On Sunday we made homemade Montreal style bagels. I used this recipe, and they turned out pretty nice! I was surprised at how simple it actually was to make our own bagels. We just had to make the dough, knead for 10 minutes, cut up the dough and shape it into bagels, then boil for 90 seconds, dip in sesame seeds, and bake for 20 minutes.
Before baking:
I forgot to take an after baking picture. They puffed up a bit in the oven and got a nice brown colour.
Well, I’m back.
What happened? It’s kind of a long story. My old website was set to expire at the beginning of April. I didn’t renew it because I was planning on switching over to self-hosting during my March Break. Then my account got auto-renewed even though I had that disabled. I complained, and instead of WordPress refunding me money they cancelled my whole domain. Now jornakat.com is in a weird limbo period where it can’t be registered again until the registrar releases it, which could take up to 35 days. Ugh. Anyway so I decided to start a whole new website because I am impatient. Plus I kind of wanted to get away from having my name all over the place, so this is better.
Welcome to Grated Expectations!!!
I have transferred over some of my old posts but not all. I tried to get all the ones that were semi-popular posts, but didn’t bother with the day-to-day posts. They do still exist, at jornakat.wordpress.com, and that’s good enough. This is where the future will happen!
Things I did this weekend:
Three midterms coming up this week. I need to study a lot!! Anatomy, applied physiology, and physics. Eugh.
The hockey video game is surprisingly fun. I actually beat Scott!!
Hugo was good, I liked it. That movie had a lot of dust, did anyone else notice that?? Young Adult was ok I guess, but frustrating. I guess that was kind of what they were going for though.
Scott made breakfast pizza tonight. We have homemade pizza every second Sunday but I was a bit bored of the usual pizza so I asked for something new. This pizza had ham, tomato, green onion, and eggs cracked on top. It was delicious!
Last night we went out for dinner. Scott won a gift certificate from the Polar Bear Swim for Stepho’s, a Greek restaurant on Davie Street. We got there around 7 pm and there was a big line, as expected. Luckily since we were just a group of 2 we got seated a lot quicker. I would not recommend going there in a big group! We ordered a lamb platter, saganaki (fried cheese), and dolmathes (rice and meat in grape leaves) to share. I enjoyed the saganaki (duh) and the flavour of the dolmathes a lot, but they were quite oily. The lamb was really big and incredibly tender. It fell off the bones. The sides (salad, vegetables, rice) were all good and it came with a lot! We didn’t finish everything.
Scott and I started the 30 Day Shred last week. It’s a quick intense workout program thingy that you can do at home. You need weights. It was a little harder today…. maybe because of last nights fried cheese. We’re done 4 of 30 days. I get soooo sweaty and I really hate the jumping parts – my calves cramp up. I hope we can complete the program but it will definitely be tough.
I don’t know if I mentioned it, but last weekend the BCIT nuc med department had a curling night. I couldn’t go, because I was at Whistler. Well one of my classmates went, and fell, and broke her arm! No one got injured at skeleton…… just saying………
So obviously curling is the far more dangerous sport. :P
My second day of skeleton was really awesome. I woke up pumped and ready for another session. My first four runs I got 99.72, 99.58, 98.99, 99.42 km/hr. Frustrating. That 98.99 km/hr run was when my coach pushed me straight into the wall at the very top. I heard him yell ‘OH NO!!’ as I disappeared around the first corner. I recovered from the bump though, luckily. Sometimes in skeleton you hit an edge near the beginning of the run and end up bashing back and forth the whole way down. They usually get a speed in the 80’s or low 90’s at the speed trap. Luckily I have not had a run like that yet!
Anyway after the fourth run we were told that the next one would be our last. I told myself ‘OK Katrina, you really need to focus and have a perfect run’. The run right before that I thought was pretty good too but I still didn’t get that 100 km/hr that I wanted. I got the other people to help smooth down the back of my sweater, tuck my gloves into my sleeves and I smoothed down my tights on my legs. Coach Ivo gave me a slightly bigger push than before. He really wanted to see me get 100 km/hr too but often giving a bigger push at our level means less control on the way down and a slower speed and time. I relaxed as fully as I could and concentrated on keeping my chin out and my shoulders down and my toes pointed and I made sure to lean into the one corner I sometimes bumped on the way down.
It felt like an awesome smooth run and when they announced my speed at the bottom we all cheered. I was so happy!! 100.60 km/hr and a finish time of less than 30 seconds. A perfect way to end the session.
Dang Brian beat me by 0.09 s on my perfect run, so I actually still only came in second. Achieving my personal goal feels really really good though.
That’s the view from the finishing area. When we do skeleton we only get about half way up and then the crew helps pick up your sled and pass it to you.
Later that day Dylan, Brian and I also got a chance to do a bobsled run! Sometimes you really do just need to ask. Tourists pay a lot of money to do one bobsled run but we got to do it for free. Woohoo.
Bobsled was freaking bumpy. My head bounced around all over the place and I couldn’t even hold it up in the last corner. So much force. It was just like a really rough rollercoaster. I like skeleton better.
I don’t have any pictures of me doing bobsled because I went at a different time than Dylan and Brian. But I tried to take pictures for them…. and failed. That is the best picture I got, and that’s with Rosemarie’s camera! They were going about 125 km/hr.
Dylan and Brian after bobsled. The guy on the far left is the one that took me down as well. I guess he’s always trying to get more track hours so he has room to take other sliding association members down before and after tourist sessions.
I sure wish I was going again this weekend. Instead I’m going to be studying… a lot! We have three midterms next week again. Then holy cow it’s already March Break. Insane. We have to put in our top three choices for hospital placements this week and soon that will be decided as well. First year… coming along!