sad...

This morning i set out for my torture session of walk/running. The sky was blue and the ground was dry and the sun was shining. I was huffing and puffing away already only two minutes into the ordeal when my attention was caught by a rustling in the bushes. I paused in my exertions,only too glad to have an excuse to rest, and saw to my sadness, a little rabbit. He was lying on his side under a bush twitching and frantically jerking about as if his legs didn't work anymore. He seemed to be frantic and was breathing very quickly. I froze, not sure what to do... if i had been a few minutes later or earlier, i most likely wouldn't have seen him there but now, now, i had an onus to do something, didn't i? I wasn't sure what to do, so i stupidly stood there and watched... should i have done something? I remember coming across a little baby bird, too young to be out of the nest really yet, but he was alone on the forest floor and Carina and i stood there helplessly, caught in a dilemma, do we kill him or just let him go? What would be the cruel or the right thing to do? In the end, we let him run away convincing ourselves that he would survive and be all right, while in reality he most likely became lunch for a hungry fox. I suppose in the end, if we hadn't been there at that time, he would have gone on his way, or this rabbit would have died without anyone to see him.
So i stood by the path, and watched the rabbit for a long while; he eventually slowed down and stopped breathing, the poor little guy. I wondered what his family would think, and why such a little thing, whom i had never seen before, could affect me so... but I suppose seeing any of God's wonderful creatures suffering is always sad. Thankfully, there is the verse about God tending even to the sparrows and He knows about this little rabbit too...

All my bags are packed..

All my bags are packed, i'm ready to go... okay, so i'm not... but it will come... Only 4 more sleeps till Lauren and I head off to good old England and a fresh set of adventures... no denying that we're pretty stoked about this and i'm sure the days will fly by before we head off. Our plane leaves from Hamilton Airport at 8 pm on Friday evening.. provided GlobeSpan is operational... i believe we are amongst their first flights to Edinburgh from there so here's hoping! So lots of last minute running around, finishing things up and packing and unpacking and repacking and such, all part of the travel experience. Three night shifts lie between myself and Friday evening so i will have to have everything organized by tomorrow afternoon - so i'd better shuffle off and see what sort of organized system i can make out of the chaos on my floor!

April showers bring....

Once upon a time, there were four young ladies. And these four ladies were determined to give themselves exercise and improve their physical health. Consequently, they all arranged to meet at a specific time on a specific date at a specified location in order to facilitate this goal. As they travelled towards their meeting place, the heavens conspired against them and opened the clouds to allow some raindrops to patter through. Our erstwhile heroines decided that this would not stop them. As they parked their vehicles, the skies darkened and the wind howled and the pace of the raindrops quickened. But firmly determined that exercise would still be had, the ladies stepped out boldly on the path, nary an umbrella or a raincoat to be seen.
Perhaps, these things would not have even been enough to keep the wetness out - a full body suit of repellent material would have been more in order as the rain had a persistently nagging way of completely covering them with an ever darkening hue of wetness. Soon, the rain was so heavy that the path was nearly obscured, the gravel was spitting up onto their legs and their hair was so wet that it dripped onto their noses and made seeing very difficult. But exercise was vital so the walkers persisted... no one was going to give up!!!

The gales of wind lashed the rain at the foursome and caused them to shake with cold and draw their breaths in with a gasp. At long last, two of our heroines decided that pneumonia was not a good way to start off the spring season, so unfashionable and unhealthy and they boldly resolved to head back to their cars. Unfortunately, their two companions wanted to persist for a while longer... but soon common sense won out and the intrepid foursome were making their desparate way back down the path completely drenched and looking for all the world like a quartet of drowned rats (except for the exceptionally toned legs!! heehee!). As they separated and were ready to depart for home, to seek warmth and shelter, the sun began to peek through the storm clouds, the rains let up and the wind slowed down. Isn't there some law about that by a man named Murphy?? Well, all's well that ends well. Fortunately for our girls, they were, none of them, witches to melt in the rain such as Dorothy's nemesis in the Wizard of Oz and there was nothing a towel and a dryer couldn't fix. All in the name of fitness!!!

It's travel time!!!!

Bring on your maps and compasses, your roads on the wrong side and your scones, your backpacks and suitcases, your zip-off pants and guidebooks and i'll tell you that we are about to tame England once and for all!!! My intrepid travelling companion, Laurenski and I are on the cusp of an adventure of a lifetime (if we indeed can manage to make it out of the rental car parking lot without major incident!!! - more on that in a few weeks!). In just 15 sleeps, we will be ready to board our little flight to Edinburgh and to take on the Scottish highlands in the footsteps of William Wallace, Rob Roy and Mel Gibson lookalikes in blue war paint. Much time has been spent in garnering information on the various destinations we will be hitting - among them hopefully Hadrian's Wall, Stratford, Derbyshire (home of the home of the fictional Fitzwilliam Darcy - the eternal romantic hero), Oxford, Bath and London. After blitzing through England and seeing all we can cram and stuff in two weeks, we will once again be on our way, winging over the English Channel to gay Paris and all the sights and sounds that accompany that great European Capital. We are most excited to be priveledged to see the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower and such... fun times lie in store! Then with the good old train, we head to the Motherland of tulips, wooden shoes and King peppermints to enjoy some good old family time and gezelligheid. We are both super excited and can't wait for what waits for us!! So many options and choices - kinda like those books i used to read whence i was a child "choose your own adventure!" Once we are done that whole whirlwind, we will be ready to settle down to regular life and attempt to assimilate once again into the workforce and the like, but our memories will live in our hearts and minds - oh boy, i sound way too melodramatic - gotta go now - probably that good old air at 4:09 am that is causing me to wax emotional...
Bon Voyage

Icing, High-Sticking and Bruises

Well, here at long last i am returned to the blogging world after an unexpected hiatus... caused by the interruptions of a thing called life. Yes and accompanied by a healthy dose of laziness! But here i am again - mostly to talk about a thing which is rapidly consuming a large majority of the Canadian population's interest. Nope, it's not the mating habits of harp seals or the peculiar camouflage techniques of the Arctic ptarmigan but rather that game which is known not as the "beautiful game" (i.e. soccer/football for the English amongst us) but ice hockey! Yep, it's the playoffs and so we are now immersed body and soul it seems in the armchair fan position. Currently, i am cheering for any team which is remotely Canadian - Calgary, Ottawa, Vancouver, etc... though i suppose this really is rather ironic since most likely all the high scoring, bigwig players on the Canadian teams are likely American and vice verse for the American teams hence i should be really cheering for Texas or Florida or whatever other unlikely state that supports a hockey team (i mean, why in the world would there ever be hockey in Florida except for someone's brilliant invention of an arena with cooling fans and ice machines!). I enjoy watching the games now - i'm such an non-loyal fan i suppose... only coming on board at the last minute - i really should pick a team and be loyal to it and that's that - but i'm fickle and so with my fickle being, i cheer for whomever seems to be doing well at the time!
Anyhow, i digress - ice hockey is one thing - ball hockey is another world entirely. It was brought to my attention that as a ball hockey player - i have greater energy expenditures than the average NHLer. We are doing lots of running and shooting whilst ice hockey players have the great advantage of skates and being able to glide across the ice. Now, there are days when i glide - but it's usually due to tripping or the like - not a planned thing to be sure. But i'll argue that we are more tired - nothing at all to do with the fact that i am super out of shape and can't run worth beans and such. -Somehow i ended up in the face-off circle after yet another goal scored against us (i believe the score was no longer being tabulated after it reached the astronomical height of 82 to 0 or something vaguely similar to that!) and since i'm still not convinced which side i like to shoot on - i was playing with my lefty stick that night - hence i could only play well on the left hand side - if the puck dared to go over to the other side, i was lost! He was laughing at me since my stick seemed not to be on the right side but i won the face-off none the less! Yeah!!! I also managed to steal a few times from our opponents whilst whacking them firmly about the shins with my mis-managed stick. It's sure a good thing we don't really get penalties for tripping and such.
But all in all, hockey is fun. So bring on Hockey Night in Hamilton and drop the puck! I'm ready!

The Good Old Hockey Game!!

Well, all in the name of athleticism and health, of comradeship and socialization, i have joined a ball hockey team! I was asked by Carina, my roommate, if i wished to participate in such an endeavour and at the time it seemed like a spendid idea.... would help me achieve many things if not increase my athletic profile significantly. So there we were, two silly chicks, quavering in fear the evening of the first game, foolishly attempting multiple excuses to get out of their commitment but knowing deep in our hearts that we needed to do this crazy thing. We knew only a few souls at the gym and were surrounded by many others who appeared to be much more proficient at appearing to be expert hockey players. Both of us on the other hand hadn't played floor hockey since around grade five so any muscle memory that may have developed was definitely not in play anymore. We furtively peered around at our fellow team members and soon-to-be opponents, sizing them up and trying frantically to look like we knew what we were doing. We sadly lacked our own sticks and knee pads and so looked sorely out of place with bare shins and plastic gym stock room hockey sticks. I didn't even know what side of my body i was supposed to hold the stick on... was i a leftie or a rightie? I'm still not convinced that i've made the right choice but for now i'm sticking with the old rightie - seems the least awkward to me - that's what it's all about right? We ran onto the gym floor apprehensive about what to do and how to do it... where should we be? why is the other team scoring on us already only two minutes into the game? With our intrepid coach/organizer shouting out encouraging comments to the members of our team (most of whom had not played in many years either thankfully), our team replicated the Tim Horton's junior soccer leagues where all the players follow in a nice little clump behind the ball and don't spread out on defense. We have learned better since then but we still have lots of skills practise to work on. But to our shock and horror, it was the sad lack of physical shape that was the big problem. I experienced jello legs, a stitch in my side and complete breathlessness within the first 2 minutes of running around - how was i supposed to last beyond that time? But as all things in life should be - we took things a minute at a time, coming gasping off the court yelling "switch!" with the last remnants of breath in our lungs. We unfortunately lost our first game to the merciless score of 13-2 if i'm right (it's possible it was higher than that but i think they might have stopped counting at some point!). Our second game, last week, was a little better as far as skills goes and strategy - our team scoring right away 2 goals in the first few minutes (mine being one of them!!). Our opponents quickly pulled together and defeated us handily 11-2 but we did feel somewhat more into playing this time. So all teasing aside, it is a great exercise experience, we have met new people but we still have a long ways to go before the Women's Olympic hockey team is sending their scouts to watch our performances!!!

A Viticultural Experience

The whole gang!

Well, on Saturday afternoon, a group of intrepid girls set out for a little holiday to Niagara-on-the-Lake, a most wonderful and culturally enriched little section of good old Southern Ontario. The girls were most excited to be on an outing and to be able to enjoy each other's company for an afternoon. They piled into a vehicular conveyance and made their way at high speeds down the main highways in the direction of south. Much joy was had in the car partaking of vruchten hartjes and chocolates whilst a certain member of the group, no names mentioned, was tormented by the noxious odors of certain despicable black licorice candies courtesy of the ultimate favorite store in Grimsby, the Dutch store! However, once the pungent smells had been vented out of the car by some quick draw action on the automatic car windows, the situation improved noticeably. Soon enough, the car pulled into the extensive grounds of the Pellar Estate Winery and the females eagerly stepped out into another world. This was the world of sommeliers and flutes, of wining and dining, of bottles and corks and all things viticultural. The girls joined a tour hosted by a rather bulbous and rosy proboscused (proboscied?) fellow who seemed to have indulged in a little more than was good for him of his stock in trade. However, he did educate our heroines on the finer elements of wine making and tasting. He encouraged them to follow the five "S"'s - let's see if they can be arranged in proper order here!

• Sight - is it cloudy or clear, what colours can be seen in its liquid depths - seen by tipping the glass on its side (without spilling it!) and peering through it on a light background - does it have legs, meaning assessing the viscosity of the wine
• Swirl - involving swishing the wine around in the glass oh so carefully so that the wine does not slosh out the top of it - a feat which was difficult for some members of the group who tend to be a little on the clutzy side!
• Smell - inhaling deeply in the glass and trying to determine what other smells could be hiding in the wine - most of the group had difficulty overcoming the alcoholic smell and merely agreed with the guide when he suggested hints of honey or blueberries and the like
• Swish - a sip of wine is taken and swished around the mouth to expose all those tastebuds to the wine and to cleanse the palate!
• Spit or Sip - depending on how much wine the drinker is going to engage in - the options are spit - unnecessary in our books or sip - gently allowing a small amount of wine to slip through the teeth and sit in the little pouch behind the teeth whilst attempting to softly inhale some air to make little bubbles and enhance the wine tasting experience - a supremely hard thing to do without making a fool of one's self!

The budding viticultural experts!

Once a sample had been had of both a nice red wine and a very oily and foul-smelling ice wine(isn't that stuff supposed to be Ontario's best?), the group was led back up from the cellars into the real world in the gift shop (of course!!) where three intrepid members of our quintent partook of a wine tasting flight - seven little part glasses of different wines - after a little while, they sorta all ended up tasting similar and the girls realized somehow that they enjoyed white wine better than red, smashing all previous likes! Feeling nice and warm and giggly, with nice red cheeks, the fivesome departed the winery (with their lovely designated and feted driver) and went in search of some sustenance to slake their hunger. Some high jinks to work out the wine!

Life imitating art???

A fun time was had by all as they strode down the lovely quaint streets of Niagara-on-the-Lake and a wonderful lunch was gobbled quickly down by the hungry females. They then went in search of some sweets to finish off the experience and were lured in by the Cows icecream store to purchase delectable flavours of icecream which were enjoyed as they shivered their way back to their vehicle in the 3 degree air! Never a bad time for icecream!!! A wonderful drive home was a fitting conclusion to a hele gezellig dagje uit! Thanks very much ladies!!

A moment with a fine bovine!