VACATION!!!!

Well, yesterday was the first day of my vacation which will go until January 2nd, 2012. I know, a full week and a half off from early mornings, long days, and extra time to cook meals at home and catch up on some reading and other fun things. Maybe I’ll have the odd afternoon nap, maybe I just won’t get dressed at all. I’m sure Lindsay would love that, especially if her parents come to visit unexpectedly while they’re here.

I managed to conquer shopping malls yesterday to pick up some last minute Christmas gifts for everyone (the dog included), and what amazed me the most is that I didn’t have the urge to cave in any chests of those other shoppers who would walk in front of me, stop, turn, look at me, then look away, and stay standing in front of me like they didn’t notice me standing there while they made a decision of what their next move would be, right in front of the escalators I’m trying to get onto.

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Call it the Christmas spirit mixed with egg nog, but it was actually tolerable to walk through the busiest mall in the city and not feel like I was going to snap on someone.

We’re having our big family event out at Lindsay’s sisters place in Spruce Grove, about half an hour outside of Edmonton, and it always means there will be two things: way too much food, and me passed out on the couch in an insulin coma. With this, even though I’m technically on vacation, I’ll still be hitting the gym almost every day to work off the turkey, buns, baking and all the other stuff I’m not planning on eating but that will invariably find it’s way onto my plate. Lindsay’s mom even gave us a massive “care package” last night full of a whole bunch of stuff that really shouldn’t be in my house because it’s going to get eaten.

While on vacation, I’m also going to dust off my book that I was writing for a good portion of 2010. I had to put it on the shelf for a long time because of a few things:

1. The memory stick I had it on wound up crapping out on me, requiring me to ship it off to get the datat recovery and wasting all of two months to get it back.

2. I got married, which suprisingly took a lot of free time and available energy

3. I contributed to Muscle Imbalances Revealed: Upper Body, and also launched a product of my own, Post Rehab Essentials, which also took the better part of 6 months to put both together and release them

So now I can get back on track and start hammering out some of the details on this bad boy and hopefully get it available to go to print sometime in 2012 or early 2013, but maybe the Mayans were right and the world will end in exactly one year? They’ve been wrong before, though.

I’ve also recently jumped on the Apple bandwagon, purchasing a new iPhone 4S, and am waiting to pick up a new MacBook Pro in early January so I can continue my plans for world domination from my living room. I’ve had my current laptop for about 4 years now, and it’s served me well, but it’s getting to that stage where it’s ready to be put out to pasture and something new and shiny is able to take its’ place. The downside is that I’ve never used a Mac product before, so I’m sure there will be a few weeks of swearing and throwing mini-tantrums before I figure out what to do when I’m trying to do stuff.

As a completely unrelated seguay, apparently this week one of the lead signers of LMFAO managed to herniate a disc while “wiggling” to their song “Sexy and I know it.” Essentially, he was going through forced spinal flexion to end range of motion, which is the necessary mechanism to cause the herniation. Suffice it to say that he probably wasn’t balancing out all the spinal flexion with some spinal extension work or trying to develop a good hip hinge to prevent hinging from coming from the lumbar spine, but I’m sure he wasn’t considering all that when he was dropping some deft lyrics such as “wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle, yeah!”

With Christmas now upon us, it’s a time to spend with one’s family and close friends, make new friends, and forget old grudges. It’s also a time to revel in the awesomeness of some of the worlds most gawd-awful Christmas sweaters known to mankind, as well as some of the most awkward Christmas cards you will ever see, such as this one:

Sure, it looks all sweet and cheesy in those ugly sweaters, he looks like he’s slowly coming to the realization that he’s in doors once again, but then you look in her lap and realize that, yep, she sure is holding a baby goat. And that goat is wearing a Santa hat. While our Christmas cards tend to look somewhat similar, complete with the stunned look on my face that always seems to appear whenever I’m about to have my picture taken, we tend to class the hell out of it a little more than these three. That being said, if I actually owned a sweater like these, I would rock it all day every day for the better part of December. Training a client? Ugly sweater. Groceries? Ugly sweater. Dentist appointment? Yup, you guessed it, ugly sweater.

So in closing, gentle reader, I’m going to wish that everyone out there has a safe and happy Christmas, and if Christmas isn’t your bag, enjoy the weekend to the fullest. For me, it will involve sleeping in until 8am, eating, watching some television, reading a bit, eating, and probably trying to plan out some Boxing Day shopping for some of the stores in Canada that offer some steep discounts. Boxing Day is kind of like our “black Friday” here in Canada, people go mental for it. But usually there are some pretty good discounts on some things, so I’ll take a looky loo and see what’s happening.

Have a great day!!