Training Log Archive: Yukon King

leek soup garnished (generously) w gorgonzola, roasted red peppers, & basil chiffonade, & a skillet cornbread w sage & cheddar.

C • MMMMmmm...whats a chiffonad... 5

train station to p/u prescriptions, a coca cola & bus tickets over at Metrotown, plus I scored a free big ol' frozen sample pizza (spinach & tomato) that they were giving away at the train station, on the way home!!!

evening walk, blueberry & cantaloupe sky, met Mog & a weird (neurologically hampered?) dog named Blue, plus NIcky Da Mop. G-dog just about has the command "Bring the Sock" wrapped up - before a walk, we go in the bedroom, get a pair of socks, she carries one (w gusto) & human carries the other, out in the hall, she kills her sock, then human puts both socks on & we go for a walk. It's insanely cute & completely useless, but I love it.

scooted over to the corner grocery for fish for birthday (lemon, dill, cracked pepper & olive oil w a touch of tabasco), then walk over to "the other park" in bright sunshine, very nice.
also for birthday - artichokes (butter & lemon), brown rice, lime-avocado crostini's w/ shrimp, & the blueberry..parfait-things, with lemon shortbreads in them instead of ladyfingers or spongecake...kind of an overall citrus theme...

C • how did you sneak in this b... 8

more coffee pollination...

also toasting up triple-nut granola batch, oat-bread for birthday shrimp-avocado crostini for tomorrow, blueberries & custard for birthday blueberry white-trash-style tiramisu/trifle, baking squash for purees for next week's squash soup & squash ravioli, gonna buzz up some hummous...maybe sundried tomato flavor?
food makes me so happy!

walk-date w Keith & Oscar - down thru the woods & over to the dog-park, up to Taylor for water, & home along the parkway. Cool & overcast.

finally felt good enuf to try out a lil RoM etc, yow am I achey. Elbows, knees need work. But at least they can imagine doing a bit of RoM now, which is a big improvement over the last few weeks of skanky inflammation...more later, I think.

over to the train stn and Stn Sq for a movie - Speed Racer, one of Dennis' childhood favorites - I know I am not a big refined movie viewer, but I thought it was Really Fun, quite innovative visually, and even possessed a sort of coherent plot, so why is it bombing?!

train stn & Stn Square to sort out some prescriptions - decided to wear my opal & then picked out an entire outfit to go w it, boy did I look great!
PM walk (most of time way longer than I imagine, aiming for 1 hour stayed out for 1.5, but its all good) over to old resort by the ravine - the clearing is just over-the-top movie-set meadow w drifts of buttercups & tiny daisies & some tiny blue mint-like thing w the birds going nuts on a movie-meadow soundtrack, tweetweeee... then down the bikepath thru the woods & thru the woods again, & up the top of stairmaster, met Kischa, & Kyra.
hoisin tofu for dinner...

felt like sh*t most of today, that dumb ol' feel-like-I'm-gonna-pass-out thing. WhatEver.
laid on the bed, still felt bad. went for a walk to the park w Dog at the proper time, kicked back in the red adirondack chair sculptures across from the school, felt a bit better. Floaty clouds, nice breeze, we brought along some snowpeas to eat & Walden to read. Wandered back real slow along train tracks past Cortina, what a sweetly lush & pastoral path that is now, w all the lupines in bloom, wow...
Prepared odd thai pkg food (sucked in at the grocery store, haha) wasn't too bad but won't try that again. Then messed w plants on patio til about sunset, still really weak. As mentioned, WhatEver, tomorrow is another day.

C • ok, for tomorrow's installm... 6

back from Vidette - it was at least as good as I hoped it would be!
getting up and going to bed w the sun (I made a pact I wouldnt look at a clock or a watch the whole time, & I did it), morning coffee & hours on the deck looking over the silent lake & watching all the birds - loons, mergansers, bald eagle, ospreys, kingfishers, nuthatches, two sorts of hummingbirds, some scoters (huh?! ...uh, OK...), tanagers, various ducks and shorebirds... one morning there was a beaver which was very cool. Gypsy loved playing with her BFF Sweet Pea, who looks just like a wolf, & is almost as wild, but who loved Dennis cuz he'd take the pair of them for huge rambling walks every morning. BBQ dinners, favorites were the grilled peaches n cream corn and the huge garlic-buttery mushrooms...
finished Great Expectations (mostly about stupid people being stupid in particularly unlikely ways, but I liked Mr. Wemmick, Herbert, & Joe) continued on Walden, did embroidery & a puzzle, some naps, roasted marshmallows, D made up the fire every morning so it was toasty when I got up (still a bit brisk at that elevation)...weirdest thing was smelling a kinda toasty barbeque smell after driving the jeep for a while, & there are little piles of twisty black gooshy... things in various areas of the engine - we pick them out, more appear the next day - they are mushrooms! being cached by some little rodent looking for excellently warm, dry, sheltered areas to dry things for winter storage apparently.
Gonna take it easy today, order groceries for my fun recipes-from-magazines cooking week, tonight is emergency rations, a frozen vegetarian lasagne from the big chain grocery frozen section for only six dollars, we'll see...

C • GE and W 12

corner grocery to p/u milk etc in the morning, then dog walk w Bao & his mom, down to the parkway, over to Taylor, sat & watched the kids get out of school, dragged grumpy dog home, talked to Odette about her scooter, tea, Disc Drive....

fourth averaged day...

third averaged day....

second averaged day...

added up (wildly estimated) walks at Vidette & Tunkwa and decided to sorta average them over the latter four days of the vacation - both D and I felt kinda drained and energy-less the first few days there (travel day after-effects? elevation? tail-end of cold for me? dying-away of stress from kitchen reno planning/pepper spray/other assorted worries? big ol' skanky flare that I performed during that timeframe? who knows...) I felt alot, ALOT better after three or so days of rest tho.
No yoga! thought it would be a yoga kinda tihng but it wasnt.
Should also note more explicitly that ...R knee improved substantially, as did feet, and that grievous deathly energy drain from the cold has been crushed out of existence, yay for rest !!

C • yay - sounds like it helped... 2

off we go....
http://www.videttelake.com/

C • have a great time, i guess ... 2

packing for week at Vidette Lake off the grid. So looking forward to it. Kind of weird not to be doing the Sage Stomp this weekend, but it was certainly very restful, & it looked terribly hot up in Kamloops, hope they had fun.

C • not too bad actually 1

galloping about in circles (and circles and circles) at the grocery store, and then a fun evening walk over to Taylor Park w Gypsy, Shelly, & Su-Jane.

hot afternoon walk, very leisurely over to the ravine, down a bit, & back home. Met some people who are moving into the neighborhood & chatted w them a bit. Then over to train stn to go for matinee (Forbidden Kingdom) & dinner over at Metrotown. Red Robin, surprisingly good salmon plate & chicken wrap, plus a strawberry lemonade & a bellini. Also selected tile for kitchen floor, yay!

slept nine hours after pepper spray experience yesterday - it's not often you get to read an AP log where the words "trophy wife" and "pepper spray" occur in such close juxtaposition. Still a bit tired but doing OK.
So, after we got back from the park, I went into the bedroom to start tidying but then G did an alarm bark followed by several more, so I went to the door & peeked out the little spy-hole thingy but there was nothing - went back to the kitchen, hacked up a lung into the kitchen sink, & wondered "wow, even for me this is a nasty fit, what on earth is going on", cracked open the hall door & got a good faceful of, to me, terrifyingly unknown toxicity. (not being in the habit of subduing either bears or human malefactors or being associated even remotely with such events) - this all ended up with 5 fire trucks, two police cars, and me & the G on our Tiny Balcony along with Three Gigantic Hacking-up-a-Lung Firemen who had come to rescue us, yay! They seem to have a standard procedure w huge hi-powered fans to help with this situation, which they promptly deployed. Me & G escaped downstairs to breathe fresh air, & found the cops were there cuz the pepper spray was apparently part of some sort of attempted home-invasion/robbery next door to us which is I suppose what G-dog was barking at.
Then Alfie picked us up is his new miata (G was the Inaugural Blonde) & once D got home & checked things out & cranked the windows open more etc, he came over & we went out for thai food, which was a very nice ending to a rather stressful and surprising afternoon.

C • whew you seem to be taking ... 3

over to the park, met Rocky on the way home. Hot & sunny, high white overcast after we got home. Both G & I boggled by heat, G is napping on cool kitchen tile, I ate an orange juice popsicle, cunningly prepared this morning, yum! Really quite tired, dinner will be easy tho, already mostly prepared - seared scallops on a sushi-flavored rice salad, cucumbers, avocado, nori, scallions... & a touch of dimsum from yesterday. And orange-juice popsicles.

today will be busy as well - downtown to bank & have coffee w Robin, then back to Metrotown on the train for dimsum w dad-in-law & some of his cronies & Hopefully his new, deep red, convertible, chick-magnet, two-seater, Miata, oooh! actually very surprising that Alfie buys this car, but if it makes him happy...
hoisin tofu & peppers for dinner, I think.
do I sound like a Trophy Wife? shopping, cars, socializing...dang. it's kinda not very AP. oh well :)

to train stn, downtown, & dog walk to Taylor Park where Gypsy helped train two small children on how to walk dogs - she was a bit freaked out, but she managed very well. Sunny and windy, not quite warm enough for full summer clothing.

so apparently today (soggy & misty thus far) the temperature will almost double from yesterday. Then over the next two days, the weather will clear & the temperature will double AGAIN from that! is this global warming? yow! but it will be suddenly gloriously full summer!

started off the day w visits to various tile stores (kitchen floor project) & the wheelchair place up on Edmonds - 1.4 km - lotsa tiles & some possibilities, but need to look at a few more stores. Found a less expensive but equally nimble model to the Quantum - they have sturdy young men in wheelchairs (non-motorized of course) selling the chairs at this place, bonus! oops is my husband reading this?
Next G & I had our neighborhood walk, the rain suddenly stopped halfway thru - we went down to the parkway, up the creek, & around the block w little diversions off to add interest - only met Betty Boop, which bothered G-dog quite a lot.
Evening walk as well - great sunset, clouds are breaking up a bit. G dragged me down the back-path cuz she apparently HEARD the duck-tollers quietly playing catch in the courtyard from half a block away - she was so happy to play with them...
vegetarian pizza, ww crust, apple pear & pistachios for dessert.

this was a bit lo-key to log, but G sure enjoyed it, so what the heck...rolling around on the livingroom floor after setting up the pizza.

short-ish dog-walk in the pouring rain, down to the parkway & back up the creek, with little extra bits thrown in to make it more interesting and a bit longer. Soaked when we got home. Strapped my knee up as it seemed to need it.
salmon, caprese salad, wild rice, snowpeas & mushroom stirfry...maybe a bit of mango?

down the creek, and up the creek... nice, cool, quiet, overcast day, forest is beautiful w delicate new leaves and birdsong. Met Remie and Amy. R knee cranky. Still very weary despite good sleep. Spicey whole wheat Vietnamese-style noodles, tofu & veg for dinner, and a big fruit salad.
Bizarrely, realized today that I am a health-wise completely f*cked-up person, ie before now I guess I always kind of thought of myself as a healthy person w a touch of arthritis & so on & so forth, but this is so not the case (um, how did it take me so long to notice this!??) I am Really Different, my energy is WAAAY different, I am crippled & sooo-o-o messed up physically. I don't get over immune challenges anything like other people. Etc. Weirdly, this isnt upsetting me or freaking me out at all, I'm just sorta marvelling over it & poking it again & again & again like you poke a cavity with yer tongue. I don't know what to make of it at all. Probably nothing, really, it's just business as usual.

C • tough stuff there 5

evening walk over to corner grocery, & a short walk w/ Shelly & Su-Jane to catch up.

wildly random guesstimate - walk in the woods south of Rice Lake orienteering - down to the tunnel site & back. G was freaking out over the orienteers for some reason - never did it before - tracking them anxiously as they ran thru the woods - had to do some serious stand & stay commands, since she was breaking them - on the way back she calmed down. Very pretty in the woods but I was a bit tired & anxious.
went over to Gord's after for lunch (& dinner!) & some tax prep work.

dark & unsettling weather, grumpy dog. walked over to Taylor Park via Cortina and then home. Had tea, made posh salmon dinner & ate it in "the dining room" looking out over Richmond, then Green & Black's organic chocolate sampler for dessert. That was a rather better than the walk.
Note: R knee is a bit congested last two days, not too bad but notable.

feeling a bit lo-key today since not enuf sleep - did trot up to Highgate to p/u pkg, but lost power bigtime after that - staggered down to the parkway to sit for a bit, then down thru woods & up thru woods & home, met lotsa dogs, gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous day but really wiped out - probably order in some blissful pizza for dinner & call it a day...oof...

colder & windy today - went up behind Cortina, down to the park, met Shane the Park Guy, dug after some voles, then back up thru Southwind. Decided to make a pot of chai today & relax a bit as not so energetic. Thai tofu tonight, yum! asparagus, red pepper, maybe fancy-cut carrot shapes? then the last bit of pineapple for dessert.

not quite so much sleep last night, but I'm comin' back anyhow. Getting my menu mojo back too - it may be time next week to do some fun "magazine clipping" recipes....

train stn & over to Station Sq to p/u meds & red pepper, grapes, etc. then fabulous dog-walk, 2+ hr in the bright early summer sunshine - windy so over to the woods, down along the creek, then thru the woods & sat in sun near the top of Stairmaster - meandered in meadows of flowers, wandered in woods, listened to nuthatches honking & squirrels burbling & pipping, saw a rufous, met dogs, dug after moles, read a book, had snax, sunbathed, chewed a stick...sounds like summer, really...
since dogsitter did not eat perogies & sausages, am going to whip them up for dinner tonight along w/ mushrooms, onions, & sour cream. Plus snow-pea-carrot stirfry & a big plate of icey green grapes, yum!

evening walk while D went for a run - met a huge fat Rottweiler named Princess. Went for astonishingly gigantic desserts at Boston Pizza, one will definitely be enough next time!!!

Slept another nice 8.5, yay! took it easy today over to the park - mini-picnic only. G reluctant as usual to come home but passed out exhausted as soon as we get home. warm, misty sunshine...

mostly lay on the floor & breathed & focussed probably half the time, still muy tired...or actually it is just perceiving that no depth/no stamina thing, I guess, it is getting better every day tho. Bit of RoM, bit of yoga, R knee is improving.
Tea-time, lil bit more taxes, then a tamale casserole, nice and easy!

team dog-whupping on the bed after we watched a DVD of 07 Acura Florida regattas. She is SOOoo cute, waving her (actually rather impressive) fang collection around , growling & flailing & attacking pillows.

various bits of walking - dogwalk down to the parkway, across & hastily back home (G could NOT believe what a cr*ppy short walk that was!) prefaced by Dr office visit (took taxi there, but bus back) in AM, and followed by trip downtown on train to St Paul's in PM.
Knee is doing a bit better, slept a solid 8.5 hr, and hopefully the transfusion gives me a few more cards to play with. Am generally feeling a bit better, but still feeble, no stamina not even usual SickChick stamina. But have hi hopes for improvement now!
Tomorrow, will finish back-taxes for the girls, and then G & I are hoping to spend the day at the park, getting warmer in BC, yay!!!

team-dog-walloping right after dinner for all of us, initially fun but then a bit queasy-making for everyone. Overall worth it.

morning walk w G. It is so peaceful in our neighborhood & I am SOooo glad to be home. Tweee-tweee go the birds...D comes home later today.
Strapped R knee again. Still very tired.

back home, did the afternoon & evening walks w/ g-dog, who survived quite nicely with Uncle Keith sleeping over & feeding her steak. hmm...
I'm insanely tired, knees Not Good esp. R. knee - v. swollen, v. weak, & some slight pain twinging inside periodically. Strapping it up.

meandering about & dozing in sun on top decks, reading my new geology book from parents & watching the shipping go in & out at Astoria. Did our Holland America donation to the Susan Komen breast cancer foundation ("on deck" walk) & got a cute T-shirt for Dennis.

marching happily about on Oosterdam, & walk to parents' place from the Victoria cruise terminal. This wiped me out (not sleeping well at night), so I took a nap w cat, & Alf & Barn had a scream of a good time giggling & drinking tea w/ parents, & looking out their huge windows.