Not To Be Trusted With Knives

The Internet’s leading authority on radicalized geese

Oct
19

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Powerlifting!

Category: awesomeness, events, goals, health, New Westminster, sports Tags: , , Leave a Comment

Weights

Remember that time I joined Strong Side, the best gym ever and became obsessed with lifting heavy weights and then putting them back down? Well, in addition to all the other things I love about this gym (like the super knowledgeable trainers that help me get super strong in a safe way and the wonderfully supportive and fun nature of my fellow Strong Siders), I love that the gym embraces the community and finds ways to give back. They sponsor local community events, they do fundraisers in partnership with other local small business, and they even provide some classes for people in need with a local non-profit.

For the past few years, they’ve done a fundraiser for Purpose Service Society where the trainers have to lift 1 kg for every dollar that Strong Siders donate. Well, this year they decided to take their fundraiser up a notch by hosting their first ever powerlifting competition to raise funds for Purpose! Those who want to compete pay an entry fee and those who want to spectate pay for a ticket, with the proceeds going to Purpose. There will probably also be some donation opportunities on the day of. And I’m sure that my astute readers have figured out where I’m going with this….

Weights

So I’m competing in a powerlifting competition in November. For quite some time I’ve been intrigued by the idea of this type of competition, but I’ve not been in a place where I feel I can dedicate the time to entering a “real” competition. Some of the people at my gym do these – two people just competed at provincials – and I see the amount of time and dedication they put into it, and I know that I am just not in the position to do that right now. But when I heard about this fundraiser competition, I immediately wanted to take part. To me, it’s a low barrier way to try out a competition to see what it’s like. I can do my usual 3 days-a-week at the gym, learn about how competitions work, and compete in the supportive environment of my own gym surrounded by cheering friends! I’m super stoked about the whole thing.

My trainer, Dee, wrote me my first powerlifting training plan. And while the competition will just involve deadlifting, I am going to train all three of the big lifts that are usually done in competition (deadlift, back squat, and bench press) just for fun. My first week of the program involved finding my current 3 rep max (i.e., what’s the most I can lift three times in a row). My 3 rep maxes turned out to be:

  • deadlift: 80 kg (176 lbs)
  • bench press: 45.5 kg (100 lbs)
  • squats: 75 kg (165 lbs)

And now I work through my program for 4 weeks where I lift a given percentage of my max for a bunch of reps, lifting progressively heavier weights for fewer reps each week to make some sweet, sweet gains and see just have far I can get. Or, as my new t-shirt says:

My new tshirt

Given that I’d just starting getting back into the heavy lifts after rehabbing my knee injury, the competition is coming at a perfect time for me. Plus, two of my 2019 goals are to deadlift and squat 90 kg, so this competition will be the perfect opportunity to work towards those goals!

Anyway, long story short, if you see me between now and Nov 30, I’ll probably bore you to tears with talk of powerlifting. And I may also hit you up for a donation, once I figure out what the donation system is going to be (maybe donate $1 for every kg I lift? I’m open to suggestions!)

Bicep

Jun
16

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Summertime!

Category: awesomeness, events, food, friends, goals, New Westminster, rampant narcissism, sports, Stupid Injuries Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

OK, so it’s not technically summer until Friday, but you’d never know it from the weather we’ve been having. It’s sunny and warm and the sun is up until nearly 9:30 pm.

Things I’m excited about for the summer, in no particular order:

  • The New West Grand Prix – watching professional cyclists ride around and around and around and around my home is actually a lot more exciting than one might expect. Plus my gym will have beer and snacks
  • playing tennis – Scott and I bought some tennis rackets that were on super duper sale at a sports store that was closing down, right before I sprained my MCL. And while the MCL healing has been going slower than I would like, it’s definitely getting better. So much so that I’ve been able to play hockey with a knee brace – so I think I’ll give tennis with a knee brace a try too!
  • the New West Farmers market – while the Farmers Market in New West runs all year, the winter market is uptown on Saturdays and somehow I never manage to get all the way uptown! But the summer market is at City Hall, which is just a short walk (up a very steep hill) from me on Thursday afternoons/evenings. I haven’t gotten out there for the first few weeks, but I’m planning to go soon.
  • canning/jamming more stuff – my friend Patricia has some pear trees near here that have those most amazing tasting pears EVER. I can’t wait until they are ready because I’m going to pick some and can them!
  • tackling stuff from my 2019 goals list – I am VERY behind on my goals for this year (I blame teaching too much in the January semester), but now that that is behind me (along with all my work travel for May), I can actually do some of that stuff
  • Fridays on Front Street and the New West StrEAT Food Truck festival – two New West traditions. I have a couple of friends who are moving/have moved to New West this year, so I’m excited to indoctrinate them into our New West ways
  • hiking – every summer I say I’m going to do more hiking. Hope springs eternal!

I also have a bunch of vacay that I need to book, but I don’t really want to go away when it’s so nice out and there’s so many fun things going on. Perhaps I’ll take some days off to do stuff around here (especially if a certain friend of mine comes to visit and wants to jump out of a plane with me, as we may or may not have previously discussed).

And maybe I’ll look at the fall for a trip somewhere…

Jun
9

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Another Beer Company

Category: beverages, New Westminster Tags: , , Leave a Comment

Another Beer Company brewery

Another Beer Company opened up in New West this week. Like, that’s the name of the company. You see, we had one beer company in New West before this – the amazing Steel & Oak – and now we have another beer company.

This company has been in the works for quite some time, as beer companies have to do, what with all the finding of a workable location, doing renos, getting permits and so forth. Not too long ago, I joined the ABC Original Patrons, where you give them $250 and you get a $250 gift card, a hoodie, invites to exclusive patron parties, and glory.

Of course, the soft opening for patrons happened when I was out of town, so I went in today to check out the place and pick up my swag. It’s quite a small brewery – see the little black machine in the picture below:

Another Beer Company taps

That’s the device they use to hand can their beers. Seriously, they can their beer BY HAND. Right now you can only get tasters at the brewery, as they are waiting for their lounge license to come through, and then you’ll be able to go there and have a pint. But not a growler fill, as apparently they don’t make enough beer to do growlers.

Another cool thing about this brewery is how you get there. It’s located in the Braid industrial area of New West, which is where there is industrial space for such things as breweries. It’s a bit tricky to access and if you don’t want to drive there, up until recently you’d have to risk your life running across a very busy road where people drive very fast in order to get to that area.

But now Translink has opened up what was formerly a fire exit at the Sapperton Skytrain Station to be a regular exit, so you can take stairs down from the the Skytrain platform to the Braid industrial area. And even if you haven’t ridden the Skytrain and are just walking there, you can tap into the station and then tap out of the station at the bottom of the stairs and you won’t get charged. 

When I went there today, this sign was on the door at the bottom of the stairway:This sign was totally lying

But I just pushed the door open and it was totally fine. And today would have been my dad’s 74th birthday, so I am yet again honouring his memory by ignoring a sign and going through a door that says “do not go through this door.” Wish my dad was here for me to tell him this story. 

Anyhoo, I made it to the brewery, safe and sound, picked up my swag, enjoyed a couple of tasters (my favourite was the Belgian saison), ran into a couple of people that I know (because New West), and all-in-all, it was a lovely Sunday afternoon.

 

Dec
16

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On the fifth day of donating…

Category: New Westminster Tags: , , Leave a Comment

Rounding out the New Westminster-based non-profit organizations that my students worked with this semester is New Westminster Family Place, which is “a community hub where families access support, opportunities for engagement, and community resources.”

They run a variety of programs for families with children, including arts, cooking, and nature-based programming, and have drop-in locations around the city. As a community hub, they bring families together so that parents can connect with other parents, children can enjoy a variety of activities and learn social skills – and it’s all free for families!

New Westminster Family Place welcomes all families by supporting them with services and resources that empower them to thrive! 

New WestminSter Family Place Mission

As we hear more and more about the negative effects of social isolation on mental and physical health, I think that an organization like New West Family Place, which provides opportunities for engagement and community building is well worth supporting!

Donate to New West Family Place

Dec
15

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On the fourth day of donating…

Category: New Westminster Tags: , , , , , Leave a Comment

Another non-profit organization that my class worked with this semester was the New West Hospice Society. This is a relatively new non-profit organization in New Westminster that is working “to provide services and to facilitate processes for those in New Westminster experiencing end-of-life and bereavement”.

Death and dying are a fact of life, but so often we don’t know how to talk about it or how to support people going through it – both people who are dying and those close to them. The Hospice Society is looking to change that.

We will work to build a community where death is no longer hidden or whispered about; where people know what to say and do to be supportive; where residents can die with dignity; and family and friends can grieve well.

New West Hospice Society Vision

One of the things that I learned as my students worked with the New West Hospice Society is that there is something called the Compassionate City Charter, which is “a framework to address 13 social changes/sectors to normalize dying, death and loss”. The Society works with partner organizations from a variety of sectors (including schools, trade unions, religious organizations, arts groups, etc.) “to support those at end-of-life to live as fully and comfortably as possible in locations that are conducive and appropriate.”

One example of this is a partnership with the non-profit that I wrote about yesterday, the Arts Council of New Westminster! For example, the Hospice Society and ACNW are jointly holding a short story contest on the theme of “compassion through sharing stories of loss, grief, and healing.”

 

When my dad died, my mom, sister, and I received a lot of love and support from our family and friends and work colleagues and classmates. But not everyone has that kind of support. The New West Hospice Society is working towards a future where everyone is supported – and everyone knows how to be supportive – around death and dying. And I think that is very important work.

 

Donate to the New West Hospice Society

Dec
14

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On the third day of donating…

Category: arts, New Westminster Tags: , , , , Leave a Comment

This semester I taught a program planning and evaluation class at SFU and the main assignment was for the students to work with a non-profit organization to develop an evaluation plan that the organization can use. So I figure I will highlight the five nonprofits that we worked with as part of my course.

First up is the Arts Council of New Westminster. You may recall the ACNW from such things as me being on their board of directors for a few years. The Arts Council is so integrated in the community that they have a hand in pretty much ever event that happens in the city. Fridays on Front Street, New West Craft, Music by the River, Uptown Unplugged, the Cultural Crawl, etc., etc., etc.!

Bringing Community Together Through the Arts

ACNW Tagline

In recognition of the great work that the Arts Council does, both the Executive Director, Stephen O’Shea, and the President, Leanne Ewen, won Platinum Awards1 , this year. Stephen won Citizen of the Year and Leanne won the Bernie Legge Cultural/Artist of the Year award!

Donate to the ACNW
  1. For those of you not from New West, the Platinum Awards are given out by the New West Chamber of Commerce and are kind of a big deal. [↩]

Dec
12

By

On the first day of donating…

Category: New Westminster, rampant narcissism Tags: , , , , Leave a Comment

As I’ve mentioned before, my charitable giving “strategy”, well, doesn’t really exist. I typically end up giving to charity when someone I know is doing a fundraiser, like a fun ride or the Ride to Conquer Cancer. Some years I get a lot of asks and end up donating to a variety of charities. But this year, I haven’t seen any asks like that from family and friends. I’m not sure if people have become tired of fun runs or if everyone is just asking on Facebook instead by email and I’ve missed them all. So in the interest of actually doing some giving, I decided to do my own version of the 12 Days of Christmas, featuring one charity per day that I’ll give some money to.

Today I’m starting with the one ask I’ve actually seen from people that I know – specifically, the trainers at my gym. As I have mentioned before, the people at my gym are the best people ever and here’s yet another example. They encourage gym members to donate to the Purpose Society, which is a social services agency located about a block away from the gym. And the trainers have to lift a kilogram for every dollar that is donated. So if we donate $1000, they have to lift 1000 kg! (Not all at once, of course, but enough reps with enough weight so that they’ve listed the total).

 The Lower Mainland Purpose Society for Youth and Families is “a community-based multi-service organization that delivers a continuum of programs to children, youth and families.”

http://www.purposesociety.org/

They offer a variety of services, including:

  • youth health clinics
  • outreach workers for high risk youth
  • youth groups
  • family therapy
  • early childhood programs
  • parenting groups
  • a rent bank
  • an independent secondary school

…just to name a few!

Donate to Purpose!

So that’s my charity for the first day of donating. Check back tomorrow for another instalment!

Dec
2

By

Lightning Strike

Category: New Westminster, rampant narcissism, random Tags: , , , , Leave a Comment

Lightning 8

This is not the lightning bolt that struck my building. But I’m sure it looked something like this.

I was at a conference on Friday in Vancouver and apparently while I was there, the apocalypse happened in New West. There was torrential rain, hail, rivers of blood, plagues of locusts, and lightning struck my building. Ok, maybe the rivers were just made of rain and there weren’t any actual locusts, but lightning did, in fact, strike my building. And apparently that killed our building’s transformer1, so they had to bring in a generator, which will power the building until they can bring in a portable transformer, which will get us through until they can fix the building’s transformer, which is expected to take 10 weeks. Ten weeks! Fingers crossed that the strata’s insurance will cover all of this!

The power ended up being out for about 12 hours on Friday, so when I got home from the post-conference dinner, I met up with Scott at Waves, as he had an assignment due at midnight and Waves has free wifi, lots of access to electrical outlets, and lets you sit there pretty much forever. When they closed at 10 pm, we went over to the pub2. By about 11 pm I was too tired to stay up anymore3 and it occurred to me that I didn’t actually need electricity to go to sleep. As I was brushing my teeth by the light of a flashlight, the power came on!

Just a few weeks ago, I had bought a stand up freezer, because I was sick of both having to be selective of what frozen foods I could have at any given time since the freezer at the top of my fridge isn’t very big and of having stuff fall out of my freezer at the top of my fridge every time I opened it. So I bought this lovely appliance, and filled it up with a whole bunch of frozen meats and vegetables, homemade veggie stock, homemade waffles, fish that Scott’s dad caught on his most recent fishing excursion, etc.

Freezer Freezer

So of course I was worried that 12 hours of no power was going to have ruined all that food. But lo and behold, this thing must be super well insulated, as after the power came on I opened it up to survey the damage and everything was still frozen solid!

Yesterday afternoon, the power went off again! I had just gotten home from having been out most of the day and was going to try to fix the wifi, which wasn’t working since the first power outage, and the power to the whole building went out again! We got a letter from the strata later telling everyone that the generator they have running cannot provide enough power for everyone to do all the same things they are able to do under normal circumstances, so we need to minimize our electricity use. So don’t, for example, do laundry while cooking dinner and, if possible, cook dinner outside of the peak hours of 4-7 pm. And maybe turn off the lights when you aren’t in a room. Most of this (other than the not eating dinner between 4-7 pm) is stuff we really should be doing anyway, when you think about it, so I’m going to use this as a way of getting myself into the habit of being more energy conscious!

Image Credit: I did a search for a Creative Commons-licensed photo of a lightning bolt on Flickr and one of the first ones to pop up was the above photo, which was taken by Derek Miller. You may recall Derek from his final blog posting. It’s really an incredibly cool photo!

  1. Fun fact: I did not know that my building had a transformer! When you think about it, it makes sense, but I guess I thought the transforming happened somewhere outside, rather than in the building. [↩]
  2. Fun fact: Kelly O’Bryan’s pub has free wifi! You just have to ask for the password! [↩]
  3. In my defence, I’d been at a full day conference at which I gave two presentations, than ran an AGM, and then went to dinner, all after having stayed up late the night before putting the finishing touches on my presentations and making sure I had everything prepared for the AGM! [↩]

Jun
18

By

Summertime

Category: New Westminster, random Tags: Leave a Comment

Summer is here! After a few rainy days last week, it was all sunshine and 28 degrees on Saturday and Sunday! Things I enjoyed this weekend, in no particular order:

  • sitting on my balcony where my herb garden is growing like gangbusters, drinking coffee and doing some writing
  • walking along the New West Quay, where I may or may not have bought some things from some of the vendors at New West Craft, who were set up along the quay1

It’s a beautiful day to check out New West Craft on the Quay!

A post shared by Beth Snow (@drbethsnow) on

  • kayaking in Deep Cove
  • finally getting around to watching Solo: A Star Wars Movie
  • this sunset, as viewed from my balcony:

The view from my balcony tonight. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.

A post shared by Beth Snow (@drbethsnow) on

Starting next week, I’ll be on holidays for a few weeks, but it will be mostly a stay-cation (though we might take a road trip for a few days somewhere, possibly the Sunshine Coast, since I haven’t been there before). If anyone else has time off in the next few weeks and is interested in going hiking during the week, hit me up!

  1. I may or may not have also been catching Pokemon. Shut up – lots of people were doing it, including an adorable elderly couple! [↩]

Nov
26

By

NaBloPoMo – Day 26 – Happy 50th Birthday to the Arts Council of New Westminster

Category: arts, awesomeness, events, NaBloPoMo, New Westminster Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

Today was the Annual General Meeting of the Arts Council of New Westminster, followed by its 50th birthday party! For the past 50 years, the ACNW has been bringing community of New Westminster together through the arts and I’m proud to have been a small part of that.

Name tag. Arts Council of New Westminster

I joined the board of ACNW back in June 2014, at the encouragement of my friend, Tig. It was shortly after I finished my MBA and it gave me my first experience of being on a board of directors. For the past year, I served as the secretary on the board. I got to work with a fabulous group of people, got to contribute to an organization that supports artists in the community and runs many of the amazing events that makes New West such a cool place to be. I learned a lot, made some great friends, and am proud of what we’ve accomplished over this time. I made the tough decision to step down from the board after 3+ years – with my day job getting busier and busier and my new role on CESBCY, I felt like I should not spread myself too thin and that it was a good time to make way for some new blood on the Arts Council board. I will continue to be a supporter of the ACNW, but now as a cheerleader on the side rather than as a member of the board. Looking forward to seeing what amazing things the ACNW does in the next 50 years!

Happy birthday, ACNW and thank you to all the artists, art enthusiasts, donors, staff, volunteers, board members, and ACNW members who make it all possible!

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