Go me!

Just got an e-mail from the race organizer of the Waterloo Classic. Seems I did get the third place award after all (since Joanna Fedy the captain of the waterloo xcountry team won the race). yay! I have an age group medal.

My poor bike :(

So this morning I went for a bike ride with burger and shortly after she turned around to go back home my bike broke down. Word from the bike store is that there is a good chance it might not be worth the money to fix it, in that case I'll be salvaging the parts and giving what is still good to Burger. She'll have one awesome bike by the end!!!

So I've been looking seriously at Tri bikes. I think I'm willing to go into debt over it. For anyone who is curious as to which models I'm looking at, I'll post the links

1) Norco C-tri
http://www.norco.com/05/2005bikes/road.php
2) Trek Equinox 7
http://www2.trekbikes.com/Bikes/Road/Time_Trial-Triathlon/Triathlon/Equinox_7/index.php
3) Quintana Roo Kilo
http://www.rooworld.com/bikes/2005/kilo.aspx
4) Quintana Roo Tequilo
http://www.rooworld.com/bikes/2005/tequilo.aspx
5) Fuji Aloha
http://www.fujibikes.com/2005/bikes.asp?id=21

If there is anything else that I find that is in my price range I may go for that one too, but so far these ones seem to be the front runners.

I guess I should update...

Not much new is going on in this end of the world. I have been lacking serious motivation at school for about a week now. I'm so close to being done 774, but I can't motivate myself to work on it. Instead I've been spending way too much time working on my TA, just taking my time with it. But I did stay until 5:00 tonight, so maybe the draught is over?

I can't remember what I did outside of school last week, so obviously it wasn't too exciting! But I did go berry picking and made jam (yum!)

This weekend I was helping my sister move and in belleville for my granny's birthday. Since I was in that end of the province, I met up with C-Dub and went to Kalan Porter. I'm a dork :). He was definitely a good singer, I just think he needs to find his own style. We also went out dancing which was super fun. I have been dancing in way too long! C started talking to these two guys asking them why they weren't dancing. Turns out she works with one of them. How funny is that? They were both engineering students from Dal.

S & W's new place is really nice. It was nice getting to see them again, I hadn't seen W since he broke his ankle. It is all healed again and he is allowed to return to sports. I'm trying to convince him to train and do the Niagara Half Marathon. Hopefully he doesn't fall and break his other ankle this time. (He broke it running under my bidding :O :(). I guess that is it.

Oh, and I saw my dad's pictures from his trip to Italy and Greece. Gorgeous! I'm so excited about going next summer. He got me a fake Louis Vuitton Purse. It is pretty nice - I guess there are some benefits to your dad dating someone. Presents are better :)

#@%$!

Not good :( I've been trying to get these stupid model runs done on my computer for like 4 days now. What happens??? The last two somehow crash when there is like a couple hours left on them. I have no clue what caused the crash. But here I go, leaving my computer all day again for the 5th day in a row. GRrrrrrr. I'm not a happy camper.

However, I did order my copy of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince last night :D It will be available for me to pick up at 12:01 am on July 16th. Only 24 more days!!!!!!!!

Another weekend gone

And none too exciting either! Kind of weird that I like being in waterloo for the weekend and not going anywhere, but I always end up being bored when I'm here.

Friday was a busy tri-training day. Went for a swim in the morning and managed to sneak in 2000 yards, go me! Later I went to the gym and did my weights and drove over to the soccer practice, I was 25 minutes early, so decided to take advantage and go for the run I had planned. Ended up doing 4, I wanted to do more, but I was pretty happy I got in anything at all.

Saturday I went to the Market. I love going there. I bought some orange gerbers and they are totally brightening up my kitchen. I love flowers :). Later on I read some, slept some, and finally got out of my lazy spell around 4 and cleaned my apartment. Top to Bottom. Man, it felt good. My apartment is now sparkling :). Around 9 I got a call from my cousin, she was going to be in KW sunday for her NLS (Lifeguard) recertification and needed a place to stay on Sunday night so that brightened my day.

Sunday, had my race in the morning :D. We all know that it went really well. I'm still grinning about it this morning. It feels really good to have accomplished something I didn't think I was capable of doing! I usually set lofty athletic goals, and am really hard on myself when I don't meet them. However, my last three races (two halfs and my 5K) all went really well. Yes, I was off my goal by 9 minutes in Ottawa, but really I know that the weather played a huge role in that so I was able to move past the time part of it. Later on, I was pretty wiped after such an exhaustive effort. I slept some more, and read a bit. In the afternoon, it really didn't look like it was going to clear up, but it definitely wasn't going to rain, so I took my camping stuff out from last weekend to air out and dry out before dinner. Sure enough, after dinner the clouds had cleared and it was bright bright bright. Oh well, I'm not psychic!

I went to pick up zoers at the Y at 9:30 and on the way home we rented Princess Diaries 2. Very Cheesy, but in a good sort of way. I was a little disappointed though when Julie Andrews broke into song and dance and it wasn't My Favorite Things. Zoe had to be off early this morning so I saw her off and went back to my apartment to work from home. I'm now at school to set up my computer (infinity yay!) and do my office hour. There isn't enough time in the day! Oh well, I have my model running on my computer at home, so I'm multi-tasking :)

I'm a speed demoned :)

I did the Waterloo Classic 5K race this morning, and for the first time ever, I really truely raced a 5K.

Finishing time, 25:43 according to my watch (they have chip timing, but without a starting mat, the number is kind of useless... my official time was 26:04). This is a full 1:30 faster than my PR and watch time, 1:50 minutes faster. I rock :)

Sorry for all you non-runners out there, but I'm super proud of myself! (4/24 in F20-24 too... but all the fastest youngin's run the 10K).

ACK!

Many of you may know, I'm afraid of birds, I can't deal with them. I find them very unpredictable, and they have no limitations where they can be... as humans we pretty much exist in 2-Dimensions. Yes, we can climb a tree, or a hill, but we are still attached to the gound in some way. Not birds.

So this morning, I was out for a run, and what happens? A bird attacks me. Yep, attacks. I hear this thud thud behind me of its wings flapping, and next thing I know, I feel it going at my head, with it beak or its feet, I do not know. I probably broke the world record for the 100m trying to get away from this crazed bird, it scared the bejebus out of me!!!

That is by far, the only drama in my life these days. Didn't do too much to end my fear of birds!!!

Nothing new

So instead of posting my normal boring what-I-did-today crap, I though I would mix it up a bit.

With Burger starting the one month count down (almost! This Thursday :)) to the Half Blood Prince, it got me thinking about what will happen to Harry next.

I did some browsing last night on the net (went to JKR's website, but dissappointingly, there is nothing new), so I went off to browse the fan sites. I found a new one I had never heard of before HPANA.net, or something like that. They had a forum that had some really interesting conversations going on about who the half blood prince is, and what (if anything) the book cover art means. For those of you who haven't seen the cover yet, here is the link http://www.bloomsbury.com/media/hbp_large.jpg. So the biggest question mark on the cover art had to do with the black ring on the spine. What does it mean? Whose is it?

So someone with WAY too much time on their hands noticed that in the Order of the Pheonix there is a chapter called "The Ancient and NOBLE house of Black" in which they mention a black ring. Coincidence? likely not. JK always gives hints about what is to come in her books. Especially since she has known now for close to 10 years how the books are going to end. So me being a big Harry Potter fan (not huge as some people, but I would say I'm a pretty big fan - I'm on my 5th time through the books right now) want to know what the deal is. And I CANNOT wait another month :)

So here are my thoughts. A while ago on JKs website she talked about two things that may be important. 1) the whole half blood prince thing was originally meant for the 2nd book, but that it was too long and complicated to fit in there, so she took it out. Note: the original title of the Chamber of Secrets was the Half Blood Prince. 2) the Weasly's were originally supposed to have a cousin, I believe in the second book as well, but that she was taken out because she made it too complicated, and she didn't really fit (possibly because the HBP stuff got taken out???). So I linked this with 3) for those that have read the 5th book, you remember the family tapestry, all members that showed too much fondness for Muggles/Mudbloods were taken off. Like Black himself, and also the weasleys. Ah... blacks family is related to the weasley's, so could they not also be related to this unknown character that was taken out of the 2nd book? And could that person be the half blood prince with the black ring? Too much speculation I know, but I'm soooooo excited for the next book, I can't wait.

Does anyone else have any other crackpot ideas of what's to come?

One canoe trip down

And I have the wet, smelly belongings, sunburn, and bug bites to prove it!

On friday morning I was up before the crack of dawn (hard to do in June! 5:20) to have a shower and get myself off to Huntsville (got there at 10). Had an uneventful drive up there and met my cousin. In regular Walton fashion things were a little disorganized when I got there and it was 2:15 before we finally got the canoe into the water. The first day saw two portages and about 3 hours of paddling to our campsite, which was pretty nice, not too buggy, nice swimming area. However we notice some very large droppings which I recognized to be bear - they were a little old, but still the thought was in my head, so I had a pretty rough night sleep. (For those of you that don't know, I had a bear on my campsite 5 years ago, and it was very scary, it has kind of scarred me forever... I'm always a little nervous in my tent because I feel vulnerable like I can't do anything to fight back.

Saturday brought more sunshine and fewer bugs, so that was nice. A lot of portages though, the last being over a km. Shortly before the portage we could see clouds rolling in, and sure enough, partway across the last lake we started hearing thunder moving in (from all directions!) we found the closest campsite and set up camp (we had wanted to make it to the other end of the lake, but weren't going to risk our safety for it. Coincidentally there was a cute waterfall across a little bay from us, so that was really pretty :) unfortunately though, the campsite had a) leaches, ewwwwww... one thing I am afraid of, and blackflies, double ugh. I loathe blackflies. So another un-interesting evening at camp. we went to bed early because the blackflies were coming out in droves. Was awoken at 9:45 (yes, I was asleep before 9) by a huge crash of thunder... it proceeded to pour rain for half an hour, and the storm was literally on top of us for a good 10 minutes. My paranoid self was afraid a tree was going to get struck down and fall on top of us... actually, I was more worried that my virgin tent wouldn't handly the torrential downpour and that all of our pocessions would be soaked. When it finally let up, we got out of the tent and made channels with rocks to ensure that the water was draining away.

Sunday morning we were up bright an early since I had to make it back to w/loo, and on the water by 8:30 again. only this time, it was overcast and wet from the thunder, so the mosquitos were out in full force. We did a 1600 m portage right away, and the mosquitos molested me... at one time I slapped my hand killing four of them in one swipe. The rest of the day was better than the first portage, but the sun never really came out so I felt it unecessary to put on sunscreen... bad laura, you know better than that, so I got a little pink... well, in some places a lot.

The drive home was good... except to down pours where we slowed to a crawl, I made it back to wloo in really good time. And I guess that is it... great weekend. The bugs were bad on land, but one the water it was gorgeous!!!!!

Obviously, I'm doing no work today

My super hero identity

Name: Blaze Muffin
Secret Identity: Laura Jones
Special Power: Psionic Push
Transportation: Nuclear Skateboard
Weapon: Quantum Sling
Costume: Stainless Steel Pajamas
Sidekick: Odd Job
Nemesis: Arnold the Unspeakable
Tragic Flaw: Addicted to solitaire
Favorite Food: Salad

weird... I got a really good deal on romaine last week, so I HAVE been eating more than the average amount of salad lately...