The Wrath of Duck Wrap

Let the record show that I had an Aromatic Duck Wrap from Waitrose for lunch today. It was my first duck experience, and I've felt gittery and slightly off since. Not cool. Not sure if the blame can be entirely placed on the quack quack though. Not a fan of aromatic duck I think. Especially done up all Peking like.

Had a lovely run this morning. I think I've developed a new training strategy. I'm going to run longer. Ha ha! No but really - my friend and I have been doing more smaller sets of running with a minute of walking in between, but we figured out today that doing that interrupts our rhythm, so we're going to change our routine a bit.

I'm off on holiday tomorrow for a week and a bit. Hooray! I should end lunch now, and get back to it!

Let it Snow! Let it Snow!! Let it Snow!!!

Well, I awoke to half an inch of snow this morning! It was so exciting. And here pessimistic me thought that I'd go a whole winter without seeing any! At minus two degrees celcius it is "biting cold" out there (in the words of the BBC One weather person) and with all of the driving warnings out there, I thank my lucky stars I'm not frozen in a ditch somewhere.

I'm such a weather snob :)

Yob in a little arena

This one clearly displays my friends' senses of humour whereby they thought that since I was holding everyone's beer, it would be funny to take a picture of me to show everyone at home what a yob I've become since moving here. Yes, you heard it here first. I'm a hooligan now. I also wanted to take this opportunity to highlight the fact that there really are only five rows of seats in this little adorable arena. I also wanted to quickly apologise for not yet figuring out how to post all of these under one heading. It will come in time my friends...

The Net is Down!

This is the chaos created by the "The Net is Down" incident. I think they'd got it back up by this point, but it was quite an exciting moment I tell you! If only I knew how to rotate the picture too. Oh well, I still think it's amusing to imagine you all craning your necks to see it!

The best game you can name....

Meet (from left to right) Danni, Rich and Matt. Danni is clearly enjoying being reunited with Moosehead and hockey! Oh yes, and they really did play the song at the end....good ol' Stompin' Tom!!

How could I forget?

How could I forget to add that one of the highlights was when about two mins into the first game the puck hit the net and the net collapsed....

The (British) Ice Hockey Experience

So having taken in my second British Ice Hockey game last night, I thought it was well nigh time that I shared the experience with others. So, here is the British Ice Hockey Experience according to Fraggle.

Part 1 - The Build Up

A couple of months ago, because I was missing hockey from home (not that there was any anyway), my friends Rich, Danni (Hobbes), Matt and I decided to go see the London Racers live at Lea Valley Ice Centre in East London. I suppose I got my first indication of what was to come when, upon reserving my tickets, the very Canadian sounding person who called me to confirm my credit card details told me I'd be able to pick them up at "The Ticket Table" prior to the game. With much anticipation, much singing the hockey night in Canada theme over and over the day finally arrived. By this time I had discovered that Sleeman and Moosehead were available in adundant supply, and upon also discovering that many of the players were Canadian to begin with, I was really quite excited! So excited in fact, that when hoping aloud in the car on the way there that we would be on the jumbotron I didn't even clue in that Rich's not knowing what a jumbo tron was, might also have prepared me for what was to come.

Part Two: The arrival.

It went something like this:

Rich: Here we are!
Jo: Where's the Ice Centre?
Rich: Right there!
Jo: That little bubbly thing? Are you sure? That's half the size of our community arenas! (Jo laughs uncontrollably)

Part Three: What awaited inside.

It was quite quaint. Picture a little community arena. Actually - smaller than a community arena. Picture a little rink that is surrounded by four (count them, four) rows of seats (that you don't need to reserve, by the way). Picture the snack stand that is out of Cornish Pasties, Candy Floss and most else of what it says it serves. Picture the bar upstairs that is manned by one..well...man, and another one who's heckling the first's bartending abilities. Picture the same man later operating the deepfryer while his fellow barman is now out operating the zamboni and later putting away the nets and clearning up the ice. They're probably the ticket salespeople and the voices on the other end of the phone answering machine too. The loos were just like community arena loos, except with slightly less graffiti. It is necessary to wear coats and scarves in these rinks (although they're slightly warmer than community rinks at home).

It was quite fun being so up close though. In fact, I had never been close enough to smell the players' sweat before... It was great to make eye contact with the players and know that were we to yell something (I didn't have the courage to) they would have been able to hear me! And it was also quite fun to hear the players talking to each other etc, etc.

Part Four: The Game

As it happens, they've won both games I've been to (yay Racers!) But it all seemed a bit slow motion. I guess that's because judging by their ages, they were mostly retired or injured former NHLers. It was also remarkably unviolent. A couple of times the body checks were followed with a glimmer of "If only I was younger..." in the check recipient's eyes, but that's about it. Not that I mind though, as I've never been much of a advocate of hockey violence. Many of the players (particularly the Scottish ones, as it turns out one game we saw was against Edinborough, the other against Fife) are quite small too. Teeny tiny, itsy-bitsy wee little hockey players that roll their rrrrrs when they say "Overrrrr herrrrrre McDuff". Actually, to be honest, most of them sounded remarkably...North American. See above.

Part Five: The Fans.

Polite Brits. They clap when a member of the other team gets up after being knocked down, they clap when the other team is introduced, they clap when the introduce the refs, and no joke, there's a "give three cheers for the other team" at the end of the game. Ahhhhh.... And yes, they do stand for God Save the Queen at the beginning.

Well, all this to say that they've made the playoffs (yay!) and I think I'm hooked. I may even get the shirt. Although with all of the Team Canada and Toronto Maple Leaf shirts in attendance at the games I might feel like a bit of an outsider wearing one that says "London Racers" on it...

I've added the link should anyone be interested...

www.londonracers.com

Tim is Here!!!!!

Just a quick note to say that thanks to the kind daughter of a colleague, I have been happily sipping away at Tim Horton's for the past two days! :)

I could possibly be Parisian!

The trip to Paris was fantastic!!!! Wow! I walked around on Saturday in a state of sheer marvel and bliss. Well, except for when I was walking around feeling slightly too full of crepes and coffee - of some sort. We really couldn't figure out the coffee - sometimes ordering coffee would get us cafe au lait, sometimes we'd get espresso, sometimes we'd get coffee with milk on the side and it goes on. Despite out best french, there didn't seem to be any regularity between coffee varieties wherever we went. Not that we minded though - getting an unexpected variety of cafe in Paris is simply grand! I practised my french as much as I could. However, when the waiters figured out we spoke English, they'd usually switch for us - we really had to convince some to let us practice! They were all quite lovely though. Apparently we were too, because one left us with his phone number. Not that we called it though - we've heard about those Frenchmen!

I'll be sure to post pictures once I figure out how - oh, so many stories to tell!

Tim Horton's Yesterday, Paris Today!

My colleague just made me a cup of coffee yesterday, and something about it tasted just like Tim Horton’s. For real. I was in a state of Happy Tim-ness all afternoon. Kind of riduculous, eh? People here are always amazed when I tell them of the line-ups outside any Tim Horton's each morning. They just have no concept. Maybe it really is something one needs to see to believe. I met one person (a Brit) who was explaining to an other the phenomenon of the Tim Horton's Drive Through (or "thru" as I think the sign reads). It was like he was describing another planet. Very amusing.

In other news, I'm heading off to Paris this afternoon with two of my friends for the weekend. It never ceases to amaze me that I can hop on the tube, hop on a train at Waterloo and be in Paris in just over the time it would take me to drive to my parent's house from Toronto at home (or about the same time if you include the obligatory stop at Tim Horton's at the Brock Rd exit on the 401 - see importance of Tim's, above).

Anyway, my little break is over now, so I should get back work...

Au revior, mes amies! Bonjour Paris!

Let the Training Begin (and the biscuiting end)

Two of my colleagues and I are running the British 10K in July. To date, our biggest training downfall (apart from not going out running as much as we should) has been the never-emptying biscuit tin at work. Somehow, regardless of how many biscuits we eat, the tin is always full. So yesterday, to coincide with the beginning of Lent, we decided it needed to stop! We even wrote a little anti-biscuit chant to help us through. It goes:

Biscuits, biscuits
Are evil food
They make you fat
And they block your pooh.

The last line arose out of a conversation we had yesterday about a nasty anti-constipation drug ad on the telly whereby they portray constipation by having a lady add food to her bag (read purse, for the Canadian blog-followers) and carry it around with her. It's pretty how shall I put it...moving (ha ha - get it? Constipation...moving - ha ha!)

It should be said that we're not great advocates of the self-deprivation thing, but our bickie consumption was really becomming a bit ridiculous. We're choosing to see it as an opportunity to gain more fruit intake. It's much more positive that way. Besides, the money we raise running this race for our charity will somehow trickle back into the cookie fund anyway.

Anyway, my colleague A has made a pretty snazzy spreadsheet whereby we can track our fruit/veggie, biscuit and water intake. Not being runners ourselves, we hear those things are quite important.

We're quite excited about running this thing. I even got a new pair of trainers to get me started! I'll keep you posted with the progress. Any training suggestions? Actually, there wouldn't be any yet, because those who are likely to care enough to read this don't know it exists yet...doo, doo, doo.

My Very First Blog Thingie...I think

Hello? Does this work? Can anybody heeeeeaaaaaar me? Well, this is my first step into the big (and highly addictive, I hear) world of blogging.

I guess my first big announcement is that I'm a bit nervous and excited all wrapped into one about this. I'm such an amateur!

The second is that after having lived in London for 8 full months now, I had my first crumpet today. Very yummy indeed. OK - off to see if I can post this somewhere? Oh, what to do next?