You probably already saw these on Facebook or Instagram.. but here they are for posterity…
My Favourite Tokyo 2020 Olympic Moments
Category: Stuff I Love
2019 In Review
Rosemarie requested that I write about PBs, books I read, new board game reviews, and favourite recipes of 2019, so here I go…
PBs: snatch 41 kg -> 46 kg (in training), clean & jerk 49 kg -> 54 kg. The bigger accomplishment has been fixing my back enough that I can do all movements again! I think my PB potential is very good for 2020.
Books (TBH I’m not sure if I read these in 2019 or earlier but here are the last few books I read):
- How To Stop Worrying And Start Living by Dale Carnegie – some of the chapters at the beginning were useful but then it got a bit too religious to me
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt – a long one!! About the lives of a few students. I love really long detailed books if the story/characters/world is interesting
- The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt – again, a pretty long one about a boy who loses his mom and ends up with a priceless painting. They made a movie of it but the book is better
- This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel – about a boy who wants to be a girl, and a family that loves her. A nice book
- Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman – pretty much the male version of Don Tillman from the Rosie Project, entertaining
- Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult – in my opinion it’s a corny book about racism written by a white lady for white ladies. :/ I guess that’s better than no book about racism?
New Board Games:
- Drop It – a very simple but fun game where you try to drop pieces into the right spots to score lots of points
- Azul – very easy game to teach people, can get brutal when you get stuck with tons of extra pieces
- 7 Wonders Expansions – fun on the ipad but a bit too much to keep track of irl
- 7 Wonders Duel – my very favourite two player game, I’m still not tired of it 10/10
- Agricola All Creatures Big and Small – ok two player Agricola spin-off
- Camel Up – fun light game, everyone loves the gimicky dice rolling pyramid and the KRAZY KAMELS
- Jaipur – two player camel betting card game that we got for Christmas… first impressions are good, Scott likes it a lot
- Puerto Rico – not as hard as Agricola, kinda fun that you get to do stuff even when it’s not your turn
- Sagrada – quite simple game with NINETY dice, tricky fun
- Terraforming Mars – very complicated game with lots of pieces, a bit hard to play well but still fun to play even when you don’t really know what’s going on
Great recipes of 2019:
Praline Almonds – I used the recipe in my ice cream book but it’s basically the same as this (except I used almonds). This was one of the craziest things I’ve ever cooked! It magically goes from a pot of watery almonds to a pot of sandy almonds to a pot of candy almonds. Sprinkled with a bit of salt… so delicious.
No Knead Bread in the cast iron pot – so easy!!! I use this recipe. I did try whole wheat once but it didn’t turn out as delicious as pure white.
Dutch Baby! – so visually spectacular, so easy! I’ve made sweet ones with fruit and ice cream toppings, and also savoury ones with smoked salmon, rocket and parmesan. This is my go-to sweet recipe.
Fish Tacos – Coles just started selling corn tortillas so we can make delicious tacos at home, like this easy Pinch of Yum recipe. I’ve made it with basa or shrimp. I love the garlicky sauce.
Adventures:
We didn’t leave the country in 2019. Actually we barely took any days off at all. The good news is we have enough holiday to go to North America in May 2020 AND possibly Fiji for our 10 (!!) year anniversary later in the year too! 2020 is gonna be gooooooood.
We did check out some new places in Victoria/Australia, here are a few highlights:
A very windy 90 Mile Beach in Gippsland.
A relaxing and fun few days of camping/day hiking at Wilson’s Prom.
On platypus watch in the Otways.
Day off at the Peninsula Hot Springs.
Whale watching on North Stradbroke Island.
Final thoughts: 2019 was not the most exciting year of my life, but we put in a lot of good work to our future. We did the hard stuff of finding a house, working hard, saving, rehab… and very very soon we get to enjoy the benefits of that. I feel very good about 2020.
MORE: art, friends, gains, nice food, pictures
LESS: worrying, Picross
Final Skeleton World Cup Race in Sochi, Russia
I got SO riled up on Friday night about skeleton. I was watching the final race of the 2012-2013 Skeleton World Cup season, which was in Sochi on the new track that they will be using for the next Winter Olympics. I’ve been watching all season long and was REALLY excited to see how all my favourites do on this track that was brand new for all of them.
I follow a lot of skeletoners on Twitter and for the past two weeks they had been tweeting about cancelled practice sessions and poor ice conditions and horrible hotel food and all sorts of negative stuff. And the fact that it was 17ºC out!
Anyway man oh man the mens race was BANANAS. Especially the first half of the first heat.
- Tomass Dukurs started pushing his sled, then at the last possible second decided it wasn’t a good push and quickly managed to stop his sled, do a u-turn and carry his sled back to the start line to try again. This is allowed as long as long as they haven’t reached the first timing eye, and they do actually start within the 30 second start window. It was very surprising because I have never seen any one do that before.
- The start groove was really NOT straight and many sliders hit in to the walls right at the very top of the run.
- One guy smashed into the side and a mini avalanche of snow and ice fell down on to the track. And then no one cleaned it up!! So the next few sliders had a big disadvantage because they had to slide over a bunch of ice chunks.
- The track has a totally unique uphill section.
- The outrun looks super dangerous and several sliders hurt themselves trying to slow down.
- There is exposed wood in several places down the track, and the ice is super bumpy. Many sliders pinballed down the track. Some sliders opted out of the race because their brain was too rattled from training runs.
- Everyone struggled except Martins Dukurs, he made it look easy as usual. He is an INSANELY good skeletoner from Latvia. If he won this race he would win €100,000 for the “Triple Crown” by winning three specific races during the year. It was close between him and a Russian but of course Martins won!! HE IS AMAZING! I think he finished the season with 8 gold medals and 2 silvers, in 10 races, plus the title of World Cup Champion. And when he won a race he won by a mile.
The womens race wasn’t as exciting. The ice was deteriorating quickly and each person coming down had a slower time than the person before them. At least they straightened out the start groove so there wasn’t near as many wall smashes. My favourite non-Canadian slider Noelle Pikus-Pace won the race, and a German girl won the World Cup.
Well now I’m sad that the skeleton World Cup is over, but I’ve still got one more weekend of sliding to come in two weeks so that is good. And I can’t wait until the Olympics!!!
PS My skeleton coach was Martins Dukurs coach in the Vancouver Olympics. :D You can see him yelling at him to run fast in the Olympics footage.
STUFF I LOVE #3: My Favourite Food Related Art and Stuff
STUFF I LOVE #3
Here is a collection of my favourite food related art and items at the moment. I LOVE FOOD! AND STUFF WITH FOOD ON IT! If I had unlimited money I would get it all.
Mutato print. I love this. It would look amazing in our kitchen. Unfortunately it would be 40€ with shipping which is too much for me at the moment.
Cheeses is Love print. It is no secret that I love cheese! I like that this is so simple and pretty. US$30 for large size + shipping. Wah.
Baker’s Edge Nonstick Edge Brownie Pan. Corners are the best part of brownies!! (In my opinion.) This particular tray is a bit pricey at US$34.95 + shipping, but THIS ONE would be a totally reasonable substitute at US$5.98, even with slightly less corners per brownie. I’m just waiting until we buy something else on Amazon.com and I’ll add it in to my cart then to avoid paying excess shipping.
Sushi post its. So cute and clever. ¥1890. Also this reminds me that I really want to go to Miku, here in Vancouver, to try their pressed sushi. Maybe this year for our anniversary?
Chocolate bar bed sheets. People are so creative. This is so cute and clever too!! US$260 for a single set. LOL.
Hamburger sweat shirt. Hehehehehehehehehe. No link for this one because I don’t think it actually exists. SO SAD. How hilarious would someone look walking down the street wearing this. I want that person to be me.
SANDWICH TENT! You’d be the star of any campground. ONLY $794.41 for a two person tent!!! O_o
Furniture waffle iron. Again, I’m not sure if this actually exists, but that’s their website. So genius I can’t even handle it.
That’s all for now. Stay tuned for the next STUFF I LOVE collection!
Stuff I Love #1: Audiobooks
STUFF I LOVE #1
Audiobooks
I recently decided that I LOVE AUDIOBOOKS! I read listened to an entire book in two days, WHILE WORKING. How’s that for multi-tasking.
I’m sure I could have curled up in bed and read the whole book in two days too, but who has time for that!? Now I can earn money and “read” at the same time. I feel like I’ve opened up a huge new chunk of day for me to take advantage of. Plus it was also kind of… comforting… like the old days when dad used to read to me at night time. A nice feeling.
I was listening to Terry Fallis’ The Best Laid Plans which he podcasted one chapter at a time a while ago when he was having trouble getting it published. You can get it for free off iTunes. Then it won the CBC Canada Reads 2011 contest and I’m sure he’s doing a lot better now. It’s a good story, check it out!
I suppose some books are better for listening to than others. The Best Laid Plans worked well, but we also downloaded audio files of Jasper Fforde’s books and now I am thinking that they might not be as good since he does a lot of clever things with different fonts or intentional ‘myspelings’, which would be lost.
I’ve also listened to Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything which was also quite interesting, but that was a serious time commitment since it really is not short at all. Now I need some kind of audiobook library (does that exist? probably) to pick what next! Any suggestions?
The question is, does listening to a book have the same educational benefit as reading a book? It certainly is a lot more passive. But I think I personally absorb more from listening than reading.