Monday, June 10, 2013

Hiking The Chief in Squamish

It was pretty much mandatory that Dave and I take my sister, Markie, for a hike in these mountains while she was visiting me in Vancouver last week, so last Sunday we packed some bags, laced up our sneaks, scooped up our friend Evan and the four of us headed north of Vancouver to hike the Stawamas Chief in Squamish. "The Chief," as it's affectionately referred to around these parts, is basically an enormous rock protruding from the earth. Peep it:

the chief in squamish
.  the agro crag  .





Here's where it is, in relation to Vancouver:

vancouver to squamish

We knew this would be a short (distance-wise) but steep hike, so we expected quite a workout... and that's definitely what we got! I'm kind of terrible at describing hikes using details that legit hikers would use, so I will keep this description pretty non-technical and mostly just let you enjoy these sweet pics.

views from shannon falls parking lot
.  views from the parking lot  .

After a short walk through the woods we got to a set of steep wooden stairs at the trailhead, and we immediately began walking UP. Like, straight up. As we ascended, our trail switched between worn dirt trails peppered with huge boulders and fresh-smelling cedar staircases. The steep trail was packed with people, which made it slow going in parts.

stairs up stawamas chief trail

The reason for the abundance of people was the beautiful day, so we couldn't really complain. The trail offered 3 different summit options, and we passed the 1st summit without checking it out because we wanted to save our energy for higher views.

stawamas chief trail roots and rocks
.  a look at some of the trail on the way up  .
views from chief trail in squamish
Nearing the 2nd summit, things got quite interesting. The second summit was basically a massive and steep rock with one narrow, tricky pass up - which many people were also using to get back down as well. The pass was so narrow that you couldn't fit two people through it, width-wise, so everyone at the bottom needed to wait patiently for a lull in the hikers coming down before we could begin our ascent up. It actually took us getting into some arguments with the people coming down before we could finally convince them to stop descending so that the group of patient hikers below could finally get out of the tiny pass we were crammed into and continue ascending the mountain.

This narrow pass had chains drilled into the side of the rock to use as aids for ascension:

chains near second summit of the chief in squamish
Once we made it beyond this pass, there was just a short climb further before the second summit. There we sprawled out with the others who'd made it up and ate our lunch while checking out the views.

views from second summit of the chief
.  you can see people on top of the rock across the way  .

david checking out views from summit of chief in squamish
.  david seeing what he can see  .

summit pictures the chief squamish
.  me and markie  .
logging view from summit of the chief in squamish
.  logging situation happening far below us in the water  .
panoramic view from second summit of the chief
.  panoramic view from the second summit  .
summit pics from stawamas chief
.  posing on the summit  .
.  evan, me, markie  .
Rather than try to make it back down the same way we came - which would require us having to try to go through that same narrow pass with epic wait times - we decided to take a trail that passed the third summit and looped back around the mountain until eventually meeting up with the original trail we'd come up.

mount garibaldi from chief trail
.  awesome view of mount garibaldi as we descended  .


This way ended up being a little less packed than the trail we'd taken up, but still busy for sure. And it was a total scramble down - roots, rocks, fallen trees. It looked like an avalanche zone that happened to have a sometimes discernable path marked by yellow diamonds nailed to the trees. It was also just as steep as the climb up had been.

hiking down the chief trail
.  a view of what we were hiking down  .

Definitely the kind of terrain that you want to be ultra careful making your way down. Especially if you've ever had any knee problems, which Markie and I both have! #SisterACLIssues.

We were all sufficiently tired after this hike - it was a great workout! The hour spent sitting and resting on our ride back to Vancouver was welcome.

Check out pictures from other hiking adventures here!

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Sunday, June 9, 2013

Sweat Roundup of the Week!

Well this is going to be brief because I barely did anything this week!

6/2 (cardio, lower body & core)
Hiked up The Chief! (Read all about it here tomorrow!)

6/7 (upper/lower body)
10 mins biking
12 bent over rows, 20 lbs each hand
20 calf raises, 20 lbs each hand
12 chest press on exercise ball, 15 lbs each hand
12 tricep kickbacks, holding 10 lbs
40 static lunges, 20 each leg
12 wide deltoid raises, 7.5 lbs each hand
12 squats, 20 lbs each hand
40 bridges

Yup, that's it. I took a brisk 4 mile walk yesterday, but I won't count that in my weekly workouts. I'll get back on track this week, I SWEAR!


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Saturday, June 8, 2013

50 Random Facts About Me (Blog TAG)

There was another fun TAG going around YouTube that I wanted in on - this time it's the 50 Random Facts About Me TAG, so GET YOUR FACES READY FOR SOME FACTS Y'ALL.

1. Hip hop/R&B is my favorite type of music and has been for the vast majority of my life.

2.  When I was younger I had a real history of falling head over heels in love with boys and staying in love with them for years. My apologies to BJ, Cole, Danny, Mike and Aaron. You probably could have done without my stalker advances from the years 1989-1999.

3. I had my nose pierced in Spring of 2003, so I've had my nose ring for 10 years now!

4. I have two middle names.

5. I still have the teddy bear that I received from my parents the day I was born. His name is Erving and he comes with me everytime I move. I even had him at UMass with me all throughout undergrad.

6.  David and I have been dating since September of 2007.

7. I come from an enormous family! My dad is one of thirteen children so I have (at last count) 24 first cousins on that side of the family alone. My mom is one of four children, and I've got 11 first cousins on that side.  And then of course many of my first cousins have children themselves (who I believe - please correct me if I'm wrong  - are my first cousins, once removed). I have literally lost count of these particular kin - there could be any number of them floating around. I myself am the second oldest of four children.

8. When we'd get into fights when I was younger, I'd scratch my older sister's arms with my fingernails and make her bleed. I feel very bad about this now. Sorry Mallory, I love you!

9. Dave and I have lived together in 5 apartments since September of 2008.

10.  I've lived in 9 different apartments since September 2004

11.  I played on travel soccer teams almost every single year between fifth grade and twelfth grade.

12.  I made my high school's varsity soccer team as a freshman...

13. ... I'm not actually that great at soccer, I was just a pretty fast runner.

14. I CANNOT CANNOT CANNOT stand the taste of olives! If one single olive has made it onto a plate, it ruins the entire dish for me. Olives are most definitely my most hated food.

15. Ever since sixth grade, I've had a tendency to faint and have fainted about 15 times in my life. (Coincidentally, I even just fainted again a few nights ago.) Most of the faintings have come right after a "medical scare" (whether it's a cut on my thumb or an injured back or a torn ACL).

16. I quit the JV basketball team in 10th grade because I couldn't stand the humiliation of my inability to make a layup. My speed meant that I was often by myself on a breakaway sprint towards the basket... and being by yourself at the end of a basketball court and missing your layup is embarrassing enough. But have it happen over and over and over and over and over again... and you may start feeling like maybe basketball isn't your sport. I did, however, start keeping stats for our JV/Varsity girls basketball teams after I quit playing, so I got to travel to all the games anyway.  :)

17. I went to college at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and graduated magna cum laude in 2006 with a degree in Communications. I have no intentions of going to grad school.

18. My first CD ever was CrazySexyCool by TLC, and I think it was an excellent first CD to own.

19. I was always very, very good at understanding and remembering lyrics to songs. I'm so good at it that it doesn't impress me when other people are. At all. So, don't brag to me that you can remember all the words to a song, because I will tell you that I can remember all the words to ALL THE SONGS, EVER.

20. I was voted Most Dramatic in high school.

21. I was also hysterically voted second runner up prom queen my senior year in high school. This was not something I campaigned for and still cracks me up to this day.

22.  I wear a size 8 or 8.5 shoe.

23.  I'm 5'4.5" but I tell everyone that I'm 5'5".

24.  Canada is the only country in which I've ever used my passport.

25.  I'm a very fast typist, but I'm not sure if that's very impressive in this day and age?

26.  I had my belly button pierced shortly after my 16th birthday.

27.  I'm not a very strong swimmer.

28.  I don't like even numbers and sometimes take steps to avoid them or actively make biased choices against them. My favorite numbers are 13, 3, and 21.

29.  I ran track in high school - the 4x100 relay, 100m, 200m, occasional 400m (death) and occasional high jump. Track made me feel so incredibly anxious before every race that it made me want to vom.

30. I've jumped into Crater Lake in Oregon (see the left side of my blog header for photo proof) and it was cold. As. Shit.

31. I remember when my little sister Markie came home from the hospital as a newborn, when I was 7 years old. I have a memory of sneaking into her room to pick her up out of her cradle and hold her when no adults were watching. Don't worry, I was very careful.

32. My favorite ice cream flavor is mint chocolate chip and has been for as long as I can remember.

33. I don't like dogs (or really any pets). Contrary to VERY popular belief, this does NOT make me a bad or evil person.

34. I wore braces on my teeth for 3 years, 4 months and 5 days. I got them during the spring of fifth grade, had them allllll throughout middle school, and didn't get them removed until the summer between 8th and 9th grade. No one else has worn braces for this long.  No one. I used to have a huuuuge gap between my two front teeth and when I first got my braces, kids made fun of me saying that it looked like "a bridge over the Grand Canyon."

35. I was once part of a group of a dozen or so girls who dressed up and performed the "King of New York" song/dance from Newsies in a high school talent show.

36. I'm not a vegetarian but I don't like eating meat or poultry. It really weirds me out and I have to try really hard not to think about it while I'm eating it. It's not an animal welfare thing for me, so much as it just really gives me the weirds to think about the fact that what I'm eating used to be alive.

37. I'm a Scorpio. And you know what that means.

38.  I loooooooooove ice cream. So much so that when I cut it out of my diet, I drop weight.

39. I very rarely drink alcohol. I've always gotten bad hangovers quite easily so I eventually just began avoiding alcohol. I swear it's not because I am a bad time or that I don't like fun. Please see point #45.

40. At one point when I was in elementary school, my mother purchased an electronic device called a TV Allowance which made it so that none of us could turn on the TV unless we punched in our unique 4-digit code. As soon as we turned on the television, our weekly TV allowance of FOUR hours (that's four hours a week!!) began counting down. When our four hours were up, the TV would simply shut off. Fahk.

41. My parents blocked MTV from our television when we were growing up. This meant that if you were scrolling through the channels, it would skip over Channel 23 (MTV). However, if you just typed in the numbers 2-3, you'd still get to MTV just fine.

42. I took Italian classes from 9th grade through my freshman year at UMass. I can understand the language decently but have a very hard time speaking it properly. #FuckVerbConjugations.

43. I'm completely embarrassed of singing in front of people, in any sort of a serious context.

44.  Despite that above fear, I have performed singing in school talent shows twice before. Once was in 7th or 8th grade and it was a total bomb because the microphone wasn't working when it was handed to me so I decided on the freaking fly to sing without the microphone. So naturally, no one except the front row could hear me... but I could hear the entire audience of kids laughing at me loud and clear! #Ouch. The second time, in 11th grade, was much more fun, as my friend Jamie and I performed a parody song we'd written of Britney Spears' Oops I Did It Again. Our performance even included back-up dancing "skanks" and featured my older sister coming onstage in an astronaut costume at one point. You can only imagine that it was epic. (The "King of New York" performance from fact #35 was not live singing; we lip-synched over that track.)

45. Once in college, I successfully funneled an entire 40oz. There is a video of this somewhere. I was instantly hammered. There was definitely vomit later that night. I do not regret it.

46.  I wrote lots of stories in elementary school and wrote tons of songs in middle school (complete with melodies and CD cover designs... not kidding).

47.  I get motion sickness on everythinnnng: cars, boats, buses, elevators, carnival rides, planes. YOU FREAKING NAME IT.

48. I currently own 111 nail polishes. This does not include top/base coats.

49. My older sister and I shared a dorm room my sophomore year in college. For some reason we didn't think this was a bad idea at the time. It was.

50. I once made it a project to turn all of my notebook doodles from one college semester into one massive collage:



It was a ton of fun to think of all of these! I hope you've learned something here today. Or 50 somethings. Since this is a TAG, I'm tagging the following bloggers to tackle this topic too:

Lauren @ Much Ado About Somethin'
Emily @ Osborne || My Life in Words
Angie @ Angie's Boblog

Even if you're not one of the above tagged bloggers, I would seriously love to hear one random fact about you in the comments below!

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Friday, June 7, 2013

I Painted My Sister's Nails!

You may or may not have noticed, but I've been making it a bit of a habit to post a nail polish blog on Fridays for a little while now.  Since I took a bit of a break from blogging this past week while my younger sister, Markie, was visiting me in Vancouver, it seemed appropriate to "return" today with a nail polish post that also pertained to her visit.

Markie visited from the evening of May 31 till the morning of June 5, and during that time we walked around the city, went for a hike (pics to come!), hung out on the beach, ate some good food, and (finally coming around to the point) I gave her a mani! Whooop!

I don't ever do other people's nails, so this was thrilling for me. We perused my library of nail polish blogs until she spotted one that tickled her fancy - pink nails with a glittery silver accent nail. Check it out here: Pink Nails with Some Razzle Dazzle

Instead of pink, Markie chose a red from my stash of polishes - a Sinful Colors polish called Ruby Ruby. For the silver accent nail, I used Pure Ice's Beware (I showed it here in my How to Remove Glitter Nail Polish post) and Love & Beauty's Crystal Silver (see it here).

red nails with silver glitter accent

I used two coats of Beware and two coats of Crystal Silver on her thumb. And yes, I made her pose afterwards with a bottle of nail polish. That's what big sisters are for.

Can't wait to recap the awesome hike that we took together while she was here - stay tuned for that!

Happy Friday :)

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Great Use for a Leftover Frame: Sunglasses Holder!

I know I said that there would be a few days with no blogs from me, since my sister is here visiting me in Vancouver. But she is taking a nap right now and this is just a quickie post!

Remember when I put up some empty frames as wall decorations a few weeks ago? In that blog I mentioned that I'd purchased 5 frames, with only 3 of them making it up onto the wall. As for the other two frames that I'd purchased and painted for the project, one of them didn't take the paint well (it turned pink somehow) and the other just didn't really look "right" with the other frames.

This is the one that just didn't look right with the others:

picture frame with wire backing

And since I'd already gone through the trouble of paying for it, removing all the insane retro picture backing, cleaning it, and painting it, I figured it should be kept around until I found another use for it.

Here's my "other" use:

picture frame used as sunglasses holder

I doubt you have any questions at all about how this was achieved, so I won't insult you by posting any instructions. I hope you find this useful!!

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Sunday, June 2, 2013

Sweat Roundup of the Week!

Like I said last Sunday, each weekend here in my blog I'm going to try to do a roundup of the workouts I've done over the previous 7 days. Hopefully it will help hold me accountable in my workouts this summer and prevent me from becoming a lazy sunovabetch. Here's what I've been doing in the gym this past week to try to look fly. You can click on most of these exercises for a demo of what they are (if you don't know already):

5/27 (lower body & abs)
5 mins elliptical
12 deadlifts, 20 lbs each hand
12 squats, 20 lbs each hand
40 bridges
40 single leg bridges, 20 each leg
12 deadlifts, 20 lbs each hand
20 calf raises, 20 lbs each hand
40 weighted v-sit twist, holding 15 lbs
40 bridges
40 single leg bridges, 20 each leg
40 weighted side bends, 20 lbs each hand

5/29 (upper body & abs)
20 mins elliptical
12 bent over rows, 20 lbs each hand
12 chest press on exercise ball, 15 lbs each hand
20 Russian get ups, holding 5 lbs
15 deltoid flys, 7.5 lbs each hand
12 close grip chest press on exercise ball, 15 lbs each hand
40 weighted side bends, 20 lbs each hand
- 1:30 plank
- 30 cobras

5/30 (lower body w/ some abs)
5 mins elliptical
20 deadlifts, 20 lbs each hand
40 static lunges, 20 each leg
20 calf raises, 20 lbs each hand
30 Russian get ups, holding 5 lbs
20 squats, 20 lbs each hand
- 40 single leg bridges, 20 each leg
2:00 plank

My younger sister Markie arrived here in Vancouver on Friday night for a visit!! She and a friend just completed a substantial road trip across the entire country, beginning in Massachusetts and ending in Portland. Markie flew up to me from Portland and will be here till mid-week this week.  For that reason, I'll probably skip a few days of blogging while she's here, so that I can spend some QT!

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Saturday, June 1, 2013

A Few Good Things

A new coffee and donut place opened up this past weekend on 4th Ave, just a few short blocks from my apartment! 

lucky's doughnuts, vancouver
.  lucky's doughnuts/49th parallel coffee roasters  .

coconut cream doughnut
.  toasted coconut w/ coconut cream filling  .

I tried my first papaya:

papaya
.  you would never guess what this looks like on the inside...  i'll leave you with the mystery .

I filled my new blue glass bottle with some fresh flowers...

flowers in blue bottle

... and had fun with the exposure tool in one of my photo-editing programs:
flowers in blue bottle, high exposure
.  not low  .





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