Crafty Me

I enjoy doing crafty things. Here are a few of my more noteworthy projects:

And my quilt, completed only with the invaluable assistance of my mom. 

Sketching

At night, when I don't want to read and I'm sick of netflix, I do drawings. They aren't good, but I feel good looking at them. They are mostly copied from NGS photos:

These are from the art class I took 2 years ago:

A Day in the Life

Since I can't seem to think of anything more interesting to blog about these days, I'll give my many followers an idea about what its like to live the life of Karen.

I get up in the morning at about 7:30 am. I make my delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs, a cup of veggies, and a slice of cheese (with extra hot sauce of course) and my days worth of spinach salad, cottage cheese, and sliced vegetables.

Then I straighten my hair, just like this:

















I do this because otherwise my hair looks like a bunch of cotton balls are glued to my head.

Then I usually lie back on my bed for 20 minutes and try not to fall asleep. Why don't I just wake up later? ... I don't know.

I walk to work, trying to avoid the homeless people (because I always feel guilty when I walk past them), and gaze at the beautiful ocean:

Okay, so maybe I've never seen a turtle. 

I rush to work 5 minutes late, and spend the next 4 hours trying to look like I'm working, pretending not to go on Facebook, and zoning out. 

Then at 1:00 its off to the gym!

Getting stronger, getting tougher!

The rest of my day is spent zoning out, hunting for sweet treats around the office, and wikipedia-ing. 

I then walk home. Dinner is usually something delicious, like shepherd's pie, stir fry, some sort of soup and biscuits, etc. 

I also read. A lot. I think I'm reading book #264 at this point? It's gotten a bit out of hand. I should really pick up some other hobbies. I also like to paint and draw, but I've kind of gotten out of the habit of doing that lately.

So that's a day in the life. So exciting. My own life bores me to tears. Hopefully something fun will happen this summer!

Marathoners

A marathon is a 42 kilometre race. The fastest ever finishing time for a marathon was done by Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, who ran the race in 2 hours and 3 minutes (!!!!!!!)


The average finishing times for marathons are  4 hours 32 minutes for men and 5 hours 6 minutes for women.


I would love to be able to say one day that I ran a marathon. It would be a huge achievement, considering that I get exhausted after just walking for 5 hours, let alone running it ... I can do about 5.5 km before I'm done. 42 km seems beyond reason. 

Not to mention that you get a rockin' bod. I would kill for this body ... but would I run for it?

Misiek

Misiek is the other great love of my life. 

One summer I decided to buy a dog.

We never had dogs growing up. None of my friends ever really had dogs. In fact, I have always considered myself a cat person. 

But I decided I needed a small companion. So I went on Kijiji and bought a shih tzu puppy. A few days later a van pulled up outside my house, and a girl said I could choose any of the puppies in the back of her van. I took the one on the right. An epic tale of love and adventure, I know. 

Misiek is probably the best dog there is. I doubt that he’s a pure breed shih tzu, but I don’t really care. He is kind and brave, cuddly and thoughtful. He howls like a wolf, and has the thoughts of a philosopher. He has the sturdy body of a piglet and the tiny head of a cobra.

  

I think this photo taken of Misiek while he was conquering Europe really sums up his personality: 
courageous, intellectual, refined.

He was once a tiny puppy

... a bit of a scraggly puppy really.

Sometimes he's sad ...

... and sometimes he is ferocious beyond your wildest nightmares!

His first hair cut!

His summer look. 

A noontime nap. 

I like this picture because Misiek looks wise, and Lucy looks like a stuffed animal. 

Getting his exercise. 

Just being cool. 

Being so cozy in his long johns.

Teague

Teague is definitely one of my favourite things.


We met in the required Canadian Politics course for poli sci majors/minors at the U of A. I sneakily managed to sit next to him nearly every class, and cleverly started conversations by daily asking him what day it was, and constantly seeming to forget my pen. I'm not too proud to admit that I found out his name by counting seats and reading his name off the attendance sheet (although he later admitted that he did the same with me!) I asked him out for coffee at Starbucks after finals, and about 3 months later he wondered if I'd like to go to the Sugar Bowl. This went on, more or less awkwardly, until we finally started dating, almost exactly one year after we met.


He has survived meeting my family, and I have survived his late night studio sessions (so far!)


We managed to get through two months in South America, notwithstanding stolen wallets, lost tickets, brutal altitude sickness, and some pretty spectacular late-night puking.


And he has managed to overcome his jealousy for my romance with Misiek.


We're pretty much made for each other.

He's a photog extraordinaire

Survivor Stories

I love a good survival story. They always leave me a little awestruck, which is a good feeling in my opinion.

Although I’m always on the lookout for another good survival story, these four stories are the ones that really standout to me.

Beck Weathers

I came across Beck Weathers’ story while reading Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer. This 

book recounts the hellish experiences of the mountaineering teams who attempted to summit Mount Everest in the 1996 climbing year, during which fifteen individuals died.

Beck Weathers was a member of Rob Hall’s climbing team. In the “Death Zone” of Mount Everest (in which human life cannot be sustained due to the altitude), Weathers was struck with snow blindness, making him incapable of summiting. Hall instructed Weathers to sit and wait for him to summit; he would then collect him on his way back down. However, a raging blizzard soon struck. The 150 km/hour winds quickly caused the temperature to plummet to nearly -100°C. Hall did not return to collect Weathers (and ended up perishing himself on the mountain side that day).

A small group of five climbers came across the nearly unconscious Weathers and assisted him in climbing down the mountain. However, the white-out conditions and paralyzing cold halted the group a mere 300 yards from camp. The group huddled together for warmth. During a lull in the storm, one of the climbers struck off alone for the camp. A rescue team was soon assembled, and three of the five climbers were rescued. Weathers and one other climber were left for dead.

The next morning, two Sherpas returned see if the climbers were indeed beyond saving. 

After chipping away the ice from their faces, the Sherpas decided that, although both 

were still breathing slightly, it was not worth the energy expenditure to hazard a 

rescue. Weathers was left for dead a second time.

At this point, Beck later recalls seeing his wife and children in front of him. He managed to open his blinded eyes (only one of which was still capable of seeing 1-2 feet into the distance). The nearly dead Weathers stumbled into the camp, much to the shock of those whom he found there.

Weathers survived the ordeal, although he lost both hands, most of both feet, and his 

nose.

omg!!!

Aron Ralston

This climber is best known, of course, for cutting off his own arm with the dull blade of a multi-use tool and a pair of pliers after being trapped for 5 days (or 127 hours ...) by a 1,000 pound boulder in a hot canyon in Utah. He later reported finding the strength to do this after seeing a vision of his unborn son. 

Of course, after amputating his own arm he still had to rappel 20 meters down a sharp cliff and hike nearly 15 kilometers in the baking Utah summer sun.  

Ernest Shackleton 

I will never be able to full express what a hero this man is to me. 

His obsession with Antarctic exploration took him repeatedly to that region of the globe, and he was determined to become the first explorer to transverse the entire continent of Antarctica. Unfortunately, his ship, the Endurance, became trapped in an unseasonably heavy ice pack on January 19, 1915, and remained trapped for the next 10 months. Shackleton and his men soon began subsisting almost solely on penguin and seal meat. On November 21 the Endurance was crushed by the shifting ice, leaving Shackleton and his men stranded on an ice floe. 

They camped on this floe for the next 2 months, repeatedly attempting and failing to struggle closer to land. The ice began to collapse beneath them, and Shackleton and his men escaped in their three lifeboats. They spent five harrowing days at sea in some of the most tempestuous and dangerous waters in the world. They managed to land on Elephant Island, an inhospitable crag of land with no food and no hope of rescue. 

Shackleton soon determined to row one of the tiny boats to South Georgia, a whaling station located 1,500 km away from Elephant Island. He and his chosen five companions spent the next 15 days in some of the world’s most storm-swept seas, with waves that regularly reached 18 meters constantly threatening to capsize the tiny boat.  By luck, will, and excellent navigation, they managed to land on the wrong side of South Georgia island. 

Shackleton took the two most fit men and set out on a 36 hour expedition to cross the largely unmapped craggy mountains and dangerous glaciers of the island. The men used nails in the bottoms of their boots for traction. Shackleton later reported that he felt there were four men on the journey, rather than three. 

They made it to the whaling station. All the men were saved. 

Joe Simpson

This is the story told in the documentary film "Touching the Void." Without fear of exaggeration, I can say that this film changed my life. 

Joe Simpson and Simon Yates took upon themselves the feat of climbing the West face of Siula Grande, a 6,344 m mountain in the Peruvian Andes. They summited the mountain despite bad weather, and began their descent as more storm clouds approached. During this descent, Simpson managed to slip on an ice cliff and smash his tibia into his knee joint, causing an extremely painful and dangerous break. The two men decided to attempt to lower Simpson down the mountain by tying two pieces of 150' rope together. Yates would lower Simpson down the mountain, and when the knot tying the two ropes together made it impossible to continue threading the rope, Simpson would take the weight off the rope by standing on his good leg and Yates would then re-thread the knot onto the other side and continue to lower him. This process worked well enough until the blizzard enveloped the men and made communication impossible. In the darkness and confusion of the storm, Yates inadvertently and unknowingly lowered Simpson over the edge of a precipice, making it impossible for Simpson to take the weight off the rope. The two men remained in this difficult situation for some time, until Yates was forced to cut the rope, or be pulled off the side of the mountain by Simpson's weight. 

Simpson plummeted into a deep and terrifying crevasse. He spent a horrifying night alone in the crevasse, and when the morning came, he was made the difficult decision to abseil further down into the pit in some hopes of finding an exit. He eventually, miraculously, managed to climb back onto the glacier via a steep snow slope. For the next three days, he wound his way across the treacherous glacier with no food and almost no water by crawling, hopping, and dragging his excruciatingly painfully broken leg. In a state of pure exhaustion and delirium, he reached Yates' tent mere hours before Yates intended to return home. 

That is MENTAL.