Fitness Fav on Friday (Places)

This week’s linkup is on our favorite places to get in our fitness, so here’s one of my favorite places ever!

My favorite gym in the world is the ARC (Activities & Recreation Center) back at Davis. I was massively spoiled there and no other gym I’ve ever been to since then has not compared. I also love being outside. If I could move a squat rack outside (and perhaps a giant truck tire!) to work out, it’d be awesome. :D!

Fridays have apparently become my time to provide life updates, so…I’ve moved, yet again. I’ve lived in …8(?) places since 2007. ._. This apartment complex is quite possibly the nicest place I’ve ever lived in. It’s also the most expensive, even with the $45/month discount my friend managed to get for me, but if I keep pinching pennies like nobody’s business, I should be okay.

I got to Kentucky on Sunday evening. As it is, I’m only about 1/3 of the way moved in because my Tetris-ing skills unfortunately have not transcended to unearthly levels. I’m currently leeching wireless from a network called, “get your own” (yepyep, very fitting), but hopefully by August, I’ll be done! I’m hoping I can share internet with Hira, and also may or may not have left a somewhat creeper-y message on my neighbor’s door. (…It was to ask if we could split the wifi bill if it didn’t work with Hira.) The creeper-y part is because I don’t actually know my neighbor, but…does it make it any better if he’s also a student, but a year above me?

Minimalist living. Mike found out I didn’t have a bed and loaned me his extra for the week (he’s returning it on the weekend).

Orientation was throughout this week. We had a wholeeee ton of information thrown at us on Monday, but I’m super grateful that we’re in this region. Our dean and site coordinator really seem like they care about us. :D

Our first ice-breaker involved “2 Truths & a Lie,” which I always find kinda fun. :D For people who know me, the lie is pretty easy to detect.

1. I’ve been living at a cat shelter for the past 2 months.
2. My favorite subject in high school was biology.
3. I hold a state powerlifting record.

None of my non-friends suspected that bio was not one of my favorite subjects in high school. (English, journalism and treble ensemble!!!)

We got fed lunch and there was enough left, so I got dinner too!

We had a couple team-building exercises. One of them involved using the 6 pipecleaners we were given to create “something medically-related,” but we were only allowed to use our non-dominant hands. Our group immediately opted to make Borrelia burgdorferi.

It’s beautiful!

Most of the other teams made stethoscopes, and her dean has dubbed our class as the least creative group she’s had thus far. (Noooo! :'( ) Past classes have made an ambulance, a wheelchair, a bunch of teeth with braces…etc. She said she liked our Lyme disease creation though, but she can’t display it in the case or it’ll get smushed.

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Banana Almond Oat Waffles

Jun and I decided to go for a hike on Christmas morning since both our families would likely still be sleeping. Both of us had been binge-eating like no other and not working out all that much so we were pretty out of shape. We did manage to make it up Mission Peak in about an hour though, so not too terrible? (I like to be a “glass half full” type of gal.) The world is filled with all kinds of intense human beings–there are some regulars that seriously put us to all kinds of shame (e.g. the guy who runs up there every morning with his dog, the girl that hula hoops all the way up…). But imagine our surprise when we came up to find this!

This means someone carried a tree up there. Complete with blinking lights and a power source and everything.

It was super cute and festive. :D

Sunrise! Although I guess by this point, it’s technically already risen.

On the way down, we came across a rebel. It would’ve been awesome if there’d been a cow there or something.

 

We also came across a cow herding a bunch of turkeys!

When we finally got down the mountain, we took showers and set out to make an awesome (and for once, appropriately-portioned) breakfast. This waffle recipe (obtained from a friend at church!) makes 2 waffles. We modified it from 1 3/4 cups of water to throw in cottage cheese for extra protein and some soy milk so it’d be more liquid batter-y. :O It worked well for our breakfast after our Christmas morning hike. :]! It’s a little burnt because I couldn’t find the happy medium for my waffle iron (haven’t used it in way too long ;_; ). One of these days, I’ll perfect the technique!! I will likely make an unmodified version at some point.

Banana Almond Oat Waffles

Ingredients:
-1 cup oats
-1 cup cottage cheese
-1/2 cup vanilla soy milk
-1 1/2 bananas, mashed
-1/2 tsp almond extract
-cinnamon, to taste

Instructions:
1) Preheat waffle iron.
2) Mix everything together until smooth.
3) Pour into waffle iron. Use more batter than expected since it doesn’t rise much.
*Don’t worry as much about over-cooking it, since a crusty waffle will soften under  a towel (steam!) whereas a doughy one is yucky.

hiking

To somewhat counteract all the insane food consumption that’s pretty much been happening for the past…6 weeks, we decided to do a whole lot of random hikes over break!

The day after Christmas, I went hiking in Sausalito with Mekala/Sylvia/Kaitlin/Elyse for our annual hangout (the last one I may be able to attend in a long while :'( ).

For once, it wasn’t shrouded in fog! This was the start of the trail.

We did a 3-ish mile hike on the “Coastal Trail,” except it was full of lies and kept bringing us more and more inland. sigh. Eventually, we turned back and decided to get an early-ish dinner.

But we accidentally took a wrong turn and in so doing, we happened to find an awesome beach!

Hooray for getting to see a beach, even though it was super cold! Mekala/I were especially happy, since we are currently residing in landlocked states.

This was trip #2 up Mission Peak! Sunset hike! (Trip #1 was a sunrise hike and trip #3 was a before-noon sorta deal.)

:]!

Here’s to an awesome year to come!

roughin’ it up

I mentioned in passing that I promised a date to one of the fighters at the competition last month, and I’m not one to go back on my word, so we made plans to hang out while he was back for Thanksgiving! He asked me what kind of activities and/or food I wanted to do/get so he could think up something special. I figured livening up my life with a bunch of stuff I’d never done couldn’t hurt, so I suggested going shooting (I’ve gone to a shooting range once in my life, but I’ve never fired a rifle before :O ) and going out on his 4 wheeler because that sounded rather intriguing. (I had no idea what a 4 wheeler was. ._.) :O He lent me a ginormous jacket, coveralls and gloves since I really only have just one warm jacket that gets me through the winters here and was somewhat hesitant about possibly murdering it.

I can probably officially say now that I’ve shown up to a date (of sorts) in clothes covered in mud (and possibly also dog poop).

What can I say? I’m awesome.

Kidding. But in my defense, it was because Mike and I went to the dog shelter the day before to take the dogs out on runs and I figured I’d wear the same clothes since I’d probably be getting all muddy anyway. And really, he’s already seen me parading around in a bikini. C’mon now. We bumped into his cousin along the way and he told us his wife was out tracking a deer, so he gave us a vest, which he put on me so the chances of me accidentally getting shot would somewhat decrease. (Whatta nice soul. :O )

I’ve since discovered that 4 wheelers are a type of ATV and holy effing crud, they are a ton of fun! :O! He used to race with em’, so that’s probably why we’re still alive and everything, despite blowing through the snowy countryside hills the way we did. I’m very glad that I didn’t fall off. I think that summer I spent taking horseback riding lessons and my rolling sessions with Dan and Mike definitely came into use there. It was super pretty out there (he says it’s even more beautiful in the summer, but hooray for seasons?). I will admit that it definitely made me enjoy the snow more. I wish I’d taken more pictures (when we were stopped, of course), but sometimes you just gotta enjoy/live in the moment! He also told me that his parents hold horseback riding workshops/lessons. Where was all of this during my childhood?! (Oh right. I lived in the suburbs. Although said suburbs = 4x more people than the biggest city here. It all makes sense now.)

It’s probably a little hard to tell, but there are a bunch of targets set up (with distances marked) off in the distance.

I actually hit the targets! :D To be fair though, it’s probably a little difficult to miss if you’re using the sights properly.

Still alive with intact limbs and all! Graininess because I resorted to using the front camera. I am not well-versed in camwhoring.

I sometimes wish I’d been raised on a farm. I feel like I have absolutely no practical knowledge or streets-smarts, and I don’t really consider myself to be very book-smart either (I just work really hard), so holy crud, there’s gotta be something. :O Would’ve been cool, but as it is, maybe I’ll just make a list of things I want to do before I leave WV.

In other news, my blanket fort (aka piles of blankets on the floor of my study room with the space heater aimed at said pile) has returned because it’s cold as shit over here.

Say hello to my best friend, the space heater!

young’s nature trail

We decided to take advantage of our fall break and the gorgeous weather and went on a 4.5-ish mile hike up the road and along Young’s Nature Trail (~1.7 each way). :]