Week 18: Old Favourites

So as you might know if you follow me on Twitter (let's be real, how else would you have arrived here?) I have set my sights on completing the 5K run at LeakyCon this June. I've started a variation on the popular "Couch to 5K" or C25K program, and so far it's been going.....well, it's been going. I was going to write about that today but frankly I'm getting exhausted just thinking about it. So we'll save that for another week, shall we?

The time I spent NOT running today was mostly spent getting reacquainted with some childhood obsessions. After seeing an old rerun of the CBC show Heartland on TV the other day, I remembered that this show is still very much A Thing, and decided to go back and catch up so I would not be spoiled by the plot of the current season. 

This show started in about 2007, and I was obsessed with it for a few solid years. I'm not going to do a complete rundown, but suffice it to say: ranch that heals abused horses, based off a middle grade chapter book series, with a female teenage heroine. Exactly my kind of show. In fact - I literally just remembered this - for my final project in Grade 9 computers, I made a Heartland fan site. I wonder if it's still online.....

I can't remember why I eventually lost interest, but right now, despite having seen it several times, Season One is proving to be great.

And while I was marathoning this show, I was also busy with another childhood passion. I've been in Girl Guides since about age 6, and at some point along the way my mother stopped obligingly sewing on my various badges. I guess sewing was one of those Girl Guide skills I never quite mastered - or enjoyed - and as a result I have ziplock bags full to bursting with badges and patches and crests. Some earned, but most received as swaps at international camps.

The way it worked was this: you came to camp prepared with crests, patches and tiny crafts representative of your region, province or country. Any down time - standing in line, chilling after dinner, waiting out a thunderstorm under a screen room tent - was prime swapping time. Trading your things away and receiving (obviously much cooler) things in return, from girls who had come from all over the world.

Most people's patches made their way onto bags and blankets and hats and what have you, but mine mostly languished in a closet....UNTIL NOW! I've decided to make a bit of a summer project of actually doing something with these things. Although I'm still far from great at sewing, I can manage a weak straight stitch - some things you can't help but absorb when you grow up in guiding. Most of the patches will go onto a lovely new camp blanket, some on my backpack, and some....well who knows where they might end up?

So my summer is starting to bump along quite nicely, and actually feel like a summer. The weather has been co-operating so far, and now that I have a few things to occupy myself, missing uni friends is a little less painful.

Goodnight, bloglings