Let them eat CAKE!

I've been starting to feel better from this horrible cold, well, "better" is used loosely, it's more like, been starting to feel "not as miserable" from this horrible cold ... Meaning ... (trumpet trill) Da-da-da-da!

Two short swims (30-40 min.) recently and even a little jaunt around the neighbourhood, just a short half hour run. But at least I'm training again, lightly, mind you. I still have to get over all the fatigue of this cold but the return of the sun and warmer temperatures are boosting my morale.

Time to get on my bike :-)

Met up with DM, a friend from Toronto, last night and we had a blast. Dined at one of my favourite restaurants, Le Blanc. Great food and live music every night! They've just changed the menu and have now added a delicious chocolate lava cake ... YUM, YUM ...



Always nice to enjoy a fantastic supper with a good friend. We followed up with more live music at Jello Bar ... Ugh, late night, and I am now paying the price ... :-D

What a strange feeling!

I've been up since 5:42 am, something that has not happened since I don't remember when. I suppose this is to be expected given the circumstances of the previous day.

Feeling quite ill and exhausted, I slept ALL DAY yesterday and basically only woke up to eat and check e-mail. Funny, but not funny ... I got up around 4:30 pm to finally eat a late lunch and lay down to rest for a few seconds while it was heating up. Woke up three hours later. Reheated my food, ate and went promptly back to sleep.

Now you understand what 5:42 am is about?

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So I thought I would have a more productive day today but still felt tired, so thought I would just rest for a few minutes before I really got the day under way.

I fell back asleep before 7 am and didn't crawl out of bed until 11 am when the phone woke me up. Yup, still quite sick and feeling LOUSY. Can't believe I've slept this many hours since my return late Sunday night from The Boston Tea Party where I had a blast with my friends, CM, ST, and David Fein, who's sandwiched happily between us two girls. Saturday night had record attendance ... 1400 dancers!

It's about 4 am in the morning in these pics and we are very very tired. Does it show? Ugh ... Let's just say that dance convention weekends are not known for sleeping ...

Fun news!

I'm going to the Boston Tea Party! YAY!!

Also, my head is finally making it's way out of the jar! Double YAY!! Maybe I won't need to fill that antibiotic prescription ...

To swim or not to swim ...

Trying to figure out if I have an ear infection or not.

I feel like my head's been in a jar since Monday when I went snowboarding with the kids. (Had to try to catch the last good snow!) Maybe going up and down the mountain wasn't a good thing. Maybe that 70-min. swim Monday evening doing countless laps working on technique wasn't a good thing either.

Tuesday, slept a lot trying to recover from Monday's exertion and the past weekend of dancing. I paid the price for my tom-foolery.

Today, my head still feels like it's in a jar and my ears are itchy and a little painful ... having trouble even hearing my own voice ... something's not right, and it's been three days. So, do I swim or not today? Alright, I should be cautious and wait to see what the doctor says tomorrow morning. Argh.

Good thing is, my cough has loosened up and my throat is less sore ... woohoo, I'm on the road to recovery!

www.newagesensitiveman.com

I went to a little social gathering at JC's recently and, being the fantastic photographer that he is, of course whipped out his camera ...

JC: "Give her a little kiss."

So lo and behold, here we have it ... Flirtation abounds!



JC gave me a good chuckle on the phone today ... I was complaining about the lack of interesting, exciting, intelligent men to date.

JC: "Go check out www.newagesensitiveman.com."

So I did ... and found nothing. Absolutely nada. Sort of symbolic of what the real dating scene is all about ...

Like, why can't I find a guy who makes me swoon in his arms when he dances with me and who can also do triathlons ... I mean, is it too much to ask that he attempt at least a sprint triathlon, or failing that, how about just a measly marathon if he's not interested in all three sports?

And picking up dancing can't be too difficult ... I organize workshops, he can get in for free ... I can even teach him myself!

SHEESH!!

Got back from a fun dance event this evening in fact. My miserable cold is still holding on tenaciously and blatantly ignoring my pleas for it to leave me alone. No training today obviously, but do I get points for all this dancing? Hey, it's cross-training!

Miserable cold!!

Been feeling off recently and wondered if it was all that good food from the other day ... No, I've been fighting off a cold. Slept a lot last yesterday trying to ward it off ... No good. Woke up feeling miserable and congested. Had a sore throat, tight lungs, headache, runny nose, sneezing, coughing ...

But this afternoon, after finally losing the woozy "do-I-have-a-fever" feeling, I started feeling more energetic! Even thought about going out for a run or a swim or worse ... BOTH!

"Wooooaaah!" a friend cautioned me ... "Be careful."

So thus, I am still at home resting and did not train ... sigh ...

I would have never thought!

Today was SUPPOSED to be a very productive day. Instead, I got sucked into the vortex of two very charming and delightful gentlemen visiting from London, England, and ended up pigging out and showing off Montreal's fun eating spots. I would have never thought that they were so totally cool! Ha ha!

And who is to blame for this? ... JC, my swim buddy!!

Alright, alright, I admit it ... I went with my twisted rubber arm to meet JC and his brother GC and friend GM for brunch. Cool morning ... got to hang out with two Kiwis and an Aussie for hours over a delicious omelet, fresh fruit, and three cups of coffee. It was great meeting JR as well, a very sincere and pretty girl from Franc, who like JC, is also a photographer. We had a great conversation about the importance of looking into people's eyes ...

JC and JR returned to their work. We remaining three decided that the super long brunch called for a walk afterwards. Final destination, Little Italy and the Jean-Talon market where I snapped this shot of GM and GC (left to right) .


Spring is just around the corner! Isn't it wonderful to finally have above zero temperatures? Lovely flowers, aren't they?

GM was intent on finding some yummy cannollis but instead, we found some lovely homemade pasta. Never found those cannollis but there were lots of nice cafés.

A little gurgle in GC's tummy brought us next to Schwartz's, the internationally reknown deli famous for it's amazing smoked meat sandwiches. Can't visit Montreal without tasting one of these, and of course a bagel from Fairmount or St-Viateur's Bagels, but we didn't have time to stop there too.



I wanted to chuck the cell phone of the man sitting to my right at the cafeteria-style table. It rang non-stop with one of those annoying gimmicky ring tones one hears only in American films. Obviously, he was not aware of the "vibrate" function on his phone.

The still hungry men wanted pie afterwards, so of course I HAD to bring them to Rockaberry's on St-Denis Street. And of course, I HAD to have a slice of Key Lime Pie. Couldn't let the men eat alone, could I? And heck, we still had 45 minutes to kill until it became absolutely essential to get them back to JC's flat so that they could pack and catch their evening flight.


All in all, a very unproductive day work-wise, but an incredibly amusing and lucky day spent happily in the company of two wonderful men with sexy accents and wild wit. The fetish nightclub story was a total hoot!

Thank you GC and GM for your company and all the laughs! And thank you for sharing with me two things that I love ... Montreal and FOOD!!

Ahem ... no training today ... couldn't get up off the ground from rolling around with my big belly ...

Those fried onions are the culprit!

No snowboarding recently ... too cold, and my youngest has a cold. But we managed to take a little dip in the pool yesterday. Met up with JC who told me about his recent swim workshop in the Alexander Technique ... will have to check it out online.

Invited GB over for hamburgers last night, something I rarely make, but I was long overdue. It was his first invitation over for hamburgers and you can bet your bottom dollar he'll be over again for them. I have other friends who totally love my burgers too. GB polished off four burgers, admittedly munching down the last one just for the taste. I must say, we were all pigs last night, as I was wolfed down two and a half myself, with my youngest eating almost as much, two and a third, winning hands-down in the "pound-per-pound" category of who can eat the most. He only weighs about 55 lbs. GB would have had to have eaten seven burgers to tie.

What makes these hamburgers so enticing and delicious?

Fried onions with steak spice, my friends ... try it ... come over to the dark side ... you will never be able to stop at one burger anymore ... mouah-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!

March Break Madness

I only realised today how long it's been since I last posted ... what can I say? Kids aren't in school or at their father's, and as any parent knows ... kids need a lot of attention and that's A-OK. Been a really fun March Break so far ... :-)

What have we been up to?

- snowboarding ... pretty wicked, especially with all the fresh snow
- lounging
- swimming
- watching videos - picked up Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights tonight ... funnier than I thought they would be!
- eating yummy stuff, like hot dogs, braised beef, homemade chocolate chip cookies, rice pudding, bacon and eggs, homemade bread, Chinese food (mine!), nachos with salsa and cheese, and more ... This sure beats my Christmas eating. Yes, I am doing a fine job of feeding my Buddha belly this week.
- sleeping
- cuddling and laughing and playing
- spending time with friends and other good stuff ...
- certainly haven't put any emphasis on training - hey, March Break is family week for me!

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I got into a conversation with JC recently about blogging and websites. He received a few negative comments like "don't be so narcissistic" when he first started his website for his photos and also other websites for things that interested him that he wanted to share with the world ...

I too have received comments about being "self-absorbed" or "self-centered" and all interestingly enough from people who don't even know me. Hmm ...

Well, JC and I and other bloggers and people who have websites have one thing to say to these negative people ...

"Don't visit our websites."

Easy solution, isn't it? Duh, I would think so!

Would these people continue smelling their own socks if they didn't like the stench? Or gobbling everything on their plates while complaining about how disgusting the food tastes?

Life is full of choices. I'd rather not choose the negative ones.

Thank you to the readers who do like to read my blog, and a special thank you to those who have shared their thoughts with me by making comments. I appreciate the time that you take out of your day to visit me here :-)

SNOW DAY! YAY!!

Montreal got snowed in today. It's not like we don't get snow on a regular basis, but today WE REALLY GOT SNOW, at least a foot of it if not more!

Dug my car out to drive the kiddies to school this morning to discover it was closed. Snow day for everyone! No training for me!

The kids are in the backyard as I type this post, happily building a gargantuesque hill and sliding down it. And to think I had to convince them to go out and play while I made supper. I had thought about going to the pool this afternoon but that would have involved digging my car out a second time and then losing my parking spot in the street (no garage, no driveway ... I live in the city!

Here's something neat I got sent from a friend ... a link to my commercial presently airing across Canada. Click on the video on the right. See if you are quick enough to spot the image below ...

Good girl, bad girl

GOOD GIRL

Got in a fairly decent workout at the pool.

10 laps warm-up
10 laps kicking drills
10 laps position drills
10 laps pull-buoy drills

4 x 10 laps freestyle, with last 10 concentrating on making myself as long as possible and reaching forward

Lots and lots and lots of flip turns. I usually rotate to my right and can't rotate worth sh*t to my left ... collided right into another swimmer as I pushed off the wall of the pool. Thank goodness he didn't chew me out; I felt so guilty already and apologized profusely through my embarrassment.

4 laps cool-down: one lap breast stroke, 3 laps slow back crawl. I realise how much my neck is still injured from my car accident. Breast stroke used to be easy, it is now very painful and difficult.

Grand total of 84 laps, or 2100 m. Yay!

BAD GIRL

True to my nature, I got too engrossed in my work this afternoon and realising the time, only had 20 min. left to run before picking up the kiddies. Well, I suppose 20 min. is better than nothing. And here I am, trying to train for a spring marathon. I'm not doing too well. I will have to run it on blood and guts and sheer will, fuelled by stupidity. Sigh.

Spent $220 at Loblaws ... What!?!?! We are only 3 people! How's that!? Alright, I did buy big ticket items like that big pack of soft toilet paper and Louisiana-style chicken wings. It was also dinnertime and we were all hungry - nope, not a good time to shop.

Word of advice ... The last batch of toilet paper I bought was that recycled kind. Never again ... I am sure they must have missed a few steps in the recycling process of all those cardboard boxes ... Need I say more ... OUCH!

I'm tired. How did I ever survive all those 3-5 hour training days last summer?