blackberryless for 36 hours.

Friday night, Katie, Britt and I drank copious amounts of wine and taxied our way down to Gabby's. i get to the door and dig around in my purse to grab my wallet and it is nowhere to be found. I had just paid for the cab so I ran outside and awesomely enough the cab was still parked out front. I open the door and find my wallet tucked down the side of the seat waiting for me. I grabbed it, yelled a thank you and ran back to the bar. Lots of beers and dancing followed. The band was awesomeish, their guitar player was quite the looker. A few hours later kt and Britt tell me they are leaving and obviously i was too busy having too much fun to leave. By this point I've found a long lost friend I haven't seen a while. She shrugs and hands me my jacket and i throw it down in a corner somewhere. Tequila ensues. I'd like to skip the next part of the story and liken my life to the song "Tequila makes her clothes fall off", however that seems a bit graphic, so I'd like to edit the lyrics to tequila makes her phone get lost. or tequila makes her jacket disappear. or tequilas makes her not care that her phone and jacket are missing and her friends have left her alone to make bad decisions all by herself AGAIN! (jk, love them) Anyhow, Saturday afternoon eventually rolls around and my buzzer starts going off. I drag myself out of bed and pick it up with a very wary "hello?". I have never been one to like the dreaded Drop By. It's Katie. I explain over intercom that I've lost my phone. She insists i buzz her up. Of course, i do. She tells me that my mom and her and Amanda have basically sent out a search party for me. Normally we do a Saturday morning speaker phone chat that they were clearly missing pretty hard. I explain that I am fine, just down 1 phone and 1 jacket. I told her i would call her later to sort out our plans. Lol, slash I would walk over to her house because clearly I am techno-less. We BBM my phone and the first message is Delivered and Read. WTF give me back my phone we say. The messages are then not delivered meaning the phone has been turned off. Argh. Manda insists she will find my phone through GPS. Kita and Lan come over. Nik plays the sugarland song that is my ring tone and i get all hopeful that my phone has been found. insert cry face. The girls go out for dinner while i lay on the couch in mucho pain. They bring me back mcdonalds which i promptly return to the toilet. sorry, i forgot to put a disclaimer about gross factor. this morning was very depressing without my beloved BB. I spent all morning thinking about all the messages i could be sending and all the facebook and allrecipes i could be surfing. I put on my Sunday jeans and drove to carol's. Manda meets me over here and makes the call to Fido to tell them my phone has been stolen. After a bit of smooth talking she has convinced them to give me a new phone at the low cost of activation plus 30 bucks. Part of that to be paid with my Fido dollars (free money). We rush over to the mall and they set up my phone and don't charge me a penny and give me a free 2mb memory card on top of that. LML. Manda and I get home from the mall and she gets a text from the person who has my phone. She calls him and is rather rude and tells him he will come grab the phone in cloverdale. I meet him at Tim Hortons (with my dad as backup in my car in case this lunatic is trying to kidnap me- i think i watch too much tv). The guy who shows up is Bryan, who i had been dancing with at the bar. He says that he was hammered and might have taken it as a joke and forgot to give it back. He did mention being a little nervous about manda's threat about GPSing the phone. I manage not even to be mad about the whole thing and tell him to call me sometime as he already has my number. i mean its a perfect Meet Cute. If my dad wasn't in the car I'd probably have went and had a coffee with Brian Phone Thief (as he is now saved as in my contacts list). I went from no phone to two phones in a matter of two hours. God must love me.

My Kitten Kit.

I probably check my mail two or three times a week. On the weeks that I check it three times, at least one of those times the mail box is empty. I am always very excited when there happens to be mail in the box. There are three types of mail i get- 1. stuff from the government 2. junk/flyers/coupons/free stuff I've ordered online 3. actual awesome mail that is meant for me. Yesterday when i opened my mail box it was FULL. I squealed in delight and ran up the stairs.. okay ran up the first flight and walked up the rest. I sat down at the table and started in on my STACK of mail.

Now you'd think this blog would be about #3, awesome mail. It is not. Although, come to think of it this item is kind of #2 and #3. It's awesome and free. THAT makes it a twofer, which instantly brings up its awesomeness rating. It could probably get its own page in the 1000 awesome things book.

I will delay no longer.  The snail mail i received was something I had ordered off the Purina website ages ago and had forgotten all about. "My Kitten Kit" they call it. Please see that it was addressed to Michelle & Watson! Adorable? I think so.

In this kit was a Owner's Manual type thing that covers everything you'd ever need to know about owning a cat. There was one Did You Know blurb i found especially interesting. "Cats are the only mammals that are unable to taste sweetness." I thought it was weird that Watson licked all the icing off my cupcake if she can't taste sweet. It must be the butter in the icing that she likes. or the pink. or maybe the sprinkles. It had lots of helpful information that i could have used weeks, if not months, ago. How to make sure she uses her litter box, how to keep her from scratching the furniture and my entire body, how to get her to sleep at night and not annoy the crap out of me. I skimmed through the book and filed it away if future reference is necessary. There is lots of information about if they get sick and about keeping her a healthy weight and basically stuff i don't care about at this point in time. Oooo! It also came with this cute little charm to go on a collar.

The thing i was most excited about, OBVIOUSLY, was the free coupons. Included in the package: a free bag of kitten chow, a free can of wet food and a free container of kitty litter. Like no joke, best deal ever. Watson didn't care much for the charm, coupons or manual, but she really loved the cellophane that the package was wrapped in. That's all for right meow... uhh i mean now.

Mission: Chocolate Cupcakes

  I sometimes offer bribes at work to get people to do things for me. For example, last week I needed help with a rather techy email. I wanted it done for when I got into the office the next morning. I threw a baking bribe at Simon to get his speedy cooperation. Cupcakes for email. Fair trade? I think so. I can tell you he does too! I made a comment that the liners were going to be pink and flowery and he said that it wasn't manly enough. I decided to go all out and use pink flowery liners with pink icing and red sprinkles. I can tell you, he was thrilled. Here's a bit of a photoblog.





Curious Kitten hasn't quite gotten the hang of staying off the counters. She likes to lick the greased tins. I like to let her.







 Letting the spoon fall into the bowl just means you get to lick the spoon clean. NBD.



Watson, unsurprisingly, likes cupcake batter too.



Round 1, no cupcake liners. These were basically a test batch to snack on.







Please note that these domed cupcakes are decorative and not for your eating pleasure. I will have you know that everyone at work made yummy noises after eating.

an eulogy

621am saturday morning I am puzzling over grammar. Why is it "a eulogy" and not "an eulogy"? It is "an egg" or "an elephant" but a eulogy. Eulogy begins with a vowel- two in fact. I said them both aloud to be sure and then googled to double check. It is an (annoying) exception to the rule.

Wikipedia says;

A 'eulogy' (Classical Greek for "good words") is a speech or writing in praise of a person or thing, especially one recently deceased.

My Aunty Joyce died on Tuesday morning. She is survived by her husband (my Great Uncle) Ron Wilson; as well as her Son and Granddaughter. She hadn't been well for some time, but her death was still a shock to the family. We all had been thinking she would be coming home.

I can still remember attending their wedding. It was my very first time going to one. I think Mom bargained good behaviour for a trip to McD's afterwards. I saw some pictures yesterday- Aunty Joyce wore this beautiful peach suit and hat, and I, on the other hand, wore this horrid dress with tights and sneakers-thanks Mom. From that day on she was stuck with us Little's!

I am sad she is gone, but am grateful she no longer is suffering from pain and fear. In honour of my Aunty Joyce, I'd like to share this poem.

God's Garden

God looked around his garden
And found an empty place,
He then looked down upon the earth
And saw your tired face.
He put his arms around you
And lifted you to rest.
God’s garden must be beautiful
He always takes the best.
He knew that you were suffering
He knew you were in pain.
He knew that you would never
Get well on earth again.
He saw the road was getting rough
And the hills were hard to climb.
So he closed your weary eyelids
And whispered, ‘Peace bethine’.
It broke our hearts to lose you
But you didn’t go alone,
For part of us went with you
The day God called you home.
–Anonymous

Sara the Yogi Says

I hit the track last night, turns out it actually hit me. To be honest I'm not sure if these pains are from the track or if it was from the brutality caused by my foam roller last night after the track. i was hoping that giving my legs a good once over with foamy that i wouldn't suffer so badly from Trackmania. I dont know what it is about the track, but i get ADD when I'm there. I can run two laps max before i get bored and want to move on to something else.  Last night I worked on some sprints, high knees, fast feet, the stairs (ouch) and also practiced how to walk slowly around the track while gasping for air at the same time.

Sara is working at becoming a yoga instructor so she has been learning lots of stuff about things. She is now totally my official personal trainer advisor, via email. I asked for some advice on how to stretch out my hip flexers as they were super sore this morning. This is what Sara the Yogi had to say (with some shelly comments thrown in):

Hip openers always entail hip closing, if you will...

1. You can simply sit cross legged with one foot in front of the other (so not totally crossed legged) and lean forward – hold for 30 secs – then put the other foot in front and repeat. This is our favourite, please note this can also be performed while sitting on the couch. Not to the same degree, but hey if you can stretch while couch surfing, why the hell not?

2. Sit on your butt and have one leg bent with foot on floor, cross your other ankle onto your knee and lean forward. Or, try this laying on your back and pull your knee into your chest (but keep your head on the floor – if you can’t then do it sitting up). I am a longtime fan of this one. You definitely need to be on a yoga mat or plush carpet or the spine and tail bone will not be happy with you.


3. You can also stand up cross your legs pushing one hip out and bend forward – maybe hold onto the coffee table for support – this one can be tricky – you feel it more if you push your hip out and lean... I can guarantee this stretch is easier than it looks, I tried it on my lunch break (not for the first time) and fell over a couple of times. It's tricky to maintain balance while trying to increase the stretch especially if you've been drinking. Please note that we were not consulted on the outfits of the models. Baggy orange t-shirt is not a requirement for this stretch.



4. Or sit with your legs in front of you and wrap a band around the palm of your foot holding onto each end of the band and stretch your leg across your other leg – hurts though. (you can get bands from winners for like $10 for a three pack – great for back and arm stretches too) (you can do this sitting up)



5. This one is good too – just try to make sure your hips are square to the front – and if it’s more comfortable you can lean forward – and try not to hold your breath..



6. SARA SAYS: AVOID THIS ONE – UNLESS YOU ARE A HURDLER! I had to ask her why and she claims that it puts a lot of stress on your knee ligaments. I certainly wouldn't want to do that, plus it looks rather uncomfortable. How bout, let's cross number 6 from the list of acceptable stretches.

7. You could even sit at your desk with one ankle up on your knee.. make sure your chair isn’t slanting forward and that your legs are bent at 90 degrees. I tried this one and love it. I don't even have to leave my desk or the couch, basically my new go to stretch!disclaimer: make sure you are warm before your stretch or you might make it worse and hold them for AT LEAST 15 secs! Any injuries caused by trying these stretches or other stupid ideas off this blog are in no way the responsibility of the blogger or her pseudo fitness director Sara The Yogi.

Well i hope everyone learned something useful. Now, go stretch! or not... whatever. like i care.

Sunday Runday

Sunday morning, she wakes up knock knock knock on her door. [britney spears quote of the day] I heard her new song on the radio and now I have assorted BS songs running through my head. It is a rather sad state of affairs....anyways, i got up Sunday, fed the kitty, put on my running shoes and hit the streets. black tights under black shorts and an underarmer sweater with a bright blue skiing headband. I look like a rock star. Outside, it is somewhere around -4 degrees. My fingers and toes are instantly bitten by frost. I decide to do a 10km run. This was prompted, as most things are, by the slight competitive streak I may have. Wendy mentioned she entered an 8KM race on January 1st- yes New Year's Day- and finished with a time somewhere around 45 minutes. I hadn't ran that far in ages or timed any of my runs to see what my pace was at, so i decided to go for it. At about three kms i could feel the burn in my calves. I haven't loaded up my new iPod yet so i'm running naked (music-wise). Every car that drives by sends a gust of freezing air right in my direction. so awesome, I am having a great time. I finally get down near my  half way point where there's no sidewalk. there happens to be snow in this part of town and the side of the road is super icy. I near-bail a few times. I hit the 5k mark with a smile and turn around and head home.  I started to scuff my feet which is a sure sign my legs are getting tired and lazy, so I ran a bit harder because I heard a rumor that makes your body work harder which makes you less tired. Sounds crazy but it seemed to work. I always get excited at 7-8 kms becuase it's my downhill stretch. The sun had come up so I got a beautiful view of the mountains and ran super fast down the hill. Obviously this was tarnished by the side cramp i got. I stood tall (that opens up your stomach and lung area which helps the cramp to ease) and it went away super fast. the last stretch is always the hardest for me. I basically hobble down the street and make it to my building in a slight rage. For some reason it always makes me feel better to swear when i'm done my run. I can barely move at this point, my legs are seizing up. I practically crawled up three flights of stairs. I checked the time as soon as I got in, I had been gone 1 hour exactly. Not bad for my first ten kms back on the running scene. I will note here that I was in major pain for the rest of Sunday and most of monday.  I brought out Foam Roller for the first time in months and went to town on my legs. It hurt like hell but I felt great today. Please note that I have incorproated calf raises into my morning and night teeth brushing routine. Credit is due to Wendy on that one. I can't wait until I'm old and smart like her!

head & shoulders, knees & toes

Sara: I’ve decided if I have a child, I’m going to teach it the proper names to the muscles and bones. K.. why do we lie to ourselves and our kids from childhood with made-up general names for things...? up until a week ago I thought the elbow bone was called the humerous.. no.. the whole upper arm bone is called the humerous. And biceps are biceps brachii.. and don’t get me started with the “calf muscle”. – end note.

Shelly: Haha lol. U can start with teaching ME the proper names for things!!!

Sara: No probs you can point to things and I’ll tell you what they are called in real life. I know all of the main guys. And I’m pretty good at figuring out which muscles control which movements. I’ll teach you two things for now. The biggest and strongest bone in the body is the femur. (the “thigh” bone.. if you will) it can take up to 600 lbs of vertical force. And the second strongest and most stout bone in the body is your “chin” bone, called the Tibia. Stay tuned.



Sara: Hahaha not CHIN but Shin rather..only I have a big strong chin.. not everyone is so blessed.

Shelly: Haha i was like CHIN? REALLY? Shin though, that makes much more sense. My shins take a lot of abuse from running. Can you tell me a bit more about shin splints?

Sara: The bottom of this page has some good exercises you can do to strengthen your shins/ankles for running. www.sportsinjurybulletin.com/archive/0161-shin-splints-treatment.htm

Sara: Dorsi flexion is when you bring your toes toward your shin (like flex your foot) – the muscle that does it is called the tibialis anterior (the muscle you can feel in front of your shin bone). Plantar flexion is when you point your toes or stand up on your toes – acting muscle is the gastrocnemius and soleus (calf muscles)

Shelly: Lol i feel stupid for not knowing all my body parts now. the song “head and shoulders, knees, and toes” should totally be altered to... uhm, well u know...

Sara: I know, especially when they throw in strange explanatory words – see, if our parents taught us properly we would know these things! Cranium, scapula’s, patella’s and phalanges.....patella’s and phalanges... patella’s and phalanges.. doesn’t have the same ring..

Sara: Lol go right ahead.. you may want to know that the scapula is actually the shoulder blade.. don’t think the shoulder has a name.

Shelly: Mmm i don’t think it matters for blog purposes. I’ll check with my editor though.

Sara: HAHA do you really have an editor?

Shelly: Bahahha. No! Just being facetious.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, brings us to WORD OF THE DAY:

fa·ce·tious   /fəˈsiʃəs/  [fuh-see-shuhs]  –adjective
1. not meant to be taken seriously or literally: a facetious remark.
2. amusing; humorous.
3. lacking serious intent; concerned with something nonessential, amusing, or frivolous: a facetious person.

2011-01-01 xox