I’m quite confident that I can still organize the team remotely as a majority of my communication was done by e-mail.

Part of me thinks that I’m nuts for taking this up again and I should have just let the team die off when I moved. But the pride and the thrill of knowing I put together a team of people for this awesome, fun-filled, adrenaline pumped event keeps me hooked!

The realist in me knows all about the meetings and picking up of stuff so I’ve asked for a volunteer to captain and to be the team representative in Ottawa. I know that the festival is still months away but I’m covering my bases.

I am also confident that once I’m on the water paddling away, all this doubt and hesitation will melt away. Until then, I’ve got some e-mails to write and phone calls to make. Wish me luck!

This Threadless tee explains my relationship with blogging so well!  Honestly, I have files and files of drafts and half written posts but never really get around to finishing them. I find that by the time I get around to it, the timeliness and relevance of the post has diminished. For example, there are posts on the how proud of I am of my Psirens Dragon Boat results or what an amazing time I had at Bluesfest but I’m forecasting that I may be done sometime in September. But with Twitter I can tell you how we made the paper or where to find the beer!

Perhaps, I will commit to giving NaBloPoMo another shot to get me back into blogging regularly. Blogging daily for a month feels mind boggling. I read lots of blogs and I think I’ve found more after attending Blog Out Loud last week.  As a compromise, I’ll start with something simple like de-lurking as long as no one minds that my comments will probably be 140 characters or less!

In 2007, I was asked to participate as a paddler on a Dragon Boat team for my friend Nisha’s team set up through her work. It was an event that I had always been interested but just never got around to it. Initially, I was a wee bit skeptical as I’m not the sportiest girl out there but I was convinced me to try it.

After the first practice, I was hooked! The feeling of paddling is unlike any other, as you can just feel the boat glide across the water. It was a co-ed team and placed well in the recreation division during the 2007 festival.

2007 Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival

The following year, Nisha and I were inspired to organize and recruit our own team. It was never my intention to organize solely a team of women paddlers. However, the rules state that you need a minimum of 8 of either gender. Around January 2008, after asking everyone I knew and then all of their friends, I decided to make it an all women team when I had 13 committed women. I really wanted to put a team in so I gathered some cash and put down a team deposit in late January.  All of this without having a full roster! (Eek!)

In the following months, I kept asking the women around me if they were interested and to ask the women that they knew. In the meantime, I was hosting socials to have the team meet each other and recruit new members. (It almost felt like my sorority days.)

The e-mails were flying as we worked on finding a team name, getting t-shirts, creating a logo and continuing to recruit. (I highly recommend Gmail for stuff like this!) Goals were set, I tracked metrics, kept planning events and scheduling practices, as well as paddling! Nisha worked on keeping me calm and reassuring me that it would all work out okay with a boat full of new and inexperienced paddlers.

After feeling as if I’ve asked everyone I knew as well as sorting through all the e-mail, it all started to click into place. We agreed on a kickass name, designed and printed some awesome shirts and most importantly, completed a full roster!

We decided on “Psirens” which has history as a Greek legend of fatally beautiful women who sat on the rocks and distracted sailors, luring them to their watery graves with their enchanting music and voices. As for pronunciation, the “P” is silent, it’s the original spelling, derived from the Greek letter “psi”. Just like in psychology.

The first Psirens first team practice was on Saturday June 7^th 2008 and it was fun but we knew we had some work to do. After a few more practices, we were ready for race day a few weeks later on Saturday June 21st. We were scheduled in the first race of the day and we were the first team at the staging area. Notice how we were the only ones there. Later in the day, the staging area would be completely crowded!

First! It was EARLY!

I was very proud and happy with the Psirens results, no one fell out of the boat, we didn’t crash and we weren’t disqualified. It was great for a first year recreation team and we placed only seconds away from making it into the second day of racing. All that effort made for a happy and smiling team.

"We lure, we devour, the Psirens have the POWER!"

Help us support Ottawa area charities by donating to the 2009 Psirens Dragon Boat Team! Thank you!

~V

Psirens Team Organizer

Taken from the back and there were more people behind us!

The first one was a chocolate cupcake with chocolate icing and mini M&Ms. It was gooey, fluffy with just the right amount of chocolate sweetness.

Look at those M&M toppings!

It must have been the chocolate round because Cupcake #2 was chocolate cupcake layered thick with frosting, garnished with mini chocolate and peanut butter chips. Upon tasting, the frosting was peanut butter goodness. It was also light, moist and fluffy. Yum, yum.

There were so many photographers and social media types out that I got a great kick out of seeing this on the table.

Twitter. FTW!

Whoops. I had been tweeting using another hashtag (#cupcakecamp) all afternoon.

After milling around a bit and jostling for space, the next batch of cupcakes arrived.

Cupcake #3 was an innocent looking white cupcake with vanilla frosting, garnished with what looked like a chocolate covered raisin. When I bit into it, I was quite surprised! It was delicious! It was a banana cupcake with chocolate chunks and the garnish was a chocolate covered espresso bean. Pure heaven!

So innocent looking, yet a knockout cupcake!

Cupcake #4 looked really good! A white cupcake with oodles of chocolate frosting, garnished with a little jelly bean. But, when we tried to divvy it up, it sort of just crumbled. It was alright but tasted a bit dry.

Unfortunately, after being in a crowded room full of people all hyped up on sugar took its toll so we ended up bailing shortly after this batch. Personally, I would have liked to stuck it out a bit longer to see the Cupcake results, but the crew was getting restless and overheated. Plus I knew that there were other people waiting for their shot at the cupcake goodness.

True enough, when we walked out there was still a line up that ran into the hall, down the stairwell and almost to the front door! I was quite impressed with number of people who had shown up. Overall, it was a pretty delicious afternoon and I would definitely go if the event was held again. Although, I suspect that next year it will be at a bigger venue as I overhead one of the organizers say that Ottawa’s Capital Cupcake Camp turned out to be the largest in the world!

This is one of the reasons I absolutely LOVE living in Ottawa! When we do something, we do it up BIG. Thank you to all the bakers and volunteers, it was a yummy afternoon.

~V

What is the best beer on planet Earth? 
Submitted by Remmy Van Hornie.

A cold one.

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What are the 10 foods you must have in your refrigerator and/or your kitchen cabinet? 
Submitted by Carol.  

There's food in my refrigerator and/or my kitchen cabinet?!?!  I'm single and I live alone.  Seriously, I don't cook from scratch much. I mean look at my latest cooking diaster!  Yes, go ahead and laugh, but I know my strengths.  Cooking is not one of them!

IMGP1840

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I’ve neglect to update unleashed because I thought that I haven’t had anything to say and that my writing wasn’t good enough.  But I’ve been looking over journal entries in my paper journal and my other blog and it was revealed to me that I learned so much in the last couple of months.  I am a writer and I have a story to tell.  Actually, I have many.

Today is July 20th 2007 and this is my summer update in the land of being single, solo and fabulous.

In the past four months, I’ve been getting some action.  At least my heart has.  Like any good citizen of Ottawa, I watched the Senators play and pleaded in my heart for the possibility, even though it was improbable for a Stanley Cup win.  Somewhere in that journey, that local hockey team turned into my hockey team.  I’ve stood transfixed, staring in the sky, standing in the open air, with the stars shining feeling a song vibrate though my body and touch my heart.  I watched at the edge of a pool, a play that was all about a stolen heart, lost in the depths of water.  I’ve rocked out at concerts where the slight thrill of fear hit my heart as the mosh pit ramped into overdrive a bit too close for comfort.  This summer I’ve paddled as one of twenty-two hearts to create one soul on fire.  I’ve ran and physically moved so hard that I lost my breath but depended on my heart to keep me going.  As much as I did these things, my beautiful heart has also been trifled with and (unbeknownst to me) I’ve trifled with another’s heart.

It’s not about what a person has.  It’s about who a person is.  Life is about representations.  And I will admit that I portray myself as someone with a cold, black heart.

Shh, don’t tell anyone but I’m a hypocrite.  I was throwing down the gauntlet and challenging you to choose correctly.  Then I found myself in the middle of a messy break-up.  In hindsight, it really wasn’t that messy or that much of a break-up.  In the end, I turfed a guy because he wasn’t treating me with the respect that I deserved.  At the time though, it was hard to do.  I couldn’t follow my own advice.  My poor heart was too blinded by what he represented.  I was too busy feeling and not enough time thinking.  My heart was rebelling against logic and reason.  I ignored the voices in my head that told me things that my heart would not accept.

I got a wee bit overwhelmed until the sober second thought kicked in.  I needed my girlfriends to be my clear voices of reason.  I was reminded that it’s about friendship and for that I am so very grateful.  Even without knowing what some else feels but sitting there nonetheless with the thoughtful ear.  It’s about just being there, supporting without judging, laughing, mocking with love and talking.  That’s what it is like to be friend; it’s the hugs, the nods and knowing looks.  Friendship is simply being there at odd hours of the day when a girl needs a chat.

My greatest lesson from this is that it’s about actions, not words.  He wasn’t the really person that he portrayed himself to be.  I know what I want from a man and it wasn’t this.  I am wonderful, fabulous and deserving to be loved.  My heart came out of this experience stronger.  I was ready to take on the world with a vengeance.  Maybe even a bit too tough…

Stand up, speak up, hold your ground.  I could have chosen to sit on my couch, eating chips and watching TV for the rest of summer, but that’s not who I am.  Instead, I continued to live it up, having a packed schedule doing about three million things at once.  What I was really doing out there was just being me!

In there, I made another friend.  This one was different though.  He was a he.  I was so excited about it.  We had met while the girls and I were out for a pint and a chat.  He was sincerely nice and charming – not in the sleazy sort of way.  He was really cool and surprisingly tolerable for a guy.  His friendship developed with ease, as he lived in our ‘hood, he fell into step with me and the girls.  His presence was awesome as our girl talk was no longer that as he became ‘the’ guy.  He added a new, fresh and often baffling perspective.  I am fully aware that I have a jaded and cynical point of view when it comes to dating.  Just like the girls, he lovingly mocked my cold, tough exterior and pounced on my fleeting moments of tenderhearted sentiment.  I can only speak for myself, but I know the girls and I appreciated and valued his friendship.

As my heart was in the mode of toughening itself against his gender, I lost my judgment and took a bit of too much hostility out on him.  It got bad enough that an intervention had to be held.  He was patient and remarkably took it well – my apology included.

The summer of 2007 was unfolding as it should – late nights, bbqs, cold beers, great talks, sunny days, fruity girlie

drinks.  Maybe one too many drinks at a Canada Day party where things were said between him and I that changed everything.

“A drunken man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts.”  I was blindsided by his words and had been oblivious to his thoughts alluding to something beyond friendship.  I wasn’t in a good spot to respond to his statements, but I do know that I reacted in way that would have harmed my own heart had the positions been reversed.  At the time, I thought he took it well, saying that we'd talk more about it later.  But I was wrong.  This time an apology cannot be given as he is ignoring me and I believe he will continue to do so until he moves away at the end of month.

To lose a friend like this hurts my heart more than a silly breakup ever could – those I know how to handle.  His wall of silence is what stings the most.  I’ve tried many ways, many times but I have my pride too.  I don’t know what else to do, except let it be.  It it’s ok that I don’t know, that’s his story to tell, not mine.  It is what it is.

So maybe I’m a bit stubborn about protecting my own heart, but in the future, I will try to be gentler with the male gender rather than hating them outright.

Being strong doesn’t mean being heartless.

~V

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