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.