Saturday, December 20, 2014

Kitchen Reno - Done


Quite a difference from that last picture. The painful renovation process has not been forgotten yet but I do love how it's turned out. What a world of difference in how it looks and how I use my space.

A lot will need to be left unsaid for now. Maybe one day I can talk about it without obsessing over all the details and everything that went wrong, but that will probably take a while. A very long while.

Right now all I care about is that it's done.

It's done!

Monday, October 06, 2014

Kitchen Reno - Day 1

Last night I went to bed and my living/dining room and kitchen wall looked a little like this:



Came home after work to this:

From the front door -

From the hallway to the bedroom -

No going back now!

Thursday, September 11, 2014

The triathlon that wasn't - First race

When I first started drafting this post, I was high on the energy of a lot of good swimming, biking and running. I had planned to write all about how great the race had gone and skip over the pre-race stuff, such as training. Then I had a little accident and it all changed. Here's the story.

Last December Brother #2 and I decided we would race a couple of Olympic distance triathlons together this summer.  I started focusing on my training in January, and then took the extra step of working with a trainer and nutritionist to be sure I was as strong and healthy as possible for the two races.

Training was going well. I'd reached my distances and was working on speed. I'd dropped a little weight and turned some fat into lean muscle. Then, one Saturday morning, about 6 weeks ago, I decided to do a brick (cycle/run). I biked out 25+ kilometres to a friend's house, dropped off my bike and ran up to a lovely little forest area for a trail run and promptly tripped over a tree root, twisting my ankle.  But I am a tough woman, so nothing like a twisted ankle was going to stop me, oh no!  I continued my run and within 5 minutes the pain went away. I ran a nice 5km loop and just as I was getting back to the street, said to myself "Now don't go tripping over that tree root again!", which is of course exactly what I did. This time I managed to fall and scrape my knee and the palm of my hand.

Back at my friend's house, I washed off, and we enjoyed some time in the pool with her kids. Later in the afternoon I biked back home another 25+km.  By this point my ankle was quite swollen and it hurt to walk on it.  That night I iced it, elevated it, etc.

Over the next few days I rested the ankle as much as possible and focused on getting biking distance in, instead of running. By the following Friday my foot was feeling much better and I had an easy 5km run. The ankle didn't feel exactly right but well enough to get a run in.

The following Monday my ankle felt a lot better and moved things up to 8km, and on Wednesday back to 12km. Slow and steady is how I run. Not breaking any speed limits, just getting through the distance. Then on Friday, about 6km into my last 12km run, I started to have some pain in my ankle again, which then moved, I could feel it moving, down the side of my ankle, across the top of foot and then stayed, like fire, on the top of my foot until I had to stop running for fear my foot was going to burst into flames. I was at 7.75km of my 12km run. No way could I continue. I was also 1.3km away from the gym and had to hobble/drag my leg behind me.

One week before the first Olympic distance triathlon and I could hardly walk, let alone run. Panic set in.

An x-ray, a couple of visits to the doctor, some physio and although it seemed I didn't have a fracture, something called the intermediary cuneiform bone (which, quite frankly, sounds too much like "unicorn" so I'm calling it my unicorn bone - yes, that one, in my foot) got displaced and was causing the ligaments down to my toes to scream at me. If you want to know what it feels like, it's kinda like this:  as you flex your foot to take a step, imagine someone hammering a dull nail into the top of your foot and that will give you the basic idea.

When the doctor told me I wouldn't be running anywhere, I suddenly felt the tears welling up in my eyes. When I fell the first time I didn't cry. Nor when I fell the second time. Not even the third time when the unicorn bone moved and the ligaments screamed at me. No crying, no, none at all.  But somebody tells me I can't do something I've spent the nearly 8 months training for and now I want to cry.

So I couldn't run. What could I do? I did the next best thing. I switched my race to an Olympic distance swim-cycle! Turns out I did pretty well.

Here's a summary of the pre-race, race and post-race events.

Pre-race:
Might have slept an hour all night. Typical me.
Got out of bed at 6am, dressed and re-packed my bag one last time, triple checking everything.
Ate a bagel, some Greek yogurt.
Arrived on site just before 7:30am.
Got set-up.
Went down to the beach and pulled on the wet suit.
Quick warm-up swim - water was perfect temperature.

Race:
Swim -- Tried to take the long-line on the swim to stay out of the way of the crowd, but apparently everybody had that very same idea. Oh well. Did my 2 loops and hoped for a decent time.

T1 -- Wet suit came off fast and then I dilly-dallied over drying my feet and tried to pick off the cut grass that was sticking to me. Stupid waste of time. Even put on my bike gloves - another 20 seconds wasted.  Finally got my bike in my hands and started heading to the mount line. But first I had to knock the bike computer off the bike not once, but twice, before some kind man picked it up and got it locked into place.

Bike -- My heart rate was high and I struggled to catch my breath on the first 10km lap. Found myself hardly able to maintain any speed over 25km/h. The second lap wasn't much better. Finally by the third lap my heart rate was down a bit and I could push harder. By the fourth lap I didn't care anymore and really pushed it to finish. Off the bike, and as much as I would've liked to run through the transition zone, my foot was telling me not to. I hobbled and semi-ran down the finishing chute.

Post-race:
By some miracle I finished 3rd overall (admittedly we were only six) in the women's Olympic distance swim-cycle! Not only did I get a finishers medal, but also a "Bronze" ribbon and a prize (Deep ice & heat relief and big plastic smoothie bottle.)

Official times:
Swim: 40:07 (includes transition time, by my watch I was at 33 minutes when I got out of the water)
Bike:  1:33:12 (includes time from dismount line, through transition, to finish)
Total:  2:13:17.4

What would I do differently?

Swim

  1. Take short line out to swim course
  2. Swim over more people, but in nice way

Bike

  1. Get outside on more roads, more wind, more hills
  2. No dilly-dallying in transition
  3. Tape bike computer to bike
  4. Run through transition (if I could have)

Run

  1. Not run 5km after a fall
  2. Take more time to heal if I have fallen


Summary of the second race, 3 weeks later, coming soon ... hopefully before Halloween.


Thursday, September 04, 2014

Ice Bucket Challenge

In recent weeks you have probably heard about the Ice Bucket Challenge in the news.  Many people have been pouring buckets of icy cold water over their heads to help promote awareness of the disease and what it does to its victims.

On als.ca  they tell you right on their home page that "ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) is a progressive neuromuscular disease in which nerve cells die and leave voluntary muscles paralyzed. Every day two or three Canadians die of the disease."  

Please, before you go throwing any icy water over yourself, read up a little on the disease and please, please, please donate.

This past weekend one of my brothers nominated me in his own challenge. It took the suggestion from one of my closest friends (hi, SuperC!) to get me to accept this challenge as I had no intention of putting any kind of icy anything anywhere near me.  I made this little video.

Enjoy and do please remember to donate to ALS.


Friday, July 18, 2014

Long time no see

Did ya miss me?

I'm still around. Busy and stuff  but otherwise well.

Here are a few pictures from Canada Day weekend with the family in Ottawa.

Enjoy!

Monday, February 24, 2014

Scammers at large!

Yesterday I posted a few things for sale on kijiji and Craiglist.  Later in the evening I noticed an email in my inbox with the following message:

Please contact Ms. Juninho my tenant at smithkate328 at gmail.com for your final price and where to pay. Thanx...


I wrote back with the details. The last thing I expected was to start receiving this type of email, from somebody called "Charlotte Wellington":

Good to hear back from you. I'm satisfied with the price and the
condition. Presently, i am out of town with my WORLD HEALTH
ORGANIZATION TEAM to raise funds for People Living with Diabetes and i
won't be able to come for the inspection due to the nature of my work.
I will be paying you through PayPal as it is the only Medium at which
i can send Payment at the Moment.if you don't have a PayPal account,
It's pretty easy to set up a PayPal account at www.paypal.com . it's
just a few minutes away from signing up. it's safe and secure for both
Parties and i have been using PayPal to buy and sell for years now
without problems. Pls get back to me with your PayPal email and FINAL
SELLING PRICE so i can proceed with the payment and contact the Pick
up Agent who will come
for the Pick up

I look forward to your Positive response.



Understand of course, I had already confirmed the price and advised to pay through paypal. Why they needed to reconfirm this, I didn't quite catch on. But then I got this:

I have just completed the payment and i am sure PayPal would have sent you a
Confirmation email. Please, check all your mail folders(INBOX,SPAM and JUNK
mail). I sent a total Payment of $1,350. I added $600 but $500 will be
sent to my Pick Up Agent via Western Union. The extra $100 is to cover the
Western Union fee and PayPal charges. PayPal will not release the funds
until you email them the Western Union details for verification and also to
enable my pick up agent to come for pick up and inspection. Here is the
agent's details where the money will be sent.


AGENT'S NAME: TASHAS KELLY

CITY: AUSTIN
STATE: TEXAS
ZIP CODE: 78719
COUNTRY: UNITED STATES


Please get the necessary details sent to PayPal : 10 DIGIT Western Union
MTCN, Sender's Name and Address used to send the $500.00USD so that they can
release the whole funds into your account. Please get back to me once it's
done.


That's when it clicked. I checked my paypal account of course no funds had been transferred. So I let it sit there unanswered. It came as no surprise to see this in my inbox this morning:

i'm a STRUGGLING mother, my younger sister who is starting
college this fall also lives with me, and we share one car. I think it is
pretty low for another human to try and take advantage of another
human. Why do you do this to people


The kicker though, was the next email, from the "FBI":

You have been reported to the FBI TEAM and Local Sheriff Police division for none response  for the Transaction between you and a PayPalverified Client  Charlotte Wellington. We have had series of fraudulent issues in recent years and we are putting preventive measure s to wiping them off thereby affiliating our team to PayPal and Western Union to help them solve fraudulent issues which tend to occur often. If the WESTERN UNION  details needed by PayPal is not received at the PayPal customer care desk in the next 3 hours, we will be visiting your home address and you would have to come with us to our base for further queries. We look forward to hearing from you soon.


Attorney James Mcfadden
 
200 McCarty Avenue


Strangely enough, nobody has visited my house from any police or enforcement agency. Shocking, I know! Haven't received any other emails since then and am quite disappointed they've given up so easily. I was having such a good laugh. On a Monday and everything.

Clearly I will not handing over $500 to anybody. Except maybe the notary next week when I sign for the new condo.  And then it will be significantly more than $500. 

Sorry Charlotte ;)

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Pre-move sale

Long time no see.  It's two weeks until my move and I have a few things to sell.  Here are the links to my ads on kijiji:

Washer & Dryer

BBQ

Videotron HD terminal

If you know of anybody looking for these items, please feel free to forward. 

Monday, January 27, 2014

A year ago today

A year ago today, I was in a plane somewhere over the Atlantic, on the first leg of my trip to India.  Where has the last year gone?!

What a lot can happen in a year. I still think of my experience in India almost every day and am still amazed that I did it. It was hard. If there were 2 days when I didn't learn something new about India, its culture, people, language, etc., it would be a lot. I feel that I learned a lot about myself too. And about my own culture and norms.

When will I stop thinking about it? Someday, I suppose. But for now I relish thinking about it and about the day I can go back. That next trip may be years and years away. What I've found though, is the big stuff in life is definitely worth waiting for.