Monday, May 23, 2011

Holidays and Leisurely Activities

I haven't written a blog in a couple months so I thought it is overdue.

As many of you may know we went for our first vacation in the nearly a year since I started working at Atelka. They do not seem to know the meaning of time off and even had to fight to get this week off but managed to secure the vacation pay I am entitled to.

We went to Southwestern Ontario. Mostly to attend our cousin's wedding, but we made a vacation out of it by visiting numerous other relatives as well. We drove pretty much all over Southwestern Ontario visiting people in London, Dutton, Alsa Craig, Hamilton, Toronto, St. Catharines, Grimsby, and even Ottawa. So while it was nice to see everyone it certainly was a whirlwind tour managing to see all the people we did.

The wedding was very nice. They even accomodated to the vegan minority making everything but the meat and gravy vegan friendly. So this was very pleasing to us vegan foodies! And I would have liked to stay at the party later, but since we brought Whisk with us on our vacation, we had to leave early to let her out to do her business. It was nice getting caught up with all our relatives though, and even had numerous opportunities to have candid and open conversations regarding veganism.

That is actually a good segue, as on the return trip home, we passed four slaughterhouse-bound trucks full of pigs. These always greatly upset me. I was driving and had to fight intensely from full-out crying. Why people want to commodify these creatures is beyond me. It reminds me of the holocaust with their shipping of these defenseless animals to their needless deaths.

Just before our vacation, I also ran my first marathon. I exceeded my pre-planned time of four hours. But I must confess, once I started I thought I could get 3 hours, 30 minutes when I did my first half in only an 1:45. But I completed the marathon in 3:42:48. Which - I'm told - is a good first time so I'm pretty happy with that. My next marathon I am aiming for at least one late summer or fall. I would - ideally - like to complete 3-5 this year. Especially since my ultimate goal is to run ultramarathons.

We managed to get a lot of our taxes back this year. I may even qualify for a GST rebate since I made so little last year! I definately want to avoid paying any money to the government as basically everything they spend most of their money on are things I oppose: health care and animal testing, the military, [animal] farming subsidies, industry bail-outs, etc. Plus this will also help us get into our Earthship faster. Which will mean I should no longer be required to work, and only do so if I want to travel or something.

As far as work is concerned though, I have recently been contemplating a career in nutrition, possibly even sports nutrition. With all the literature I figure if I cannot convince people to go vegan for selfless reasons, I can at least persuade people for selfish reasons; like not succumbing to the plethora of degenerative illnesses caused by animal product consumption. Furthermore, when you look at endurance athletes (like Scott Jurek or Brendan Brazier - who are my new idols by the way) they advocate a vegan diet essentially for performance reasons (apparently also environmental as well according to their biographies). And if you haven't read "Born to Run," I strongly recommend it, because they actually discuss in fairly great detail the benefits of a vegan diet.

Anyway, I think that is enough to get off my chest to the world (or whatever weirdos read my blog...Kidding :oP). Stay posted and in a couple months, or sooner, I should write another blog.