Oh my god so much sweet potato!!
september 22nd, 2013 – vegetarian chilli
september 23rd, 2013 – blue cheese yam fries and grilled steak
september 24th, 2013 – slowcooker pot roast with barley, and roasted sweet potato
This was from a Canadian Living recipe. It didn’t turn out as nice as I hoped. The beef wasn’t very moist, which is weird because usually everything comes out super tender from the slowcooker! :(
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I’ve been putting this post off for a long time, because I didn’t want to be all “LOOK AT ME I’M SO GREAT AT FITNESS” and then end up not sticking with it and looking stupid. But it’s been 6 months now and I’m still going to the gym on a regular basis so I think it’s safe to say I’m somewhat committed.
Before six months ago I hated exercising, I thought. But actually I think I really just hated running. I did the Couch To 5K program a couple years ago and hated every second of it. When I got home from a run I felt like puking! People say things like ~you never regret a workout~ but when I’d come home from running with a purple face, shins hurting, and feeling a thousand times worse than I did before the run, I DID REGRET THE WORKOUT. I was quite content on the couch before I went out!!
But then I got into skeleton. Skeleton isn’t really the sportiest of sports (probably part of the reason I like it), but even as a beginner it does involve walking up inclines, carrying really heavy things around, and keeping your body really tight on the way down. And I sucked at that. So I joined a gym.
I started with the cardio equipment because they weren’t as scary. But upon further research I realized I really needed to be in the weight room. I got a bunch of books on weightlifting from the library and tried to memorize some of the exercises [this was pre-smartphone] and slowly started trying more and more things out in the weight room. It was terrifying at first!! Weights are intimidating! I mostly stuck to the machines and dumbbells at the beginning, and only when it wasn’t very busy. [Getting my new phone later helped a lot because you can sneakily look things up while at the gym.]
I followed the dumbbell only routines from The Body Sculpting Bible For Women for several weeks. They were fun and challenging and not too complicated. The best thing was writing down the weights I used in a little notebook [eventually replaced by phone] and seeing the numbers go up and up every time. Super addicting! I finally understood what people meant when they said they never regretted a workout because I always felt great after a sweaty lifting session.
Over the past few months I’ve progressed from those timid dumbbell moves to exciting stuff like deadlifts and power cleans with the barbell! I’m a million times more confident at the gym now. It’s been a fun journey, thanks to watching other people, reading on the internet, and coaching from my skeleton friend.
My original weight lifting goals were to try not to embarrass myself at the skeleton tryouts, but then they took out the weight lifting part anyway. My new goals are to get my benchpress to 100 lbs, and my squat and deadlift to bodyweight. And to be able to do pull-ups and handstands.
I may be smiling in that picture but actually I felt like puking from nervousness!! I was so so so scared to actually do the tryouts. Scott had to drag me there, pretty much. I felt more nervous than I do before giving presentations!!!
Thankfully it ended up being a super small group (5 people) and not super intimidating. My sprint performance was pretty pathetic but I apparently had the best broad jump form. (THANK YOU YOUTUBE!) I jumped 1.78 m which is only about ONE METER TOO SHORT. Lol.
But I guess since so few people actually showed up I made the team? I’m just kidding grandma. I don’t have the time/money to actually do that anyway. Even though it was slightly embarrassing I’m still glad I went and glad I got the chance to show Ivo that I am still really interested in skeleton. I guess it worked because he talked about bringing us to Calgary to try running starts in the icehouse in a couple weeks!!
BTW my skeleton goals:
WORK/SCHOOL – My summer has pretty much revolved around this. I feel like the majority of my summer has been working, commuting, studying or sleeping (and going to the gym). I’m two weeks away from finishing clinical though so it’s all good. After clinical ends we have a couple weeks to study our butts off and then we write the national certification exam on September 17th.
HOME – We still really like this apartment. Our neighbour situation at the moment is pretty ideal too now. We used to have really loud neighbours to the right. They did things like leave their alarm clock beeping from 10PM to 5AM straight, or have loud arguments on the balcony at 10PM, or have loud parties on Wednesday nights. Then a while ago we noticed we hadn’t heard anything from there for several days. We peeked around the divider to look and all their stuff was still there, but it seemed like there was no one in the apartment for a whole month. Then mysteriously one day all their furniture was packed up and gone, except for a few knicknacks here and there. THEN we noticed that the patio door has been wide open for at least a week now. WHAT HAPPENED???!!! Did they die in there and now they are airing it out?? I don’t get it. (ps I hope no one actually died)
FOOD/DRINK – New favourite drink: strawberry lime cider. Six for $11?? Love this province and their ridiculously cheap cider. Today I baked cheesy garlic bread… FROM SCRATCH. There’s more than one baker in this house!!! It was delicious.
FRIENDS/FAMILY – I’ve been enjoying bubble tea dates and game nights and chatty lunches and hanging out on the patio. We should have another party asap. Friends: just come over any time!! Also I miss Rosemarie a lot and am counting down the days till she comes “home”. At least it seems like she is doing really well in New Zealand (office work weekdays and outdoors for the whole weekend, the usual).
FITNESS – I’ve still been going to the gym 2-4 times a week. Still doing mainly weightlifting but today I did my first attempt at HIIT. I like that HIIT only takes like 15 minutes. I bought a bikram yoga Groupon last week too. Thought yoga might help with my core which will help with skeleton. It would have made my mom SO happy if I had told her I decided to finally try yoga, haha. I’m also thinking about getting back into swimming. I’ve been meaning to write a big post about my foray into fitness so that’s all I’m going to say about exercise for now. New post coming soon.
HOBBIES – What’s a hobby?
It is so so nice not having homework. And one benefit of very early morning starts is that I’m usually finished work by about 3PM. To make it even better the weather in Vancouver has been PERFECT for the past week and a bit. Life is good here, at the moment. :D
We saw Monsters University last weekend. Have you seen it? I liked it quite a bit. I laughed a bunch of times. Then the next night I watched Monsters Inc again. Cute.
I can see Canada Place from our balcony so I was planning on watching the Canada Day fireworks from here, but I fell asleep and missed them!! I actually did wake up from some booms and ran out onto the balcony but it must have been the very last ones from the show because I didn’t see or hear anything after that. Bummer.
I went to the gym with my skeleton friends on Thursday and my quads are STILL sore. We did bench press, front squats, power cleans, abs, and core. Chris pushes Matt and I to lift as hard as we can. I am still pretty weak but I am improving. BTW, they still haven’t announced the dates for BC skeleton tryouts yet and I still haven’t decided if I’m going to bother trying out this year or not. It might be kind of fun to do all the tests, but I’m worried that I would still be embarrassingly unqualified. I haven’t even tried any of the sprints or jumps yet. We’ll see, and I’ll keep you posted.
The end of last week was dramatic at work. We got a call near the end of the day on Thursday from a camera manufacturer that said we could no longer use their cameras until they have been checked out, effective immediately. The hospital exclusively uses that brand of camera so we had to cancel everything for the next day that we could and figure out how to get the urgent inpatients their tests in other facilities. I thought I was going to get the day off but instead they sent me back to the outpatient centre (that uses a different brand of camera). Friday was pretty chaotic with all the extra patients from other hospitals so I helped out with that. I’m not sure when things will get back to normal… hopefully by tomorrow but I’m not sure.
That hospital rotation really was exhausting and tough, but I ended up getting a very good review so I’m happy. I’m glad I got that rotation over with as well… the rest of the summer should go pretty smoothly.
Yesterday Clare and I went to see our classmate Gillian get married. We just went to the ceremony so we weren’t there very long. We got to see their first EVER kiss!! Gillian looked so pretty and I loved her dress. Congratulations Gillian and Bryan!