I mentioned the relay race I’m running in a little while ago.

My team is starting tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon at 2pm, and expecting to finish sometime around 5pm on Sunday.

If you’d like to see the 191 mile (308 km) route, check out this map. I’m running legs 4, 16, and 28, a total of 16.3 miles (26km).

Since we’re starting at 2pm, I’ll probably start my first leg around 4:30pm. My second leg will be at night, starting at roughly 2:30am, and with any luck I’ll be starting my final leg by noon on Sunday.

Wish me luck!

Look what arrived in the mail today!

I have to say, as someone who only ever builds virtual experiences and writes for digital mediums, it’s pretty cool to physically lift something I’ve created and flip through the pages.

So… my day’s going pretty well. How ‘bout yours?

Speaking of U of O, I had to fill out some stuff about my education earlier today, which meant digging up my transcript. It makes for fascinating reading.

Here are my grades for the four years I spent earning my degree, ordered by letter:

It averages out to a C+. If anyone ever tells you you need to do well in school to get a good job, tell them you’re taking Software Engineering.

That said, school is a fine place to learn, and I’m happy I went, and it definitely is a huge part of where I am in my life right now (gainfully employed). A better summary might be:

Stay in school, kids; even if you suck at it.

Back in February, a really cool thing happened. (And yes, I realize it’s April. I’m behind on my writing.)

The school from which I graduated — the University of Ottawa — hosted a get-together in the valley for all its alumni that happen to have found their way to the bay area.

As you can see, I was a little underdressed:

(That’s me on the left.)

Next to me in the handsome salmon shirt is my buddy Mo, who graduated the same year I did. He works at Microsoft, and has an impressive track record for doing amazing things online.

Next to Mo in the killer suit is Vijay, someone I met a few times in University and now sort of regret not connecting with more often. He’s doing his Ph.D. at Stanford, on full scholarship, which he earned with his winning combination of being really good at everything and being extremely personable.

Rounding out the photo is the current Dean of Engineering at U of O, Claude Laguë, who was a gracious host, and gave me an awesome pin — which Leah later lost, much to my dismay. (I read that line out to Leah, and she claims she “vacuumed” it. When I said that that was the same thing, she insisted that “it’s different”.)

There were some delectable snacks and free beer, which is always a win in my book. During the “networking hour” I met up with a woman named Pam who also recently migrated from Ottawa to San Jose, and who also has an awesome blog about it.

The focus of the evening was a panel about how to encourage entrepreneurship through the university. The panelists were all bay area venture capitalists, which was really neat because they had really insightful stories, none of which I remember well enough to type out in full. (Sorry.)

Following the panel, we all just hung around and talked for a while. I met some fellow Netflixers, and people that worked at LinkedIn, Yahoo, Adobe, and Dropbox, plus a smattering of startups.

It was a lot of fun. I really hope this becomes some sort of an annual tradition, I’d like to see a number of these people again.

I’ve wanted to run for about 2 years now. It seems like something I would be good at, because I have generally good discipline and I already run faster than a lot of people. You may remember Leah and I ran a 5k way back in July, and we both totally rocked it.

Well, back in January someone at work sent an email asking if anyone wanted to run in a relay race.

“Sure!” I thought. “It’s a relay! You don’t even need to run the whole thing!”

The relay runs from Calistoga to Santa Cruz. Because I’m sure many of you don’t know how far apart those places are, I can tell you: 312km (194 miles).

There are twelve people per team, which after some basic division is 26km per person, or a little over half a marathon each. Because it’s a relay, this is broken into three legs per runner, each leg being 10km or less. Each team member takes turns running, so I’ll run my three legs about six hours apart — meaning I’m going to be up for at least 21 consecutive hours.

I may have bitten off more than I could chew.

I’ve been training since then, and I’m coming along. I can run a 5k in a little more than 20 minutes, and I ran my first 10k a couple weeks ago in just under 50 minutes.

Yes, I know how fast that is. I’m fast. As long as I don’t overtrain and injure myself, I will have no trouble running this race.

I’m actually so confident that I’ve already signed up for a half marathon in August. So yeah, I’m a little committed to this running thing.

I’ve kind of been pinging Facebook with some running stuff every now and then, and I meant to mentioned it much sooner here… anyway, I’ll try to post about it here more often.

In the mean time, do you run? I wouldn’t mind reading a success story or two in the comments…

Gosh Leah’s getting good at writing blog-like posts. And here I haven’t written anything in ages. Let’s fix that.

So you may have read my post from a couple months back where I talked about being on Weight Watchers. I was doing great with weight loss but decided I wanted to start weight training as well. To sum it up without being too “I have a degree in biology”, weight training is what REALLY change the shape of your body. The added bonus of putting on muscle is that it increases your resting metabolism better than cardio. The general consensus is that while cardio causes you to burn calories IN THE MOMENT, weight training boosts your calorie burn throughout the entire day. Also, I like being the only girl in the weight room and making fun of the meatheads. What can I say.

For the last month I’ve been weight training 5x a week (with one rest day and one hockey day). I alternate legs and arms and go back and forth between doing weights, doing cardio, and doing a combo of the two (think jump squats and other plyometrics). I purchased an amazing heart rate monitor that also tracks your calories burned. I don’t know how I worked out without it before. It makes me up my intensity and makes it so much easier to determine how hard I’m going.

A misconception about weight training is that you should do low reps, high weight to build muscle/bulk, and that women should do high reps, low weight to develop “lean muscle”. This is so not true!

Women don’t get huge like men when they weight train because they have less testosterone. We’re not built to get massive. It just won’t happen. Stop being girly and put down the pink weights. Bodybuilder women take testosterone supplements to get huge. It’s as simple as that.

That being said, my weight lifting mentality is “go big or go home”. I like to feel pumped (side note: if you’d like to watch a hilarious non-parent/in-law appropriate video that explains how California became the state it is, search for the “Arnold Schwarzeneggar pump” video on Youtube. We made that man our governor).

(yes, this is the background on my phone)

The side effect of increasing your metabolism is that you’re hungry ALL THE FREAKING TIME on weight lifting days. I decided to try out My Fitness Pal, which is a free calorie counting and exercise tracking app that works a lot like Weight Watchers. The added bonus is that it breaks down all your macro and micronutrients so you can specifically adjust your diet to what it should be. For example, I tend to go over my recommended sugar intake. This is mostly due to my high fruit and veggie intake, but it’s still nice to be able to keep an eye on that. Right now I’ve decided to double track (track on both My Fitness Pal and Weight Watchers) to get an idea of what’s going on. So far it seems like I can eat more using My Fitness Pal (which still gives you a calorie limit for weight loss).

The “problem” with weight training is that you gain muscle and muscle is heavy. Because of this I’ve actually gained a bit of weight in the past month. I’m OK with this. It often takes a few months of weight training for your body to start losing fat. I know that if I’d stayed doing just cardio I’d be losing weight but I’m not too focused on the number on the scale right now.

I’ve truly started loving weight training. I look forward to the gym every day. I feel strong and powerful and fit when I leave the gym. I’ve also adjusted my diet to be much more clean and full of whole foods. Ironically I need to boost my fat intake, which is taking a fair amount of effort! Olive oil and avocados are becoming my friends.

I’ll do another fitness update in a month or two. I’m hoping to shed more fat so that my muscles show through a bit more. In the mean time, here’s a totally embarrassing muscly arm pic for you:

A couple months ago our friend Craig Holmes (aka, Holmes) came to visit us. He missed us tremendously and just couldn’t stay away from Dan’s sexiness. This is not true. He works for Adobe and was in town for a conference. I prefer to think of it my way, though. Much more glamorous.

Anyways, we wanted to show him a good time while he was here, but his fiancee said no. Also not true. He said he wanted to do something “extreme” on his day off. I suggested a trip to Big Sur to go hike this:

With an elevation gain of 1600’ over about 2 miles, the 5 mile Ewoldsen trail boasts ocean views and redwood forests. Unfortunately, much of the trail was destroyed by a forest fire a few years ago. The most up-to-date information I could find said that while the trail was closed, you could ignore the signs and still hike it, if you don’t mind climbing over some burnt stumps. I even went on their official website which said you could ignore the “Trail Closed” signs and do the hike.

After grabbing the essentials we headed off for the 2 hour mountain drive to the trail. I was super pumped to try out my new “girly” backpack. Apparently if you buy a backpack specifically designed for women with..ahem..boobs, you only get one colour choice: purple. Of course. Nothing sexist about that.

We spent a bit of time looking for the trailhead but by following the “trail closed” signs we eventually found our way. Thus began our vertical hike. The switchbacks were killer and Holmes has legs like an antelope. I, on the other hand, have legs like a mountain goat. On the Simpsons. Go watch it.

We got a mile in before we noticed that something was amiss. I’m pretty sure jackhammers aren’t left in the middle of the forest too often:

Sure enough, we soon came upon some construction workers/hippies (I mean, more hippy-like than most Californians) who politely said “Oh, I guess you didn’t see the signs. This trail is closed for construction”. We backed out of there sheepishly mumbling something about the internet.

We decided to hike whatever we could while we were there. Here are some pics of some burnt stumps:

And the always gorgeous California coast line:

We ended the day with a trip to Monterey Bay and the Cannery Row Brewery. Dan and I had been here once before and the food and drinks are delicious! We also stopped in to a record store where I had a bunch of fun sorting through tapes from the 90s.

Dan and I are planning to go back and do the hike once the trail’s been re-opened. We still had an awesome time and saw a lot of the beauty of California, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. It was also a great way to spend time with one of our Ottawa friends, which is always fun!

…is that you have so much to write about, and no time to write. I’ll try to get caught up this weekend.

My cousin Nikki is a better and considerably sassier writer than I am, and posts like this are exactly what I aspire to write some day. (She’s spot on about food and culture, by the way; I’ve noticed the same thing since moving to the US.)

Leah here!

For those of you that don’t know, Dan and I joined the Chandon wine club, which delivers us bottles of Chandon every 2 months. We signed up while on a trip to Sonoma/Napa with Lindsey and Marc. And yes, we were a little tipsy by the time we handed over our credit card.

Our most recent shipment was 2 magnum bottles (1.5L each) of champagne.

After having them take up too much room in our liquor cabinet (OK, liquor bookshelf) for too long, Dan decided we should just devote a Saturday to drinking all of it. That means we’d each be drinking the equivalent of a normal (750mL) bottle each. After picking up some post-drinking Gatorade, we were good to go.

Dan also chose Saturday to start training for his crazy Netflix run (will likely be discussed in a later blog post). I went with him for his first run. It went….OK. At least the weather was great!

After showering, we started the drinking. Dan’s first glass was accompanied by blueberry waffles. How refined!

I also accidentally took a picture of our apartment while trying to figure out the settings on my camera. Here it is on a nice, sunny day:

As the drinking continued we watched The Meaning of Life, before deciding (as all drunk people do) that we absolutely needed Mexican food immediately. Thus began our drunken journey to Tlaquepaque. On the way Dan had to restrain me several times from trying to “steal” oranges from everyone’s orange trees. He said it would be trespassing and theft. Pshhhh.

We passed this house and it made me laugh. The sign on the door says “We Love Snow!”. Really? Maybe California was a poor choice. (Dan pointed out that WE love snow, but whatever)

After a long journey, we finally reached our destination.

Now, I’ve mentioned before that Tlaquepaque has something called Chavelas. They also have something called SUPER Chavelas, and those are…well…super. It’s a beer with a shot of tequila and fresh lime juice in it, served in a goblet with a salt rim. Basically all my favourite things rolled into one.

After gorging ourselves on flautas, fajitas, tortilla chips, and salsa, we headed home. On the way back (stumbling a bit, I might add) we passed this sign. There’s nothing like passing a sign for Alcoholics Anonymous when you’re drunk at 2pm on a Saturday.

The rest of the afternoon was spent napping and watching TV. We didn’t get through the whole bottle but we came pretty damn close, so…small successes and whatnot.

Other than the hangover that lasted from 5pm to 11pm, it was a really fun day!

Weight Watchers and Christmas

Since the beginning of July I’ve been on Weight Watchers. It was kind of a random decision for me (I honestly think I had an annoying Jennifer Hudson popup on my computer and thought “Why the hell not?”. I guess I’m the reason people keep making popups. Sorry everybody.). I’ve always eaten relatively well (thanks Mom and Dad!) and have been very active (again, thanks Mom and Dad!), but I’ve never been at my ideal weight and I’ve been gaining weight since university and trying to lose it unsuccessfully for a while.

Whenever I tell people I’m on Weight Watchers their first response is “Like, you go to meetings??” and my answer is always “Nope!”. I do all of my food tracking on my phone and I find it really easy and convenient*. It hasn’t even been HARD to lose 15 pounds in 6 months. I find like any attempt at weight loss/healthy living, it has to be something that works for you. I know a lot of people would struggle with tracking every single thing that they eat (I thought I would hate it) but it’s really not too bad.

The system is based on points, which are linked to the nutritional information of the food. You can select from their massive database (including almost all restaurants) or you can put in the nutritional information yourself (or scan the barcodes!). The best part about it is that fruits and veggies are “free”. This means you should never really be hungry because you can eat all the fresh fruit and veggies you want. It motivates you to grab an apple or carrots as a snack, for example. I find my fruit and veggie intake has gone up significantly since I started Weight Watchers.

An added bonus to losing a bit of weight and eating better is that the blood work I had done recently had incredible results. To be fair, the baseline is probably based on the normal American, but still!

One major test of the efficacy of the system was when I went home for Christmas this year. I think people would struggle with this if they were home for a week or something, but I was home for three and a half weeks! I told myself before I left that I would be really happy if I stayed the same weight over Christmas. I thought losing weight was too unrealistic of a goal. I made sure to track all of my food but I was a little lenient with myself as well.

The hardest part was the alcohol. My family drinks a lot of very good wine, beer, and whiskey. My daily points allotment is 34 points (this includes a weekly 49 floater points that you can use all at once (say, for a party), or throughout the week). It’s great when all you’re eating is food, but when you consider that 1.5 ounces of hard liquor, 4 ounces of wine, and a can of light beer are all 4 points, you can easily drink all that away before even accounting for food. Three beers at a party is half of your daily points allotment! That’s just mean :(

Anyways, I came home after my break and weighed myself and I weighed EXACTLY what I weighed before I left. Woohoo! I think that’s worth the disappointment of not having as many cookies or drinks as I would have liked :)

*Note: I will start going to meetings for a little bit because it will allow me to get Lifetime membership, which means free weight watchers for the rest of my life!

Dan and I just had a really great weekend and I figured it was worth a blog post. It’s very rare that we have what we call a “normal weekend” so we really enjoy when we can actually spend a full weekend together doing errands and getting groceries.

Yesterday we finally tried out a newish crèpe restaurant on Lincoln (our little neighbourhood street) and were able to sit outside because it was so sunny and warm! The guys at the table next to us accidentally dropped a big pot of cream on the floor and it ended up splattered all over Dan’s back, face, sunglasses, hair, ears, pants, etc. It was pretty funny because the waiters felt so horrible and kept asking Dan if he was OK. One even came up to me and said “You know him better than I do, are you sure he’ll be OK?”. Considering Dan is the most laid-back person I know (or should I say “lait-back”? I’m funny), I think he’ll be fine.

After that we walked around Lincoln a bit and found some guy with a huge smoker that smelled delicious. We had him open it up and it was full of 1/2 chickens and ribs. Turns out he’s there every weekend and sells them through this little Italian shop on the corner. Can’t wait to try that out when we’re not stuffed with crèpes!

Later that day I took Dan to Tesla so he could go to our friend Anthony’s work BBQ. We ended up going back to his place after for some drinks and socializing with a bunch of Tesla employees. We left early because we’re lame but we still had a great time!

Today our goal was to get me a new wooden hockey stick. I’ve been having serious issues finding some here in California, and I couldn’t even find anything in Ottawa over Christmas! We ended up going to the HP Pavilion hockey shop (where the San Jose Sharks play. It’s literally a 3 minute drive from our apartment) to find one and I’m super excited to try it in my game tonight.

Our next stop was Carl’s Jr (a fast food burger place). Dan and I had been there once before and I thought it was delicious but Dan said it made him sick. We’ve been arguing over whether or not it’s delicious for months so I forced him to try it again (it WAS delicious and it DIDN’T make him sick). I stuck to a grilled chicken salad just in case. Dan realized that the Carl’s Jr. was in a plaza he’d been to before I moved here. We ended up picking up some fresh veggies and flowers at Trader Joe’s before making our way to the World Market.

World Market is like a Pier 21 on steroids. My friend Amanda introduced me to it and Dan had always wanted to go. It has a lot of furniture, house decor, wine, beer, and food inspired by different countries. We had a really fun time there and found a bunch of stuff we loved! We’re thinking of having some furniture shipped from there to Ottawa if and when we move back.

We really loved a coffee table a bit like this one:

And this wine rack:

And these sausages:

no, JK, these look disgusting

Dan spent a lot of time in the beer section. You can even get beers of the world!:

We ended up leaving with just some coasters and napkins, but we’ll be back for more soon!

Now we’re drinking white wine with the windows open and blogging a bit before my game tonight. We have a pretty hilarious weekend planned for next weekend. When we recover I’ll be sure to write about it too!

A friend of mine works at Tesla, and invited me to their holiday party yesterday. (Yes, their holiday party was held on January 19th.)

The Tesla factory is out in Freemont, and is easily the biggest building I’ve ever been inside of. The party was right out on the factory floor, where they make the cars. It was decorated nicely, with little white picket fences separating the areas you can go from the areas you can’t go. There was also a table that was literally about 100m long serving free beer.

Here’s the first thing you see when you walk in:

That’s the acclaimed Tesla Model S, with some award that it won off in the corner of the shot. It’s a gorgeous car.

Here are some unfinished ones:

Ok, technically these will never be “finished”. These are actually test cars they use to train new people. I guess they expect new hires to make a few mistakes, so they reserved a few frames specifically for that purpose.

There were also car parts everywhere:

This is a shelf of sheet metal used for the floor of the driver’s side of the front cab. There were tons of these shelves, all clearly labelled.

There were also bigger things lying around, like doors, and row after row of seats:

Seriously. You can’t tell from that shot, but there were seats as far as the eye could see.

Being there with a Tesla employee was nice, because he could answer my constant questions. For example, I asked what this weird computer area was:

He explained that these workstations are used to control giant presses that stamp out car parts. The presses were off in some unrestricted area, but by the way he described them, I pictured the kind of enormous robots that inevitably “turn evil” in sci-fi movies and try to destroy the world.

I also asked why these walls are red:

It turns out this is a welding station, and the walls are red so that people walking by that aren’t wearing welding masks won’t go blind if they happen to look towards the welders.

Probably my favourite part of the factory was the inspection area:

Every time they finish assembling a car, it gets sent to this floor for final inspection. It rolls slowly down the floor via those conveyer belts, and engineers inspect all aspects of the car. If they find any blemishes, the car is returned for fixing up.

Sometimes they’ll drive-test a car, and because Telsa cars are all 100% electric and have literally zero emissions, Tesla is the only car company in the world with an indoor test track.

Speaking of being good for the environment, I had to take a picture of these awesome recycling bins:

That’s Tesla for you. Beautiful design in every aspect of the factory; from the floor itself to the cars it produces, right down to the waste bins.

I had a great time, and I heard I can go back for a formal tour someday — just don’t expect a post about that one, because I also heard I’d have to sign an NDA :)

Can’t wait! This will be about a 20-minute walk from our apartment.