Anniversaries

My cell phone contract expired on Sunday.  I went into my existing cellular company to see what offers they might have for me in order to keep my business (none) and also stopped into the Apple store to play around with the new iPhone.  Me being the genius that I am I finally remembered that on Saturday it was officially three years since I moved to Calgary.  Growing up I moved around A LOT and there weren’t very many places that I lived in past the three year mark.  Somehow or other three years in one place feels like a big milestone for me.  The only other spots that have made the milestone?
- Bogota, Colombia (3 years, 3 months…I think…)
- London, England (5 years, 2 months…or so…)
- Vancouver, British Columbia (6 years, minus a few months for a work stint in Rocky Mountain House, AB and Houston, TX)
Aside from the obvious that I am now free to sign a new 3 year cell phone contract and that my 3 year financing term is 6 days away from being complete this time of year seems to play host to a lot of various anniversaries.

- 8 years of being out of university, working in the industry.  Hard to believe I have been out of school for that long!
- 6 years ago my brother and sister-in-law got married!
- 6 years since the Okanagan Mountain Park fire.  It never directly threatened my parents thankfully.  Unfortunately there is another scary fire at the moment…
- 3 years ago we lost my Aunt Mary to lung cancer.  She was also my godmother.  In many ways she was the social butterfly of my mom’s side of the family.  She was always the one to make sure family was together for various holidays.  When I was in second year in university my parents were overseas, but I was still living in the family home, commuting an hour and a half each way to school (it is normally a 30-40 minute drive, rush hour is just that bad in Vancouver).  The long commute…the living far away from my classmates in an empty house…and second year being one of the toughest years in engineering all made for tough times.  She was always there for me, ready to chat or to feed me a home cooked meal.  I miss her a lot.  Here’s me, my mom, my Aunt Marjut (my dad’s sister and my other godmother) and my Aunt Mary the day I graduated from The University of British Columbia.

Take It and Run Thursday: An Encore Presentation

Runners' Lounge has this great feature called Take It and Run Thursday. They pick a topic, you write about it, and it helps to get the virtual running community together to share ideas and knowledge. Since they just hit the 1 year anniversary of Runners' Lounge today's theme is: Best of the Best. I scoured through all my blog posts and nothing really stood out at me. Since I'm now hopping for tons of nice warm weather and sunshine this post made me think back to the time when impending cold weather might not necessarily be the worst thing in the world:

Wow how things can change here in a couple of days. Last week I was revelling in the somewhat warm temperatures. Then last night the snow started to fall. When I woke up it was -12C (10F). Brrr. At least the sun came out today resulting in a fantastic run through -5C (23F) weather over lunch. Sometimes I wonder about this whole "training for a marathon in January while living in Calgary" thing. I think it gives new meaning to the term "endurance running" because not only do you endure long distance training runs but you endure cold and crazy weather. In an effort to put a bright spin on things I thought of all the things I love about winter running while I was out today:

• Cold weather makes you run faster. You want to hurry up, run, and get back indoors.
• Cold weather running mitigates the need for an ice bath after your long run. Indulging in an ice bath seems like an invitation for hypothermia around here if you ask me.
• Running over snowy pathways helps you pay special attention to your balance as you try not to slip and fall, and gives you something else to think about besides how far you are running. I think it also helps to promote a better gait as I concentrate more on shorter strides and faster turnover on slippery surfaces.
• I love the crunching sound I hear as my sneakers impact the snow.
• You can ogle all of the men out running the pathways clad in liberal amounts of spandex. Although maybe this isn't always a good thing.
• The fluid in your water bottle stays cold.
• You get to see what everyone else wears to stay warm. Today I saw a woman in this crazy coloured ski outfit, complete with hood with furry trim, wearing a dust mask.