So, in the last almost two months, Mounir and I went the Philippines, narrowly missed a typhoon (but got to experience the roughing-it joys of its aftermath), rode around on a motorcycle that had had a garage fall on it, enjoyed the beach and the ocean and our friends, saw the new James Bond movie in Manila’s Mall of Asia for about 3 bucks US apiece, had a 40 hour-long Christmas thanks to the international date line, caught a horrible cold or flu virus, spent New Year’s Eve at home coughing and sniffling and watching TV (both of us) and using Fimo to make the cake topper you see here (me), went back to work whilst still suffering from the plague, started training twice a week with T’ai, sorted out a bunch of wedding details, including the cake this topper will go on, sampled eight different kinds of cake, ate fairly healthily other than that.

I’m rather tired, oh, and on top of all that I’ve folded 830 origami cranes, which means I have 170 to go. It seemed like a good way to channel wedding stress/excitement/anxiety, for the first couple hundred or so. Now I’m just hoping it causes not just good luck but world peace/health/longevity/all that good stuff.

If the cranes can also fix Mounir’s rib/back that would be good too. He managed to dislocate something in our fifth (of seven, for now) training session and has been aching (and even more anti-fitness) ever since. The chiropractor is now on the case, but a bit of origami magic couldn’t hurt, right? I enjoyed working out with Mounir, but he claims exercise is bad for you and now that he’s given it a try he’s done with it.

In any case I felt the need to note that I’m not dead and I intend at some point to write in greater detail about our tropical island adventure, but my involvement with the internet these days is pretty much confined to looking at pretty pictures in the Offbeat Bride group and trying to figure out wtf I’m going to do with 1000 cranes once they’re all folded. (leading candidates: dangling in curtains or garlands or chains, or stuffed them in vases; sadly, we can’t transport the Grand Canyon to Vancouver for our wedding on February 10th).

To sum up: I’ll be back but not soon.

More accurately: gone sunning and lounging and diving and catching up on sleeping, etc., At least that’s the plan. Tomorrow I am off to Boracay Island in the Philippines, and may resume blogging when I get back after Christmas. I’m still brushing my teeth and daily exercise should be easy whilst there, but posting daily wasn’t a habit I wanted to maintain.

NaBloPoMo was good in terms of exposing me to new blogs but work + wedding stuff + travel planning + actually staying in shape (as opposed to writing about staying in shape) are higher priorities.

I wish everyone who reads this warm, relaxing, fun and uber-happy holidays!

My hypothesis, however, is that it’s the whey protein. Now that the Wild Rose Detox cleanse nonsense is done, I’m back to dumping 30 g of Isoflex powder into my water bottle each morning. Everything I’ve read about fitness nutrition advocates replenishing amino acids during and after a work out, and the glutamine complex in the Isoflex is supposed to be particularly helpful. It’s not a double-blind trial, but feeling less achy is good enough for me.

With the extra sleep this morning, though, I’m back to looking forward to the last two days of boot camp.  And to sleeping in after that, while still continuing this crazy fitness kick.  And to only blogging when I have something to write, as tomorrow is the last day of NaBloPoMo.

Flailing around for something to say today, I was inspired by Rachael’s Free Will Astrology quote, and looked up Aquarius’s horoscope for the week:

 This week I propose that you feel gratitude for every person who has ever told you that you were inadequate, that there was something wrong with you, that you would never amount to anything. You might even carry out a little ceremony in which you bow down to an altar containing their photos or slips of paper on which their names are written. And why am I suggesting this? Because those jerks helped motivate you to become as cool as you are. And if I’m reading the omens correctly, it’s time to summon a huge new burst of creative energy as you disprove their misbegotten ideas about you even more completely.

The thing is, there aren’t many jerks who’ve told me I’m inadequate, so my problem is more that I never feel like I’m living up to my potential.  Sleeping in this morning triggered that feeling too.  But I heard a great snippet of an interview on CBC this morning (14 minutes in), apparently the coolest boy in Claire Messud’s grade 3 class singled out her and another girl as not being allowed to play Spin the Bottle.  She gets tremendous satisfaction that she’s now a novelist, the other girl became a soprano in an opera company, and the cool boy runs a sports bar.

- I should have mentioned yesterday that the other automotive feature for which I’m particularly grateful is heated seats.

- This morning I came the closest yet of this boot camp session to just saying screw it** and going back to sleep. I only convinced myself to go by doing some faulty math that after the sleep and getting ready for work it would only really get me to work 45 minutes earlier.  Even though this proved to be false, I’m glad I went because today was game day.  We played tag, a ball tag-ish running game, and soccer.  We also did some running the length of the gym with weights, doing squats on one side and pushups on the other.  And we did some other exercises I’ve forgotten now.  Anyway, it was fun.  I have drunk the working out kool aid.

- ** I’m feeling profane lately.  One more thing to be grateful for: my grandmother doesn’t access the internet.

- Via Sphere.com I discovered a few interesting fitness and nutrition-related blogs:

*  Hey look, more about pomegranates from Health Tips.

* Iateapie.net reviews fat-free, low carb, low calorie, etc. etc. ‘diet’ foods; generally I’m trying to eat less prepared food and I’d rather have full fat goodness in moderation, but it’s an interesting concept.

* The self-proclaimed Really Useful Fitness Blog seems to live up to its name: entries include 10 Weight Loss Tips from a Nutritionist and 7 tips on getting a fun and effective work out outside.

*  The numbers in this entry about how much exercise is required to lose a pound of fat are a bit shocking, but they seem to be leaving out the impact of exercise on your resting metabolic rate.

*  The FatFree Vegan Kitchen (“so delicious you’ll forget it’s good for you”), the World’s Healthiest Foods and Tales from a Veggie Kitchen seem promising, recipe-wise.

I found out today that I’m getting a raise, so I’m grateful that others’ standards for my work are more reasonable and/or delusional than are my own. I’m grateful for one of my performance reviews, which started off “I’m a big fan of Christina.” And I’m grateful for a job that challenges me and is interesting and comes with an office with a big window, which today was overlooking this:

I’m grateful for four-wheel drive, which allowed me to get to boot camp, work, and over to the North Shore after work to see two sets of friends, the first very briefly.

I’m grateful for anti-lock brakes. They kicked in and prevented me from plowing in to the car in front of me on a particularly icy patch of road leading up to a stop sign, as I was driving between the two sets of friends.

I’m grateful for boot camp’s assistance in getting into shape, because otherwise I may have had a heart attack while it seemed like the brakes weren’t going to work, and what good are anti-lock brakes if you’re too busy having a heart attack to press on them?

Despite the treacherous road conditions, I’m grateful for the beauty of snow on branches.

I’m grateful for my friends and family. They’re all wonderful and that gratitufe is pretty constant. But today I’m especially grateful for Jamila and Sasan who fed me a delicious meal and were delightful company and indulged my photomania. And to their imminent new arrival, who conveniently did some kicking while I was feeling Jamila’s belly, accusing her of faking the pregnancy.

I’m grateful that Mounir will be back from Chicago on Wednesday. I’m so glad he’s part of my life and I’ve been missing him since he left on Saturday.

Finally, I’m grateful that the boil water advisory was lifted and I can go back to properly rinsing my toothbrush after I brush my teeth. It seemed wasteful to squander too much boiled or bottled water on removing all traces of toothpaste. I would have just swallowed the risk, no pun intended, but my bout of cryptosporidium the summer of 1996 made me very cautious when it comes to water safety. Travis was braver: you should go read his experiment with only drinking tap water, starting here. Also, his pictures of the snow in Vancouver are fucking gorgeous.

Isn’t this picture of Kai’s gorgeous? I love pomegranates. They taste just as jewel-like and juicy as they look. And the Persephone mythology tie-in is a nice bonus. It gives me someone to blame for the whole concept of winter. (It is still snowing in Vancouver, and admittedly the snow-bedecked trees are beautiful and the West End and English Bay this morning made me wish I’d brought my camera with me to breakfast with my parents, but I really hate being cold.)

In contrast to my feelings about winter, I love the whole concept of superfoods, especially the ones added earlier this year, because they are all YUMMY.

Except, not quite all. Let me break it down.

Delicious:
Beans, blueberries, broccoli, oats, pumpkin, salmon, spinach, pomegranate, cinnamon, apples, honey, cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil, dark chocolate.

Varies depending on form and execution:
Oranges, soy, tea, tomatoes (pinkish, mealy tomatoes are the only thing that demoted them from delicious), walnuts (I’ll take pecans given a choice between the two), yogurt, kiwi

No thanks:
Turkey

They just need to add artichokes, barley, red lentils, and this really great creamy French cheese whose name I’ve forgotten (helpful, I know) to the list and I’d happily eat nothing but superfoods.

Behold the snow coating the roofs of neighbouring buildings:

And look at the difference in visibility towards the Granville Street Bridge between these two pictures:

I really can’t wait to head to the Philippines. Mon pays ce n’est pas l’hiver, c’est la plage. Which won’t make sense to anyone who doesn’t know the song, but my country really ought to be the beach.

Come the revolution, I’ll be claiming beaches for my own. Also, first up against the wall will be people enforcing anti-grunting policies in fitness clubs. What’s next, no sweating policies? My Adventure Boot Camp has a no swearing policy but if you break it you do pushups. You don’t get kicked out.

I don’t grunt or groan often, but sometimes it’s the only thing that helps me push through the last ten seconds of holding plank position. It’s a good thing I don’t belong to one of the gyms in the article, as my response to people whose delicate ears can’t handle grunting would be “Suck it up, princess.”

Also of interest in the New York Times, distance runners may have an increased risk of skin cancer. Not that surprising, but I did wonder about “Even though, by chance, the nonrunners had more benign moles and freckles and significantly higher sun sensitivity as determined by eye color and skin shade, the runners had more solar lentigines and more lesions suggestive of basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas, two less aggressive skin cancers.”. They say it’s by chance, but I wonder if those more prone to burning tend to self-select out of pursuits involving a lot of sun exposure? Maybe that’s why, even though I no longer hate running, I have no desire to become a distance runner.

Sometimes I worry that this will be a liability some day, when evaluating scenarios like “what if I’m in a situation where I have to run for hours on end to survive a zombie attack or something”, but it’s not a big enough motivator. (In fact, such thoughts just remind me of this this ‘a softer world’.) Of course, my dream life of living on the beach doesn’t make much sense from an avoiding skin cancer perspective either, but I’d be willing to trade a bit of longevity for always being warm and near the ocean.

Tonight was the last session of the intermediate/advanced swing dance class.   My aching muscles are thankful that it was less strenuous and more feeling-the-musicy.  First we did some walking across the floor paying attention to stretching, then sinking into the hip of the leg that had just stepped (forward, backward, and then with a pivoting rock step triple step).  Then we did a lot of playing around in closed, followed by a pattern of three swing outs, one circle, four bars of 6-count stuff (like tuck turn, change of place, inside or outside turn, possibly with the lead turning), then 8 counts of just hanging out and playing with the music.

I need to work more on a) connecting with the floor, b) connecting more with the lead’s hand on my back by sinking back like I’m sitting on the edge of a barstool, and c) enjoying the dancing more instead of worrying about how well I’m following.  Not so shockingly, it’s easier to follow well when I stop worrying about it.  Leo emphasized that it’s about the journey, not the destination.  At least until the next class series in January, focussed on moves and repertory; that class will apparently be all about the destination.