:)

I'm keeping up with the emoticon title trend :)

So date two with MCB was last night and I must say that it went really well. I'm pretty sure he's interested in me and that makes me excited. We met for coffee at 7:30 and next thing it was 10 and I was getting really tired. He is really easy to talk to about anything really. I like that. The reason I'm sure he's interested... and they are numerous
1) he mentioned that he wants to learn how to ski this winter and suggested that I could teach him how
2) he wants to teach me how to rock climb (I've been once before, but that was several years ago. It was definitely fun)
3) hes going to try and call me this afternoon so that we can talk before I go away for the week :)

Okay, so I'm literally (well, almost literally) the only one here today. Parkers door was open when I got here this morning but I haven't seen him and had to turn the lights on in the hallway when I got in at 9. I just wanted to come in and clean off my desk, distribute some cookies and get some work organized to do over the holidays if I feel so inclined, but no one is here to give cookies to yet. Guess I'll just dick around for a bit then.

Happy Holidays everyone! I probably won't be updating until tuesday next week.

:O

I guess we're all going straight to hell

women in sports

I won't keep you all waiting in suspence

Much longer anyways ;)

Man, I'm sore this morning. I did weights at the gym yesterday morning for the first time in a while, and I can definitely feel it this morning, my whole body aches, I guess I must have been doing something right!

Also haven't heard from Skiboy since our date on Friday night. I'm kind of glad of it, I didn't want to have to let him down, I think my body language did the talking for me :) I did however hear from MCB. He called me last night. We'll be going out for Coffee on Thursday night, he seemed to be interested and asked if there was a way we would be able to talk next week when I'm away :) Okay, off to do work. I'm tired this morning, but I think I'll be leaving early today. There are exactly 4 students here this morning. JD, Burger, me, and my office mate.

A revelation of sorts

Okay, so a bit of a history of my dating past...

In highschool I never dated anyone. I think it is because I kept on getting crushes on my guy friends and never really did anything about it since they were friends. coincidentally two of them have since come out of the closet so I don't take it personally that they didn't reciprocate feelings. I'll chalk that up to a gaydar lesson.

So University started and all the sudden I was surrounded by new faces and I started dating the Ex Boyf in November of first year. we dated for about 5 months and then broke up. It took me a while to get over him (like probably another 5 months or so... first love, etc...). While I still wasn't over him, I kind of dated a guy, IW, in the summer of 1B. I broke it off when I realized he was just a rebound guy and I wasn't all that interested... So now for the revelation... A memory that I must have supressed for some reason, I didn't remember it until Sunday night. After IW in the summer of 2000 (way long ago I know), another guy expressed interest in me, but I had had my "not-over-ex" revelation, so I had to shoot him down.

By the time I was finally over the ex sometime in that fall co-op term, I was a changed person. I don't know what it is, I certainly can't isolate what happened, I guess I just lost my spark, my outgoing personality, etc. Back in first year (and before), I was always a social butterfly and loved interacting and meeting new people. I could talk to people I didn't know for hours, but I lost that somewhere along the way. And I want it back. So this is what I need to work on. I want my spark back! (this is my revelation)

Two other things to note. On C-dubs urging I e-mailed MCB last night, hopefully he gets back to me, if not, at least I don't have much emotional investment. Slightly less interesting is this, third post in three days. Oooooh, consistancy. Mrs. JB did you get your package yet?

*Yawn*

Pretty slow day today. I got in super late this morning (9:30) to discover that no one was here yet (just burger and JD!). I certainly found myself asking why I was coming into school this week again. Maybe I'll take a few afternoons off this week.

I have been feeling super lazy lately. my base building for a spring half marathon was supposed to start two weeks ago, but I was sick then, and I just don't have the energy now. I decided to just scrap the first training cycle and start training harder come the new year. Oh well, I guess it happens. I did get some quality bike time in this weekend. I'm starting to get used to the whole trainer thing. I'm using trainer time to just go pretty easy aerobic type stuff. I put in pirates of the caribean and the time went pretty quickly :)

Yesterday evening I went to my aunts and uncles for dinner and to use their drill press. I've got most of my christmas stuff done now, I just need to finish up my napkin rings (varnish them) and wrap presents. should be a good time.

I think it is safe to say that I'm a little smitten with MCB. I hope he's interested too! AL thought I should call tonight, but I've been given advice to wait until tuesday. I don't know.

3 hours of crafts, 2 dates, and a funny year end video

I spent a few hours yesterday morning doing arts and crafts. I volunteered to make my dad's girlfriend a christmas stocking so I sat about doing that yesterday morning, I think it turned out pretty well and should fit in well with ours. I just hope its facing the same way as ours!!! Since I had my sewing stuff out, I decided to make ties for my curtains. They look wonderful!!!

On friday night I had my second date with skiboy, it went okay. Yep, just okay. He is nice enough, but I just don't really feel any attraction to him. The best word I can used to him is flat. We went out to the maharaja (my suggestions to "test" him as andrew says), played a few games of pool, and then went to see the movie Syriana (VERY VERY good! a little confusing at first, you just have to pay close attention, it eventually comes together). On Saturday I had my first date with Mountain Cimbing Boy (MCB) which was good. He showed me around the gym that he rock climbs at and then went to dinner. 2.5 hours later I didn't realize so much time had passed! I think there was definitely more spark there, so I guess we'll see. I hope he calls :)

The funny year end video. Warning - do not watch if you like bush and love the US :p

Holiday Baking Fun

Last night was the second annual Waterloo Holiday Bakeoff. This year EK was replaced with JR since EK isn't living in town right now (:(). So the four of us (Burger and QC as well) got together and made all sorts of holiday treats. Peppermint cookies, gingerbread cookies, molasses cookies (kind of like ginger snaps) and some almond stuff. Fun times :)

Hmmm... nothing else to report really. My model started working yesterday (yay!) now I just have to figure out how to fit this data. Believe me, it may sound easy, but it won't be :( Sometimes I just want to quit my masters! Only 5 more months of hard work though (after that, writing). There is a light at the end of the tunnel!

Impatiently waiting

For Sweetie's wedding post that is. Post soon dammit!

What else? Not much. I decided to give skiboy a second chance, I'm impressed that he replied at all after I called him a bastard. So I guess we'll see. There is another boy that I now have a date with this coming saturday. We're going indoor climbing and then for dinner. Should be good times. Not sure what his name will be... RCB, Rock climbing boy? He also likes photography so maybe photoboy? Hmmm... I think I'll postpone the naming until after I've met him. Fun stuff.

And just for the heck of it cause I like this new picture posting ability, here is another picture from my trip to Gaspe in 2004.

Picture experiment :)

Kbum and C-dub should recognize this picture (if it works :O)

Um, yeah...

So I ended up sending Ski boy an e-mail on Friday night when I was pissed off. I got a reply tonight, this is what it said...

"Hi Laura,

I am so sorry about Friday....I ended up working late. It's been a really
crazy weekend, with work and parties. Did you have a good weekend?

Again, I sincerely apologize about not calling you, I should have
called....sorry.

Anyway, I guess I am a bastard!!! I would like to see you again if you're
up for that. Let me know, okay?

(skiboy)"

As for the bastard reference, this is what the e-mail I send said...

"Hey (skiboy),

I was just wondering what happened tonight and why you didn't get a hold of
me to solidify the plans. Hope there is nothing wrong, but if there isn't
you're a bastard.

Laura
"

Sometimes you get the elevator...

And sometimes you get the shaft. I just got stood up for the first time in my life. Bastard. How hard is it to send an e-mail or call and say - "Sorry, I don't think I can meet you tomorrow, I'm just not that interested". Jackass.

Glad I didn't have any emotional investment here cause then I'd be a wreck!!!

Winter Wonderland and Wedding Weekends

So first off, although I know she won't see this until she gets back after the weekend... HAPPY WEDDING DAY to Niks. We all miss you and are thinking dearly of you today. I hope you are having a wonderful time, and wonderful weather and that your day is absolutely perfect :)

Second of all, woke up this morning to a beautiful winter wonderland. We got 4 inches of snow over night and this morning it is bright and sunny and beautiful! My entire walk to school I had a wide, stupid grin on my face, I'm sure everyone I passed thought I had never seen snow before :) Yipee!!! first beautiful snow fall of the year :)

Third off, today was supposed to be the date of my 2nd date with skiboy although I still have yet to hear from him about making definitive plans. Meh. If it doesn't happen, I won't exactly be heartbroken. We'll see. Other things on tap for the weekend - Continued christmas shopping, bike trainer riding, and the Chronicals of Narnia. Yay! should be a great weekend with the fresh snow the icing on the cake. I think I'll ride my trainer to christmas tunes this afternoon :)

Monterey Baby!

I found out yesterday that I got into my conference that I applied to back in July that is in Monterey California! I'm pretty excited, ever since I applied, I've been thinking about it. It is beautiful. Just as an example, here is a picture :)



Yeah, so I'm pretty excited about that :)

As for everything else, I'm really starting to think that Skiboy isn't for me. I don't want to start a huge political debate here, but it is important to me that someone is on the same page as me when it comes to ideals and social issues. Being Conservative would be a deal breaker, I can't see myself dating someone who leans that way. Just me though. I'm really starting to think that Skiboy is a conservative minded person. Which is just fine, I'm not judging (well, maybe just a little ;)), but like I said before, not for me. I'll still get to know him a bit better, but I'm really thinking this is going no where.

EDIT - Burgers car talk reminded me of my other good news of last night. My dad called, he only wants $2000 for the car instead of the $4000 we agreed on earlier. S's first car was free from my granny after my grandad passed away and my dad gave OUR piano to K (still at our house until she gets back), so yay for me! Extra money!!!

Details you want

Details you'll get.

But first off, yesterday afternoon QC came into my office to see if I had heard about the earthquake... what earthquake I ask? The one in Africa. Go onto the net, sure enough, there was an earthquake in Tanzania with the epicenter ~100 to 200 km from K, and Earthquake that they could feel in Niarobi another 300 km past Kates. Problem - when I get home from school it is the middle of the night in Bukoba and I can't call Kate then. Call my dad, he hadn't even heard that it happened, so he didn't have any news. Ended up calling sis this morning, turns out that they didn't feel a thing where they were, and that no one even knew that there was an earthquake until they heard it on the morning news today (like 16 hours later). That was good. She also hadn't heard of anyone that was affected, so I'm guessing all the other VSOs in eastern Africa were safe and sound.

As for the date, don't know what else to say. Burger asked if he was cute, my answer, no, not really, but not hideous either. He is 3 years older than me, a mechanical engineering tech at a car parts company about 45-60 minutes NW of Wloo. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but I would say no chemistry. I figured a second date to make sure, but I'm thinking it isn't a match. Maybe it is just me being naive though, I do have that tendancy :)

News?

You bet. I had a good weekend.

Friday night was the Civil department christmas party. I had my haircut before hand, and she was done early so decided to do my make up for free. I don't think I've ever looked that good :) She really knew what she was doing with the makeup. When I got home, I had an e-mail from one of the boys I've been communicating with asking for my phone number.

Saturday morning was the Santa Shuffle 5K. I finished 4th woman over all in a time of 24:40. I rock :) I decided to e-mail the boy (skiboy from here on out) and give him my number. He called last night. Seemed like a pretty pleasent person, so when he asked if I wanted to meet, I said OK.

Sunday cleaned my apartment went for a run. Skiboy called me in the afternoon to make plans for the night. We decided on Dinner at the Lion's Head which was pretty good. Afterwards we parted ways and I went off to chapters for some christmas shopping. As far as the date and whether it was a match, I'm not sure, we had enough in common to be "good on paper", but I didn't feel much attraction. I think we're going to go out again, so I guess time will tell. Sorry for not mentioning it when I was talking to you this afternoon Nej, didn't want to jinx it!

Deck the halls...

Oh, wait. I already did that a couple of weeks ago :) Unlike others around here, I have no problem with starting the christmas season early!

Last night I got a few more items for my sister's stocking. I'm almost done that, now I just have to figure out what I'm going to get her as a present. I'm thinking expensive shampoo as she would never spend money on that kind of thing for herself. And wes, and my dad... crap. I'm in the christmas spirit, but I have NO clue what I'm going to get people :(

What is going on with my life? Not too much really. With the Lavalife thing, not too much. I'm in communication with two people right now, but not sure if either of them are a match. I guess I'll have to wait and see. With the running stuff everything is going well, I'm finally starting to feel great again after the marathon. I was just beat up after it. No other way to describe it. Swimming on Tuesday and Wednesday was awesome, I've really made some great improvements on my swimming in the last month and a half. My old 100 yard time was 1:20 (from the beginning of November), my new time is 1:15, my old 400 yard time was 6:15 (from middle of october), my new time I believe was 6:07, but I might have been 15 seconds off which would have been 5:52, which I think makes more sense - I missed when the instructor was timing, he wasn't originally going to, but there was a guy I was going faster than that got 5:55 on his watch... I guess that is one of the problems with pace clocks.

Guess that is it for me.

EDIT: Oh God. I just read this. How Horrible. Remind me to never go to Singepore, knowing my luck I'd j-walk and end up getting executed.

Busy Busy Busy

So the past few days have been a whir of activity.

Friday was spent at school, then home to make my dish for the potluck, to spinning, and then home to quickly shower. The potluck was lots of fun. It was nice spending time outside of school with that group of people.

Saturday morning - man that was stressful. Wake up to 2"s of fresh snow. Don't think anything of it and head down to ring road to catch my bus to downtown to get my train. Snow not cleared off roads = bus 5-10 minutes late. I power walk from king st. to the train station. spend 10 minutes in line. When I get to the front of the line, the phone rings (now 9:10, train supposed to be leaving), apparently it is stuck on the tracks outside stratford and won't be moving anywhere. Ack! So have to figure out how I'm getting to Peterpatch - don't remember bus times either!) they are going to bus people to toronto but I likely won't get there in time to make my transfer, what time is next train to coburg. oh, that would be 6:45 leaving toronto. Ack! Okay, calm down. Left train station at 9:15, and am hustling! I have to make it back down to king (5 minute power walk) and hopefully catch a bus to the bus depot, but no guarantee of when the bus will be along. I know there is a bus leaving at 9:30 to toronto, an maybe if it is an express bus I could still catch the train to coburg. A nice lady stopped and drove me to the bus station. I ended up making it onto the bus at 9:31, express to toronto. Could have made the coburg transfer, but apparently there was a transfer at the bus station to peterborough, and ended up all the way up there. Phew. Long winded I know, but it was super stressful! Thanks to the random lady, I never would have made it up to peterborough without her.

Saturday afternoon we went to the festival of trees which was pretty neat, and then out to the Junction. I had a mini-breakdown when I realized I'm old and nowhere near where I wanted to be when I was 25. It is pretty depressing really. I want to have kids in like 5 years, but I'm no closer to that point in my life then when I was when I was 13. And no, single motherdom is not appealing to me, I will not have a child if I'm single.

Sunday morning had to get a hold of Bro-in-law, which proved difficult, but eventually he picked me up at 11:15 to drive me back to his place and then onto my dad's for family dinner. I got my trainer, yay!!! I still have to set it up. I fell asleep on the couch at 9 watching the 3rd harry potter.

Monday morning I was trying to get off early to come back to waterloo. My sis and Dad don't really understand that yes, I do actually have to be at school, I was hoping to leave by 9, but because of them, didn't get off until 10:15. Made me late for the 4th year project presentations, and I didn't have time to actually do anything other than drop off my bag and grab my rain jacket, so I had to go back home after the presentations. Not fun. Ran with the Tri club, did my laundry, and went grocery shopping last night. All fun.

I'm enamoured

Crap. If this crush gets worse, I won't be able to talk to... yep, you guessed, Ironboy.

Running again with the Tri group tonight, but because of the snow storm only 4 of us showed up. Me, Ironboy, and two other boys who don't come out often, also training for ironmans. AKA, everyone in much better shape than me. So I kept up for the first 2K, but decided to drop back since I was working too hard and slipping back too much (the faster I try to run in this weather, the more I slip). Ironboy told the other two to go ahead and ran with me the rest of the run. We chatted the rest of the run (another 15-20 minutes) and then all during stretching and what not. Turns out he also tore his ACL and that is why he decided to do a tri. Ah. Okay, I'm going to stop gushing now :)

Am I a bad person?

So last night I deleted one of my MSN contacts. It is someone I used to be friends with a few years ago, but I haven't talked to her in literally years. So I just got an e-mail from her wishing me a happy early birthday and asking me what I'm up to. Weird. Now I feel totally bad about deleting her from my list! I'll reply later on today I guess.

I was also trying to figure out this whole internet dating ettiquette. It is damn confusing. You "smile" at a guy, they "smile" back, is the ball now in my court to send a mail message. So damn confusing.

Man. I'm cold today at school. I've got the heat on max, my touque on and my mits when I'm not typing. What is wrong with me? I think it is the fact that my apartment is so toasty warm, I want my office to be that warm too!

A guy's perspective

I'll explain the title at the end of this entry.

So Friday night was Harry Potter! Nej came up from b-town and we went with P&J, Q&R, and Burger. It was pretty great! They left out alot of the back story but managed to keep in all the key points. My thoughts are that they made the movie as good as they possibly could have. What made the book excellent was all the character development which would have taken hours more to do in a movie because of this, people who haven't read the book might not think it was as good.

Keeping with the Potter theme, Saturday Nej and I hit the town and went to the Waterloo Potters Guild show to do some christmas shopping. I picked up a stocking stuffer for my sis and a maple syrup pitcher for myself (It was pretty cheap, so I don't feel that bad about it :)). Saturday afternoon I ran a bunch of errands and relaxed at night.

Sunday morning I went for my longest post marathon run. 10K ooooooo. I did some more errands and got ready for my dad and his girlfriend who came for lunch. They were picking up the car since my oldest sis is flying back down from Tbay this morning and is borrowing the car for the last week of her visit.

Sunday night I was chatting with my friend AL (think BC). Something that I haven't actually mentioned here before - Last spring after E started dating P, she gave me her lavalife profile that had some "credits" on it. At the time I was still kind of skeptical of the whole internet dating thing and didn't put much effort into the thing. I didn't really search people, just waited for others to search me, and didn't get any responses. Nada. So anywho, last night AL and I were talking about all this, and he helped me update my profile, and voila, like magic, I've gotten something like 4 or 5 "smiles" in the last 12 hours. I haven't decided who, if anyone, I'm going to reply to since the replies cost credits, but we'll see. Just made me feel a little better about myself!

E-mail from Lisa

Hi Laura,

If you or anyone you're aware of would like to make a donation - cheques
can be made out to;

"Kenton Carnegie Memorial Fund"

The donations can be brought/sent to my office.

Thanks,

Lisa Schneider

University of W/loo
Environmental & Geological
Undergraduate Office
E2-2337

Nothing much new

Just talked to Lisa about the donations, apparently they were going through the funeral home, but they are now going to be going through the department. She's waiting to hear back from SG in the Deans office and said she will e-mail me when she finds out.

Nothing else new really. Ran with the tri group again yesterday. Went pretty good, was actually able to keep up for most of the run yesterday (a couple of people sprinted on ahead, but I kept with/ahead of the main pack, so I was pretty happy about that. Back in mostly good health :)

Also Burger decided to give me some dating advise. Thinks I should be dating more. I couldn't agree more, but I lack the confidence to make a move, and no guy has shown any interest in me in, oh, 5+ years. Lots of fun there. Boo-urns to being single.

Sad news

Daily Bulletin

Thought you guys outside of waterloo might be interested (and saddened) to read this. I don't know if any of you knew him, I can't claim that I did, but I certainly knew of him through engsoc type stuff and through the TA I had this summer (I was TA-ing the Enviros only). So sad, so horrible.

Anyone want to go to lake placid with my in July?

I've decided I'm going to volunteer there at Ironman USA (closest Ironman to here). I'm so excited about this :) It'll be such a great experience :)

Oh, and if anyone cares, Hawaii is on TV tomorrow at 4:30 on NBC.

Hawaii

I love watching it every year, and dreaming of the day (if ever it is in the very distant future of hearing "Laura Jones of Ontario, you are an Ironman". So cool :) It's going to be so much fun to be there!!!

Better?

Well a little better anyways. I'm not completly congested and I seem to have my roaring appetite back... I can't wait until lunch time today :) haven't had that feeling for a while.

So I went to swimming last night. Only 5 people went :O... craziness. We swam (well, I did anyway) 2400 yards and I felt pretty good. Only really out of breath once, but most of it was at a pretty slow pace. So my current dilema is do I try to go for a run tonight with the tri club (at 4:30) or do I not tempt fate and stick with swimming yesterday and spinning tomorrow? Other details... I have to get down to Toronto tonight to pick up my car (sis is en route to t-bay as I write to visit friends up there, so I will have the car for the next week and a half).

Option 1) Bus leaving campus at 5 pm arrive downtown at 7 pm, this option I miss running with the tri group. Although free dinner is involved :)

Option 2) Bus leaving downtown terminal at 7:30 arrives downtown at 9 pm, this option I must pay for city bus ticket and I'll arrive back later.

Right now I think I'm leaning towards option 1. I want to run (I miss it), but I really need to get rid of this illness, I'm still not 100% although I'm feeling 20 times better than I did earlier this week. I'll need to make up my mind soon though since I'll have to call my dad and tell him what I'm up to and get a bus ticket... ah, decisions.

Ugh.

So I woke up with a full blown cold on Friday morning which progressed over the weekend. Saturday I couldn't breath... well at least through my nose, Sunday my nose wouldn't stop running/sneezing. Sunday night I started feeling nauseous which continued through monday morning. I didn't go to school yesterday. By monday afternoon I was feeling marginally better so decided to go for a run. Bad idea. Took me 4 minutes longer than usual for the route and my heart rate was through the roof. This morning nauseousness seems to be mostly gone but my cold seems to have taken a step backwards. Nose worse than yesterday and throat the worst it has been. Needless to say I don't think swimming tonight is happening. I learned my lesson yesterday. (Oh, I slept for like 3 hours during the day last night and still had no problem gettin in 9.5 hours last night... can we say worn out?)

Okay so today I decided to come into school. I'm feeling like crap, but hoping that as the day goes on I'll start feeling a little better. I might go home a little early today, depends on how the day goes (like if I get back my headache).

Other than that... got to see my sis this weekend which was nice. We had a Jones family get together, the only ones not there were my cousin Dave and his girlfriend (she live in BC, he is going out later this month.) Even the cousins from Sudbury were down. It was great getting to see everyone again, but as is always the case not enough time.

I'm such a pack rat

One of the drills that we did in swimming on Wednesday left me with a few questions so I got out my old swim books to look up the proper technique for front crawl, and what did I find? My old lesson plans complete with Homework assignments for levels 4-12 :O Crazy. I can't believe I still have all that stuff. I'm ready to jump in the pool and teach Aquaquest tomorrow. All I need now is to actually be qualified again :O

I amaze myself sometimes... Not in a good way.

Scary stuff

So I am currently reading a book titled "Oxidation in Organic Chemistry" for those of you who aren't chemistry buffs (like me!) oxidation is generally used in the water treatment industry to "get rid" of organic contaminants. This book was written in 1965. The attitude of the book however is to use and control oxidation to make new fun organic compounds. Fun eh? Kind of scary, sounds kind of like they thought "What would happen if I add x to y?" without thinking much of the consequences and the saftey of what they were creating. Got me thinking a bit.

Last night was swimming with the Tri club. Good times. About 2000 yards, but there was some stroke improvement drills that were a big waste of time for me. (Both my sisters (former instructors as well) have told me I have near perfect strokes, I just need to work at getting faster - and no, they aren't telling me because they are my sisters, they tend to be critical. We used to critique each others strokes to make sure we weren't getting sloppy.) Disappointing development however is that ironboy is hairy. Like really hairy. Luckily it is contained to the chest, but I prefer my guys hairless thank-you (As most of you know I have a bit of a hair thing).

Happy First Day of Work Nej :)

Not much else to post about. Last night I went to swimming, it was so so. too much whip kick for my crappy knees :( It is sad since I used to OWN breast stroke. I guess that happens though when you have knee surgery and aren't able to do whip kick for a long time.

Oh, and I also chatted with E online which was nice, I miss that girl! (Hope it went well today chickie :))

Happy Birthday to... My blog???

Yep, that is right. 1 year ago today I posted my first post on this here blog of mine (after switching from livejournal). Wow, how time has flown.

So what have I been up to??? Not much. Friday I went home after lunch and called my sister. Went to the gym for a spinning class, came home and started cleaning my appartment.

Saturday I woke up and didn't do to much in the morning, but got to the gym by 10:30 for a body flow class and to use the elliptical. Man, it has been years (literally) since I've been on one of those). In the afternoon I went grocery shopping and in the evening continued to clean my apartment.

Sunday I got up at my normal early hour despite having an extra hour. I did laundry and made cookies in the morning and went to the gym to do weights (Shocking I know) and went to soccer - we lost 1-0 so that is the end of our season. We played really well though in the second half :). Sunday night we went out for desert at the plantation to celebrate my marathon. I felt a little silly about this, but EK wanted to, so I didn't want to deny her ;)

Monday more of the same. Came to school, carved pumpkins in the hydro lab, handed out candy, went to bed.

Oh what an exciting life I live.

So now onto the mopey bit... At times like this, I really hate being single. I think it always happens when my schedule slows down a bit and I have time to spend by myself. Don't get me wrong, I love (and need) me time a lot, but I just feel like something in my life is missing. I know I have the best friends and family in the world, but it's just not the same. I want a companion, someone to share my life with. GAR! Where are all the single guys??? I know I can be picky, but is it too much to ask for a single guy who is active and enjoys the outdoors? really, it isn't that much.

I'm baaaaaack

I know you all missed me greatly. I'm such a wonderful, fabulous person that your lives have been NOTHING without me all week long ;) Obviously I'm joking here... or am I?

The conference was pretty good. I was up super late finishing my presentation on Monday night. I'm pretty happy with how the slides turned out, but I would have liked to have another couple of days to practice my talk (instead of oh, 8 hours (in which I actually had to sleep.

On Wednesday, burger and I went to downtown chicago, went up the sears tower and walked through the expensive stores area (The Magnificent Mile). We went into Nordstrom, Sephora, Ninewest, and Tiffany. The people in those stores were pretty nice and realized that we were just costumers, and treated us decently. We then went into Saks Fith Avenue. Totally different story, the sales lady was totally rude, I think she realized we were just there to gawk at the price tags. However, the trip did reaffirm my love fro Christian Leboutin (I think I butchered that spelling!) shoes even if I would never (ever) spend $790 US on a pair. And Burger also discovered Jimmy Choo's (I personally think she would have bought them if I hadn't been there to set her straight ;), just joking burger, they were beautiful shoes, but I know you were more sticker shocked than I was.)

Yesterday it was back to T-dot. Pretty uneventful flight. I got back just as QC (who was cat sitting) was coming back from the gym, so that was excellent timing.

Oh, and the pictures are up from the marathon. They got TONNES of me :)

http://www.brightroom.com/view_user_event.asp?EVENTID=9148&PWD=&BIB=502 (And in case you are wondering, Yes, I passed that guy :))

I'm a marathoner :)

So my story starts while back. Back in first year LF (a friend of mine) entered the new york lottery and tried to convince me to enter with her. At the time I had never run more than 7 km, and the thought of a full marathon "No way, I could NEVER do that!". So the years went by, I discorvered I was more capable than I thought. So I sent the tentative goal that I wanted to do a marathon before the age of 25, realistically knowing that this fall would likely be when it happened. (My 25th birthday is next month!)

I started thinking about it about this time last year, and did a couple of half marathons and 1 tri in the spring and early summer. I ramped up my training for a month and a bit, but then it was off to africa to go and visit my sister. I didn't register for my race until I got back since I wanted to make sure I got in my long runs I needed. I had to adjust my training schedule, originally I wanted to have 3 runs of 20+ miles and to peak at 50 miles/week (mpw). But life and vacation got in the way and I only got in 1 20 miler and peaked at 48 mpw. (I got in 3 really long ones, a 28K at altitude on crazy hills in africa, and then a 30K and 32K run when I got back.)

So fast forward to the past few weeks, as you all know, I'm a grad student and preparing for a conference that is in oh, 24 hours, the incredible stress and long hours at work allowed the cold I had been fighting for 4 weeks finally took over last week, but surprisingly, I didn't notice it too much during the race though. I did adjust my goals this past week because of it though, I originally wanted 4:30, but I realized with the combination of my slacker training and my cold that I really didn't care about my finish time. At all.

Saturday morning I was up early and off to the expo (2 hours away). I met up with a woman I know from a running message board (AR), and we met Kathrine Switzer - first woman to do a marathon, and she signed my bib "To Laura who honours ME with her debut, Go Girl! - K. Switzer". So cool. And she really understands. She wrote of the front of my bib, upside down so that when I needed motivation during the race, just had to flip up my bib I went out for lunch with AR and her family to applebees. I got the "Two Cheese" Chicken Penne, Yum! (note: it was supposed to be 3 cheese, but I asked for light on the cheese ).

It was then back tracking 45 minutes to my Aunt's and Uncles house for dinner and the night (Also met up with my dad there). We had a nice little visit and I excused myself to go to bed, and actually slept pretty well. I woke up once at 4:30 and literally sat bolt upright, and had to check my watch to make sure I hadn't overslept.

I got up at 6:00, got dressed, ate, and tried my darndest to go to the bathroom (number 2) for a the next few hours, but wasn't able to go. Never a problem for me before a race! Ended up popping a couple of immodium and hoping for the best (I know, too much information ;)).

So the race started (after chilling out at this cool Art Gallery in Buffulo for a couple of hours), My dad and his girlfriend were back from breakfast and saw me in the shoots, and just on the other side of the start line.

I lined myself up near the 4:30 pace bunny not really caring if I kept up or not, and for the first mile I ran with them, but the split had me in at 9:30, oops! I slowed it down a bit and got the next few splits

1mile 9:30
2 - 10:07/19:37
3 - 10:22/29:59
4 - 10:16/40:15
And that is where I stopped watching my splits , got a couple of them...

Was throught 10K around 63 minutes, 15K somewhere around 1:34-1:36, Through the half at 2:16:37 (Had to go potty - Finally! - right before the half point ) And just kept going. From the half point to the finish line, only 2 people passed me. I was picking off people the entire way. I probably passed 50 people along the course. as soon as I passed one, I'd find a new one to pick off.

I can't give you any splits for the rest of the race. I knew 4:30 wasn't happening, so I just ran my own race from this point in time. How many marathons or races, are you guarenteed a personal best for???

My legs started to get tired around the 18 mile mark, but I was fine until the 20 mile mark. Just after EK and Burger were on the side and that boosted me for a bit, definitely good placement girls!. A few minutes after that, AR showed up, she was doing her long run after her hubby finished the half (shes doing New York in 2 weeks and is so getting her 3:40 goal!) and was there to pace me in for the last 5 and a bit miles. She was amazing. I wasn't good company and very quiet, but I can honestly say, I never hit the wall, I never felt like I couldn't finish, she kept my mind occupied. At the water stations (which I was walking through - and had been planning to walk through), she would introduce me to the volunteers and get them to cheer me on, and she kept two steps in front of me to block the wind. I can't say the miles flew by, I was in pain, but I never felt like I couldn't finish.

(EK and Burger were there again about 1.5 miles from the finish. They were a hard pair to miss :)). At 5K out, my quads started to hurt, and with a mile to go, my calves started to cramp up and I needed to stop to stretch them. They still hurt to the finish, but I kept going. I even managed to pass "the guy in the blue jacket" in the finishing chute . Everytime I passed someone, AR would sing "another one bites the dust".

Finished with a huge grin on my face, and the most amazing feeling of accomplishment somewhere around 4:39:45?? In my excitement i forgot to press stop Am I disappoint? Heck no! I'm so proud of myself!!!!!

Conclusions:
1) I'm not doing another marathon for a few years. Not because of the race, but because next time I do want to go for time, I do want to train properly, and I do want to give it the effort it deserves. Not splitting time with triathlon and multisport.
2) for now my goals are to get my half marathon time down (much easier to train for with multisport) and get my tri distance up.
3) I'm a marathoner! Yipee! I CAN do it

And they're off and running

My models that is. 60 models, 30-90 minutes each. Roughly 15 hours. I've so far taken over 4 computers, but might take over more as it slows down in the afternoon. It is friday after all :) One set already crapped out because the time step was too big. I'll try to decrease that step, and run this one chemical (5 runs) on my computer overnight. Oh, I lead such an exciting life.

I did manage to get hom last night by shortly after 7, so that was a nice change. I actually got to sit down and relax for the first time since Monday. I'm still fighting this pesky cold, it still hasn't got the better of me. I was feeling better yesterday after having a booster juice on Wednesday (thanks for the tip c-dub!), but it seems to have taken a turn for the worse again. I'll get another one tonight, and probably another for the car ride to Niagara Falls tomorrow morning.

So yes, my marathon. 2 days from now, I'll be running it! Time certainly flies when you are dreading something ;). Seriously though, I'm pretty excited and nervous about it, but haven't had too much time to think about it this week. Probably better that way since I tend to obsess a bit :) Okay, off to work on this presentation, can't put the results in, but I can put some rough conclusions in (I know what the model is going to show), and get all my method and stuff set up. Good thing I'm okay at winging presentations :) I'll probably not post again until Sunday night, I won't keep you in suspense any longer than that :)

An Update you want

An Update you'll get, but I can't guarantee it'll be positive. Actually, quite the opposite.

So my model was running, yay, got my runs done and then I met with my supervisor to discuss the results. He saw my "Fit" curve from last week and decided that it wasn't good enough, so I have to spend all this extra time now getting a better fit and re-running my model to get better results to present at the conference. Sounds like fun right? Well, I'm not even started. So this all comes about yesterday at 4:00, we make a few minor changes, and voila, my model no longer runs. I spend the next hour and a half in a total panic, and finally realize my program is running, just not out of the fortran window. Weird, I know. So I have swimming in under an hour, I still have to eat, etc. so I grab a sandwich and head home, for like 15 minutes. Go to swimming (that was nice, I can be positive about that), and then back to school from 8 to 11:45 pm, I leave a bunch of models running on my school computer, and bring a bunch more home with me to run from there.

I get about 7 hours of Jenny interrupted sleep, she missed me and wanted to cuddle. Cute, but not good when you are fighting a cold and halve a marathon in 4 days.

I get back into school shortly after 8 to realize what I should have known would happen, my models aren't done running. After about 15 minutes (my computer was super slow), I decided to stop a couple and bring them to run from home. Finished running at 12:15, back to school by 12:25, looks at my breakthrough curves, and tada! No break through. All the work I got done is a complete waste of time, and I'm in the exact same position as I was last wednesday. Only this time I have only 6 days (minus saturday and sunday because of marathon) to get results, make a presentation, practice it, and present. Sound like fun yet?

I'm a little stressed out if you can't tell. I'm planning on taking over the computer lab every night this week (and weekend). I have a feeling that Sunday night will be my first (and hopefully only) all nighter in grad school.

Balance this!

Okay, so finally, my equations are balaced. Wahoo! Just realized though that my coefficients in the ones I ran yesterday were wrong, so all that work is essentially down the drain. Hopefully my runs don't take that long to do. I'm finally ready to set them up to run. 12 chemicals, 5 runs each = 60 runs. Each run takes about 10 minutes right now, so that'd be 10 hours. Ugh. If I get a bunch going on my computer before I leave today, I may have results tomorrow morning.

And for those of you with your kind words, thanks. I was in tears last night over this, and have spent over 5.5 hours this morning trying to balance these stupid equations. (Note: I just finished, and I've been here since like 7:45 this morning!!!)

My weekend was good. C-dub, nej, and Margo came down on Saturday afternoon to go to Oktoberfest, it was fun catching up with those girls :) The highlight of my night was when burger's boyf said that quite a few people had said I looked "sexy". Definitely an upper, especially since I tend to have pretty low self-esteem when it comes to my looks. (I tend to blame that on the reason why I don't get any boys, but the truth is, it is probably the way I feel I look and not the way I look that is the problem). Anywho, thanks to burger's Boyf, for making my week :)

I guess that is pretty much it. I haven't run since thursday - taking this taper thing a I little too serious. I plan on doing 13K this afternoon, first 7 by myself, last 6 with the triathlon club, which means, fingers crossed, IB will be there, and with my new found self-esteem, who knows ;)

Do you ever feel like you are stupid

Like really dumb? That is how I feel right now. I've spent the hour and a bit trying to balance some stupid equations, stuff I should have been able to do back in highschool. Can I? Nope, not at all. I'm never going to make it through this week, or my master's degree. I should just quit now.

I feel so defeated. After a thomson was gone all last week, I was supposed to get so much done, but I didn't. He is going to be so disappointed and I don't know what I'm going to do.

Very Tired

More vivid dreams last night led to another side effect of Larium - insomnia. I felt like I was up half the night. After one particularly horrible nightmare (like, absolutely horrible, the kind I used to get when I was a kid) I actually had to sit up for a bit and read to take my mind off of the dream. I have a feeling today is going to be a mucho caffine day.

Yesterday was the Triathlon club again. Didn't really find anything new out about IB, but I did talk to him quite a bit on the run. I have a feeling that he might be a really strong athlete, he was talking about some of his friends that are pros. Craziness. There weren't very many people there last night, only 6, probably due to the crappy weather (looked like it was going to rain). Then it was off to Yoga. I got a bit better at a couple of the poses, so I felt pretty good about that :)

CSI last night was a weird episode, not one of the better ones. Now I'm back at work trying to sort out my input files (my goal for the day), but I still am waiting to hear back from my supervisor about some problems that I noticed late yesterday.

Wahoooo!

Progress! So on Friday afternoon I was supposed to get some number to add into my model, easy numbers that were supposed to just fit in all nice and then I could do my model runs this week. Well, turns out these numbers didn't exist and I had to find them by myself. Finally after 2.5 days of hard work, I have my model calibrated and am almost ready to finally start my model runs. Problem: Model runs are supposed to be done and graphed by the time the captain gets back next monday. NOT going to happen at this rate.

So my goal is to get my working from input files today, and then tomorrow spend the day setting up my input files: 1 file for each run, and at least 50 runs total (probably more like 100 since I have to vary two parameters). And then I can set them up so that they run over the weekend (either at home on my computer there, or here at school - If I have 20 going at a time, that will mean I *only* have to come in 5 times to restart the next set of model runs. That leaves me monday morning to assemble my data into presentable graphs.

Only hitch is that I was supposed to do all of this twice (once for column, once for "inject and leave"). I've never even tested the inject and leave model so I have no clue how or if it works, have no clue what kind of numbers we would want for flow rates, well diameter, etc. Basically, I'm screwed. Argh! oh well, I guess I can only do what I can do, and hopefully getting the second set up and running next week will be easy enough.

Thanks for letting me vent. I feel better now :)

things that make you go hmmm

Last night I went to see "In her shoes" it was pretty good, I'm glad I went. After the movie QC commented that she has yet to go to a movie with me where I don't cry. Oops! :)

So I woke up this morning in an utter panic. I just finished taking my anti-malaria pills last week, and one of the side effects is vivid dreams. Well, I think I just had one...

I wake up one morning and realize it is the day of my marathon and I completely missed the expo (where you pick up your race kit). Since the race starts in the US we HAVE to clear customs on Saturday at the expo, so I'm in an utter panic trying to figure out what I'm going to do, who I'm going to contact, how I can make this right. Next thing I'm at the mall searching for something, not sure what, and then I can't find my car, but I NEED to get to buffulo! I keep thinking, 'This is a nightmare, I'll wake up, and it'll all be okay', but I don't, and I realize this is actually happening to me. I swear when I actually woke up this morning I was almost in tears about missing it. It took me a couple of minutes to realize I still had 10 days.

Current Forecast: Rain and 11C (52F), I want 8 and sun. Still has 10 days to change...

Today is running with the triathlon club (and of course IB).

Edit 10:04 am Good lord

A woman obsessed

So I keep on checking the extended forcast for Niagara, I'm finding it hard to concentrate on my work :O Oops :) Still have 10 more days of obsessing to go. I'm going to be a nervous wreck next week!

Skipped the swimming last night, my throat was starting to get worse so decided I needed rest. I got up for my run this morning, but cancelled out of spinning for tomorrow morning. I figure that my running is more important than cross training right now, and since I'm not 100%, I need to cut one back so cross training it is.

Oh, I also started to clean my apartment last night. Shocking I know. Hopefully by the time the weekend comes around it will be semi-decent looking and relatively cat hair free for Margo. I actually washed all my glassware last night, so no dusty glasses at Laura's :D

Have a great Hump day everyone!

*sniff*

As in I have a runny nose :( I hope I don't get too sick seeing as my marathon is in 11 days! I decided to take off this morning when I woke up feeling completely drained. Hopefully I'll get a good night sleep tonight and feel 100 times better, but I have a feeling this cold is going to get worse before it gets better. Maybe I should go off the echinacha and vit. c and just let it hit my like a tonne of bricks.

My weekend was pretty good. Action packed. Friday night my cousin Z was in Town for Oktoberfest so we went out for dinner (Maharaja, I love that place!!!), Then is was back to b-ville and I didn't get in till around midnight. ugh. Saturday morning was breakie with D&M, and up to Ottawa. Saturday afternoon got together with e, we went to gatineau and MEC. Lots of fun :) Then off to dinner at my aunts house.

Sunday was my last longish run. 21.5 km, felt pretty good and pretty strong, so that is always a nice feeling :) ran the last 2 miles at the same pace as the first two, so that is a good sign :) then I hung out with my Granny, dad, sis, and bro-in-law for the afternoon and went to my uncles for t-giving dinner.

Monday was up again and back to b-ville where I spent a few hours before carrying on to W/loo. Took me 3.5 hours to get to Missisauga where I met NQ for dinner (that was nice, I hadn't seen her since her wedding in June 04!) and back to home. Jenny was very happy to see me. I was going to take her with me, but I decided last minute on friday that she'd probably prefer to stay put. It was a good trial run for our conference in a few weeks.

That is it. I'm back at school now after a long busy weekend. I can't do much though until one of the other grad students sends me his lab data. If he doesn't send it to me, I may go home and sleep and do some errands. I guess we'll see.

*Yawn*

Another day, another fully tired self. I will be glad when I'm done my book and it doesn't keep me up at night anymore! Oh yeah, and when my marathon is over so I don't have to get up at 5:30 in the morning anymore!!! Definitely glad it is friday, I plan on sleeping a lot this weekend :)

Okay, so yesterday afternoon was the triathlon club meeting and run. It went pretty good, however lasted about an hour, so I was pretty late getting to yoga last night.

New things found out about IB
1) He has VERY nice legs to match his nice torso that burger mentioned last week.
2) He is in the first year of his masters (applied math), so he is a year younger.
3) He has done tris for 3 years now, first year try-a-tri, second sprints, third olys and long courses, however, he registered for IM Wisconsin the day after the race so didn't have to qualify for it.
4) He has a very outgoing personality
5) He looks oddly familiar without his glasses on. I'm thinking I know him from somewhere, but am having troubles placing it.

Still no info on his "attached status".

The run was pretty good, I was actually one of the "fast people" so that was a huge ego boost. I'm by no means a fast runner, or actually any of the three disciplines, but all together I do decent since I'm okay at each. I joked part way through the run that it wasn't a comon site for me not running behind others :) Mind you the girl I was running with was a 16-17 minute 5Ker (ie. insanely fast for those of you who don't run), so what felt like a tough but doable pace for me was probably way too easy for her.

Edit 10:30. Oh. my. lord. I just don't know what to say. click here

Almost all the good Canadian Teams won :)

Well, except for Calgary, and that has me sad. Yes, that means I'm cheering for Ottawa *Ducks quickly*. I've cheered for them since the word go. I've always loved the city and when they got back their NHL team, I started cheering for them. Even though for many years they were a joke, stationed at the bottom of the league year in and year out. Go Ottawa!!! (But that isn't to say that I won't cheer for the leafs as well, just don't expect me to chear for the leafs if they are playing the Sens :))

Okay so other news? Not much, but I found todays MSN horoscope intriguing this morning...

A potential new love partner could appear on the scene, Laura, perhaps someone from a distant state or foreign country, or in a field such as law or education. You could have a lot of interests in common with this person, and some intriguing discussions could result. Whether or not you pursue this attraction, of course, depends on your situation, but today at least you could enjoy this person's company. Tomorrow - well, who knows?

A potential new love partner - IB
Field such as law or education - He's a grad student
A lot of interests in common - How bout the old swim bike run?

Oh, and in case you are wondering, the UW triathlon club is having a group run today, so there could definitely be the opportunity for "intriguing discussion".

Man, I'm tired, I want to go back to bed. I'm reading Angels and Deamons right now, I couldn't put it down last night, so I stayed up about an hour later than I intended. Oops :O

More Complaining

I should change the name of my blog to "Laura's Venting Forum" since really, that seem to be all I'm doing lately.

So all day today I'm been coughing. not a lot, just a little, but now my throat is getting sore :( I think I'm getting sick, so I better get over this before my marathon or I'm not going to have fun :( Not happy right now.

Oh, and for anyone whos interested my training swim went well last night. 2650 yds altogether

300 choice
4x50 pull
200 choice
2x50 kick
100 choice

300 choice practicing flip turns
100 kick
4 x 200 on the 3:30 (supposed to be 3:20, but the girl I shared and lane with and I decided we'd prefer the extra 10 seconds of rest)
100 kick
4 x 50 on the 1:00s. Easy shmeasy
150 cool down

I started doing dolphin kicks off the flip turns, and man does it ever make it easier!!!!

Oh, and Amazing race, amazing? Not really, not sure if I'm going to watch this season.

Why me?

Why is it that everytime I fix one problem I'm faced with a new one??? I was able to figure out why my model wasn't sensitive to three major things it should be. Stuff was in the wrong order, I wasn't updated my mass term at thre right location. Fine, I fixed that. Now my decay curves have some super messed up, inexplainable bend in them. :(

One problem fixed

So I rearranged some stuff, and voila, the mass transfer is now making sense. Unfortunately other stuff isn't. Ah, you gotta love the world of modelling. Why did I chose this for my masters? Can anyone remember? I could be in arizona right now basking in the sunlight :)

Not much going on. I got my pictures developed from my trip to africa. They turned out really well. I got 8x10s of three of the pictures, they were expensive ($9 each), but they turned out beautifully and will be added to my collection of 8x10s :)

Oh, and I also had to rearrange my furniture a bit this morning. When I got home last night there was a notice on my door saying that the maintenance guys were coming and needed access to my AC, so I had to move my dresser this morning. Jenny couldn't figure out what was going on and was thoroughly confused. I might keep it this way, I might move it back, who knows. I think I'll wait a few days and see if I like it. All this reminds me, I MUST remember to pay my rent!!!

Later dude(ette)s

Bad posture?

Man that running guy never listened to the string tied to your head advice eh? Running like that all day like he has, I'm surprised he hasn't stopped because his neck/balk hurts. It's going to be one long haul of a month if he doesn't sort that out soon ;)

I'm feeling a little better, I've decided to leave my mass transfer problem for now and sort out other things. The new stuff isn't going any better, but hopefully when I sort it out the mass transfer will be magically fixed. Or at least make more sense.

Edit: 4:46 - yes, I'm still at school, shocking I know. I just remembered something from yesterday, so I'm at home watching the Subaru Ironman Canada. Lots of fun. They were at the finish of the swim and one of the commentators (the typical TSN guy who doesn't know what he is talking about) starts talking about how a number of the athletes are switching to butterfly at the end of the swim. WTF??? They are NOT doing butter fly, they are doing dolphin dives, which is faster than front crawl or running in about chest deep water. Very typical for high level triathletes to do this. No triathlete in their right mind would do butterfly during a race, let alone as the end of a triathlon swim let alone an ironman swim, it is inefficient, and horrible on the heart rate. We like to stick with easier strokes. All the top level people would know this. It irked me. Learn something about the sport before you start commentating. Oh and for what it is worth, the other commentator was Lisa Bently who is an ironman champion.

Gar

Have you ever been so frustrated you just want to cry? All day today I've been working on my model, trying to figure out why it is doing this one thing wrong, and I'm no further now than I was at 8:30 this morning.

When I INCREASE the mass transfer coefficient, I'm getting DECREASED mass transfer. I can't figure it out, and I just want to curl up into a ball and make it all go away :(

Nice weekend

Pretty relaxing, didn't do too much. Friday I read and watched some tv, saturday read most of the day, also dropped off some pictures to be developed then forgot to go back to pick them up!!! Rented Sahara on Saturday night - It was okay, but the movie is about an "Environmental Disaster", and it kind of annoyed me because the science and hydrogeology were pretty off. I hate it when people write stuff and don't research it properly. Mind you the average person wouldn't realize there was anything wrong with it.

Sunday morning was my long run, all 32K of it. I finished, and that is about as much positive as I can say about it. The first 18 K were great, the next 6 it started getting hot, and my legs started feeling heavy. Tried to pick it up to marathon pace for the last 6 km, the first 3 were great, the 4th not so great, 5 and 6 were miserable and WAY off pace (conciously so though). I'm pretty sure that I "bonked" which is the figurative wall. It has been a while since that has happened to me, and it is never pleasent. I think my problem was with hydration. I had my 2L pack on and was practicing drinking at the intervals that stations would be at during the race, but I don't think I was drinking enough each time. I had about half a litre left at the end of the run which means in the course of 3:45 I only drank about a litre and a half. Not enough, especially given the heat for the last 10 or so km.

I guess I just have to shrug it off as a learning experiance and hope that the same thing doesn't happen on race day. I made it through the last 2km, but I'm not sure I could have made it 12.

No Malaria?

So I called the clinic that I went to on Monday and they say it is a no to Malaria, however, I've started to feel worse again, I am feeling like shit now, so if this keeps up any longer I'm going to go home for the night. Dammit, I have my 32K run on Sunday, I do NOT want to miss it!

Ho hum

Looks like Nej stayed at home today. I'll miss her updates.

So what's new with Lj??? Not much. Yesterday Burger dragged me to the inaugural meeting of the UW triathlon club. Looks like it will be pretty good. I was expecting there to be mostly hardcore people there, but turns out I was wrong, looks like I'm one of the more experienced girls that went. Some of the boys were hardcore, one did the muskoka long course this year (2K, 55K, 15K) and one is training for his first Ironman - next september (3.8K, 180K, 42.2K!). Actually, the ironman boy (IB for short) was kind of cute - and a grad student - will have to investigate further :)

Then it was off to Yoga with QC. Lots of fun as usual, I managed to do all the poses except for one, the one I couldn't get was tough stuff. I think my chest is too large for it (and my back too weak which is odd for me to say since my back is normally quite strong!) (C-dub - I'm talking about crocodile, but getting to it from the floor instead of from plank).

I also went for a run yesterday afternoon, did my normal 8K route 2.5 minutes faster than my fastest, felt like a stud, this morning I did 10K 1.5 minutes slower than normal, felt like an elephant. Oh well, as long as I don't feel like an elephant on the 23rd of october :)

Sympathy Morning Sickness?

That is what I've decided I have :) Still waiting to hear about the malaria, don't think that is what it is, but I woke up this morning with funny tummy yet again.

Normally on Thursday mornings I run to the gym, do a spinning class and then run (a longer way) back home. I got outside this morning and turned around to go and get my car keys. It was not pleasant out there! Now it is clear and nice, not so this morning. Lots of trees down and things flying all over the place, so better to skip the run. I'll head out after school instead.

So apparently UW has a triathlon club again, so burger and I are going to go check it out this evening at their meeting. Should be good times.

And speaking of Burger, her new puppy is absolutely adorable. I got some pictures, so it is now up to her to post them :)

Oh, and one last thing. I found out that a girl I know (from doing tris) is going to be doing Ironman Canada next year. She's nuts (but in a good way!). She has a blog for her training, I'm going to ask her if I can link her :)

Exciting news :)

Okay, so before I get harassed, still no word on whether I have malaria. I'm thinking not. Honestly, it feels more like I'm pregnant, but there is no chance of that. But more on this topic later. This morning I woke up feeling queasy again, but had 17Km planned. Not fun. I decided to go and let myself pull out if need be. I got to the 8 K mark and still felt pretty good so I headed off in the direction that would be 9K left to go. I feel much better now. It is weird that running has been helping my queasiness. Note, the same thing happened on Sunday morning for my long run. Hopefully I'll find out later today if I have an infection of some kind and be able to go on drugs to clear it up. (I'm not a huge fan of antibiotics, but I don't want this cold to linger and effect my marathon).

Training swim started last night, and it was pretty tough, but I'm proud of myself. the workout went something like this

Warm-up
400 whatever you want
100 pull
100 kick
100 IM (Individual medly, means 25 fly, 25 back, 25 breast, 25 free)

Workout
4 x 100 alternating front crawl and back crawl on 1:45. This left me enough time to recover on the front crawl, but only seconds on back crawl - not my strongest stroke
Then some shorter stuff... can't quite remember what
3 x 75 on the 1:30. Lots of time to recover on these ones
some more easier stuff then...
8 x 25 dolphin kick on the 45 alternating between back and front... WTF??? I've never done dolphin kick on my back before - remember I didn't race back crawl. Now that was painfull, not even able to recover before switching to my front again.

Cool-down
200 whatever.

Man it was tough. A total of 2050 yds, not a whole lot, but more than I have swum at one time since the last time I did training swim (close to 3 years ago!). It felt good to be back in it though. I <3 swimming :)

So now for the exciting news. And yes it does pertain to the more on pregnancy issue. I got a call from D last night and looks like I'm going to have another godchild :D. She is due at the end of May :) I'm pretty excited. It is weird having a best friend with kids, but better her than me :)

If you want a good laugh

My father just sent me this by e-mail. I was cracking up at my desk. I think my office mate thinks I'm nuts!!!

Subject: 2010 Winter Games: Vancouver questions people the world over are asking.

Now that Vancouver has won the chance to host the 2010 winter Olympics, The following are some questions people the world over are asking. These questions (and answers) about Canada were actually posted on an international Tourism Website.

Q: I have never seen it warm on Canadian TV, so how do the plants grow? ( UK)
A: We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around and watch them die.

Q: Will I be able to see Polar Bears in the street? (USA)
A: Depends how much you've been drinking.

Q: I want to walk from Vancouver to Toronto - can I follow the railroad tracks? (Sweden)
A: Sure, it's only four thousand miles, take lots of water.

Q: Is it safe to run around in the bushes in Canada? (Sweden)
A: So its true what they say about Swedes.

Q: It is imperative that I find the names and addresses of places to contact for a stuffed Beaver. (Italy)
A: Let's not touch this one.

Q: Are there any ATMs (cash machines) in Canada? Can you send me a list of them in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and Halifax? (UK)
A: What, did your last slave die of?

Q: Can you give me some information about hippo racing in Canada?(USA)
A: A-fri-ca is the big triangle shaped continent south of Europe. Ca-na-da is that big country to your North... oh forget it. Sure the hippo racing is every Tuesday night in Calgary. Come naked.

Q: Which direction is North in Canada? (USA)
A: Face south and then turn 180 degrees. Contact us when you get here and we'll send the rest of the directions.

Q: Can I bring cutlery into Canada? (UK)
A: Why? Just use your fingers like we do.

Q: Can you send me the Vienna Boys' Choir schedule? (USA)
A: Aus-tri-a is that quaint little country bordering Ger-man-y, which is...oh forget it. Sure, the Vienna Boys Choir plays every Tuesday night in Calgary, straight after the hippo races. Come naked.

Q: Do you have perfume in Canada? (Germany)
A: No, WE don't stink.

Q: Can you tell me the regions in British Columbia where the female population is smaller than the male population? (Italy)
A: Yes, gay nightclubs.

Q: Do you celebrate Thanksgiving in Canada? (USA)
A: Only at Thanksgiving.

Q: Are there supermarkets in Toronto and is milk available all year round? (Germany)
A: No, we are a peaceful civilization of Vegan hunter/gatherers. Milk is illegal.

Q: I have a question about a famous animal in Canada, but I forget it's name. It's a kind of big horse with horns. (USA)
A: It's called a Moose. They are tall and very violent, eating the brains of anyone walking close to them. You can scare it by spraying yourself with human urine before you go out walking.

Q: I was in Canada in 1969 on R+R, and I want to contact the girl I dated while I was staying in Surrey, BC. Can you help? (USA)
A: Yes, and you will still have to pay her by the hour.

Q: Will I be able to speak English most places I go? (USA)
A: Yes, but you will have to learn it first.

Pain in the neck

Literally. Last night I develeped a pain in the left side of my neck. I have no clue what it came from, and when I woke up this morning it was still kicking around.

This morning I woke up feeling a little queasy again, but decided to go for my run anyways. I felt much better after I got back. Is that weird or what? I don't get it. Hopefully my illness is starting to abate, but if not, it hasn't really been THAT bad. Not really.

So other than my sore neck and lingering unidentified illness, all is pretty well here. I'm tired, but hey, I was up too late last night chatting online with KB. Oh, and in other news my Training Swim starts tonight. I haven't done any hard swimming in way too long, so I hope I don't suck! maybe I'll go in the slow lane this week...

Hat Trick Post

My third that is.

David Millar is making a comeback, he is joining the Saunier Duvaul team for the Tour next summer. His ban lifts 9 days before the tour starts. I'm still on the fence of whether I'll be supporting him or not. He was my favorite cyclist until he got caught for blood doping.

In other news, I'm feeling a bit better, I had my blood tests and they rush malaria tests, so I should have results tomorrow.

An update?

From me. I know, shocking. I'm going to get tested in half an hour. Hopefully I'm just being paranoid, but I want my mind put to rest. I started feeling nauseous again after lunch, and my headache has returned.

I'll update y'all in an hour or so.

Wahoo!

Internet in office :) it only took what, 3 months? It is pretty exciting though :)

This weekend, hmmm... Friday did nothing. Saturday Burger and I went for a bike ride and then I went to my Aunt and Uncles for lunch. And met my new little cousin, Deven, he was adorable :) As my friends from highschool would describe him, he is caramel ;)

Saturday night went home and relaxed. I watched the movie National Treasure, it was pretty good, but kind of ripped off the storyline from the Davinci Code. On Sunday it was my long run (but a cut back week, so only 21.5 km) and soccer in the afternoon. Burger and I watched the last part of the Rugby game, which was pretty fun. UW got creamed, 24-5 for UWO. Oops :O. Watching the game though made me want to play again. I need a serious psychological evaluation for even considering playing again, but it was so much fun. If I'm still interested in the spring, I'll look into the City team. I might be good enough for it. Who knows.

Last night I watched Desperate Housewives. A pretty good season premiere, but I was really tired and practically asleep. Maybe that is a bad sign?

So on the Malaria front, I just don't know, I seem to be feeling ill on and off, and keep on getting this bad headache. I'm thinking of getting the test done just to make myself feel better. I don't want to have malaria, but if I have it, better to catch it early.

I'm SO getting malaria

Shit. I'm supposed to continue taking my malaria drugs for 4 weeks after getting back in the country, and I just realized that yesterday I forgot to take mine. Shit. Apparently, you can go up to every 10 days for taking them, but they only advise every week so that people remember to take them. A lot of good that did me. Must remember to take drugs tonight with dinner... BTW, thanks to Margo who inadvertantly reminded me to take it while talking about her bad night sleep last night. Insomnia is a side effect of Larium.

Okay, other than that, not much. Second yoga class last night. There was a guy there wearing tight lulu lemon capris?!? It went pretty good though, and none of my positions had to be fixed. I felt totally cool. Then back home for survivor. The team I'm rooting for lost both challenges, but they made a smart decision about who they voted off. Then up to QC's for the season premiere of CSI. Pretty good episode, but also the most graphic pictures I've ever seen on that show. I seriously felt like vomitting. Oh, and I also liked Nick in his white shirt. V. Hot.

Okay, I guess I should be getting back to work. I'm supposed to be getting connected to the internet in my office today. Yipee! I've only had my computer for 3 months...

Oh my!

So last night I watched the premiere of "My name is Earl", and I have to say, it was one of the funniest shows I've ever watched. Definitely going to be on my TV roster. Only problem - it is in the same time slot as the Amazing Race, so I'm going to have to tape one of them. Oh well, I'll make that sacrifice.

Didn't do too much else. I made banana muffins, and they are yummy.

This afternoon is the first soccer game of the season. I think we are going to get our asses handed to us on a platter. We moved up a division (most of the people on the team can handle being up a division, I on the other hand am not good enough for this), and about half of our team can't make it, so we'll only have 8 players and the other team will have 11. So we will have to play the entire game - did I mention I ran 15 km already today???

Tonight is the season premiere of Americas Next Top Model. Woohoo! I'll probably watch it tonight, but I'm not sure if I'll watch it every week. I need to cut back on my TV viewing time.

Back to the Flow

Body Flow that is. I went last night for the first time in like a year. It was pretty good. I felt really good afterwards, my legs were loose, not tight, and I was unstrung (well, a little anyways). Now, after this mornings run, and being back at school all that work has been put to waste. Oh well, guess I have to start going on a weekly basis again. Plan - Monday night Flow, Thursday night Yoga.

Today - not much going on. I'm at school for the morning and possibly the afternoon. I'm on a waiting list to take part in this online seminar thing, and might have to rush home to take part if a position magically opens up. If not, no biggie, it'll be available online later this week.

So now that I'm back in the country, summer is over, and marathon training is dwindling into my taper (starts in two weeks!), I all the sudden have more time on my hands than I've had in a while. I plan to use some of the time at the gym getting back into activities I like (Monday night weights and flow, tuesday training swim, wednesday weights, and thursday yoga), but that still leaves a whole lot of free time on the weekends. Hmm... maybe I need a hobby. Or a boy.

Oh, and on Saturday I registered for the Niagara Marathon, so I really have to do it now! eek!

The love affair continues

My new combination - Cream of wheat and raspberries! yummy!!!!! I got frozen raspberrries last week to make jam, and I have some left over, so I tried it with my cream of wheat and success! Yummy :)

On Friday I went to get my hair cut (it is between my shoulder and my chin now. Just long enough to pull back, but pretty short). Then it was off to B-town to hang out with the Nej and C-dub. We had a blast, went to the kingdom and then foot attire shopping on Saturday. I didn't get anything, there were a few pairs of shoes and boots that I liked a lot, but they were either out of my price range (like over $200 for boots) or not in the right size. I stopped by Conestoga mall on my way home as a last ditch attempt and found one of the pairs I had liked at Transit in my size. yay! They are brown and pink and have cool velcro closures. And they were pretty cheap too!

Saturday night I did nothing of consequence. Watched some tv, read some, and went to bed pretty early. Sunday morning was my longest run to date - 30 km! I did the last 4 km just a bit faster than my hopefull marathon pace, and it felt really good. Yay! I wanted to do the Terry Fox run (well, walk) as well, but I didn't make it back in time, maybe next year?

Sunday afternoon I lazed around, and by lazed, I mean lazed. I wanted to sleep, but the adreneline from my afternoon rum wouldn't let me fall asleep, so I just hung out instead. In the evening I made my raspberry jam, and cleaned my kitchen up a bit. It is amazing how fast I can make a mess. Give me 5 minutes in any room, and it'll look like a tornado hit.

The new love of my life

So when I was visiting Kate, her roommate made this porridge type stuff out of millet flour, it was pretty good and I searched hi and lo for millet flour at Zehr's, but no dice, couldn't find it. Jamie and Kate suggested that I try cream of wheat since it was pretty similar, so I got that instead. I made it for breakie this morning and oh my! I put cinnamon, brown sugar and raisens on top, and it was scrum-didily-umptious!!! I think I'm in love with a new breakfast food.

Other news. well, there is none. This afternoon I'm getting my hair cut. Might go for something drastically different. With the exception of the brief foray with short hair in 2002, I've pretty much had the same hair style since starting university 6 years ago. I want something different dammit!!! Tonight is also the kingdom, so I'm going to get the hair dresser to do something funky with it :)

Oh, and I went for a run this morning, and it was pretty perfect. I did my usual 8 km route in 47:45 which is only 15 seconds slower than the fastest I've run it leisurely. I've run it faster when I was trying to, but this morning my heart rate stayed under 70% for almost the entire run (except for a few short uphills). It'll be interesting to see what sort of time I can pull off in the marathon.

Clarification

It has been brought to my attention that some people out there mistakenly think that Jamie is a Boy. I was informed this when I got back and was accused of never using a he/she to clarify this point. I would like to draw everyones attention to the first e-mail I sent out after being in Ndolage...

"Kate (my sister) has a physio student with her right now from Canada. She
is actually from Waterloo, so what are the chances???? She also has a
multi-enty visa since she was planning on going to kenya when she was done,
but is no longer going. Kate's Passport is in Dar es Salaam right now
getting the visa extended, and she's not going to get it back in time to go
to Uganda for the white water rafting, so Jamie, the student, is going to go
with me instead. We'll be going next weekend."

So Clearly, Jamie is a girl. Sorry for those of you who got up hopes about my love life. No dice. Although, Jamie is a very nice person, I'm not attracted to females.

Meh. Time to go to school. I don't want to go :( Oh well, I think it'll be another short day. I'm a little sleepy, so I'll probably come home early for a nap.

Back in the Loo

So I'm back after my whirl wind tour of East Africa :) I had a long and arduous journey on my return home. I left Ndolage at 8 am on Saturday look the dala dala to Bukoba (always an adventure - I think they managed 25 people this time.) That was followed by the first two of my flights home. First to Mwanza (second biggest city in Tanzania) and then on to Dar and a Taxi ride to my downtown hotel. Luckily there were no mosquitos around, the net was in pretty bad shape and slept without it. On Monday I started the longest leg of my journey.

My plane left Dar around 3:30 in the afternoon and was just over three hours to Jo'burg, but by the time we had taxi'd to the airport I had only 20 minutes to get through security and borded onto my next plane. I was luckily able to get my bording pass in Dar. So I made the plane with a few minutes to spare, however I was pretty scared about my baggage (it was a relief when I saw it in New York!!!!) The plane was pretty empty, so I ended up having the two seats along one edge to myself and was able to get a decent amount of sleep - about three hours on each side of Dakkar - but they had to wake us up for an hour in Dakkar to do a security check - What a pain!).

17 hours after leaving Jo'burg we arrived safe and sound at JFK where I had around 4 hours to clear immigration, collect my baggage, change airports and check in. So since everyone loves hearing about incompetence, here is one you will all love. So there were two international flights coming into JFK around the same time. they had two separate lines - one for US citizens and residents and one for non residents. Since it was an INTERNATIONAL flight, there were about twice as many non residents as there were residents. How does US immigration handle this. Why of course they had 6 officers handling the US people and 1, yes 1, handling all the non-residents. Finally after moving like 8 people through in half an hour they brought a few more people into the non-resident line, so it moved marginally faster (note, the non-residents for the most part take like 2-3 times as long as the residents, being Canadian, it took me under a minute...). So finally after waiting in line for over an hour, I cleared custums with my bad and was ready to set off for Laguardia. Note: Most Airports (like all) have a "ground transportation information centre" where people can get help getting a cab or a shuttle to whereever they need to go. It was closed. So I wandered around for a bit until finally stumbling upon the sign for the shuttle, and after nearly taking a cab instead, the shuttle finally showed up.

Trip through new york was uneventful. Much safer bus driver this time!!! I was pretty confused with where I was with respect to the rest of the city. I figure we went west of manhattan??? (Just checked a map, we were east of manhattan!!! however, I was correct that we drove through queens and brooklyn :)) I could see it from the runway at laguardia.

One final flight home and I was back in Canada and quite happy to be so. People here are so much nicer and friendlier than elsewhere. I chatted with the custums official (note we had like 8 or 9 officials on and didn't give preferential treatment to canadian citizens), and she helped me with my declaration form and it was off to see my dad :)

Last night was weird getting settled back into wloo. Burger brought Jenny over and we cuddled for a bit. I think she remembers me, and she hasn't tried to escape yet. When I woke up at 3:30 this morning (I was luckily able to fall back asleep) we had another little cuddle :) I think I'll keep her :)

Last blog - See you in September!

Hey everyone! This is a shoutout from the big metropolis of Corbyville. I'm up pretty early the day after D&C's wedding, I woke up at 8 (got to bed at 2), and since I didn't have my alarm set thought I should get up. We have the gift opening very early this morning since D&C have to be on their way to toronto at 11:30 am. (Their flight is at 4???)

The last few days have been a blur of going here and there cutting this up, cutting that up. Pretty crazy times. D&C were paying for their wedding on their own and invited aroudn 300 people, so they had to save money wherever possible - we ended up doing all the decorations and food on our own. The decorations went pretty good, back in highschool, D & I were in charge of all the decorations at the formals (In the Highschool gym) so we knew what to do to fill space and make a place look nice. The person from the hall that our work was the nicest it had looked so far that year :D.

So last night was the wedding. It was weird to see people from Highschool that I haven't seen in years. Even weirder was the fact that EVERYONE was either married or in serious relationships. I felt like I stood out like a sore thumb. Yes, I'm single get over it! I'm not someone to be pitied, or whatever, I MAY find the guy of my dreams, I may not. I'm okay with that right now. I'm a picky girl who knows what she wants in a relationship.

So I have to get going now. I have to get a few things together before I go over to the present opening. I'm so excited for my trip - I leave tomorrow!!!, I won't be updating my blog when I'm gone, but if you want e-mail updates let me know at my hotmail e-mail address!!!

Later kids.

Best Concert EVER!

So on friday I arrived at school with no motivation to do work. I played on the internet for a bit, went to a masters student's seminar (we don't have to do defences here at good ol' w/loo). Then some more internet playing and got myself on the bus to head downtown and grab the greyhound to t-dot.

I met up with C-dub around 2:40 and we headed up to Barrie to go to the Green Day concert. I love green day. I have since grade 9, way back in '94, and have wanted to see them in concert for about as long. The tickets were expensive and I really couldn't afford it, but I'm glad I went :). It took us over two hours to get up to Barrie from Toronto! Craziness! We were a little worried that we would have missed the opening bands since the doors opened at 4:00, but we really didn't need to worry. The concert didn't start until 7! and Green Day didn't get on until 9! Man, there go the plans for the kingdom.

The Concert was AMAZING though! Everything I expected and more. Billy Joe Armstrong actually has a great voice and there was soooooo much audience interaction, it was awesome. They played all their hits (with the exception of When I come around) and a couple of new songs off their new CD - mind you, 4 of them are hits :) And Billy Joe is Hot. Very hot. I could talk about it forever, well, maybe not forever, but at least until I lost my voice. They also had way cool pyrotechnics and ended the show off with some pretty cool fire works. (like really cool - way better than w/loo has on Canada Day.)

On Saturday we (C-dub and Exaggerator) went down to yorkdale and did some shopping. I wasn't allowed to buy anything, but did anyways. I got a really cute new skirt from H&M, I was going to wear it today, but I think I'm going to save it for D&C's rehersal dinner on Friday. C-dub and I then went downtown to MEC to get some Bike stuff for our new tri bikes. I got an under the seat bag, and a frame mount-able high pressure pump and a couple of things for my trip. we then went our seperate ways and I just missed the bus back to W/loo (Burger - I remember too late about that bus stop along university. I so could have made it from there!). I went to second cup and got a snack and read some more of my book (I should have gotten dinner though, I was starved!!), I read the whole way back on the bus and then all evening until I was finished. On the city bus back home I stopped at valu-mart to get some fruit but they were closed, so I walked all the way to sobeys and back up to king and got my fruit in time to catch the next bus going to UW. I was pretty impressed with my speedy abilities.

Sunday morning I was supposed to run 25 K, but I woke up feeling blah later than intended to decided to run in the evening. I read most of the day, but by the time the evening came around I wasn't feeling well, so the run got cancelled. I need to get better before my trip. That is more important to me than being able to run a marathon. I'll have to figure out whether that is going to happen or not. I've missed a lot of my long runs for this reason or that,so I guess I'll just have to see how the rest of my training pans out.

Too bad for the hypochondriacs

So I was a little worried about this swollen nodes business. I have never had this happen with a regular cold before, so I was afraid it may be something worse, so I went to my favorite site ever, google, and typed in three words. Swollen Nodes Symptoms. I seriously got a list of hundreds of diseases and afflictions. Everything from Cancer to west nile to obscure things no one has ever heard of "African Sleeping Virus"???

Not only that, but I found sever websites that you could browse by symptom which could increase the number of pobblible causes 10-fold. I feel sorry for the hypochondriacs in this tech world.

BTW - Think it is just a cold. Hoping it is just a cold... could be west nile though, I get tonnes of mosquito bites and what I thought may be poison ivy early this week, I now realize definitely wasn't, but it could be a westnile rash. I'm strong and healthy, I'll be fine. (this is my new mantra :)).

My first bizarre dream

I'm back in my adventure race from last weekend with Burger and FS, but our team is bigger, on it are Jen S, Cindy B and Krista G (former classmates of mine - I know the least likely companions ever for an adventure race), but instead of it being a race it is more like a treasure hunt kind of like we are searching for something. I'm reading the da vinci code right now, so if others of you have read it, you know what I'm searching for - don't want to ruin anything. But there are people looking for us too, people we have to avoid...

Very strange indeed. So I think I made the connection between the Da Vinci Code and the Adventure race, the clues we had in the race for finding the check points were very cryptic. I'm not sure how the girls from my class fit into the equation though. Maybe I'm just deleting them as exaggerator point out yesterday ;)

Other stuff. It is raining. And I'm going to an outdoor concert. Bah. And I have swollen glands as in it hurts to swallow swollen. Grrrrr. Hopefully I feel better soon. I decided to skip the morning run. I was just convincing myself I could just do 8 if I were feeling unwell when I decided, screw it, I'm sick, I'm taking the day off, since I was already awake, I decided to use the hour that would normally be taken up by my run to read a bit more of the Da Vinci Code. It is a great book, has really got me thinking about a bunch of stuff.

Let the weird-@ss dreams start

So I started on my anti-malarial pills this morning. You are supposed to start 1 week before you enter the malaria region, but since my pills are known to cause some psychological problems, we decided it would be best if I started them a week ahead of time to make sure I don't have bad side effects.

The side effects 1) depression (mostly in people that have had past problems) 2) Psychosis (again underlying problems), and 3) Hiluicinations (in dreams). So I'm already having weird dreams. For a couple of days in a row now, I've dreamed that I am at Hogwarts... weird since I haven't thought about thos books for over two weeks now... So what are my dreams going to be like now??? I'm kind of scared that I'm going to have a nightmare and that is is going to be really really bad. Hopefully it'll be okay!!!

Nothing else to report. I've been running and biking and stuff like that (have run 29 km in the last 3 days!!!) , and as you've already seen on C-dubs and exaggerators blogs we are going to the kingdom tomorrow night after going to the green day concert (cdub and i). Should be fun.

My attempt to go run errands

So last night I got myself ready, a little later than intended due to a couple of phone conversations, to go pick up some groceries, go to the bank, and mail off my visa application. I got onto my bike at 8 and biked over to valuemart. The power was out - So no Canada post, no bank machine, so groceries :(. Okay, I had to rethink.

I know! Westmount plaza, on my way home, they have an RBC (not as ideal as Scotia), a post office, and I could pick up some fruit from the farahs there to tie me over. Alas. Power out there too. I'm starting to get freaked out. it is now closing in on 8:30 and the sun sets at 9:00. I could try beechwood, Zerhs would be open until 10:00, they have scotia, but alas, the shoppers there doesn't have a post office. I couldn't think of anywhere else close enough where I could do the stuff I needed that was within biking distance, so I decided to just go home. Now this morning I'm waiting for the post office to open and then heading there on my way to school.

I'll have to go for the groceries this evening, but the high is supposed to be 40 with the humidex. Ugh. Oh, and I just heard on the TV. So far there have been 39 days this year where the temperature was >= 30C the average for the whole summer over the last 30 years is 13. Pretty crazy eh?

msafari

pronounced mmmmmmmmmm-safari. It means, I safari. Like a verb. Unfortunately I will not be safaring when I'm in africa, but I will be going to uganda, and I will actually get to bukoba (where my sister is).

I talked to her this morning (or afternoon where she is!!!), it sounded very tropical in the background. She has my flight booked from Dar to Bukoba and I should be able to go the afternoon I arrive :) I'm starting to get really excited!!! The only things I still have to take care of are 1) Visa. I'm sending it off this afternoon, and 2) Accomodations in Johannesburg the night of my layover. Yipee!

Oh, and I think I have some mild poison ivy now. Meh. Not too bad, just a few bumps here and there.

Adventure Race Report

Burger and I did our first ever adventure race this weekend. We did it with FS who we worked with in the Hyrdo lab...

The total distance was supposed to be 40+ km so I figured my base fitness level would bring me to the finish line along my group. To tell you the truth, I was afraid that I was going to be the "weak link" that slowed the other two down. The race: paddling, mountain biking and hiking. Most of the mountain biking was on the road, but there was some that was on trails. In previous races FS had done the trails were easy trails with no technical sections.

So we drove up on Friday night to register and get our stuff together and spent the night at Dr. NK's house 20 minutes away for the night.

Saturday morning we were up bright and early, back to the start place for 8:00 am. At 8:30 they had a captains meeting and we were given the UTM co-ordinates, a map and the race direction. We also found out we were being shipped off 25 minutes to the race start and that we would have to bike literally right past Dr. NK's house!

The race started at around 10:15 with a 10km paddle. I'm a strong paddler but I've never raced in a canoe, hard stuff! We finished off the paddle last place of the co-ed teams, and 4th last out of about 40 teams. (one of those teams was out of the water at the same time as us and they passed us on the way to the bikes!). We ended up passing two of the teams in front of us on the 15 K bike to the first hiking portion. One due to pure speed and athletic talent (was a co-ed team) the other missed a check point and had to go back for it.

During the first hike section we had to find two checkpoints at the bottom of a gorge, one in a river that required going in chest deep. As the strongest swimmer on our team, I was nominated for this job. It was so cold! but fun nonetheless. Out of the hike quickly, we had caught up to a bunch of teams and had actually passed one more (but were passed by a team as well).

The next section was about a 15 km bike ride on gravel roads followed by < 5K cross country. Part way through the road section burger and I stopped to relieve ourselves and FS went on. He was struggling on the uphills and knew we would catch up. In that section one of the other teams passed us. When we caught up, I noticed that FS's wheel was pretty flat, so we stopped again to pump up the tire, and there was such a change! we started to catch up to the other teams big time. By the time we got to the cross country section we had caught up to the two teams ahead of us.

The first 1 km of this section was on the Bruce trail and was pretty crazy. None but the hardcore mountain bikers would be able to ride this whole section. I road probably <100m of it. Not cool. Something I really need to practice. The next 2 km was on double track with the odd obstacle, much more my style and I biked all of it BUT 100 m. No teams passed us, and we passed a couple. The last 2 km was back onto dirt/loose-rock road pretty much all uphill. I made it the first 500 m, but when I realized it wasn't ending got off my bike with my other team members and hiked up pushing my bike. We got into the second hike section and the first cutoff point in 5.5 hours. If you got to this point in >6.5 hours you had to head to the finish line then.

We had to find 3 points here. There were trails, but they were pretty obscure, and we got pretty lost, well, not lost, but couldn't find the points. It was not well organized and we are convinced they gave us the wrong UTM co-ordinates for two of the points. We eventually found the three points after joining up with one of the other teams and working together. It took us 2 hours of bushwacking, and sinking into the mud but we got all the points and caried on to the finish. (The person managing the transition area said that a lot of the teams didn't find all the points). We got into the finish area at 8 hours and we had one more point to find on the property, but were told that there was a 7:30 cut off so ran into the finish area where we were told that we could go find the last point if we wanted to. We ended up wasting 40 minutes looking for the point but never found it, and came back with no more points, but 40 minutes later. I'm not impressed. We were apparently really close to it, but we didn't have time to mess around, we needed to get to a bus terminal to get back to w/loo (FS was continuing on to lindsay to his wife's uncle's house so wasn't coming back last night)!

I don't know how we ended up ranked according to the other teams. We got all the points but the last, but I'm not sure how we would be compared to teams that got the last point but missed one of the points partway through the race. I guess we'll have to see the results.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how it went. I think the organization was pretty poor, so I think the next one I'll do will be in a different race series. I had lots of fun, and *fingers crossed* no poison ivy this time, but my legs are totally scratched up and sore. I was supposed to run 25 km this morning, but I didn't get to bed last night until 2 am, so I had to rework my schedule and make this week a rest week. I think I deserve it!

In other news - nada. Nothing going on, hence the lack of updates.