Still here!

Yeah, I'm still here. I haven't blogged lately, obviously, so thought I would tonight. A lot has been happening lately. From the motor dying on my old car on Friday the 13th, to finishing my old job of 5 & a half years, to getting a new car, and then starting a new job! I'm so happy the long weekend is almost here, I need to sleep in!

Last night I had my first hot stone massage. It was great, but not long enough. Could have stayed there forever! Well...at least as long as my small bladder would let me...then I got a pedicure, which was badly needed. My poor feet had blisters from one of the long runs I did. Which brings me to running...I haven't been keeping up with my training this past couple of weeks. There's not enough hours in the day, or enough energy in me lately to keep up with everything! Today I went to Zumba though, and then did a short run. I hope to get a couple of long runs in this weekend, because only 2 weeks from Sunday is the half marathon!

Ciao for now!

Ambition

Aspire to climb as high as you can dream. I guess this goes along side the quote that if you dream it, you can do it. One of my dreams was to become a runner, and I'm doing it! I'm very happy with myself for that :) I didn't think of myself as ambitious before, but a few people have mentioned this in the past few weeks when referring to me, and I thought of it, and I guess I am. I like a challenge, I like to try new things. Sometimes it's not always for me, but at least I take the leap and try it right? :)

I'm starting a new job this coming Monday. I've been with my current job for 5 and a half years. I was comfortable, but a new opportunity came up, so I took a leap. We will see how I like it, hopefully it's great! I like change, so it should be good.

Back to running though. This past Saturday I ran 22km, my longest run ever. It took me about 3 hours and 10 minutes, which is a lot longer than I would have liked, but let me pick up for myself a bit here. My double-layer socks were dirty, and I didn't put any body glide on my feet, so I ended up getting crazy blisters that slowed me down big time. I was actually going to walk back home after 6km, but kept going. I also had a bit of a cold, and even brought tissues with me and had to stop to blow my nose a few times, lol. AND I stopped at a friends house for a few minutes to refuel, get more water, and have a pee break after 12km. So all-in-all, not too shabby I suppose. But boy oh boy my legs were sore afterwards! I came home and had a nice bath (not hot though, because cold is better to soothe your muscles after running!)

Only 27 more days til the Half Marathon in San Diego! From this past run I've learned some things. I definately have to bring some gels with me and put in my running belt. You have to have enough carbs (aka energy) in your body to do a run like this. At least at the actual race there will be tables on the sidelines with refuel items, which will be good. Also, I must wear my double layer socks and body glide. BTW - Body glide is excellent for preventing under arm chaffing when running with a tank top on. :)

TTFN!

Ashley

Persistence

Yesterday, I was thinking about Persistence. It came up in my thoughts a few times actually, and regarding different matters. So of course, I googled a picture, but I came across two that I like, and didn't want to choose between them.


Here is the first one:

This first quote, to me, tells you that it doesn't matter if you are not the stronger one, if you continue to do something, you will eventually get through.

Here is the second picture:

This is also an interesting quote. "If there is no struggle there is no progress". In other words, don't give up, if you don't struggle a little, you won't get any further.

One of the reasons I was thinking of persistence is with this fundraiser for Blood cancers that I was doing. There were many times when I could have given up. I was dedicated to raising $3500, and that's a lot of money to raise. I went out door to door raising a few times, and I'd say about 90-95% of the houses either answered and said no, or didn't answer the door at all when I could clearly see that they were home, either peeping through the windows or had about 4 cars in the driveway! One lady even came, opened the door and before I even said anything, she said "Not interested" very rudely and shut the door. Someone told me I should of said "Oh I was just coming to tell you that you won something, but if you're not interested, I'll leave again!" Haha, how rude though! I would have prefered if she would have been the one of many that just didn't answer the door at all!

There was one time I went out, and I was at the 5th house of either No's or Ignores, and I actually was right beside my car. I was so close to just giving up and getting back in the car and going home. Something nudged me to go on though, so I decided to at least finish the street, and you know what, the very next house donated $5! So then I was not so discouraged. There was even one man that had said no, and by the time I made it around the cul-de-sac, I was across from his house again at another house, and when I left the door to come back on the street (from yet another Ignore) He came out of his house over to me and gave me some change, he said "I had to give you something, I see you out here going to all the doors so I thought I would come give you some change". I believe I had tears in my eyes as I thanked him, because he could have easily forgot about me once he shut the door, and this was right after the rude lady. To me, this is persistence, to keep going and not give up, you don't know who may be watching, and what opportunities you may miss.

Speaking of opportunities. I will leave you with a note that an Arbonne leader gave us that someone told her:

A man told her that he believes when we get to Heaven, there will be 3 big screens in front of us. The first one will be all the wrong things you did in life. The last screen would be all good things you did in life. He feels that this screen will be much shorter then his first. The middle screen though, is the worse screen to look at. It's the list of all the opportunities that you missed out on.

Just something for everyone to think about! :)

Adversity

A friend inspired this blog today when she mentioned adversity, so I googled a good picture to go with it, and found this one. I think the picture with this quote is perfect to how I feel. "A bend in the road is not the end of the road...unless you fail to make the turn". Let me elaborate a little. In my mind, this means that yes it's true, you will not have straight perfect roads all throughout life, no one said life is perfect. There will be winding, bumpy roads at times. When you come to a turn in the road though, don't let it get to you, take that turn and see where it leads you. You never know what will be around that turn. Sometimes you have to take risks in life. It may not always work out how you want it to, but I'm a strong believer in the fact that everything happens for a reason. I learned that from my mother, and I stick to it.

You have to let adversity make you stronger. As the saying goes, learn from your mistakes, or what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. The list goes on with these little "quirks" we hear, but truly think about these little sayings, and what they mean.

It's Over!

The long weekend is over! It was great while it lasted, but as always, could have been longer, lol.

I got my Halo painting finished! Here it is:

I'm getting lots of orders now for paintings, it's great! :) It feels good to be back into painting. It's been way too long. I'm here now waiting for 3 canvas' to dry, I could blow dry them, but the hubby is beside me sleeping, so don't wanna wake him up.

I got a run in yesterday, 10km. I was supposed to do 15km, but I ran out of water so I went home because I was getting dehydrated. Today was rest day, so I'll run again tomorrow.

Dinner at the sister-in-law's was great. Which brings me to another topic.. I was talking to my Mom this morning, and she had already known that I went to the sister-in-laws before I even said it, so I realized that she must have read it on my blog. That got me thinking; I wonder who actually does read my blog? So I want to try something out. If you are reading this from a post I put on my Facebook page, can you please "like" the post when you are done reading this. Pretty please? I'm just curious now as to if anyone's out there reading it. :)

Well I must run along now and get to painting a little more before bedtime.

Ciao!

Long Weekend!

Happy Easter Everyone!

What's everyone's plans for the long weekend? We are having dinner at the sister-in-laws tomorrow. I'm also hoping that this will be a productive weekend for me. I want to get a lot of paintings done, it's now crunch-time! Next Friday is my goal deadline for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society I'm raising money for. If anyone reading this would like to donate, here's the link! :D

http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=1053067&langPref=en-CA

I actually only need $400 more! The website hasn't updated yet because it's waiting on the Paypal to go through.

Anyways, I found a new salad I like! I bought one at Williams, and then I decided to make it myself to save money. It's mixed greens with strawberries and poppyseed dressing, scrumptious!

Here's a pic of it before I added the dressing. The one at Williams also has feta cheese and a few manderins and seeds. I didn't have that though, so I made do with what I had.

Trying to eat better. I've been eating oatmeal for breakfast lately. Some people don't like oatmeal, but I love it! Whether it's plain oatmeal, or Peaches and Cream, Maple and Brown Sugar, Berries Oatmeal at Tims or anything!

Well, I must go and start my productive weekend! I wish everyone a fabulous fun-filled weekend surrounded by friends and family!

Progress

I got home today, made Shake & Bake chicken, rice and caesar salad. Ate and cleaned up with the boys. Checked Facebook out for a bit (of course), fed fish, took out one that died :( Saw that one of the new ones I bought has Ick which is probably why now 2 fish and the new frog died since last week. Luckily I have Ick tablets handy from the last time this happen and hopefully it clears it up before wiping out more fish. Then I cleaned Zoeys litter, sat back down to the table with my laptop, and was going to just waste away the evening on the internet.


I thought about this though, and what I've blogged about, and said nope, not having another evening go by with nothing done, because once you get sucked in, time just flies by and before you know if, it's bed time. So I went upstairs to my Easel, and started painting. :D

I spent two hours on it, and this is what it looks like so far:



Halo Reach. What happened to the one-dimenional days of easy things that kids liked. Haha, would have been much easier to paint something like Sonic the Hedgehog! I have 4 more guys to do in this painting, then I start a co-workers cat, Pablo.