Toronto!

This past weekend we were in the Toronto area, due to the AGM of the Ontario Woodlot Association. I’m on the executive, and am also the chair of the business development committee, so a busy weekend! Nolan dropped me off at the hotel in Milton on Friday afternoon, after which he went back to Toronto to spend the night and next day with Tina and Riley. I, on the other hand attended a very successful, albeit long business development committee meeting. By the time the meeting was done, I was done as well! First a long drive, then a long meeting. But it was all worth it. The next day was the actual conference and AGM, which was interesting. It always provides great opportunities to network, as well as to catch up with people you see about once a year. Every year, there is a silent auction in support of the AGM, and last year Nolan tried to get a miniature wooden skidder, but in the end someone else got to take it home. This year, they had a very similar one, and I decided to bid on it. Luckily for us, I was able to offer the highest bid, which was well under last year’s highest bid J

The highlight of the business meeting was, of course, the election of the board members. I was once again elected to the board, and on top of that, I received the highest number of votes (together with the current president!). I have to admit I stand out a bit with most members having reached retirement age, and male…

Nolan picked me up at the end of the meeting, after which we went back to Toronto (again), to visit Carrie. She lives really close to downtown (you can see the CN tower from her window, which is about 3km away…), and we walked to a nice little Mexican restaurant on

Queen Street

. The food was great, but the margaritas and sangria made the night! The next morning we left fairly early to drive back to Ottawa. The weather was awesome, lots of sun, which made the drive so much easier. All weekend, and most of last week, it felt like spring was in the air, so nice! But today we got a brutal wake-up call that winter has not forgotten about us just yet. As of yet, we received about 10 cm of snow, covering the grass that had just started to appear again. Ironically enough, we are getting our summer tires put on the car today. Maybe not so wise?!

The Invisalign is going really well. It’s an adjustment that I have to take them out every time I eat, which can be a bit of a hassle at events such as last weekend’s, but nothing too crazy. And most of all, they don’t really hurt, which is nice.

Invisalign time!

Today was (finally) the day that I could pick up my first set of Invisalign aligners (see previous post on Invisalign here). They are clear, so they are not super obvious to see, but you can definitely tell they're doing something. And they are really hard to take off, so I'll only take them off for a meal, but will have to cut down significantly on coffee and snacks. However, that could be a really nice side effect!  I wonder if my teeth will really be as straight and perfect as my dentist makes me want to believe. I guess to be continued?!

This past weekend we were in Brockville to celebrate Aimee's birthday. It was a fun, relaxed and great weekend. We ate some amazing foods, albeit too much, but it was  worth it!  I'm very blessed with my in-laws, that's for sure.

Not much else to report on. The weather has been pretty good, and the forecast is even better so hopefully some of that snow will melt soon. I went for a run on the trails today, and that was challenging, trying to manoeuvre between ice, slush and deeper snow where the sun doesn't hit the ground. But it was really, really nice to get out there again!

Oh, I guess one last thing. We have some additional animals around the house. With some of the snow melting, the raccoons decided to get out of their hiding places.  Not sure we're very happy with them, but they make for some cute pictures:

I guess it's time to bring the bird feeders in...

Good night!

Winter Wonderland

I had the pleasure of spending the past couple of days at the Petawawa Research Forest, and helped facilitate the session for the National Research Forests Research Program. Our training last week came in very handy, and the techniques we used then were a perfect fit this session.
However, part of the session was spent outdoors. We all know that the best conversations take place in the bush, right?

The PRF got close to 30 cm of snow on the weekend, which created some pretty amazing pictures.

Needless to say I love my job :)

We're apparently in for another snowstorm tonight as well, so perhaps another change to go snowshoeing!

Murphy's love affair

In one of my previous posts, I talked about Murphy's love affair with our humidifier. Here are some photos that tell the story better than a thousand words...

Training and the return of winter...

This past week I was lucky enough to take a three day training session on Learning Organization Community of Practice (LOCoP) for advanced practitioners, focusing on strategic planning. The session was facilitated and led by Sylvie Lapointe, who is an absolutely fabulous teacher. She started her own company, L2Emerge, a few years ago but used to work for CFS. If you ever need a facilitator, I highly recommend her!
The days were intensive, but very productive. The funny thing is that we never thought that we would actually talk about strategic planning, vision, etc. Beforehand I thought the session would more focus on the preparation before you facilitate a session, which we talked about as well, but it was so much more! And on top of it all, it fit in perfectly with our National Research Forests session that we planned for Monday and Tuesday.  We received some great guidelines for a 'Taking Stock' exercise. Guess what was on our agenda for Tuesday morning? Indeed: Taking Stock. We thought we would just talk about it for a bit, and move on, but now we actually have the tools to make it successful. Same for a mission statement we're trying to come up with; we now know how to tackle this effectively without it being too dry, and making sure everybody is involved and have their say!
This training also fits in very nicely with the SRI International training I took in the fall. The approaches are slightly different, but they both offer very valuable points and advice, and we'll be using both strategies next week. It is just really nice that an investment in training is actually useful.

I was supposed to leave for Petawawa this morning to guide a group of university students around the PRF, but woke up to a crazy blizzard! It was a bit unexpectedly, especially since we received 30mm of rain yesterday, and were maybe secretly hoping that winter would come to an end. No such luck! So I decided to cancel my trip, and now I'll go up tomorrow morning instead. Missed my coffee date with Krista though :(
We almost went running as well, but decided last minute that it would probably be a disaster and went snowshoeing instead. Never knew that snowshoeing in wet, fresh snow could prove to be such a great workout! We were both sweaty and had our heart rates racing! We put them on about 5 minutes from our house, and just snowshoed down the streets. There was more than enough snow, and now plough in sight! Until this afternoon of course, when we could go out and shovel the end of our driveway again. I guess being on a corner lot does have one disadvantage: we seem to be getting an awful lot of snow dumped on our driveway. And consequently, our snowbank is the highest in the street!

Peterborough Half Marathon - race report

Yesterday was the day that I would redeem myself. Flashback to four years ago: Candice and I both signed up to run the Peterborough half marathon. I was living in Cobden at the time, and had a leg that tended to act up every once in a while during training runs. Long story short: 13 km in the Peterborough half, I was forced to step out. But yesterday was my chance to make up for it! Fun fact: I've started this race three times now, and all three times the course was different... All of them were hilly.
I drove up to Tweed on Saturday to be able to spend some time with Candice before the race. This included some wine, but that might have helped keeping our nerves under control...
After a good night sleep we headed to Peterborough. We had lots of time since the race did not start until 12.30. It has snowed a bit the night before, but the roads were not bad. Our biggest worry was that the roads would be wet and soggy. It turned out they were in pretty good shape. There were definitely a number of puddles, but they were all avoidable.
Since we got to Peterborough fairly early we had some time to kill, and just sat around for a bit. We got approached by two Fleming massage therapist students, offering us a pre-race massage! Well of course we are interested! It probably helped us relax and calm our nerves a bit as well. It felt good, but it was hard to get up afterwards. All we wanted was a nap!
There were about 500 people starting in the half, and at first I was planning on sticking close to the 2.20 pace bunny, but at the start I was right in between the 2.10 and 2.20 pace bunny. I just ran my own race; Candice had taken off at the start (as usual :) ). I forced myself to take it easy, and ran a comfortable steady pace until 5km. Just after 5km a huge hill appeared around the corner. Knowing that I had not done a lot of hill training, I decided to walk up for the most part. Experience has taught me that hills can kill your race. After the hill I picked up my pace again and ran a steady pace along fairly hilly roads, but nothing too crazy. I grabbed some water and a gel at the half-way mark and turn-around point (it was an in-and-out race), and continue my journey. However, at that point it had started snowing a bit, and the wind had picked up as well, but it did not stop me from going strong! The hill I mentioned earlier showed up again (for people that know Peterborough a bit, it's the hill you go up after you go under the Lift Locks), and I walked it up again, now from the other end. It was the same hill down again, but even going downhill didn't feel too comfortable. We were around 16km at that point, and I was getting a bit tired... I crashed slightly at 17km, but a 30 second walk break fixed that, and especially the last 2km I felt strong, and I was even able to pick up my pace a bit at the home stretch and passed a couple of people just before the finish.
My final chip time was 2.15.00. Not bad, considering it was hilly, snowy and I didn't really start training until about 1 month ago. I was actually very happy with my time!
After the race, we drove back to Havelock to drop Sarah, grab a coffee, and go back to Tweed. After collecting my stuff etc., I hit the road to go back to Ottawa. In short I spent the majority of the four and a half hours after the race sitting still in a car. Not sure if that was a very smart thing to do, since my legs are slightly sore right now. However, I'm sure that will pass as well.

When I came home last night, Nolan had just finished painted our guest bedroom, vacuumed the whole house, and even made lunches for today. I have an amazing husband!

The original weather forecast called for snow on Sunday, and then up to 13 degrees on Monday. Sunday was not too bad, not even a couple of centimetres of snow. However, Monday turned out slightly different than they had expected. We woke up to freezing rain, which quickly turned to snow, and we have about 15 cm of fresh white fluffy stuff on the ground right now! Just when I thought the trails would be accessible again... Oh well, now we might be able to go skiing!

Half marathon - Weather forecast...

Ok, it's only Thursday and the half marathon is not until Sunday. However, they currently predict between 10 and 15 cm of snow for Sunday. That is on top of the 10-15cm they are predicting for tomorrow. Maybe I should bring snow shoes instead of running shoes?! I am still anticipating that we are going, but I also know that safety for everything, so we'll keep our fingers crossed that the weather won't be playing too much havoc.  I personally think this race is jinxed...

Work has also picked up quite a bit in the last few days. Meetings, reports, Research Forests session next week, training, articles... Lots and lots to do. But it's fun, and I much prefer being busy over having 'to look for stuff'. I'll update after the half marathon for sure, but it might get quiet for a bit after that :)

Just a quick update on Murphy. Well, really not that much to update on. He is still madly in love with his humidifier girl-friend. Never knew that cats could be so passionate and romantic!