Tag Archives: cold

German Christmas Market

5 Dec

For the fourth year in a row I went to the German Christmas Market that is held in the downtown core. It runs for a month or so and can be a lot of fun. It is based on the large Christmas Markets that happen in Europe and is German themed. I’ve never been to one of the Christmas Markets in Europe so I couldn’t say for certain how this one compares, I’m pretty sure this one is way smaller but the gist of it is the same…I think?

There is a carousal for all ages that my friend and I meant to go on but forgot, we kind of purposefully forgot as it was pouring rain and we didn’t like the idea of sitting on a wet horse lol There is also a massive Christmas tree that every single person there tries to get a picture in front of, for real, every single person lol, we had to wait for people to clear out so we could get a picture without strangers in it lol

Me

Me

My friend

My friend

Close up!

Close up!

One of the main things about the market is the food, I’d say half or maybe a bit more than half of the booths are food. Most of them are German foods but there is one booth that is all maple flavoured foods, we are in Canada after all! lol 😉

For dinner we each got a, hmm, a glorified hot dog I guess, mine was all beef, I think KL got the one that had beef and pork in it but I could be wrong about that. They are topped with sauerkraut and fried onions and if you want there is also ketchup and mustard.

2014-12-04 19.34.03

With your entrance ticket you get a free mug of either apple cider or mulled wine. I know from previous years I don’t like the mulled wine so apple cider it was! Lucky for me I like apple cider lol You get to keep the mug, which means I now have 4 of these mugs lol they are small so normally not a useful size, after all, if you are having a hot drink you want a normal sized mug right? I find them the perfect size if I am having juice though. 🙂

We also got dessert, I got a hot apple strudel and KL got waffle on a stick, which now that I think of it is probably not a German thing since it is at every fair type thing I’ve been to for years now and one of the few booths not manned by an actual German person lol

Hot apple strudel with vanilla sauce on top

Hot apple strudel with vanilla sauce on top

Of the two desserts KL’s was the better option, her waffles on a stick were covered in a strawberry sauce and whipped  cream and I thought it was way better than my strudel…kind of because the strudel was a bit bland and had raisins in it, ugh, raisins, blech.

There was also live entertainment, it ranged from good, to meh, to funny.

When we got there a group was performing whose name I didn’t catch, they performed a variety of songs, all Christmas themed. The lead singer had the cutest little hat on which you can’t see all that well in the picture because she kept standing directly under a light which made my camera unhappy lol

Can you see her hat? It's adorable!

Can you see her hat? It’s adorable!

There was also entertainment provided by some extremely well dressed drag queens who are way better at walking in heels than I ever will be, not even joking about that! There was a Simone Says game, and at least three separate musical performances, lemme see, there was a Celine Dion, a Taylor Swift and hmm, I’m not sure who the other person was supposed to be but she was entertaining! Basically it was a bunch of people having a great time. 🙂 The Taylor Swift impersonator was wearing such a skimpy outfit I felt bad for her lol even with all her dancing she must have been freezing!

The weather was cold, not super cold but cold, shrug, it is December after all. It was raining the entire time so thank goodness for waterproof jackets and boots! lol I bent my head forward at one point to look down and had a whole bunch of water pour off the top of my head where apparently my hood had been collecting it *rolls eyes* The rain is totally manageable if you are dressed for it, which luckily both KL and I were. I’ve gone other years where I wasn’t dressed for the weather and while I had fun I was also freezing which drastically lowered my enjoyment level, this year I was prepared! 🙂

This market has quickly become part of my Christmas season tradition, I really look forward to it and hope to continue going in the years to come. 🙂

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A Lovely Mountain Day

6 Feb

I spent a chunk of my afternoon up on a mountain today and thoroughly enjoyed myself. 🙂 This may not seem odd but anyone who knows me knows I don’t like being outside during the winter, it’s cold, and there is snow and ice, and it’s cold! Yes, I know, I am a failure as a Canadian *rolls eyes* 😛

I decided to go snowshoeing today, yay! It was zero degrees Celsius, which is, um…gimme a sec, I gotta google…it’s 32F…so nice n warm and perfect for spending outside. 😀

We haven’t had a lot of snow this winter (yes, I’m in that part of Canada lol) so I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for the trails to get snowy enough to make it worth my while and decided today was a good day to try em out.

There was snow, and a decent amount of it, but none of it fresh and none of it even remotely powdery, which, if you snowshoe you know is the most fun type of snow to trek through. Todays snow was all packed down, partially icy because the snow keeps melting during the day then freezing overnight – vicious loop that.

For part of the trail my snowshoes looked liked this…

2014-02-06 14.59.31yup, that’s right, they were being carried not worn cause the snow was just that packed down that there was no point putting them on my feet, sigh. I felt like an idiot carrying them and was really wishing I’d left them in my suv but obviously I wasn’t going to go all the way back to my suv to put them in the trunk so in my hands they stayed.

Until…

2014-02-06 15.23.23

 

I finally got to put them on! Yay! 😀

And hey, don’t judge the pants! They are super warm, fit well and my friend sold them to me for a measly $60, I heart those pants!…even if in this pic they do make my legs look huuuuuge lol

snow...

snow…

Me...

Me…the most unattractive cold person ever, sigh.

more snow...

more snow…

omg, me without makeup, on the internet, ack!

omg, me without makeup, on the internet, ack!

Do you see the damage to my toque? The loose threads that make it look old and worn? Well, lemme tell ya the story of that damage. This toque is brand new, this is only the third time I have gotten to wear it and I take good care of my stuff. So how did it get to look like this? The cat. *glares at the fur ball* I came home from work and discovered my toque at the base of his scratching post, it normally hangs on a hook on the wall by my front door. So he got it off the hook, brought it through the kitchen, in to the living room, killed it, then dumped the carcass somewhere I was sure to find it. The sadist. I’m trying to figure out how to fix or hide the damage but don’t know how…so right now, if you are keeping score, it is Cat-1, Human-0.

I didn’t get to go all the way to the top of the mountain due to timing issues. I got up there a bit later then planned which would’ve been alright except I was going on a trail I haven’t gone on before and accidentally went on the wrong trail to start with, oops! In my defence, there are two trail entrances, fairly close to each other, the first trail entrance turned out to be the wrong trail but the other trail entrance is hidden from site when at the first trail entrance so I thought there was only one trail…does that make sense? lol

Anyways! I went on the first, incorrect trail, and fairly quickly thought I was gonna die. It was super icy, lots of rocks, not a lot of snow, steep decline the entire way and of course the rocks were covered in ice so every part that had some serious decline trekking to do left me feeling I was facing certain doom. I don’t do awesome on ice, thanks to my stupid knee, and I didn’t even have my hands free thanks to having to carry my snowshoes. The trail was seeming like one super bad idea. I didn’t get all that far in to it when I decided screw it and I turned back. I felt like a bit of a failure but figured better safe than sorry. Since I thought that was the path I was supposed to be using I was deciding how I was going to get my exercise for the day since snowshoeing obviously wasn’t going to work out but when I got back to the start of the trail I noticed some people seemingly pop out of nowhere on my left side who had snowshoes. Being the nosy person I am I went to investigate and found the real trail, yay! and phew! lol

The second, and correct trail was way better because (1) it had snow (2) it was meant for snowshoeing (3) it was uphill and (4) way less icy patches.

Oh, and can I say people who take part in outdoor winter sports, super friendly! Every person I passed on the trail (by passed I mean they were going the opposite direction as I not I was faster than them and scooting around them) said hi, or asked how I was doing, a couple people stopped and we chatted a bit. Messed up my timing (I was tracking my distance and speed) and also shortened the length of time I was active but I don’t mind. People look out for each other, and that’s nice. This one lady checked to see if I was going up the mountain alone, I said yes so she gave me a recap of what I was in for (she was on her way down), reassured me about how many other people she had seen, where there were some rough patches, stuff like that. Nice lady. 🙂 I notice the same thing when I am hiking in the summer, people say hi as you pass on the trail, sometimes stop and chat, things like that. Maybe it’s all that sunshine people are getting, makes them friendlier lol

 

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A Slight Delay, sigh

18 Feb

Ok, so my plan for today didn’t work out but I have hope for later in the week, kinda lol.

I woke up this morning sick, ugh, talk about timing! My plan for today was to go to the gym after work, use my One Free Session coupon I printed off the website and assuming I liked the place sign up for a membership. I was so psyched for this (also kind of scared, but mostly excited lol). But yeah, so didn’t happen. All while getting ready for work this morning, and all during work I kept thinking maybe I’ll be ok by the time I’m done work, maybe I can still go! By the time I was done work though I was exhausted, and not the normal didn’t get enough sleep the night before exhausted but that lethargic tired you get when sick, and I was so so so cold and couldn’t get warm and my throat was killing me and…and…and…why go on listing symptoms right? We’ve all been sick so you know what was going on over here. Bleh.

I had no appetite all day but I made sure I ate a small breakfast and a provided by work lunch and I eventually managed to choke down some dinner. I’m pretty sure I could have gone the day without food cause that is how squashed down my appetite is but since I am trying to correct my not eating properly habits I figured it was better to force a mildly healthy days worth of food down my throat then not eat. Isn’t it feed a cold, starve a flu?…or something like that…or is it drown a cold as in I should have been drinking more fluids then normal? *confused face* hmm…I’ll have to google this cause I’m not sure which way it is supposed to go lol 😛

I am super annoyed that I didn’t get to the gym today cause I won’t have another chance to try until Wednesday, although maybe that is for the best cause that’ll give me an extra day to feel better…meh, whatever, I am still annoyed. I know some people think you should still work out when sick but I find that if I do that I take even longer to get better and the day after the work out I am in even worse shape then I probably would have been if I’d just stayed home and let my body rest. I figure each person has to figure out what works best for their body and go with that. 🙂

This cold is like a harassing little mosquito that won’t leave people alone. A couple people at work have also had it and it comes back, and back, and back! I was sick about two weeks ago, not so sick I was bedridden but sick enough getting through the work day was pretty hellish and on my days off I cancelled all my plans and just stayed home and tried to get better. I finally did get better, obviously, but then today was like some weird resurgence of the cold only instead of coming on gradually it hit me all at once. The same thing happened to two other people at work, they were sick with their colds 2-3 weeks ago and around the second week of being better they got sick again. So TF is sick again at the same time as me and CJ was sick for the second time last week, she said she only really felt sick for two days the second time around so I am hoping I only have one more day of this and then my immune system gets itself organized and kicks some invading microbes butts! *crossing fingers*

I don’t want all my plans to go out the window cause look at how long it took for me to stop being depressed about how I am and get motivated to change it! If I lose this momentum and end up down in the hole again thinking “what is the point so much damage has been done it is not fixable” can someone come slap me upside the head cause seriously, that is not a fun place to be. 😦

I did try to drink more fluids today but I don’t think I managed to drink as much as I normally do. See, I am a tea-aholic lol I drink tea like it is going out of style! I have a travel mug that I use at work that is constantly filled with tea, as soon as I finish one cup I make another, it’s like a never ending 8 hours of tea! 😀 Granted, I don’t drink it that fast cause the cup keeps it hot for a long time (the whole reason I use the travel mug and not a normal mug, sneaky huh? lol) but I definitely go through a lot of tea while working. Then when I get home the first thing I do is make a cup of tea and depending on my plans for the evening I either am out or home and if I am home I will be drinking more tea. Hey, there are no calories, it’s a fluid, holding a hot cup helps keep me warm-ish and I have English blood in my veins which basically means my blood is half tea 😉 being  a heavy tea drinker is practically my destiny lol. But today, I didn’t really want it as much. I wanted the hot cup to hold but that’s about it. My tea drinking was definitely not endless, shocking! When I got home I did have two cups of tea over the course of the evening and about a glass and a half of water, all of which were drunk in an attempt to make my throat feel better (fyi, totally didn’t work, sigh). As a result, now I am feeling mildly dehydrated and yet, my tummy doesn’t want anything in it so I guess it’ll be a battle of the body systems, wonder which will win? Will the body parts that want hydration be strong enough to tamp down the upset tummy feeling long enough that I will be able to drink some more water or will the tummy win and the water be a no-go mission? Ooooh, the suspense! 😉

To be honest, right now I don’t really care, about the missing out on the gym or the possibility of being able to drink something or anything cause I feel like crap and the only thought I have in my brain right now is going to bed…which is where I am headed riiiiiight now! *yawn*

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I’m Being Frozen To Death

20 Dec

I may not survive the next two weeks, it’s just too cold for my poor body to deal with. As I type this I am staring mournfully at my empty tea cup, I held off drinking the tea as long as I could so I’d have the hot cup to hold but I so badly wanted the hot liquid inside me I of course caved and downed the tea. So now my tongue is a bit singed, my hands are blocks of ice and I have a delicate shivering taking over my body in what I suspect is going to be a permanent manner.

I am not a person meant for winter. I’m sorry to break this to my international readers but just because I was born and raised in Canada and am a proud Canadian this does not mean I like snow, ice, slush, cold temperatures or any of the other winter type conditions we deal with for over half the year. Brr!!! Give me tropical weather anyday!…no seriously, can somebody pay for me to go somewhere tropical so I can thaw out? 😉

The only plus side to dealing with this whole freezing to death thing is that I will die surrounded by my more hardy friends and family, ya know, those who didn’t move away and can still handle the winter weather without wanting to break down in tears. *rolls eyes*

What makes this whole thing worse is…it’s not even that frickin cold!!! Compared to where I live now it is, and it’s a different type of cold (don’t mock me, that actually matters! lol) and the longer I am away from here the less I can handle the cold. I could barely handle it when I did live here, so having even more trouble handling it, well, it sucks. 😛 But global warming is soooo in effect cause the weather that this city is having is nothing compared to what winter weather is normally like…it’s usually way worse…which is why I packed long underwear lol.

I can’t decide if this is going to be beneficial to my weight loss or not…on the one hand I am constantly shivering so that might help me to burn some extra calories. On the other hand I find I am constantly wanting to eat something, not out of hunger but out of an instinctive need to put on more body fat to help me survive the cold. Hey man, I didn’t come up with animal instincts, I am just driven by them…to a point lol. I’m drinking lots of tea in the hopes that will help me get warm, instead of snacking away like a crazed barbarian…cause ya know all those crazed barbarians totally had access to Christmas baking. 😉

On the food front, I had the yummiest dinner tonight, my mom made meatloaf and it is one of my fave dishes of hers. Yeah I know, meatloaf? I personally think meatloaf gets a lot of undeserved grief, my mom’s is great and I was so happy when I found out that is what she made for dinner. 😀 Heck, I’m already looking forward to the meatloaf sandwich I am hoping to have tomorrow for lunch. Mmm! It was a nice healthy meal, I had the meatloaf, veggies and two baby potatoes. Look at that, food groups! wOOt! lol

I have decided for this trip that while yes there are a lot of events and occaisions that I’d normally pig out at I don’t have to go crazy at every one of them. I have my birthday, then Christmas, then New Years and I gotta decide which of those events I want to splurge at and which to be more careful at. And really, even when I do splurge at one of those occaisions I can still splurge carefully thereby not derailing my weight loss…well, not completely derailing it lol, I’m aiming for maintaining while on this trip.

I think I should be able to get through the Christmas and New Years season without gaining weight, don’t you? If I make responsible choices and pay attention to what I put in my mouth that’ll go a long way to not gaining and I’m even hoping to get in some exercise while I’m at it, no guarantees on that though (due to access to facilities and my schedule, not due to laziness which admit it, some of you were thinking 😛 )

Course, by midway through this trip I may be saying “screw it, bring on the hot chocolate and cookies!” but for now I am optomistic I can keep a leash on my hand-to-cookie-to-mouth behaviour. 😀

 

 

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Can’t stop thinkin about it

25 Oct

So, I just can’t stop thinking about the 1.4 lbs I lost last week…I know it’s not the biggest amount to lose and since it’s around the amount I have come to expect to lose every week it’s not like it’s a massive big surprise but I just can’t stop thinking about it. lol. 🙂

I guess it might be because of feeling last week like I screwed up a lot so I was half expecting to not have lost anything…or if I lost something it would have been a way small amount…which I s’pose 1.4 is a small amount but hey, it could have been a lot lower!

I think mostly I can’t stop thinking about it because I am 0.8 lbs away from getting to go through my closet and try on all my clothes and see how they fit now. I can’t believe how much I am looking forward to that! I mean, hello, they are already my clothes, it’s not like I am going shopping or anything…but it’s almost like going shopping cause I don’t know what I will find in there. teehee.  I’m oh so close to that 15 lb mark; it feels like it is in reach and oh man do I want to reach it!

Something else awesome that happened is I got a connection through a friend to a photographer who is amazing and she will give me a discount on new headshots, wOOt! Now, for all those who don’t know, headshots can cost anywhere from $500-$800 depending on the photographer and what you want/need. This photographer will give me three looks, a disc with all the pictures taken on it and apparently she is way fun in the studio. 😀 I have seen some of her work and it is amazing, I can’t wait! Oh, and all this for only $200. 😀 I have been saving money in a piggy bank and I think I have enough to cover the costs but I gotta go count it. lol. I will count it after this coming Saturday after my nannying gig, I will bring in $120 from that nannying job so that’ll give the savings quite the boost. I will still have to pay for the make up person and that will be about $100 (that’s average cost so no surprise there) but before headshots can be done there are sooooo many other costs. sigh. I hafta get my hair trimmed, I need my eyebrows waxed (not like they are nasty looking now but they have to look professional) and drum roll please…I need to buy some clothes. Ack!

I wasn’t planning on buying any clothes until at least 20 lbs lost, I wanted to have a good chunk of weight gone before spending money on clothes but I may have to change that…depends what I find in my closet at the 15 lb mark! hehehe There is so much prep work to be done, I am sooooooo excited! For one thing, headshots are a total blast to have done, it’s a day all about you and you look fabulous cause you have professionals making you look awesome and keeping you that way. Who doesn’t love that?! 😀 Plus, it’s a total boost to self confidence cause dude, a whole stack of pics showing you at the best angles with the best lighting – that can’t do anything but make you feel good about yourself. 😀 The only part that can bring it down is the clothes, if you don’t have clothes that make you feel good about how you look and that look great on you, well, it’ll make you self conscious in front of the camera and that will show. So, I will have a mission…well fitting, bold solid colours, varying necklines, short sleeves – these are the kind of tops I will be looking for. I am hoping I will find enough pants in my closet that I won’t have to buy any of those…I hate pants shopping, well, I hate clothes shopping in general since I got fat but especially pants. ugh. For now though I am just gonna focus on next weekend where hopefully I will be trying on all the stuff in my closet – then I will focus on finding some tops. 😛

Today I ate:

29 grams Special K Vanilla Almond = 2 points

1/2 cup 1% milk = 1 point 

1 small banana = 1 point

1 serving weight watchers soup = 0 points

1 bagel = 4 points

2 triangles light laughing cow cheese = 1 point

1 Activia yogurt = 2 points

1 cup strawberries = 1 point

1/2 serving Pesto Linguine = 7 points

1 Jolly Time popcorn pckg = 1 point

1 Thinsations Oreo Cakesters = 2 points

Total points eaten 22. 🙂 I want to eat more but it’s not cause I am hungry, I am having that “I want to eat just for the sake of eating” thing happen again. I think it’s cause I am tired…I have been draggy and tired all day, and cold-brr!, and I think being tired and cold is making me instinctivly want to eat more. You know, like my body is trying to up it’s internal temp and rev up it’s energy and the way it knows how to do that is by getting more fuel in to it. Silly body though, apparently it doesn’t know it has gotten enough fuel for the day…or maybe it does know and that is why I don’t actually feel hungry. lol. Either way, no more food for me today! Nuh-uh. Instead, I am going to go turn on the space heater in my room, get my lunch for tomorrow ready and go to bed early, I will probably sit up and read a while but at least I will be burrowed under covers and (hopefully!) warm. lol. 🙂

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Some Confusion Happenin Over Here

14 Oct

It is thursday which means I exercised…yes, somehow I am still managing to do that! lol. The weather was crap most of the day, raining and blah, I am on the 24th floor at work and our view was of the cloud we were in…which to tell the truth I enjoyed, made me feel like I was in the Jetsons. lol. Remember that show? Man, I want to be in the far far far future so bad! Someone needs to invent time travel and I need to be important enough to get to use it…ok, I’ll stop now…lol

who wouldn't want to be in a building that high? or in a flying car? awesome!

While at work I kept looking out at the clouds and the rain hitting the windows and cursing the weather cause yeah, I sooooo don’t hike in the rain. *shakes head* it’s just not gonna happen. I didn’t want to not get my thursday exercise time in and sure, I can use the stationary exercise bike I have but (1) I was hoping to hike as much as possible before the weather makes it impossible and (2) thursdays my roomie watches a bunch of tv shows so she’d be stuck listening and seeing me on the bike while trying to enjoy tv and that’s just not cool. Well, by the time I was on my way home the rain had stopped, it still looked like it was threatening and it was way cloudy and overcast but shrug, whatcha gonna do? I almost didn’t go out, I was uber close to hopping on the bike but I decided I’d just dress warm and suck it up. And it worked. I had to wear two shirts and a hoodie and my legs kinda froze cause my pants are summer weight, oh, and my hands stayed cold the entire time and I got to “enjoy” seeing my breath puff out in front of me – but put all that aside and it was fine. lol.

Here is where my confusion comes in, sigh, you calculate your exercise points using intensity level, the levels are graded as (1) Low, no sweating, (2) Moderate, sweating after 10 minutes and (3) High, sweating 3.5 minutes. Easy-peasy right? Well, normally right, but today? Not so. Normally on this hike I consider myself at the High Intensity level, I use the five minutes it takes to get to the trail as warm up and once on the trail really push myself so I am sweating pretty quickly…er, scratch that, I am glowing pretty quickly cause I am a lady and ladies don’t sweat we glow… 😛 So, normally I am glowing by the 5 minute mark thereby putting me in the High level, following so far? Well today was cold, not freezing I am in the dead of winter cold but it was around 8C which for all you Americans is…wait, I can do this…ok, who am I kidding, I googled it, it’s 46.4F which sounds a lot warmer to me then 8C lol. So definitely a nip to the air. This nip meant I didn’t start sweating, er, glowing, until much farther in to my hike. I was working as hard as I normally do but my body just wasn’t getting that warm that quick – I can not control the weather people! Trust me, if I did it’d be a hell of a lot warmer all the time!

Sooooo, how do I calculate the exercise points? Does my exercise become a moderate intensity level cause I couldn’t get my glow on within the first 5 minutes of my hike cause of weather conditions? Or do I still count it as High cause I know that in non-cool weather it is a high? A dilemna that’s for sure!

Oh, fyi, it is a dilemna I have yet to solve so don’t be looking to this post to answer the question for you. lol. I will do some digging, see what I can learn and if I come up with something I will post it another day but for now? I am in the dark.

Let’s see what I ate today:

29 grams honey nut cheerios = 2 points

1/2 cup 1% milk = 1 point

1 small banana = 1 point

1/2 cup cottage cheese = 2 points

1 Lean Cuisine Chicken a l’orange = 4 points

1 peach = 1 point

2 triangles light laughing cow cheese = 1 point

1 Activia yogurt = 2 points

baby carrots = 0 points

29 grams beefless tips = 1 point

95 grams Green Giant Simply Steamed broccoli and carrots with garlic and herbs = 1 point

1 cup tomato soup = 4 points

1 toasted sandwich

    – 2 pieces bread = 2 points

    – 2 turkey bacon strips = 2 points

    – 2 cheese slices = 2 points

    – 1 tbls light miracle whip = 0 points

Exercise Points Earned = 4

Total points eaten is 26 which is my 22 daily points and my 4 exercise points. 😀

Case you are wondering, I guessed on my exercise points. lol. Since I hadn’t answered my exercise point calculation question I guesstimated. shrug. It’s all good. 🙂 I actually felt a little weird cause I always have something sweet at the end of the day and I didn’t have the points for it so no little piece of chocolate or cookie for me, sadness. I didn’t miss it though, I was nice and full from dinner and felt fine without it – which is a relief cause I didn’t want to go over my points tonight, not when I have gone over in record numbers so far this week and I am going out after work tomorrow and eating who knows what!

Oh! Happy news! Tonight, on the flat area of the trail at the end, I did three jogging/running spurts! wOOt! Last tuesday I managed two jogging/running spurts so today I thought I’d see if I could do better…oh, and they lasted longer too, oh yea babeeee! teehee.

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