Category: #amreading

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#amreading #amwriting Internet

End of the week; extra notes.

Well, it’s been one of “those” weeks, but surprisingly I have managed to stay upbeat about things. Tonight I finally got around to purchasing my domain via DreamHost, so I am hoping by tomorrow I will be able to start playing around with creating my homepage. I’ll need to get back into creating graphics of some sort.

The movable outline stage of the editing process is moving along well (no pun intended, perhaps). Since I have a long weekend ahead of me, I aim to finish my outline by tomorrow or Saturday and start shuffling the cards. Originally, I was going to seek out plot advice from a larger group of people, but I think now I will only share it with a few people whom I trust.

In terms of the writing realm, my confidence in my story weaving has dropped a little during this week, perhaps from my general moodiness of the week. Also, I began reading Howard Mittelmark’s and Sandra Newman’s book, How NOT To Write A Novel, and I realize a lot of the elements they list in the book are in fact in my first draft. But, I keep reminding myself, that I still am working off of my first draft, not my final. I know I have a long way to go to polish the novel off, so I know I cannot get myself down over my first draft. Besides, I already see a lot of characters in the novel that need to be “killed off” for the re-write.

I wrote a piece of flash fiction last night and found myself rolling into confusion over the different types of work I can produce. For the longest time, I just kept referring to my shorter pieces as “short stories”, when in fact, they are supposed to be labeled “flash fiction”. I’ve been perusing WikiHow lately with their writing articles, and have refreshed my memory on the different writing techniques and so forth. Of course, this weekend I am going to reserve one day to go to the public library and do more research on writing/how to get published/etc. It will indeed be a scholarly weekend for me.

Well, here’s to the end of this week, and knowing that I survived.

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#amreading

Do you have clutter in your home?

I have just recently cracked open my library book, Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, by Karen Kingston. For quite awhile now, I remember how feng shui used to be “super trendy” especially in my teen magazines when I was in high school. I never really got into exploring feng shui until recently; don’t ask me why, but I guess I just never took interest in it until now.

I feel I usually don’t consider myself as someone who has clutter/is messy, but once I began reading this book, I realize that–yes, indeed, I have clutter just like anyone else.

We all have clutter lurking somewhere in our homes, and because of this clutter, perhaps we’re being held back in trying to pursue our dreams.

So, I have begun to really clear out a lot of things I realize I have been keeping for too long for no apparent reason. Some things I keep out of fear of needing use out of them “some day”; some things I have kept because they remind me of people in my past…but these people I now want to forget about.

There’s a big pile of stuff I am going to donate soon; perhaps I wouldn’t have felt motivated to clear this clutter out if I hadn’t cracked open this book.

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#amreading Review Time

Review of "Water for Elephants"

Water for Elephants Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

My review


rating: 4 of 5 stars
Pretty good historical fiction; helped me learn a bit about circuses from the Depression era. The story itself was weaved very intricately, which I liked; novel had a great protagonist telling a sad yet invigorating story.

View all my reviews.

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#amreading #foodie health My San Francisco Chronicles sweet treats

Hungry Girl in San Francisco.

Today after work I managed to go see Hungry Girl aka Lisa Lillien give a talk and sign her new book at Borders in Union Square. I don’t remember how long I have been following her newsletters, but every time I receive them I feel like I’m more well-informed on certain foods. The swap recipes make me realize how really unhealthy most average sweets/general foods are in terms of fat content and calories. Insanity…

Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the whole session due to work ending around 7pm. Still, I was able to grab some free samples/coupons and get my book signed by Lillien. A great way to end a long 10-hour workday, indeed!

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#amreading #foodie drink health

Craving for Tea; Mindless Eating.

I had a random craving for tea today, so I ended up buying two boxes of tea while grocery shopping. I find the craving “random” since it had not occurred before…

Anyway, lately I have been reading the book Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink, Ph.D. I had been meaning to read this book for the past two years since I kept reading reviews/excerpts about it through all my health magazines. After finally getting the chance to crack the book open, I find it to be an interesting and somewhat startling read. A lot of the information I had already known before from the two years of healthy habits I have been practicing (watch portion sizes, put away tempting snacks from visible view, etc.). Yet, there have also been other facts/tidbits that I did not know about until I read it in the book.

For example, today I finished reading a portion about how iced water actually helps the human body burn calories due to the body working harder to regulate the iced water when it enters into the body. Hm! I decided today that I would start drinking more iced water in my apartment. More calorie burn, the better.

And I finally have figured out the term to use when it comes to “organic foods” or any “organic/healthy” restaurants out there: the “healthy halo” effect. So very true: seems most people automatically assume that just because a place serves supposedly healthy foods that they can pile up on the food inside and still stay “healthy”. It may be true to an extent, but not when these people end up piling on other not-so-healthy items on their foods (i.e., cream dressings, etc.).

After I finish the book, I hope to use the re-engineering strategies inside to change a few bad habits in my lifestyle.