July already?

Happy belated Canada day and welcome sunny weather!! I'm having a hard time blogging regularly. I doubt I'll get much better while the weather is nice and there is so much to do that doesn't involve computers.

So I took my prednizone for 4 days. The swelling is gone and the blisters too. The skin on my palms is just really dry and rough now. Glad that's over with.

I finished my Nutrition and Mental Health course last week and started today on the Anatomy of the Spirit course. From what I can tell so far, this course discusses the control we have over our health and healing through positive thinking and overall outlook on life. I agree that our attitude affects our health, I'm not so sure about how far that can be taken... the author of the textbook discusses a case where an HIV positive patient was cured of AIDS. I need to see more information before I can fully accept what she's claiming.

We had a wonderful weekend camping in Manning Park. Aside from the torrential rain on the way up we had beautiful weather. I've put up some photos here. I was hoping that my new wide angle lens would have arrived in time, but it didn't. I had a call from FedEx today, and it will be here tomorrow. As soon as I got out of the car at our campsite on Friday I was instantly reminded why I like Manning Park so much. It smells wonderful up there. Ok, so I think it smells wonderful in most of the forests I've been to, but there's something a bit different about Manning Park, not sure what it is. We went for a couple nice walks and on Saturday morning before anyone was up I found a nice quiet space for a wilderness yoga session which was very nice.

Did the grind today with Nicole in an hour and 14 minutes. It still kind of surprises me how much harder it starts to get when it's hot out. I didn't make it up last week so maybe twice this week?

We bought a van today. It's a Mitsubishi Delica and it's pretty cool. Looking forward to taking it camping. Here's a photo. Runs on diesel or biodiesel, has sunroofs, an icebox/hotbox, and built in karaoke! It was kind of an impulse but we're pretty happy with our decision. With Luke being able to work from anywhere with internet, and me being away from work, we're pretty flexible and having a car makes it easier for us to be more mobile. We realized this summer that we were going to have to rent a car nearly every weekend and with me home during the week we've been using the co-op a lot more too. Anyways, we've got a 2002 scooter for sale now. Excellent condition, just tuned up, comes with 2 helmets and a large trunk, all for $2000. :)

What's next? So we stopped and bought some berries on our way home from Manning. Going to have to get back out there and do some picking soon. Raspberries are ready now, blueberries should be ready in a couple weeks.

I'm heading to Victoria this weekend to do 2 Pampered Chef shows so that should be fun. I have to say I'm really disappointed with the Pampered Chef recipe collection. I have to choose a PC recipe to prepare during the show, but I'm having a hard time finding easy, quick and healthy recipes. There are very few vegetarian options and it just seems like so many of the recipes call for premade croissant rolls or blocks of cream cheese.

I haven't had much time recently to work on my website, hopefully next week. I'd like to get the recipes section up and running and get this blog fully transferred over.

I've planned out my Anatomy of the Spirit course and I should finish this week or early next week. I'm looking forward to the following course which discusses the business side of things and talks about the legalities of giving nutritional advice and setting up a consulting practice. Once that course is over I'd like to spend some time working on my case studies and then I'll be halfway through the program!

One thing that's been on my mind a lot lately is the idea of hiking solo.... I've got a huge list of hikes to do and not enough weekends to fit them all in. Is hiking alone a terrible idea? I think maybe I'll try something familiar on my own first and then maybe work up to an overnighter. I think it could be really fantastic as long as I'm ready and prepared to handle whatever might come up. I'd like to get back up to Manning Park for the summer wildflowers and I'd love to take Luke back to Black Tusk and try to get to Panorama Ridge too - maybe a 2-night trip. I also would like to do the Musical Bumps again while the flowers are in bloom. That could also be worked into an overnighter by heading up to Russet Lake and staying at the wilderness site there. We'll see. There's so much to do, I'm so glad I'm not working right now. I'm really looking forward to the August long weekend. That's when we did Black Tusk last year and I think this year we might go to Golden Ears.

That's all for now. Kind of a random update, but better than nothing I hope. Got to get settled into a routine. No time for that now though. Maybe in the fall. :)