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Nanaimo Weekend

9 Jul

This past weekend (July 5-6) was the Nanaimo Dragon Boat Festival. Last season there was drama! drama! drama! And since you probably don’t memorize my blog posts if you would like to refresh yourself on what happened click here.

We had a goal, win a medal to redeem ourselves from last year.

Well…we didn’t quite make that goal a reality. We did redeem ourselves by having a strong presence at the festival, by racing hard, by having new jerseys the other teams were envious of and by moving up a division to the highest division at the festival, yup, that’s right, highest division! Awesomeness! The only part of our plan that didn’t quite come to fruition was the whole winning a medal thing but hey, we tried and we were close and having close times with the teams we were racing against, teams that consistently rank in the highest division, well, that is nothing to sneeze at.

Overall we ended up ranking 8th place out of 80 teams, not so bad, right?

My team The Twisted Hips

My team The Twisted Hips

The people there are still the friendliest people ever, it is a beautiful location for a dragon boat festival, the water is warm and clean, even with the rain the temperatures are still high. There are so many great things associated with this festival! 🙂

Overall the weekend rocked, we all got there Friday night, I didn’t get motion sickness while on the ferry going over to the island (yay!), the three teammates I was bunking with were hilarious, the food was tasty, there was lots of walking and racing and just in general physical activity. There was free paddle boarding both days, two of my teammates and I gave that a try on the Saturday. It was ok, I was paranoid about falling in to water while wearing my racing clothes so I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I might have if I didn’t have the worry of spending the rest of my day in soaking wet clothes lol Having said that, even if I had been in a swimsuit and not worried about getting wet I don’t think it’s an activity I’d do for an extended period of time, it’s not that interesting lol 😛 There were all kinds of food trucks but our team pools money and we have a little buffet of food at our tent (as do most teams) so I didn’t get anything from the food trucks, I did hit up Tim Horton’s for tea multiple times but tea is a whole different story, I can’t survive without tea lol

There were also lots of booths set up with people selling everything from home made jewellery, to official festival clothing, to dragon boat gear to scarves…the list goes on and on. There are also booths set up to educate people on things like drinking tap water or recycling as well as booths representing banks and other boring  things lol.

I bought two bracelets as thank you gifts for the daughters of my friend, they came and checked on my cat while I was gone and I thought they’d get a kick out of some jewellery, shrug. I also bought myself a festival t-shirt. I buy a shirt not from every festival but from a lot of them, I like having a memento that is also functional lol

One of my teammates and I are taking part in a plank challenge, on the Saturday we decided to plank while in the middle of partying (cause isn’t that how everyone planks? lol) and the teammates that were present decided to get in on the action lol Planking is now a team sport!

The plank challenge!

The plank challenge!

Even though it was slightly overcast most of the time, and raining for chunks of both days I managed to get sunburned, a special talent of mine lol Oh, and I also managed to get injured, another special talent of mine lol

While planking someone leaned on me and somehow I ended up hurting my lower back, I don’t mean a twinge I mean I was in massive pain and had trouble standing up straight. Luckily one of my roomies has a mothering instinct and she helped me out, she got me a microwavable gel pack thing from the hotel office and walked me through some yoga that she thought might help the back get better. A combination of some sort of cream a friend had, plus pain pills, plus yoga, plus the heating pack led to me being ok to race on the Sunday. To be honest, it wouldn’t have mattered what level of pain I was in on the Sunday I would have still raced but it was nice to race and not be thinking I was screwing my back up even more lol 😛

The other injury is just stupid *rolls eyes* when I was paddle boarding sand got in my shoes, didn’t matter how much I rinsed them out some sand stayed in them and while I could feel the sand rubbing against my feet it didn’t seem like that big of a deal, I was wrong. By Sunday I had 5 open and quite nasty wounds on my feet, ugh. Couldn’t do much about them till I got home and really all I could do once home was wash the feet, put some polysporin on the wounds and wrap with bandaids. The feet are healing well, slower than I would like but meh, whatcha gonna do? I wash, reapply the polysporin and bandaids daily and am basically waiting for them to finish getting better. I’m down to three bandaids instead of five now so that’s a nice improvement! 🙂

The trip home went smoothly, once again I managed to not get sea sick on the ferry, this is a big deal for me in case you were wondering lol I had an unpleasant surprise waiting for me though, a spider apparently decided the best place ever to have her eggs mature was in my bathroom, ick! ick! ick! I came home to this…

Baby spiders. Lots of baby spiders. *shudder*

Baby spiders. Lots of baby spiders. *shudder*

I went on the offensive asap, obviously, and became a mass murderer. Thought the situation was taken care of but the next day when I got home from work I had a smaller web with fewer inhabitants in the exact same spot. wtf?? So they died also. I then sprayed the entire area with Mr. Clean all surfaces cleaner, and I don’t mean a gentle spray, I mean I drenched the area, it was dripping off the ceiling! Chemical warfare at its finest lol Since then I’ve seen an occasional baby spider but no big webs and en masse gatherings so I’m hoping they have moved on or died. 😛

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1:00:98

6 May
Grr! I am dragon, hear me roar!

Grr! I am dragon, hear me roar!

Yesterday was the first dragon boat race festival of our season! 🙂 Soooooo much fun! I love race days! I mean yeah, I love practices too but it’s nice to go as a team and put all your hard work to the test ya know?

For this festival instead of the regular 20 person boats all teams were split in to two and raced in 10 person boats. So even though our team was still our team for this one day we split in to Team Blue and Team Black, not the most original granted but whatever, it’s one day! 😛

I was on Team Black which pleased me immensely since I look better in black, it’s oh-so-slimming 😉 lol

Each team had three races. Our first race didn’t go all that well due to technical difficulties with the boat. We finished…but that’s all I can say about it. *downcast eyes* We didn’t wallow though, we got back to the tent, had a debriefing and decided to forget about it, move on, make the next race count! And oh man did we ev-ah!

Our second race we came in first place with a time of 1:02 or 1:04, I can’t remember which…just focus on me saying the words “First Place” 😀 then picture a happy dance cause even though I am sitting and typing in my head I am so doing one teehee

Our third race we came in, *dun*dun*dun*…First Place!!!! wOOt! with a time of 1:00:98! Not only did we come in first place but we beat the boat that came in second place by a boat length (or so I am told, you can’t really tell when you are racing, you’re too focused on your boat). Aaaaaand, the other half of our team was watching and cheering us on (which fyi totally helps you push even harder) and one of the girls said a person standing near them who was also watching the race said something along the lines of “look at the team that’s in the lead, they look like a machine” O.M.G!! That’s so awesome! That is quite possibly one of the best compliments you can give cause it means we were all in time, we had a good paddling rate, good paddling strength and all of that combines to make us something to look at. 😀 *even crazier happy dance*

Talk about making a comeback, redeeming ourselves, showing we aren’t a team to be ignored! Can you tell I am still high from the excitement of yesterday? lol

It was such a great way to start the season. Sure, the first race didn’t go as planned but we regrouped, came together as a team, moved past it, and proved to others (but more importantly to ourselves) that we are a strong team. 🙂

We don’t have another race festival until June and that kinda makes me sad, it seems sooooo far away but we will use that time to get even better and who knows what we will accomplish there?!

After, the team did pizza and beer and chilled, the weather was gorgeous so we took advantage of it and stayed outside. We have a huge team tent so we had shade thank goodness. I was a sunscreen nut-job all day, applying and re-applying throughout the day. I was all proud of myself of not getting burned…then I got home and saw my scalp, ouch! Totally burned my scalp where my hair was parted, this is especially annoying (and painful) since I burned that same hairline two weeks ago and it hadn’t finished healing yet, oh dear. I’m a tad annoyed with Coppertone since I sunscreened the part in my hair multiple times throughout the day with their product and it apparently did nothing. Grr to Coppertone! Grr!

Minus the sunburn it was a perfect day – can’t wait for the next one! 🙂

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Oh St. Patty’s Day

18 Mar

Alrighty, who had an awesome St. Patrick’s Day? er…Night? lol Mine was fairly sweeeet but oh how it unhinged my eating plan, eek! I’m trying not to freak out about it but since I had those two days this past week where I wasn’t feeling well so my eating was off and I missed one exercise day (also due to not feeling well) I’m really worried about having to step on the scale tomorrow.

Ah geez, I just realized that even thinking about the scale has made my face grimace, how attractive *rolls eyes*

I went out with my roomie, her brother and a bunch of friends to a bar called Joe’s Apartment, a little too hipster for me but all the so-called Irish Pubs were crazy full way early in the evening and hey, we had a connection to Joe’s so we got in without waiting in line and only paid half the cover charge…which incidentally I didn’t have to pay at all as the roomie’s bro picked up my tab, nice huh?

There was a live band that I never did catch the name of but they were excellent and inbetween their sets the dj played a good mix of tunes. I felt a bit old at one point though cause the dj played a small portion of the song Step By Step by the New Kids On The Block (this is a song from when I was in elementary) and my roomie had no idea who it was, I can’t remember who she was guessing it was but I remember being shocked that (a) it was being played at all and (b) she didn’t recognize it…just goes to show how a couple years difference in age can really affect what people remember from their childhood lol.

Sadly, I did not drink any green beer, I had fully intended to but I couldn’t bring myself to let the Guinness be touched by food colouring and well, the other drinks I had (a) I didn’t order, the roomie’s bro did and (b) weren’t really conducive to being turned green…I mean come on, a green Corona? Ick. 😉

BW (that’s my roomie, I’m just sick of typing ‘roomie’ lol) and I left about 1:30am cause we had to make sure to catch the last bus going back to our area, on the way home this guy whose her friend but who also kinda likes her texted and somehow ended up inviting him and his buddy to our place so we were home maybe 5 minutes when they showed up and we all stayed up partying until about 6:30a when we all started to crash where we sat…it wasn’t a pretty sight. lol.

Now, I had anticipated all the alcohol that would be going in to my system and although I hadn’t done anything crazy over the top to compensate for those calories I thought I might do ok buuuuuut, here’s where things went a bit downhill eating wise. I got home from the gym, didn’t think we’d be going out till maybe 8p or 9p but BW’s bro picked us up early, I think around 5:30p or so, not good for my timing! I only had time to have my yummy protein shake with all the fruit etc in it and then I had to rush to get ready so no actual dinner for moi. Oops number one. Then! When we were at the bro’s apartment we pre-drank with the group we were hanging out with that night so both BW and I were drinking on what amounted essentially to empty stomachs…I learned that BW gets drunk quickly when this happens lol We both wanted to go somewhere with food…I was fantasizing about nachos lol, but we ended up going right to the bar, after we got stamped and knew we’d be allowed back in without waiting in line we left and went to find food, at that time of night though, in that location and with such a limited amount of time we ended up with pizza, ya know, from those places that sell it by the slice? sigh. Oops number two. We each got two slices, I have no idea why I got two, who needs two?!?! But two I got, one pepperoni and one veggie (and oh man, the veggie one was grrrrreat!) Then back to the bar and the alcohol *happy silly grin* We did spend the night dancing up a storm so I’m going to pretend that burned a lot of calories lol

I might have been ok if after we came home we’d just gone to bed but when the guys came over we all ended up staying up and the munchies set in so I ate some cookies and some chocolate flake, oy! Oops number three. I ate more cookies then I wanted cause by that time I was craving sushi but like there’s an open sushi place at 3am? Uh, no, no there isn’t. Epic fail on the part of sushi restaurants everywhere I say lol 😉 Least at this point I stopped drinking, well, I was drinking water which doesn’t count. My two wins of the night were the dancing and the stopping of drinking when I did cause without those two actions it woulda been waaaaay worse! 😛

Today (sunday) has been a recovery day lol I slept for a while then basically did nothing. I was wanting pancakes more then a cat wants to catch a mouse so I got pancakes from this all day breakfast restaurant relatively near my place. I figured the walk to get the food would do me good, and it did. 🙂 I got the short stack which is three pancakes and brought em home, and wow they were yum! I unfortunately ate without really thinking about it though and where I would normally of stopped at one pancake, maybe one and a half, I actually ate all three, ugh, so then I felt even worse then before and spent even more time doing nothing. Well, drinking water, but again, that doesn’t count lol.

Eventually my system sorted itself out and tomorrow I’ll be back on track but I’m soooo dreading that scale! What do you bet it shows a weight gain??!?!? All my hard work down the drain! 😦

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My Dragon Boating Weekend

13 Jun

Oooooh man, what a weekend! 😀 The 11th and 12th were the Dragon Boating Festival and for the first time I was a part of it. I can’t wait for next year!

Lemme tell ya, dragon boaters are their own special breed, lol. They work hard and they party harder – which is sweeeeet!

Both sat and sun KL and I (well, our whole team as well as other teams) had to be at the Paddler’s Village way early in the morning, on sat we were there at 7:30am and sun we got to sleep in and didn’t have to be there until 8:15am, oooooh, soooo late! 😉 hehe. We were there until 4:30pm or so on the sat, we could have stayed later cause the races weren’t all done for the day but we were finished with our races and we wanted to come chill at my place (she stayed the night), sunday we didn’t leave till after the paddler’s party in the evening so I got home about 12:45am…a looooong day! 😛

Keeping in mind this was our teams first time racing and we had only practiced together as a team 4 times so don’t expect this post to be a story of how we won a medal, lol, cause we so didn’t! We came in 88th out of 100 teams – my competitive side wants to say that totally blows and how embarassing but the realistic side of me says we could have done worse and hey, we were the least trained team there so at least we beat some teams! 😀

I’ve never been involved in a competitive sport like this before, where you go and compete against other teams from around the world and when you’re not on the water competing every team is friendly with each other because it’s this small community, shrug, it was weird but nice. Heck, even when on the water the teams are friendly towards each other, well, before and after the actual race, during the race you’re so focused on your boat you don’t even have time to look at the other boats let alone think of them. lol.

The weather on sat was cloudy but warm, the sun didn’t really come out until a bit before our second race, so around 2pm or so? I put sun screen on but sadly, I missed a couple spots near my hairline and just above my eyebrows so I got burned, sigh. That wouldn’t be sooooo bad but sunday was bright and sunny but coolish (figures! lol) and even though I had sunscreen slathered on all frickin day I burned! Totally ended up with racoon eyes, ow! What’s worse of all though is my freckles are darker, grr! I tried to be careful with my arms cause our team shirts had regular t-shirt length sleeves so I didn’t want part of my arms to be darker then the rest (by darker I of course mean the freckles are darker, not the actual skin, once the red fades from a burn it goes back to it’s normal uber pale colour). I almost managed it…almost…today I noticed in the mirror that the freckles below the sleeve line are darker, sigh, but hopefully if I keep them covered the rest of the summer they will go pale again quickly. Man I hate the sun. *rolls eyes*

Sunday night was the Paddler’s Party in the beer gardens, the ticket covered the price of 2 beers so everyone was drinking! Even though the beers were $5 each that didn’t stop people from goin crazeeee, oh, there was wine as well but nobody was drinking that, lol. So the beer was flowing, people are yapping away, then the bongs came out, yup, bongs. Two seperate teams brought them, one was a standard looking bong, the other had 3 spouts so 3 people at one time could chug – I’ve never seen that before, quite the contraption. 😛 I did not do the bong, it’s not my thing and besides, I was only drinking a tiny bit since I was gonna hafta drive later, lame but oh well, KL however was not driving later and she was already quite drunk by the time the bongs were pulled out so she decided she wanted to do one. lol. I of course, being the good friend that I am, took pictures that I am going to post on facebook. teehee.

Everyone had a killer time at the party, and sure, part of that was the beer, but a big part was just the comraderie of a group of people who may be completely different from each other in all kinds of ways but they have one awesome thing in common and that has brought them together for a weekend of fun. 😀

I woke up this morning feeling like death and all I wanted to do was sleep some more, lol, 4 races in 2 days is a lot for muscles that aren’t that used to it yet – plus the dancing at the party used all kinds of muscles cause lemme say, the dancing was not the tame kind at all! Oh yea, the party had a dj, sorry, forgot to mention that. Plus, my throat was way sore from all the yelling etc but it was all worth it and I’d do it again in a heartbeat! I’ll actually be doing it all again, but on a smaller scale, in about 10 weeks, yah! 😀

My food was not all that great this weekend – it started off ok and then tanked. KL is a great friend but a horrible food influence, sigh. Sat I had oatmeal for breakfast, but after that KL and I ended up at a pancake breakfast fundraiser (a team is trying to get the funds to go to a race in San Francisco) so I ate 3 pancakes, I didn’t really have lunch but I did snack on some grapes and had a small soft serve ice cream cone in a waffle cone with a half sized flake chocolate stuck in it – yum! I drank water all day so that’s all good at least. Now that may not seem so bad but after we left the racing area we decided to get dinner and neither of us had the energy to cook so we ordered food from White Spot, man I love that restaurant. I got a bbq burger with cheese, it came with yam fries, coleslaw and a root beer. Oh my. Then Sunday, started off with a Hearty Medley’s, I resisted the pancakes but we ate lunch on Sunday at the village and sadly, there were no healthy options, shrug. I did my best, got a wrap with taco style ground beef in it, lettuce, grilled veggies, salsa, little bit of shredded cheese and sour cream – way delish! Then later an even smaller ice cream then the day before, um, a bunch of beer, and then when trying to minimize the effects of the beer 2 apricots, a peach, a granola bar, a heck of a lot of water…and then KL and I (again) bought dinner, we went to this place she swears has the best burgers in the world, and it’s true, they are awesome but oh man, two burgers in two days? My tummy may never forgive me for this, *shakes head*. It was huuuuuge! And had crispy onion strings on it and cheese, oy, oh and of course it came with fries! lol. I couldn’t finish the burger but I ate almost all of it and had some of the fries, sigh. Way tasty but I told her it was so bad for me (the whole menu is horrible, it’s the only menu I’ve seen that doesn’t even attempt to have something healthy on it!) I would only eat there at most 2 times a year – cause, dude, that just so doesn’t fit in to my points! lol.

Today I was back to basics. I didn’t exercise due to scheduling issues but I am at 19.5 points for the day and not even tempted to snack on something to eat that extra half point – I think I may still be digesting from last nights dinner! hehe.

I’ll be hiking for sure tomorrow and then going to acting class in the evening – wednesday I will be driving to Alberta so no exercise that day and who knows what will happen food wise – I am hoping I’ll manage to eat fairly healthy cause I hafta be super good this week to make up for the weekend, *scared face* I finally managed to lose that weight I managed to put on when I was in Alberta over Easter (and just after Easter) and what do I do? I eat like a maniac over the course of 2 days and probably gained it all back. sigh.

The weekend was such a great time – who would have thought I’d enjoy it so much? Looks like I am becoming an active person after all…if that can happen, well, anything can! 😛

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