GUBA

Hey everyone!!!
This is just a quick news flash: I am officially going to be GUBA, U of A's own mascott for tonight's Telus University Cup game against Manitoba at Rexall Place... and I am quite possibly THE most excited person in the world about it! Nervous, of course (it's being broadcast live, nationally on TSN) but I'm sure everything will be just fine! Cross your fingers! And if you have TV and can watch TSN, look for me on national television! It's a 7pm western time (that's our time here in Alberta, anyways). Well, that'll be something cool to experience, I think. Wish me luck! WOOT!

Clothes!

So yesterday I went and bought new clothes, with money I didn't have. Actually, quite literally, I used a gift certificate I got two christmases ago. And I knew I was saving it for an emergency... like... when one of my two (count them, one... two!) pairs of pants decided that they don't like being abused by riding a bike and split. Sucky. So now I have new clothes! Yay! Haven't had that in a while. And they fit! Wow, my clothes haven't fit properly in ages (problem with all your clothes coming from... junior high and grade 10....) and it feels wonderful. But now I want to wear the same clothes every day and I suppose that's not a great idea. Anyways, just had to stick something in there about that. Because everyone knows that feeling where you get new clothes and you feel all special and new clothesy and such, which is how I feel right about now.

Randomness

Today I went swimming for the first time in a week. Wow, I had nothing there for stamina, but some awesome sprints. My fly kicked. All I know is that my twitch was starting to get to me and I needed some exercise desperately..... I hate winter right now, especially because it left and everything got wonderful, and then it came back and everything turned to crap. Or maybe I just got concussed, got a cold, weather decided to go insane and the world became cruel. Okay, maybe the last part didn't happen but I hate winter. No more random fun bike rides or nice long jogs in the morning until the stupid snow is gone and that makes me sad inside. What makes me happy inside though, are these beautiful daffodils sitting on my desk looking all cheerful and yellow and pretty. They make my room light up. Also, I was really craving pickles all afternoon today. Not dill pickles, which are good, but sweet pickles. So I bought a jar and have almost finished it.

Song: Manah Manah (The French Waltz) - The Muppets
Picture: Merge

It's gonna be a long trip home....

So, just for all those who didn't receive my mass email, or the grand news, here it is all over again. Just thought I'd make it as official as possible now that I'm in up to my neck! This was sent out yesterday at 3:51 am, which is my excuse if it appears to be a little out of orbit.

Hey there!

Yup, it’s me again, crowding everyone’s inbox with more fun quirkiness from the life of Jeanine. So what am I going to bother you with now, with, you might ask? Don’t worry, it’s nothing too much. I’m not asking for your soul, your first born, or even for your rhythm (gasp!). Some of you may have already heard from me, and know what I want! You lucky ducks!
Okay, what I am asking for, is your support (and possibly) your donations, because I am raising $ for cancer, by biking from Calgary to Edmonton at the beginning of April. Yes, this might sound a wee bit crazy, but that’s what I do best! Anyways, if you decide you’d like to help out and give some moolah for this cause, even if it’s only a few dollars, twenty five cents... some peanut butter cups... (hey, I need my energy), please just hit reply and say so! I’ll even bike to your house if need be! I should be training anyways... St. Albert, Sherwood Park... bring it on.
If you donate $15 or more and give me your address (yes, this means you run the risk of me stalking you, but don’t worry, I’ll try to restrain myself), the Alberta Cancer Foundation will send you a tax-deductible receipt. Regardless, I’d love to hear from any of you, because your support means everything, whether or not you decide to help out. Also, if you decide you don ’t wish to donate, that is perfectly okay! :)

Thanks!
-Jeanine

P.S. If you’ve already given, thanks so much for your help! Your reward is my lifelong friendship. If you decide you want to take it back now, too bad for you, that is not an option currently available. Try checking back later.

So, some current comments so far from friends:

Jeanine, you’ve officially reached insanity… I knew this school would break you, but so soon? You're nuts, completely and utterly nuts. You've gone crazy. - Megan

You should actually shave your head while biking to Edmonton. And instead of calling it "Jeanine's Charity Bike Ride" you should have called it "I researched that Edmonton is 500 metres in elevation below Calgary and that is why I am riding my bike this way and not the other way around Charity Bike Ride". -Ian

Hey Jeanine! I had no idea you were doing this, and I think it is incredible. -Dee
(Wow, finally a friend who loves me!)

That's a very ambitious bike ride you have planned out. Good for you. I'm game for supporting you. -Danielle
(If I had a dollar for every person that said... "That's very..... ambitious.... of you...." I wouldn't have to be asking for donations. lol. But thankee, Danielle!)

Well, that's just a small taste so far, but I'm really quite excited about the trip. Maybe not so much right now when it's freezing and snowing outside, I have a head cold, a concussion, a lack of sleep, and an early class tomorrow morning (If you're not sure what kind of combination this makes, think really hard and then imagine what it feels like to sneeze four times in a row with a concussion) but I'm not complaining. No, I swear. I would never do such a thing.
Anyways, I'm assuming that in three weeks time, when I actually do this, things will be relatively back to normal and hopefully I'll have raised my goal amount (at least $1000). And then after I get back to Edmonton, I am officially going to have chocolate ice cream (remember, I have given up ice cream for lent... but I'm going to extend this until after my bike trip). And when I say chocolate ice cream, I mean, Safeway had better be prepared. That is all. Oh, except, if you want to help out and donate, please please please let me know, either by leaving a comment :) or emailing me at Je_Neeners@hotmail.com.

Song: Pilate - Overrated
Picture: Rain pounding on your door (Don't I wish)

Site

To all those that want their own paper calendar, and aren't squeamish about the poor trees, here's the site on the registrar's page where you can print off the coupon. They hide it so that people can't print it off as easily, most likely because they want less people to get their hands on the actual calendars. No, seriously, it took me about 20 minutes just to find this stupid site. So enjoy the feel of the calendar in your hands, and if you're like Lisa and I, I'm sure the interesting material will help you procrastinate your way through many a long night of lab reports.

Picture: Just one more inch!
Song: Weezer - Island in the Sun ("my" song, thanks goes out to Cody and Aaron for playin' it for me on the jukebox!)

My Brush With Death (Gasp!)

Well, today I have an interesting enough story to share, and I suppose I'll have to update my accident tally once again. Which is funny, because this morning before I left the house, I thought, "gee, I haven't even come close to getting hurt this week, I bet I could even make the rest of March without another update to my tally!" Yeah, not so fast... I actually have two new things to put on my tally as of right now. But the second is the more interesting of the two, I was finally hit by a car. I've been expecting this for quite a while now, Edmonton drivers are crazy. But this was pretty ridiculous... I was on the street, biking along in the bus/bike/taxi lane, when this guy in a car started to pull onto the street from a parking lot. I saw him as I was biking along, but thought, "Yeah, he'll stop." And then a second later, I'm lying on the street, in a state of shock, thinking... "He didn't stop?"
Yes, so I was hit by a car. I'm not too badly hurt or anything, my ankle's a bit scraped up and so's my left leg, but nothing major. The chain fell off my bike. I was mostly just in a state of disbelief. It wasn't even like he cut me off or anything, he really actually hit me while pulling out of a parking lot.
So, this is to my dad - THAT'S why I am so anal about people doing shoulder checks and actually looking when they pull out of places. Especially in the city, there's lots of bikers and such, which are easy to miss unless you do a shoulder check and actually look to see if anyone's coming. Because it doesn't work to assume that you and everyone else on the road is indestructable. Think of the cyclists. *Sniff*

Picture: This can't be the end!

Song: Third Eye Blind - God of Wine

Typo

It has recently come to my attention that I'm in way better shape than I thought. When calculating how much front crawl I can swim without stopping, I was doing it wrong... because 44 lengths = 1 km and I can do 44 laps. Hence, I can swim 2km non-stop. That's more than I can run non-stop. And that's just weird. I need to run more. Now that my legs have recovered enough that I can actually walk down stairs facing forward instead of backwards, I think I'll go for another run either Friday or Saturday. And then I will treat myself to another booster juice. Those things are marvellous incentives. But right now I have just swam 2.2 km... for the third time this week... and want bed.
... and I have one more physical feat to do in the next month... which I am going to be keeping a secret until I'm allowed to publicize it... but Lisa knows what it's going to be ;) so we can huddle in corners and keep secrets together. And another small joy: my Australian citizenship application has been received in Ontario and is currently being processed. So, hopefully before September, I should officially be a dual citizen and have the best of being both Canadian and Aussie. Well, I don't think that the post about this weekend is going to be happening after all, but I've told enough people all the fun stuff I ended up doing that it would probably just be a boring repeat anyways. G'nite!

Picture: The egg means business.
Song: Dido - White Flag

Oh, and as a side note, I updated my accident tally. Check 'er out. There should also be a post coming soon about the crazy happenings of this weekend at work, there's some pretty amusing stories there.

Run, Forest, Run

So this is a kind of celebratory post, and later, there will be an update into the wild and wacky world of Jeanine. Celebratory because I've finally kicked my fear of running (yes, as weird as that sounds, I, lover of all sports, have suffered from a fear of running since the days of my sadistic grade nine PE teacher). Runners have actually always been a huge enigma to me... almost like otherworldly roman gods or something.
So the story there, from the beginning, is that since October-Novemberish (post bronchitis.. blech) I've been swimming about three to six times a week, for an hour each day. Mostly because I love swimming - so much I can't do without it now (stress relief!!!) and develop a strange nervous twitch after a couple of days without pool time. My favourite stroke is butterfly, and since last spring one of last year's assistant varsity coaches has been coaching me on it. I found out the hard way that the traditional way of doing fly (with the keystroke underwater pull) is actually harmful to your shoulders, and will eventually cause your shoulders to pop out of joint. Which is exactly what happened to one of mine (while playing volleyball, but it happened because of the weakened joint). So Andrew, fantastic coach extraordinaire, has been helping me completely rework my stroke. Way harder than it actually sounds, but my shoulders have already thanked me for it... I can no longer get them to pop in and out of joint, which might have been a cool party trick but it's pretty painful and something I can do without. Anyways, back to swimming, I didn't really start out with a goal but eventually I decided it would be to be able to do a kilometre (88 lengths/44 laps in our pool) of front crawl without stopping (aka, only flip turns). So now, I can do this.... WOOT!!! (but only on a good day... and when I eat pizza).
I'll keep swimming of course, but now I'll try and focus on building up my endurance for my fly and work on sprinting too instead of just distance. But how does running tie into all of this? Well... As many of you know, I happen to have a bike (I know, I know, bike ≠ running, but there is a segue, I promise). And my average km cycled per week is about 70 (I installed an odometer). Sounds like a lot, but it's really not that much when you think about it. So here I am, I have swimming, and biking... everything needed for triathalon, except *gasp* the dreaded running.
So for a while now, since I met my goal for swimming, I've been thinking of moving up in the world of physical fitness, to something I've said I would never do (yup, you guessed it).. run. And this spontaneous and strange desire has come from two of my great buds from work, Amanda and Lisa... Amanda, who apparently was just like me (running phobe) but has become a super runner in the last year, and Lisa, who is part of the triathalon club (which is something I've been contemplating, and now planning to join next year). But the most influential thing has been, of all things, my dreams. For the last week, I've been dreaming of running almost every night, and waking up in the morning itching to run. Now, if that doesn't make you cave in, nothing will.
Hence, I am happy to report that I have now started to run, and plan on making it a regular thing, starting with three times a week and hopefully bumping it up to six by the end of the summer like I did with swimming. So, it may not sound like a big deal, but to me, it seems almost miraculous, something I never thought I would be capable of doing. And I'm doing it. Not very well, of course, I haven't ran since grade 11 PE and my legs feel like j-e-l-l-O! but I have the most undescribable feeling of satisfaction that only comes from fulfilling a deep, secret dream I've always had but somehow always thought was unattainable.
So, this post might be about something so small to most of the people in the world, but it means more to me than most of the people in the world could ever imagine. And so, I am challenging all those that read this: Find something, anything, that you want to do but never thought yourself capable of. It doesn't have to be today. Could be tomorrow. A week, a month, a year from now. And just do it. Because there is no joy like reaching for something you never thought you could touch and actually achieving your goals.
Good night, and sweet dreams.

Picture: And what if I do?
Song: Broken Road - Rascal Flatts


Cologne

Okay, this is just a quick thing about scents/cologne. I realize I am probably guilty of wearing too much scent sometimes, hey, it happens... so don't take this personally if you wear cologne/perfume. But I just saw a friend today, who happened to be wearing a fantastic colonge, except waaaay too strong.... as in, so good, but I thought I was going to pass out within a few minutes of talking to him. And it kind of lingered for several minutes after he was gone. So here's a shout out to people wearing scents. 1 squirt = good, 2 squirts = fine, 3 squirts = slightly excessive, 4 squirts plus = potentially lethal. That's all for now.
Picture: I computered it
Song: Get Low - Lil' John & East Side Boys