Body in Motion

Maybe it's the generally warmer weather, or maybe it's the spare tire around my waist that's been gradually growing more obvious over the past several weeks (hopefully only to me!), but lately, my body has been wanting to move. Sedentary is out, action is IN! Even if I schedule no exercise into a given day, I find myself dancing to music in my room, or suggesting walks along the Seawall instead of coffee when making plans with friends. I have energy that's just bursting to be spent.

I have also been really unhappy with the 6 or so extra pounds that seem to have crept onto my frame just in time for bikini season. I worked really, *really* hard to lose about 15 pounds in 2007 and now it's all back, every last ounce of it. This is NOT OKAY with me. I worked too hard at getting rid of them, I do not want them back. I had a lot of my clothes taken in when I lost that weight, and I don't want to replace them all now that I've gained it back. I want to wear them again, and look good in them again.

I knew I needed to do something drastic, and I want to capitalize on my body's natural desire towards being active at the moment. Just a couple of days after I began thinking I need to do something way above and beyond my usual workout routine, an email landed in my inbox from Survivor Bootcamp about their summer sessions. I read it, and 15 minutes later I was $225 poorer and several degrees crazier, because I had signed up for three 1-hour sessions per week for the next four weeks.

I have also decided to do the Grouse Grind once every two weeks for the rest of the summer. The Grouse Grind is a household name in Vancouver. In fact so many people have heard of it that you'll often see tourists show up to do the grind in their jeans and strappy sandals, without any water bottles, thinking it's more of a touristy hike than a hard core workout. Boy are they in for a shock! The Grind is 2.9 km of stairs and scrambling up rocks, straight up the side of a mountain. It's affectionately been nicknamed "Nature's Stairclimber," and the average climber burns 1100 calories per hike, which takes between 30-90 minutes, depending on your fitness level.

I started my first hike of the season assuming it would take me 90 minutes. I was pleasantly surprised to finish in 1 hour and 24 minutes, after having stopped along the way to take a few photos. Here are some snapshots from my first Grind of the season:

The stretching area at the base of the mountain, just before the entrance to the hike

25 minutes in, I reached the 1/4 mark sign. The hike is comprised of stairs like these almost the whole way up

Half way!

Reaching halfway is cause for celebration. I celebrate by taking a break to photograph the view.

3/4 of the way to the top - so close I can taste it!

Reached the top. I JUST CLIMBED A MOUNTAIN. The hike totally sucks, but damn it feels good to accomplish that!

Doing my best impression of a tomato. Approximately 237 mosquitos bit me while I stopped to take this quick self-portrait.

Whip It Up Week 1: Tomatoes Filled with Rice

Whip It Up is here at last! Kicking things off during the week of American Independence Day, the suggested theme for the first week of cooking was "holiday food." Bah humbug to that, I say, because I'm Canadian and although we had our very own national birthday celebration this week, I prefer to celebrate with frozen pizza and friends and fireworks than by cooking anything from scratch! So there will be no holiday food here.

Instead, there will be tomatoes filled with rice. This is a recipe that I read about on Orangette nearly a year ago, which Molly originally found on The Wednesday Chef, and I have had it saved in my "to make" folder since that day. The recipe sounded so simple it couldn't be all that remarkable, but Molly swore up and down that this would be fantastic, and I tend to trust Molly's opinion on food.

I have been drooling (not literally, I promise) over the gorgeous tomato varieties that have been gracing the produce aisles lately, so I finally decided it was time to dig up this recipe. And hoo boy, am I glad I did. The recipe was super easy to follow, and even my brother liked it (he doesn't really go for vegetables, as a general rule. BOYS!) I will definitely be adding this one into my regular recipe rotation. You should really make these immediately.

Italian Tomatoes Filled with Rice

4 large, good-tasting tomatoes (I prefer heirloom)
1 small yellow onion, diced
Olive oil
1/3 cup Arborio rice
1/3 cup water
Fresh basil leaves (Molly's version calls for 5 leaves, I probably used double that)
Salt
Breadcrumbs (I was lazy and used Corn Flake crumbs. Worked out great!)

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Cut the tops off the tomatoes. Holding them over a bowl, scoop out their insides – flesh, seeds, and juice – and let it all fall into the bowl. Set the tomatoes in a lightly oiled baking dish, or a cookie tray as long as it has edges (the tomatoes will release juices while baking, you don't want that spilling all over your oven). Then fish the flesh out of the bowl, and chop it. Return it to the bowl with the juice and seeds.

In a medium (2-quart) saucepan, warm a glug of olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, and cook, stirring frequently, until soft and translucent. Add the rice, and continue to cook, stirring, for another minute or two. Add the tomato flesh, juice, and seeds – it may look like a lot, but add it all – as well as the water. Tear the basil leaves into small pieces, and add them too. Add a generous pinch or two of salt. Reduce the heat slightly, cover the pot, and simmer for 10 minutes. Taste, and if needed, add more salt.

Spoon the par-cooked rice mixture into the tomatoes. Top them with a sprinkling of bread crumbs. Give everything a good drizzle of olive oil. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. The tomatoes should shrivel a bit and release some of their juices.

Cool for 15 minutes or so before eating, so that the tomato juices have time to settle.

Yield: 4 servings

Molly suggests serving these with potato wedges which you can cook in the baking dish with the tomatoes (click on the Orangette version of the recipe for instructions). I, however, am trying to reduce my carb intake, so I served them with grilled chicken.

Happy Canada Day :)

Things I Have Done This Weekend

• Agreed to sublet my sister's room at her apartment for her while she is travelling in South America. FINALLY, I have concrete plans for moving out of my parents' place. I'm subletting, and then getting my own place in October when she returns home.
  
• Watched The Hangover. Please proceed immediately to the nearest theatre and watch this movie. You will laugh your pants off.
• Bought Timbits and Ice Caps at Timmies with my date and sat on the beach at 10 pm enjoying them as the last of the light faded, watching the waves crash before us
• Learned how to play my iPod in my car
  
• Slept over at the apartment of the guy I'm dating. Ahem.
• Bought a birthday present for my sister (yoga mat in her favourite colour!)
• Dropped off my dry-cleaning
• Picked up money from my mum's friend that was sent over from England by my mum WEEKS ago and had tea in the sunroom of her friend's new home
• Did two loads of laundry
  
• Worked out at the gym
  
• Watched So You Think You Can Dance
• Took a 2-hour nap
• Went out partying for my sister's 23rd birthday party. Lost her best friend at the club. Found her again when we got home.
  
• Made a meal plan for the next few weeks, and shopped for groceries for said plan
• Made fruit salad, brownies, spinach dip, and a recipe for Whip It Up (coming soon) that kicked so much ass it will be sore for weeks
• Attended Girl's Night where I heard the most hilarious engagement story of all time, because one of the girls got engaged last week
• Went to the Farmer's Market
• Did the Grouse Grind. My goal time was 1 hour and 15 minutes, and GUESS WHAT? I did it in 1 hour, 15 minutes, and 0 seconds. Did I call that one or what?

Granted, it was a long weekend for me so I had an extra day to pack that all in, but whew anyway! I'm so happy and motivated after such a fun, productive weekend. Hope there will be many more like this in the future.

Weekend to End Breast Cancer Fundraiser

I'm diverging from my usual blog content here for a quick minute to post this fundraiser for my friend. The Weekend to End Breast Cancer benefitting the BC Cancer Foundation is a cause that is close to my heart, as I have lost a family friend to breast cancer and watched several others battle through it. The event is a 60 km walk over 2 days, to raise money and awareness for breast cancer research and treatment. I have walked in this event twice - in 2006 and 2007 - and plan on walking again in the future.

When I heard that a friend of a friend is running this AWESOME fundraiser for the cause, I agreed to post about it here. So if you're around in Vancouver this weekend you may want to check out this event, it looks so fab!


(Click on the image to enlarge if you can't read it)

The event also has a Facebook event page, which has details of how you can purchase the bracelets ahead of time (or just email the address in the invite above for details). All the proceeds from this event are going towards my friend's fundraising efforts. If you can't or don't wish to attend the event, but you would still like to support her fundraising efforts, you can donate directly to her on her personal fundraising page.

Best of luck Tricia!

Signing Up to Whip It Up

Last year, a few of the blogs I follow participated in a summer recipe challenge called Whip It Up. The challenge was simple: participants would commit to making one new recipe each week and post the recipe with photos and a review of how the recipe turned out on their blog. The recipe had to be something you'd never tried making before. 

I really enjoyed reading the recipes each week, and I found it inspiring to try new recipes. I thought it would have been fun to sign up, had I known about the challenge in time. Well, Whip It Up is back this year, so I'm all over it! I'm going to participate this year so expect one recipe per week from me. Watch this space! 

If you're interested in signing up yourself, you can sign up here. Let me know in the comments if you sign up, so I can check out your weekly recipes!

My Bungee Jumping Debut

I have just bought a new laptop, as the first of many Pre-Moving-Into-My-Own-Apartment purchases, so one of the first things I've done is transfer all the files from my old computer to the new one. I've rediscovered all sorts of fun things in this process, and one of them is the video of my first (and only, to date) bungee jump in 2005! I thought I'd post it here for you all to enjoy and/or mock, whichever you prefer.

Bungee jumping is one of the things I'm most proud of doing, which may sound silly, but I'm not a risk taker by nature (please see video evidence below of my typical state of wussery). I didn't enjoy the jump, but I did feel exhilarated and proud that I overcame my fear and did it anyway!



My comments:

1. Sorry about Chris' vocal presence in the video. I edited him out as much as possible, but he was with me for the jump so he's part of the experience. It actually made me smile watching the video with him in it because it was a good time in our relationship. It's nice to remember the good times we had together rather than always focusing on the awful way things ended.
2. I think it's kind of hilarious at the 1:00 minute mark how Chris is talking to me, asking me questions and I was so focused on how freaked out I was that I didn't even hear him!
3. Chris trying to talk me into jumping at the 2:44 mark by saying, "It doesn't even hurt!" I was all, thanks buddy! Pain had not even crossed my mind until you just mentioned it!
   
4. Love how I'm so concerned about the placement of my hands on the metal bars at the 4:21 mark, like that will somehow be what makes or breaks the jump. The things that the terrified mind focuses on!
5. Please note the broken scream of absolute sheer terror as I do finally jump off at the 5:07 minute mark. *Cringe*

It was a great experience that I will probably never do again (I'll go with my first gut reaction on that one!) but I'm so glad I did it. If anyone is interested, this jump was done through Whistler Bungee just outside of Whistler, BC.

Beauty in Dance

I don't watch a lot of TV, but I will freely admit that of the few shows I do watch, So You Think You Can Dance is far and away my favourite. I often brush it off as a trash TV guilty pleasure, but the truth is that the quality of dancing on this show blows me away every week, and I often find it inspiring and moving in addition to being entertaining and fun to watch.

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A good friend of mine recently lent me her copy of the movie Once, which is a truly gorgeous story of connection between two people, forged by their shared love and talent for music. I loved the story, the actors, and the music in this movie - if you haven't seen it, you should rent it immediately!

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This evening's episode of SYTYCD combined these two loves of mine when two of the contestants danced a contemporary piece to the song Falling Slowly from the movie Once. The choreography was excellent - it was about two strangers who had just met and fallen in love. The dancers executed it so beautifully it gave me chills. This made me want to dance again! I may just sign up for dance classes again in the fall. Have a look for yourself.

Dreaming

I've had a couple of weird dreams lately, neither of them very pleasant.

A few nights ago, I dreamed that I was on a major canoeing trip with friends. We were in a huge canoe, there were at least eight people in the boat. I climbed into the bow seat, my favoured position in any boat when I am rowing or paddling, and I stashed my gear at my feet. My camera was loose on top of my pack. As we pushed off from the dock, the boat inexplicable tipped completely sideways and then rolled over, and we all went for a swim. All of us, including my camera, which floated to the bottom of the ocean. I awoke in a sweaty panic after several unsuccessful attempts to dive down and retrieve it from the depths of the ocean floor. The degree of panic didn't really match the severity of the situation, even if it had happened for real (yes, it would suck to lose your camera. But it's a $450 point and shoot camera. It's not the end of the world!) But I sure was happy to wake up and discover after a few groggy, confusing minutes that I was not in the water and camera-less, but I was in my bed and my camera was stashed safely in its usual place in my dresser drawer.

The very next night, I went to sleep and awoke in a fit of sobs. I had been up to Kamloops to visit my friends Ryan & Cary, who are my ex-fiance's best friends (and yes, I'm still friends with them). They get to see my dog Sierra regularly when they visit with my ex, even though I haven't seen my dog in over a year. In my dream, my ex had gone away on a trip and left Sierra with Ryan & Cary, and they invited me up to stay with them so I could play with Sierra for a few days. I jumped at the chance, and when I got there, Sierra didn't remember me. It tore my heart up into a million pieces and I awoke in that state!

Thank heavens after those two nights of fitful sleep, I was so exhausted that I've been out cold at night time ever since and haven't remembered any dreams.

I have been thinking about Sierra a lot lately. The situation of me visiting Sierra at Ryan & Cary's house in Kamloops while they're dog-sitting her is one that could occur; we've been talking about it. I thought that giving her up would get easier over time, that the wounds would heal over and that I wouldn't miss her so much. The frequency of the pain has reduced a bit, but not the intensity. I still have days where her absence causes a physically ache, where I miss her so much it brings me to tears, where I wonder if she would remember me and I really don't know the answer. I don't think that seeing her again would re-open any wounds that aren't already, or still, open. So I no longer think that seeing her again would be a bad idea. I'm never going to get over giving her up, so I'll take what I can get. If I had the chance to see her from time to time, I will take the opportunity.

So I know where the Sierra dream came from. But what the heck was that canoeing/lost camera dream all about? Any dream interpreters out there?

Relationship Chronicles: Pressing Reset, Part 3

Read Part 1 and Part 2 first.

Despite the crap cards I’d been dealt, I was feeling optimistic. I had a lot of fun in the months following my “epiphany.” My friends and I took wild road trips and treated every random Wednesday like Mardi Gras. I slowly but surely started to date. One guy told me he was extremely literary and then proceeded to show me his collection of Dean Koontz paperbacks. Another guy had a few too many cocktails and told me during a party at his house that the National Weather Service was predicting ice storms, and I would have to sleep over, end of discussion. Barf. Not quite soulmate material, but I had a good time. I was happy to be out there, but a little low that I hadn’t met anyone special. It still seemed like getting to know someone the way I knew my ex would be impossible. I still sobbed after particularly crappy dates and felt hopeless.

After six months of singledom, I landed a new job. I was moving to Little Rock to report for the NBC affiliate. New gig, new city, semi-new status. I was excited and terrified.

Not even a few days into life in Arkansas, I locked eyes with a 6’3” fellow reporter. He had gorgeous blond hair and sigh-worthy blue eyes but more importantly, a bright, intelligent light that shone behind them. He was from Dallas, smiled easily, was nice to even the dorkiest co-worker. He couldn’t get enough of his 4 year-old nephew, played guitar, loved dogs and just so happened to have read all the same books I couldn’t shut up about. We became fast friends. By the time he finally asked me out (a painstaking 14 days after we met), I practically screamed yes. Here was someone special.

We fell breathlessly in love. It’s funny, we’ve been joined at the hip for more than two years now… a respectable amount of time but not exactly an eternity… but I can barely remember what life was like without him. Our relationship is as real as it comes. We’ve had some very hard times; he unexpectedly lost his father three months after our first date. I’ve had my own issues rear their nasty little heads; any girl who’s been semi-jilted can tell you that insecurity is a guaranteed parting gift. But the amazing thing is, every hurdle thrown in our path, we jumped… or at least walked around it.

So now I’m 27. I don’t know when I’m going to have my first child and I’m not exactly sure how many I’ll have. I’m still determined to write the great American novel, but I don’t know how old I’ll be when it hits the shelves. But there are some things I’m absolutely sure of. I know the man I’m with now is the man I’ll be with forever. If he doesn’t change one hair on his head, I’ll be happy with who he is for the rest of my life. And I am absolutely positive that making the toughest decision of my young life three years ago was the best thing that ever happened to me.

The kind, caring, smart, funny, talented man I’m with now popped the question just last month. He proposed to me on live television. He walked onto our news set in the middle of a show I was anchoring and told the whole world (or at least most of central Arkansas) that I was the woman for him. He got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. Saying yes was the easiest thing I’ve ever done.

So if you’re broken hearted and angry, let yourself be. If you feel crushed and lost, that’s all right. But don’t allow a sad twist in your story to be the end of your story. Remember the sad 24 year-old that felt all alone when the guy she trusted with her happiness disappointed her. Sometimes in the midst of pain, confusion and heartache you stumble toward what you were meant to find.

In my case, I found hope. Who knew hope was a tall, handsome Pisces named Pete Thompson?

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Thanks Courtney for your submission, and I hope you guys enjoyed the story and the video!