Poolapalooza

Its been a lot of years of feeling well, plump.

Its been a lot of feeling like 'i don't like to exercise' and now I think I'm getting it, because I have found my 'thing'.

There is nothing better than setting the pace in the lengths lane at the pool, even if it is an evening swim attended primarily by seniors from my hood.

I love doing this, and I absolutely love the resulting toning in my body. I am wearing all the same clothes but they just fit better now.

I wore a (cutest) little hepburnesque gingham silk top to the Gala event at the Cultch the other day. I put it on and thought; 'this has never looked right, I bulge out of it' and yet, to my surprise; It fit BEAUTIFULLY!

I relished the occasional top shelf reach because it showed off my smoother than ever tum!

Hooray for having a pool down the street! I won't go back to frumpy when fabulous is so fun!!!

Kiki

A little over a year ago I was just readying myself for the thrust into a whole new life, culture and career.

A little over a year ago, I was spent at working a job that had helped me through, but become like an overbearing parent, full of weighty obligations and numbing patience as i waited to finally move on.

I loved that life I lived, the freedom i had learned to cultivate for myself there. I loved knowing every inch of that city, and still finding something new every day. I loved to be held warm and close by the friends who I loved, knew and who I trusted felt the same for me.

I leapt.

I leapt into a new kind of patience, one that required me to encourage myself and be satisfied with the possibilities that lay ahead. I reveled in the opportunity to introduce myself to the new people I met, and to myself since afterall such a change does change a person to a degree.

So in the spirit of re-introductions, and fresh steps I began to wear the nickname I never knew I wanted as my own.

I felt this springy fresh name was oppressively optimistic at times, and even unduly sexual on occasion in the context of business but somehow I wore it well, it emboldened me to a degree, and I was secretly shifting it towards a more confident and wise reading.

Kiki, rooted in my Finnish name 'Kirsi' is easier to pronounce, is sweet and memorable, is unorthodox...but who isn't, it references a new area of growth on an orchid, its Happy.

Kiki is my friend, is fantastic, is still figuring it out

Kiki lives in the Pacific Northwest and loves the green rainforests and grey riverbeds and teal lakes.

Kiki cherishes her family and all of her wonderful good friends spread all over this planet.

Kiki is helpful, a bit shy, a boisterous party animal, a sharp witted comrade, a considerate debater.

Kiki is a willing student of home cooking, musicianship, instrument repair and life in general.

Kiki is well loved, certain of her intentions if not her course of action, eloquent, and dedicated to doing good everyday.

.

Kiki is who I am becoming, without losing sight of my pasts, I feel like I have become a grown up these past few years, it feels good.

YAMMY BROWNIES!!!

So, I am not a baker, but i am learning to be, and i especially love making things that are delicious and not especially bad for me. :)

I found this recette for sweet potato brownies in a magazine and tweaked it (as i am fond of doing) and they actually worked out GREAT! They are made like so:

Ingredients

* 1 1/3 cups dark unsweetened cocoa
* 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
* 1/2 tsp baking powder
* 1/2 tsp salt
* 1 cup sugar
* 2 cups (orange!) sweet potato baked and mashed about 2 average s.pots (remove skin)
* 2 lg eggs
* 1 Tbsp vanilla
* 1 cup of coffee (rooibos tea would totally work too)
* 2 Tbsp of olive oil or melted butter
* 1/2 cup of chocolate chips or walnuts if you want.

Directions
1A. Poke some holes in the s.pots, and bake in the oven/toaster oven for 1/2 hour or so until the skins start to look 'saggy' or there are juices dripping (put them on a pan silly!) cool, cut in half and squeeze out of the skins and mash with a fork.

1. Mix wet: coffee, vanilla, eggs and olive oil together in a bowl and add sweet potato mashup

2. Mix dry: flour, sugar, salt, BPowder and Cocoa together in a smaller bowl, add to wet mix.

3. The mixture should blend to be silky and even. If its still chunky add more coffee or water.

4. Grease a 16x8 inch cake pan and pour mixture into it, it should be gloopy and settle into a

5. Bake in a 350F oven about 20 mins or brownies appear set

6. Cool and cut

This recipe makes enough brownies to share with friends/roommates and co-workers!

They are YAMMY and fantastic, hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

BIRT is my actual life now!

My certificateish and boobies

I finished my program a few weeks ago, and now have been working as a real live instrument repair technician!

I don't mind the mundane-ness of my job of late, in fact i enjoy working in all its varied forms and the more mundane the work, the more good quality 'thinking' i can do while i'm working.
Last week, my first week on the job, i processed 49 rental trumpets the great majority of them, yamaha ytr1335 and ytr2335's.

Its funny the things you notice about a model as you work your way through a cloud of them!

Me tossing the euphonium ring on the last day of school!

I am looking forward to a busy summer and a rather quick learning curve, as this august i'll be needing to make a decision about where to move/work/stay.
I'm pretty content here, especially with the lucky situation i found myself in, roomate wise. I've started spending some time to practice and learn the french horn, more specifically 'Lars' who was once 'Larry the dirty old french horn' but was my final project at school and is transformed into something playable from something that was on ebay for 10.00. I actually love that horn, and am looking forward to being much more capable of controlling him. :) Maybe one day i could play in a community band or something local to where i'm living... yep, that question of where again.Me in my rental car on the drive to Vancouver from Seattle! Hooray!
For the time being though, i'm absolutely loving my chance to explore Vancouver, to stick around the 'Northwest' for a non-humid summer and to absorb as much as i can from my colleagues, to adapt myself to the mechanics of the shop, and to make myself as efficient as possible at my job!

Water Tornado and KidsQuest Museum, in general.

Last week I fixed a water tornado at the kids museum where i volunteer. The exhibit is basically a big clear acrylic cylinder with a drain in the bottom on the ‘waterworks’ table and a tube that fills the tornado with water and pushes it clockwise until the pressure from the drain focuses the flow into a tornado. Its a lot like a pop bottle tornado if you’ve seen one of those, only perpetual.
The thing about this is that when i got to the museum my friend Sarah who does maintenance with me now each monday, was already starting to disassemble it because it was draining too much and wasn’t making a very good tornado at all. We had to calibrate the system, which took a good while, and then wait for it to fill up before we could see if it was working, and then we had to re-calibrate it so that it stopped filling up and just kept going without overflow.

I love this volunteer work because its

A: Crazy what adult gets to hang out in a treehouse and fix a knot board, or rewire a shoe-sole keyboard!?

B: Its a challenge to me, not to damage anything further, and to outwit the six year olds who can systematically rip apart gorilla glue and snap apart silver brazed steel components WEEK after WEEK!!!

C: Its a regularly scheduled ‘something’ the likes of which i actually really miss in my life!

I’m like the tornado. If you follow me for a minute.
When i first got here to Seattle, i didn’t know anyone which was a heck of a shock since i had lived in toronto for fully 8 years and had created lots and lots and lots of good friends and memories and places to go for lunch where you know exactly what you’re in for, which really do make a difference.
Familiarity in general is really VERY comforting in a generally familiar sense.

So yeah, now that i’ve been here for a few months, i have been struggling to calibrate things. To fill my life up with friends and familiarity and happiness. I’ve been lonely and irresponsible and overcautious, the whole bit. Its been a real struggle but its really all worth it. It feels good to know that i have people locally to call if i want to chat, people counting on me to be there for them, and things that i am a part of out here.

(Being Chased by Robots is something that i've started to do, since moving here.)

Things were a bit overwhelming at first because everything seemed to come together all at once and i started having such a good time that the impulse to fully enjoy it was really hard to ignore. I was overflowing and have just recently had to re-calibrate.

I love it here, I love a lot of the people i have met and hope to stay friends with as many of them as is reasonable.

Things are a sort of wonderful quixotic balance now. No more sitting at the window table at restaurants by myself, not unless that’s what i want to do anyway.

I know that if/when i move again when school is over in a few months it will all go back to zero and i’ll go through that loneliness again in a new place without a Linda’s restaurant where i drank bad coffee and talked about mothers with marie, or a discovery beach littered with barnacle rocks where my cousin and i walked and got to know each other again after several years, or the magnolia bridge that i walked over and back again while discovering how totally and completely confusedly lost I was in a city i felt like i was just starting to know.

The place is another thing i’m starting to really love.
The longer i’m here and the more i do, the more things i add to my list ‘to explore’. There is so much to do outside here and i’ve only just scratched the surface. Its very much a place of parks, now that i’m not clinging so tightly to the urban-ness of the place (that reminded me of my home in toronto i guess) I think i will really miss the different kind of opportunities I have here, after i’m gone.

:)

I am so proud of me, and have a renewed appreciation for the beautiful science of just living life.

Thanks!

MAG Part Deux

I went home at christmas and brought back the copy of MAGazine that had been forwarded to my mom. Its the copy with MY ARTICLE on Lily Yung in it. :) Now i'm a doubly published national magazine contributing writer!

How cool.

Its been a lot of months since I wrote that article and I'm proud to say that i'm very proud of it, its good!

GO ME!