• Home espresso machines
• The sun
• Two wonderful and supportive friends, you know who you are!
• My parents
• Second chances
• My IKEA kitchen
• My husband for building said kitchen (and being awesome)

My old SIGG bottle is ruined and I need something new! Do you have a water bottle you love and would recommend?

I am planning on buying a new one tomorrow on my way to THE GYM, a place I haven’t set foot in in nearly 6 months.

I’m nervous so I bought new workout pants to psych me up.

I will do this.

I really need to pay more attention to my bank account. Last January I signed up for a one year membership at my gym and by the end of 2010, I assumed it would be finished. It turns out that unless I fill out a form to cancel the EFT, it continues to come out of my account and my membership is still valid. So basically I’ve had a gym membership for the past 2 months and had no idea! I’m ridiculous. I got in touch with my trainer though, and we are going to schedule a session this week. I need to take it pretty easy, but my main goal is to strengthen my quads and hamstrings before my knee surgeries to speed up my recovery.

In other news, in exactly 2 months from today, we will be leaving on our honeymoon to France and Switzerland! I’m so, so excited. We have our rail passes, reservations and accomodations all booked now which takes off a lot of the pressure of trip planning. Our itinerary is: Paris - Caen - Geneva -Zermatt - Interlaken - Paris

It’s only 2.5 weeks but I think we worked it out so we aren’t cramming too much into a short period.

One month from today I will be having surgery on both my knees to clean up the all torn cartilage that’s floating around in there.  There’s just enough time for me to recover before our trip to Europe, and you bet your ass I’ll be hiking up one of the Swiss alps in May!

I cannot wait to get this resolved and start being active without pain again.

After considering it for awhile I decided to take a break from school this term and not register for classes. I kept feeling like I was in school for all the wrong reasons, not because I wanted to but because my family and my husband would be disappointed if I decided to quit. The truth is, I haven’t been happy, committed or interested for at least a year, with the exception of my term abroad and seminar classes. Turns out, I’m silly for making assumptions and both my parents and Ryan are very supportive of my decision. Turns out, they just want me to be happy! (I can be clueless sometimes)

So in the next 4 months I’ve decided to continue to work and focus on my physical and emotional health. We booked our flights for our honeymoon in May, and my goal is to be in the 190’s by then. This is a big decision I know, but it’s the first thing I’ve done in a long while that is really for me.

I’m excited for the months to come.

I’ve been having a really off few days and I feel like I’m starting to loose the drive I had from going to the gym 5 times last week and breaking through my plateau. I haven’t worked out since Saturday and before then it had also been a few days so I wonder if I’m going through endorphin withdrawal? Is that even possible? I’ve been too tired to work out, yet without it I have less energy, it’s a total vicious cycle.

To be honest, pouring over the negative details never did me any good, in fact that’s what caused my anxiety to spiral out of control last term. SO, this is me being positive by forgetting the not so healthy things I’ve eaten and the lack of working out in the past few days and looking forward. I think the success of my school work (ie: paper due on Thursday) and happiness depends on this.

This morning I woke up feeling fantastic, despite my sore neck I was peppy, energetic and on time for my training appointment! (gasp!)

The work out was pretty awesome, I did squats and lunges with one leg on a bosu ball where basically you do a squat, keep your one leg on the ball, then move the other leg behind you and do a lunge then repeat. OUCH! Lot’s of other stuff too, deadlifts with 20lbs instead of 10 since I’m getting stronger. It was a blast as usual.

I had subway for lunch because I didn’t feel like cooking and have some reading to do before class at 2:30 today. Also I’m waiting patiently for my new dress to arrive, hopefully it will come in time for me to wear it today! Until then I’m hanging out in my sweaty workout clothes, nice.

Since my decision to eat healthy and exercise:

1. It takes way more alcohol than before to get me silly drunk. More than I’m willing to drink. (this is probably a good thing)

2. It only took 40ish days to get my soccer player’s calves back.

3. I STILL crave McDonalds despite all the gross crap in their food and how shitty I feel after I eat it.

4. If I don’t do some sort of exercise at least every 3 days I have trouble sleeping and feel irritable.

5. 1 cup of oatmeal in the morning is way to much.

6. My nails are stronger and are growing faster.

7. My lack of weight loss is still discouraging, despite shifting my focus and its really hard not to step on the scale every day.

8. I am extremely lucky that my family is amazing and supportive and loving

9. My posture has improved

10. It still blows my mind that with each training session I attend I get stronger and can do more, I have never been strong and it’s very empowering.

In September I was in a wedding planning frenzy. Dress shopping, venue scouting and countless hours looking online at ideas and pictures. I was OBSESSED. This obsession combined with my month long flu episode and subsequent anxiety/insomnia issues led to the dreadful month where I dropped all my classes and postponed our wedding till the following year. Let me tell you I was not in a good place in November, I nearly quit school altogether and our relationship was severely put to the test.

Now after a few months of reflection, family time and shifting focus on my health, maybe it’s time to start thinking about it again? I have literally avoided all things wedding related. People ask me when the date is and I reply “Sometime in 2011” and aside from briefly thinking about a venue, my existence has been wedding free. I’m doing much better now so I think I will take things very slow, checking out little things here and there.

For example, my friend Talia (who’s site link isn’t working atm!) sent me a link to these beautiful brooch bouquets. Recycling vintage items is something I really want to do for our wedding.

more pics here

I’m torn between that and Origami Bouquets. If they are made well they can be so beautiful! Check out this one from The Everlasting Blossoms Etsy Shop.

Like I said, I’m torn. On the one hand the brooch bouquets are very eco friendly, can be saved, etc but on the other it might be hard to find nice pieces here in Saskatoon. The Origami is paper which isn’t as eco friendly but they can be recycled if bridesmaids etc don’t want to save them. hmm.

Which do you like better?

Yeah, I’m in class right now. I really can’t help how bored I am, really. It’s kind of painful how dry the material is. Maybe I should stop brining my laptop so I’ll pay attention more. We will be moving onto development theory soon, so at least it’s applicable.

I was at work last night until 10:30ish, helping set up for christmas stock. It seems weird to have all the holiday stuff out so early, but that is the nature of consumerism these days. It does however get me into the holiday spirit which may not be a good thing. I shouldn’t be thinking about holidays when I have so much work to get caught up on. These past few weeks have been hard, school wise. I’ve been having trouble getting motivated to do all my readings, to go to class. Being sick doesn’t help. Right now I’m pretty sure I have a fever but I forced myself to go to class anyway, FYI: I am writing notes inbetween blogging so I’m not tottally slakcing off. She likes to go on tangents. We are learning about the EU now. Seems like this class is review of all the other classes I’ve taken so far.

It’s bloody cold in this classroom. My hands are freezing, also my nose is tottally running so I’m that annoying person who keeps sniffing every 30 seconds in class. bah