Bucket List Item - Trying To Do The Splits

After sharing my bucket list on this blog, I've been asked what will I do first and to be honest with you, I wasn't too sure.  There are so many things to do and some things require money for which I have none at the moment.  After thinking about it for some time and seeing what wouldn't cost me anything, I decided do the splits again for my first task.

I used to be able to do the side splits (or straddle splits) when I was a kid and throughout my teen years, then something happened and I could no longer do the side splits.  Instead I was able to do a front split, that's where you have one leg forward and the other leg behind your torso.  Now it's been awhile since I was able to do either side or front splits and since I never specified what type of splits to complete for my bucket list, I decided to try and do the forward splits for this task.  They seem to be the easiest.

Yesterday, I was tried this tutorial split stretch workout for the first time.

Now this is where I am with my splits.  As you can see, I'm not too far off from doing them and with a little practice, I hope to be able to do them completely and soon.

 My little cheerleader is helping me in the second picture - she probably wanted to do a photobomb.

Bucket List

Lately, I have been seeing many blogs and articles on bucket lists. I've always had a list of things I would like to accomplish and thought I would finally share my Bucket List.

1. Get driver's license
2. Sail on a felucca down the Nile
3. Go to Egypt
4. See pyramids
5. Skydiving
6. Go to Meteora
7. Paraglide from Mont Blanc or higher
8. Try Zorbing
9. Hike TMB
10. Hike the Lycian Way
11. Try Diving - if you like it - get certificate
12. Backpack for at least a month by yourself
13. Hike Chilkoot Trail
14. Walk another long distance race/organization
15. Learn to ski Black Diamond trails
16. Visit Nahanni National Park and stalactite caves
17. Zipline in the Cloud Mountains - Costa Rica
18. African Safari 
19. Hike from Chamonix to Zermatt
20. Sail in the Mediterranean 
21. Learn how to make gelato in Italy
22. Visit a tea plantation 
23. Learn to really surf and surf the waves 
24. Yoga retreat
25. Write a book
26. Fall head over heels madly in love with someone
27. Learn photography for DSLR camera
28. Go to Bora Bora
29. Stay in a tree house
30. Attend Glastonbury/ Coachella
31. Participate in the Holi Festival 
32. Visit all 7 continents
33. Float in the Dead Sea
34. Do a road trip through Canada
35. Do a road trip through the States
36. Dog sledding in Alaska
37. Ride a Vespa
38. Be an extra in a movie or show
39. Take a photo everyday for a year
40. Watch the Winter Olympics in person
41. Travel somewhere new every year
42. Be more giving/caring
43. Spend 4-5 days in Brooklyn / NYC
44. Go to Brooklyn Flea Market
45. Sample food at the Smorgasbord in Brooklyn
46. Hike the Camino de Santiago
47. Take train to Churchill, Manitoba and see the polar bears
48. Go in a cave with stalactites / stalagmites
49. See all ISU Grand Prix figure skating events in one season
50. Go to ISU World Figure Skating Championship
51. Try heli-skiing
52. Take the Orient Express
53. Find something I truly love to do and that I'm good at
54. Swim in Quilotoa, Ecuador
55. Visit all the places I circled in my atlas as a kid
56. Go bungee jumping
57. Learn how to ride a camel on my own
58. Do the splits (I used to be able to do this)
59. Get married
60. Read at least a 100 books in a year
61. Attend an Grand Prix F1 race in Europe
62. Hike the Appalachian Trail
63. Learn to play chess
64. Play Jenga
65. Watch a sunrise and sunset in the same day
66. Be a tourist in my own city
67. Take a cooking class
68. Get my fortune read
69. Get a 2nd tattoo
70. Give up tea for a month
71. Research my family tree
72. Eat a meal at a renowned restaurant (I.e. Massing Bottura's Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy)
73. Learn to water ski or wakeboard
74. Go for a horseback ride in the woods
75. Do my genealogy 

Some bucket list (by others) items already done:

1. Took a surfing class
2.  Ride a cable car in San Francisco
3. Zipline in Costa Rica (short one)
4. Kayak in Belize
5. Go snorkeling
6. Swim with dolphins
7. Paraglide
8. Whale watching
9. Do a colour run
10. Ride a camel in the desert
11. Learn to glassblow

Summer Road Trippin' 2014

I must admit it's been strange to no longer do the Photo Challenge.  In a way, it's been a relief because I don't have to think about it or hunt for my subject, but I also miss it.  I miss having "something particular" to do each day.  I find I now look at things differently than before and pay more attention to  things that you wouldn't normally think to photograph.  The photo challenge is a great way to learn how your camera works so that you become more comfortable with it and it's various settings.  I will do another photo challenge in the fall, but it might not be a daily one.  However, I'm on vacation for the next 2 weeks and will be taking lots of pictures of all kinds of things.

What am I doing for vacation?  I will be going with my two friends Nina and Robin to their home towns, Nash Creek / Jacquet River, New Brunswick (I can't remember which friend is from which town, but their childhood homes are less than a kilometre apart), and we will also be going to Gaspe, Quebec to do some whale watching, sea kayaking, and sight-seeing.

Now I have never been to these places, but I know it's a long drive to get there.  It's at least a 10 hour drive from Ottawa, Ontario to  Nash Creek / Jacquet River, New Brunswick and we need music, lots of music.  Nina and Robin go home every Christmas and I usually make them mixed music CDs to help them pass the time and one time I made a copy of Aziz Ansari's Dangerously Delicious comedy act. For this road trip, I have Eddie Murphy's Greatest Comedy Hits; 2 mixed music CDs of current Alternative hits (i.e. alt-J, Broken Bells, Vance Joy, Lorde, Echosmith, etc.); and a mixed classic road trip songs (Summer Road Trippin' 2014).  I would have made more, but I ran out of blank CDs and Robin's car doesn't play MP3 CDs.  We discovered that the hard way many years ago.

Here's my Summer Road Trippin' 2014 playlist for our trip.  Take a listen and let me know what you think.  Does it make you feel like you're on the road, cruising down a highway, and having fun?  Do you feel the sun shining on you and the wind blowing through your hair?





Here's the playlist:

1. Just a Girl - No Doubt
2. Highway to Hell - AC/DC
3. Radar Love - Golden Earring
4. Livin' On A Prayer - Bon Jovi
5. Sweet Caroline - Neil Diamond
6. Panama - Van Halen
7. Going to California - Led Zeppelin
8. Free Ride - The Edgar Winter Group
9. Thunderstruck - AC/DC  (A friend told me to play this song when we drive through Montreal.)
10. Born To Be Wild - Steppenwolf
11. Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen  (This should be on all classic road trip playlists.)
12. Total Eclipse of the Heart - Bonnie Tyler (I remember my older sister playing this song ALL. THE. TIME.)
13. Dancing With Myself - Billy Idol
14. Kung Fu Fighting (Dave Ruffy/Mark Wallis Remix) - Carl Douglas
15. Paradise City - Guns N' Roses
16. Roam - The B-52's
17. Blitzkrieg Bop - The Ramones
18. Girls Just Want to Have Fun - Cyndi Lauper

I hope the girls like this one and the other CDs I've made. Hope this makes you want to go for a road trip.

31 Day Photo Challenge - Celebration - Day 27

Day 27's photo challenge was "Celebration", unfortunately, I did not see any celebrations whatsoever.  No balloons for a party, no one cheering for a goal at the soccer field, and no celebrations of any kind.

I wondered what to do for this challenge, but then it came to me as I accomplished something for my blog.  In a way it was a celebration ... well, at least to me it was.  I created this blog back in 2008 prior to my trip to Turkey as a way to document it and so that friends and family could follow along.  Over the past 6 years (can't believe it's been 6 years since Turkey) I've changed the template, layout, and colours for this blog always trying to achieve a more personal look because I am always envious of great some blogs look.  For many months, I tried to figure out how to put social media icons on my blog and successfully added them in Tangerine Tango, Pantone's Color of the Year for 2012.

These sites provided great tips, instructions and code which I used to create my icons.

• Helpblogger
• diy Design Fanatic
• Code it Pretty

First, I went on the hunt for free icons and true to Pam's (diy Design Fanatic) post, there are tons of free social media icons and some can be found on Pinterest. I liked how Pam used Pantone's Fall 2012 line/design for her icons.  However, I didn't want something that looked like her icons and to be honest with you, I was not a fan of the dotted circle icon.  I Google "Pantone tango tangerine social media icons" and found various images and chose one to use.  Once a style was selected, they were saved on a local desktop and resized to a size that looked good on my blog, then they were uploaded to Picasa photo album that is open to the public.  I remembered I had to do this in Chrome because Google changed something and you couldn't upload or get the embedded link from Firefox or Safari.  I already had a "Follow Me" gadget in Blogger Layouts and removed what ever was in there and entered the following code (see image below) and an embedded link for each icon.

Follow Me Gadget with Code to link to images

Social Media Icons in Tangerine Tango

At some point after G+ was released, users were prompted to use their G+ profile for their Blogger profile instead of having two separate profiles.  Some people prefer to have separate profiles and other choose to have one profile because it's less maintenance.  I don't remember when exactly but I switched from two separate profiles to my G+ profile for both G+ and for this blog.  Now this put a "G+ Follow" button on my blog and in or around the "About Me" gadget and I couldn't get rid of it until I found instructions on a web page that has since been removed.  I will try to find the link and add it to this post.

Earlier in this post I mentioned a Website called "Code it Pretty" by Marie Mosley, and Marie provides codes and tutorials to help people like me customize their blogs.  I recently saw one of her tutorials on adding a signature to your blog posts.  I thought it was pretty nifty and decided to try it.  I created a signature using the A Beautiful Mess APP, resized the image and uploaded it to Picasa.  Once again, I couldn't use Safari or Firefox to upload the image, I had to use Chrome.  Why Google are you being so difficult?  Once my signature was uploaded it changed the background from white to grey and I was stumped why it was doing this.  I commented on Marie's post and she replied that it's a "feature" of Picasa's auto-enhance.  She also provided a link to a tutorial with directions for turning it off.  I followed the instructions in the tutorial and turned off the auto-enhance "feature" and voila the background went back to normal. 

Next, I couldn't find the "Link to this Photo" option since Google transition to G+.  I scoured the Internet and found a Google Page about Picasa photos and there were numerous complaints how people could no longer do the things they used to do once Google switched the pictures from Picasa to G+ Photos.  Someone commented on this page that you can see this "Link to this Photo" option if you link to your old Picasa Album folder and provided a link: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos?noredirect=1

Finally, I was back on track and returned to Marie's tutorial and followed her instructions and used her code for my blog.  This code displays my signature image at the bottom of all of my posts, both on my home page and on individual post pages.  I decided I didn't want my signature on the bottom of my posts on my home page and used Marie's additional instructions to use Blogger's conditional tags to display my signature on post pages only.  WooHoo!  It worked!  If you click on the link for one of my titles, you will see this signature at the bottom of each post page.  It will probably change it at some point to something smaller or completely different.  The point is is that I did it.  This was an accomplishment for me and I did a mini-celebration when I first saw it on the page.

31 Day Photo Challenge - Day 27 - Celebration (final picture)

31 Day Photo Challenge - Someone Else's Pet - Day 31

My parents (M&M) and I looked at small house today (house #2) in Vanier.  My real estate sent me a new listing yesterday.  This house was listed in the Winter and was taken off because I assumed it had sold, but I guess not.  In the meantime, the homeowner replaced the oil furnace to a gas furnace and did a slap-hazard paint job.  It looked cute in the pictures and the price wasn't bad, but it just didn't do anything for me.  I didn't like the tiled ceilings in the most of the place and they were bent and could push up on them.  For some reason, when the home owner put down flooring they kept the carpet in the bedroom and it's dirty and stained.  They put in a new bathroom sink/vanity, but didn't replace the tub and tiles around it, which are lifting off at some parts.  The kitchen was dated, which is fine because it could be replaced at some later date. They opened up the attic and put a room up there, but I didn't care for the open, narrow stairs that led upstairs.  The backyard was fine, but it didn't have any grass, so I would have to remove all the stones and get sod.  I couldn't see myself living there and being happy.    My real estate lady said it's fine, to take my time, and that I will know when I see the right place.  I hope so because I would love to own a cute, little home with a backyard with grass.

If you recall from my first photo challenge post this was originally supposed to be 30 days.  However, my friend Vicki said the challenge should be 31 days since there are 31 days in July and that it should be a photo of Someone Else's Pet.  For today's challenge, I took some pictures of Raven, a green-eyed, black cat who lives down the street from me.  Raven is a rescue, and had never been outside in it's prior life.  Now Raven is always outside and she's either very confident or stupid as lamppost because she often sits right in the middle of the road and cars and cyclists have to go around her.   She's lucky she hasn't been hit yet.  Raven has also been seen sitting on the corner with her back leg up in the air and cleaning herself and so that everyone can see her doing this.

Raven licking a puddle

Raven giving me the Stinkeye

31 Day Photo Challenge - Day 31 - Someone Else's Pet (final picture)