Over the last six years, 12 of 12 has been graciously hosted by its creator, Chad Darnell. though Chad is moving on, I am grateful for his creativity and willingness to host our links over the years and give us an awesome project to tackle once-a-month. Thank you, Chad!

On the 12th of each month, a bunch of bloggers from around the world take 12 pictures throughout the day.  Here are my pictures for December 12th, 2011!

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11:27 am – sidewalk. Our passports are expired, I think, so we went to get our passport pictures redone.  Not that I look a ton different, but my last picture was from when I was fifteen, so guess I’m due for a bit of an update.  I have an incredibly hard time not smiling in the darn things.

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11:34 am – photography place. Passport photo dude’s studio is also part collector’s store, which featured, along with sort of creepy Mario, a large TV playing The Doctors.  Also I yelled at Jillian Michaels about some sort of crap advice she gave.  Soon-ish-to-be kinesiologists are allowed to do this, right?  Am I a kinesiologist if I have yet to graduate?  I’m not sure.

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11:36 am – photography place. Smithers action figure!

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11:37 am – KUNG FU PANDA! Made me think of my friend Mike :]

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11:41 pm – photography place. I kind of want this, is that ridiculous especially considering I’m a vegetarian? Though the burger looks sad :(.

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12:52 pm – road. New extension, how exciting.  (Can you believe this is midday? So dark-ish.)

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12:56 pm – practicum. Can I still call it practicum if my practicum is totally over, as is the course associated with the practicum?  I went back to my practicum place and helped the rec therapist, Tracy, wrap Christmas presents for the tenants! Was super stoked to be back, considering I keep having to tell her I can’t make it to things and ti makes me sad!

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2:36 pm – Lindee’s. Turns out I forgot my phone and iPod at my grandparents’ house [we went there for lunch], so I had to go to my aunt’s house [next door to my practicum place and which I have a key for!] to call my mom to pick me up. I am so smart, S-M-R-T.  Can you guess what this is?

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3:15 pm – bedroom. HOORAY!  Got home to see a giant package in my mailbox, which happens to be the ACSM’s Exercise Management for Persons With Chronic Diseases and Disabilities textbook that I ordered via The Book Depository about a week and a half ago. I had no idea it would arrive so fast.  Also, I definitely ordered this for fun and not for school, and it is fascinating. Because I am a giant nerd! :] (Also, currently reading for Lance Armstrong’s it’s Not About the Bike for the second or third time.)

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5:15 pm – kitchen. Passport picture.  Is it mandatory to dislike these things? No-glasses weirdness!  DEFINITELY better than my old one though! [ . . . not only am I sporting the TWLOHA shirt on my student ID, I will apparently be sporting it on my passport to some degree for the next five years].

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7:29 pm – kitchen. About to have a Skype meeting [read: party] with Dia, in which we try to do work and usually end up not doing work. Also we contemplate taking off and rolling with this project we’re on for our legitimate jobs [except we kind of both love our legitimate jobs too much, and there is the issue that I have to finish school].  It would likely involve kinesiology, road tripping and documentary shenanigans or something equally fabulous.

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9:30 pm – kitchen. And back to the study train, yeah? Final final on Friday. It will be another fabulous day when this term is over!

12 of 12 is a project created by Chad Darnell, Though this is the last official Chad-hosted 12 of 12, I hope to see you all come 2012!

So I dropped another class today, Religion.  It means no more unfinished readings and no more complete confusion.  It also means I still have to fight my way through another six credit hours of humanities at some point in the very new future.  In the last two years, I’ve dropped three humanities classes–Religion and Pop Culture, Linguistics and now this one.  Add to that my other chronic course dropping habits including Psych Skills in Sport and Life, Anatomy, Intro to International Development studies [in first year], Scientific Principles of Fitness and Conditioning [which I’m now in next term], Developmental Psychology, Introduction to Disability Studies and Introduction to Sociology, and you’ve got a pretty wide range of dropped courses.

I know my study habits leave something to be desired, but I really am trying to keep up this year and it’s just getting more difficult with increasing readings.  I have issues with procrastination, and I’m the first to admit it.  I have a master syllabus of all my requirements for each course I’m in that I look at frequently, important things are in my Google calendar which syncs across the board, and all my notes are always with me in Evernote.  And like Religion, some things just don’t work.

I was really excited for the second term of Religion, but considering I knew literally five points on the review, and was up until 1 am writing a paper and then launched into crazy Wednesday — work, a meeting with my Issues in Sport prof, Issues in Sport, lunch, practicum, Promotion and Adherence, attempt at religion studying and dinner, and then Physical Activity and Aging until 8:30 [or 8:10 today].

I would show you my awesome scorekeeping drawings from practicum today, except for I have no idea where my phone cable is and the e-mails of the pictures apparently aren’t coming through.  They were awesome, though, and the seniors thoroughly enjoyed them and kept telling me things to add.

The coolest thing today was that I had an impromptu tweetup with Donald after Physical Activity and Aging.  We found out via Twitter he was just a building over from me at school and he came by after the presentation he was at — how cool is that?

Tomorrow: work, no class, and probably a flu shot.  So a) I don’t get really ridiculous sick and b) my doctors don’t yell at me.

On the 12th of each month, a bunch of bloggers from around the world take 12 pictures throughout the day.  Here are my pictures for October 12th, 2011!

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8:54 am – work. Blurry gym!  I decided to take all my pictures on my iPod today, but don’t have an epic camera app.  Fortunately, this is the worst of them.  This is the entrance to the gym where I spend most of my mornings at work!

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8:56 am – bus stop. Fall is upon us. :]  I love Fall.

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10:03 am – commute. Apparently there were men working above.  Just in case they fall on you or something, then you know?  I guess.  Not sure the actual purpose of this sign.

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10:04 am – commute. HOCKEY!!!

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10:12 am – mom’s office. I’m sure the real reason the university can’t afford to give us photocopies is that they use far too much electricity.

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12:50 pm – commute. On my way to practicum from the bus.  The whole bus issue was very confusing, but Dean made things better.  Hooray for buses with names I don’t understand but take me where I know where stuff is!

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12:54 pm – senior’s apartment/practicum. Waiting for T, the recreation therapist who’s coordinating my practicum..

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1:55 pm – recreation room. The blue team totally kicked butt at Ladder Golf.  [I was on the yellow team and keeping score, I didn’t help much, evidently!]

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4:15 pm – gym. Watching Ellen while riding the bike and listening to Matthew Good.  So I have no idea what the girls in tutus singing Nicki Minaj actually sounded like.  But evidently they were good as they got to go on Ellen and meet Nicki Minaj.

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4:34 pm – gym. Workout done.  Wednesday workouts are pretty quick because they happen between afternoon and evening class and we still have to eat food so as not to starve during evening class.  Though everybody just brings delicious smelling food to class anyway.

 

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5:48 pm – school. As part of my Physical Activity and Aging class, we went to a lecture by Paul Estabrooks on motivating people to be active.  Mostly it had to do with interventions that are beyond the scope of independently motivating someone to exercise.  Oh well.

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11:05 pm – home. Printing some papers for Tara, which leads to using the Windows computer downstairs since I can’t yet figure out how to network it with my MacBook Pro.  Here’s another nice thing about having a Mac — no ridiculous “applying update one billion”.  Basically this scared me and made me think the computer was going to explode.

 

12 of 12 was created by Chad Darnell.  Check out his blog to see a list of all September 12 of 12s.  Thanks for dreaming up this awesome idea to connect people around the world, and for allowing us to infiltrate your blog space for another year!

Last week, I Facebooked [Faceboked? Well, if my Education prof in first year made “Amazoned” a verb, I suppose I can do the same for Facebooked] about gym game issues.  As in, issues finding gym games that don’t suck.

Yeah, there are a lot of gym games that suck out there.  It’s ridiculous.

So I got everybody to tell me their favourite gym games.  A lot of people really like dodgeball, apparently.  I hated dodgeball.  The only time I ever sort of liked that game was in middle school that time that Sam and I spun in circles and didn’t get hit until the very end of the game.  I think people thought we probably weren’t playing or something.

Anyway, a week or so before I’d met up with my friend Dia when she was here for BUSINESS TRAVEL!  Dia and I connected through my blog awhile back [I believe that’s what it was] — she’s got not only a Bachelor’s of Kinesiology, but a MASTERS as well.  So we had all kinds of nerdiness to discuss, it was awesome.  She works for Special Olympics Ontario, so we share this epic love for adapted physical activity and she’s full of resources and research articles that she sends me sometimes, and stuff like that.  We had coffee and it was awesome.

So, back on the subject of gym games, Dia dropped me an e-mail, and the next day, a gigantic package arrived in my mailbox [or maybe in my door.  It may have been too big for my mailbox].  Holy amazing.

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Seriously.  Best title for a book about developmental physical education EVER.

So not only that, but I’m totally spoiled.  She also sent me TORONTO CHOCOLATE.  To add to that, she also gave me Toronto chocolate when we met up when she was here.  How sweet is that?

But not just ANY chocolate:

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CHOCOLATE WITH POP ROCKS.

Seriously.  If there was ever a food that was a party in your mouth with everyone invited [a la Moe Szyslack] it would be Toronto chocolate with Pop Rocks and hazelnut.  Thanks Dia!

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On the subject of kinesiology [okay, the story about chocolate was sort of about kinesiology in a roundabout way], I’m in this class called Physical Activity and Aging.  As part of the course requirements, we have to complete an eight-hour practicum with seniors who are exercising.

You know what’s difficult about that?  Seniors exercise during the day.  Because when do seniors have free time?  During the day.  During the evening they are full of visiting their kids who work during the day, and hanging out at home, and going to bed early.  Or at least that is my understanding.  Maybe the people who work with seniors who want to exercise are just all “Hey, they have free time during the day, I can have a 9-5 job now.” and affect the socialization and exercise hours of seniors that way, I don’t know.  And what do I do during the day?  I go to school and I work and I attempt to get some of that awesome thing called exercise worked into my day myself.

So I finally got my practicum arranged at a senior’s apartment complex.  T, the therapeutic recreation coordinator, is awesomesauce helping me figure out when my practicum fits with my schedule AND theirs.  She is SO stoked about my practicum, it’s awesome.  I’ve met the woman once and she’s officially FULL OF AWESOME.

I went to what the schedule calls Exercise Tape today.  Originally i thought that meant Exercise VIDEO Tape.

It didn’t.  It meant Exercise CASSETTE tape.  It went on for half an hour and I observed and took about five lines of notes, and it was INCREDIBLY boring.  It was chair exercises.  Which, I mean, that’s awesome.  If that’s how the senior exercise boat floats, then that’s cool.  They do it every morning.  And they are all serious while doing it, or something, because there is no social involved.  Which is something I’d like to observe, since apparently having social support helps people adhere to exercise programs.  [There were seven people there today. Sometimes there’s two, and sometimes there’s fifteen.  Just how the exercise boat floats.]

Here’s the problem though.  It was half an hour, which means to make it work into my schedule on the two days a week I can go at 9:30 am . . . I have to do it for eight weeks.  And this thing is due November 23rd.  So no bueno on that.

T and I sat down and hashed it out. She was determined to make this work for me.  Super awesome woman, as I said about three paragraphs ago.  We got it set up.  I’m going for Ladder Golf the next four Wednesdays and Bocce Ball the next four Saturdays.  One O’Clock Games.  It’s gonna be awesome.  The tenants I met today were super friendly, and I’m sure they’re gonna kick my butt at these target games [TGfU model FTW].

 

Oh, I’d also like to mention within the span of less than two hours, I went form watching kids play floor hockey to watching seniors work out.  I also walked 4K today and am going to the gym tomorrow. I got this kinesiology thing down.