Sarasota Specific Saturday: Amazing Sarasota Scavenger Hunt

by in Local Events, Seattle Specific Saturdays
The Amazing Scavenger Hunt: Sarasota Edition
Photo documentation of:
People:
            Pregnant lady
            Arm wrestling a stranger
            Dancing with a stranger
            Sign spinner (extra point for costume)
Things:
            A photoboth
            An alligator
            Classic/exotic car
Miscellaneous
            Kissing under Unconditional Surrender
           
Actions:
            planking        
            public pillow fight
            headphone dance party
            fake picketing (your choice)
            poetry recitation
            donating money 
            acting out a Monty Python skit
To bring back:
            A geocache prize
            Fortune cookie
           

Foodie Fridays: Treat Yourself to Balsamic Vinegar

by in Foodie Fridays, Local Eats
Olive Branch Tuscan Estate Balsamic Vinegar

No sugar added to the original balsamic, it is super delicious, thick, and bitter-sweet. I highly recommend this balsamic. The only shortcoming is the packaging as I didn’t care for the cork style top.

To find this product and more like it, visit:
http://www.atasteofeden.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=OB_Bals_Tuscan

Toiling Tuesday: Maple Valley Writers December Workshop – Goals and Resolutions

by in Author Thursdays, Maple Valley Writers, Toiling Tuesdays | 1 Comment

Goals vs. Resolutions

Do you write out goals with deadlines in mind?
      Do you have daily goals? Weekly goals? Monthly goals?

Your goals should:

  • Be something you can control (not just “make lots of money” but “send out three query letters a month)
  • Inspire you
How to define these goals:
  • They should be measurable (not “be a better writer” but “write daily”)
  • They should be attainable (not “be the number one writer” but “get an article published in the local newspaper”)
  • They should be meaningful
Short term vs. long term measures of success
  • Do you want to measure success in terms of hours spent writing per day (or per week)?
  • Do you want to measure success in terms of pages produced or words produced per day (or week)?
  • Do you want to measure success in terms of queries submitted per week or month?
  • Do you want to measure success in terms of projects (articles, stories, or chapters) written per month or year?
What’s your writer’s bucket list?
Here is mine fantastical bucket list:
  1. Become rich and famous
  2. Write a book in every genre/type
  3. Publish my own anthology of poetry
  4. Write my autobiography
  5. Have one of my stories made into a movie
  6. Write a screenplay
  7. Write a one-hit wonder
  8. Be a top-selling, name-known author
  9. Be on talk shows about my books, as an author
  10. Sell a million copies of one of my own novels
  11. Be an inspiration to other authors
  12. Win an award
  13. Travel and do talks in other countries
Don’t forget your support! The people who can support and motivate you along the way. 
Also, don’t forget about what resources you will need to accomplish your goals!
Are you self-publishing? Take the author self-assessment worksheet to help you as you progress through your publishing experience:

Foodie Fridays: Raw Milk

by in Foodie Fridays, Local Eats
Front Street Market

Here is a wonderful product available at your local Front Street Market in Issaquah. Why raw milk? Raw milk, though it has dangers associated, is beneficial in that it is still full of nutrients. When you buy homogenized milk from the store, it has been bleached and stripped of all its nutrients and then they are added back in afterwards. This kills any potential harmful substances but also any good substances in the milk. If you are into milk, I would suggest an alternative to the regular grocery store milk. Don’t just go with the cheap milk, go with organic, or local, or raw. For one it is better for you and two it tastes better! However, raw milk is straight from the cow, therefore full of fat and I would not suggest consuming it in large quantities. Like any product that comes from a cow anyways, I would recommend buying a quality product, like this Raw Jersey Milk.

Medical Mondays: Allergy Testing

by in medical Mondays

Needles, right?

Not quite.

I recently went through some allergy testing and it wasn’t that bad.

Gasp! How can that be! Needles. Long, thick, prickly, itchiness.

You’ve got it wrong.

It’s just a little prick, a scratch to just break the surface of the skin and then the substance you are testing for is injected on top of the scratch and permeates under the skin. Granted, if you are allergic, the skin will turn red and get itchy, but no more than a fire ant bite or mosquito bite. It’s not that bad, honestly. Note, they even have some anti-itch cream they will give you.

That’s the first test, the second test goes a little deeper and is a bit more intense but again it is only a mild prick of the skin and a little injection just under the skin. If you don’t watch, it won’t bother you much at all. For me, it’s more the idea of what they are doing then how it actually feels:

Scariness of the doctor = actual pain/imagined pain X seeing needles X scary things your body doesn’t normally do.

 So if you don’t see the needles or what weird things they are doing to you, the scariness factor of the visit should go down. The imagined pain should go down as well if you won’t watch because scary things look more painful than they really are and you might psych yourself up to higher degree of felt pain if you see what’s going on. My technique is to let them do a few and get used to how it feels and my reaction and then see what they are doing so that the process is demystified for me.

How do you cope with needles?

Toiling Tuesdays: Authoring, Marketing, Publishing, Selling is Hard Work

by in Ataxia and the Ravine of Lost Dreams, Maple Valley Writers, Toiling Tuesdays

The Maple Valley Writers booth at the MAple Valley Holiday Craft Fair sold several copies of the books of the two featured authors: Becky A. Benson and Rachel Barnard. For more information on the authors, check out the brag corner on the Maple Valley Writers website. To purchase Becky A. Benson’s novel, Three Short Years, click the link here. To purchase Rachel Barnard’s novel Ataxia and the Ravine of Lost Dreams, click the link here.

We had fun and met many fascinating people with their own stories to tell. Perhaps you will see their books in the future. This post is dedicated to those writers out their in Maple Valley who have important stories of their own to capture and inspire us.