I posted yesterday about our experience doing the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. It was a pretty long post already without pictures so I wanted to share some today.
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| Starting off early in the morning |
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| Walking by the Palace of the Fine Arts |
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| Love this city |
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| This lady danced her little face off, all day long |
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| Funniest hat I’ve ever seen |
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| soooo much pink |
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| beautiful bay |
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| golden gate |
The Avon Walk for Breast Cancer was this past weekend. We signed up in February, fundraised for months, thought about training for months while sitting on the couch and not actually training (to be fair, it’s walking, right? I’ve been walking pretty solidly for like 26 years by now).
I was excited for it, and excited to be doing it with my mom and sisters, I thought it would be fun and that it raised money for a good cause, but I didn’t give it much more thought than that.
It was a really great experience, even just as far as getting to see the city. If you only have one weekend to visit a place, think about signing up for this event because it was really awesome, we walked through Fisherman’s Wharf, down the Embarcadero, through China town, North Beach, the Presidio, past Golden Gate Park, it was really an amazing way to see the city, and to get to really appreciate so many of the places that I drive by all the time and think to myself “Oh I should really stop there”, but then never do.
As we were at about mile 8, we came to a corner where a woman was standing alone. She was pale. thin, and she looked frail but tough. From her close cropped hair, it was clear that she was either in the midst of chemo, or had just finished it. As each walker passed by her, she would look them directly in the eye and say “Thank you for walking for me.” I almost burst into tears, but it was so inspiring, especially at about mile 25 when all I wanted to do was lay down and drink a margarita.
That night we went to Cheesecake Factory for some carb loading and some truly delicious Asian Pear martinis, I didn’t even blink at finishing most of our shared piece of cheesecake myself, because let’s be honest, I had earned it. We were sitting there, feeling proud of what we’d accomplished, 26.2 miles the first day, but tired, sore and injured, and really disheartened at the prospect of doing it all again the next day.
All of a sudden, my mom pipes up with “Maybe that’s kind of what it’s like when you are actually fighting cancer. You’re tired and sore and injured and you’ve already come so far and you feel like that should be enough, but it isn’t, and you have to wake up the next day and do it all over again, even though you don’t feel like you can, but you have to do it.”
I guess that’s why we have moms. All in all, it was a great experience and a very memorable weekend.
Here are a few things that are making me happy right now:
This article about living in Hawaii. Makes me happy/homesick.
My co-worker went to Italy for a few weeks and brought me back some truffle risotto. Amazing.
I love discovering news words like this one:
fernweh – (noun) a craving for travel; being homesick for a place you’ve never been.
Also, I have recently discovered this amazing spray that has actual magical powers. I’ve been kind of hating on my hair lately because no matter what I do it seems kind of dry and frizzy. I tried using WEN for a few months, and as always happens when I try to do nice things for my hair, it completely rebelled and looked worse than ever.
Apparently my hair is still 13 years old and only likes things that are mean to it. But I tried It’s a 10 spray with Keratin last night, and my hair is soft, shiny and frizz free, and for the day after I wash my hair that is almost unheard of.
It usually takes at least two nights of me sleeping on/aggressively rubbing my head against my satin pillowcase to achieve this kind of sleek manageability. It’s a bit expensive, but worth it if these are going to be the consistent results.
I still don’t know my way around here very well, probably because I’ve been so dependent on technology that I’ve never had to learn. My phone GPS is broken right now, so on the way home from San Jose last weekend, we ended up getting lost and going through San Francisco, which worked out anyway because I had a friend visiting and she wanted to see the city.
It was a gorgeous day, not a lot of traffic, the sun shining and good tunes on the radio, and as we drove north on the 101 and came around the last curve and saw the San Francisco laying out in front of us, with it’s cute, colourful houses on the hillsides and the skyline off in the distance, I realized for the first time that I really love this city.
It would be just like me to finally notice that just as we’re starting to get serious about planning where we want to go next, but you can’t have everything in life. The transition to living here was definitely rough, I’ve never been so lonely and homesick in my life, including when I moved to an island in the middle of the ocean without knowing a single person.
It was a great experience for me in hindsight, nothing helps you figure out who you are faster than no longer have anyone around you to tell you who they think you should be. It’s scary at first, but once you figure out that the only opinion that really matters is your own, even if it’s because there is nobody left around you to have an opinion, it’s very freeing.
Looking back, I can pretty clearly see how each new place I’ve lived has changed me and shaped my viewpoint, and I know I’m very fortunate to have had the ability to live in so many wonderful places. I can’t wait to see what is in store for me when I get to my next new home.
Over labour day weekend, my best friend got married in a gorgeous ceremony in Bend, OR. I arrived on Wednesday night, and despite a pretty terrible toothache, had such a great weekend. Nic’s family and friends are so much fun, so in addition to the actual wedding, it was pretty much just a 5 day party, broken up periodically by important bridesmaids duties like making bouquets and playing Cards Against Humanity.
Contrary to popular belief, I did NOT cry through the whole ceremony, but she looked so beautiful, and so in love, and I don’t think there are words to describe how happy I am for her and her wonderful new husband Mac.
I also began what I believe will be a life-long commitment that day, although mine was with a beverage. If you are looking for a sign that the world really is a lovely place, you can probably find it at the bottom of a lavender lemon drop martini.
Last night we went to the launch party for Tiffany’s new jewellery line, Atlas. I went with my friend Hannah, and it was a good time. They had some really good appetizers (and some not so good ones, avoid black bean tarts at any cost), and we drank all of the champagne that exists in the world, as evidenced by my pounding headache and immediate craving for a cheese bagel the second I opened my eyes this morning, one hour past my alarm.
We also got to meet Aimee Song from Song of Style, and she was very sweet and just as beautiful in person. It was a pretty fun night, we were quite like Holly Go-Lightly, but without the emotional baggage or jaunty hats.
The Atlas line was pretty, I liked some of the bracelets especially, but call me old fashioned, if I’m going to pay that much for a piece of jewellery, it needs to be really sparkly.
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| Aimee Song, she was very sweet |
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| Sparkly chocolate truffles. Everyone was completely covered in edible glitter |
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| Tiffany jewellery models |
Even though it is still gorgeous out here, it’s mid-September and getting close to Fall. This time of year always makes me want to throw out everything I own and become one of those women who owns a trench coat and wears socks that actually match.
Here are a few things I’m creeping on right now:
I have a little ritual that I pull out every couple of months when I really need to just get away from everything for awhile.
I leave work and go straight to specialty’s and buy the biggest chocolate chunk cookie they have, then I wander around the city nibbling on it and people watching, marvelling at the truly unique souls that are housed by this interesting little city.
I was only going to take 1 day off work for Nic’s wedding, and fly to Oregon on Thursday, but then I heard the slate of activities that were planned for the bachelorette party and I had to immediately change my plans.
We went on the Ale Trail, a local institution in Bend, which is a 16 person bar/bicycle that let’s you pedal/drink your way from bar to brew pub, all over town. It was so much fun, and also sort of a workout. I think if more workouts involved alcohol and a bunch of friends, people would always be in peak physical condition.
Our bar driver was a doll, and we ended up picking up a topless troubadour, whom we invited along because we thought he was a friend of our driver, but at the end of the tour we were informed that he was actually just a random homeless guy who came along for the ride.
As an added bonus, one of the breweries we went to was called the Boneyard. If you knew me during my time on the island, you will probably be as excited as we were, and will likely fully support our decision to buy matching Boneyard hats.
If you’re ever in Bend with some good friends and a few spare hours to kill, definitely check out the Ale Trail, more info here.
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| boneyard for life |
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| bride’s bitches |
I wrote about BodyRock a few months ago, and how much I liked the workouts, but they kept changing the format. I checked back in with them recently, and they have a new site called The DailyHiit that provides daily workouts with trainers who are actually doing the workout with you to keep you motivated.
It is almost amazing how much my capacity for doing squats increases when I’m doing it with someone, even if that person happens to be virtual. When I’m alone I’m easily distracted by anything other than squats, like staring out the window or being hungry and needing a snack, so it’s hard to really get a good workout in.
Check out the dailyhiit here, so far I’m really liking Karen’s videos, she is very cute and peppy, but she looks like she could kick my ass if she wanted to. I did her “transform yourself” workout video 4 times in a row and I could only hobble for almost three days afterwards, it’s a good one.
loveliness. 