What a beautiful day!

The sun is shining, the air is crisp and my driveway is FINALLY getting fixed!!! When my room mate and I moved into our apartment it was a little more challenging than expected. The driveway sucked. A lot! I couldn't even get my car into it to unload my car - guess the few extra steps didn't kill me, but still! For some reason water and runoff that comes down from the side of the building pools at the bottom of our stairs instead of flowing down the side of the driveway like it should. Having the wonderful Nova Scotia weather like we do means that its warm one day and cold the next, which means that every time it rained, snowed, or the snow melted, it pooled at the bottom of our stairs, eventually covering our entire driveway in ice. Now, I'm not just talking about the little bit of ice you need to be careful of when getting out of your car or walking down the stairs, I'm talking about the 6 inch thick solid, slick ice that was covering our whole driveway, and half of the road in front of our apartment. My parents came down for a visit one day and managed to get their car into the driveway, but when they left, the car spun around as dad was trying to back up. Lucky for him the car spun perfectly and ended up in the right direction, without hitting the rock wall or any other cars!

We complained a bunch of times to our landlord, who told us he'd work on it, and for us to park on the street for now. Yup, turns out theres a winter parking ban and you can't park on the street between midnight and 6am! With no warning of this both mine and my room mates car's were towed! I guess this made him get things going with fixing it, because when I came home from class today there was a backhoe here digging up a trench on the side of the driveway! Hopefully this will fix the problem so I can park my car in the driveway, and not worry about falling on my ass every time I go outside!

Feeling Good

You know that feeling, when you just feel good? Its a hard feeling to describe, but its just so good. On friday my roommate made me do a few exercises because we've been talking about getting into shape. I use the word "made" somewhat lightly. She is really good at sticking to her schedule and working out, even when she doesn't want to, but I don't quite have that drive. I always feel great after working out, but its that motivation to do it that gets me. My roommate tried to convince me to go check out the gym with her here at school, since we haven't gone down yet. But of course, I came up with all kinds of excuses not to go. Mostly because of the fact that I haven't done any sort of work out in so long, I didn't want to look like a goof! Anyways, I agreed to try out her TRX and do some yoga, while she went for a run. I wasn't a huge fan of the TRX. Anytime I tried anything with my legs, it would bother my knee. Then I felt unbalanced because I was doing all sorts of arm exercises, and not doing anything with my legs.. and again, more excuses not to try it again. I was really just bored, it wasn't very fun. And the exercises I was doing didn't seem very challenging. Boy was I wrong. When I woke up on Saturday morning I could hardly move. My arms hurt so bad, there was no position that was comfortable. For some reason, I thought some more exercise would help, so I went snowboarding for the day. A few hours later and all I wanted to do was have a hot shower, take some pain killers, and go to sleep! My body was not happy with me. And this morning, well it was just so beautiful out I couldn't not go snowboarding again...

Although every muscle in my body is hurting, it has become a good hurt. When I left the hill today, I was so content, and still had so much energy, even with the amount of pain I was feeling. When I got home I cleaned my room, made a delicious supper, had a nap, did some school work, and even had some time to do a bit of knitting! It was just such a productive weekend that I feel so good. I hope this high sticks around for a while, and I keep working out and being active so that I get back into shape this winter!

Discovering old thoughts

I recently discovered an old blogspot account I had filled with thoughts and stories of my adventures in 2010. The most recent post was in October 2010 and consisted of a list of goals and dreams that I have for my life. I had forgotten about it completely, and reading it got me thinking. I've accomplished a lot in my life, and am so proud of what I have done. But there are so many more things I want to do, see and be a part of.

For the majority of last year I was living and working at a camp in a small town, 2.5 hours north of Toronto, Ontario. There wasn't much going on, other than the normal camp stuff, but I was with some really great people. I took advantage of the opportunity to find things that brought me joy, and focused on myself; doing things that I wanted to do. I was myself and felt no pressure to impress anyone. It was fantastic. Probably the best 10 months of my life thus far. I discovered things that I didn't know I would ever enjoy, and I learned things from people I would have never researched myself.

One of the greatest decisions I made while in at Camp was to go back to school. In that old post I discovered this morning, I realized one of the things I wanted to do was to go back to school and graduate with a degree. Didn't matter what degree it was, I have just always wanted a degree. Well, I'm one step closer. Just 3 more years and I'll have it!

Starting 2012 meant a lot to me. It will bring many changes and many new beginnings. As a continuation of the joy 2011 brought me, 2012 will be full of good friends, good food, many laughs and memories that will last a lifetime.

I began writing a list of things I want to do/change this year. I have always been terrible with sticking to new years resolutions. Although, knowing this, I don't tend to make them. I simply take the new year as an opportunity to start over.

As a major assignment for one of my classes I am required to choose 3-5 goals that I will work on throughout the term, and track my progress. It was hard to choose so few, but I took this opportunity to choose the 4 that were most important to me, so that I am forced to really work on them. I made up a checklist to track my progress, but then thought to myself, why not make a checklist that includes all sorts of things I want to start doing? So I did! It's set up on a weekly basis with places for me to check off when I complete a task. This way I can see how often I do things, and it will also give me a little motivation. Some of the things on the list include eating breakfast, drinking water, taking vitamins, doing yoga, and knitting. I know, knitting? This is more of a hobby that I really enjoy. However tracking how often I make time to knit will encourage me to take the time to do things I enjoy, rather than focusing on school work. Hopefully it works!

Anyways, I have decided to create this blog to help me stay focused on the things that bring me joy in life. As a student its easy to get caught up with studying, doing assignments, volunteering, seeing friends, etc. and forget about the little things in life that really make me happy. Lets hope I remember to take the time to do this!