I have decided to run a half Marathon!
Insane, I know. However, I am quite sure that only insane people run half or full marathons because what sane person would?
Last year I volunteered with the Queen City Marathon. Why? Well, I was new to the city and volunteering is a good way to get out and about in the city. One day at work I happened to glance at the back of a paper and saw an ad looking for volunteers, so I volunteered! It was a lot of fun and I had 3 great days! And I began to think, "This sure seems like a lot of fun. Everybody is so excited!" So then I wondered, "Can I run a half marathon?" I still don't know the answer to that question, but I'm going to run one anyway!
Why run a half marathon? Wouldn't walking one be the better starting point? Well, if you enter the half-marathon walk you are not allowed to run. But by entering the regular half-Marathon I can run of course, but also walk. So, it's like the walking one but I can run when I feel like it.
I've been reading up on marathon training and recently bought a book that includes a training schedule. I decided to start yesterday as that is 4 months exactly before the marathon and my book outlines a 4 month program! Handy! So, I look at my training program and oops! I missed Sunday. Oh well. Onto Monday. Oh look! Monday is a rest day! Awesome! Great way to start my marathon training!
So, today is Day 2 of training, but really my first day of doing anything. What a craptastic day to start. It's been raining all day and is still raining. And my running shoes are made of mesh. Lovely. But, I got on my clothes, looked myself in the mirror, said, "How cool! I look like a runner!" and set off. I think that was the last moment that I looked like a runner. I was supposed to run/walk 35 minutes. Here's how that went:
30 seconds in: Oh holy crap my calves are burning - this must be the pain that was mentioned.
1 minute in: Boy am I glad I've been working out and working with a trainer for a few months.
3 minutes in: Time to start running - had my warmup!
5 minutes in: That's enough running.
7 Minutes in: Splashed a bunch of water right on the mesh of my shoe - socks are now wet.
9 Minutes in: Starting to realize I was right before I left - I did have to go to the bathroom!
11 minutes in: Wondering why my body couldn't have just gone to the bathroom when I was home, but noooo, it just couldn't right then.
13 minutes in: Starting to head back - I know it's a bit early, but the path ahead is muddy and surely it will take longer to get back than it does to do the first half?
17 minutes in: Desperately have to go to the bathroom. Man those trees look tempting. Too out in the open though.
20 minutes in: Try one last desperate run. It doesn't last long. Walking from here on out.
23 minutes in: Don't eat Dairy Queen before going running.
25 minutes in: Home is in sight - contemplating whether I can walk 10 more minutes.
27 minutes in: Screw it, I'm making a bee-line for the bathroom!
29 minutes in: Ended 6 minutes short of my goal.
So, that was my first run. What a shitty day. There were lessons learned and positives and negatives. Here we go.
Lesson Learned: Having to poo while running is awful. Also, apparently running makes half the food in your body go downwards and the other half go upwards into your throat.
Cons: Did not finish my 35 minute run. Didn't run as much as I would have liked, much more walking occurred.
Pros: I got my running gear on and went out for a run in the wet, rainy weather! I began my training and now I can only go up from here!
Last full day in NYC! YAY!
Today we headed down to Liberty Island! To get there, we took the Subway. The subway car there was brand new and announced everything and got us where we were going in style!
We hopped on a ferry and said hello to...Lady Liberty!!
I'd never looked using one of these before, so we spent a quarter and looked out at really boring stuff.
The ferry then took us to Ellis Island, where the immigrants to the US used to land. A very interesting museum! This is the registration room where they used to gather the immigrants for the start of their inspection. 
We then were going to head to the WTCentre site, but it started to pour rain. So, we decided to go back. We hopped on the subway and got back to Times Square with no trouble. We also got some US $1 coins! 
We stopped by the Hershey's Store b/c I wanted chocolate! I tried to take a picture with some points of reference so you could see how big it is! I'm not bringing it home...it's already half eaten. :P 
Anyway, tomorrow we head back. From the time we leave the hotel until we land in Regina, it'll be a 24 hour trip. Oh well. We'll get there eventually!
Hi!
So, I definitely wanted to sleep later today. But I've been setting the alarm for 9am so that we don't sleep all day. We can sleep when we get home from NYC. Most things don't open until 10am, so there's no point in getting up any earlier.
Today we were going to do Andrew's thing! He wanted to see Alex Grey's paintings - an artist he likes. Likes = IS OBSESSED WITH. So, off we trekked from 46th street where our hotel is down to 14th street. On the way we stopped by:
- Toys 'R Us - Ferris Wheel INSIDE
- Macy's - It's just a really big The Bay
- Madison Square Garden - It's just a really big arena
Union Square Park
So then we went back to the art gallery. There were only 2 room and a hallway full of paintings. The gallery is just a temporary location while the artist builds a new location, so not all his paintings are there. So, they had a movie playing where he goes through all his paintings and explains them and it showed them in a lot of detail. They had chairs to sit in on the floor and we sat and watched the movie which was about an hour long. So, that was a nice addition to looking at the paintings. We probably wouldn't have spent very long in there if it was just the paintings, so it was nice that the trip was worth it. We spent a few hours in there in all.
Then we wandered back to the hotel, going a different way. Along the way we stumbled upon:
The Empire State Building - we could see the top part that's pointy from farther away, but not from the base of it, which is where this picture is taken from.
And yet another Ghostbusters scene location - the public library!
We went to TGI Fridays for supper. It sucked. I highly don't recommend it. I non-recommend it.
We also wandered over to Grand Central Station - which is actually Grand Central Terminal. Andrew did say the line and it was funny.
Anyway, by this point we were tired of walking, tired of the crowds, and headed back to the hotel room to rest up for our last day in NYC.
Day 2!
Well, we didn't go overboard or anything today. We got up and left around 10:15. We didn't sleep all that well - it's a loud hotel and the city is loud. But we got a bit of sleep.
It was pouring rain, so we decided to do an "indoor" activity today and go to the American Museum of Natural History. It took us an hour and a LOT of rain to walk there, but eventually we got around to the outdoor activity. :P On the way there we saw a couple places such as...
The Late Show with David Letterman...
Radio City...
The Rockefeller Centre...
And....this street. It made us laugh.
To get to the museum, we had to go through Central Park. Very pretty:
Andrew thinks this place is in Ghostbusters. But he wasn't sure, so we took a picture.
We finally made it to the museum!!
Spent a few hours at the museum. We went to the Planetarium there, which was really awesome! Then we walked home and saw a few more places such as the Trump Building and...a HERSHEY'S STORE!! Look, a Reese's only section!! 
Then we went for supper at Planet Hollywood! Very cool and very good food. We got a picture from there, but you'll have to wait until I get a scanner to see it. :P
Then we went to Avenue Q on Broadway!! YAY Broadway play!!!! It was awesome! Was it worth $66? Probably not. But we couldn't have gotten better for the price. I just think plays are overpriced. :P But it was good!
Tomorrow we go do Andrew's thing and head to an art gallery!
Anyway, that's a quick recap of today. :)
Well, we made it. That's a plus! This place is INSANE. I've never seen anything like it where I've been...which isn't much of anywhere. But I think I was comparing it in my head to Washington, DC where I went a couple years ago, and it's nothing like that at all.
We're mostly exhausted. Our first flight left at 6am, which meant we needed to be at the airport around 4:30, so we got up at 3:30. Suffice it to say, neither of us got much sleep. So, we got to the airport thanks to our lovely sister. We then got checked in and went through security. I got held up b/c of one of my carry-on bags, but finally got through security. I still don't know what was confusing her so much. But whatever. We got on the plane and to Calgary with no troubles. We then had to find our way to US customs and we finally did after a bit of confusion. In Calgary we did pre-clearance for US Customs and Immigration. So, that was done and we waited for our flight from Calgary direct to Newark, NJ. Our flight was half an hour late leaving and 40 minutes late getting in. But we did get in. We got our luggage no problem and found our bus into the city no problem. I had paid for a shuttle bus to get us from New Jersey to downtown New York. So we got off at the Grand Central Station stop and proceeded to walk to our hotel which was MUCH further than expected. But we finally made it.
We are at the hotel now and just need to eat something and then sleep. We'll begin our NYC touring tomorrow. The hotel isn't bad. It's not great, but from my pathetic research, anything around $200/night in NYC isn't going to be that great. So, it's acceptable and will do the trick. :)
For now, here a couple of pictures:
So, I took a picture of myself on my first day in uniform, so I wanted one from my last day too. Here are the before and after pictures.
BEFORE
AFTER
Well, I've been sick since about Wednesday. But had to finish out the week at school, then do some Brownies stuff. We were taking the girl door to door on Thursday to sell cookies but I had to stay back as I couldn't talk. We sold cookies for 3 hours yesterday at Sears as well, and that almost killed me. But I went out and got myself some better drugs and I'm feeling more like a human being now.
I'm flying home in THIRTEEN days. Finally getting voted off the island. Survivor makes it look easy to get voted off the island, but it's actually quite hard.
I bought the new Kelly Clarkson CD. I'm really desperate for new music, and I own all of her CDs. I'm surprisingly disappointed by it! It's nowhere near the quality that her last one was. Oh well.
It snowed here last night. Supposed to snow for the next two days too. What a crazy province.
Anyway...I need to go clean and start packing. I'm a couple days behind from being sick. Also, my apartment has been taken over by Kleenex, so I need to get rid of them!!
The hardest part about moving when you can't just bring everything with you is trying to purposely run out of stuff. Normally when people move, you just bring everything with you - if you had a half-full box of pasta, that's fine! Bring it along! But when you're moving across the country, you don't want to pay to ship all that.
I've timed my laundry PERFECTLY. I only bought one jug of laundry detergent this year and it's going to last me EXACTLY as many loads as I need - no more, no less. I managed to plan out my laundry so that I only have 50 cents remaining on my card - not too bad - could have been $10 on that card, with no way to use it. And I've timed it so that I'll do my last load of laundry a week before I go - I do laundry every 2 weeks. So, I'll have enough clothes to last me the last week, plus one week back home - where I'll have access to laundry again!
I ran out of soap in the bathroom which sucked. Only ran out a couple days ago. Definitely not worth it to buy more. HOWEVER, I have way more dish soap than I could ever use. So, I just refilled my bathroom soap dispenser with dish soap. I figure soap is soap. And it's only 3 weeks.
My bubble bath should get used up in the next week or two, which is good.
Overall, I wasn't able to accumulate nearly as much stuff in the 8 months I was here as I had in the 5 years I was in Saskatoon. Which is good, b/c I don't have parents to dump stuff on this time. :P
Figured I should put a little something about what I've been up to lately.
I just finished my 2nd Lucy Maud Dinner rotation. This is making plated desserts for the dining room for supper service, as well as doing any functions. I found this rotation to be the most stressful of all of them. It's stressful for a few reasons.
First of all, I just feel like the expectations for quality were higher on this rotation than any other. So when you mess up, it's a bigger deal.
Second, you have to stay in the evening 2 nights of the week to plate desserts when people order them. This just adds a bit to your exhaustion level, b/c it creates a 12-14 hour day at school. And service is very BORING. You just stand there for upwards of 5 hours waiting for people to order your dessert. This rotation I spent both weeks working Friday/Saturday which sucked. It takes up a lot of the weekend.
Third, it has the biggest and fanciest functions. Functions for this rotation tend to be for 120-250 people at a time, rather than the 40 person functions you get for lunch. We lucked out with our rotation and only had 2 functions. One was a small function for 40. The second was a function for 240 people for Sticky Date Pudding. This was a challenge to plate for the function because it's a warm dessert. So, you're trying to time 250 desserts. Now, everyone knows that any banquet for 250 people starts late by the time whatever event it is finishes going through opening remarks, grace, etc. So, as kitchen staff, you're waiting for them to start, and as pastry staff, you have to wait for them to go through 3 courses before they get to dessert. And you can't start plating too early b/c it will get cold, but neither can you plate too late or the serving staff will be waiting for you. It's tricky.
Anyway, I'm glad it's over. I'm starting to like plated desserts more and more. I'm thinking of making Friday night dessert-night when I'm at the parent's place. B/c having dessert every night is expensive and unhealthy. But once a week seems good.
I now move on to Chocolate. It's only a 3 day rotation, so I'm not too worried.
Thursday we have our written theoretical final. I'm really not worried about it. It's basically an amalgamation of all the tests we've already written, plus some food costing. Food costing is very simple - it's just memorizing the conversions from imperial to metric that can be confusing.
We have Friday-Monday off for Easter. Then we start practical exams. I'm scheduled to do my practical the next Thurday - one week after the theory final. For the practical we have to do something frozen, a cake, cookies, a custard, and a bread. The custard and the frozen dessert have to be plated with sauces and garnishes. We have from 6:30am until about 2:30pm to do this. Should be a fun challenge! I'm mostly worried about when you sit down with the chefs face to face at the end to discuss how you did. I have trouble being told I suck to my face. I prefer th university method of just giving me a crappy mark and letting me deal with it. Here they have to bring you in and tell you. It's like being on American Idol and having Simon yelling at you.
After that, we go in on the 24th to clean the kitchen and do some other wrap up stuff.
Then I fly home on the 25th. Sleep for a week. Then go to NYC.
So, yeah. That's an update!
Just found an airplane napkin I had drawn all over on my flight here back in September. According to the napkin, it only wasted 45 minutes of my flight, but I still had 45 minutes to go. Since I can't share the picture with you, I guess I'll share the limerick on it:
There once was a butterfly named Ben
Who never knew when to say when
He ate and ate
Until he ate a slate
And swore never to binge again!