Sweet taste of victory

I did a real chin-up today. Three of them, actually.

Sweet victory. I've been working towards this since I mentioned it a few months ago. Three months! I started by using the lat pull cable machine to mimic the chin-up action, and supplemented that with "negative" reps (jumping up onto the bar, and lowering myself slowly, maxing out the eccentric muscle movement, which is apparently an efficient way to build strength).

Last week, I managed to pull down 5 reps of 120 lbs on the lat pull cable. I knew that adding more weight would equate to pulling my bodyweight, so it was time to go for the real thing.

You may wonder why I'm making such a big deal of this - it's just a chin-up! *I* don't even know why the big deal... Except maybe it's that I haven't had such a precise and specific physical goal before (usually it's just "get better" or "get faster" or something equally unmeasurable and therefore there is no risk of complete failure.) No wait, that's not actually true, I've had race-time goals for half-marathons that I've worked toward achieving. But with running, it feels like you can just push a little harder. I guess this one just seemed way out of my league. I couldn't "just push harder". I had to actually BE strong enough. And strong in a way that I'd never been before. And, come to think of it, I've trained for a chin-up for as long as I ever trained for a half-marathon!

I digress. Back to the story. (See? BIG DEAL.)

All week, I got butterflies going down to the gym. I couldn't figure out why, but I figured out it was because I knew it was time to attempt the first real chin-up -- but I was afraid of trying and failing. That simple. So I put it off. Tuesday, I ran intervals. Wednesday, big leg workout (mini-success: I deadlifted 95 pounds! If I wasn't so bad at math I'd have put the larger-sized plates on the bar and looked like superstar. But alas, I can only count by tens so I used a lot of little plates. Lame.) See, I'm procrastinating again.

Today, I was nervous again knowing I really couldn't delay any longer and today had to be the big day. I ran into Sarah, our fitness trainer, in the change room. She'd been helping me along since the start. I 'fessed up my nerves. She told me to go out there, warm up, and she'd talk me through it.

She did, I did, there were high-fives all around.

I just hope it wasn't some sort of fluke, and I can do it again next week!

View from the first grade

Us: Ben, it's time to get out your homework.

Ben: Aw-awwww! But we did homework all day today at school.

Vanity muscle

Amongst ourselves, we eschew and mock the bicep curl. (Isolating that muscle isn't going to make you faster or stronger; and and yet it's the move of choice for oh so many meatheads.)

Thus we end up with me laughing embarrassingly aloud in my cubicle, reading my email:

McPie: Today at the gym I saw a guy blow out his hair product on a massive bicep curl.

G: Bicep curl guy is going to be able to answer some serious phones.

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God

In that order.

Good: kitchen counter is pretty much finished. [Sounds of angels singing on high: "AAAAAAAAH"]


You wouldn't think a kitchen counter would be such a big deal (or take five weekends to acquire), but when you do it yourself from scratch it takes on a whole new meaning. Such as: "pride and joy".

Cool bonus stuff: McPie built a shelf for recipe books and recycling.


It's got a magic desk! (Not yet stained, but fun!)


Ok, now the bad... I mentioned before about a sort of leaky roof? And you may have noticed, out your window lately, the WORST WINTER ON RECORD? In the NCR, that means snow snow snow snow rain melt freeze snow snow snow rain rain rain freeze snow. And THAT means really leaky roof.

Wednesday morning. McPie notices dripping ceiling, pokes hole in ceiling to release pressure and water flows freely.


There was nothing we could do about it, so we went to work. After work, we went to the track. (Hey, I ran a mile in 7:02 minutes. McPie beat me with a 6:22 mile!) Anyway, when we arrived home at like, late.

Same foyer, 12 hours later:


The lily survived; the table did not.

That white stuff there on the floor is the ceiling. Sigh. Up there, where all that darkness is is soggy, moldy insulation. There is an enormous ice dam on our roof which is totally unbudgeable, even by the redoubtable McPie. Thus, we have a major renovation in our future. But when that happens, the sun will be bright, the weather will be sunny and spring well under way. (I'm still operating under the assumption that spring IS coming.)

[Note: my foyer is not actually the colour of blue that appears in the picture. It's the camera flash that makes it appear to be kids-bedroom-blue.]

Enough house stuff for awhile. Next up: chin-up progress. Look for the entry titled "So Close I Can Taste It".

Weekend warriors

Needless to say, arrival of Big Snow this weekend put a bit of a damper on plans... Mostly it slowed everything down, so that every errand that needed to take place took much longer than normal. There were also several hours spent shoveling.

I hadn't cleared the front walk since last Wednesday's foot of snow, and we hadn't gotten mail in awhile. So I had to do some prep-work (that is, an hour of shoveling) before the storm. Prior to starting the post-storm shoveling, the banks on either side of the walk are already higher than my head... McPie took this picture from the safety and warmth of the house.


Sunday was such a gorgeous day that it was actually great to have an excuse to leave all the other jobs-that-needed-doing to get out and shovel. McPie and I double-teamed, so it didn't take all day. But the Swift? The Swift is MIA:


We did manage to make some progress on the kitchen. We found some stools for the counter, so it's now fully functional. Also, behold the newly installed butcher block, presented to you by Constance, aka Daddy's Little Helper. Aka "Dork Factor 5".


(I'd like to point out her hand-knitted-by-Hedda toque. Of course, it wasn't knitted this year...)

Where the girls are pretty

The best thing about my workouts this week is my new iPod Shuffle. Especially the part where I had the foresight to load Paradise City onto it.



Chin-ups never seemed so within-reach.
I love you Axl Rose!

Speaking of foolish mortals...

Until this weekend, we hadn't made any progress on the kitchen since last I mentioned it. (Last weekend, McPie was in the recording studio -- aka Sheilah's parents' basement -- on Saturday and Sunday. I was on kid-duty*.)

So, this weekend, it was time to get a move on it. And so I present: the KMac tutorial on replacing your kitchen counter in 8 easy steps.

McPie had cut out the counter shapes, so we needed to apply the Formica. Turns out this is done with nothing more hi-tech than contact cement. The application of which was my job.

On the counter pieces:


And on the Formica:


You didn't know you could spread contact cement with a paint roller, did you now? Very efficient. (Er, excuse the panty-flash. That's my classic Gatinoise version of plumber butt.)

Then, we carefully lift the Formica sheets onto the plywood, and place it very carefully over the shape of the counter. And smooth it down firmly. (It looks like I'm pounding. I'm not - I'm firmly pressing. In a circular motion.)


At some point, McPie used a router to trim the excess Formica from the edges of the counter. He's handy that way.

Finally we DO get to pound it down. Apparently there is a tool for this (like, um, a rubber mallet?) but we didn't have one, so McPie used a more creative method. Yes, he is jumping:


So, that's done. We take a break, and go to The Ballet.

Sunday morning. McPie spends a substantial part of the day installing the new dishwasher, while I "help" (ie: clean the bathrooms, do laundry, get groceries).

Missing dishwasher:


New dishwasher!!


When I return from the market, we are ready to remove the old counter. We have to bust it loose, because the previous DIY'er screwed it in from the top, then glued the tiles on top of that. We expected it to take hours, but with a little expert pry-bar action, it popped right off. Findley, as usual, is lending his moral support.


A kitchen without a counter is not a useful room. We couldn't have dinner until the counter was back on (also, we are missing a sink at this point) and it was very tricky piecing it all together.


However, at long last (10 o'clock, in fact), the counter is on and dinner is made. (I was nesting tasks.) Voila! Two obscenely large steaks, served with blue cheese, barley-shiitake-pinenut risotto, and roasted radicchio, served ON our new counter!


For the record, neither of us were able to finish our steak. We had steak sandwiches in our lunch the next day.

We still have much work to do. There are edges to be added, caulking to applied, stools to be shopped for, and lots of other details. (And that's just the first stage of the kitchen project.) At any rate, we now have a lovely new counter, at which seating will soon be available.

Meanwhile, as of tonight (Monday) we have a new project on the go:


Maybe you can't tell, but these containers are catching drips of water from the ceiling, where it is leaking thanks to the serendipitous meeting of two feet of snow and freezing rain and plain old icky rain. These aren't the only leaks. The piano is covered in plastic, and the dining room table is pushed from the middle of the dinning room to avoid the deluge...

Sigh.

But honestly. What I really want to know: what to y'all think of the turquoise vinyl flooring? I'm telling you, it's coming back into style...

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

If you ever have the opportunity to see a performance by Les Ballet de Monte-Carlo, don't pass it up!! Even if you think you may not like ballet.

I took Sweetie McPie to see Les Ballet de Monte-Carlo's performance of Le Songe (A Midsummer Night's Dream) on Saturday, and it was quite incredible. I am a sucker for ballet anyway, but this one rivalled my all-time favourite performance - back in 2000 - which was Romeo and Juliette performed by, you guessed it, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo.

Lots of companies do the "modern twist" thing, but BMC does it best, in my (admittedly limited) experience. It's closer to modern dance, but with enough ballet sensibility to keep it civilized. The music used in the BMC's Le Songe was was amazing - they used Mendelssohn's score for the scenes with the Athenians (Hermia, Lysander and the like); a very ethereal, modernist classical piece for the scenes with the fairies (whose costumes and choreography were simply breathtaking); and a crazy super-modern score which included a choir for the scenes with the "mechanics". There was also some talking, and fantastic acting that really made the story clear. Because the plot involves so much mixing-up of who loves who, the key lovers were labelled so the audience could keep it straight. It was just really amazing.

We were lucky not to miss this - we picked up the tickets just the night before the performance, and we still managed to get great seats. I think it was NAC karmic repayment for the lacklustre Royal Winnipeg performance of Carmen that we saw last month. (In that one, the musical score lacked any degree of drama, and therefore so did the movement... and what else is Carmen supposed to be if not dramatic?! She came off as a sort of boring hussy.)

Of course, in attending the ballet we had to briefly interrupt our big weekend of working on the kitchen. Thanks to many hours of work on Sunday (most on the part of my genius husband) we are getting there. I will post an update (with pictures) soon.