Our Trip to the ROM

Yesterday, Chris and I met up after his work to go to the ROM, or the Royal Ontario Museum, to enjoy their half priced Friday night program. It's a really neat museum with just about everything inside of it. There were dinosaurs, lots of exhibits with taxidermied animals, collections of art, giant totem poles, a bat cave, recreations of rooms from different time periods, items from tribes of people from Africa to New Zealand to South America, and even more things that we didn't get a chance to see due to time constraints. It was a pretty great trip and filled with way more information and culture than I could absorb in two and a half hours.

After the museum, Chris and I went to Spring Rolls and I had dim sum for the first time! I had siu mai, or shumai, which is a pork and shrimp and wonton wrappers and it's wonderful. Now I want to go to a whole dim sum restaurant before I leave and try a bunch of different kinds, since there are a million in Toronto and one in Jacksonville.

I'm getting hungry, so I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures while not trying not to obsess over dim sum.

The museumused to be just one big old building, but in 2002 they added this insane crystal structure to one half. It's strange and exciting, and while some people really hate it, I like it a lot.

I particularly like the parts of the museum where the irregular geometric craziness of the crystal building interacts with the more predictable old building. This used to be the outside, but now it's inside!

We took the stairs from floor to floor, and between each level there is a landing with mini-exhibits. This one showed various birds, finger bowls, and small animal skeletons.

The stairs are known as the J.P. Driscoll Family Stair of Wonders, and were a clever, unexpected touch.

A giant prehistoric turtle floats through space in front of the architectural details of the ROM.

Chris and I agree that this fish is wonderful.

Dinosaur! Crazy windows! ROM!

Hey Mom, it's a sloth! I did a report on sloths in the third grade for Ms. Jobo's class. ^_^

It's official. Underneath their moosey coats, they're just nightmares.

Ancient plant and animal indentations that kind of look like art you'd find at Kirkland's.

The bird section was AWESOME. The birds are all strung from the ceiling and to one another.

Part of the huge generic nature/biodiversity section, which I really enjoyed. Everything was unfortunately behind glass, though, so lots of bad reflections in the pictures from that area.

These owls were hanging above us!

I really liked the freaked out/disapproving face on this fish. Can't get my bangs to do that thing, though.

A huge Japanese spider crab, one of the few animals displayed alone, looking gigantic.

This might be a children's exhibit, but here I am petting a national symbol of Canada. It's so soft!

This narwhal just thinks he's soooo smart. Stop smirking, you fat unicorn.

We enjoyed the touch-screen monitors throughout the museum and on this one watched a puffer fish escape the grasp of an eel by filling up with water.

So many birds!

 

Me and an ocean sunfish, a fish that looks (to me) like a shark that's always mid-turn. But it's not! That's the whole thing, right there. It's so weird looking, and I love it.

Me and Bull, a rhino that used to live at the Toronto Zoo. Chris once saw him pee, back when he was alive.

There are a few more pictures, but I have to run. We're going to Chris's family's house this afternoon for dinner, and I'm not ready at all. More pictures of the cultural parts of the museum to come, though not as many pictures as I would like due to our camera dying. Thanks for checking it out!

Weigh-In #7

I'm late with this update! This picture was, however, taken yesterday, so the number is accurate. And it's a good one! Don't mind me while I make this a super short post because that last one (the Disney Day post) was looooong and draining.

This week I'm weighing in at a very encouraging 174.4, down three pounds since last week for a total weight loss of 12.2 pounds, which is officially awesome. Officially. I'm happy to see the weekly see-saw of my weight loss has continued, since this is the week I lose weight, Next week I might feel differently, though.

How I Ate:

This week I had an average of 1356 calories per day. We tried these two recipes for the first time this week and will definitely be doing the second one again soon. The nice thing about the tortilla pizza is that it uses two tortillas and that makes it more than just a floppy, thin tortilla with stuff on it. We use Dempster's small whole wheat tortillas at 90 calories a piece, so if I was on a serious calorie crunch I'd probably use just one tortilla and tough it out with the floppiness. Chris had just cheese and Pizza Squeeze on his thanks to Ash Wednesday rules against meat, but I ended up enjoying a Mexican pizza with leftover taco meat from a couple nights before, and it was killer! I ate out with Cat on Disney Day, but we split a meal, so the calories were really reasonable, especially considering the 45 minute walk to and from the place.

How I Moved:

This week Chris and I started the Cardio Kickstart program on EA Sports Active 2. They say this is a good program with which to start exercising with the game, but we wanted to try the nine week general fitness challenge. Fun fact: going from one to another is almost not comparable. At the end of the medium nine week program, we were regularly working out 40+ minutes and burning 300-400 calories. After our first couple EASA2 Cardio Kickstart (on hard), we've averaged a workout that's 21 minutes long and 118 calories. In other words, it's pretty weak. We've been walking a bit around the city and taking the stairs everywhere except in the apartment, but I worry about my success slowing down. Ah, well. I need to pick up the free weights again, and this is probably the perfect time for it.

How I Felt:

Pretty good. There have been down days, and I've had some moments of perfectionism paralysis, but I'm trying. I feel good. I know I'll be sad when I leave Chris and happy to come home to my parents and sister, but for now I'm just trying to wring all I can out of this time with him, in this city, with Monte, everything. Trying to look around, to take photographic and mental pictures of things, especially my everyday stuff like the block approaching our apartment or the shops I pass every time I go out or the living room. Just the stuff of life here.

Disney Day!

So an exciting part of living in Toronto these last six months, on top of all the stuff I knew coming in (new environment, big city life, getting to live with the love of my life, all that junk) has been that I have the opportunity to hang out with my friend from the mc chris message boards, Cat. We've both left the boards since then, but through Facebook (okay, not anymore), Twitter, and a new board, we've kept in touch. It was so exciting to hear that she had landed a job as a performer for the Disney cruise ship, the Magic. She's playing a number of characters in various shows on the cruise, from supporting roles like one of the Muses from Hercules to one big time princess. (I could have linked her Wikipedia or something, but cake is so much more delicious.)

Yesterday I got to see a rehearsal of one of the shows in which she performs, Twice Charmed. The weather was miserable (Chris calls it "mixed precipitation," but I have other words for it) and I was running late, but I made it on time! Let's not focus on the fact that the rehearsal was running an hour late, I made it, okay? The whole Disney Magic training happens in the basement of the Canadian Broadcasting Company's building, where Chris and I saw George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight! I ended up waiting in the green room, which was every color but, with another person there to watch the rehearsal. Apparently he's dating the fairy godmother from Cinderella. I have to tell you, I seriously regretted not having my ebook reader with me. But when I thought I could wait no more, it was time to go in and watch the show, at last!

Cat lead me in, and I took my seat next to the fairy godfather-in-law, and watched the show start up. In this show, Cat plays Anastasia Tremaine, the redheaded stepsister who plots to take the prince from Cinderella, even when it looks like they've gotten their happily ever after. A wicked fairy godfather is summoned, hijinks ensue, all seems lost, and the stepsisters might get their way and then, at the last moment, the couple is reunited! It was great and funny and more feminist/woman-friendly than the movie, because in the show, Cinderella connects with Prince Charming not because of her snappy outfit or choice of footwear, but because of her personality. It's still ridiculous to pick your mate based on dancing together for a couple hours, but this sort of sequel paints it more as, "love at first sight" and less as, "You're finally acceptable now that you're wearing gorgeous clothes!" There was dancing and singing and, though no one was in their costumes, it was awesome to watch. The choreography was great and the songs were cute and well-sung, and the dancey bits were impressive to this totally unknowledgeable observer. It was awesome! Awesome!

After the show, Cat and a bunch of the cast members (Cinderella, the footman, the mice, the wicked fairy godfather, random townspeople) went to get lunch. Cat and I split some yummy bourbon chicken with broccoli and noodles. It was time for me to head out and her to get back to lunch, so we split up and I went to the CBC shop and bought this shirt and got a free tiny hockey stick because of some crazy promotion the store was running.

What am I going to do with this thing? Oh well, it's a souvenir, I guess, and it fits nicely with my burgeoning interest in hockey. And it was free! After that I headed home in the gross snowy rain/rainy snow. It was a reasonably long walk, about 45 minutes, and I tried to use the time to take a few pictures of pretty buildings and a couple of random sights of Toronto to share and probably look back on later. Here's a bunch!

Every epic picture I try to take, some goofball has strung up a telephone wire to obscure it. Seriously, Toronto, why isn't that junk underground?!

The buildings are fading away!

I really love the architectural juxtaposition in Toronto, from styles to eras.

A Toronto streetcar. With an ad for Taco Bell on it. Did you know Taco Bells here serve fries?

The Canon Theatre, where Chris took me to see Wicked for my birthday present shortly after we arrived here. It was amazing!

I ended up grabbing some groceries on the way home and bought three Kinder Surprise Eggs, which you've probably never had. See, they're this hollow chocolate egg, that's milk chocolate on the outside and white chocolate on the inside, which is already pretty amazing. And inside there's a capsule with a toy inside of it. It's delicious like a treat and exciting like a gumball machine and you come away with a toy like you'd just gone shopping from the Oriental Trading Company. They're chocolate eggs themselves are so thin that the whole thing is only 110 calories, a decent little sweet snack that doesn't kill your fitness goals! In a word, it's terrific. I can't be convinced that Kinder Surprise Eggs aren't awesome, no matter what you say or do.

Not one of my eggs, but I really liked this picture from lacocottefilante on  Flickr. Click the link for more of her awesome photography!

Or how totally illegal they are in the US. Sure you can carry handguns and procure either the service of a lady of the night (Nevada) or marijuana (California), but Kinder Surprise Eggs are totally banned. Seriously, you could get a $300 fine for having them! It's crazy, but it comes down to a rather bogus old law about not having non-functional non-food (the stick in a lollipop serves a function, to help you hold the candy) and some silliness about the toys posing a risk for children under three. Though the toys are inside capsules that are really difficult for ADULTS to open, especially while walking down the icy sidewalk while being pelted by "mixed precipitation." Ah, well.

So that was a giant description of my day, some random buildings, and chocolate! I hope all (three!) of my readers are having great days.

The Hockey Hall of Fame!

Chris and I went to the Hockey Hall of Fame on Sunday! I'd been wanting to go for a while, but this weekend was such a good time because I've been getting more into hockey whenever we watch it with Chris's family when we're over on Saturdays. I'm starting to understand the game a tiny bit more, but mostly I just follow the puck and get excited when people crash into the boards or punch each other.

We'd had kind of a boring week, so when I asked if it was okay to go to the HHoF, Chris was pretty excited and said yes. We got dressed and headed out. While we were walking down Yonge St., I got a whiff of somebody's hot chocolate and had to have some as soon as possible. So we went to a Tim Horton's, which was particularly exciting because they're in the middle of their Roll Up the Rim to Win contest, a promotion they have every year where any warm drink that comes in a coffee cup gets you a chance to win things like free coffee, Tim Horton's gift certificates, TVs, and cars.

But first, we had to endure a delicious hot chocolate and a chocolate chip muffin. We split them, so that translated to 330 calories. Yes, 330 calories is only half of a muffin and half of a hot chocolate. Oh, well. That's what you get when you eat out. So we finally finished the muffin and drink and it was time to roll up the rim and win!

I said and win, darn it! Oh, well, maybe next time. So we headed to the Hall of Fame.

This is a picture I took outside the entrance to the museum, which is actually inside a larger building with lots of offices and a restaurants and even another, smaller building inside it! The most important thing to note is that these adorable hockey-loving children are absolutely terrifying and mean you harm.

Don't ever forget.

Inside, the architecture is modern and airy and just wonderful. I had a bit of trouble with the above and below pictures because of all the light and the fact that my camera is the devil, but I hope I captured a bit of how exciting the building, Brookfield Place, is. It's spectacular, and I don't even know anything about buildings.

That mass to the left is the old building inside the snazzy new one. Take my word that it was pretty. Also, those tiles on the floor? Glass. Why do you keep making me stand on glass, Toronto? First the CN Tower and now this.

So we went downstairs and found the entrance to the Hockey Hall of Fame, paid to get in, and used some coupons we received when we were at Casa Loma to get sweet blue Hockey Hall of Fame wristbands. Yaaaaay free stuff!

The inside of the HHoF was overwhelming! There were a lot of glass cases dedicated to specific players, coaches, and referees with pictures and equipment inside. I didn't take any pictures because it was kind of dark and everything was in glass, so I assumed the flash would just be a giant shiny reflected spot in an otherwise dark picture. Sorry!

There were, however, some very photogenic parts of the Hockey Hall of Fame, like this recreation of the Montreal Canadiens' locker room. While everything is attatched by glue and nails and cables to the exhibit, I love that there's no glass or roped off portion or anything keeping you from reaching out and touching the equipment in there.


Chris and I ended up watching a 30 minute movie about the Stanley Cup, from the early days of hockey to Lord Stanley's gift of the silver trophy to how it came to be the exclusive prize of the NHL after previously being open to amateur and then professional hockey teams from all kinds of other hockey associations. Then the movie showed a recap of the most recent NHL championship between the Philadelphia Fliers and the Chicago Blackhawks. It's one of those things that isn't too exciting, but is pleasant enough to watch while you just get to enjoy sitting down in a comfy chair while in the air conditioning

Apparently, there are all kinds of hockey trophies, though, not just ones gifted by Lord Stanley of Preston. These are just a few housed at the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Some of these are still in use, some are retired.

After the crazy trophies, we looked around at more random hockey displays. Then Chris tricked me into playing virtual goalie and I was AWFUL. If you know my natural athleticism and quick-learnerability, you may doubt this. I understand your skepticism. For you, I present this video of me being the worst goalie ever. In the world.

I think I'll stick to spectating.

This picture doesn't have much of a story behind it besides hey, it's me and a big helmet! What up?

Next we walked around a bit on our way to the Stanley Cup. We happened across this picture of Elvis playing hockey. I needed a picture of it so very badly.

Then we went into the Stanley Cup area, which is officially crazy. It looks like a bank. There's a vault and a desk and everything! But there's also a stained glass dome in the ceiling, which looks a little like this:

Click here for an even better picture of the dome, but this one right here is the one I took, so it's special!

So it's a bank and there's a churchy element to it and, oh wait, there's also a whole bunch of giant trophies. First we have the Stanley Cup in the middle of the room with ramps leading to and from it. Around the room there are other trophies, too, like the Hart Memorial Trophy and the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, all encased in glass. Inside the crazy bank vault is the original Stanley Cup. What do I mean by "original?" Well, there are three, didn't you know? So that's where the original cup is, as well as all the rings that there is no longer any room for on the Authenticated Cup.

The original, looking like a pretty good bargain for its original price of $48.67.

Then we went to the big one, the Authenticated Cup. It's no replica, baby, they only put that out when the cup is making the rounds among the players on that season's winning team, and that's only in the summer.

Here's me with it, trying to act casual:

Also I'm wearing my Toronto Roller Derby shirt. Yes. I am in Canada. Loving sports. Chris went up to the cup and shared a moment, but he didn't want me to take a picture. We wandered around a bit and finally headed up the stairwell to the gift shop. There were lots of lovely pieces of novelty plastic crap, but we didn't end up getting anything besides this snazzy picture of the store's entrance:

I aspired to be a brick wall when I was playing virtual goaltender, but perhaps I should have aimed for whatever this guy is made of.

Our Neighbor Listens to Terrible Music

But at least it's loud!

We have a crazy neighbor on our floor. He's not immediately next door, we've got another neighbor between us. Even though we share no walls, we hear his terrible music at least every other day. If he's home, and we're in the hallway, we hear it, whether one of us is taking out the trash or we're just waiting for the elevator. We hear it in our apartment somewhat often, too, when the TV isn't too loud or I don't have music playing.

This doesn't bother me at all. We all have our things, you know, and I'm an adult who is pretty easy going in this respect. When in the bedroom, you can't hear the music, and if you're not trying to sleep, what's the big deal? That would be my attitude, anyway, if our neighbor hadn't complained about us (not recently) to the building manager because Monte barks when we're not home. So we've worked to deal with the problem of controlling a dog's behavior when we're nowhere around to do anything about it, but in the meantime our neighbor keeps blasting his music at all hours.

Here's a video I took the night before last where you can hear just how loud the music is from our front door at midnight. I'm whispering in order to be heard, but my mouth is right next to the camera. You can barely hear me next to what he's playing. Ah, city life.

Weigh-In #6

Happy Thursday! Well, not the happiest Thursday. As Chris pointed out, the odd Thursdays are my favorite. This isn't too bad, though, and I'm going to optimistically attribute my slight increase to water weight or muscles or a gravity storm. I expected to gain back a bit of weight this week, I just didn't really want to. Oh, well.

177.4 pounds.

So this week I'm weighing in at 177.4 pounds, one pound heavier than last week and 9.2 pounds lighter than when I started back on January 20th. I wish I could have lost more weight, but I'm not too disappointed, and not surprised. It's just working out that this is how my weight loss journey is shaping up.

How I Ate:

This week I ate an average of 1447 calories a day. That's not bad, though I could go a bit lower next week. I had a couple bigger meals this week, but I also had some really great ones that hit a lot of my goals for nutrients and low calories. I'm pleased with the week overall, and my main issue for the upcoming week is using leftovers, whether from Chris's parents or our own meals, respnsibly. It's okay to splurge on a special meal out, but the next day you have to balance the high calories of some of the items with super healthy other things, and don't feel pressured to recreate the other meal.

How I Moved:

I caught up on my EA Sports Active 2 workouts this week! That means I worked out for six of the last seven days, which is awesome. Today's actually the last day of the 9-Week Program, which is exciting and I'm nervous for it. Oh well, it'll be great. Terrible and hard, but great. This week I did a bit of walking, but most of my exercising came from EASA2. Some days were amazing and I did a great job pushing myself, and others I had a hard time overcoming my mental blocks in exercising. I'm still not totally sure what makes one day go so well and another such a struggle for exercising, but I'm trying to clue in to how I'm feeling and see if I can figure it out.

How I Felt:

This week was pretty great. I had some really productive days, and I tried really hard to force myself to be positive. I've been increasingly feeling claustrophobic being home all day, which is actually really good news. When I first got to Toronto I would take little trips while Chris was at work all the time. After a while it got colder and I became more focused on trying to make the house pleasant, I used housework as an excuse not to go anywhere. It fed a kind of anxiety about leaving that I developed, where I'd say, "I can't go anywhere, I haven't done X, Y, and Z!" and even if I was feeling terrible and wouldn't do X, Y, and Z anyway, I wouldn't leave because I felt too guilty to do so. I've been wanting to go out and do things on my own this week, and feeling less chained to the apartment. I'm happy about that and, as it will result in more walking, it bodes well for my fitness.

Overall, I'm happy. I feel like I'm working hard for something and it's paying off, but I'm not letting it rule my life. It's pretty great. I'm feeling very positive and hopeful, despite the little stumble on the scale this week.

Well This is Horrifying

We got this notice in our mail slot today. What in the world is happening in our apartment complex?!

In other domestic news, we didn't have hot water in our apartment for three days because the building's boiler broke. Boiling water to wash dishes and bathe is challenging but not impossible, and now that the water's back on, I'm really grateful for the luxury of water that's neither frigid nor scalding. Yaaaaaaaaay water!

I'm hoping tonight Chris and I can go out and do something. I know the Art Gallery of Ontario is free on Wednesday nights, but we've been there before. There's also the Textile Museum of Canada, which is "pay what you can" on Wednesday nights, but I don't know how crazy we're going to go over rugs. We'll see.

One last note, this one pertaining to the blog, is that I'm now tracking my media consumption on this page, which you can access by the link right here on this post or on the right side of the blog, where there will be a permanent link that says "Mini-Reviews" or something like that. It's mostly so I can remember books I've read/movies I've seen/whatever because I'm so very forgetful, but maybe someone else is interested in these things. I'm working on summarizing the things I've seen/heard/read in January and February so I can be up to date, but apparently I've seen and heard a lot of stuff, so it's taking a while. Oh well. I'll catch up soonish, I'm sure.

Thanks, Chris!

Today Chris introduced me to the song "We're Here for a Good Time (Not a Long Time)" and I liked it and wanted to post it here. It's one of my "cheer up, darn it!" songs, and hopefully it'll make you happy. It's by a Canadian band, Trooper, which is why I assume I hadn't heard it before. Here you go.

I hope you like it as much as I do.

Round and Round, Around and Round

I got a couple great gifts from Chris for Valentine's Day. I'd been mentioning that I'd like to get a food scale to help measuring my food to log my calories, and just hadn't gotten around to getting one. Having no money was a hindrance to that, too. Even though I will ask Chris for money when I need it, it's never something I feel awesome about, and it was hard to justify the purchase when I'd done without one for so long and I would really be the only one using it. (I sure am glad I finally mailed those checks home and thankful that my parents deposited them!) Needless to say, I was really excited to see a new food scale in his backpack when he tricked me into looking in there for something. Well done, Chris.

I seriously love this thing.

We'd agreed not to do anything too crazy for V-Day, so this was perfect, but it wasn't all. Chris also got us both tickets to the Toronto Roller Derby, two weeks later. Well this Saturday we took the subway to the bus to the venue, and got to see our first real life roller derby bout!

The bout was a double header, which made it great for first-timers like Chris and me because we got to watch the first match while reviewing the rules in the pamphlet we were given as we walked in, and by the second bout we actually mostly sort of knew what was going on. Stuff would happen that made no sense at all to us, and we got to see it happen often enough that suddenly we understood what was going on. We came to see the strategy, if not of the blockers, then certainly of the jammers. I think I'll have to see a few more games to be able to focus on more than just the two jammers, a single player on each team who earns points by passing the rest of the group.

Crankypants, Toronto Roller Derby's announcer, introduces Smashley 

from Sister Slagwhile the ladies skate around the track.

More than just being educational, though, the first bout was a great match up. It was the perfect combination of an exciting and close-ish game of two similarly-matched teams and a victory for the home team, the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, or the D-VAS, against the Sudbury's Sister Slag. There were a few great players on each team, but my favorite was the jammer deom the D-Vas, hellbat. She was fun to watch and her shorts (which might have just been underwear worn on the outside) had a bat on them. Wheels of Miss Fortune was on Sister Slag was a pretty great jammer, too.

A video from the first bout, wherein a lot of ladies skate and a referee falls down.

At this point we realized that we were starving, and Chris ran to get us some pizza slices and water. If only we'd though ahead and brought delicious not so bad for us snacks. Alas. The pizza wasn't too bad, just 380 calories for two slices of cheese. We ended up splitting a hot dog, too, but when we got home I did a workout and considered everything even. EVERYTHING IS EVEN.

Defecaitlin (#2) laps the pack, scores points, and "calls the jam," a term for ending the round.

Next came the singing of the American and Canadian national anthems, and then the big bout, pitting Toronto's CN Power against Michigan's Killamazoo Derby Darlins. It was very exciting. Until the score got to about 60 points of difference between the two teams and just never shrank. Don't get me wrong, it was fun to watch the home team steamroll the competition, but it was a little disappointing seeing things so lopsided. We all wanted Toronto's team to win, I just wanted them to have to work a little harder for it.  During half time, the junior roller derby girls skated around the track, weaving between cones and jumping over pool noodles. It was pretty adorable.

I had a great time. I wish the bouts had been closer, but I don't think, "My team is too good" is a legitimate complaint. Chris and I really got into the game and I'm really hoping I can catch the next match-up on March 12th between Chicks Ahoy! and the Smoke City Betties. Maybe we'll even bring some lawn chairs and get to sit up front instead of back in the stands. We'll see.

Click here for some pictures from someone who was a lot closer to the action than we were.