Going to My Happy Place

There have been some stressful things happening to people I love lately, and then those stupid Facebook memories (which I love) reminded me of someone who died too young. It's been a rough few weeks.

Let's talk about what's making me happy.

This was released on the weekend:

That appearance at the end?!? WHAT?!? Last I heard, Marvel didn't have movie rights for that character!!?!?! Mind. Blown.

Vancouver hosted its first Rugby Sevens tournament. By all accounts, it was a success. Plus, it meant that Brian O'Driscoll was in Vancouver. I love that man. I seriously considered heading to Vancouver for the weekend to see if I could spot him. 

In B.O.D. we trust!

The man was a legend on the Irish Rugby team.

I didn't go to Vancouver, however, because stressful things happening to people I love.

I know awesome people who are doing awesome things. Cely and her sister are raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (I linked to the Canada page because they also do Team-in-Training) with an epic bike ride. My cousin, David, is raising money for Mencap by running a marathon. And yes, I did just shamelessly link to both of their fundraising pages. When it comes to good people doing good things, I have pretty much no shame.

I went to see The Bills on Friday night with my stepmom. It was their CD release party for Victoria as well as a fundraiser for UVic's Continuing Studies division. The funds raised are going towards sponsoring a refugee family from Syria. I love the Bills and it was a fantastic evening of entertainment. 

This is one of their older songs but I enjoyed the new music they played on Friday. I can't wait to get my hands on the CD. I've been humming What Trouble Is since Friday night. (Sticking with the old songs,they closed the night with Bamfield's John Vanden. It gave me shivers to hear it live. P.S. John Vanden was a real person.)

St. Patrick's Day is this tomorrow. You'll probably find a few posts floating about that tell you how to say 'Happy St. Patrick's Day' or to order a pint of Guinness. But what you really need to know is in this video:

I'll be watching it and practicing my insults as I bake my Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes with Bailey's Cream Cheese icing tonight!

Monday Night Brain Dump

I had a moment after my last post where work became quite stressful and I actually forgot how time worked.

Seriously. Not a joke.

I couldn't remember if we went from one month to the next in the middle of the day, or if Thursday following Wednesday happened every week. This is what four days of crazy will do to a person.

The inability to understand time only last about 10 minutes but it wasn't exactly a fun 10 minutes.

In amongst the loss of cognitive thought, I miss tracking my own weight. When I started going to the gym, I decided to just use the gym scale with my trainer and leave it at that. Except I love charts and grafts and tracking things in Excel. I'm seeing changes in my body and I'd love to have a fun little graft I could plop into a post to say "see? SEE? I'm not just making this up!"

If I can't track it in Excel, I don't care to track it at all.

I dusted off my old spreadsheet, updated the data, and have started tracking at home with my cheap, old scale. It's not as accurate as the gym scale but it's close enough.

(If you ever need help with Excel, feel free to drop me a line. I <3 Excel so much!)

I attended a friend's burlesque revue at the end of February. The show was so much fun and my friend rocked her number. She only started in November but she knew how to sexy eye look. After the show, Katie (another friend) and I proceeded to relive our early 20s. I believe the words "we should go to Denny's!!" may have escaped my mouth around 1:30am. Yeah. It was that kind of night.

I'd be quite happy to never have a night like that again, to be honest.

I did not successfully complete my 90 day Add1Challenge. Now, I don't want to blame it all on my inability to understand time, but that certainly didn't help. I was already behind the 8 ball after being sick in January. When Thursdays started confusing me, I figured I had to throw in the towel... even if only for my own sanity.

Still, to remain positive about it:

1. I progressed much further in my Swahili learning than I would have without it.
2. The Add1Challenge Community is a really fantastic bunch of people and I am thrilled I got to be a part of it.
3. Even in my failure, I know what and how I can do better next time.
4. Oh, yes. There will be a next time.

I'm not going to do the next challenge because my mental capacities need a break, but I'd like to do another Swahili challenge before I go. I'm actually thinking that if I time it right, the challenge could end as I'm going to Tanzania so my 15 minute conversation could be with someone there. I have to sit down and think it out a bit more but I'm liking the idea more and more.

I still plan to continue with Swahili on my own, but not as intensely as I was during the challenge.

Finally, I can't remember if I shared this previously. The GAA season is starting up again. The big news for Monaghan is that FKM is their secondary sponsor this year. Big news because yours truly used to work for FKM! At any rate, this commercial is a few years old but it's one of my 'happy place' videos so I've been watching it a lot recently.

Kilkenny and Tipperary are two of the dominant hurling counties (along with Cork and Kerry) so when they ended up facing each other in the All-Ireland final in 2014, the adverts pulled footage from the times they had previously met in the finals.

Who, being loved, is poor?

Like the title? It's an Oscar Wilde quote. It's one of my favourites from him and it seemed appropriate for a belated Valentine's post.

The last time I wrote, I was laying on death's door. More specifically, coughing and sneezing all over the door. Happily, that little foray into Vick's VapoRub and NyQuil has ended. However, it seems like all I see around me now are sick people. STAY AWAY FROM ME, YOU HARBINGERS OF THE PLAGUE!

I had a busy weekend of love with a Galentine's Day Brunch on Saturday (after a gym session), and then a hot Galentine's Day date to see "Deadpool". The best thing about my friend's husband is that Superhero movies really aren't his cup of tea so I have a built in date for all of them. Sa-weet.

As for my thoughts on Deadpool:

AMAZING!

No spoilers but if you're a fan of the comic books (then why haven't you seen it yet?), it stays very true to Deadpool and has a fair amount of inside jokes. If you're not a fan of the comic books, then it has a lot of just straight up jokes.

I am so happy that the studio relented and agreed that a PG-13 version didn't have to be made. Oh, happy day! (Although, I will note that it rated 14A in Canada because we're a bit more lenient with the sex scenes than the US.)

Valentine's Day was much more low key with a matinee of "When Harry Met Sally...". The evening consisted of hanging out with my future husband finally watching Season Four of Luther. Oh, Idris Elba... be my Valentine!

I'll be waiting!

In amongst all the fun that the weekend of love brought me, I stepped on my scale. I'm due for another weigh-in with my trainer and I'll use that for my official numbers but for now, my home scale shows that I went down about another 8lbs since January 4th. I'll take it!

I know. I know. I'm amazing. Thank you ;)

As it's getting late and all I really wanted to do with this post was brag about the weight drop, I'll wrap it up with no real ending except to say that this is my favourite Oscar Wilde quote:

How right you are, Oscar.

I'm Sick; Thinking is Difficult

I spent my weekend wandering between my bed and the couch while fighting a slight fever. Now I have a lovely cough and nose faucet to go with it.

Ugh.

The best part? Our department is down to two people - my supervisor and me - due to the other two members being off on Short Term Disability. Two people: four projects. Working when you're sick is the worst!

I'm pretty sure I've got my supervisor in my pocket for any upcoming favours I might need to ask.

Despite the sickity-sick, I did get my tickets to Tanzania sorted and booked.

The foreground is the backyard (during the dry season). The row hedges marks the border with Arusha National Park. Yeah, this trip is going to suck ;) I am incredibly grateful that I have a job which can afford me the time and opportunity to do things like travel to Tanzania for an extended period. I really am very lucky in that regard.

Due to being confined to the apartment the entire weekend, I finally got around to watching Ex Machina. About bloody time!

I've had multiple people tell me that I need to see this film... now I totally get why! It's a bit slow moving in parts so I wouldn't recommend it if you can drift off easily in slow movies, but the slow also serves as a foil to the frenetic ending. I got sucked down the rabbit hole of YouTube fan theory videos after I watched it. There are some incredibly smart sci-fi fans out there that picked up on things I completely missed.

I also rewatched Inside Out. Because when you're feverish and emotionally compromised, you should totally watch a children's movie that made you cry when you saw it in theatres. Yup. Great idea. Really helped with the faucet nose.

If you watched this movie and didn't cry, you're dead to me. You and your cold, black heart can go sit in the corner!

The dreaded lurgy has also made the gym a no-go location this week. I'm a little bummed about that but when every walk causes a coughing fit... working out isn't exactly enjoyable. Still, I did manage to touch base with my trainer and we have a game plan set for how we're hitting the ground running once I'm able to breath again. It makes me feel like I haven't completely fallen off the workout train.

Have a great Wednesday, folks!

Award For Most Depressing Start To the Year...

Much of 2015 was what I have referred to with friends as 'a holding pattern'. However towards the end of the year, things had started to pick up. I entered 2016 with the feeling that this was going to be a good year. Nay, a great year.

Then there was a surfeit of celebrity deaths.

Damn you, 2016!

But before we start talking about 2016, let's backtrack a bit to 2015.

I was semi-consistent with my gym attendance in the last two months of 2015. I say semi-consistent because with her family visiting from Brazil, holidays, and her getting sick, we were consistent in changing at least one session every week. There were a lot of Saturday sessions to make up for a missed/changed session during the week. Despite that, I lost 5lbs in the month of December. Happy Dance!

At my size you don't really see 5lbs, but you definitely feel it. Clothes are loser and my energy level is increasing. I mean, nothing crazy - I still like to spend the end of the day sitting on my couch watching Netflix - but waking up is easier and I'm more likely to do something active on the weekends.

At the start of January, my trainer made a deal with me. For every 3 lbs I lose between now and when I leave for Tanzania, she will donate $15 to Jifundishe. (That's the NGO in Tanzania I work with. So it's not like she choose some random group.) As a result, I've given up booze for all of January.

I know! The only time I've really missed it was after a day of snowshoeing. My friends were drinking beer with their taco dinner. Man, how I would have loved to have consumed a cold one with them.

Speaking of snowshoeing...

It was a very foggy day. We were up in the Kludahk area (above Jordan River) which has trails which follow old logging roads and a couple of huts. We sent out a detailed email with our itinerary... and then completely ignored it because the road was too sketchy even for the 4x4. Because of that, we didn't go off the logging roads. We followed a lot of dead ends before calling it a day. Good thing too, because it started to pour with rain within 15 minutes of us getting back to the truck!

Snowshoeing season is very close to an end unless we get another cold snap.

I set a goal at the start of 2015 to improve my Swahili in preparation for my trip to Tanzania this year. I worked diligently at it for two weeks... and then did nothing. That's not totally true. I'd pick up the books from time to time and look at them.

At the end of the November, I joined the Add1Challenge as a way to motivate me to study on my own. I plan to do an entire post about the Add1Challenge (I'm aiming for after Day 60 because I just might be rapping in Swahili for my Day 60 video and I'll share that here) but it will be day 45 on Wednesday (I think) and the challenge has done exactly what I wanted it to do. In fact, it has done a lot more.

It has not only provided me the motivation to study, but it comes with its own built-in support group. We may all be learning different languages, but that doesn't mean that many of our struggles don't overlap in some way. If you need to self-study a language and are looking for a supportive group of fellow language learners, I cannot say enough good things about the Add1Challenge.

Kind of what the Add1Challenge feels like.

Inspired by what the Add1Challenge did for my language learning, I joined Karen's accountability group. Much like Add1, it's nice to have a place where we can celebrate our successes with food and working out, and virtually hug each other when we have crap days.

And that's where I stand just over half-way through the first month. Personally, 2016 is setting itself up to be a pretty awesome year.

(What ever you say, Tom Burke.)

But I'm still a little shocked that none of my Facebook statuses in the past week and a half weren't just the word

You know what he's saying. Don't pretend you don't.