Sick - Day Three

For only three days of sickness, this bug has certainly knocked me right off of my feet. I'm sooo tired but laying down means more violent coughing; there's no happy medium. I was coughing up such a storm this afternoon that Lenny and I headed to the walk-in clinic nearby to get checked out. The doctor there doesn't seem to think there's anything to worry about but I might still make an appointment with someone else later this week if my symptoms continue. Feeling your entire chest cavity vibrate as you inhale is pretty special. It's slightly reminicent of childhood asthma attacks. Anyhoo, Lenny is taking excellent care of me and even got me some flowers to look at as I continue to sprawl out on the couch for hours on end:



I signed up for the Vaughan Resolution Run today. It gives me hope that I'll be feeling better enough sometime soon. I've got a training schedule worked out and am excited to see a faster time than last year.

Speaking of Christmas, Lenny and I picked up our first Christmas tree the other day:

You may ask, "Why bears?" Well I say, whenever I get in one of my pessimistic, grumpy moods (hardly ever I'm sure you know ;) ), Lenny always says "The bear is out." It's a funny game we play that reminds me to be happy, so when we saw this tree at Costco, we just had to get it. I'm so happy I've found someone with a sense of humour to hang out with for the rest of my life.

We had spaghetti squash with marinara for dinner tonight. If you've never tried this combo, I highly recommend it. It was so easy to make (so Lenny tells me), really inexpensive, and full of vitamins. Nom nom nom!

Well I think that's pretty much it for exciting news. I'm going to go back to enjoying http://tvpc.com's live streams of HGTV, TLC, and the Food Network. Woot woot!

Sick - Day Two

Well today was slightly more eventful than my 12 hours spent on the couch yesterday. The morning began with dropping Lenny off at work followed by a tour of Home Sense, one of my favourite stores. They're starting to get some Christmas things in now and that's pretty exciting. I've got to think of what colour themes we should do with our Christmas decor before I get anything though. It's a tough choice because red and green just seems to simple. Should I add silver or gold, or maybe blue and white, or burgundy? Hmmm I will have to take an inventory of what we have now and go from that. We inherited a lot of stuff from previous roommates and I'm not really sure what's there anymore.

After Home Sense it was off to Shoppers for me to pick up some more cough medicine. This was followed by a visit to the Dollar Store in the same mall to pick up some picture frames to host Lenny's 25-km race pictures. Still so proud and amazed at his accomplishment. Anyhoo, in other exciting news, the city has finally started paving Wonderland between Sarnia and Hyde Park. For all you non-Londoners, once this finishes it means we'll be able to drive to the big box stores with more than just one lane each way... Fun times!

After shopping came marking, something that always seems to take longer than you expect it to. Then it was off to catch a bus to work at the clothing store. Lucky for me it started raining/sleeting and apparently (although I didn't see it) snowing. Work was alright. They recently swapped out all of the overhead lights to LED and it makes a crazy big difference. It's so much less intense. Kind of hard to describe now that I think about it. The store was also giving away a lot of free sample items in exchange for donations to the United Way so all of our customers were in a pretty good mood. I was also proud of myself for not coughing up a huge storm in the store. Way to go body!

I'm getting more excited about feeling better and starting to train for the Resolution Run. I'm quite determined to do better this year and with an easier school schedule, training should be a lot easier to fit in. I still have to come up with some sort of non-food-related reward for doing it though so if you have any ideas, let me know.

Well I've been ready for bed since about 2:00 p.m. so I'm going to take the opportunity to say ciao ciao now.

Sick - Day One

Well I think it's official that I'm sick. I've been sleeping a lot more than normal for the past few days (averaging 12 hrs per night) and today I have one wicked cough. It's days like this that I'm so grateful I have an easier school year this year and can cancel nearly everything under the sun and just stay at home lounging on the couch. That's pretty much what I've done all day today... think I'm almost up to 10 consecutive hours on the couch now.

I'm feeling a little more optimistic about school and exercise and things though thanks to Lenny's tlc. I'm going to sign up for the Resolution Run on Dec. 31 in Vaughan and create some sort of training schedule for it this weekend. I'm also going to schedule in some practice daily practice time as soon as I can exhale without coughing up a storm. I'd like to come up with some non-food-related rewards for myself for accomplishing these goals. If you have any ideas, please pass them along.

While I don't have any photos from the Resolution Run last year, here's me at my most recent feat: the Guelph Lake Triathlon, July 2010. Oh the glory of training to get to this stage!

October Photo Blast

I always like reading blogs when there are a lot of pictures versus just text so I thought I'd give a bit of a photo summary from some of my October events.



This is a picture of our Hallowe'en/Fall get up thsi year. I really like the "Welcome" sign I found at Michael's for something like 40% off and these pumpkins will go down in history for the difficulty that ensued to find them on Oct. 31.


This is Lenny's pumpkin. It is something from Battlestar Gallactica. You'll have to wait for a comment from him explaining exactly what it is.


This is my pumpkin. It's a very standard cut mainly because we were already getting trick or treaters by the time carving it took place. I was thinking about putting some of the guts hanging outside his mouth, but Lenny oppossed due to the lovely cleaning up tomorrow. Today I agree - it's waaaaaaay to cold to clean outside :P

In our efforts to find a pumpkin yesterday we went to Starbucks. I found something similar to this picture on a StumbleUpon site and thought Lenny would like it. :) As a side note I've started drinking coffee on a regular basis thanks to the pumpkin spice latte. Nummies!!!

This is Legg's general store in Burr where we should've got a pumpkin from as it was our first stop. Their selection wasn't huge though so we opted for going to a grocery store in the big city. Bad idea. Everyone was sold out. Ah well, in the end it worked out and I got to go to Legg's. I love independent gift stores like this. I soooooo would love to find more in the area. Let me know if you know of any!

This picture is from a visit by Shane Wieler of Marcus Wieler Bassoon Repair to my bassoon class. Much fun was had and all i studenti learned a lot.


This picture is Lenny after 3 hours of running on the trails for the Vulture Bait run. I am SOOO proud of him for finishing in great time for his first 25km race as well as doing it while he was sick with a terrible head cold I gave him.

This was how chipper he was when he started. :) What a beautiful place btw; if you've never been to the Fanshawe Conservation area in the fall, you should definitely check it out. I think they are still doing regular hay rides too if you're interested and have kiddos.

Well I think that's enough for now. Back to reading for me!

On Hallow's Eve

Well it's Hallowe'en and so far we've had about 15 trick or treaters. We only really planned for less than 10 so note to self: next year, eat less chocolate. Luckily Lenny had a giant box of sesame snacks I was able to beef up our candy dish with. Lenny was not so happy about this, but I'm happy we had enough for everyone. Another note for next year is to buy pumpkins before the holiday. Today I probably visited 10 different stores in search for some pumpkins but everyone was all sold out. Luckily the Real Canadian Superstore had about 15 left of which we took two. After some moments of panicked carving, we were able to get the pumpkins out by 7:30...

Next up in sob stories is avoiding work. I'm becoming very very good at this. Sometimes I wish April could come faster but it's looking like if anything, it's just going to get further away... In the mean time I've been enjoying spending money and watching tv. Yay.

And then there was stress

A weekend filled with fun things = a week of feeling totally unprepared. There are some days I just struggle to find the time for getting just about any unfun things done. This week I have about half a dozen meetings for one thing or another and I've prepared for zero. I have a class I'm teaching, for which I have a guest lecturer coming, which I feel unprepared for. I also have a lesson coming up on Thursday which I've only practiced once for and things aren't looking good that I'll be able to put in much time for that either (when life gets crazy, practicing and exercising are the first things I choose to drop). I've got a midterm on Saturday I've read 2/8 chapters for. I've also got an online posting on one of those chapters that was due Oct. 12 that I haven't got to yet but have an extension on (well at least I hope I do... the teacher only answers e-mails on Sundays so it's a little tricky). I feel behind on doing website updates and I'm also majorly short on cash and should be picking up as many shifts as possible this month but can't. I'm attending an info session for an employer I'd like to work for tomorrow night and haven't checked out their website or reviewed my resume. I will not be home to cook dinner until Friday of this week and have no groceries and no plan for any food eating this week. On the plus side I've recently lost about 6 pounds (within the last few weeks) and it'd be nice not to ruin that with lots of eating out this week.

You may have guessed by the rambling of this post that I'm so stressed I cannot sleep. It's been quite a while since I've been this high-strung. It's more unpleasant than I remember. Boo. You'd think with answering something like 40+ e-mails yesterday that had been looming overhead that I'd be feeling better today. Well don't you know it's the two e-mails I didn't get to that are causing me stress and mad typing tonight. I've finished both but can't help feel guilty I didn't get to things when I said I'd get to them. A combination of sleeping in too late today (until 10! a near record! guess I still actually am recovering from my illness) and working 6 hours at the store today. Again need money but neeeeeeed time to actually get things done. I feel like I'm ignoring so many things right now. Ugh.

On the plus side, if you've never tried this bread, you should. It is one of the most awesomest products I've seen come out in a while. YUM.

Sleeeeepy Heather

Lenny did a 25km trail race yesterday morning at 9. While I am EXTREMELY proud of him for completing such a long race, I am so incredibly tired from getting up to support him, writing a midterm in the afternoon, and then travelling to Waterloo for Oktoberfest until 2:30am. I am so tired today! As such, practising was not so hot (incredible how tired my face was getting!) but I did get a lot of things done off of my to-do list. An amazing amount of things actually. I managed to reduce my 50 e-mails to only 2. A record for the longest time in standing memory.

I'm excited to watch the Amazing Race tonight. It gets me excited for our trip to Italy in the summer. I hope it will be a lot of fun and we don't get too bored or frustrated with the language barrier or each other. I have faith it will be fun though. Viva Italia!

Lenny and I went shopping today. I bought a new dark blue cardigan and a pink shirt. I haven't bought new clothes in a reallllly long time but it was needed. I definitely haven't invested much in updating my wardrobe for fall and now I feel a lot better.

Eating less sugar and more fruit and veggies has been going better lately. I think I'm on a good streak right now. Here's for hoping I can keep it up.

Along the same line, I've been visiting an old classmate's blog a little more regularly lately. It's great for inspiration to exercise and eat well. You should check it out sometime: http://eatrunknit.blogspot.com/

Well that's probably enough journalling for now. TV time!