Closing Down

As I don't really have much time for gaming or even writing these days (sad sigh), I am going to make focusing on my Food Blog a priority.

So please, my dear followers turn your attention to:

http://theallergychallengedgourmet.blogspot.com/

Thanks!

Hi!

Not much to update here just yet - but I am considering doing Camp NaNoWriMo in August.... Anyone else going in?

That's right I am crazy enough to consider doing NaNo TWICE this year.

Haven't been paying too much attention to the gaming world just yet - but Halo 4 does look shiny. I hope it really, truly, is.

Division and Rebooting

So here's the deal, this blog here was supposed to be a gathering place for my WriMo and Gamer friends to come read about my doings, feelings, and thinkings in those arenas.

It started as a food blog (Bento) then switched, then moved back when we started Rebooting. But now this will become what it was meant to be. If you're interested in keeping up with the Rebooting and other Foodie things I do check out my new blog over at The Allergy Challenged Gourmet.

More updates soon! I promise!

Reboot #2 Days 3 (Part 2) - Day 5

Welcome to another blog about juice! In all seriousness though I am so glad I figured out why I felt so poorly the last go round. I am feeling so much better this time and was even able to resist a horribly bad for me, but oh so delicious looking sheet cake at work yesterday. That was a tough fight!

So we finally weighed ourselves yesterday. Logician is down to 217.5 and I am down to 204. His weight loss is a bit slower this time but I think that's because he's not getting enough calories. We shall continue to argue this fact for awhile. 

An interesting thing I forgot to write up in the last blog was that when we picked up those amazing grapes (yes they are still amazing), the cashier asked us if we had seen Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead (Join the Reboot). It is interesting to us that it seems like all sorts of people have seen the documentary and taken Rebooting into consideration. It reminded us just how epidemic the fast food diet is. 

I don't know exactly what I will do if this Reboot gets me below 200lbs. I haven't weighed less than 200 since I was in high school. More on the days after the jump.

Reboot #2 Days 2-3

Day 1 sucked for me. I was so tired and so hungry all day! But it did lead to some awesome discoveries that I think will help make this Reboot more successful for me.

The first thing I realized is that I felt so sick during the last reboot because my calorie intake was way to low. I did some research and I burn between 300 and 500 calories for each hour of massage I do. Add that to a busy life style of running around to get errands and what not accomplished and the fact that I do between three and five massages, five days a week and you've got a massive calorie deficit. I ended up doing two juices, four cans of V8 (about 140 calories each), and two solid meals on Friday (which included five hours of massage) and on Saturday I woke up feeling much better.


For dinner on Friday I had smashed potatoes with mushrooms, and some celery and humus. Then when I got home from work I ate more celery and humus and another potato. Not the most chef inspired food but I was tired and grumpy. But man was it tasty.

As discussed we had 'Mean Green' for lunch on Friday and it was one of the better versions of it, I think. I find the celery gives juice a very grassy taste that I am still working on enjoying. Which is weird because I can eat celery all the time otherwise, but meh.

We didn't do very well on Saturday as far as juicing at home. We went to the farmers market in the morning and got some awesome carrots (and I do mean awesome, we got them last week too and two bunches just disappears), but found out it was the last week for carrots sadly. We also got some awesome green curly kale, rainbow chard, a small butternut squash, six juicy cucumbers, a large bag of fresh basil, and a small pint of mixed heirloom cherry sized tomatoes.

We have made the switch to buying most of the things we juice locally or at least organically. We have found that though they tend to be smaller (think cabbages) they also tend to be juicier. Especially greens.

Although we still have not made the much needed switch to organic apples... (Yes I KNOW! Biggest offenders of all, seriously no need to yell.)

Reboot #2 Day 1

That's right Kiddies, we're rebooting again. Today is day one. We've been prepping for about two weeks now although somewhere in the middle we lost steam. We're back on track today.

We started off the day with:

As you can see it has some Cantaloupe, about half of one to be exact. Somewhere between five and eight stalks of celery, three farmers market carrots, two peaches, a piece of ginger, and some rainbow chard. It was green colored, tasted of cantaloupe, and a very meh sort of juice.


For lunch today we're having Mean Green. As that's what we had items for. And for my dinner I made two baked potatoes, smashed them with almond milk, mixed in a small can of mushrooms, and some garlic, pepper, and salt. I will likely end up having a V8 and some hummus along with it.

We are trying to apply lessons learned last go round to this one. Namely that I cannot function without one solid meal a day, and that I need to make sure I watch my caloric intake. It was too low last time and that led to me feeling really sick. Being a massage therapist and working 20-25 hours a week doing massage means a lot of burned calories!


Other lessons include that I cannot drink 20ozs of juice in one go, stomach won't tolerate it. And that Logician has to have 16-20 oz a serving in order to feel full. Lunches are a bit smaller for him as he generally won't be hungry for dinner otherwise.

I have stocked up on cans of V8, which while it would be better to make it from scratch in the juicer, I seem to have a knack for hating the natural V8 I make. So when I start to feel a little blah, I grab a V8. Since our breakfast juice wasn't that high in calories I have had some V8 this morning, to stave off that hunger/sinus/tension headache monster that is arguing with me.

Off to lunch and work! Blessings!

Juicing end, updates, etc

Wow so I disappeared again. Even after all my awesome pictures with which to regale you of the last days of our juicing.

We made it a total of 17 days and are still losing weight. Logician is down an astounding 28lbs, and I have lost about 21-22 depending on the day. I am pretty much plateaued but he keeps losing so we'll see where he ends up.

Our current plan is to begin again June 1st and go for at least 15 and as many as 60 days. So far we have about three other people on board with us.

I will likely post the pictures sometime but the juices were a lot more of the same. Going to try to find some books to help us branch out with recipes this time.

I have not done much editing on LoE, which makes me a bit sad but such is the way of things. The writing muse is fickle and will often lead me off on other stories when I want to focus. I'm not worried. She'll come back.

Nothing more interesting than that right now. Ciao!

Rebooting Days 6-9

Silence descended again, but with good reason! I had a crazy weekend involving a furbaby emergency (Kitty) and a lot of running about so here's the update.

Due to the kitty situation we ended up "cheating" twice this weekend. Though to be honest for what we used to eat, we still ate pretty darn healthy. We went to a Mongolian Steakhouse and made fish stir fry bowls (the cheats were the fish and the rice, but I did eat brown) on Saturday night and then Sunday afternoon we went to a place called Jason's Deli which has an awesome salad bar. We sort of needed something different after the craziness and I feel like with all the options available those were not bad choices.

So I left off Thursday lunch. Thursday for dinner we had Epic Tacos. That's right Epic with a capital E. We made "meat" out of a can of corn, a can of black beans, and a can of chopped tomatoes and chilis onto which we put normal taco seasoning (though next time we will make our own). These ended up becoming Taco Salad just because we wanted the veggies. We WANTED the veggies. In fact we demanded them. It was amazing.

Rebooting Days 3-5

So lets see... I'm still doing okay on this juicing twice a day and having a solid dinner but last night (day 4) we only had a veggie dinner. But let me tell you it kicked arse! In fact we're never having meat tacos at home again!

So on Day 3 we made a fruit juice for breakfast and I must say I personally prefer the fruit juices. For some reason the veggie heavy ones do not make me want to drink them. But I am still trying my best!

Reboot/Juicing Prep Days 2 and 3

So I realized I didn't post any pictures yesterday or anything really (I know, you're also wondering about book news, stay posted though it's not much!) regarding the second day of our juicing prep.

So what Logician and I decided to do was thus: We have two juices a day and then dinner as normal. The first day we had our own juice creation for breakfast, I ate left over spicy boiled fish from a local restaurant for lunch while Logician had the last bit of the breakfast juice and then for dinner he had fish and I had the Gazpacho juice.

Note on the Gazpacho it was tasty, however I was lazy and didn't peel the lime which killed it. It was somewhat like torture to drink. But if the lime had been peeled it would have been epic!

I had a hard day Monday. My body was not really enjoying the lack of solid food and I ended up having to eat a little more when I got home simply because I was really on the edge of an irrational emotional meltdown. I had a very small bowl of rice and some Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer tea and all was well.

So yesterday I woke up feeling sore EVERYWHERE! I was exhausted and grumpy. I got a 90 minute massage which was heavenly and very helpful, and then we had this AMAZING dinner of rice and what we call Indian Hamburger Helper (yes I know, processed food = bad but the ingredients in this one were fairly good) called Tempting Lentils with Sorrel leaves. To which we added a couple tilapia fillets and an AWESOME salad. Seriously food tastes so much better already.

Rebooting

So as a Massage Therapist I come across some awesome clients who are doing a lot to take care of their health. So when a few people around me randomly (without real connection to each other) started Juice Fasts/Cleanses I wanted to find out more.

They all started after seeing the documentary Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead (Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead Website) which then intrigued me to watch it. At first I was just intrigued enough to watch them all complete their goals for time (10 days, 15 days, a month) but opted yesterday to sit down with the Logician and watch the documentary. I was intrigued and he was excited.

2012 So Far

It's only a few weeks old but already 2012 is starting out amazingly better than 2011. It seems like this year is meant for accomplishment in my life, and I like that. I have been slacking (again) on revising/editing the first draft of Lines of Eternity (by the way - currently HATE the title). I keep hauling it around with me but then decide to give my attention to other things.... Not the best idea. The problem is I have so much I want to get done and now a lot less time to do it.

I have promised myself to get it done though. I'm so close! I've added so much amazing content and rewritten so many scenes that are extra amazing now. So I need to do it!

Bento Galore

Alright so I've been posting these Bento pictures on Facebook for the world to see their glory but haven't been here to talk about them.

First of all - I got the Just Bento Cookbook and it is amazing! The photographs are beautiful. The recipes are inspiring and I just love the ease of the language and techniques. I am looking forward to using the recipes once I get back in a place to buy the staple items I'm low on.

Hi Blog!

Hee hee... Hi. *sheepish wave*

So NaNoWriMo? Huge fail. Epic in fact, because the story never came to me and when I tried to force on it fell flat on its face.

It didn't help that in mid-November I lost my job, but I was very lucky to find another one fairly quickly! A Massage job too - oh yea.

So I made some Bento since I work tomorrow all day and will need something healthy and yummy to eat.

BENTO!

Yea I'm pretty happy with these. They aren't the cutest I ever made, but after being out of Bento making for quite some time I'm happy with them.

One of my goals for the new job is to make Bento when I work. That way I always have something healthy and cute to eat. It will hopefully help me condition my body for working as a therapist full time, and help me lose some more weight this year.

Here's hoping!

I lied... Again.

So as it happens every year when I pick a story, I open writing program on November 1st and a different story comes flying out of my fingers! This year I am apparently continuing last years' theme by writing the first book of the Otherworld (or the Sensational Nonfictional Account of the Secret Order of the Tree Fort).

It's a lot of fun so far. Already at about 1400 words, which is not bad seeing as how I just started!

Woo for NaNoWriMo!

Star Rose

So it seems like the story I will be writing this year is another old friend whom has had many attempts but has never truly been finished. Which also means I will need to write closer to 65k words in order for it to truly be a challenge. I don't doubt the story will get that far, I am just scared of the extra 15k!

This story might be one of the first attempts at a true adventure/rpg style idea I ever had. It's an awesome story and I am looking forward to writing it. I am going to use Scrivener which means that I have time now to outline and build the chapters and scenes, to name the characters and create biographies, and to use the program for an entire novel from scratch this go round. It should be interesting!

I wish the Winter would come sooner...

Music and Writing

I don't think there has been a single line of a single story that I have ever written that did not have a theme song in the background. It's very interesting how much music makes my stories for me. I generally begin a story, get a few (fifteen or so) pages in and then go compile a soundtrack. Sometimes a song inspires the story and for a long time I just listen to the single song on repeat.

Because I've gotten back into editing I've been considering this music business again. When I had wrote the original version of LoE:FC (yes it's an acronym now) I didn't have a song for it. I simply holed up in my little mostly unfurnished room and wrote furiously (by hand). When I began to rewrite it (by hand) we had moved and I worked in retail so I had a fluctuating schedule. The theme song at that time was May It Be, by Enya from The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. It didn't make sense to me at the time because back then the story had this horribly tragic ending that was a resemblance of the relationship I was "in" at the time. I couldn't see the forest for the trees so to speak.

When I finally sat down in 2008 to do my first NaNoWriMo I thought of LoE:FC but it didn't happen, I wasn't ready to see the forest yet. Oddly enough LoE:FC doesn't have it's own playlist yet, it piggybacks off another playlist I made in about 2006. May it Be is still a very important song for this story, and likely will still be the theme in my head. But now I see the forest and I understand why the song is so important to the heart of my story.

So this year, since I'm still deciding what to write, I'm trying to look to the music I'm attached to and see if the story lies hidden in the music. So far it seems the music is leaning towards two story ideas. One I call Hitori (Phoenix in Japanese) and the other I'll call Cassandra. Both have been attempted but neither have gotten passed maybe the third page in writing. So I'll be interested to see if either of these stories ends up being the one to get written. There is another that almost always lurks in the shadows waiting, Star Rose, but it's got something like fifteen to thirty pages typed already so I would have to write 50k more than that for the challenge. So I'd be writing closer to 75-90k. We'll see.

Writing without music is like breathing without air, at least to me. 

FALL!

I'm more than a little excited about the awesome patch of cool weather that's come through. There is no time I love more than a cold day at home with some awesome music playing!

I'm trying to focus myself into finishing the last half of edits to Line of Eternity, but it's pretty stop and go right now. I'm almost to the end of the first edits notebook and have written a lot of new scenes in Scrivener. It's been a very good run so far. I am greatly looking forward to seeing the second draft in paperback form.

Yes I am crazy and I will have a paperback version of each draft. I will display them all together and laugh maniacally as I see it come together into a wonderful book.

Each time I edit a scene I am reminded of how much depth this book was missing during the craziness of NaNoWriMo and how that is happening again in 28 days. 28!!! Less than a month! I love the writing without a care chaos that is NaNo. I can't wait for it this year, though I still have no clue which story I am going to write.

I've completed a bunch of paperwork to get the ball rolling for classes at the Community College, in the hope that by starting there in the Spring (I hope, I hope, I hope) I can really hit the ground running and get this B.S. in Psychology done ASAP. Then I just have to take the GRE and apply to grad schools. Woo!

The cooler weather always energizes me, which has always amused me being that I was born right smack in the summer in Florida. Now I just have to figure out some time to get to the beach and soak up that cool weathery, watery, goodness.

Peace!

And now it's almost October

Some day I will be a better blogger....

Time sure flies when you're having fun. It's been very busy for me as we are back into a busy period at work and Logician and I are trying to get some other things going at home, but it's been a lot of fun. New friends are also a definite plus!

NaNoWriMo is sneaking closer and closer and I feel less prepared than ever this year. I seriously believe this year will be the year I sit down, open the blank Word Document, and have no idea what comes running out across the page! Something new? Something Old? Who knows?!

It does have me thinking about what the last year of my life has been like. The story I wrote last year was really for therapeutic reasons and will likely never see the light of day in any format close to how it exists now. I don't feel like I need that this year.

In 2008 for my first NaNoWriMo I did a similar thing. I wrote a story using a mass of characters I used to roleplay with in an e-mail game. I took them out of the world they'd lived in a built them a new one to work through a lot of things I was going through at the time. It ended up being a rambling story much in the same vein as others I had written. Then in 2009 came my (baby, pride and joy) Lines of Eternity story that is so much more amazing now than it ever was in 2002 when I first conceived of it.

So since 2008 and 2010 were both therapeutic writings it stands to reason that whatever I do commit to "paper" this year will likely be something that will one day make it to second draft. A somewhat exciting prospect!

Still waiting for November 1st!!

PS Halo: Anniversary is looming closer as well... This will require will power to persevere. The most AWESOME HALO EVER versus THE MOST AWESOME WRITING EVER.... It will be tough, but fun.

It's September?! Wait, What?!

I keep forgetting I have a blog. It's horrible for the six people that read it.

So in the writing world the news is that I am finally HALF WAY! Through edits that is. I am really excited about using Scrivener (http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivenerforwindows/) in case I hadn't mentioned that yet. It is awesome and I love that I can go in and write new scenes (to save my poor hand) and know that they won't have to be monitored later like I would have to do in MS Word.

There's whole new angles on my story I didn't see before. I love being a writer! My characters have revealed some new twists and turns and I really feel like the story is much more solid this go round. Maybe I will actually get this mamajama published some day.

Also it's September... Which means there are only 45 more days until NaNoWriMo.... Eek!!!!1!

I have NO CLUE what I am writing about this year. I keep asking all my characters (they hang out in this nifty cafe lounge in my head) but they don't seem very gungho this year. It could be because MC_Etcher is bailing on me this year...Slacker....

But really I think it's because I have the urge to write a new story but the only ideas I come up with are refinements of previous ones. I'm guessing I'll do the same thing I do every year. Open a blank Word Document (or Scrivener depending on my mood) and see where my brain leads me.

I'm sort of excited about continuing to do this challenge every year. It's a way to test my mental... well my sanity. I love the thrill of trying to scribble out the daily word count and keep up with my friends. I missed Camp NaNoWriMo this year, which is an awesome new thing (CampNaNoWriMo.org) where you can do the challenge in July or August. Mostly because I had no idea what to write.

In nonwriting related news I finally sent off the application to go back to school for psychology. Here's hoping the ball gets rolling quickly on that. I applied for next Summer but am hoping I might be able to get in sooner. I'd really like to get cracking on that.

So I'm off for an interesting evening and hopefully a restful weekend so that next week I can get going on the second half of Lines of Eternity: French Charades (by the way so hating the name right now....).

Ciao!