A scent of snow

Mountains today! I stepped off the night bus at 6:00, bleary-eyed and excited. My hotel room was ready when I arrived so I checked in and took a nap. Ran around the Safeway to find snacks and apples. Walked up part of a steep mountain and grabbed a gondola with a couple of British girls the rest of the way up.

The summit was windy and cold and crawling with shivering tourists (like me). The treetops were at nose level and the snow that hung to the top branches and way down on the rocks below smelled fresh when the wind picked up. I have been trying all day to dissect the scent of snow but all I understand is that it has a single note. Pure. Clean. Fresh. (Sounds like a laundry detergent commercial.)

I languished in the outdoor turquoise spa pool with the other tourists until the heat and lack of space got the best of me. The air was about 8 degrees but the water was a lovely 35 or so. I received a free towel because I asked for one just as the girl's manager was leaving the room.

Relaxed and warm, I trudged down the hill towards the centre and reflected on the day. The only disappointment was that the wildest animal in my environment was a bold chipmunk eating peanuts on a wooden fence. I heard that the bears moved on when the berry supply dried up, and I was probably too close to traffic for anything else to show.

Dinner was a bowl of udon with tempura shrimp and veggies and a seaweed salad in a tiny hole in the wall resto on Banff Ave. I think I've had some form of east asian food every day since leaving Ottawa and I'm contemplating more for tomorrow.

Odds are.

Take a message

A late night. An early flight. Looking out the window. Another flight. Waiting for a shuttle. Unpacking, channel flipping. A walk and a look around. Weighted eyelids, stifled yawns. Jammies at 8pm. Night night.

Grand sweeping statements

I ran for 49 minutes tonight and set a PR for the fastest 1k recorded by this GPS - 5min/k. Kind of embarrassing: a few changes in recent years! I ran along the usual circuit but opted for an altered route with more flowers, plus I got swept up in a gaggle of runners I didn't know, and I am sure that's where the improvement happened. Change demands results. And I was treated to some flamboyant stranger gossip that I really shouldn't pass on (to all one of you, haha).

When I got home, I wanted to do some shoulders but my left one is sore, so instead I did legs with two 5-lb weights:

• forward lunges x 20, 2 sets
• leg lifts x 10, 3 sets each leg

It worked up my appetite for veggie pizza made with a pita, spicy sauce, spinach, broc, zucchini and dairy-free shredded cheese which isn't nearly as awful as you might think. It kinda melts, and it kinda tastes cheese-like, but perhaps not if you pride yourself on having a refined taste for cheese.

Where are my shoes?

We haven't even talked about last Sunday yet. 19k. I had planned on hitting only 15k but everything was going so well. I took to the other side of the river to see the trees and again, got swept away.

Michael C. Hall was a guest on Q today. I need to go now and listen to the interview and that deep voice again. :-)

Friday night fun run

Friday night runs are invigorating, and the weather tonight was perfect - not too hot but still warm. A few ducks still playing around in the lake, and a few cyclists. Not many runners. Plus rain started to fall just as my apartment building came into view - a bonus either way you look at it (Running in the sweet rain, yay! Or, almost home, yay!) 

I ran for an hour with speed increases during the Diamond Rings tunes on the playlist.

Had a moment. I realized that the crunchy material I'd been running on down by the university was a mess of fallen leaves, and I was struck by the realization that I was interacting with the first signs of autumn. It's tragic to see the signs of summer's passing but transformation is inevitable. Cycles provide opportunities for change as well as the security of routine. And really, all changes occur in cycles that carry on without us or our consent. 

So don't worry! Everything is moving along the way it should.

Big Tuesday

So much happened today! And didn't happen. To explain, allow me.

It was Back to Work after a long weekend. It's not uncommon for a steep plunge in motivation on the first workday morning following a long weekend - and I know I'm not alone here. But today was an exception and I think I know why. See, I've been plunking my butt into my desk chair 30 minutes earlier for a week now, and I think those extra minutes have isolated the crest of my energy wave! Wow that sounds like I've ingested some funky mushrooms; however, it's pretty accurate. I get to work, and then I get to work. Less dawdling, more focus. It's pretty cool that a change this small can have such a significant effect. My crappy job hasn't even changed! I'm just more alert and conscious.

|| Cutting naan dough into triangles ||

And I won a tee shirt on my way to the office! I gave a group of Shinerama kids a bill, and in response they pulled a white T-shirt down from the concrete building it'd been duct-taped to and handed it to me, screaming wildly. I got a high five from a tall guy in an alligator onesie. I barely got away with my life, haha. An awesome start to my morning.

|| Fryin' up the naan ||

I didn't run tonite but I did some yoga when I got home and it was amazing! Those 75 minutes pass pretty quickly during this amazing video.

I'm typing quicker than fire all of a sudden - I'll blame/tip my hat to the fantastic trance music revving my ear drums.

Dr. Financestein

I think I have been pretty quiet about the shift in my spending habits these last seven months. Don’t worry, it’s nothing personal. I just haven’t explored the data myself, and I have only scratched the surface when it comes to considering the progress I’ve made. And I have made progress for sure.

So here goes. Since January 1st I have been trying to live more frugally. (I had to, just now, edit the previous sentence because I had added, “…and consume less,” and really, that is just not the case. I am probably consuming less – I'll explain in a future post – but reduced consumption was never a goal of this adventure.) My true goal was to save half of my income this year. Looking back, I didn’t think too hard or too long about doing it, or how I would do it. It was late December, maybe a week before the January 1st deadline, and I just jumped in. I created a simple Excel spreadsheet and threw in some income and expenditure data, and pretty much left it at that.

Around that time, I heard of a 100-day challenge where particpants were encouraged to exercise every day for 100 days, and to keep records. I think a minimal amount of exercise minutes was expected every day. Wow, I thought, that sounds great! So I started a second spreadsheet and filled in my exercise particulars for that day. But that’s as far as I could take it, because by the end of the third day I had fallen off the exercise wagon. To think that all this time, I thought I preferred exercising over saving money.

So I deleted the 100-day challenge spreadsheet, and spent a surprising amount of time hunched over my laptop, poring over the financial one. This was my experiment, and I the eccentric Dr. Financestein, compelled by my competitive nature to excel at this new science of money. I wanted life! Life instead of working and wasting, and wondering how I’m going to leave my yucky job and move on to something else.

At first, my record keeping was sparse. When I look back in a few months, January will not be a month from which I will learn how I managed my cashflow because that page is just a list of expenditures and income all mashed together, probably with missing data. Around mid-February, I started to play with my spreadsheet design, adding a separate page for each month, and notes that detailed where I had spent and what I had bought. And where had I spent my money? Well, I can tell you where it didn’t go: toward weekday lunches or clothes. Let’s meditate on the fact that I can save money by not indulging in two wildly unnecessary areas. Now I bring my lunch to work and I don’t go shopping for clothes for myself unless I need them. Pretty simple.

Last week I took a brief look at how much I've saved. I was relieved to see that I'm on track, and not bringing my lunch everyday for nothing (my brother was right, this saves a bundle!). If I continue on this path, by December 31 I will have more than 50% of my income stashed.

YIPPEE!