Partying in paradise

So I've been struggling to sit down and write this week's blog not because of lack of inspiration, but I have simply been far too busy and important! No, not really, probably just a combination of laziness and great summer weather to be honest. It's pretty tough to be all dorky on the computer when you can be outside in the sun. Thankfully my skin has finally shed its scaly translucent luster and is somewhat normal once again (if only momentarily!).

In other news, this week my work hosted an island themed picnic in Stanley Park on Wednesday afternoon so we all got to leave the office at 11am and spent the afternoon eating, playing games and learning Hawaiian and Tahitian dance. Despite my inherent distaste for dancing, it was actually pretty fun. The other great work news is that I had some really positive feedback on my work from the big boss and he wants me to apply for a full time EA position coming up in September. Hooray!

In Steven-work related news, last week he spent four days in the Northwest Territories at a place called Yellowknife, where his company owns a local plane business. Tough for some! Interestingly, his boss warned him to check the weather a day or two before he left just to make sure they weren't expecting any freak snow storms (in the middle of summer!!) It's actually the place where they film the TV show 'Ice Road Truckers' ... if you've heard of it... (basically it's a show about truckies that have to drive these big semi trailers over ice covered roads - yep, exactly what it sounds like!). Anyway, he had a great time and was apparently quite a novelty for the locals!

So last weekend was Dave's birthday and his girlfriend Liz invited a few of us to her family's cabin at Loon Lake - approximately 5 hours drive north east of Vancouver. Needless to say we spent the majority of the five hour journey making jokes about how crazy this would be back home - driving five hours to Bundaberg to celebrate a friend's birthday when we often balk at driving an hour or less to the coast! The major difference between the drive from Vancouver to Loon Lake and the drive from Brisbane to Bundy is quite clearly the epic scenery - I was completely in awe of the grandeur of the mountains we drove through - impossible to describe but they completely dwarfed our car and made me feel so small. Even in the darkness their majesty was humbling. My mesmerisation was briefly interrupted twice - once when we spotted a baby bear (that's #2 for me, #4 for Steven - dammit!) and then when we almost hit Bambi's mother who ran right in front of our car (much to my relief Dave broke well in time).

Our view!

The Loon Lake house

Some scenery on the way home

More scenery on the drive home - note the snow still on the mountains in the middle of summer!!

Before we even made it to Loon Lake we had a little trouble culling our 'essential items' for the two day trip. With Steve planning to fit in some training, plus groceries and alcohol, we had pretty much packed the entire contents of our tiny little house. As most of you would know I do enjoy a good list and I try my utmost to incorporate this list making habit into every facet of my life - holiday packing is no exception -

Nat's stuff

Nat's comprehensive list

So when I arrived home on Friday afternoon, I had to laugh when I noticed my list making had managed to infiltrate Steven's conscious stream of disorganisation -

Steve's stuff

Steve's comprehensive list

Loon Lake is incredibly gorgeous and unbelievably peaceful. It was well and truly the most relaxed place I have visited since I have been in Canada. When I thought it couldn't get any better, it well and truly cemented itself into my good-books when I spent Saturday morning eating breakfast sitting beside two friendly ducks and a brace of ducklings! Alvin, Simon and Theodore even joined us for lunch later in the day! I was so impressed with the chipmunks and I couldn't believe how tiny (about the size of a large mouse) and quick they are in real life! 

My little duckling friends

Very tame wildlife!

The view - pretty impressive!!

The beautiful Lola - token lake house dog

Chippy!

Feeding the ducks

More chippies!

So cute - check out their cute little hands (paws?)

Saturday we spent doing a whole 'lotta nothing and it was fabulous! With gorgeous sunny weather and an average of 27 degrees, we made the most of the cabin's prime lake location and chilled out canoeing and lazing around on inflatable pool toys, with a few beverages for good measure. Dave was also thrilled with his present - a BB gun (apparently they're illegal in Australia) - and so were we - taking turns shooting empties balancing precariously in various locations (I gave it the 'ok' after confirming the bullets were biodegradable and no animals were or were ever going to be harmed in the activities - this BB gun was purely for beer can related fun). In case you're wondering - it was a requirement of the weekend that we wear our party hats for the duration of our stay!

Steve sucking it up before diving into the chilly water

The Dave's go for a paddle on the pride floaty!

Chilling in the lake

Dave tries his luck with the BB gun

The poor beer can copped a beating

A pretty accurate shot!

It was me of course ... or not??

Dave - the birthday boy

Dave shoots Dave with the BB gun - he asked for it!!

Saturday night was made complete with an open fire, pavlova birthday cake, and my first ever s'mores for dessert! (s'more:  a traditional nighttime campfire treat popular in the United States and Canada, consisting of a roasted marshmallow and a layer of chocolate sandwiched between two pieces of graham cracker). Liz was amazed at how excited one person could be - she clearly does not understand my love of chocolate and/or other sweet treats!

Delicious pavlova cake

Pavlova cake cutting FAIL

Campfire!

Taking cool campfire photos with the fancy camera

S'mores!!

Sunday was a little more depressing as we all realised we'd soon have to make the five hour journey back to Vancouver. The sombre mood in the car spoke volumes of the wonderful weekend we had enjoyed and was briefly interrupted as we made our way through Whistler on the way home and thoughts of our upcoming Christmas festivities started to creep in. We had a sneak peak of our accommodation and I have to say I am pretty excited!

We're preparing for a fairly quiet weekend in the lead up to our next big trip - Cancun! Steve's training is coming along well and I hope to have a nice summer wardrobe sorted out soon ...

Until next time...

Sunset at English Bay

Long Weekend Fun & Festivities

What a weekend! I honestly feel like today is a hangover day, minus the traditional pre-hangover day events. Let's call it my Grouse Grind hangover day ... and I'll get to that in a minute! Earlier in the week I made the comment that long weekends mean so much more when you're employed, and it's extremely handy for us that there's pretty much one long weekend per month in BC. How convenient that the first of August happens to be 'British Columbia Day'! Originally we'd contemplated going up to Whistler but trying to get bus tickets or a cheap rental car at short notice ended up being more trouble than it was worth so we decided we'd stay in Vancouver for the weekend and attack the list once again.

Saturday morning started with a well deserved (or not?) sleep in. We'd both been fighting off cold symptoms from earlier in the week so a sleep in was in order. It was such a beautiful day outside we decided we'd head to the local West End markets for a coffee fix (for Steve) and a brownie fix (for me). Yes, it was delicious. So delicious in fact, I forgot to take a photo before devouring the entire thing (but not without some resistance to Steven's attempts to have a bite).

Comox Street Markets - our local

Markets embracing Pride Weekend!

Later in the morning we headed off to have lunch at Horseshoe Bay. What a gorgeous little place! Horseshoe Bay is one of the two areas where the ferries transfer from Vancouver to Nanaimo (Vancouver Island) and back (the other being Richmond, where we caught our ferry to Victoria). We spent the afternoon walking around and admiring the million dollar houses, picnic-ing and making the most of the sunshine. I also forgot to mention that this weekend marked the start of Pride Weekend in Vancouver. I took great delight in collecting evidence of Steven embracing Pride Week to its full potential ...

An example of the impressive houses at Horseshoe Bay

Horseshoe Bay - pretty scenic!

A perfect day for a picnic in the park!

Steve embraces Pride weekend ...

Nanaimo Ferry coming in to the Bay.

Enjoying the sunshine!

Saturday night we made our way to English Bay to watch the first of three fireworks shows - part of Vancouver's annual 'Celebration of Light' which involves a fireworks competition between three countries - Canada, Spain and China, who was first up on the agenda. The firework shows take place over the course of a week, with Spain presenting their show on Wednesday night and Canada rounding out the competition on Saturday, August 6th. China's show was pretty spectacular. I generally find fireworks to be fairly underwhelming so I was pleasantly surprised.

I'm sensing a Pride theme here Steven ...

Fireworks!

More fireworks!

Sunday morning began much the same as Saturday morning. I had all the best intentions to get up early but it didn't really work out that way. Fortunately Steve took one for the team and did his long run (25k) for the weekend so I decided it was only fitting to reward his hard efforts with a trek to Grouse Mountain and our first attempt at the infamous Grouse Grind! To set the scene, we'd finally got ourselves sorted and ready to head off, I'd done the necessary public transport research (or so I thought - hah!) and we began our walk to West Georgia Street (approx 5 minutes) to catch the bus. Little did we know what awaited us just around the corner ...

Batman ... say it isn't so?

Yes, that's right - a whole lotta Lady Gaga!! I seriously couldn't get 'Born This Way' out of my head for the rest of the day. So our grand trekking plans were momentarily foiled by Vancouver's Pride Parade - which turned out to be pretty fun in itself.

West Jet float.

That's not dangerous ...

... at all!!

Some great signs to be seen!

Once we'd made our way through the crowd of people we hopped on the 240. So numbers aren't my strong point and I guess counting bus stops isn't either, because we ended up hopping off at the wrong stop - I'd made us to North Van but not quite where we needed to be to catch the 236 ... it also didn't help that we needed to get off at "Ridgewood" ... but we got off at "Bridgeman" - honestly, Ridgewood and Bridgeman sound very similiar!! (okay, so add hearing to my list of weaknesses back there). Thankfully we asked some nice bus drivers a few questions and made our way to Grouse Mountain in the end. Our first time in the 'burbs since we'd arrived and I can't tell you how gorgeous the houses are in North Van. I wish I'd taken some photos!

So our primary purpose for making the trip to Grouse Mountain was of course to take on the infamous Grouse Grind. Basically the Grouse Grind is a 2.9km trail up the face of Grouse Mountain and consists of 2,830 stairs and an 853 metre elevation. It was a humbling experience to say the least! In fact, when my cousin told me he'd run the Grind when he was in Vancouver I was thinking, oh yeah, well, if he could run it then I'll be fine walking it ... I thought I was going to die. Several times. I even had to use both hands and feet to get myself up some parts of the trail it was so steep. I'm sure Steve thoroughly enjoyed it after his 25 km morning run too. People do run it though, and the fastest recorded time is 21 minutes. Insanity. What's more is that in the midst of the suffering and pain I saw my first wild bear!! I couldn't believe it I was so excited. What makes it slightly scary is that the bear actually ran only metres behind and past us to cross the trail and I didn't even notice until I heard a guy from down below yell out "bear on the right" ... so I turned around after a 30 second brain-compute delay (owing to lack of oxygen I can only assume) and I saw the baby brown bear running down the mountain. Crazy! And so cool!

The very beginning - provides a nice false sense of security!

Views as we make our way up the mountain!

Looking back down the trail

Winners! Well, finishers, anyway!

Once we'd completed the Grind and taken a few photos as evidence, we decided to make the most of our suffering and enjoy the rest of the day up on the mountain. We visited the resident orphan Grizzly Bears Grinder and Coola and Grey Wolves (retired from the movie industry!), took the chair lifts up to The Eye of the Wind (wind turbine) and decided to finish off the day with drinks and dinner at the Altitude Bistro which overlooks Downtown Vancouver - a pretty spectacular finish to an incredible day!

View from the top!

View of Downtown (where we live!)

Grizzlys!!

Wolves

Chair lift up to the wind turbine

Grizzly playing in the water

Views from the chairlift

Now we're off to complete the weekend with dinner at Guu (a great little local Japanese restaurant)!

Stay tuned for more adventures! :-)

Back by popular demand ... or not.

So I feel that I am being punished for having such a good run in my temping career thus far. When CPSBC Natalie thinks back to SNC Natalie's perfect job earning a decent hourly wage for browsing the wonderful web stores of Saks and Christian Louboutin while making the occasional deep-in-thought face whenever a VP walked past her desk, a pained sigh ensues.

Cue beginning of dramatic personal journal style blog entry a la Bridget Jones ... Current Weight: 5 000 000 pounds; Cigarettes: 2 packets (this will make no sense if you have not read the book .. or seen the movie for that matter!).

The truth is I am far too tired and of course it is not that dramatic at all. In fact, I actually enjoy being busy because it makes the working week fly by! Nevertheless I catch myself occasionally reminiscing about the days when temping was fun and carefree. Now it's all business and little play, hence the lack of blog updates recently (and quite possibly the lapse into talking about myself in third person).

So my new work is at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia (CPSBC) and I'm working in the Registration department until (at this stage) mid September. I'm still trying to work out what my fellow colleagues are on (although when I put two and two together...) - they are without a doubt the nicest collective group of people I have ever met ... and this place has a LUNCH ROOM! Is it sad that I was so excited to find myself lucky enough to work in an office with a dedicated lunch room? Please don't answer that.

Basically the work involves me sifting through hundreds of files of physicians that have at any stage in their careers been registered in British Columbia and issuing certificates of conduct to other agencies and regulatory bodies throughout the world. Clearly it's pretty important all the details are accurate so the job is a tedious, painstaking grind. Despite the busy days I am thoroughly enjoying the challenge and as I said - can't complain about the company! It has also made me question (several times, daily) the sanity of my friends who are studying medicine - do these people EVER stop studying and taking exams?

Vancouver life of late has been fairly non eventful.

We celebrated Canada Day (seems so long ago now) by enjoying afternoon drinks at a British pub down on the water near Canada Place and dining on a range of tasty offerings from local street food vendors - pretty sure we did Asian (pork dumplings), Greek (lamb wraps) and French (Crepes) all in one day! 

Despite our best porker efforts Steven is still hungry and attempts to eat his beer.

The Olympic cauldron in all its glory on Canada Day.

We've also started making our weekly pilgrimage to Granville Island on a Sunday afternoon to do our  grocery shopping (and for me to buy my banana nut toasted lunch-bagel!) at the public market. The food is fantastic and well worth the ferry fare. As it turns out our groceries cost the same, if not less than they do here, in Downtown. The only negative is that it gets so busy of a weekend, especially later in the day, so it's sometimes a struggle to shuffle through the hoards of people - works wonders for my  patience threshold though!

An example of delish Granville Island ingredients dinners - homemade rice paper rolls & Vietnamese salad.

Steven is still training hard for his upcoming events. Every morning I wake to the sweet sounds of the wind trainer and the sweet (OR NOT) smells of hard work. In fact, as I type this a waft of training gear smell is moving in this direction and has reminded me I need to do ANOTHER load of exercise clothes washing. All for a good cause though - if he was this stinky for no reason then we'd have serious issues. Steven is also training extra hard this week because I promised him I would make lasagne on Friday night if he makes all his sessions. He is being very diligent and as the household appointed Director of Dinners I am enjoying having all the power.

Post half marathon I have been attempting to maintain my own fitness by continuing to run the trails of Stanley Park. The other day I saw a tiny baby squirrel no bigger than my hand! At first I thought it was a piece of dead wood (cut me some slack, I run glasses-less!) until I moved closer and realised the poor little thing was frozen in fear (as you would be with a giant monster standing a metre away from you). It was pretty much the cutest thing I have ever seen.

I've also started taking bikram yoga classes and I am in love. I honestly feel like I am going to die every time I do a class yet I am now addicted. I could be addicted to worse things though so it's all good.

So I guess we've been lying fairly low lately also because summer seems to have disappeared as quickly as it arrived. The last two weeks we've had mostly rainy days or ones full of dark, ominous clouds so our trips to Granville (scheduled rain, hail or shine) have been the only shining light - oh, plus my new found love of bikram. Thankfully last night was rain free so we packed our sleeping bags and set off to Stanley Park to watch a free screening of Top Gun (Steven could hardly contain his excitement, he even had to tap his head and feet in unison along to 'Danger Zone'). Free outdoor movies screen all summer long - I love it how people really embrace the season. It makes sense though - summer is fickle here.

We didn't take any pictures from the night but it basically looks like this (only dark - obviously!) -

People tend to set up early to get prime spots and do dinner in the park, pre-movie.

No rest for the wicked. I am off to start dinner and get cracking on this stinky washing. Miss you all and I promise not to leave it so long in future as I am sure you will all be waiting with bated breath for the next installment.

Namaste.

Celebrating the three month milestone!

So it's now Wednesday evening and I can finally sit down without feeling any pain! Why you ask? Well, last Sunday I completed my first ever half marathon (with the help of Missy & epic support crew Steven & Dave)!

Given the mediocre build up and despite the emphysema-esque cough I had (and still have) (see previous post featuring the return of my dreaded flu-cold), I was pretty happy with the end result. In fact, earlier in the week I had attempted one last training run of only 40 minutes and by the 20 minute turn around mark I thought I was going to die! So let's just say it was celebrations all 'round! 

The weekend started off well and was pretty low key but mostly sunny weather meant we were all in happy moods. On Saturday after his ride (Steven has now started training for his next Ironman - more on that below) Steve and I decided we should finally visit the little cafe on the corner of Comox & Denman called Central Bistro (just a short walk at the end of our street) because we'd heard so many good things about it. Well yes, it was amazing! So amazing in fact, that then and there I declared my chicken BLAT sandwich to be the best sandwich I had eaten in Canada so far. And as you know, we've eaten A LOT in Canada in the short time we have been here! Needless to say it was a big deal. Steve had the lambwich (bet you can't guess the key ingredient) which was also delicious, but once again I was the victor in our 'best meal' competition.

True to my traditional pre-competition form, I spent the majority of the weekend a nervous wreck but by Sunday morning I was relatively calm as I underwent all my pre-run rituals including eating a small bag of popcorn (yes - I finally found the cure to my running cramps!!).

Over 5,000 people (and one gorilla) competed in the race which began at UBC (University of British Columbia) and finished in Stanley Park. Vancouver even managed to turn on a gorgeous, sunny and warm (20 degrees - woohoo!) day for us so we had awesome running conditions. Our support crew were very dedicated, making their way to various points along the course to cheer us on. Needless to say I think Steve now has a lot more respect for all the hard work that goes in to being support crew!

These guys were only a few k's behind us! ;-)

Told you!

Missy & I at the start

Picturesque running conditions!

Quite a few k's in and still feeling good

Finishers!

 The only support crew 'fail' was that I had to take my own finisher's medal photo ...

  ... because my support crew stumbled at the final hurdle ...

So tired he couldn't even take his socks off!

But at least he supports a good team! ... 

Secret Lions supporter??

Completing the half marathon is something I am pretty proud of and I am very happy to be able to cross it off my Vancouver list and life list of personal goals. It was also a pretty big highlight to cap off hitting the infamous three month milestone. It's hard to believe we've been here for only three months - it feels like a lot longer ... in a good way of course!

Aside from the highlight of crossing the finish line, I was also excited to be able to harass a stranger's pet once again (I'm desperately missing Ruby, Marty, Zorro, Benny, Charli, Cracker, Angel, Brownie, Curry & Noel) - this time it was a Jack Russell puppy called Toby -  

Sadly for me he was more interested in someone's old apple core!

We celebrated post race with ice cream and reading triathlon magazines down at English Bay for the rest of the afternoon. The most exciting part? My ice cream melted for the first time in 3 months!! Hello summer!! (I never thought I'd be so happy to announce a melting ice cream).

As I mentioned above, Steven has now started training for his next Ironman event which takes place on November 27th in Cozumel, Mexico. Pretty exciting stuff! At the moment he's at the start of a big bike block of training and actually just got back from a six hour ride this morning. During the sessions he often updates me to let me know he's okay, where he is and what time he'll be home. Since training in Vancouver began, the texts I now get are something else ...

"It's snowing up here, I don't think I'm dressed appropriately" AND

"Umm... there's a bear on the side of the road" ... he wasn't kidding!

So with the next release of upcoming triathlon dates, our travel schedule for the rest of the year looks something like this: 

September 14-21: Ironman 70.3 Cancun (Cancun, Mexico) 

October 5 - 11: Ford Ironman World Championship (Kona, Hawaii) (Spectating)

November 3-6: ITU Long Distance Triathlon World Championships (Henderson, Nevada)

November 23-30: Ironman Cozumel (Cozumel, Mexico)

Looking pretty good indeed!