Sincerity is the greatest form of flattery

Since August 14, 2012 (yup, this year) I have had my Facebook Deactivated. Wanna know the funny thing? Not a SINGLE one of my friends noticed. Except for my boyfriend fiancé who asked me why Facebook bumped us out of a relationship. You might be asking “why in the world would you do such a crazy and stupid thing… Facebook is everything!”

First, let me explain that I wasn’t one of those “once in a while” Facebook users. I posted pictures, quotes, and statuses several times a day. I was that one friend on Facebook you blocked because you were sick of all my updates. That being said, I also sneakily wrote “Fiancé”. Before you skip to the bottom and write all your congratulations I want you to understand that our (very) recent engagement was THE reason I deactivated my Facebook.

After we announced our engagement to both our families and our closest friends (something we chose to do in person, which took us almost 3 weeks), we had the last step to take: make it Facebook official. On the journey home I kept on imagining what it would look like on Facebook. Who would comment and like? What would certain people say? And the more I thought about it, the more I became upset by the idea of insincerity. People with whom we haven’t spoken in a very long time and have not made much effort to stay in touch would be saying “Congrats you two! We’re so excited for you!”. To me, a relationship, an engagement and a wedding are all very intimate and private matters. Matters that I would love to share with my family and closest friends. But not with that drunk girl you met one night at a bar. You know, the one who kept pestering you for your Facebook info because she could swear you two were “like total BFFS”?

So in all this serious consideration, and also on top of my curiosity to see if I could do it, I got rid of Facebook. I know I’m going to probably eventually go back to Facebook because of convenience purposes, but I’m excited to see how long I can stretch this out for. In the last week or so that I have had Facebook deactivated I have made a great discovery: No one cares about your online stuff. You post pictures, statuses and clever quotes for yourself.

Try it for yourselves. Deactivate your Facebook. You can come back any time you want and your photos and statuses are all still going to be there. So are your friends. However, before you do, check to see if you are the admin of any group, because your admin status will NOT be automatically re-instated when you join back. Many students do this for approximately a month or so during their final exams.

If it’s something you DO end up trying, I would appreciate you sharing with me. Good luck!

 

Lisa

Fitness Stuff

I originally began my fitness journey with the wrong goals in mind. I wanted the sexy bikini body with the flat tummy and nicely toned legs. But  when I began working out, and realized just how difficult it is, I realized that instead of focusing on looking good, I needed to being feeling good, and the results would follow.

I began to worry about not being able to keep up with my tour group in Israel because I could hardly scale the local hill here: Mt. Finlayson. Agreed, it is somewhat of a difficult hike, I still rather hoped I would do better. After a five minute ascent I was sweating bullets, my heart was pounding and my legs felt like they were about to fall off. That is when I changed my mind frame. Instead, my goal became “to get fit” not “to get fit-looking”. I don’t care if I still have thunder-thighs (well, I do care a little), as long as those thunder-thighs are able to take me up a hill without dying.

2 weeks ago I began to make preparations, and I am continuing until I leave on the 9th. I have so far hiked Mt. Finlayson twice and am planning to do it again this weekend for the last time (each time it gets a little easier). I have also gone on jogs. AND FINALLY, and most IMPORTANTLY of all, I have been doing continuous videos from Blogilates! I love Cassie, and her channel on YouTube! She challenges people in so many ways, and is right there with you doing the exercises. Stop buying those useless Pilates tapes that you’re only going to do once, just go on YouTube! Cassie puts out new videos weekly, has great nutrition plans and is an extremely encouraging person!

PS Totally didn’t mean this to seem like I’m selling something!

Here is what my week looks like:

Sunday – Hike Mt. Finlayson
Monday – Do the pop-Pilates arm workout:

Get ready to cry, my arms hurt for 5 days straight!!! Make sure to stretch them and drink lots of water!

Tuesday – Go for a jog around my house, I only ran about 4km before my asthma kicked in, but even a little bit of cardio is good for you. Adidas has this awesome free app which uses the GPS in your phone to keep track of your progress and you can even set up your weekly running routine and everything:

Wednesday – Do one of Cassies’s Pop-pilates HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) videos. Over the past few weeks she has been putting out the “bikini blaster” videos that I’ve been following religiously.

Thursday – This is my day off, often because I get called into work and usually tutor in the evening, so unfortunately I don’t have any time to work out, and I’m usually too tired anyways. Always good to have at least one day off in the week to let your muscles regenerate!

Friday – I will push myself and do another Bikini Blaster video AND either target my arms, my thighs or my abs with another pilates video.

Saturday – I like to do things in the nature, and outside, so I will allow myself Saturday to be an “easy” workout day, where I’ll go on a 10km walk around our lake, or walk around downtown, or maybe a leisurely swim at the pool. Nothing too intense.

 

That’s IT! That simple. You don’t have to follow this routine EXACTLY, but I want to make as many people as possible aware about this awesome AMAZING woman who lives in California and does free fitness videos for us to try on YouTube.

Her website is here:http://www.blogilates.com/
Her YouTube channels are here:http://www.youtube.com/user/blogilates/videos  and here:http://www.youtube.com/user/BlogilatesTV/videos

The awesome birthday shenanigans!!

I am one for super sentimentality! I also love surprises, so I figured a great combination of the two for the birthday of my very special someone!

Here’s the low-down. Both of us are HUGE fans of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The band is coming to Vancouver on November 17th this year and I got us tickets! I originally planned on giving the tickets to Sebastian on his birthday, but because I didn’t have them printed (they were e-tickets) I needed to find a better way to give them to him.

Here is what I did:

I found a cute picture with gift boxes on it. I cut the picture into 10 puzzle pieces and on the back of each puzzle piece I wrote some famous lyrics from the band. On the last puzzle piece I wrote “We are going to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers on Nov. 17”.

I bought a bag of 72 balloons (I recommend the brand-name kind, not the dollar store kind, as they won’t pop on their own). And decided to print out a whole bunch of pictures from our adventures in the past few years and stick them in the balloons. 10 of the balloons would have the “secret” puzzle pieces.

I used a small wooden rollie thing, but you can use a round pen or pencil to roll the pictures around so as not to damage the photographs.

Next I stuffed the pictures into the balloons and blew the balloons up. This part is tricky because the pictures try to unroll in the neck of the balloons.

Looks very provocative, I know!

I hung a few balloons off the ceiling, scattered some on the floor and hung the “Last 1” up on the dart-board so that he didn’t open the one with the big puzzle piece first.

He looked like a little 3 year-old running around and popping the balloons, the house was a mess, and I was incredibly pleased with myself. We needed to put all the pictures somewhere, so I also got him a photo album which I gifted in the morning. Kept him wondering what was in store for him:

Our birthday boy was very impressed, incredibly surprised and very humbled. I say it was a great success and I am very proud of myself.

I love going all-out and need to figure out a way to top myself for next year. Gotta start planning!!!

A brief introduction…

“All life is an experiment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was having a rough time choosing a name I actually liked for my blog. I do have another blog that I started a while back to keep progress of my teaching career, but I felt that teaching was only a small part of who I was, and only a small part of what I wanted to share.

So instead of being all boring and writing a long-winded introduction about myself and all the amazing places I have been or lived in I will just do an interview-style Q&A. Most of the people reading right now already know all there is to know about me.

Why did you start this blog?
I love finding random things on Pinterest, but I also love sharing things and ideas I come up with. But I realized that I can’t simply upload a photo on Pinterest, it has to come from a source. Most recently, my boyfriend of 5 years is having his 24th birthday TODAY and I have come up with a mischievous and seedy plan to give him his presents (that’s right, plural) for his birthday, I thought I should share this with my close friends.

What kind of things do you plan on sharing on this blog?
My life is full of wonders and adventures, as should everyone’s be! I will gladly share all those adventures! From local places to visit in the lovely town of Victoria, BC and its surrounding areas, to random travels I do, to extremely sentimental things that I enjoy in life.

Travels, eh?
Yes, in 2 weeks time I will be leaving for Israel and will be learning all about the culture, the way of life, and hopefully becoming better acquainted with Judaism.

What will your first official blog-post be after this one?
As I stated previously, today is a birthday of a very close and dear person. Me, being me, I went all out and planned an amazing treat for him, all will be revealed in the next blog-post.

What’s with the quote, and how did you come up with the name?
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist… at least that’s what Wikipedia tells me. I didn’t know anything about this man until about 10 minutes ago. However, I did find his quote in a quote journal I have been keeping since 2004. The quote itself is short and sweet, and rings extremely true to me. I live life trying new things and diving right in, life is an experiment and shouldn’t be lived in fear but in wonder. (You can quote me on that).

 

Let’s get started!!! I’m so excited!