Mighty Neighbourly

Lexi sniffing the air - I love the snow sticking to her fur

It snowed about 10 cm this morning, pushing Vancouver into a full blown snowmageddan. I’m serious, that’s what the papers are calling it – granted other parts of the Lower Mainland did get more snow than us. I’m not a huge snow lover, but as long as I don’t have to drive anywhere I don’t mind a few inches.

There’s a bylaw round here that states you need to have your sidewalks cleared of snow by about 10 a.m., so usually when it snows Derek and I grab the complex snow shovels and will clear the paths. Our complex makes us laugh, there’s a North side vs. Courtyard divide, and usually the courtyard ignores the North Side, meaning they’ll clear all of their paths and sidewalks, but won’t touch ours.

This morning I saw that it was starting to snow, so I waited until the majority of it stopped, grabbed a shovel and started clearing ALL the paths, stairs and sidewalks in the complex, North and Courtyard. After about 45 minutes of shovelling and working up a good sweat, I was literally on my last 3 sections of pavement, when a neighbour came outside and said that he’d do the rest.

I had done about 98% of the shovelling, but my hands were freezing so I was happy to hand it over. Just as I gave him the shovel and was walking away, another neighbor started walking up and thanking him for shovelling all the paths.

How neighbourly of him.

A half has never felt so huge

Other than a brief spell in University, I have never enjoyed running or considered myself a runner. Running was something I did to train for basketball or boxing, but I never pushed myself for more than 30 minutes and never had the desire to go faster or further. In fall 2010, with one year to go before the wedding, I started running with a friend twice a week. Our distances began to increase and we set the goal of running a half marathon in the spring.

Running a half scares me so much, it's a mental thing. In my mind, it's a long distance (read 23 km!! aka 13 miles) and the ability to do it seems so far off. But bit-by-bit we increased our distances and the goal seemed so attainable. Just when I was finally starting to enjoy running, I ended up injuring my hip to the point where I couldn't walk up the stairs in my house. Couple this with my running-buddy getting pregnant, the goal died and spring came and went.

I did get in shape for the wedding thanks to the South Beach Diet (I won't blog about it... but it worked, I lost 25lbs before the wedding) and boxing/running twice a week - but I never got back to loving running.

Once we were home from our honeymoon I wanted to maintain my weight, but still eat carbs. In November I started running small distances (4km) just to test out the hip, get Lexi out of the house (my car was totalled this summer and I can no longer drive her daily to the dog park like I used to) and get back in shape. Low and behold I'm building up my stamina.

I'm up to 6-8 km several times a week and I really want to revisit my half marathon goal. The BMO Vancouver Half/Full Marathon is the first weekend in May. So here is my public declaration that I will RUN THE HALF MARATHON! I'm putting it out there publicly so I can't back down.

I'm going to watch my hip carefully, so hopefully it'll hold up through training.I'm also thinking that if I run the half marathon I'll treat myself to a Disneyland trip. Ha Ha, I think I'd drag myself across the line if it means Disneyland!!

Another goal for the year will be to start taking photos again. I got a new laptop, and haven't uploaded any of my photo software on here, and Lexi ate the memory card in my other camera - so I don't have the ability to take anything.... therefore I'll post a few random photos from Easter.

H is for Hitched. A is for Apology

I don't know why I chose today to foray back to the world of blogging. Actually, I do know why. It's because I have work deadlines and I needed a way to procrastinate.

Here we are, I skipped blogging in 2011. I know, I'm sorry - most of you probably stopped caring, but I'm here, I'm alive and I have a new last name. To recap my 2011, I got married and I went on a honeymoon. Those two activities pretty much took 365 days.

I'll write more about the wedding, as well as a few lessons learned, but first I just wanted to come crawling back, tail between legs and promise you that you'll hear a lot more of my ramblings in 2012.

Here are some wedding photos, they were all taken by the talented Vanessa Voth