Jody Williams: A realistic vision for world peace | Video on TED.com

Jody Williams: A realistic vision for world peace | Video on TED.com

This makes me want to just get out there and DO something.

The fourth awakening book review

So, last night was the night that my book club met and we talked about the book "The Fourth Awakening" By: Rod Peenington and Jeffery A. Martin.



It was an interesting read. Basically, the book is about the power of thought. It's about a reporter who was great in her own day but took time off to be a Mom and is now trying to get back into it. An old friend of hers calls her about interviewing an inmate at the local military prison that most of the media outlets have agreed to not publish anything about.



The inmate is a scientist who is giving the government a bunch of trouble with his research and they want to take it over and classify everything, while the scientist would like to tell everyone.



It was not a book that I just could not put down, but it was still a good read. It was one that I did not want to move on to another book until I have finished with that one. They were defintily lacking in some of their descriptions, but since both authors are actual scientists I can overlook that.



The best thing about the book really was not the story in itself. Most of my book club agreed with me when I told them that after I was done with the book I couldn't stop thinking about how I could now tottally do things with my mind. The power of positive and negative thought really is pretty great. Rose (in my club) pointed out that it is sometimes so hard to really get excited and carried away with positive emotions, and then also so easy to get angry about something.



If nothing else this is a good book to make one think. Not only about themselves, but also about society as a whole. It makes you want to do research on the side just to see if they are right. How far does the fiction go? There is a small history lesson, but it leaves you wanting more.



I would recomend this book to anyone who likes books about conspiracy theories, new age thinking particularly about reaching an enlightened state, or action books.

Productive Productivity

I am not a busy person. I never have been. I spend my days getting things done, but I really do have a habit of always waiting to do things until I absolutely have to do them. I have "to do" lists that do not get finished for a month. I have a ton of goals that rarely get acknowledged past the initial making of the goal.

Yesterday though, I had a productive day. I woke up and immediately got in the shower to start my day. I vacuumed my living room floor while I watched the history channel during commercials and ate my breakfast during the show. Then I did things like ACTUALLY clean my room. And I called my bank finally about a problem that came up like two weeks ago. I wrote in a traveling story that my friends and I have going between us that I have to pass on Sunday morning. I cleaned off my desk. I read like 60 pages in my current book. I called my mother and she is now sending me my old keyboard so that I can start to learn to play the piano.

I realize that all of these things just seem like they are a list of things that I have done in the day and in and of themselves is really quite boring. To me though, they show me a day when not only did I do all the things that I normally do, like read and watch TV first thing in the morning, but I was able to kick off a good chunk of my monthly "to do " list. I for a short day was able to say to my friends, who all have busy lives in the big wide world, that I did all of these things. It was an accomplishment for me. I know that it seems like I am bragging about nothing. I think though that it is the little things like this that make up some of the best days of my life.

Books ..... and thier reviews

Well, as an avid reader I always find myself going through books at breakneck speed and then never thinking about them again. I just love getting as many stories as I can as fast as I can. I only recently started up my own book club, but admittedly the books chosen for that do not take up very much of my time so I am still reading about five books on top of my book club assignment. I am to the point that I actually put a sticky note on the title page saying "read"

after I am done with them.

So, what do I do to help make my reading more memorable? I make a list on this blog (a blog that no one actually reads) of the books that I have read this year. I start a new one every year. I didn't even think twice about deleting 2010's list.

In an effort to make things last a little longer in my head I have decided that on top of the list I will do a review for every book I read. It might not be long... or good for that matter, but if anyone takes a look they will have some ideas about some good books to read.

But I have a little catching up to do so this first one will be a mass one with all of the books on here except for "The fourth awakening" because that is my book club book for January and I would like to hold off on that review until we have our meeting so that I can put some of their points of view on as well.

SO.. for the month of January:
"FOOL MOON" By: Jim Butcher
This is actually the

second book in a long line of books in

Butcher's Dresden Files series. I really do like him and his style of writing a lot. The Dresden Files are about a wizard living in modern Chicago. He makes a living from being a professional wizard. Basically, it's a fun twist on the classic PI story. He doesn't get many takers though so he makes most of his money consulting for the Chicago PD in the weird crimes unit (that is not the official name but I am being too lazy to actually get up and look up the name in the book). He also has a plucky side kick whose name is Bob. he is a ghost who is trapped in a skull for doing something very bad. I don't remember exactly what it was, or even if he tells you... but it was bad. Fortunately though, he helps Harry with his spells and such. I also like him because he

seems to be a seasoned heckler. A past time that I have always found to be very entertaining. Harry also works closely with a police detective. I think her name is Kate something. She is awesome and bad ass. Mostly she believes in magic and everything it can do, but she is very annoyed with Harry for the majority of the book (and the first book) because she knows he holds back stuff about the supernatural world.

In this second book of the series harry is up against werewolves. Apparently there are different kinds, a fact which I find just handy and makes for a good story. There are lots of action scenes where Harry is barely making it out alive. Cool magic abounds, and he seems to pick up quite a few friends along the way. The mob is a central part of this book. Which I suppose is appropriate according to main stream pop culture surrounding crime in Chicago.

It's a fun read. Not really a thinking book, and I got through it pretty fast. It's most likely

categorized as an urban fantasy. The Syfy channel made a brief series based on the books.

Unfortunately, it didn't take and only lasted one season. The only reason I know about it is because I stumbled on it wandering around netflix one night.

I do recommend this book to any one out there though. I wish I could say "If you like such and such book or type of book then you will like this one" but since I like and read basically everything I can't really do that unless I know you personally.

"Wicked Lovely" By: Melissa Marr

This is definitely a book aimed at high school girls. Which is not surprising as I got it from the teen section at the book store.

Wicked Lovely is the first in a series of books about faeries in the modern world and all around us. Aislinn is the main character and she is a junior in high school. She can see the faeries, but most mortals are not supposed to be able to. Her grand mother can as well and apparently her dead mother was able to as well. She as to hide it though ans ignore them because they will try to kill her if they know that she can see them. faeries can't stand iron though so she is dating a guy named Seth who happens to live in a couple abandoned train cars. Convenient no? Trouble comes when the Summer King faerie decides that he needs Aislinn to marry him.

There is an internal power struggle going on between the Summer King and his mother the Winter Queen. It's all very Shakespeare really. Their deal has been going on for thousands of years and I am personally torn between calling it petty or cruel. Turns out that winter faeries are just mean.

I would give this book a 7 out of 10 rating. At the same time though I think that the chosen demographic would really enjoy it. What can I say? Sometimes I can find kids and teen

books that I really enjoy... ex: Harry Potter series and the Narnia Chronicles.

(And just in case anyone does read this and is interested... YES, I did read Twilite...NO, I did not really like Twilite, No, I will not review them on here.. ever, and No, I don't even watch the movies. I feel there should be a little more substance to a story line. I respect the first book and the originality of it, but the rest you could tell tha

t she had a contact to fulfill with her publisher.)

"Medusa" By: Clive Cussler

Let me tell you up front.. I LOVE CLIVE CUSSLER. He is definitely one of my favorite authors. One CAN NOT go wrong with ANY book by Clive Cussler. He has a few series' out. There are the Dirk Pitt adventures that got me hooked on his books in the first place, the Oregon files - which are just as awesome, and then there are the NUMA files which star Kurt Austin. Any and all of them are awesome and worth buying and reading over and over again. I own quite a few myself.

Medusa is a Kurt Austin adventure. It starts off with a possible global pandemic in China. The government is containing it, but they are trying to find a cure as soon as possible. Austin comes into the mix when Dr. Kane the scientist heading the group that is the closest to finding said cure comes with him on a historic dive recreating the historic expidition by WIlliam Beebe and someone named Barton (or maybe Barton just helped him design it). As far I can tell without doing any further research beyond reading this book the dive was done in a big bubble of a submersible called a bathysphere. They get attacked (although I won't tell you how, because it's awesome and I don't want to ruin it for you), and Austin has to save Dr. Kane and Kurt's best friend and plucky sidekick Joe from the depths.

I will not ruin it for you, but I will say there is plenty of adventure, and sarcasm, and impossible feats that could have only been pulled off in the imagination.

I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO ANYONE AN EVERYONE.. but that's just me :)


The last two books kind of go hand in hand so I think I will do a joint review of them.

"Masques" and "Wolfsbane" By: Patricia Briggs
This little duo starts off in Masques. Aralorn is a shape-shifting spy who finds a wolf who turns out to be a Mage and tends to follow her around. They have to basically save the world from the evil head Mage. Aralorn is a green mage and only half human. She can do magic, but only by pulling the natural energy and magic from the earth. Together the end up accumulating a slightly large group of people that are running from the ae'Magi (head mage) which includes a King who is immune to all magic.

I really like this first book and would recommend it to anyone who likes fantasy books. I pretty much never wanted to put it down.

The second book of the set is Wolfsbane. It is definitely not as good as the first book. We still have Aralorn and Wolf, but we meet Aralorn's family when she goes home for her father's funeral only to

find he is not really dead but under a spell. There is more about the shape-shifting and the relationship with her brothers which is fun. It was a cute book, and not bad, but I was not as addicted to it as I was to the first one.

I recommend these books for a fast, fun, easy read.



So those are the books in January.. Hope you love them!!!!

Trust and Dis-Trust... as it were

"To be trusted is an even greater compliment than being loved" - George MacDonald

The world that I live in is a small one with a very exclusive membership. I of course must interact with MANY people on a daily basis, but I am unfortunately one of those people that does not trust easily. One must earn my trust to get it, and that is not done easily. There have been a few exceptions to this long standing rule, but they are rare.

Last night however I had a conversation with a man that I have had maybe five interactions with. In the course of this talk I actually wanted to ask him questions. As much as I like to ignore this aspect of myself, I really am pretty disinterested in most of the population on the "outside world". I wanted to hear his opinions on the things we were discussing. I wanted to laugh at his jokes, and learn about him as a person. When he left my house I stood there with a feeling of trust and safety. I feel like that is not a common feeling for people to leave me with and it caught me off guard.

I stood there staring at the contents of my fridge trying to dispel the feeling. It was not possible that this random guy had maybe think to myself "he is someone that I can trust completely".

Now before all of you start thinking that I am insane and paranoid with a crush, let me just tell you that that is just untrue. Well... I might be a little insane.

I am not tho only one who thinks this way though.

http://changingminds.org/explanations/trust/what_is_trust.htm

My paradigm has been challenged though. maybe I am coming up with all of these exceptions to my rule for a reason. I trust God so why would I not be able to trust my fellow man? Why is it that 99% of the people that I know and love have the exact opposite approach to the whole thing? They believe that trust is given freely only to be taken away when it is breached.

I can not say that anywhere in the near future I will be able to do that, but I suppose that it is a step in the right direction that I am thinking about it.

Happy Birthday.. To ME

Well, lets face it. My history with Birthdays is not that great. In years past I have had pretty crappy birthdays mostly spent in the ER, bailing people out of jail, or missing someone. Some years it was even a mixture of the two. I never grew up getting extravagent parties, but that I will never look upon that as bad because my upbringing made me the person I am today. The last two years I have actually spent pretty quietly. Last year I was taking care of my Grandmother in Arizona, and the year before that I was living in Everett with my parents and if I remember correctly we just had a quiet dinner at home.

This year has been different.. this year snuck up on me in the simplest of ways.

My day started out awesome when I went to breakfast with three close freinds. It was great, and I am so thankful that I was able to celebrate with them. They all know that I have a bit of a dislike for my birthday, but they love birthdays - so we compromise and I don't put up a fight for them acknowleding it and they keep it low key. I fully expected for that to be the last of any birthday stuff this year.

Then, I came to work...

In my world I don't tell people when my birthday is, and that rule seems to apply extra in a workplace setting. When I left for work I had curled my hair because I decided that that little confidence boost that it gives me was by birthday present to myself and then I had made myself a smoothie as a birthday sweet treat. I fully expected to maybe have a few people comment on my good mood and I would just tell them that it was a good day to be extra happy. I got here though, and I came upstairs and was waiting off to the side of the desk while the previous shift finished with their guests, and my manager Jay came up behind me and wished me a happy birthday. A suprise in and of itself at first. A pleaseant one though. For some reason it mattered to me that he knew (even though I know he gets told by HR when it is. They even supply him with a birthday card) and, that he made it a point to say it to me. Everyone else at the front heard him of course and wished me happy birthday as well, and even though some of them had just found out about it, them saying it still mattered to me. About ten minutes later the bar tender comes around the corner with a birthday cake complete with candles and ice cream! Jay had bought me a small cake and when the cooks had learned who it was from they got a little excited and added their own little flair. It was so cool. the last Birthday cake that I can remember is the one that my best friend had made me right before my accident three years ago. The rest of the day was normal. I had a few people that are just stupid, and a few guests that even wished me a happy birthday. My friend Rose even drove all the way out to the village to get me from work. She gave me a pearl bracelet. I even think it might be real.

My birthday was great. What made it better was that it was subtle. In the past it has been pointed out to me that I do not like attention, or recognition. I think that that is wrong now. I like recognition just as much as the next girl, I just don't like to be the center. I would much rather someone be sneaky about it than make a big production out of it.

So , I am now a quarter of a century old, and I feel I have started it off right.

Utah

I have a freind.. a very good friend in fact, whom I have always made fun of for having a dislike for an entire state. Utah, although not of of the prettier states as far as I'm concerned, has never done anything bad to her I would say. I would say she could not like the people, not like the activities, the politics, or the individual things that personally happened to her, but she could not really hate an entire state. I am now eating my words. I hate this state ... I really do. I have lived here for a ew months now and am still thoroughly unimpressed by it as a whole unit. My point in telling you this is that I have learned that even in my own irrational and admittedly narrow opinion of this state I still recognize that some people really love it here. I can not fault them for that. I think that this world is severely lacking in its reserves of understanding and compassion.

Grandma Dying

I went to get Thai food with a group of friends last night and it came up that one of my favorite places to be is graveyards. You see I have a somewhat different outlook on death and dying than most do. Most recently I was in Arizona with my Grandma who was dying. I helped her do everything that she possibly needed and it was one of the best things I could have ever done. In the end we had her in hospice for a little while because there was three of us that were taking care of her and we all were miserably sick at the same time as well. She was only in there for about two days before passing, but the atmosphere at the hospice was something I have never experienced before. There was a sense of waiting, true, but on top of that was love and respect. There was no delusions as to what was happening to every person there, and when Grandma passed it was a relief from the pain that we could all see her experiencing. In the past one of my grandparents passing has had little to no effect on me since we were never really all that close to any of them.. geographically or otherwise. Since I was around and had been for a while when Grandma died I got to see the direct effect that she had on so many people. I watched one of my church leaders break down and cry in front of an entire congregation. So many people came up to me to tell me how she had been an inspiration to them, a good friend, someone that other people could go to for help and she would help as much as she possibly could. Her funeral is on Friday morning. In my religion these sorts of things are always more like inpromptu family reunions than anything else, and for once my entire family will be there. That in and of it self should be entertaining.
But this all brings up the question of what does death really mean to us, as human beings? For me, I am LDS and basically it is just a step in our eternal progression. We belive in life after death, in becoming more than we are now, in learning everything that we can here and re-applying it in our future life. But what do we want to be remembered for? I have at least two grandparents that I have been old enought to recognize the impact that they made on the world, and that I should be proud to be one who inheritade that legacy.

This is my first attempt at doing a video update. I actually think I recorded it before my last actual post. But i wanted to see if this could be a viable option for me to add things.

This is me.. winging it

In my most recent of a series of questionably good decisions - I have moved down to Orem, Utah. To those that know me the best, I hope you can control your laughing. To make this illogical move even better, I moved down here with no where to live and no where to work. I came down to live near a couple friends that will be plunging into the black abyss that most people call marriage.

Some side benefits appear to be that my siblings who live in this state are suddenly very social. Coming from a family in which we all love each other, support each other, and are loyal to each other, we are not particularly social when not in direct proximity to each other. I have one brother who has told me some of the biggest events in his life over text message. Which, for me, was fine; we really had nothing to talk about. He texts me "I'm getting married", I text him "congratulations". He texts me "We're having a baby", I text him "congratulations". Done and done my friends. Now though, I am in on birthdays, and holidays, and Sunday dinners. Something to get used to, but not something bad.

Now all I have to do is find a job. Finding a place to live turned out to be really very simple. After one day of my friend and I looking for places we decided that the apartments we had looked at in the middle of the day with the pools and hut tubs, and weight rooms, and no deposit and two months of free rent was the way to go. So, after two hours of unloading my car, by myself, up two flights of stairs, I had an empty car, and a messy apartment. But, no job.

I admit that I can to this town with a somewhat romanticized view of what would happen. I figured that coming down here like I did, I would find an apartment (which I did) and then maybe a few days later a job. Chalk it up to a few days of rest and relaxation. Well.. now having a week of rest and relaxation I am ready and willing to be right back out in that work force... 9 to 5 or otherwise.

But like I always say... it's always better when you wing it.