Day 59 (Feb.28, 2010): Gym

Today I went to the gym with Ken. I don't have a membership to his gym so that was my "different" thing for the day. It was nice to go to the gym to add some variety to my workout. I usually work out at home which includes going on my treadmill and doing some type of strength exercises with my dumbells, exercise ball or pilates. However, I don't really like Ken's gym. He is actually going to leave that gym and go to a different one soon. I just don't like it because some of the equipment is getting kind of old and it is a bit dingy. The elliptical that I went on was almost falling apart.

Ken's "different" thing today was that he tried to leg press 1000 lbs.........I know, that is crazy hey? He actually did it but he had to push a bit on his legs with his hands to complete it. Here is the video.

Day 58 (Feb.27,2010): Concert

Tonight we attended a benefit concert for David Garber. He is the conductor for a choir that our friend Heather is in. He has been involved in the Edmonton Choral scene and music scene in general for a long time. He was diagnosed with cancer in December so they held this concert to raise money to cover some of his medical expenses.

The concert was really good. Eventhough it was a benefit concert it was fun and lighthearted. It was held in a beautiful church downtown that had an enormous pipe organ. There was a variety of different types of music. The "PreTenors", Pro Coro Canada, The Metropolitan Chorus (this is the group that our friend Heather is in), Epsilon, Martin Kloppers, 2 Island Girls and VOCE were the preformers. We heard Barbados Island music, African Chorus music, traditional choir music, accapella and an electric cellist performance. The wide variety of music made the concert really interesting and unique.

Thanks Heather for inviting us!!

Day 57 (Feb.26, 2010): UNO

Tonight we were watching Team Canada play Slovakia in the men's hockey semi finals for the Olympics. We really didn't want to miss that game so we decided to do something at home tonight. We had a brand new set of UNO cards that we had never used so we played UNO (by the way, it is really hard to shuffle new UNO cards!). Ken hadn't played UNO since he was a kid and I'm guessing that the last time I played was at work with the summer camp kids, last summer. Ken beat me in a best of 2 out of 3 :( He got lucky cards...... We actually played by the proper rules (we consulted the rule book!) and I realized that we play it all wrong with the kids at work. Oh well, as long as they are having fun!

Day 56 (Feb.25, 2010): Walk

Tonight we went for a walk through our community. Ken had ordered some books from Chapters and he needed to pick them up so we walked in that general direction. We chose to walk down the side streets instead of Whyte Ave (we will save that walk for the summer time) so that we could check out some of the houses in the neighbourhood. We noticed that there are ALOT of apartments for rent. Also, there are lots of incentives for people to rent from different companies. For example some are saying, "1 month free rent" or "no damage deposit". One had a sign outside of it that said "come on in, coffee is on us". I found that so funny! I guess they are really hard up to get people to rent from them. What a difference from a year ago!

Day 55 (February 24, 2010): Did you know....

Tonight we went on www.didyouknow.org to learn something new. Here is what we found:

"The tongue of a blue whale is as long as an elephant. Our eyes are always the same size from birth. Earth is not round, it is slightly pear-shaped. On average, people move house every 7 years. Mel Blanc, who played the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots." These are facts that we found under the "fast facts" tab......

I don't know about the eye thing....maybe it's true but I have pretty big eyes so that one seems a bit odd to me.

Next we looked under the "sports" tab. Here is what we learned: The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, Greece in 1896. There were 311 male but no female competitors. A badminton shuttle easily travels 180 km/h (112 mph).

Here is what we learned about statistics: In 1750 there were about 800 million people in the world. In 1850 there were a billion more, and by 1950, another billion. Then it took just 50 years to double to 6 billion. The opposite sides of a dice cube always add up to seven. In 1870, there were more Irish living in London than in Dublin. In 1870, there also were more Catholics living in London than in Rome. US Post Office handles 43% of the world’s mail. Its nearest competitor is Japan with 6%.The world’s average school year is 200 days per year. In the US, it is 180 days; in Sweden 170 days, in Japan it is 243 days.

If you found this post interesting you should go to www.didyouknow.org or you can just google "did you know" and lots of different websites come up.

Day 54 (February 23, 2010): Canadian Pride

Tonight we knew that we were going to watch the Canadian Men's Olympic team in the playoff qualifying game against the German Team. We decided to make some "Team Canada" posters to help us cheer on Team Canada. After the game was over we put them in our front window.



Here I am cheering on Team Canada in my "Canadian Hockey Rocks" t-shirt. "Go Canada Go"

Day 53: (Feb.22, 2010): Star Fruit

Tonight we decided to try star fruit. It is really funny because when we tried the dragon fruit Ken really liked it and I didn't. He liked dragon fruit because it is sweet and syrupy. The opposite was true tonight. I really liked the star fruit because it is a bit sour and I like sour things. Ken did not like it at all.

This is Ken trying it...he is very cautious!

This is after it is cut up.....these pictures are in reverse order...

Cutting off the slices, they are so pretty.....



When you cut a start fruit you trim off the outer edges first, then the "stem end" that is a bit brown and then cut the slices from there.


This is what it looks like whole.