Workout today is to build my weak upper body. First was sets of 21, 15, 9, 3 – pullups and burpies. After that was a tabatas (20 secs on, 10 secs rest, repeat 8 times) situps.
Short but effective!
Work out of the day
Monday, January 16, 2012 by Erin
I have made it a goal to form a new fitness habit.
I currently work out once a week at work but that is not enough I am finding. So, I have decided to work out at least once more week at the gym at work. I’d like to do more, but I being realistic, adding more than one new thing means instant failure for me. So, starting small…just one additional work out per week.
I am going to keep them v. short (less than 20 mins) and today’s is the Crossfit Cindy!
I’ll post my results in 30 mins!
Results: 9 reps!
12 for 12
Sunday, January 1, 2012 by Christine
Happy new year! I am writing this email in my very untidy living room…eyeballing the Christmas tree that is absolutely coming down today so I can get back to normal after a wonderful holiday season. It’s been lovely but I’m done. Done with eating too much junk, drinking wine too often, done with the gifts and crafts and general chaos. I do wish the kids weren’t going back to school quite yet, however.
The Dalzells have made a family resolution. We often talk about changing our habits so this year we are going to make 12 new habits. Some as a family and some individually. We are going to work on just one new habit each month so hopefully by the end of the year we will all be a bit better organized, productive, fit, healthy, fulfilled.
I am feeling the itch for change and challenge. I’d like to write more. Our friends the Fox’s do a great job with their blog which they use as a journal to remember the fleeting moments that are parenthood. I’ve been using Facebook statuses for that purposes which was dumb because of course now they’re gone. I hope to write more and maybe the blog will be where I do that. I also hope to submit as a guest to Life as a Human which would be a publishing credit I can put on a resume. Then there’s my latest novel which I got a jump start on in November but my efforts waned in favour of making Christmas stuff. Back to it! But first, I have to get better organized which is of course our January habit: to tidy up a little each day.
I am recruiting a friend of mine to help me. She has “OCD” and her house is immaculate. Well, I know mine will never be immaculate but she is going to help me organize my house one room at a time. Each member of our family will be responsible for putting away 12 things each day (or perhaps we will work for 12 minutes if it’s particularly messy). Whatever the case, 12 is the magic number in order to receive a token. If the person has done their task every single day for the month, they will earn $12, if not, each token is worth $.12.
So, readers, today I wrote for 12 minutes (although writing is not my official January habit…I’m trying to do two habits this month – we’ll see.)
Amendment: I began writing this article this morning and I have finished it in the evening in my now tidy living room, sans Christmas tree, after we spent our first 12 for 12 day cleaning up together.
Wish us luck!
Finally, I have servants!
Sunday, October 23, 2011 by Erin
This morning the girls offered to be my servants for the day, so I didn’t have to “do anything”. First up was breakfast.
Nella took the order and Elise was the chef. I had toast and jam, then a bowl of cereal then an apple.
Next up was planning the meal for the day and of course for that, you need a menu!
Elise asked about Juice, so I helped her spell that one, but all the other she did herself.
I believe for lunch we are having tomato soup and for dinner, scrambled eggs.
Then they started to put away the dishes!!
But since it is now time to watch some TV, the restaurant closed:
We’ll see how dinner turns out!
Elise’s creative mind
Thursday, October 13, 2011 by Christine
I am not writing enough of this stuff down. For a writer that is pretty pathetic.
Let me tell you about Elise’s creativity. It’s bottomless. The other day she made a board game that involved rolling a dice and landing your player on a letter. The alphabet was all mixed up on the game board. You have to draw the letter and then make something out of it. For example, I had the letter T and I made it into a clothesline. Elise drew a lower case m and turned the m into the humps on a camel. She drew a Z and made it the lid of a recycling bin with a baby (new baby Grayson) putting something in the recycling.
Tonight she showed me her animal rescue kit. In it was a walkie talkie, a shoelace, a spool of string (silk in case she should rescue a caterpillar who needed some silk to make a cocoon), a clear plastic container with a hinged lid (a fish bowl should she have to rescue any fish), a pen and a notebook.
She is learning to loom knit. Spent every spare minute for a day making herself a scarf.
She turned a sandwich bag box and packet of “cheese n crackers” into a bus by putting the cheese n crackers packet inside the box and putting lego wheels on the bottom. The cheese spot was the driver’s seat, the cracker part was for the passengers.
God please let her mind stay so open and if not, please don’t let it be me who closes it!
Don’t Forget Your Password!
Thursday, September 29, 2011 by Erin
I had read that if you encrypt your iPhone backups, when you restore you won’t have to re-enter all your mail, wifi and other passwords. So I dutifully encrypted the backups.
And then I forgot the password.
I didn’t really want to have to redo all my app organization and settings the next time I needed to restore my iPhone. Thought I’d post the steps to remove the encryption in case others need to do this:
- Jailbreak phone
- Install OpenSSH
- Mount the phone on the desktop (I used ExpanDrive) with the default directory at /var
- Download a sqlite3 browser (I used MesaSQL)
- Follow the instructions here to remove the required line
- Hook phone back up to iTunes and uncheck the Encrypt Backups checkbox. When prompted for a password but in anything (doesn’t matter)
- Sigh with relief
- Unjailbreak your phone.
- Follow instructions here to restore your phone without having to redo all your folder organization
- Repeat with your wife’s phone.
Long process!
Impromptu Trip
Monday, September 5, 2011 by Erin
So we could celebrate our 11th (holy smokes!!) anniversary, my parents took the girls overnight yesterday. We hadn’t made any plans but we decided, on the spur of the moment, to go to Bumbershoot and to spend the night in Seattle.
After finding an amazing deal on parking (only $10 for the day), we got in around 1:30 and sat by the fountain to figure out what we wanted to do/see/hear.
The band that was playing while we were planning was called Whalebone and they were just OK…a good band to get warmed up to but nothing I would buy.
After they finished we were going to just wander around for a bit but I heard a band get the crowd screaming and headed over for a quick listen. Turns out they were Mad Rad and they put on a phenomenal live show! Not sure I’d buy any of their music but I’ll check it out to see if they have the same energy as they did on stage. They are a very dorky looking band, but tons of fun!
Next we checked out Broken Social Scene but we didn’t like them at all…too loud and not very interesting.
After that we had to choose between Shakespearean Improve comedy or a British blues-rock band. Sadly, we chose the music. Turns our they aren’t blues-rock, they are an extraordinarily loud (hurt our ears and we couldn’t hear the music nor the lyrics) punk rock band. This meant when we raced to get to the comedy we had to wait 30 mins until we could get in and catch the last 30 mins of the show. Glad we waited though as they were very, very funny! Highly recommended.
Funny thing, when we were waiting to get into the improv, I needed a snack, so I went to get some french fries. Good thing I ordered the small: 
Since we were in the comedy mood after that, we checked out the Comedy Bang Bang Podcast which was very funny as well with some outrageous characters (Andrew Lloyd Webber and Hotdog).
Next up was the absolutely amazing Allen Stone band. Side note: people still use MySpace? This was, by far, the highlight of our trip. Great stage presence, amazing band, groovy/funky beats. Highly recommended. Will be purchasing his new album when it comes out in Oct.
Last show was Carbon Leaf and they are very pleasant indie folk/alt rock band. Will probably buy one or two of their albums to use as easy listening background music.
We had a wonderful day with great music, great comedy, great weather and great company. The perfect way to celebrate 11 great years.
Some pics of the Allen Stone show and the view while watching Carbon Leaf:
Welcome to the new site
Wednesday, August 31, 2011 by Erin
I decided that my previous blog software was too hard for me to manage, so I switch to WordPress and chose a very basic theme.
I will be adding all the old posts back if I can, as well as resurrecting all of our photos, eventually.
Swimming—-at last!
Tuesday, August 30, 2011 by Christine
Oh it has been a wonderful week. As you all know, Elise has her “little” anxieties. One of these has historically been a wariness of the water. This time last year, I took her to Sunnyside Pool and it took 45 minutes to get her in the water. When I finally did, she clung to me like a barnacle until I took her foot and placed it on the bottom of the pool so she could see she could touch. To her, you see, the big size of the pool meant that it was also too deep for her. It is lower than my waist when I stand, just so you get the picture! Anyway, in October, she finally agreed to do swimming lessons but at our local pool, they do lessons in the big pool which is a little chilly and a little deep (though she would have been able to comfortably touch and have her head out of the water). I decided to find another location for the swimming lessons and four a pool about 25 minutes drive from us that has a gradual entry. The lessons we a success! We took a short break over Christmas which set her back for the next session but by June she and Daniella had both passed to preschool level 3.
This summer, I enrolled the girls at Sunnyside Pool for 2 weeks every day. At the end of the set, Daniella passed and Elise didn’t. She was upset that she and Daniella wouldn’t be in the same class anymore but not bothered that she hadn’t passed. I did another set of the 2 week lessons that ended this past Friday. Daniella passed to the next level and Elise would still not let her instructor let go of her so again she didn’t pass. I took them back to the pool for public swim that afternoon and Elise wore her goggles and was dunking her head and treading water. I told her “you know you are swimming when you do that?” and she goes “I am?” so I said to do it again and use her arms to move toward me. She did. After that she was swimming back and forth between the wall and me underwater over and over again. I was so thrilled! I wanted to shout it out loud and there was no one there I knew to share it with. What a milestone!
Elise, my love, I am so proud of you right now. It is so hard to do things out of our comfort zone and in one year you have gone from being too afraid to get in the water to swimming 3 meters under water by yourself.
Quick to gloat
Saturday, August 20, 2011 by Erin
Here’s something that I don’t get…why people are so quick, and seemingly happy, to slam Apple products.
I recently posted a picture on Twitter and said, “This can’t be good: http://img.ly/7wym”.
A friend of mine quickly responded, “I’ve never had a problem like that with a Windows box”, which seems like a strange thing to say because:
- Windows doesn’t have anything like Time Capsule built into it.
- It specifically mentions the hard drive, which fail all the time regardless of the OS or situation
- the OS is actually warning me of a problem, which is amazing.
So I respond with, “It’s not a Mac thing, it’s a Time Capsule thing…problem with the HD”. And the quick reply, “Sure fine. It is still an Apple product that is not behaving correctly. I’ll file that away for later”.
File it away for what? Future rebuttals? “Oh ya? Well your 4 year old Apple product had a hard drive fail…so there!”
In my mind the product is actually working just fine because it is still running, and it warned me, AND it told me what is wrong AND what to do to fix it.
The irony of course, is that this is a backup system put in place to protect against hard drive failures. Which happen All. The. Time. This is why I have two backups…if one goes bad, I still have the other while I get a replacement.
But this isn’t just a hard drive that went bad, this is a failure of an Apple product. Hockey dokey then.
