Bye Bye Vacation!

Hello Crew!

Today as a last hurrah before school starts on Wednesday I hit the slopes for the first time this season. Last year I managed to get out once but it was so spur of the moment that I ended up renting all my gear and borrowing outer wear. This time around I had my board newly serviced, new gloves, and the whole hill practically to ourselves. We never had to wait in line for a chair lift and had almost perfect weather (give or take a little wind). My only complaint was that there could've been more snow. Quite a few patches were icy. Not impossible to board on but just loud and scrapes up your board.

Me and Loren whizzing around Darren

No place like the Rockies

It felt amazing to be on the hill but I am wiped out now. Last Friday I ran 5 km and yesterday I ran for 45 minutes including hill training (got something in the works but before I announce it I have to wait for some clearance). Regardless I was sore before I even did up my bindings. Suffice it to say, I will sleep well tonight.

Tomorrow I head back to Lethbridge with my roommate and the new semester starts the next day. I already have meetings with my independent study supervisor booked so no denying it any longer. Vacation is over!

Here we go.

Jacqueline

Christmas 2012 & New Years 2013

Hello Everyone!

Belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I spent Christmas with my mother and step family in small town Alberta. My stepfather's family (he is the 5th of 7 children) is rather on the large side and accordingly, our house was overflowing with relatives. It was very high energy with lots of people doing so many different things at once. I only had to slip away for some solitude once in the four days spent there. Not too bad, right? The joy for me of course comes from being with my brothers who I very seldom get to see (let alone see all together). Steven, basking in the glory of his new i-pad, downloaded the Yahtzee game app (best 99 cents ever spent!) and kept me well entertained for a very considerable amount of time.

The tree was just a little too small...

 For New Years I went to downtown Calgary with my boyfriend and some friends to check out Olympic Plaza and pub hop up and down Stephen Avenue. All in all a good time was had. I even ran into a random friend of mine from Lethbridge by the LRT.

Otherwise, my break has been pretty uneventful. I've spent a lot of time with the boyfriend, my best friend, and family doing everything and nothing all at once. The grades I got back from last semester were encouraging and the best I could've hoped for given the circumstances.

Although I'm ready to be back doing productive things, I'm not ready to go back to Lethbridge. Having served my share of time, I'm ready to return to Calgary and start the next chapter of my life.

Out with the old, in with the new.

Jacqueline

Chocolate Dipping & School Wrapping Up

Hey Gang,

Today is November 23rd. How did this happen?!

I've already done my first group assignment presentation, booked all my final exam slots, finished all non-semester exams as of last Tuesday, and have two weeks left of classes. Only two group projects, two labs, and 5 exams to go until the semester is over for me. My last exam is December 13th and then we're on to Christmas holidays! In the meantime, here's a fun little ditty. This was a quiz I had in my biomechanics class. You had to use the software to make your model do two swings and land a triple flip combination. It's a lot harder than you'd think. You have to account for the motion of each joint in every single frame, find the right release time, and make sure your little buddy doesn't land on his face. Our prof is marking by international standards which means points are lost for bad technique and falling but also granted for aesthetics, sticking the landing, and the higher the difficulty, the more points your tricks are worth. Fun, hey?

(It is easier to see what's going on if you make it full screen by clicking on the box in the bottom right corner of the video player)

One other exciting piece of news: My physiology professor asked me if I wanted to do an independent study with her next semester. What this boils down to is I will be earning credits to help her with her research. Pretty sweet gig! I'm also pretty stoked because generally independent studies are student driven where you have to come up with a study idea or literature review topic, approach a professor, request that they supervise you, and do all the leg work to make it happen. I'm really quite honored that she said she had "had [me] in mind" for this project. We're working out the details now but I'll let you know what the extent of the study will be. The professor is one of my favorite professors too - glad she thinks highly of me as well!

Other fun news, last weekend I was in Calgary to do annual Burt Family Chocolate making. Yay! My grandparents, my brother, a family friend, and myself spent a good 9 hours in the kitchen up to our elbows in chocolate, fondant, nuts, coconut, and candies. As always it was great company, lots of laughs, lots of blood sugar spikes, and every year my technique gets a little better :) Here are the few pictures I snagged off my pa's iPhone. I'll post real camera pictures when I get them.

Not much counter space was left when all was said and done :) Happy problem to have!

My brother is amusing me just out of the frame :)

She's a pro! Been at it for 40 years!

Of course the Party Pants are appropriate attire for the occasion.

 Love to all and catch you after finals! :)

Jacqueline

October 2012

Hello Everyone!

This month has gone by in an absolute flash. In fact, the semester is half over.

This past week I had 5 midterms in 3 consecutive days and 3 midterms were on the same day. I can legitimately say I have NEVER studied so much in my entire life. The exam stress was actually giving me unpleasant dreams. Literally nothing but class, the library, the gym, and my desk for over a week straight. Throughout the course of that week it went from beautiful to blizzard. Behold:

River valley picture taken October 18, 2012

Slightly different shot of the same river valley only 5 days later.

A group mate and I cramming in a library study room.

Suffice it to say I couldn't be happier to be done. This weekend I'm headed up to Calgary just to get away from Lethbridge and relax out at the Boyfriend's place in the country. Some fresh air and playing with the dogs should do some much needed good for the soul :)

More later!

Jacqueline

21st birthday - Spoiled Rotten!

Hey Gang,

Last Friday, September 14th, was my 21st birthday. The whole weekend was phenomenal and definitely gave me insight into how caring my friends and family are.

Friday flew by so fast. I had a morning class, birthday lunch with my mother, and another class. After class ended I whipped up to Calgary to spend the evening with my closest high school buddies. We kept it pretty low key and stayed in which was nice after a very busy and long week. They got me a strange assortment of treasures. I think the highlight is the package of paper clips and each one is shaped like a different style of mustache. They're too funny!

Saturday I spent with the boyfriend. He's house-sitting for a relative out near Cochrane so it was nice to go spend time walking the dogs through the woods and sit out on the porch and enjoy the sunshine without the hustle and bustle of the city. He surprised me with flowers, my favorite cake, and an awesome owl necklace. Considering I told him not to get me anything (repeatedly), he really outdid himself. He even forgave me when I fell asleep watching one of his favorite movies later that night ;)

Sunday was a lovely BBQ with the family. At my request, we had bbq teryaki chicken, garlic parmesan quinoa, grilled zucchini... yummy. Earlier that day, my pa had stopped by the farmer's market and scooped up an absolutely out of this world carrot cake. It was SO good and it was the only occasion all weekend that I got candles and sung to. Thankfully, it was an absolutely honking enormous cake and there are leftovers in the freezer for whenever I visit next :) The birthday that keeps on giving!

I'm glad I have such happy memories to relive because this week has been piling up on me. I just about dropped out of school today when our group sat down to work on our physiology lab. What we learned several hours later after the 8 of us had given up is that the prof hadn't given us all the data we needed to complete the lab. *Sigh*

I know there is no way I'm stopping now but it does make me entertain the thought of taking a bit of time off before I do a master's degree. This semester is going to burn me right out. Fortunately, I am able to look at it as only 3.5 months. I've lived through many 3.5 month periods of time in my life and I can think of several that were guaranteed worse than this. Hurray for the brightside!

Cheers,

Jacqueline

And We're Back

Howdy Folks,

Classes started last Wednesday and I have one doozy of a semester ahead of me. I was right to think that physiology would be one of my tougher courses. The first thing the prof says to us is how important it is that we have the prerequisite course because of all the references to that material that we will be making. Thankfully I have taken it... two years ago. To put it mildly, I am rusty. Some reviewing will definitely be required.

My semester will basically boil down to the balancing act of labs, classes, studying, and reading. I am fortunate in that only 3 of my classes have required textbooks and I was able to acquire them extremely cheaply compared to other years. My roommate was not so fortunate. She ended up paying over $800 for hers. Yikes.

So speaking of roommates - I really like the place I'm living in. That townhouse is really nice, really well taken care of, modern, and a great deal. Only down side is that it is slightly farther from campus than I would like. Thank heaven for bicycles. I may be singing a different tune in December when it is 4 feet of snow but we will get there when we get there.

View from my room: picture of the sunrise taken by my (very poor quality) camera phone

My roommates seem like a pretty level bunch. Both girls are serious students and fairly clean. We're still in the stage of learning one another so I don't want to form too strong of an impression one way or the other but I think I will only go minorly crazy in comparison to other years.

So far I've managed to get involved in a bunch of little things. For example, I helped tour the new international exchange students around the campus, volunteered (for class credit -woo!) at a Parkinson's disease fundraiser, rebooted my healthy eating/working out lifestyle (down 2 lbs already!) and have been catching up with my Lethbridge peers. Tomorrow evening I'm doing dinner with a bunch of friends celebrating a Baha'i festival. It's all been nice and I know this doesn't really make sense but honestly something feels like it is missing and a little piece of my happiness is missing with it.

Wish I knew what it was.

Jacqueline

Fourth Year

Hi Everyone!

After talking to some family lately I learned that there are actually people reading this blog. Right on! Thanks guys! Might as well keep you up to date.

September 5th marks the first day of classes for the 4th year of my degree. I have a pretty heavy semester ahead of me (3 of my courses have labs) but my schedule is pretty alright. Check out the names of my courses:

• Epidemiology: The Ecology of Health and Disease
• Physical Basis of Ergonomics  
• Exercise Physiology
• Biomechanics
• Therapeutic Exercise Foundations and Techniques

Physiology and biomechanics are guaranteed to be my toughies and time consumers. Thank goodness I have a really good set up for accommodations this year. My roommates are both really studious and mature, the house has a decent location, the rent is really good, and it is all new and fully furnished. Can't believe how much I lucked out. Even my landlords are great.

Actually, funny story. My landlords are the parents of one of the girls I'm living with and they decided they wanted to meet me to make sure I was a good fit for the house. I've never been interviewed by a landlord before but it basically boiled down to my landlords invited my boyfriend and I out for dinner at a golf course club house just outside of Calgary. It was a weird situation and honestly kind of felt like a blind date. Ultimately, however, we had an absolute blast! It was great conversation, good food, I got to meet my roommate and all her family, and we all conversed for about two and a half hours. Too cool.

I've only got 9 more work days left (yay!) and then will head up to Calgary for the long weekend to help my friends move into their new place and spend one last care free summer weekend. Should be good.

In the meantime, since returning from Quebec, I've just been working, managed to hit up Stampede for the 100th anniversary, went camping with some friends, learned how to drive standard, and have spent every other weekend up in Calgary visiting friends and family. Here's a good picture of our camping crew in Dinosaur Provincial Park and one of me at Stampede pouring salt on some french fries :) Nom nom.

I absolutely love the face Brian is making behind Meghan (third from left)

Getting my cowgirl on ;)

So I will keep up on posting through the school year. Knowing me, I'll probably end up traveling at some point anyway.

Love to all!

Jacqueline