Bison Brief

So I was asked to write a blog for bison sport ... first of all none of my teammates wanted to step up and take the task on so they are stuck with my inconsistent posting and second there is not much room to be creative with them so they are straight forward. Here is my second post ...

Coming off a hard week of practice last week, we were able to get a much needed win at home versus the University of Winnipeg! After our two disappointing loses to Calgary on opening weekend in our gym we had a lot to prove to ourselves last week in practice. But we worked hard and pushed through some long ‘runs’ and rewarded ourselves on Saturday night. We had a great start in the first quarter – feeding off our intense defense to take a big lead into the second quarter were the game balanced out a bit. But in the second half we played through some runs by U of W, stayed focus and got the W. All around team effort and we had a fun time doing it together!
So we head into this weekend with our first tough road-trip ahead of us. We leave for Calgary on Thursday afternoon followed by a two-hour bus ride to the University of Lethbridge. No matter who the opponent is, when the travel includes two modes of transportation and a day worth of sitting, it is mentally and physically challenging compared to playing at home. For myself it’s one of my favorite parts of getting to be a student athlete – nothing is better than going into someone else gym and getting two wins. So I’m excited for our rookies to get to experience that and I’m excited for our team to face the step big challenge to the season. Not to mention we always manage to have a good time in the process!
So look out Pronghorns a herd of Bison are rolling into town! Haha

"Due to their large size few predators attack bison." (Fierce face above haha)

Mich

All I Want for X-mas is my Teeth!!

SO THE WAIT IS FINALLY OVER!!

no no no not for a new blog post, all though it has been a while but I finally got my teeth put in! haha. Now I know to many of you that have all your perfect pearly whites accounted for you can't really understand my excitement but this has been a long 8 year process of space making, bone graphing, steel wearing and implants. And now I have my new teeth to show off - hopefully they will last me a long time and I will now be just a regular dentist attendee! Here is my first close up of my teeth .....

"The Simplest Things in Life are sometimes not free!"

Mich

Shout Out to Lola Shortt

An ultimate goal - love your job! Wether you work there for an hour, a week or 20 years if you love what you do it can make a difference in so many lives and your own.
So at the Pita Pit close to the university - obviously a great spot for late night dinner snacks - the pita artist that works there (the only one I ever see so I think she runs the place) loves her job.
She is always energtic and always ready to tell me how much she likes U of W better than U of M. Being on a sports team I can be passionate about my Bison Pride but I have learned to hold back the smart remarks - after all my soon to be food is in her hands and don't wanted any added 'ingredients' in my delicious pita. So much to my surprise the picture below was the pita special for the week. Isn't this the first step to being famous? Or maybe it was just a slow week ... either way I was pumped about it - how many people can say they have a pita named after them!


"Who has more fun us?"
Mich

Bison Brief: ?Pretty? in Pink

This past weekend we started league play in Brandon - we got off to a good start with two wins, may have not been pretty but we will take the W's when we can get them. The previous week we finished pre-season with our home tournament "Shoot for a Cure" and our major 'pink' campaign on campus to raise money for breast cancer awareness. For me it was a busy week full of: putting finishing touches on our bison night, selling pink t-shirts, family visits and convocation!
All in all a great week to celebrate some of my hard work over the past little bit and it was so great to see my fam-jam! Here are some pictures and videos to sum it all up!

Here is a sweet picture taken by one of the track athletes - I'm sporting the sweet pink jerseys that I helped get for our silent auction. It was so successful we had to order a second set of jerseys!


Here is a nice picture from convocation - with my bachelor of Kinesiology and parents of course.


And finally here is the sweet video we made for our Bison Night ... thanks to Eric for all the time put in for my creative version.



"Go out in the world like money doesn't matter. Sing as if no one is listening. Love as if you have never been hurt and dance as if no one is watching."

Mich

Old School Love

After finding my all-black Chuck Taylor All-Stars and rocking them around school I started to remember why I bought them. One of my favorite movies growing up was Sandlot and I always wanted my own pair of PF Flyers! .... Yeah thats right the shoes that "Make you jump higher and run faster!"

At the time it may have been my 'tom-boy' attitude that just wanted the shoes to look cooler than my brothers but these are classic vintage shoes. Now a days, after checking out their heritage and the huge role they played in the modern develop of the shoe, appeals to me the most (I mean don't get me wrong, everyone still probably thinks that this is still a 'tom-boy' attitude only now I'm a nerd too or should I say L-7 winnie! haha).

Hope you enjoy the reminiscing ... I did :).

Top 5 Old School Movies:

1. Sandlot

2. Standby Me

3. Goonies

4. Mighty Ducks

5. Now and Then

"Remember kid, there's heroes and there's legends. Heroes get remembered but legends never die, follow your heart kid, and you'll never go wrong"

Mich

The Red Dragon

Came upon this video awhile ago but just remembered about it ... it makes me laugh so hard every time I see it ... watch for the bum slaps! haha. 

enjoy

"Adversity often leads to opportunity  - hard tasks are always followed by fulfilled hearts."

Mich

BISON BREIF: 3 Wins, One Shiner, and Nothing Proven

Given basketball does rule my life here is a pre-season update ...

Started game play in Dryden, ON vs. Lakehead - don't mean to sound like a spoiled university athlete but it is tough playing in a high school gym after running endless drills on the full university court - needless to say the games were a little scrappy and a lot of 'controlled chaos' but we started the season with two wins so the complaining ends there.

Than for the first time since I have been at U of M we got to play against the University of Winnipeg in non-conference play - with the 'Duckworth Challenge' bragging right was up for grabs. We came out on fire from the field than played hard the rest of the game to earn the win. With the win we finally won outright (have tied in the past) the Duckworth Challenge, which is great for Bison Sports - because it was a combined win with the men's basketball team and the volleyball teams.

But like I said the games were still a little scrappy as everyone is trying to get back to game playing form. With scrappy play comes some funny and not so funny injuries: like team mates running into each other trying to get rebounds ending in some stitches and a face mask or giant goose egg black eyes. I was the fortunate recipient of the ladder injury and let me tell you it has been an interesting week with 'the eye'. So first off when I got the elbow to the face this thing instantly starting growing over my eye lid like a balloon being blown up. As my coach yells at me to keep playing hard as I run up the side line I begin to tell him that I'm slowing losing vision out of my one eye but I will try. When he does not hear me all it took was one look from him and a teammate at the next time out and I knew there was a massive growth now forming over my eye. Ok ok so I may be exaggerating but thats what it felt like! Needless to say a some ice helped maintain the size but the bruising as been a funny processes. Other than the fact that when I'm out in public people either stare at me thinking that I have really bad make-up or I must have a had a fun night the previous night and wanted to remember it haha (added some pics for your viewing).

And finally although we started the season with 3 wins in reality they mean nothing because they are pre-season games and secondly if I have learned anything about playing in the CIS you have to win when it matters to be successful! So nothing has been proven ...

"Trust the process - one game at a time."

Mich

Thoughts: Athletes Live In Their Own World

Seeing as I haven't posted in over a week is telling to the fact that I do sometimes live in my own little world. This world has no external issues that are greater than the 20 people I interact with on a daily bases. It is driven by the cycle of waking up, going to school, going to practice, doing homework/studying, going to bed and repeating. It can often be so narrow focused that anything I do outside of those 5 tasks almost seems out of body experiences and are often forgotten when trying to remember what the day consisted of. Now you may ask 'why would someone want to live such a repetitive and isolated lifestyle?', well the old phase 'it's all for the love of the game', sums it up pretty nicely for me. If I didn't love basketball, there is no way this lifestyle would make up my 'little world' haha. For me its easy to see all the positives to being a student athlete but unfortunately for those not in my imagery world I seem like a non-exist human in the 'real' world. So this is in no means an excuse for my lack of communication skills but merely a an explanation about what goes on in my world when I realize there is more to life than my little repetitive life cycle .....

"Your World is What You Make ...."

Mich

JRB vs Sport Camp

Haven't posted a video in a while ... this is a video we made for promoting our summer basketball camp. Unfortunately due to some 'on campus politics' and us making subtle hints about another 'anomynous' camp we were unable to use them. But this is a brilliant performance by these 2 and not enough people have seen them. Hopefully even if you don't get the 'inside jokes' of them you can still enjoy! (JRB is the club basketball team I coach with)
(Mostly for Ty to enjoy a laugh or two haha!)




"It's a only just the beginning ..."
Mich

Random Rant 1 - Cell Service

Thought this would be a good theme post to start because there is always something to rant about and what better to way to waste minimal energy over it by just writing about it and being done with it haha ....

Yesterday being Sunday aka for most students 'catch-up day' or 'most productive day of the week for school work day', I had been having some trouble with my phone the previous night and I woke up, much to my verbal pleeding for it to work, to find it still KOed in the morning. Not to mention that this is the the 3rd time my phone has been completely dis-functional to the point where I have to get it reset to the manufacturing settings - and for those of you that are with a stupid phone company that doesn't give SIM cards with your phone and you are too cheap to buy one know that you have to go in and manually reset all your contacts - fun times ... NOT. So after going to my first MTS store and them telling me I have to go back to the store I bought the phone at because they can't call up my account info, 3 hours later I get to the point where the guy finally explains to me that my warrently is still valid and that I can have a 'loner' phone - called that because you are loner when using it because it has no contacts in it and you don't actually know anyones number these days and refusing to put any contacts in knowing that you get your phone back in 4-6 weeks, therefore you are a loner when using it to just call home!
Hence the rant about me spending 4 hours of my productive Sunday to sit/stand in phone stores while they throw a bunch of excuses at you for not being able to help you out - all the while you know they are just playing the 'I'm only 1 of 2 phone companies in the city so are getting screwed anyway' card.
Anyways, my luck with phones continues to worst as I go - who needs a cell phone these days haha :).

"Does technology solve more problems than it solves?"
Mich

The Skownan Adventure

After a long day of morning practice and back to back classes, our 4 vehicles of packed food, sleeping gear and tired but anxious girls embarked, with a brave coaching staff, on a 3.5 hour trek 'up north'. 5 hours later - after 2 pee breaks and one 'snack' break - we arrived in Skownan First Nations 2 hours behind schedule. Now to put everything into perspective this is my 6th trip up to the community and I have coached some of the kids numerous times in the city so for me it was pure excitement to see old friends again, but for the first timers I'm sure there was a lot of unanswered questions running through there heads as we drove up to the school. Expectations are always a tough concept in these situations because going in I have learned not to have any, other than to be open minded and truly authentic in spirit because these kids expected nothing from you other than that. So driving up to the school 2 hours late, to see kids running from the gym to say hi or they were too busy play ball to leave the gym, set the trip up for success right off the hop.
Thursday we just finished off the day by playing with the kids for a bit and headed to bed early. Friday we spent all day at school - we went in and out of classrooms just helping out in anyway - math problems, gym class, recess, crafts, reading, etc. The best part of the day was when there bottled water arrived, everyone helped unload and you could truly see the excitement on their faces! (picture below) Friday we had a drop in session at night for the kids to play outside, participate in basketball practice and parents got an info session. As a team we ended with a campfire and off course a board game!
Differently from past years this trip was a little shorter and we did have to use some time to prep for our first games coming up this week, but all in all I think it was a very valuable cultural experience as always. Not only for our team but for their community as well.
I could tell endless stories about my trips up there but I will save you from reading an even longer post haha. I'm working on a video for the program we run up there so I will post it as soon as I finish it up!

"Good sport can make a great difference!" True Sport
Mich

"The Basketball Girls"

I knew it was going to be some what ambitious to try and post something everyday - so sorry about no post yesterday but it was just one of those days were I didn't hit the pillow until after 12 straight hours at school.
Anyways, our basketball season is about to start and we always finish our 'pre-season training phase' with a trip to Skownan First Nations. We mostly do this to finish our team building and to kick off our community projects. I'm especially excited this year to head north, because I was able to help out with our summer programing out there and some girls from their community, played on the summer travel team that I coached. So all the great kids are still fresh in my mind - it always blows me away that regardless of how long its been since we have been there they always remember your name (and I can barely remember a handful after 4 years - horrible I know).
So I'm looking forward to reconnectioning with all the great people we have meet out here, to share our love of basketball, help out in the school, see how the rookies response, enjoy continuing to learn about their culture and most of all the kids excited smiling faces! I will give you an update when I return to the city because we don't use the internet out there :).


"The Basketball Girls" as they are now known in the community - makes me happy!

"You can always learn more about others when you walk in their shoes"
Mich

Slurpee Skate Stalker

It's late and I have early practice so just a quick post ....
So for those of you that don't know, I have always wanted to learn how to skateboard. For some reason after seeing my brother doing it in grade school I have been hooked. But considering I play university basketball I think my coach would kill me if I came into the gym one day with a broken wrist haha. So I have decided to just stick to watching it and going for the occasional long board ride but as you can imagine in todays world of technology there are videos, blogs, chat rooms, contest on the internet all about it. Which leads to my inspiration for the post - I was in 7-11 last week and these two kids (no older than 10) were getting slurpees with skateboards in hand. I immediate come out of my slurpee making concentration to check out what these 'cool cats' were up to (they are instantly way cooler than me cause they can skate haha). Sure enough they are discussing how they are trying to film this video for a skate competition (they even had a tripod and AV kit in hand) that they want to win but they were in a dilemma because they both wanted to be in the video at the same time .... now I know what you are thinking ... but I refrained from being the 'slurpee stalker', bit my tongue and walked out, before I freaked out the kids - by telling them I would film them because I though they were super cool. But since seeing them in 7-11 I have literally seen them everyday skating around my area of town and sometimes I just want to be able to throw down the board and just pretend that I can skate and of course look good doing it!
Here are some videos of an up and coming kid that I found on youtube - Sean Malto - check it out if you enjoy watching.



"You're never too old to pick up a new hobby"
Mich

Musically Inspired

For those of us that have our iPod glued to our ears or on continuous play on the dock, know that you have artists or albums that you have on repeat. If you don't know what I'm talking about its probably because you have not discovered the beauty of the ipod or how the power of music can always keep you company. Not only do I love music (maybe because I have no musical talent what so ever) but my favorite part of playing albums on repeat is they serve as markers for time periods in your life. You know what I'm talking about - when you hear that backstreet boys song and pretend not to know all the words and say "Oh do remember when we did an air band to this in grade 6?!!" I'm telling you right now if I heard any song from K-OS's Joyful Rebellion album I instantly think about grade 10 lunch in the caf and it playing on repeat as we played our 100th game of urcher for the week - see the power of music!!
So back to the point of the post, thought I would share some of my current albums that are on repeat. Definitely displays my weird range in music ... like I said something for every mood.

"Music can say all the things you can't"

Mich

PS. Can you still refer to albums as albums anymore or should it be playlists?

http://www.michaelbuble.com/home

www.myspace.com/royalcanoe

http://sheenagrobb.com/fr_index.cfm

http://datnewcudi.com/

http://www.asherpaulroth.com/

Who's Line is it Anyway?

Did anyone think this show was as funny as I did? I don't know what I laugh more at, the jokes or them laughing at each other haha!! I can watch these videos all day. I apologize if you aren't a fan but I loved it!


"Laughing is the best medicine"
Mich

Professor Psychology 101

Waking up to go to 8:30am class is probably the worst possible class time ever! ... or is it?
Seeing that I'm not a natural mathathlete I decided that if I want to try and get back into 'math-shape', I should double up on my Calculus for engineering lectures - now I know you all think I'm a nerd at this point but to be honest I will take it if it will get me through this class haha. But anyways, as you can imagine I was not the most energetic this morning when I slid into my chair with a tea in hand ready to try and push through my third day of 8:30 math class. Not really putting two and two together, I totally forgot that this class section would have a different professor. Well ... this older gentleman walks into the lecture theater with shirt, tie, and pocket protector full of pens .... even in my sleeply stare at the wall I gathered this must be the professor. So I automatically assume this is going to be a long hour of boring talk - you know the teacher that sounds like the one from peanuts no matter how hard you try and focus?
Well was I ever wrong , I have never seen someone so passionate about math! He was yelling and screaming about how he love vectors, points, and planes and how he just wanted us to understand it all! Now here is a guy who loves his job. Needless to say the hour flew by and so did the rest of my four lectures for the day.
Why can't all professors love their job as much as this one and actually make classes entertaining and a positive experience? Ever wonder why school teachers have to have an education degree to teach and university professors never have to take courses on how to teach? .. just some ranting for thought ...
Well, with all this said, the whole point of this post was to explain the fact that over my past four years of university I have come to learn that understanding how the prof thinks and works is just as important as knowing the actual information in the course. And I'm not going to lie I tend to sit in class some days and analyze the professor and wonder what they are like outside of school - kind of like 'people watching' but seeing them weekly increases the crazy assumptions you can make about them! haha
Finally keeping with the theme of professors and loving what you are doing, thought I would share with you one of my favorite books to date - "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. Its a great quick read whenever you need to be motivated or put back on track. You can also watch the lecture he based it on on youtube - I won't post the video because it's an hour long but if you want to watch it just search the title information and it will come right up.

"Love what your doing or stop doing it!" -#14
Mich

The Grind

Its actually insane how quickly you can go from 100% energized for life after the summer to completely exhausted after only a week of school. I mean the two weeks of two-a-days can help with that process but you think at the tender age of 21 you would be able to handle it - especially after a relatively relaxed summer. But nope back to the grind of body aching, mind mush by the time you get your last class and trying to fake your body to just keep going until you fall into bed that night. Fortunately for me I get to share this experience with 12 other student-athletes and coaches so at least I get to bitch to people that completely understand but at the same time aren't afraid to tell me to suck it up. Even more, after starting my first week of being a full-time engineering student I'm thankful that I'm not a true first year coming into this faculty because it would be overwhelming! Don't get me wrong I'm loving life 'over on the other side of campus' but I'm definitely back to begin at the bottom of the academic excellence category haha.

But this year is all about challenges - on court its my last year and we have alot of unfinished business and for school is all about showing all those teachers that told me to stick with phys.ed that I can do so much more (C get degrees right ... just kidding ... kind of).

"You miss 100% of the shots you never take" - #99

Mich

The Premiere

Thinking that my first real post should be a master piece of written pros ... i have chosen to post a link instead, that way I don't get your hopes up haha!

One of my favorite shows this summer was "So you think you can Dance", just love watching it, its so entertaining. And with Ellen being one of the most entertaining talk shows out there I just loved this dance when I first saw it. Ellen just does such a good job of putting a smile on your face or making you laugh even if your day sucked so enjoy!

Bienvenido (Thats Spanish for Welcome)

So due to popular demand or maybe just my lack of communication skills my blog has been created. Had some fun coming up with a name and design - the name basically describes my scholar ambitious to date, on degree number two, but still enjoying being a student. I don't know what you should expect from this but I hope to keep my few followers in the loop about some of the randomness going on in my life. So forgive me if it doesn't meet expectations but I will try my best to entertain you :).