Yoga – done!

29 days and 30 classes!

Technically, the pass is still valid tomorrow, but I think I’m going to pass given that I’ve achieved my goal. I’m not so much of an overachiever that I need that 31st class tomorrow. I feel like I’m yoga-ed out for a while, but that “while” will probably only last until I get some yoga videos from Charissa.

Next long-standing project to complete – the cardigan. I’m well on track with a few more rows added to the back. Although there are only 3 episodes of Defying Gravity left, so we’ll have to pick some other show that we can wash dishes to (Dan) and knit (me).

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Crafty (and other) adventures

Another somewhat relaxing weekend. No big projects tackled, because yoga is still taking up a lot of my time. Luckily (but also sadly, on the other hand, because I have gotten used to it), my pass expires on Tuesday, so hopefully I’ll have more time after that.

I did get up to a few things in the kitchen, though. First, I finally got around to making my own breadcrumbs! We don’t eat a lot of bread in the winter, so anytime we buy bread and only eat half of it before it goes bad, I feel guilty. Well, finally a few days ago I had the time to dry the stale bread in the oven to turn it into crouton-like chunks of dried bread, and today I stuck it in the food processor. Fresh, crumbly breadcrumbs emerge! I think this calls for pork chops to test out the breadcrumbs.

I’m also trying my hand at making my own sauerkraut. I’m pretty excited, and hope it turns out!

In another half-hour, when the cabbage starts releasing its juices with the help of all the salt it’s stewing in, I”ll cram it into a jar and let it sit in a warm spot for a few days so the fermentation process can work its magic.

Finally, on the project front – my long-forgotten cardigan project is flying along! The main holdup was from the fact that I had made one half of the front, and forgotten to write down how I did my decreases (let’s just say the pattern I’m using is more of a list of suggestions than a pattern… not very well organized at all!). When I went to make the second half of the front, of course I got stuck, worrying that it will look funny if it’s uneven. It took me a good couple of months to force myself to sit down, and just work through the decreases so it looked somewhat like the first half. I think it worked out ok… but don’t judge! I’m not halfway through the back – after that, just two short sleeves and a nice puffy neck, and I’ll be done! Woot!

It’s definitely helped that we now have a pattern where Dan will put on one of the shows we watch while he does dishes, and I’ll have a good 40-45 (commercials are much shorter when you’re streaming) minutes of sitting in the kitchen chair and knitting while watching the show.

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On a day like this…

I have Dan’s temperature sighting beat – my car was showing -27 this morning. The garage was down to -8… yikes! So much for trying to use it as a fridge…

I can imagine something cozy like this

or this

keeping me warm on days like this.

Until then, my lovely down slippers as keeping me company while I lock myself at home. But seriously, people – today was COLD. My face nearly fell off on the walk from the car to work.

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Yoga – week 3

21 days and 21 classes! Still on track! Although, I have to admit that I’m getting to the burn-out stage – in at least half the classes, I catch myself thinking “oof… this is taking a while… are we done yet?”

In a fortunate turn of events, we stopped by the Home Depot the other day, and these convenient little things grabbed my eye as soon as we walked in.

I hummed and hawed, but the price was good, and Dan overrode my hesitation by putting this in the cart. No more worries about not hardening off my plants as much as I should, because I’m too lazy! I think I might start by setting it up in the “grow-op room” as pure shelving, while I’m getting the seedlings under control, and then bring it down and use it in the kitchen/deck once it warms up a bit. Maybe I could start growing some early salads in the greenhouse come march!

I’ve also spent some time looking at plant porn (aka seed catalogues), and made a list of everything I might want to have. Mind you, this didn’t even include flowers – only vegetables. And then I pared it down to about 1/10th of the original list, because let’s face it – my current vegetable garden is not equipped to handle more than a dozen different things. New on my plate (both the proverbial plate and, hopefully, the real one at the end of the season) for this year are beets, patty pan squash, radishes, parsnips and red peppers. I’m getting pretty excited – the next steps are to plug the frost-free date into the calendar to figure out planting dates, and then plan out where everything is going to go!

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Yoga – week 2

15 days and 17 classes. +2, woot! Which I’m going to need, since by Wednesday I’ll be back to even because of skipping classes both tomorrow and Wednesday for volleyball and ultimate, respectively.

I’m still debating what I’m going to do once my 30 days are over. I think I would like to keep it up at least a few times a week, but scheduling my life around yoga classes is definitely a bit of a pain. My plan right now is to try and find some podcasts and try to follow along at home. Do you know of any good ones?

You remember those shelves I was raving about, oh, a few months ago now? So I finally finished the remaining couple of coats of clearcoat, and convinced Dan to help me put them up over the weekend. I like how they look. The only problem? The @#$^&ing jars don’t fit. Yes, you know, the jars that these shelves were specifically made to house. [Actually, that's not entirely true - they fit if I put them upside down, and I'm very tempted to do that - but for now, at least I put the old jars in the shelves to free up some pantry shelf space] I measured, you know. I measured more than once. And tested it after the shelves were partially assembled. ARGH! I know he was trying to help, but Dan’s assurances of “oh, it’s ok, everyone screws up their first woodworking project… they’re just 13 when they do it” didn’t help the matters much. I know it’s not the end of the world, but I’m just frustrated because this is not something I can redo until spring, since I need the garage and the low overnight was -25. The garage is slightly warmer, but not enough for me to sit there for more than 2 minutes.

In other updates – I’ve found two fantastic bread recipes. One for a baguette, which I’ll discuss later, and one for a danish buttermilk bread. The buttermilk bread is from this book, and is great because I’ve never been able to find buttermilk in quantities smaller than 1 liter (yes, I know I could fake it with milk and a sour agent, but I like the real stuff), and it’s a delicious way to use up leftover buttermilk from another recipe. It’s a pretty simple bread, but the bread has a wonderfully soft texture, and the cardamom adds a little bit of something to put it out of this world.

Danish Buttermilk Bread

2 1/4 tsp yeast
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1/3 c lukewarm water
1/4 c unsalted butter
4 c white flour
2 1/2 tsp salt
2-3 tsp caraway powder or cardamom powder (I used cardamom)
1 c buttermilk

Mix yeast, sugar and warm water, let dissolve until foamy (5-10 minutes). Soften the butter and whisk it in.
Mix flour, salt and powder in mixing bowl.
Warm buttermilk to lukewarm and mix in with yeast mixture.
Make a well in the center of the flour and mix in the liquids. Beat/mix for 2 minutes, adding very little warm buttermilk to make a spongy, elastic dough.
Put dough into an oiled bowl, cover with a towel and set that in a bowl of warm water for 1 hour.
Beat down and put in an oiled bread pan, brush with oil or butter and let rise again in warm water, for an hour.
Preheat oven to 400 F and bake for 20 minutes; turn the heat down to 325 and bake for another 30 minutes.

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Yoga – week 1

8 days of yoga into my 30-day pass, I’m up to 10 classes. With that little buffer, I feel justified taking tomorrow as a well-deserved night off.

For the last week, I’ve been pleasantly sore most of the time, but definitely not the nearly-debilitating soreness that sometimes comes with starting a new workout program. Just enough of a soreness to let me know I’ve been doing something.

The other benefit that I’m already noticing is definitely all the stretching. I know I need to do it, but I never do because it’s boring. Well, yoga has the stretching built in. I’m already much more flexible in some of the more basic postures that are done in all the classes, and I’m looking forward to even more limber-ness. My hope is that after my 30-day pass is over, I can convince myself to keep doing this on my own, at least every couple of days. Hopefully 30 days will be enough to build up the muscle memory to be able to do some of the more basic stuff without thinking.

The other point is that I loooooooooooove my new Lululemon pants. Yes, I know, I’ve called it a cult many times myself, but they’re cooooooooooooooomfy. I’m definitely not at the point that I’ll be wearing them everywhere (including to work – and yes, I know of one such person), but I can see why people obsess about them. Good choice of gift, husband!

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Seattle

Dan and I went to spend Christmas in Seattle this year. He insisted on going sightseeing, and even though the weather was a little bit crummy (and very Seattle-like with lots of drizzle) on the day that we went, I still had a good day out with everyone.

The day after we arrived, we started off with a bang by going out to dinner at the Seattle Needle. My parents took us out for my birthday, and it was a fun and incredibly tasty affair. The restaurant revolves much faster than the one in Ottawa (a revolution in ~40 minutes vs. an hour and a half), which I must admit I liked more. More opportunities to notice different things! There was even a snow machine attached to the roof (I wonder whose job that is?), so we got to enjoy some large Christmas-y snowflakes a couple of times.

After dinner, we went up (and out) on the very chilly observation deck. Cities are pretty at night!

On our touristy day, we started at the Needle again,

and took the monorail to the center of the city. We wandered through the market,

past some interesting light fixtures,

and a friendly (but not very active) orca,

to end up at the Piers.

We decide to take an hour-long harbour cruise, and I’m very glad I did. It was informative, entertaining, had good views, and even kept us warm!

The downtown is still fairly compact,

they have crazy cat statues,

cargo containers,

and even non-smoking ships (???).

Even the sea-lions from San Francisco

enjoy the vistas that Seattle has to offer!

Go to pbase for more pictures.

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Fitness

This article (well, more the associated decision to lower fitness targets for everyone) just makes me mad.

What’s that, people aren’t getting enough exercise? I know – let’s lower the targets so they feel better about the exercise they do manage to do, instead of encouraging them to try and get a bit more exercise in! If you’re aiming for even 50% of the recommended workouts, I bet your motivation to do X hours a week has just been cut by a fair bit – well, Health Canada says I can get away with X/2, so yay me, I can stop my workouts on Wednesday now! I bet someone got a nice performance bonus for this “update” to the fitness guide, as well.

An hour a day for kids? Shouldn’t they get that much at school alone, between recess and gym class? Oh right, I forgot… parents can no longer tell their kids something as crazy as to go run around the playground until dinner. What’s even more depressing is the infographic at the end of the article, showing how proportions for kids have changed in the last 3 decades.

All I can say is… ARRRG! And I hope that Rick Mercer does a rant about this, because he’s hilarious.

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The Zen and the not so much

Today is the first day of the 30-day yoga pass that I purchased last year. My plan was to actually use it in December, in order to avoid all the January resolution people, but alas the social schedule filled up quickly, and I figured I wouldn’t be getting good value out of it with all the classes I’d have to miss. Today wasn’t as bad as I was expecting – maybe yoga is lower than gym on the list of resolutions people make for new year’s. My informal plan is to try and make it like their 30-day, 30-class challenge, although we’ll see how my ultimate and volleyball schedules work out. But shhhhh, it’s not a resolution, so you can’t hold me to it!

Speaking of New Year’s, we had a fantastic bash at our house again this year. Thanks to everyone who came, you guys are awesome! What I wasn’t expecting is how popular the mulled wine and the savoury snacks (I thought people had more of a sweet tooth around this time of year!) were – I promise the supply will be more endless next year. But I digress.

The less zen part of my day had to do with shopping. Wasn’t everyone supposed to get their returns over with last week? I got Lululemon pants from Dan for christmas (yes, I’m part of the cult now, after denying it for so long), but the Tall size was, shockingly, too tall. In the “an inch and half dragging under my heel” sense. So I thought I’d go and exchange them for either a regular length, or more a capri fit, which is what I was originally thinking of. I actually tried last thursday, but after seeing people waiting outside the store to get in, turned around and went home (actually, to Bridgehead to write a letter to my grandpa, but I digress again).

So this morning, full of misplaced enthusiasm, I thought I’d get there early, soon after the store opened. I managed to make it there about half an hour after opening, and then spent AN HOUR at the store. First I waited for a fitting room to try on the various other styles they had. The regular length was just a bit too short, and I didn’t like the fit of the other ones, so the solution was to hem the original pants (how did husband know to pick just the right ones???). And of course, then I spent more time waiting to drop them off. An hour, people! And to add insult to injury, I won’t have them until Saturday. But they’re so pretty and smooth. I think all will be forgiven once I have them back.

To put us all back in our Zen places, here’s a teaser from those Seattle pictures I keep promising to edit one of these days.

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