WHOA lansi

francophile, oenophile, logophile, turophile

Tag: life

New Year

Resolutions. I haven’t been big on the whole making-a-list-of-things-I-want-to-do-better-this-year thing recently. I think if I need to change something or do better, it should start as soon as I realize a change needs to happen.

I really do like goals. That’s probably an understatement. I love goals and I set them often.

A perfect example: Nathan and I decided to do a month long paleo challenge November 15. It wasn’t the best time of year to decide to do this and we definitely cheated a lot, but my reasoning was that there was never going to be an ideal time to do it. There’s always something going on and it’s never going to be easy. So we just did it the best that we could. It worked out well for us (especially me) and I’ve been feeling great and getting lots of compliments that I look great so I’m glad we did it.

That said, sometimes it’s nice to look back on the year and decide what you want to do better next year. So here’s my list:

1. Follow our budget better.
We moved out in July and we haven’t saved much money since. We had lots of stuff to buy and neither of us makes a ton of money so it put a damper on saving for a place of our own. I’d like to get back on track with this. We do a lot of things right: bring a lunch of work every day, drink terrible office coffee instead of stopping at Starbucks, and avoid paying for parking ever. We also have a big weakness for delicious food, nights out with friends, and shopping and that needs to slow down significantly. Which brings me to my second resolution:
2. Have friends over more often.
We like entertaining and we like having drinks and playing games. I love our place and definitely want to make more of an effort to have people over instead of going out. 2 birds, 1 stone.
3. Eat grains on rare occasions.
Our month of paleo taught me a lot about how food makes me feel, and especially about how grains and gluten make me feel. I still LOVE bread and will never say I’m giving something up forever, but it needs to be a treat for me. I feel so great when I’m eating good food and fueling my body properly. Don’t worry, I’m not going to go too nuts about this whole gluten thing though.
4. Be more tolerant and appreciative
I have it pretty good when it comes to boyfriends. N mostly puts up with my neuroses and my need for our house to be clean and organized. He helps me out a lot with grocery shopping and vacuuming and taking out the garbage. He listens when I’m acting like a crazy person and always tries to be helpful and supportive. I need to be more appreciative of this and I definitely need to be more tolerant of the imperfections in our lives.

So there we go. Some goals for the year! I obviously have some other more short terms goals (get back to be being able to do 25 pushups ina row and run 5 km under 27:00…ok actually try to run a 5 km for time not training), but these are my four solid yearlong goals.

I should also probably add blog more to the list. I had good intentions of blogging about Croatia, Vegas, and Christmas. I’ll get to a couple of these in the New Year.

Come on 2013!

Christmas Jingle

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas….

Actually! Finally! It’s less than a week until Christmas and I’m actually finally feeling in the spirit. People are handing out cards and chocolate, left, right, and center. We’re having a Christmas Pizza Party. My coworker is wearing a Christmas Sweater (UGLY Christmas Sweater). It’s freezing outside. I had my first eggnog last night (we were doing a month of paleo, so eggnog wasn’t so paleo friendly). I’ll be finishing up my shopping, wrapping my gifts, and making cards tonight. Hurrah!

Some Christmas ornaments we made a couple weeks ago!

In celebration of this, here’s some Christmassy music to enjoy at work.

Merry Christmas!

Love,
A

Vegas!

Today marks 1 month until Nathan, my dad, and I will be standing at the starting line of the Rock and Roll Half Marathon in Las Vegas. This will be my third half marathon and both mine and Nathan’s first time in Vegas. I’m looking to finally break the 2 hour mark (last time I missed it by sixteen seconds). I can’t wait to see Vegas AND cross this awesome race off my bucket list.

Heather, Nathan, and I after Calgary 2012

Calgary’s weather has been making training a little on the difficult side, but it’s still been going surprisingly well. A month seems simultaneously like a lot of time and very little. That’s only 3 more long runs, 3 interval runs, and a couple handfuls of shorter midweek runs. Somehow it always seems like training flies by and race day is suddenly here. I’m sure this next month will be no different.

Hoping I feel better this time than Calgary Half Marathon

Vegas, I am so ready for you!

Such A Girl

The boy utters those words countless times throughout the day. This mostly occurs after I’ve spent 5 minutes doing something he thinks is pointless or ridiculous (such as perousing pinterest).

Fall is here. Actually, this just means that winter is here because we’re not fooling anyone into thinking we actually have more than two seasons in Calgary. Although I haven’t looked at my cold weather wardrobe in months, I’m pretty sure I hate it all. I know last season it was perfectly fine. I even bought a few things I know that I love. But whenever I open my closet I see nothing but ugly (with a few pieces I’ve recently added thrown in).

My biggest issue is that I hate wearing pants when it rains. Who likes wet pants? I sure don’t. So I usually go with boots and skirts and dresses. Most of my dresses are too summery and most of my skirts go with silk tanktops though. My work-appropriate, long sleeve winter wear doesn’t exactly get me excited. (Too-big turtle necks, plain sweaters, boring boring boring!)

I have a long list of things I want:

  • a red cardigan
  • a big wool cardigan
  • more skinny dress pants (black, green, mustard!)
  • Long sleeve blouses
  • High socks for riding boots
  • Yellow chevron skirt
  • Ankle boots
  • Patterned blazer
  • Peplum
  • Fitted dress shirts (that actually fit)
  • Oversized mens-style watch
  • Geometric printed sweater
  • Denim shirt
  • Dresses (that can transition from fall to winter to spring)
  • Knee-length pleated skirt
  • Maxi skirt
  • Tweed skirt

I could probably go on forever. Not only do I love lists, but I also love clothing. This post is a win-win for me.

Moving forward

Outside our condo

I hung the first three pictures in our condo this week. After almost two months, I finally committed to three spots on the wall and hung my three little pictures from Paris. That’s more than I can say for my place in Montreal, so I’m taking this as progress. I really love the idea of decorating our place and making it ours, but I’m a bit of a perfectionist and putting holes in walls seems really permanent. What if I change my mind and want to move it? Obviously it’s possible to change things, and it’s really not a huge deal if things are not quite perfect, but I still have a hard time making a decision.

Decorating aside, I’m loving our place. It took us a long time to find it and I’m very glad we didn’t settle for something else. Our condo hunt began back in May and we looked at condo after condo online. It was hard to find much of anything in any of the neighbourhoods we wanted. When we did find somewhere we were interested in, we found out we were up against upwards of 25 other people for the place.

Mid-move mess

We finally got lucky and found this place and I’m pretty happy with it. It’s a two story walk up on a beautiful tree lined street in Crescent Heights. We’re a block from Rotary Park in one direction and a block from amazing brunch places in the other direction. I can walk to work easily. We can go running on the bike paths within a few minutes. 
Beautiful view from Rotary park 

 So far, we’re loving it. Between weddings, birthdays, and weekends away though, we’ve barely spent any time in our new place this summer. I’m definitely looking forward to winter, spending some time at home, and making our place our own.

New holes in the wall

The Paralympics

Seven years ago, my fellow coach – Karen – and I met an awesome twelve year old named Morgan Bird. Her parents had signed her up for a swimming bootcamp and we had the pleasure of being her coaches. At the end of the week it was obvious that Morgan was hooked. She signed up for Swim Club and started the following week.

That first year (and every year thereafter), Karen would say “Birdie, when you make it to the Paralympics, Coach Karen will be there to cheer you on.” Morgan would laugh, thinking Karen was ridiculous for saying that she’d qualify for the paralympics, but Karen was persistant in her belief that Morgan would one day make it.

I had the pleasure of coaching her that first year alongside Karen and then for another few years afterwards. I’ve still never met a happier or more positive swimmer in my entire coaching career. Morgan made my job easy by always being game for whatever was thrown at her and doing everything with the biggest smile.

Naturally, my plan was always to join Karen in the cheering section and now that day is officially here. Morgan made the London 2012 Paralympic Team this year and we’re off to London tonight. We’ll be in the stands for her 50 free on Sunday and you can bet we’ll be cheering our heads off. Let’s see those dash feet in action!

Absentee

The boy and I moved out! Hurrah!

It’s been a crazy week of moving, organizing, cleaning, organizing, cooking, shopping, and planning. We won’t have internet at home until the day before we leave for the wedding on Vancouver Island so I’ve been MIA with my blogging (excuses, excuses, I know). I don’t expect this to change until we get back from the wedding, unfortunately. It’s hard to update without an internet connection!


With so many exciting things happening this month, however, I expect to have lots to blog about once said internet connection is up and running. So don’t give up on me yet!

Until then, follow me on twitter (@whoalansi) if you’re really feeling the need for updates on my exhilarating life!

xo
A

apple love

So I just got a new mac. I’m typing on it as we speak. There are many reasons why I’m stoked about this (my old one was 5 years old & just wasn’t working any longer), but one is that it won’t take me 5 million hours to create a blog post. This means I may actually blog. Hurrah! Exciting, right?

As you can see, I’m totally playing it cool. Just hanging out in my shades, on my bed, and my macbook isn’t burning my legs. This is big, guys. My old mac was always burning my legs.

If you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit of a nerd. I’ve got a French keyboard, I wear sunglasses indoors (by myself, in my bed, when it’s dark), and I’m about to admit to everyone* that the most exciting part of my night was reorganizing all my bookmarks in Safari (*all 2 people who read this blog). But seriously, is there anything more exciting than all your stuff being organized? I really need to do this with my iPhoto…and the rest of my life.

I obviously need to update more often because that leads into the fact that Nathan and I finally found a place to live! After over 2 months of searching, we are moving to Crescent Heights on Aug 1. I am so excited.

I’m also slightly terrified of the 15 years worth of stuff I have to pack up from my parents house and move into a new place. Wish me luck. (Seriously, I’m going to need it!)

trois ans

Three years later. Still laughing my head off when I’m around this guy. 

Happy Anniversary, Babe! Next year we’ll be together for it! xx

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