Carrie's World Blog

Bell's Palsy and Neck Pain - Part 3

2012-02-08T06:25:00.000-06:00

Part 3 - Antibiotics Round 3

Okay, on Monday February 6, I called the specialist and requested a second round of azithromycin. They did fill it, but they weren't convinced that the Bell's Palsy and the infection are connected.

Well, as I've mentioned in parts 1 and 2, my experience implies something different. For the first time since all of this began, my headache pain has virtually disappeared. I say virtually because the nerve is still mildly inflamed, but I don't feel the pain traveling along the nerve through the back of the head. Painkillers weren't working on the pain.

Taking in the entire picture and going by my own personal experiences with migraine headaches, I pretty much figure this latest head pain was tied directly to the nerve.

Now, considering my past experience - when I've had sinus infections, the migraines wouldn't go away until the infection had been dealt with. No amount of painkillers would or could touch them, not even Imitrex.

While I felt crappy earlier (around 7pm last night, I haven't slept yet), I notice that right now (5:47am, Feb 8), my neck only feels mildly stiff but overall breathing is better, my left ear doesn't hurt, and the pressure in my right ear has diminished. It's not completely gone yet, but it's getting there.

So, I've seen improvement in the infection, and I've seen a reduction in the head pain caused by the 7th nerve. The reduction in head pain implies that the nerve isn't as inflamed as it had been earlier.

Okay, so considering this, one can deduce that the improvement in the infection correlates directly with the reduction in head pain. Therefore, it can be said that the improvement in the infection correlates directly to the reduction in inflammation of that 7th nerve.

This brings me to my conclusion that the infection is responsible for all of this, and it will go away when the infection is cleared up.

So far, I can say that the infection isn't completely gone, and neither is the facial paralysis. It's about 90-95% gone.

I hope that this third round will do the trick. If not, I'm not so sure they'll be willing to give me another round. However, I'm not seeing improvement as fast I had last week, but I'm seeing improvement, so that is good. Whatever infection this is, it really dug in deep.

To give you an idea of some of the weirdness I've noticed - when I massage the area around the nerve (muscles, etc), I feel thick fluid move into my throat and some movement in my ear. In fact, when the fluid moves, my right ear gets a little itchy. Seriously, the fluid has been so congested for so long I'm surprised it's moving now.

How do I know I still have an infection in my sinuses?

Well, I am still seeing dark yellow mixed in with the stuff I blow out of my nose. The chunks aren't that big and they've gotten smaller as the infection improves, however they still remain to gunk up the works.

I've got 3 days of meds left, so I hope I see some more improvement soon. If the discoloration of the mucus/phlegm doesn't change to it's normal clear color by Friday, I will phone again and ask for the round to be extended. I don't want to give this infection any more days to grab hold of my system. I just want to knock it out and be done with it already. I've had it longer than a month. I mean, I sat on it for awhile (at least a couple of weeks before the facial paralysis started) trying to let my body deal with it. I think it's more than proved it can't deal with this one on it's own. I'm off for some sleep now.

Bell's Palsy and Neck Pain - Part 2

2012-02-06T02:32:00.002-06:00

Part 2 - Treatment with Medication

Okay, when I found out my MRI was clear and that it "was safe to call it Bell's Palsy" - no, this is not a definitive diagnosis because there are no clear indicators what's causing the facial paralysis. However, what else do you call 7th nerve facial paralysis?

One of my first concerns with all this happened to be the other meds I take. I needed to know if it was safe to take Mucinex-D, Allegra, naproxen sodium, as well as the other supplements I take while taking prednisone.

Turns out that it's safe to do so.

I've been taking Mucinex-D, Allegra, naproxen sodium and the following supplements before I was even diagnosed with this:

CoQ-10 100mg

Acidophilus 1 capsule

Cinnamon 1,000mg

Milk Thistle 175mg

Vitamin E 400 IU

Flax Seed Oil 1000mg

Cranberry 450mg

As of yesterday, I started using Triple Strength Cranberry which has 2000mg (2 g) per capsule as well as 100mg Vitamin C (167% daily value) and 10% of Vitamin E and Vitamin D3 (400 IU). Flax Seed Oil provides a source of Omega 3's (rather than fish oil), and I'm strongly considering adding in a Vitamin B complex. I briefly contemplated adding Zinc, but if I do, it would have to a small dose because it does seem to be in enough of what I eat that I shouldn't be deficient in it, but one never knows...

I added a B-Complex, but it seems like it might have been too strong of a dose, so I think I'll be looking to cut it down a bit to a level that makes sense for my body.

I finished my second round of antibiotics on Saturday February 4th and the prednisone a day or two before that. I had been worried that the prednisone made my facial nerve recovery possible, but now that I take in the whole picture - then up to now - I see that the likely impetus behind the quick recovery of my facial nerves would be the antibiotics.

Unfortunately, while I've made great progress while on the azithromycin, I didn't make any headway on the Amoxicillin and the infection got really out of hand. It got to the point that my breathing was terrible. The prednisone helped a ton, which is why I had some misconceptions about it, but it wasn't the cure all I first thought, which is why I had to get a stronger antibiotic.

I'm not completely healed, and I'm worried that I might start to backslide now that I'm done with the azithromycin. I believe that because, while I felt great enough to play disc golf on Saturday (mild pain in my right ear only), by Sunday morning I was feeling pain in my left ear and the pain in my right ear sort of picked up again. I ended up sleeping all day. I feel better, but I still feel a mild pain/congestion in my left ear. Since I'm feeling it in both ears, I know the infection isn't completely gone. However, because it improved so drastically while I took the azithromycin, I know I can get better with another round of antibiotics.

I'm almost there, just not 100% yet.

If what I've learned means anything, the key is keeping that nerve down.

Here's what I mean. Saturday night, I felt it flare up - in fact it kept me up a bit Saturday night and I had to ice it down. Then, I noticed a return of some of the pressure, etc. on the nerve and a small amount of tingles returned to face.

The connection between the infection/facial nerves and the effectiveness of the antibiotics can't be ignored. At this point, especially because the infection isn't completely gone, I do not believe waiting to see what happens is the right option.

I'm going to call the specialist and ask for another round of antibiotics because I'm tired of feeling sick, and I would love to be healthy - or damn close to it - by Valentine's Day.

I guess what it boils down to is that a "wait and see" approach just doesn't work for me, especially when a treatable infection is involved. It got as bad as it did in the first place because I was "waiting to see" if my body could deal with it and obviously it can't deal with this thing on its own...

Cafe World

2012-01-31T22:02:00.001-06:00

I've played more than a few Facebook games, but after awhile they all seemed to be repetitive and...well...boring. It also didn't help that many of them had difficulty working properly in the Facebook interface and by the time some of the problems got fixed, Facebook updated their programming and the game interfaces were problematic...again.

This is still going on today. It's kind of a pain, especially with Zynga games because they're so neighbor intensive. So why is that a problem?

Well, because just when I build up a decent set of neighbors in Cafe World (CW), they get so irritated with the faulty game play and all the problems which Zynga seems to be very slow to fixing. that they decide to quit playing and block the game. So, that means, I'm losing neighbors and game players all the time and I've had to resort to fan websites to build up neighbors that play CW.

Okay, so everyone does it, so why should it seem like a big deal? Because Facebook would prefer that you only "friend" those you actually "know."Um...well...that's all fine and dandy if your friends and family actually play these games, but for me, none of them do, and I'm not alone.

I have to admit, I've actually met some very interesting people through game play, even people in my own state I never would have met if it weren't for Facebook games. So, I don't mind needing to find gaming friends.

I do have a problem with overzealous games, as do most people. Then, I discovered farming games. I tried Farmville, but that game has never loaded right and takes forever just to get to the screen and then freeze, so I stopped wasting my time there. Plus, there was too much to do. Same thing with many of the other Zynga games. There are just too many tasks/goals, and some of them can be so difficult, if not impossible to accomplish, so I gave up even trying as it took all the fun out of playing.

News flash - most of us average game players don't mind a challenge, but games are a way for us to escape the stresses of our everyday lives and have a little fun in the process. I like video games, I do, but the last thing I want is to be repeatedly frustrated by game tasks. Some of them I'll do, some of them I'll skip if I can, and some of them I'll have my husband do if I need them to continue to play the game.

So, when I discovered Farm Town, I began to enjoy it, but even that one got old...the growing times were annoying and they took too long, so I kind of only play that game once in awhile. I like it, I just wish it didn't take so long to grow stuff.

That's why I liked Cafe World, there were so many items to cook that took under an hour, and a ton you could cook in 5 minutes. It made it easy to play the game when I wanted to, for as long as I wanted to. Then, the more I played, the more challenges popped up. That was all great and everything, until they put these ridiculously short time limits on goals, requiring you to cook hideous amounts of long cooking dishes (some up to 2 days), and making the only thing that can help you (timed spices) cost Cafe Cash, and too costly to even desire to pay for it, making the game begin to become unplayable.

Some time back, I wrote about how I thought Cafe World should make different types of spices and make it easier for us to get spices to help us spice our dishes.

Well, they sort of did. Unfortunately, the last week or so, one of the ways - The Food Polls - haven't been working for most of us. It's not counting all the voting we are doing and it's forcing us to post a poll several times a day. So, is this a Zynga problem or a Facebook interface issue? Either way, I'd think the Zynga developers would be trying to fix it as soon as possible, but players don't seem to be seeing much improvement.

There's also another problem, Cafe World developers keep adding new timed goals and taking some away, and every time they do it messes up the functionality of game play - something that continues to annoy long standing and loyal players.

Loyal game players are getting so annoyed with these continual problems that they have been dropping off the radar for months now. In fact, some time ago, I hired several people for my ice cream cart, but only 2 of them play now, so it's impossible to get the number of people CW requires to operate the ice cream cart.

I've since added a ton of new neighbors, but even these new ones have begun to reach their limit and are torn between playing and quitting. If CW wants to retain these game players, they need to listen to them, and change a few things for the better. Here's what could be improved:

1. Timed goals can be a fun challenge, but the timer for each goal should start when the individual player actually chooses to start the goal. For example, the Joe and Lisa wedding challenge had 20 parts, and not everyone got the same amount of time because of the goofy way the global start timer worked, which was hideously unfair when the timer should have started for each individual player when that player chose to start the challenge rather than on a global clock that started at an unspecified time that no one had any clue of. That was the dumbest thing. Not only that, but if you accidentally hit the "back" button on the goal - like I did with the Joe goals - I didn't see the Joe goals again until I had 5 days left on the Lisa goals. Boy was I surprised - and miffed and frustrated - when I saw that I only had 5 days left to complete 10 more goals. I had no shot whatsoever of earning that groom stove...grrr!

2. In timed challenges, the goals should fit the timing.

2a. For instance, when there's only a couple of days to complete as many as 10 parts to a challenge, and you're only going to give 10 days in which to complete them, then the items you need to cook should not take you that long, especially when you require that 50 items be cooked. 50 dishes that take 1 day to cook for 1 part of a goal is ridiculous at best, especially when we are limited in the number of stoves we are allowed to have.
- yeah, I get it, it's CW's way of forcing us to use spices. That would have worked, but I used mine all up just mere days before for the winter challenges, and no way was I going to invest in more spices - not at the prices they're asking for!

2b. That's not the only problem. Considering collecting items by asking neighbors directly can take days, even weeks as I continue to discover, the collected items should be done through global posts so those that are playing regularly can opt to pitch in. It's even taken me longer than 24 hours on occasion to collect things through global requests. It's these parts of goals that are keeping players behind. Why not require things to be purchased with coins for some of the goals? That would mix it up.

2c. The limit on the number of stoves, and for many players counter space, is cruelly low. If it weren't for my concentrating on the Buck stoves, I wouldn't have had nearly enough stoves to complete the Lisa goals I did complete. And no, I had no shot at making any of them ultra stoves. Sure it sucks, but I have 5 stoves each with multiple burners (1 with 4, 2 with 3, 2 with 2). But seriously, why only 1 stove every couple of levels? Why can't we have more stoves, especially when there are timed challenges to complete?

3. What's with all of the spices (outside of salt and pepper) costing Cafe Cash only? I understand why the newer spices should be as they do much more than just help cooking time along, and even instant spices since just 1 works to complete a dish that takes a couple of days, but why can't we buy 12hr, 6hr, and 1hr spices with coins? Seriously, we should be able to buy some of these spices with coins.

4. Hello, I keep clicking to give people stuff and it says I'm earning 1000 coins and 500 cafe points. The coins appear, but the cafe points don't always show up. That's an inconsistency that needs to be fixed.

Okay - Buck's back, but 120 servings (Kabayaki) at 12hrs per dish! 20 light tubes (asking people directly) and I've got 5 days to do all 5 of them! WTH? Seriously, I appreciate the second chance at the stoves, but why only 5 days? I have 5 stoves that need to not only be completed, but 5 stoves to upgrade to ultra too! That's a bit of a crunch! It would probably take me 5 days per stove just to finish expanding them! The only way to finish these tasks anywhere close to on time, you need a ton of spices, which isn't necessarily all that fair because you can really only get the amount of instant spices required is to buy them outright.

Like I said, I enjoy the challenges, I just wish there would be more time for the timed challenges, or cooking dishes that didn't take as long. Right now, I only have a couple of 50% stoves, and even with them, cooking 120 dishes at 12hrs per dish for 1 part of the upgrade to ultra challenge for 1 stove seems to be completely impossible. At this point, I'm going to do what I can do to finish expanding the other 4 stoves. If I'm able to get 1 to ultra, it will be a miracle....

Neck Pain and Bell's Palsy - Part 1

2012-01-29T08:32:00.001-06:00

Part 1 - Leading Up to the Diagnosis

Hey all!

I haven't posted since last April because...well...the continuous migraines just became too much to handle, and once I started mending, I needed to withdraw from everything.

I withdrew partially to encourage my healing, but the other part was due to embarrassment because I had let so many people down when I neglected all the book blogs. So, I buried myself in the world of anime.

This jaunt into the world of anime taught me much about my own writing as well, but that's for another post. As I healed, I began to reach back out into the internet world, beyond just playing FB games.

Then, just as all began to seem right with the world - hey, I was managing my pain, I was able to get out and be active even during cold weather, and I began working seriously on one of the stories I've thought about for some time. Not just hacking out the story, but building it using a sort of outline - something I've never done before. So, yeah, I thought things were going great.

Then, on January 20, I came down with a pain in the neck. No, not a vampire, a literal pain in the neck. While the pain didn't assert itself until a Friday night, I believe it had been building and began manifesting itself through the eye "ticking," "fluttering," or whatever you want to call it. At first I thought my eye was just "fluttering" (rapidly opening and closing) because the air in the condo was dry. That had been going on for at least 5 days prior to the pain I began to feel in my neck and head.

At this time, I must go back a little as I realize some other facts may be relevant. Roughly Monday of that week (Jan 17), I started to feel like I was getting a sinus infection, but waited a day thinking it might have just been congestion caused from allergies to dust (I hit a couple of dust pockets along the way while I was cleaning the kitchen and other related areas)...

Okay, so now that I look even closer at my own recounting, I'm beginning to wonder if the "eye flutters" started even earlier, such as the Friday to Saturday before that (Jan 13, 14), than I'm recalling and I just didn't pay attention to it.

Anyway, our new fridge was coming Wednesday (Jan 18), and the last thing I wanted was to be was ill. When getting ready for the fridge, I stumbled upon some current unused antibiotics (Amox, Clav) that I had to stop using before because it made the migraine that came with the last sinus infection that much worse (I had been off caffeine at the time, so I had no real recourse to deal with the migraine pain in the first place and sure couldn't tolerate it getting worse) that were still good. So, I started taking them. That was about early Tuesday (or late Monday night). By about Wednesday, I noticed that my ability to taste foods had disappeared and was replaced with an oily taste/coating in my mouth. It was very weird and something I had never experienced before that I can recall. I thought that the antibiotics were responsible and thought that even though the bottle said the meds were still good that maybe they went bad, and stopped taking them.

[Note: I know, I know self-medicating, blah, blah, blah. However, I'm prone to sinus infections and have been for years. I get on average 4 to 6 of them a year. If the meds aren't working initially, I'm not going to throw out good money because it just means the meds aren't working because I waited too long to see the doc about said sinus infection, and it's nested deep in my sinus cavity. So, I save that which doesn't work one time for another time. It has saved me some trouble, especially when a sinus infection would crop up when I was out of state or camping...basically, I save those extra meds (on the rare occasions I have any) for emergency purposes only. Besides, once you've had as many sinus infections (I'm 39 years old and have been dealing from at least the age of 15. 24 years times 4 infections a year minimum equates to not quite 100 of them. Experience in getting them is just as valuable as a dr learning how to diagnose the symptoms...) as I have, you know when you have one without question. You also know when your body is capable of healing itself without help and when it's time to go to the doctor.]

Well, my sense of taste didn't return and the oily feeling/taste remained. By Friday night (Jan 20) I began to feel headache pain similar to a migraine, but it was accompanied by neck stiffness. Along with that neck and head pain, I felt all kinds of head pressure, much like a sinus infection, but only on one side of my face, which has happened to me before, so I didn't put much stock in it being anything different than a sinus infection. As it reminded me of a migraine and I get some relief using ice, so I started icing the area down.

However, by the next day (according to my husband's memory), I noticed that half of my face wasn't working, but I still felt some tingles and numbness (like you feel when you get a shot of Novocain), and I began to feel a little worried, but I wasn't going to let it put me in a tailspin. Positive thinking can do wonders when dealing with weird stuff.

In fact, I felt pretty good that morning and got all bundled up to go out disc golfing at Tendick (a disc golf course in WI). I even went so far as to enjoy a Baltic Porter from a local brewery (Silver Creek in WI) after we finished the round. The beer was okay, but the taste was extremely muted. Normally, I consider that beer to be quite decent, so between the continued lack of taste and the facial paralysis/tingles, I knew something was not right and had plans to contact my doctor on Monday morning anyway.

Unfortunately, my body had other ideas. Saturday night (Jan 21), the pain in my neck and head returned with a strange sort of vengeance. It hurt, a lot. I felt like the right side of my face was going to explode. However, I needed to know where this pain was stemming from so I could give the doctor as much info as possible. Not only that, but I felt that if I knew where it stemmed from, I could get a better idea of what I was dealing with myself. Eventually that night, the pain sort of "settled" on the neck, head, and right side of my face with a loci behind/below my right ear.

There was something different about this pain though. It wasn't throbbing, but felt like the area was "burning," as if on fire. Okay, so by this point, I realized that this head pain could do some damage if I couldn't get it to calm down, not to mention drive me crazy. So, I began icing it down again, but not at 20 minute intervals like I was doing the night before, but constant - this was around 6pm Saturday night and I continued to ice it through the night (as long as I could control the position of the bottle of ice) and the next day.

By Sunday (Jan 22), I was feeling even more miserable and beginning to wonder what could be causing this. I was able to actually figure out from a Google search that it was possible I was suffering from Bell's Palsy - depending on the cause.

See, I've had Chicken Pox 3 times in my life: once in grade school and then again when I was in my 20s (early and late). Due to the fact that these later episodes came on the heels of vaccines for chicken pox, understanding how diseases like to mutate, the fact I worked in the daycare industry at the time, and considering how close in time those later two outbreaks were, I honestly believe (and still do) that I have come in contact with 3 different strains of the chicken pox. If a flu virus or other virus can mutate, why not chicken pox? That line of thinking always made sense to me. So, when I saw that one cause of Bell's Palsy could be the chicken pox (shingles) virus, I began to wonder if that was what I had.

The morning of Jan 23rd, I called my primary care physician and left a message to fill him in on what happened over the course of the weekend. I saw him later that morning. While I managed to fill him in on as much as I thought relevant, I did leave out the part about the antibiotics...my head hurt so much by this point that I forgot to mention it, plus I felt that I just wasn't being heard.

I honestly felt that I was suffering from a bad sinus infection/right ear infection because my right ear felt like it wanted to explode. He didn't seem concerned or anything. He just proscribed a low dose of prednisone (40mg to start, which is low when considering what many of the medical information out there says) and a barbiturate for the pain that other painkillers can't seem to touch. I even asked him, "Aren't you even concerned about the extreme pain by my ear? It really feels like my head is going to explode." (This may not be exact, but pretty close to what I actually said.) No, he wasn't. In fact, he told me to come back in about 3 weeks.

Three weeks! Um hello! If the pain in my ear continued, I was afraid I could be at risk to lose what little of my hearing I have left! Okay, I can hear, but I seem to have an awful lot of trouble understanding and hearing people due to fluid and what not from my allergies, and I know several people who have had ear problems and lost their hearing in one ear because nothing was done in a timely manner.

So, in the parking lot of my primary care physician, I called the offices of the ear, nose and throat physician I had seen on previous occasions for sinus infections my primary care physician didn't really want to deal with. They got me in on Wednesday (Jan 25th) with the physician's assistant. They were going to delay that a week and have me see the man himself (Dr. Kandula), but my concern over the extreme pain in my ear and my strong feelings that a sinus infection could be behind all this helped them decide that coming in sooner could be to my benefit.

The blood tests my primary care doc took were negative. That means that the usual suspects he was testing for (Diabetes being one of them, and I am assuming the chicken pox virus being one as well) were not the cause. I ended up getting an MRI on Thursday (Jan 26th).

Luckily for me, the MRI results didn't show anything bad, which is a good thing.

So, what did the specialist/physician's assistant proscribe?

A higher dose of prednisone (than what my primary care physician, which was a 40mg taper) - a 60mg taper (60mg for 3 days, 40mg for 3 days and 20mg for 3 days) - as well as 10 days of amoxicillin.

See Part 2 for more info on how my recovery is going so far.

Weight and Eating

2011-04-01T17:43:00.000-05:00

I've been reinforcing some terrible eating habits for a long time now, so making positive changes hasn't been easy, at all! In fact, I slipped off the wagon last night.

I broke down and had two sodas while at my parents' house last night: 1 Coca Cola and 1 Mountain Dew Code Red. I'm not proud of this slip, but I accept it for what it is - the result of an addiction. Now that I've had 1, I might be able to go the next couple of days and not feel like I "need" one. For the most part, there isn't a day that goes by that I don't want to have a soda, so it's hard.

Now, by nature, we try to substitute one addiction with something else. Recently, I've used ICEEs to fill that void. Last night, I finally reached my saturation point with those, so I'm looking for something new to hopefully fill that void left by regular soda consumption. While I am able to eat Kellogg's Mini-Wheats or Nature Valley granola bars more often than I have before, these items just don't fill that void.

I feel like I need to find something to fill that void so I can stop having these soda cravings. I thought maybe it might be the phosphorus that my body wanted, but now I'm not so sure. I researched further, and discovered that Coca Cola uses the spent leaf of the cocaine plant (all cocaine has already been extracted) to keep the soda fresh. This may sound strange, but it's similar to the process of using a spent hop to preserve beer. Beer makers can use spent hops to keep the flavor of the hop from influencing the flavor of the beer while still getting the preservative effects of the hop.

How do we know all the cocaine has really been extracted? How do we know that there aren't very low cocaine levels in the soda?

I guess I'm just looking for a plausible reason why my body would crave this drink on a regular basis if it's considered safe by the FDA. My own personal experience is really causing me to question not only my own food choices, but those that are considered safe to eat by the FDA.

As a result of all this questioning, I'm trying to be more natural, which means I do not eat anything with artificial sweeteners in it anymore. While HFCS is considered problematic, I'm making sure to reduce my intake - anything in moderation.

However, I'm also becoming more concerned about what I'm not getting because my food allergies prevent me from eating healthy foods. Since we've discovered that probiotics are good for the body, and are now available in yogurts and other foods I'm allergic to, I'm beginning to realize that some of my digestive problems could be caused by what I'm not eating.

So, I'm one of these people that need to use supplements. Believe me, I would much rather like to consume foods like vegetables and fruits to get these things, but my allergies do not permit this. In many cases, my body considers these healthy things toxins and will usually expel them before my body has a chance to digest them.

Right now, I'm starting a supplement regimen and keeping a pill diary - what I taken when and if I'm experiencing anything strange. I'm not posting anything right now on that, because I want to give myself some time to adjust to the regimen and see what reactions I'm having.

I'm feeling pretty good today in terms of my ankle issues (sprained it heavily July 2010) and this past week, I've finally been able to go up and down the stairs without feeling any pain in my ankle. Yay! I can walk normal again!

Weight Watch

2011-03-10T17:13:00.000-06:00

It began with a shot...of Jello...

Okay, before I get to far into this, if any of you have been keeping track with my weight loss or health discussions, you'll remember that I gave up drinking Coca Cola the date I started keeping track of my weight and posting it for all to see.

If you're wondering why I would take something so personal and publicize, there's a simple answer - motivation and accountability.

By seeing my weight numbers there, in print, every time I look at the blog to update, check in with comments and such, I see a big bold reminder that I must remain vigilant in my weight loss journey.

You'll also notice that it's been awhile since my last entry. Well, that's because, after all the eating and drinking on Super Bowl Sunday, I shot back up to 220lbs. I'm not kidding you when I say that I put on all that weight in one day of eating and drinking.

I found myself surprised by this because I've been able to drink my lovely tasting craft beers and find not too much would change on the scale, and what I ate never seemed to matter either.

So, what did I do differently on Super Bowl Sunday?

Well - and this is the interesting part - I had some...okay a few...okay, maybe about 6 or 7...or more...shots of Apple Pie. Not to mention all the beer I drank during the game (I know I had a couple of Sandcreek Hard Lemonades, an Oso Night Train Porter, and I believe I split a Consecrator Dopplebock and had a pint of Night Tripper - I think). Oh, and I forgot about the Jello shot. Yeah, I could have been even more soused, but I was saying no to all the other Jello shots and Apple Pie shots offered throughout the game because I do not drink hard alcohol, and have not knowingly drank any hard alcohol drinks since I accidentally drank from my grandmother's glass of seven-up when I was 8 years old. I didn't know it was spiked with vodka until after I'd already drunk it. I was too fast for her and she couldn't stop me, lol!

In fact,I hadn't planned on any shots of alcohol that day, Jello or otherwise, and had started to sober up, and I planned on being sober by the time we got home, but the Green Bay Packer Super Bowl win was such a great high that I thought, "What the heck, I might as well try it!", and that's how it began. Yep, it all began with a Jello shot spiked with Vodka! After having that, I saw that neat green liquid in a shot glass and asked what that was. It was called Apple Pie (a mix of apple sour and golden schlager or something to that effect). I tried one and it was too damn tasty, and too damned easy to continue drinking. Good thing I wasn't driving.

Considering as to how I didn't even start drinking craft beer until I was 35, I still haven't really drunk enough to know what my limits are, especially with hard alcohol. Plus, it wouldn't have mattered how much water I drank, I still would have had that nasty headache the next day. See, I don't get that after a night of drinking craft beer, as long as I have at least 1 pint of water. I usually drink a pint of water for every pint of beer I drink, so I haven't really had a hangover until that Monday after the Super Bowl.

If I have my say, it will never happen again either. As good as that Apple Pie stuff is, I honestly don't feel the after effects are remotely worth the taste. I'll stick to craft beer, because at least I know my limits there, and I don't feel the need or desire to drink all that frequently. I limit it to once or twice a week.

All I can say is, there must have been a lot of sugar in those shots because I can't see where the weight would have come from otherwise because I honestly didn't eat that much because my food allergies kept me from eating more that two sandwiches (just a slice of meat and a slice of cheese), a couple of pretzels and some mini eclairs. I limited myself on those too. I didn't even eat the fast food I brought home that night. I stuck it in the fridge, drank a glass of water, refilled it, went to the bathroom and climbed into bed. So, while I was pretty soused that night, I can still remember that, so that's a good thing. I ate the food the next day.

Seriously, I can eat food - including junk food - and drink craft beer, and the weight gain never happened that quickly, ever! I've been making up for it ever since.

On a side note though, I managed to add one more positive thing to my diet - fiber. Yeah, I haven't been eating enough fiber. I decided that since I've been able to mostly avoid soda (I've had an average of one soda a month to cut the cravings, but I'm working really hard to avoid having any this month.), that it was time to work on the next step in improving my eating habits - adding a bowl of Mini-Wheats. I figured even on an every other day basis right now would be acceptable. After all, I'm trying to get my body to accept the regimen, not reject it.

So far, it's worked. This has also seemed to change what I choose to eat after dinner. For example, I was up a bit late last night watching some programs I DVRd, and I got hungry. Part of me wanted to have a fried egg with bacon, but I opted for a bowl of mini-wheats (frosted and cinnamon swirl mix) instead.

I ended up eating a lot less that I would have otherwise, and I woke up even lighter than I expected I would. A win-win.

Out of this I came up with 3 positives:
1. I learned not to drink tasty hard alcohol, especially because it's fattening!
2. I have finally added fiber into my diet, when previous attempts failed
3. I got back down to 210, and then managed to lose even more weight, proving that my weight loss is not hampered by my supposed under-active thyroid.

Oh, yeah, and as of this week, I finally managed to wake up with only a minor headache that's barely a blip on the radar! So, make that 4 positives!

If I can do it, so can you! Remember, you are not alone because every normal person deals with weight issues! Don't diet, change the way you eat and you'll see some slow weight loss progress. Add a decent, maintainable exercise regimen, and you'll see even more weight loss.

Until next time, have a great one!

Going to the Super Bowl!!!

2011-01-26T15:30:00.000-06:00

Yep, the Packers are going to the Super Bowl and it's a party...no, it's Margi Gras up in here! We're all celebrating!

Here are some of the interesting and roflmao videos I found on youtube:

Migraines

2010-11-29T17:05:00.002-06:00

If you're anything like me, then you've experienced migraines for many different reasons. People are always looking for cures and remedies.

Well, in the 11+ years I've been dealing with them, I've found the easiest way to deal with them is to discover the trigger and eliminate that trigger from your life.

Before I get into that, I thought I should help answer a question some readers might have: How do I know I have a migraine and not just a regular headache?

Well, it's usually subjective because, despite what some people might think, not all migraines are the same, and not every migraine will display every symptom.

Huh?

Let's start with the symptoms of migraines (taken from the Mayo Clinic website):
- Moderate to severe pain, which may be confined to one side of the head or may affect both sides
- Head pain with a pulsating or throbbing quality
- Pain that worsens with physical activity
- Pain that interferes with your regular activities
- Nausea with or without vomiting
- Sensitivity to light and sound

Many people tend to think that migraines come with sensitivity to light and sound as well as nausea and/or vomiting.

That's not true. Basically, the term migraine is used to describe the level of pain. Minor headaches tend to be dealt with by Tylenol, Advil (Ibuprofen) or Aleve (Naproxen Sodium). It's when these medications don't work, or don't work for long that should be an indicator that you might be suffering from migraines.

Okay, if I think I'm suffering from migraines, should I just take that over-the-counter (OTC) Excedrin for my pain?

Well, only your doctor can help you with that.

Why shouldn't I just take it without going to the doctor?

Because persisting headaches can be a symptom of something much worse, and only a trained medical physician can truly make that distinction.

Besides that, most medical websites, like Web MD will tell you that caffeine can hurt as much as it might help your migraine pain.

Many OTC painkillers do contain caffeine, even in small amounts. The problem with regular caffeine consumption is that it's addictive and causes withdrawals. Even though you're only talking about painkillers, unless you drink water only and eat zero chocolate (no chocolate, tea, soda or coffee - even decaf varieties have some caffeine in it), then chances are you have a bit of caffeine in your system.

Not only that, but the more you use these OTC varieties to treat your headaches, the more likely you are to suffer headaches caused by these pain relievers.

How do I know this?

Well, for over 20 years of my life, I was a soda drinker. Not just any soda, but Coca Cola Classic regular. I love the soda, but my body wasn't loving it, so I figured it was time to quit. So I did on roughly October 16th, 2010.

I feel like I've been paying for it ever since. Well, when I first went off, even though I was drinking iced tea to keep caffeine flowing into my system, it wasn't nearly enough and I soon suffered withdrawal symptoms which lasted a little less than a week.

However, the extensive amounts of caffeine I was consuming (4 to 8 cans a day at 35mg caffeine per can, according to wilstar.com) must have been keeping the headache pain I'd been dealing with at bay because once I got over the withdrawal symptoms, I started suffering from one long continuous headache that quickly morphed into a continuous migraine.

I say "feel like" because I figured out that this never ending migraine I'm currently dealing with is really from a sinus infection of some sort, and I must have had it for some time, but never really felt it.

Now I know I Suffer from Migraines, What do I do?
This leads me to my next point. You need to find the trigger for your migraine and eliminate it.

Right now, for me, the cause of my never ending migraine is my sinus infection. Before the migraine will stop, I need to take care of the infection. My doctor gave me doxycycline. It's not working. It only serves to increase the headache pain and the nausea and I soon learned after missing a dose last night that it's not working one bit. I stopped taking it because it's stupid to continue meds that aren't working or making other symptoms worse. (I did call my doctor and let him know this.)

However, there are many other triggers that cause migraines as one can find on the Mayo Clinic's website:
- Fluctuations in Hormones (mainly women) as in during menstruation, pregnancy or menopause.
- Foods are a Huge Problem for both sexes:
1. alcohol (beer and red wine)
2. aged cheeses (sharp, x-sharp, etc.) www.oukosher.org has a nice list of aging times
3. chocolate
4. aspartame (I'm tempted to put all artificial sweeteners here, including Splenda)
5. excess caffeine
6. monosodium glutamate (msg), but I wouldn't rule out other flavor enhancers such as disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate. READ FOOD LABELS TO BE SURE NO FLAVOR ENHANCERS ARE USED!
7. salty foods
8. processed foods
- Skipping Meals
- Stress
- Sensory Stimuli
1. bright lights
2. sun glare
3. loud sounds
4. aromas or strange smells - perfume, food, secondhand smoke, paint thinner
- Changes in Sleep Patterns
1. too much
2. too little
3. change in pattern due to changing work shifts
4. jet lag
- Intense Physical Exertion
1. extensive exercise or training
2. sports
3. sexual activity
- Environmental Changes
1. weather
2. barometric pressure
- Medications
How Do I Determine My Triggers?
Don't know which ones do? Then you must determine the answer through trial and error. You may not like all varieties of cheeses, but try the ones you do to see if any of them might be a trigger.

The best way to determine which foods, activities and stressors are triggers for you, you need to keep a journal of everything you eat, when you eat it (save food labels or write down all the ingredients), how much you eat (few sips, a cup, a bowl, a slice, etc) and what you do (e.g. - fly, play video games, spend time outside on a bright day...).

Not only do you need to keep track of food and activities, but you need to keep track of your sleeping habits and the amount of stress. Write down your personal feelings as your feeling them - try to list exact times - because those could be indicators of the types of headaches you're dealing with, including migraines with aura (visual indicators such as flashes of lights, zigzag patterns or blind spots).

It's important to be able to make this distinction because the treatment/prevention is different - again, talk to your physician and bring your diary with you (it's best to give a copy of the diary to your doctor so he/she can study it, he/she may ask for it, but not always).

Once you figure out your triggers and begin to eliminate them from your diet, others may surface, which is why it's always important to continue to keep track of your eating habits and activities.

Trial and Error
Food diaries are great, but they can't always tell you exactly what food or additive might be causing your migraines. That's where trial and error comes in.

Once you know your questionable foods, you need to isolate your body's reaction to each one because, it might not be just one of your favorite foods, but a combination of them. You isolate your body's reaction by having a diet consisting of foods with no known triggers in them, and then for about a week (you may need much less time) or at least a 5 days.

Why at least 5 days? To eliminate the possibility of a stray headache or migraine. You need to be sure that the migraine is caused by the food you're consuming, and 5 to 7 instances is the best way to indicate a surefire trigger.

For most of the foods, eliminating them from your diet is the best course of action. However, if you (like me), realize that only the most aged cheeses can give you problems, then you must eliminate them from your diet or severely limit them to once in a great while. Look at the aged cheese list from www.oukosher.org and make a list of the cheeses that tend to cause migraines the most. Again, trial and error is the best method to determine what foods bother you.

In Depth Look at Triggers and What they Mean
Not every person has every trigger, which is another reason why it's important to know your triggers and not just assume that what's on the above list is a trigger. To help you get an idea of what I'm talking about, I'll give you some of my experiences.

For example, I've found that mass produced beer (especially pale lagers) or poorly made microbrews tend to aggravate my migraines. As long as I drink water while I'm drinking my favorite craft beers I can usually wake up pain free. But it must be more than one glass. I find at least 3 glasses of water works best. Yes, you might get up frequently to pee, but better that than a migraine! :)

For years, I've been able to eat chocolate without much recourse. In fact, I love dark chocolate. Unlike most women, I never craved chocolate during my menstrual cycle and I could take it or leave it. However, in the past year, I began to crave it during my menstrual cycle, and it became a migraine trigger. That means new triggers can develop all the time, just like food allergies.

Something interesting I found out is that I can't consume artificial sweeteners like splenda or aspartame because they do give me headaches or make me feel all around crappy. However, natural sugars (sucrose, lactose[milk sugar], dextrose[malt sugar]) and honey are fine.

Let's talk about a trigger we may not be considering - computer usage and video games.

That's right. Computer usage falls under the category of sensory stimuli. That's right video games, emails, websites - especially those annoying flashing ones - can cause migraines. Limit your usage, dull the brightness on your screen and you may reduce the risk of your computer/video games causing migraines. Also, avoid games with lots of flashing light/graphic effects because those are the worst offenders.

Let's not forget TV shows and movies. The more action and CGI graphics involved, the worse it can be, especially if those graphics move quickly, change view point too quickly or are too bright (explosions, or bright lights).

I'm not saying give it up altogether, just limit them. I have to avoid anything visual that flashes, like a camera, strobe light, etc or I will suffer from a migraine.

Aromas can be one of the quickest triggers, especially if you suffer from allergies. I can end up with an instant headache when in the presence of smoke of any kind or strong perfume. If I don't exit an area immediately, I will end up with a full-blown migraine.

Living in Wisconsin and growing up eating cheese, I find it hard to give up cheese altogether. For this reason, I've tried many different cheeses.

I can eat mozzarella, provolone, mild and medium cheddar, Widmer's mild brick (this cheese is awesome!), Colby and Monterey Jack. Of course, all the caffeine I've consumed on a regular basis may have hidden the headaches so I never knew they were triggers, so we'll see.

How do I Deal With Migraines?
Outside of changing your diet and activities to avoid stressors, there's not much else you can do. Of course there are painkillers like Imitrex (Sumatriptan), but they do take time to kick in.

Some people like to use a heating pad. I don't, and I don't recommend it either. Here's why:
Most headaches are caused by enlarged blood vessels passing through your regular sized veins or regular sized blood vessels trying to navigate tightened or narrowed veins.

Heat tends to excite most molecules, making them move farther away from each other (expand or enlarge). In muscles, this effect is akin to inflammation. In a sense, that's what's going on, inflammation. Heat can make inflammation worse, especially with a headache. The reason I feel heat doesn't work the best is because if your vessels are the enlarged particles, the heat will only serve to excite and engorge the vessels further, causing even more pain.

I find ice tends to work best because it does two things: numbs the area in pain and shrinks the blood vessels and can shrink the veins if they are inflamed.

What about you, what are your triggers?

Any questions I didn't answer? Don't be afraid to ask them.

Rehabbing My Ankle

2010-10-12T00:36:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of July, I sprained my ankle very badly - doesn't sound correct, but it works. Anyway, I've been working on getting it back into shape. Well, I did find out that it could take as long as 4 months to heal, with proper rehab techniques.

I admit that I've done some of the right ones, but not all of them. I think, at first, I progressed too quickly, so I got complacent and just assumed I was on the mend and would get back to normal in short order. Well, here I am three months later and not only do I still feel pain in my heel when I stretch and rotate my foot, I feel pain half-way up my leg.

The heel pain when I stretch and rotate is expected with the high-degree of sprain, but what's not expected at this point in my recovery is the pain I'm feeling halfway up my leg. It's a strange pain, and one I haven't felt in years.

I used to feel this kind of pain from the time I was in kindergarten to grade 6 (when I got my first pair of high-tops), in my feet, specifically my left one. However, after I got my first pair of true high-top tennis shoes, the pain miraculously disappeared and I went on to be fairly active and able to wear low-top shoes without too much difficulty.

It's a strange kind of pain that I have a very hard time describing. There's pain, but there's also this insane need to kick the leg out several times, as if it's restless. It's not just restlessness there, but pain, and the pain isn't always there. It comes and goes.

I stretch my calf muscles and Achilles tendons daily. Is it too much? Not enough? I don't know.

All I know is that I've got almost 3 months under my belt and I feel like I'm stalling. I'm wearing hiking boots everywhere except in the house. My ankle can bear weight and as long as I'm not doing major activity or standing, I'm okay. I pay attention to my ankle. It tells me when enough is enough, and I listen.

I try very hard not to "over do" it, but because my pain receptors don't work right anyway, I'm beginning to wonder if the signals are right, but at the same time I'm wondering if the added pain is due to the change in seasons - I suffer from arthritis too, which makes categorizing pain (determining source or cause) that much more difficult.

If that's the case, then I'm in for a long and painful winter. The main problem is, I just don't know how to tell and not sure if the doctor will either...but I suppose I need to know one way or the other....

Levothyroxine

2010-07-28T07:19:00.001-05:00

While I had been delving into the online gaming and social scene for research and other purposes, and blogged about it a couple of times, recent developments prompted me to go offline and dive back into real life.

Unfortunately, Murphy had other ideas. That's right, the Murphy stepped in just when I was beginning to think I could re-enter life and said, "I don't think so!"

Okay, he didn't really, but it sure as hell felt like he did. Here's what happened:

For some time now, I've been experiencing increasing amounts of pain, wheezing, and swelling, to the point that everyday life became nearly impossible and the Internet the only form of life I had. Leaving the house to go to the library for books to read wasn't even a possibility there for a time because walking a few feet made me feel like I was going to pass out. I really felt like something just wasn't right, but couldn't "put my finger on it".

Well, through trial and error due to a simple twist of fate, I discovered that the very medication designed to regulate my thyroid created life threatening conditions.

How so?

Well, instead of being able to lose weight, I kept gaining it. I swelled up like a balloon, my blood pressure had been up drastically high and my breathing was awful. Simple movements were so hard. My legs were like tree trunks and my joints like rocks - heavy and difficult to maneuver. I felt chest pains, and those were what scared me the most. I knew it wasn't normal to feel this way, so I kept trying to find something.

Well, due to this difficulty of mobility and constant physical tiring, when my meds ran low, I really had no desire or ability to leave and get them. I wasn't even capable of driving myself anywhere because the pain and swelling were just too much for my body to handle. Then, when a bout of vertigo hit after I returned from Holiwood Nights, I went a week without any of my regular meds because I just couldn't trust myself to go down the stairs of my condo to get them out of my travel bag.

Yeah, I know, I could have had my husband bring them up to me, but rather than risk all that medication coming back up the way it went in, I decided to just go without. Well, after a week of no meds other than my meclizine, I began to feel better. A situation I've found myself in many, many times before, but I never connected the "ill" or "off" feeling with my meds before. However, this time I did.

Why?

Well, since I was feeling better, I even noticed that the swelling had gone down and I began to feel healthy enough to move and actually go up and down the stairs multiple times in one day, I decided it was time to restart my meds again.

That's when I noticed it. The swelling and shallow breathing returned fairly quickly, too quickly for it to be anything else but an allergic reaction to one of the meds I was taking, but I didn't know which one because I restarted all three back up at the same time, so I knew I needed to narrow it down to the culprit. So, I did my research.

Both Naproxen 500mg and HCTZ are known to cause swelling, so I started off my trial and error testing by eliminating one for a week and then the other. I continued taking the Levo with the HCTZ and the swelling occurred, same thing if it was just the Levo and the Naproxen, so I couldn't really be sure if it was one or both causing the swelling and I knew there was only one real way to tell, take only one pill at a time, so the trial began.

For about 4 days I took just the Naproxen 500mg - no swelling or anything, immediate or otherwise, so I eliminated it as the culprit.

I took just the HCTZ for a couple of days (about 2) with no swelling, rough breathing or anything else, so I eliminated it as the problem.

At this point, I hadn't ruled out a problem with the combination of pills, so I knew I needed to do one more test, but I wanted my body clean again, so I stopped taking all meds again. It had been at least a week without the Levo and a couple of days without any meds, so I figured it was time to start taking just the Levo, so I did.

An instant after I took the Levo, the swelling and rough breathing returned. There, I had my culprit, so I stopped taking the Levo, the HCTZ and Naproxen for the next week, and I started feeling so much better! It was about mid to late June at this point. By my second week without Levo, the swelling was completely gone and I noticed I lost about 10 pounds. All the pain I had been feeling began to go away as well.

After the third week without the Levo, I could go up and down the stairs multiple times in an hour! The change was dramatic. Here's the proof:

On Mother's Day 2010 (May 9th), I couldn't even make it beyond hole 7 at Brown Deer disc golf course because I thought I was going to have a heart attack or something. Just over two months later, I was able to make it through the entire course with very little issue other than what I expect, which is slight and due to allergies. Of course, I did feel a bit tired by the end, but it was hot out and it had been awhile since I had been able to do exercise of any kind, so being tired isn't really a big issue at this point.

Things seemed to return to normal. After months of being unable to move properly or do ordinary, everyday things like wash dishes and laundry, I felt like the weight of the world had been removed from my body and my life. I began to want to make up for all of the exercise I lost over the past couple of months.

Well, the next day after my first successful disc golf outing, I opted to play again, at Valley View in New Berlin. On one of the holes in the back nine, I lost sight of a disc and had to search for it (like in real golf, you play from where the disc lands). I ended up in the wrong area and looked in the foliage where I thought it landed. What I found instead was a gigantic hole in the ground, lost my footing and sprained my ankle in the process. My ankle bent so far inward (practically parallel to the ground) that I could feel things stretching. I was lucky I didn't break anything. That was over two weeks ago and it still isn't healed.

I can move around the house, going up and down the stairs normally (left-right-left fashion) still hurts, so I have to do it left foot first on every stair. I do rotation and stretching exercises everyday to keep it the muscles from stiffening up, and I walk around the house as much as possible, but planting still appears to be an issue. It might be another week yet before I'm even ready to get out and walk normally - ugh!

Of course, my research implies that I can't be allergic to the drug itself, but the "dyes and fillers" but it does confirm that I definitely have issues with the pills. I have yet to locate where a list of these "dyes and fillers" can be located. It doesn't mean I'm giving up, but I have an allergy to Vitamin A, so I honestly don't find it hard to believe that I could be allergic to the drug itself.

How do I know I've done the right thing in stopping the medication?

Well, most of my life, my blood pressure has been low, outside of stressful times. However, when I started taking Levothyroxine, my blood pressure has been "elevated" and any meds they gave me for it made me sick, except HCTZ, and it didn't even work all that well anyway. The Friday after I sprained my ankle, I went to the doctor to make sure it was just a sprain, and not broken - which it wasn't (yay!). They took my blood pressure, and for the first time in a couple of years, it was well within the acceptable range, just slightly elevated, which is expected considering the amount of pain I was in.

My blood pressure was 127/70 (or something to that effect) but while on Levothyroxine, my bp readings were somewhere in the neighborhood of 140/90 and even as high on 146/100.

It leads me to wonder, just how safe are these drugs that we're supposed to take to "regulate" our bodily functions? What I've also begun to wonder, is if I'm feeling so sick by these pills, is the problem really with my thyroid or with another part of the process? In other words, is my doctor actually treating the problem itself or just treating a symptom of the problem?

What do I mean?

Well, the thyroid isn't the only gland involved in the process. There are two other glands involved in this process - the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus. At this point, I think I need to start asking, how do we know the problem I'm having is really the thyroid and not one of the other glands?

How it works
Okay, since this post is already long, I thought I'd make it even longer by adding in some info about how the glands function together in an effort to see for myself if there's any possibility that I've been misdiagnosed.

The hypothalamus releases thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) which then travels to the pituitary gland. The pituitary gland then releases thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) into the blood to stimulate the thyroid to produce two thyroid hormones, L-thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3). The thyroid gland also needs adequate amounts of dietary iodine to be able to produce T4 and T3.

Obviously, I can't make much headway without knowing my actual numbers (all of them), but I might be able to recognize certain patterns, so maybe something will stand out. I'm also curious to know if maybe my problem might lie with an Iodine deficiency, because that can mimic conditions of an under active thyroid.

Interesting to note, while we use Fluoride in our toothpaste, it is considered a toxin by the body and Iodine detoxifies the body by replacing fluoride with itself.

Isn't that interesting?

Iodine is also responsible for detoxifying the body of mercury, chlorides, and bromides.

Chlorides are considered a toxin. Again, isn't that interesting?

We eat salt "sodium chloride" every day, which means we shove toxins into our body that must be filtered out of our bloodstream for our health. The more I read, the more I'm wondering if I don't have a deficiency because I'm allergic to shellfish, and I tend not to eat much fish either. According to Thyroid.org, Iodine deficiency is the most common cause of hypothyroidism all over the world, except in the U.S., where it's merely an uncommon cause. However, over time, our lands and waters are becoming more and more deficient in Iodine, meaning we consume less and less amounts of Iodine in our diet, especially when fish and shellfish are not consumed.

Why else might this be an issue? Well, I happen to have large breasts (not bragging, stating a fact) which means I need to consume more Iodine than the average woman, so I might really be at a disadvantage and not even realize it and neither might my doctor or the diagnostic center.

Since I'm beginning to search out natural methods of dealing with issues, this might to a place to start.

For more information on thyroid issues, check out this link:
www.emedicinehealth.com/thyroid_problems/

For more information on Iodine deficiency, check out these links:
www.vitamincfoundation.org/iodine
www.thyroid.org/patients/patient_brochures/iodine_deficiency

Games as Inspiration

2010-05-23T08:13:00.001-05:00

To play or not to play - that may be the question running through your mind about a certain facebook/myspace game.

Okay, some of you might think to yourself that these games are a waste of time. True, some of them really might just be that. But then again, they might not be. Cryptic, I know, but I have a point, really, I do.

When I first joined facebook, I like many of became bombarded by requests to play different online games. If you were curious, like I was, you start checking them out, just to see if they are interesting and worth playing. Well, when you start playing one, that leads to playing a multitude of others?

Why?

Well, for those of us polite or "pay-it-forward" kind of people, you start playing a game you really had no intention of playing because someone you met, who seems very nice, gets enjoyment out of something and needs neighbors to accomplish something within a game. That happened to me this weekend.

Sure, I could have said no, but I didn't. I opted to start playing Social City.

Why?

Because when I needed neighbors actively sending out gifts to accomplish something in Farm Town I have been invested in for months, she didn't say no. Sure, she already played the game, but that's not the point. The point here is that if my playing the game and sending out gifts can make someone's day a little brighter, well, then my time has been well spent.

That's why I do play many of the games I do. I'll admit that Yoville, Petville and Fishville have difficulty holding my attention for too long - there's not much to them and they do take quite a bit of time to load and it's really annoying - but others have just caught my attention and I find myself excited to do, of all things, click the mouse button.

What games have caught my attention so religiously? The answers just might surprise you, but then again, they might not.

Initially, I played Farm Town, Dragon Wars (dragons, need I say more?), Vampire Wars, Pirates Rule the Caribbean, Mafia Wars and Fashion Wars were the games I played on a very regular basis. In the beginning, they were all different and played differently. The only thing they had in common was the strategy used in building character strength.

Then, the makers decided to change the format of all of these games - with the exception of Farm Town - and make them all work virtually the same. As a result, the games feel too limited and cookie cutter and have lost most of their original appeal.

Currently, Nightclub City, Social City, Country Life and Treasure Isle have grabbed my attention. Farm Town seems to be the only one to really be able to maintain my attention.

So what is it about these games that draws me?

The building aspect. In Farm Town it's the ability to build and create different farms. With Social City, it's the ability to create your own city and watch it "grow". Nightclub City is pretty much the same thing, only it's focus is one Nightclub rather than an entire city. However, the neat thing about Nightclub City is that, provided you get your place making enough money, you can change it's design to your whims.

Drawbacks?

Social City - Haven't played the game enough yet to have discovered any.

Nightclub City - Drink storage space can take up a lot of room - but that's the nature of the beast and part of the game. You just have to figure out creative ways to deal with the extra storage tanks if you want to continue to make money and grow your club.

Country Life - Too many of the buildings (Green House, Water-well, etc.) require building materials be gifted or purchased with Ranch Cash (Country Life $$). If you can purchase the building for coins, you should be able to buy the parts necessary to make it work for coins too.

Farm Town is beginning to become overrun with facilities and stuff and needs more space for building. In order to have all the facilities run properly, you need to grow more crops....I need a fourth farm.

Things about Farm Town I'd change if I could:
1. add a "hide animals" button
2. make cows and goats purchasable instead of gift only
3. create a coffee mill and make it cost coins not FT $$
4. add cucumbers as a crop for a higher level (80 or 90) and make the preserve factory able to produce pickles
5. make all fruit producing trees purchasable instead of some as gift only.
6. add at least 60 new levels
7. make all animals harvestable for meat as well as other stuff like milk
8. If you buy it in FT$ you can sell it back and get FT$ instead of coins - only fair.
9. Instead of creating new facilities, just improve the existing ones with seasonal/rotating things to produce - The pizzeria could make other types of Italian food using existing crops (eggplant, garlic, basil). The sandwich shop could use caught fish and rice to make sushi. The taco place would use avocados and other stuff to make guacamole - You get the point.
10. Improve the server capability by having the user save Farm and Store data on own computer - this would allow user to harvest, plow, and plant without having to be connected to server. However, the user would need to connect with the server to hire people, to use/earn Farm Town $ and to sell stuff as well as connect with the server once every 12 hours to update and program changes.
11. Use soybeans to create bio-fuel to operate equipment - much more green and soybeans happens to be an existent renewable crop.
12. Make solar panels functional and make existing fuel-using seeders and harvesters hybrids - the solar power would allow them to use less fuel...
13. Create another crop (usable in one of the facilities) that grows in 2 hours and one that grows in 6 hours.
14. Add a "4th Farm" only it's primary function would be as a town/city and would allow you to build a city.

In case you're not familiar with the game, you wouldn't see the pattern, so I'll tell you. In my opinion, the game is too neighbor dependent. It's one thing to need neighbors to grow the size of your farm, harvest your crops, plow your fields or work your facilities so they produce faster, but you shouldn't have to rely on your neighbors to gift you items to make your facilities work (meat, pickles, fuel, etc.) - that's my biggest pet peeve about the game and Facebook games in general.

Any game I'd like to see created?

Beer Town! I'd love to be able to grow hops, barley, malt and other ingredients used to make beer. It would be so cool to be able to determine if you were going to have a brewpub or just be a brewery with a tasting room. You'd have to pay attention to things like IBUs, Gravity, and whatever else you might have to do to brew a batch of beer. Granted, things would move faster in the game world than the real world, but I see Beer Town as having a lot of potential.

Of course, I'd find it cool if you could do this in Farm Town, but I get why you can't - kids play the game and it wouldn't set a good example.

How can these games be inspirational?

Well, as a writer, inspiration does come from everywhere, so why not the online games? It doesn't have to be the backdrop, but some element in one of the games could provide an author with inspiration - you just have to be open to it!

Catching Up With Life

2010-05-08T16:49:00.000-05:00

Now that the basketball season is over, I am finding it much easier to get caught up with reading, and I'm even finding it easier to edit again. Being a member of Squad 6 really takes a toll on the body and mind, especially when you get as into the games as I am. Now, I'm not the kind of fan to remember stats - don't need to, they're all recorded down on the Bucks website and in media guides should I ever want to make comparisons. I'm the kind of fun who can get very emotionally invested in a game and can be very dejected after a loss, especially if I think the Bucks could have won it.

I'm happy to say that it didn't happen in the post season play though. Sure, I got loud and cheered and wanted them to win and was upset when they didn't win, but I couldn't stay mad because this team went farther than expected and played better than expected. They were never really out of the games, it just came down to the fact that, without Center Andrew Bogut, we needed everyone to be on top of their game every game in the playoffs. Well, these guys are human and to get mad at them for having an "off" game is counterproductive and really doesn't accomplish anything.

It was such a great experience being part of Squad 6 and I'd love to be back next year, if they'd have me! I'll either find a new wig, or color my hair red next year. My red wig fell apart towards the end of the season, looking more like some animal's nest than a person's hair, so it had to be retired and I took to dying my hair with hair paint. I just might find a way to color it brighter where it lasts a bit longer and won't come off on my clothes! lol!

Yikes!

2010-04-04T09:36:00.000-05:00

Okay, I know that I haven't posted much lately, but I've been busy with editing, writing and participating in Andrew Bogut's Squad 6. The Bucks managed to beat the Phoenix Suns, but hopefully not at too high a price.

Watching Andrew Bogut dunk is one of my favorite things to do, and even though I am seeing the game in person, the game is usually recorded on the DVR so that I can watch them multiple times later. There is one dunk that I am not sure I want to watch again.... Sure, it was exciting and probably one of the more forceful ones I've seen out of him, he paid a terrible price.

While most of the fans at the Bradley Center were jumping up and down cheering, I was screaming "no" as I watched helpless as his body, rather than hanging vertical from the net, went parallel to the ground under the net and then cringed in fear as I watched him fall to the ground. It was bad because you could just see him writhing in pain on the floor. Here's a clip so you can watch it for yourself, if you haven't seen it already.

There were a lot early reports, but I wasn't really sure that they were accurate, despite the supposed connections these people have. There's no way to know what's really going on until all of the tests are done and results accurately interpreted. Everyone kept trying to be positive that he'd be back in a couple weeks and it wasn't so bad. Well, I have learned to listen to my gut, and my gut told me something more was up. I couldn't help it, I started to get teary-eyed through the game. While they won the game, it was a bittersweet victory with too high a price as far as I'm concerned.

He's out for the year. While his elbow is only dislocated and not broken as first thought, his hand is broken and his wrist is sprained. According to JSOnline, it's likely he'll undergo surgery.

This is not good!!!! I'm not sure if our season is over as we do have many players left on the team, but my mood became somber when I saw the way they were walking Bogut off the court. I couldn't shake a sickening feeling. It was a feeling I hadn't felt in years. The last time I did, it was when Rollie Fingers got injured in the World Series back in 1982. I was young and I cried because deep down I knew he was our chance. The '82 Brewers needed Rollie Fingers in much the same way this Bucks team needs Andrew Bogut!!!!

Read more about Bogut's injury here:

JSOnline Bogut Update April 4, 2010

Easter is today, but in truth I don't feel too happy right now, but for those of that aren't as bothered by this as me, Happy Egg Day!

Hope all goes well for our Andrew! He's the best thing to happen to Bucks basketball in a long time, so I am sending him wishes for a complete and speedy recovery! Squad 6 just won't feel the same without you on the court, but I will do my best to make you proud for creating Squad 6!

Thanks Milwaukee Bucks

2010-02-01T02:36:00.000-06:00

This post is long overdue. I wanted to blog about it right away, but when a player breaks his career high that he had just set not too long ago and the Bucks lose a game, it's hard to know what to say. Not only that, but to hear him call it a useless stat when they lose, makes it all the more difficult to find the right way to congratulate him.

Back in December, he scored a career high 31 points in a win against the Indiana Pacers in a game so exciting that I put the entire thing on a VHS tape after having watched off the DVR twice. Last week Tuesday, Bogut outscored himself with 32 points against the Dallas Mavericks. Despite these efforts, the Bucks lost the game, but only by a point. After some careful pondering, I've realized that, even though the Bucks lost the game, a career high isn't a useless stat.

Why?

Well, it says that Bogut is coming into his own and that other teams need to beware of the force they will be facing!

So congratulations to Andrew Bogut for his career high of 32 points! Keep it coming!

I love watching the games and I feel the need to be at every one! Of course I would like to see them win every game, but it's not necessary. This team has something it hasn't had in a long time.

You know what it is?

Heart.

Ah, I bet you thought I was going to say Scott Skiles, the head coach, or John Hammond, the general manager. While it's true that both of these men were instrumental in putting together this team, it's the players themselves that really deserve the credit.

All of the players want to do well and are working very hard to achieve their goals. They want to win and it shows in the amount of fighting and scrapping they do to create turnovers and chase down loose balls. They've also worked very hard to become better free throw shooters. It's been a long time since we've seen dunks and alley-oops on a regular basis, and the team is working to bring that element back to the games are creating some exciting basketball.

And they're doing all of this without Michael Redd. As much as I like Michael Redd, he just doesn't fit with the team anymore. In fact, when Redd first went down this season, Carlos Delfino really stepped it up and we thought he was going to be this great player for us, but when Michael Redd came back and took back his role in the starting lineup, that all changed. Well, since Michael Redd went for the season (I really do wish him a good recovery), Carlos Delfino has stepped it up again and has been playing great. I hope it continues.

Between Squad 6 and the players, games are extremely fun! I enjoy them so much that at times I don't want them to end! I can't wait to see what the rest of the season holds for the Milwaukee Bucks.

Thank you John Hammond, Coach Skiles and all the Milwaukee Bucks for making basketball exciting again, especially to Andrew Bogut for creating Squad 6. I've had a great time being part of this soon to be legendary group, and I hope I can continue to be a part of it for years to come!

Good Luck on the road at Miami, Orlando and New York! I wish I could be there in person, but I'll be sitting in front of the TV and I'll just have to wait until you get back in town on Saturday!

Why I Only Watch GH These Days

2010-01-15T12:34:00.002-06:00

Okay, so the title is an unexpected play on words, but still true. From the time I was about five years old and at home with grandmother in the afternoons after school, I discovered soaps and have been a fan throughout my high school and college years. At one time, I watched All My Children (AMC), Another World (AW), Days of Our Lives (DOOL), General Hospital (GH) and Santa Barbara (SB). I was able to do this because of how they staggered the times of the shows.

As I grew up and my tastes changed, I began to appreciate the depth of certain characters and complexity of plotlines. As much as I hated the fact that Santa Barbara and Another World ended, I now really appreciate the wisdom of that choice. The writers could have kept them going instead, and wrote pitifully stupid storylines, just as DOOL and AMC has done, but they didn't. They chose to end good stories on a high note. I remember that SB ended with the marriage of two characters BJ Walker (Sydney Penny) and Warren Lockridge (Jack Wagner). Now, I couldn't remember the full character names after all this time, but I did remember the actors involved.

For example, I remember when I first saw Nancy Lee Grahn, who most of us know as the feisty lawyer on GH. However, I remember seeing her first as Julia Wainwright on SB. If memory serves, she landed on the beach of the Lockridge estate in a Cessna... Anyway, Nancy was just one of a host of top notch actors and actresses filling the streets of Santa Barbara.

Sure, the characters were devious and there was family rivalry and some love triangles, but the storylines were always good and carried off as believable. Kudos to the writers of AW and SB for ending two great shows with a bang! DOOL and AMC can only wish to be so lucky. I keep catching glimpses of the current storylines and go, "They are so hard up for viewers that they're going to the bottom of the barrel for this one!"

Seriously, one of the worst storylines DOOL writers ever came up with was that whole Bo/Carly/Lawrence triangle. After the viewers at the time were so happy that Carly and Lawrence left town, hopefully never to return, DOOL writers do the boneheaded thing and bring them back. The reason they bring them back is the dumbest storyline in the history of dumb storylines.

Longtime fans know Bo and Hope as the one remaining super couple left on DOOL - reconstituted after Hope supposedly died in a vat of acid and returned as one of Stefano's pawns with no memory named Gina. All through his string of loves during the time of Hope's supposed death, he always carried a torch for Hope. In fact, when in the midst of a relationship with Billie, he was ready to drop her when Gina surfaced, because of the fact that not only did she look like Hope, Bo knew in his heart that Gina was Hope. He loved Billie, but Hope was always the love of his life, and he wanted to be with her, unfortunately, Billie was pregnant and yadda, yadda, yadda.

Anyway, it was at about this point that I quit watching because, well, I thought the storyline of Hope coming back from the dead was bad enough to begin with, but everything else just went downhill from there. I'm sorry but Bo is not Luke Spenser and never was, and it seems that DOOL is trying to create the magic that GH has, but is failing miserably. Of course, you have to have magic to begin with, and DOOL never really did. However, when you take a guy like Bo, who is fiercely loyal to Hope by nature, and start having him cheat on her and thus destroying the only super couple the soap really ever had (other than Hope's parents Doug and Julie), then you destroy any credibility as story tellers. Bo and Hope were childhood sweethearts and loves. Bo has never been a cheater, and it was never in his personality, so when they first made Bo a cheater, I quit watching. I happened to catch Thursday's episode of DOOL only because I missed Thursday's episode of GH and thought I would catch it on Soap Net rather than the Internet. DOOL is on after GH in the lineup, so it was just on. To top off bad storylines, they added a troop of bad actors from Passions (the worst soap ever!) into the mix. It just happened to be the death of Mickey Horton, so I watched as much of it as I could tolerate.

Honestly, with as bad as some of these storylines are, I'm surprised that DOOL and AMC are still on the air. People may complain about the recurring mob theme - one that's been part of GH for as long as I've been watching and can remember - but at least the storylines are believably complex and the characters' reactions to their situations feel real. The writers may have brought back Luke and Laura, and may have split up Luke and Laura, but at least the way they did it was believable and realistic to follow.

The only knock I have with GH deals with the characters of Carly and Jax. Carly has turned into this whiney, irritating person, and Laura Wright doesn't do much for me, and Jax hs become this hypocritical jerk. He can't stand Sonny and doesn't want him in Michael and Morgan's lives, but yet he has repeatedly helped his no-good brother Jerry again and again. Jerry is 10 times worse than Sonny ever could be. Sonny has a real excuse as to why he turned out the way he did. What was Jerry's excuse? Too much money growing up? This is just one set of characters I wish would just go away!

On a better note, Jonathon Jackson has reprieved his role as Lucky Spencer! Since his return, I have been able to appreciate the character of Lucky again. Lucky finally has more emotional range than angry. Even during the so-called love scenes, when Lucky was played by Greg Vaughn, Lucky seemed constantly angry. Now, with Jackson at the helm, Lucky can be happy, in love, exasperated, irritated, annoyed, angry, confused and a host of them I can't quite think of at the moment. Jackson makes the character of Lucky so much deeper than he has been in such a long time. I know this is the second blog post on this topic, but the fact that I can say this after having watched the show since Jackson's return, means that GH has gold, and they best keep it!!!

I found this you tube video that someone made from an old clip of Luke and Lucky. It is so funny, I had forgotten about that dancing episode! It was classic and definitely a sign of the 80s! However, I think that Tony Geary (Luke) might have thought this was lost, ha ha ha, NOT!

The gold that GH has isn't just in it's actors, but in it's writers, too. Okay, so I don't like some characters, but that doesn't mean it's bad writing. Now, if GH writers decide to blow up Robin and Patrick, they might make me mad. I don't get how a guy like Patrick who worked so hard to save Robin when she was suffering from PPD, only to have him cheat on her. If he was that way, then why would he go to all that trouble? I hope they do not opt for this direction. People do stay married and do not cheat in this day and age, even if it is rare. Why can't they be one of the rare ones?

Bucks and Free Throw Disparity

2009-12-31T07:21:00.002-06:00

In truth, this was an awesome game! I felt compelled to DVR it and I am glad I did because it turned out to be Bogut's career high for points! Overall, it was a well played game and the foul calling for this game seemed pretty fair. As far as I could tell, there wasn't too much of a disparity between calls. I did not find myself wondering if the refs were bought off or that the team doesn't getting any respect. It seemed like decent basketball to me.

Let's look at last night's game versus the Orlando Magic. The free throw disparity was ridiculous. In fact, the refs took two free throws away from Michael Redd. I don't understand how they could have not have called that a shooting foul. Redd was clearly going up to the hoop when he was fouled. The Bucks didn't get to the line very often. it doesn't mean they weren't fouled on shots, it just means that all of them weren't called. The Bucks were 7 (makes) of 9 (attempts) compared to 21 of 26....

Okay, now I'm curious to take a look at the free throw disparity for each game this season:

Game 01 - 10/30/09 - Bucks (11 of 19) at 76ers (29 of 34) - Loss 86 to 99
Game 02 - 10/31/09 - Bucks (24 of 33) vs Pistons (19 of 25) - Win 96 to 85

Game 03 - 11/03/09 - Bucks (05 of 10) at Bulls (20 of 31) - Loss 81 to 83
Game 04 - 11/06/09 - Bucks (12 of 18) at Timberwolves (10 of 17) - Win 87 to 72
Game 05 - 11/07/09 - Bucks (12 of 16) vs Knicks (13 of 17) - Win 102 to 87
Game 06 - 11/11/09 - Bucks (22 of 25) vs Nuggets (27 of 31) - Win 108 to 102
Game 07 - 11/14/09 - Bucks (19 of 30) vs Warriors (25 of 28) - Win 129 to 125
Game 08 - 11/16/09 - Bucks (11 of 17) vs Mavericks (17 of 22) - Loss 113 to 115
Game 09 - 11/18/09 - Bucks (11 of 13) vs Nets (22 of 25) - Win 99 to 95
Game 10 - 11/20/09 - Bucks (17 of 21) vs Bobcats (26 of 43) - Win 95 to 88
Game 11 - 11/21/09 - Bucks (18 of 24) at Grizzlies (21 of 29) - Win 103 to 98
Game 12 - 11/23/09 - Bucks (9 of 14) at Spurs (22 of 26) - Loss 98 to 112
Game 13 - 11/25/09 - Bucks (16 of 22) at Hornets (28 of 31) - Loss 99 to 102
Game 14 - 11/27/09 - Bucks (20 of 22) at Thunder (26 of 35) - Loss 90 to 108
Game 15 - 11/28/09 - Bucks (13 of 17) vs Magic (14 of 25) - Loss 98 to 100
Game 16 - 11/30/09 - Bucks (11 of 21) vs Bulls (27 of 33) - Win 99 to 97

Game 17 - 12/02/09 - Bucks (9 of 12) at Wizards (25 of 34) - Loss 102 to 104
Game 18 - 12/04/09 - Bucks (14 of 19) at Pistons (23 of 33) - Loss 96 to 105
Game 19 - 12/06/09 - Bucks (12 of 16) vs Cavaliers (25 of 27) - Loss 86 to 101
Game 20 - 12/08/09 - Bucks (17 of 19) at Celtics (22 of 31) - Loss 89 to 98
Game 21 - 12/09/09 - Bucks (24 of 28) vs Raptors (25 of 33) - Win 117 to 95
Game 22 - 12/12/09 - Bucks (10 of 17) vs Trailblazers (21 of 29) - Win 108 to 101
Game 23 - 12/16/09 - Bucks (12 of 17) vs Lakers (29 of 33) - Loss 106 to 107
Game 24 - 12/18/09 - Bucks (11 of 14) at Cavaliers (24 of 31) - Loss 82 to 85
Game 25 - 12/19/09 - Bucks (13 of 20) vs Kings (22 of 29) - Loss 95 to 96
Game 26 - 12/21/09 - Bucks (9 of 20) at Pacers (16 of 22) - Win 84 to 81
Game 27 - 12/23/09 - Bucks (28 of 33) vs Wizards (31 of 35) - Loss 97 to 109
Game 28 - 12/26/09 - Bucks (18 to 25) vs Spurs (15 to 20) - Loss 97 to 112
Game 29 - 12/28/09 - Bucks (18 to 24) at Bobcats (22 of 28) - Loss 84 to 94
Game 30 - 12/30/09 - Bucks (7 of 9) at Magic (21 of 26) - Loss 92 to 117
Bucks overall win/loss record: 12 wins 18 losses

Game 31 - 01/02/09 - Bucks () vs Thunder () - Not played yet

When the games are called fair, the Bucks have a fairly even chance of winning. When the free throw disparity is close to zero, give or take 3 or 4, the Bucks win if they shoot well, lose if the other team shoots well, and the point differential at the end of the game is usually pretty close.

However, in those instances when the opposing team has close to or exceeding double the amount of free throw opportunities that the Bucks have, the Bucks will lose.

If you look closely at some of these games, the Bucks did play well despite adversity. Sure it's frustrating to lose by 1, 2, 3 or 4 points, but to hang with some of these teams and be able to be in the position to win these games is a great achievement. The key here is too examine why we lost, what key mistakes happened, what wasn't done, etc. Once you know why these things are happening the way they are, then the appropriate steps need to be taken to correct these mistakes.

As fans, there are some things we must accept:
1. Rookie mistakes - they will happen and if the player isn't in the same position in a game situation often enough, the learning curve will be slow.
2. Basketball intelligence - there are some players that will never get any smarter - why? Not sure.
3. Consistency - not all players are consistent and will not score consistently.
4. Foul trouble - As much as we hate the free throw disparity, there's not much that can be done about it from our POV. Unfortunately, there is no direct way to contact the David Stern or Stu Jackson to ask for clarifications on some of these gross mistakes that the basketball refs make.

Bucks vs Lakers

2009-12-17T02:40:00.000-06:00

Twitter and Facebook were very active Wednesday night after the Bucks played the Lakers.

Why?

Well, the NBA officiating came under fire and close scrutiny. For whatever reason, it seems that the NBA officials do not like the Milwaukee Bucks this year as evidenced by the fact that our opponents seem to get more foul calls than we do.

Can someone please explain to me how a guy can run down the court, leap off the court using his own feet, fly through the air and land untouched in between two Bucks and still get a foul call? There wasn't one there, but yet the Lakers got to the line.

Of course the one most of the tweeters were commenting on was the blatant charge that was called a block on Bogut.   That was not a block. It was a charge. What made this situation even worse was that the refs appeared to take their lead from Kobe.

Hello! I thought the refs were supposed to be independent of the players? Why are they looking to Kobe for direction here? (Note: I didn't see this, but that's what all of the people who watched it on TV noticed and commented about it.)

Okay, didn't the NBA just have issues about a ref fixing games for cash? Well, I think that more investigating is needed because the officiating that has happened in Milwaukee has definitely indicated that there are some refs making shady calls.

Time to clean house and get new refs who know how to call a game fair! No more discriminating star treatment! All games and all players should be treated equally by league officials. I don't care if it's your first game or your last or if your a star, if you commit a foul, it should be called, and if someone fouls you (no matter who you are, rookie or not), it should be called. The game should be called the same for all four quarters. No exceptions.

Time to fix this problem NBA Commissioner, or the NBA itself will start to lose its fans and eventually teams!!!!!!! Less teams = Less endorsements = Less money!!!!

Fun and Games

2009-12-08T21:41:00.000-06:00

Intro

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's been awhile, but, hey, I've been busy!

I've got myself onto Bogut's Squad 6 and pretty happy about that, but since I have to be at every home game cheering my loudest and proudest, it takes time away from other things, like this blog.

I haven't forgotten, I've just been thinking about what I'd like to chat about.

General Hospital

I've recently gotten caught up with GH for this week and I can honestly say I really like Jonathon Jackson playing Lucky again. Lucky seems to have much more depth now and it's been really cool to see all that old footage again! They still make me cry!

You know, it's been awhile since I've gotten tears in my eyes but that exchange between Luke and Lucky where he was trying to tell Lucky about Elizabeth and Nicholas really got me! I was very teary at the exchange, which is something I've missed! It's very hard to ignore the onscreen chemistry between Lucky and Elizabeth now. Day by day, the attraction between Nicholas and Elizabeth seems so ridiculous that I think it's just time for the writers to let it go. The kissing just doesn't seem real to me, although, it never really did.

The difference I feel is like night and day. When Greg Vaughn played Lucky, it was so hard to see him with anyone, let alone Elizabeth. Since Jonathon Jackson came on the scene, I can actually see him as a real person again and I want him with Elizabeth. I can't help it. The more I watch now, the more I am convinced that Lucky and Elizabeth belong together!

On a new note, I am very much intrigued with this new artist guy. From the way it looked on Friday, that face we see (James Franco's) is not really his own, but a mask he dons to go in public.

The real question is, who is he really? Is he the guy who took the photo of Michael to convince everyone that Michael was dead and became twisted because of it? Or, does it mean the photographer is really AJ? That would explain why he is bent on revenge against Jason and Sonny. This should make for an interesting turn of events!

Castle

I love this show for more than just the fact that Castle is an author. The characters are well constructed and believable, but that isn't necessarily what keeps me watching. It's the actors, and not necessarily Nathan Fillion, though I do enjoy watching him. It's his daughter. Between Castle's daughter (Alexis - played by Molly C. Quinn) and his mother (Martha - played by Susan Sullivan), he loses quite a bit of the spotlight in this show. It's not just the talent of these two lovely actresses, but the carefully executed banter written by the show's writers. Castle's family as well as his profession as a writer adds a dynamic to the show that does manage to set it apart from the other crime shows, making it unique to watch.

However, I would still love to see another Firefly movie in the future!

Sports

I've been a fan of the Milwaukee Bucks for quite some time, but I have been re-energized recently. The first thing that I found to be utterly cool about the Bucks is that Andrew Bogut bought 100 season tickets in the lower bowl of the Bradley Center for extreme fans. Bogut's goal is to get the Bradley Center rockin' during the games with crowd noise, giving the Bucks a true home court advantage.

I was just handed these tickets, I had to go down to the Bradley Center and audition in front of the Bucks organization and Bogut himself. However, Bogut was recovering from the flu and Charlie Bell filled in for him. It was a very cool experience!

Since we've been sitting in this section. We've had the opportunity to meet some very nice young people and a few other people our age. Of course, I think that we are among the oldest members of the Squad, but I don't care. It's really fun.

But it isn't just being a member of Squad 6 or the fact that I've been crushing on Andrew Bogut since we drafted him that has me energized for this Bucks team. It's rookie Brandon Jennings, it's the return of Ersan Ilyasova, it's the energy that players like Charlie Bell and Carlos Delfino exhibit when they're on the floor. It's the fact that this is a team that fights and scraps and doesn't give up! It's the entire team and the presence the have on the court.

Oh, and did I mention that Bogut slapped hands with me at the end of Saturday's game? Yeah, well, he did and it was a life-fulfilling experience. He is just as gorgeous and sexy up close!

Of course, I have to wonder - do sports figures look at us weird, extreme fans and laugh at us because we consider them to be celebrities? Or do they truly appreciate the way we hero-worship them?

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

2009-10-23T05:57:00.000-05:00

I have been catching up to the current episode of GH and am doing a happy dance that Jonathon Jackson will be returning as Lucky!!!

For all those skeptics out there, Jonathon Jackson played the role since he was very young. In fact, if you've seen the movie, Deep End of the Ocean, then you'll know just how good he always has been. Jonathon Jackson has been up on the big screen in several big movies. He was in Camp Nowhere, a truly classic kids creating havoc movie and one of my favorites, and not because of Jonathon Jackson, but because of who is in the movie with him. Genie Francis and Jonathon Frakes play the parents of one of the girls at the camp. Realizing that this was his first movie roll, I'm convinced that's how he got cast as Lucky. But he was terrific and has grown into a terrific actor.

What makes Jonathon Jackson so great? Well, when I see him in his movies, even though I can say, "Hey, that's Lucky Spencer," soon after that, his acting makes me completely forget about Lucky and become absorbed into his current character. Not once have I been able to do that with Greg Vaughn. No matter what he did in the past couple of years as Lucky Spencer, I still could not get his character "Dan" from Charmed out of my mind because he played the two characters so similarly.

As it seems to be GH's way of bringing Lucky and Elizabeth back together, I'm very curious about that beginning scene where he says, "Hi. Remember me?" Part of me wonders if it's a joke some sort of role-playing - as in let's start over from some point, or if there is some connection to Jonathon Jackson's return and Helena's so-called brush with Valentine Cassadine.

Another reason I am glad to see Jonathon Jackson return? Well, I'm so sick of seeing Lucky played as this constantly angry man. That was never Lucky's demeanor. In fact, as far as I recall, Luke and Lucky had resolved all those angry feelings when Lucky was younger because Luke felt just awful about not realizing the truth and Lucky understood and, if I remember right, forgave his father. And I believe that's how Luke remembers it too.

Jonathon Jackson has such a range of acting skills. I am actually going to like Lucky again and I can see that Lucky and Elizabeth will have their onscreen chemistry again! To be honest, even though they are trying to make Nicholas a partner for Elizabeth, the only other character that Elizabeth had any really visible onscreen chemistry with was Jason, but even that wasn't completely convincing because they just didn't seem to really fit together.

This stems back to my previous post. Onscreen chemistry, couples either have it or they don't.

As much as I hate Claudia, I'm going to hate to see her go because Sarah Brown and Maurice Benard have some great chemistry together. Maybe, they'll kill Claudia off, ditch Laura Wright as Carly and replace her with Sarah Brown and then put Sonny and Carly together again, because you fellow watchers of GH have to realize that this baby is probably really Sonny's kid. I'll laugh if the kid is born with dark hair. And, I still think that Michael is really Jason's kid. We all know that the Quartermaines can rig all the DNA tests they want... I like Drew Garrett as Michael. He's done a great job and has worked his way into the role. Well done for him, and did you notice how much Michael now resembles Jason? Sign of things to come, I say!

I'm really enjoying the storyline of Dominic/Dante more than I thought I would. I'm really enjoying the twists they have with the mob stuff. Oooh, the more Sonny and Jason, the better! I'm liking Johnny Zacchara a lot too! I'm glad that him and Olivia are working to get back together, I really like them.

Olivia's hair has a slight wave to her hair in Thursday's episode and I like it much better than the her straight hair. I don't know, it does something for her.

I was worried there for a bit about GH, but they're getting things together. I seriously hope they do not make Elizabeth have Nicholas' kid. That's just way too unfair to Lucky. Three kids that aren't really his? Time to stop with that storyline, it's been used way too much. Let's just let Lucky and Elizabeth (now that Jonathon Jackson is back) work their way back to each other.

Favorite Characters

2009-09-02T19:08:00.000-05:00

Hey there,

When you write a book where people can use their own minds to imagine the people, you can put whoever you want to together, because the chemistry will always be there. However, when it comes to onscreen mediums like movies and TV, it's that onscreen chemistry that matters more than anything. If two people have it, they have it, if they don't, they don't. Two people can be married and love each other, but never have the onscreen chemistry to play two people passionately in love. You know why?

Because being on the screen is acting and when you love some one, really love them, you are too comfortable with them off screen to remember to act. Plus, you end up bringing your real life baggage to work with you and the lines between on and off screen can be blurred and even the adoring public forgets that bit of truth. Remember the movie Eyes Wide Shut and all the flack that Tom and Nicole took because they had to be directed during the love scene? Hello, it's a movie and the director had certain things in mind for the shots, so he had to tell them what to do! They may have loved each other, but they didn't have really great onscreen chemistry.

Now, you have two people, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan - each married to two different people, but they have really awesome onscreen chemistry that they made really good movies (Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail), great and a really bad one (Joe Vs the Volcano), tolerable. It's the onscreen chemistry between Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks that made these movies so great - and both are married to two different people. Onscreen chemistry can make or break a movie, just as much as it can make or break a TV show, which is why I really dislike it when soaps replace one actress/actor with another for a character because chances are, that new actor isn't going to cut it.

When I was young, I used to watch a ton of soaps, now, I'm down to just one - General Hospital. It isn't just the established characters that keep me coming back, it's the writing and the acting cast. I swear, they must use people who read/write romance novels because their scenes have only gotten better in recent years. Sonny Corinthos is the best mobster! And Jason? Don't get me started there! I could write an entire blog devoted to how great I think Jason Morgan is.

But honestly, I haven't been a fan of Carly since Laura took over her role, but let's face it, the actress who originated Carly (Sarah Brown), now playing the role of Claudia Zacchara, was the best of the lot! I am so glad GH brought back that actress to play Claudia because of all the actresses they've put with Maurice Benard, these two have had the best on screen chemistry.

I am also glad that they aren't going to put Sonny and Olivia together because, to be honest, the actors just don't have the onscreen chemistry, not the way that Sonny and Claudia and Johnny and Olivia do. These are two very hot, very steamy couples who can turn up the heat just by looking at each other! I hope GH realizes what they've got and does their best to keep Johhny and Olivia together and Sonny and Claudia together.

Now, Elizabeth and Lucky - what can I say? When Jonathon Jackson played Lucky, they had some really good on screen chemistry. When it comes to Greg Vaughn, sorry folks, but it's just not there. She had better chemistry with Jason, but I do like the idea of Sam and Jason. I think I always have. Kelly Monaco is a great actress and her and Jason really do have this great onscreen chemistry that can burn down a few barns. So far, I think that GH has been ignoring a major, major on screen pair for two long.

Way back, when Amber Tamblyn was still playing Emily, I really thought, even then, that Elizabeth and Nicolas had chemistry, and they still do! I can't believe they wasted time with this Rebecca crap (the only storyline in GH history I thought really, really stunk!). I'll be clad when it's over and done with. I never really liked Nicolas and Emily, but I did like the character of Emily, but I was more of an Amber Tamblyn fan than a Natasha Livingston one. With Amber, the niceness and caring seemed to real, but with Natasha, it never seemed real, it always seemed fake, like acting. That's how you find the good actors, they make their roles seamless, so well done that it feels as if they aren't acting at all. Which is why onscreen chemistry is so important. You want the electricity to flow, and not seem artificial. You can't force chemistry, because it won't work and can make the acting seem awful.

So, I have a request - please GH writers - stop with this stupid Rebecca crap (let Nicolas just walk away) and just put him and Elizabeth together, please! It's been far too long!

Please be patient....

2009-07-10T15:59:00.001-05:00

Hi there,

I am moving my author site here for the time being, so please be patient during the construction process.

Thanks!

Carrie

BBC has Great Chemistry

2009-04-13T04:53:00.001-05:00

One of my favorite channels to watch is BBC America. Tonight, I stumbled on to a great program, one that I found more interesting to watch than American Idol (which isn't very hard because I'm not that big a fan of the show), Any Dream Will Do. This past Sunday was the second week of telecast, which is where I jumped in. This show chronicles the search for the next Joseph in Andrew Lloyd Webber's West End Production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

PLEASE NOTE, if you want to watch the show and the drama unfold, do not, do not, do not go looking for it on the Internet because the show is currently going on in London, which means that the winner is already known on to the local BBC audiences, just not the US viewers, unless you go looking for it. Apparently, the competition actually took place in 2007 in the U.K., which really sucks because this is a really talented bunch of well, men. They have great voices, acting talent and when you add in the drool factor some of them have in spades, it's a can't miss show. I was very impressed by the amount of talent. This is the way it should be for any show. All of the participants had really good voices, so the judging was less on vocals and more on stage presence and acting ability. The point of the song choices was to challenge the singers to find the strongest one.

I don't normally rave online about reality TV because here in the U.S. reality means how much controversy and problems can we create to get people to tune in next week, talent doesn't really matter. I had to rave about this one because it is/was truly about the talent. What I think also helps the show is that there are four other judges besides Andrew Lloyd Webber. The first judge, John Barrowman, is a BBC fan favorite from the series Torchwood, that also has experience in playing lead roles in theater companies. The second judge, Denise Van Outen, is really more of a Londoner, so I can't say too much about her except to say that the public knows and respects her talent. The third judge, Bill Kenwright, is no novice when it comes to successful national theatrical productions of the play and Jesus Christ Superstar, so he knows what he needs to succeed. The fourth judge, Zoe Tyler, is London's premiere vocal coach.

Why is this show great it's got me talking? Well, for starters, I love Graham Norton and try to watch his talk show religiously (yay for the DVR!). Second, all the judges truly work with the talent and try to bring out the best of each contestant, even if it means rearranging a song. The point of this show is not judge bashing or ratings, but honest remarks and constructive criticism design to help each contestant grow not only as a possible Joseph, but as an artist as well and it's clearly evident that the judges want to see these people succeed in the business, even if it isn't with this production, which is why they try to be as honest as possible.

What else makes this show great? Well, at the end of the show, they all sing a song that I think is from the play, but not really sure. I think it gives the performer leaving one last chance to be Joseph, as his coat is removed from him. I did some poking around on the threads for the show and found that many of the contestants have CDs out or in the works. I'll try to locate them for you and put them here somewhere.

I can actually say that I can't wait to see the next installment next week!

Carrie

Characters - Beyond the Second Dimension

2009-03-25T01:36:00.000-05:00

We've all heard at one time or another that our characters are flat. Okay, so what do you, as an author, do with that? Well, it isn't enough to know that you're characters are flat, you need to know in what area they fall flat in.

Characters can be flat in a couple different ways: personality, emotionally, physically, and psychologically. So, if you're having trouble figuring out just how your character(s) fell flat enough for someone to comment on them, ask them to elaborate.

How do you stand that character up and give him or her enough mass to hold themselves upright?

If it's merely a case of the reader wanting to know more about the physical appearance and description of your character, ask them what they feel is lacking. Maybe the problem isn't necessarily lack of detail, but how long the reader has to wait to find it. Be sure to put a face to that name early enough to draw the reader in, even if the current features are temporary and might be different from the true ones. It will help the reader put things into the proper context.

If you're not sure how to get your descriptions any clearer, maybe you need to test your description skills. The best way to do that is to start with your own body and how you would describe it. Then, give that description of yourself to your significant other and ask them to guess who you are describing. Then you might want to move on to other people (family and friends) that may be in a position to recognize your physical description. See how many people guess that it's you? If some have trouble, ask they why? Maybe you left out some key detail that helps cement the picture in their head.

As a test, repeat the exercise for a couple of other people you feel you know very well and then test your description with the people who may be in the best position to judge your description and see if they can guess it correctly. The results can tell you a lot about yourself and your relationships with others. How observant did you find yourself to be? If others found your descriptions lacking, you've just identified a weakness. The best way to fix this is to observe people and try to describe them. The more you practice, the better you'll be.

If their seems to be issues with the personality, psychology, or emotional nature of your character, the problem may be that you did not dig deep enough into your character's mind and you need to go back and pick it some more.

How do you do get deeper in to a character's head?

Well, the first thing I suggest that you do is think about yourself and what makes you tick. Make up a realistic situation, put yourself in it as the main character and consider how you fit into all of the facets of it. What would motivate you? How would you react in this situation? What would your thought processes be? If you aren't sure, talk it through with the person who knows you best and ask them what they think you'd do and see if you agree with what they came up with. If not, why not? This might help you arrive at your answers. How do you're life experiences effect your answers?

Once you get some sort of understanding of yourself, move on to other people that you know (male and female). How would they react in the same situation? Do you understand what would motivate them in that situation and what their thought process might be? If not, then you need to discuss this activity with them and find out how they answer the questions to try to see what makes them tick.

The interesting thing about this type of exercise is that you learn a lot about yourself and your relationships with other people. If you were able to answer them in some way, you need to test how accurate you were. Who do you think you know better, your family or your friends? To see how well you really did, talk to them and find out how close you were.

Be sure to understand how their life experiences effect their decisions. That can help you better understand a character type you chose to write about and help you to dig deeper into your character's head to find the missing pieces.

If you did very well, the problem could be that you just need to add a few more well placed details to make a more complete picture to help the reader understand your character better. Maybe the problem is that you don't understand the character type well enough (soldier, car salesman, etc.) and you need to do more research into character types.

Yes, a character interview/questionnaire can be helpful and informational, but it won't take you very far if your understanding of your chosen character/character type is lacking. The best way to discover this is when readers or others, "in the know," tell you.

Another way to give your character substance lies with the emoting and the, "show don't tell," approach. To really make an impact here requires two things - physical gestures and speech descriptions. Sure, a character may be smiling when he says something, but how does he say it and what kind of smile is it? Does he have a sarcastic, bored (as in a sense of ennui), or devilish tone?

Another parameter to consider is the emotional and physical responses of the other characters involved, if there are any. How do they react to what he says and how he says it? Do they laugh and call him a card, are they offended and slap him before walking away, or are they downright scared with chills running down their spine?

What the character says and does when alone (especially a villain) can be very telling for motive and attitude towards other people.

Hopefully, I have helped you find a way to flesh out that character that's giving you trouble!

Unique Characters?

2009-03-23T01:07:00.000-05:00

To me, one of the hardest parts about writing is creating unique characters. I'm always reading, so I am always finding new character types, but inevitably, I find that someone has already created a character similar to what I am working on. Of course, the character type is never exact, but close. It used to bother and frustrate me, but not anymore.

During an Ancient Egyptian Civilization course, we had a class discussion about the advancement of early civilizations. During that discussion, an argument was made that a civilization couldn't make huge strides all by themselves but had to be influenced by other societies and/or civilizations. Conversely, another argument of that discussion brought up the notion that all it took for a society to advance in great leaps is for one person to have an ingenious idea and for others to listen to and support that person. Which means, that it is totally possible for two civilizations to evolve along the same lines even though they might be oceans apart. The over all point of the discussion was to say that human beings tend to think alike, or solve the same problems in similar fashions.

The more I thought about this, the more it made sense. Think about it for a minute. Where might we be today if they actually listened to Galileo when he first proposed his thoughts? What about Kepler, Da Vinci, and all those other intelligent people who were considered heretics at the time, even though they were leagues ahead of their generation? I guess we might be a bit farther along than we are now, but maybe not.

So, if I can think of something neat and interesting, why shouldn't someone else be able to think of something similar?

When I accepted this as an inevitable possibility, I started to realize that it wasn't the character types that would be unique, but the personality that I breathed into each character that would make him or her unique. While I may find many people who think like me or experience some of the same things I do, ultimately, my voice will be different from theirs and the personality I give to a character will be different too.

Considering Time

2009-03-05T05:10:00.000-06:00

Think about how ruled we are, as a society, by time. When we get bored, we look at the clock to see how much time until the lecture/meeting/workday ends. We look at the time to make sure we get to where we are going at the time we need to be there. Most of us are ruled by schedules and spend time coordinating our schedules with spouses, children and grand children. As a parent, you have to make sure there is enough time for everyone to get ready for school/work and that everyone gets where they are going. Does Jimmy have a ride home from soccer or football practice? How will Sally get to dance class this week? When do I have time to get to the gym?

Many of us have so many things going on that it's next to impossible to remember everything, so we use planners, calendars and PDAs to help us remember things like doctor appointments, meetings, birthdays and anniversaries. Even blogs give us the ability to program when we want a blog topic displayed. We have developed conveniences for our PDA/Blackberry/iPhone/laptop that save time by allowing email to be checked and written while having a telephone conversation.

Police even go to great lengths to recreate a missing person's schedule for the days prior to their disappearance.

With this in mind, ask yourself: How strongly does time matter when considering a story?

Well, in truth, that depends upon the story, doesn't it?

Or does it?

For most stories, time means everything. What I mean is that if you're writing a historical or regency, a lot of things need to be straight and correct to properly submerge the reader in the time frame in which you are writing. Sure, you know enough not to have anyone drink a soda or eat a Twinkie, but do you know enough to be able to name what brand of tea your character would drink or the prices of houses and such in that era? Well, if you're a history buff or a fan of those periods, you would. If you're a novice, like me, you wouldn't necessarily know all of those things, but you'd know how to find them. However, you don't have to be a history buff or a fan of the era to appreciate the effort an author takes to get things just right. An avid reader of historical novels can tell when something doesn't seem right or is out of place. Therefore, time means everything. To make a person truly believe that the story they are reading takes place in the past, the details need to be as right and true as possible.

How much does time really matter in science fiction or space themed stories?

This answer is a bit trickier. Why?

Well, it depends upon how long you want your books to be read and make sense. When most people write a futuristic tale, whether it takes place on or off earth, they try to pick a date far enough in the future so that the plot, storyline and futuristic creations make sense. The farther into the future a space travel story is set, the more comfortable we are with accepting what may or may not happen. Of course, there are other elements that go into building a world than just time, but for this post, time is all we are considering.

Back in the late 1800's and early 1900's and even into the 1950's, it was acceptable to use dates such as the 1980's, 1990's and 2000's as time settings for futuristic tales because no one had any clue as to what kinds of things could be made possible. In one such black and white movie from the 1920's or the 1930's, can't remember the name or exact date (I just know it was old), I saw a brief clip of planes flying through tall skyscrapers, reminiscent of a Ratchet and Clank video game. However, if you didn't take into consideration the date in which it was created, it would lose it's futuristic appeal. However, it was funny to think that people of that time thought that the popular mode of transportation of the future would be the airplane. What's even funnier, when you think about it, is that we are still trying to make cars fly.

Because much of the younger generations tend to have difficulty accepting or appreciating well crafted movies and books of the past, they end up being remade and "modernized." Dukes of Hazzard, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Batman, Superman and Star Trek are some titles that come to mind.

Because of the way generations change in what they want/expect from books and movies, when choosing a futuristic time setting, it is just as important to consider how long you want your futuristic story to be considered "futuristic." Meaning, how many generations do you want to be able to appreciate your characters and storyline. Obviously, it's easier to write for the current generation and ignore future generations. Before you decide, please remember that those texts we consider to be classics are ones that anyone from any generation can enjoy. So you need to ask yourself this: Do you want to be among the ranks of Jane Austen, the Bronte Sisters, writers like H.P. Lovecraft or Ray Bradbury, or if you just want to be one of those authors that fades away with time and not remembered after you die? In other words, what is your target audience and how long do you want your work remembered?

Note, words like "bling," might be neat to use, but they will inevitably date your piece with a time stamp and can lose their appeal over time, so if you want to have some sort of, "pop culture lingo," in your piece, make it up according to what works best with your characters and storyline and make it easy for the reader to understand its meaning.

Time is more than just years in the past or future and in relation to what audience you focus your stories to, but it also helps to have a believable chronology of events. In other words, a timetable that makes sense.

Overwhelmed yet?

Hopefully, I can provide some clarity and relief.

The timetable/chronology must follow the logical time frame in terms of characters and technological advances. No matter what you choose to do with your characters in terms of aging, acquiring strength and having children, it must make logical sense or follow a pre-determined set of rules defined on the world you create, such as how many hours are in a day/night, days in a year, growth rate, etc. If characters on your world live longer lives, whether 100 or 1000 years longer than the average earth human, the way they handle their day-to-day lives needs to correspond appropriately as well as how they adjust to acquiring abilities. A person who lives to be over 1000 years probably won't view time the same way as someone who only lives to be 80 or 100 and may be more laid back or in less of a hurry than earth humans.

Time effects technology and technological advances as well. A reader may become disengaged if the existing technology, the way it's used and the rate at which it's developed seems unrealistic or unbelievable. The rate at which technological advances occur depends upon how much knowledge a group of people have to start with. If a group of people leave earth to colonize another planet, the time it takes to travel through space as well as how much knowledge (types of scientists and equipment, etc.) is brought with them must be considered.

When you bring in technology, you have to determine if the existing technology continues to work or not. If the technology fails, you need to determine how long it takes to fail and if the scientists have the abilities to determine why it fails and stop or prevent it. The timetable for experiencing any problem must be as believable as the time it takes for the characters to find a solution to the problem, if there is one. If there isn't a solution, reaction time comes into play. Reaction time depends upon character type, intelligence and availability of materials.

Time, something many of us take for granted, can be one of the most complex issues to deal with when writing. I hope I have managed to demystify some of it.

What methods do you use to deal with time issues?

Is there any aspect that still puzzles you or hasn't been covered enough?

Inspiration

2009-02-26T12:44:00.000-06:00

Have you ever wondered where some of the storylines authors use come from?

Well, they come from a myriad of places. Some stories are born of dreams, some nightmares and some stem from the complicated imagination of the author. But it doesn't end there. Sometimes story ideas come from the simple things in life - friends, family, co-workers, pets and pop culture.

Inspiration can be a simple word or phrase or a funny situation. Now, the story that gets written may not resemble reality at all, but the point is that reality is inspiration and it is everywhere, you just have to be willing to listen, even when you think it odd or morbid. It may sound odd, but I kept a box of stuff from my grandfather's desk and a box from my great aunt's house. Stuff that everyone else considered to be junk.

Why did I keep them even though they might be considered junk?

Because, there is a story or two in each of those boxes and these items are authentic to their era. Authentic pieces such as what I kept can go along way to cementing a story in the past, making it believable. A story won't be successful if you can't convince the reader the story is taking place during the time frame you say it does. But I didn't keep them because they were authentic, I kept them because I heard the stories screaming to be heard.

Now, the boxes have been patient and quiet while I have been studying and working to become the best writer I could be, but I think I've been hearing them waking up because I haven't been able to get a moment's peace since I graduated in December and, to add fuel to the fire, I saw my Grandfather in my dreams. It was as if he was telling me that it's time to listen and time to write.

Where do you find your inspiration?

Dreams and Souls

2009-02-24T10:36:00.000-06:00

It took me a long time to get to this point in my life. I tried to take this part of my life and put it in a box because it didn't fit with the life I thought I wanted, nor did it fit with the life others encouraged me to follow. I did have two teachers that tried to encourage me, but I was too young to appreciate or understand the compliments they gave me.

It wasn't until years later that I began to grasp just how good my writing could be. It wasn't that people told me my writing was great, it was because they told me they wanted more. More of characters mentioned only once, of an unfinished short story, or about a world I created. It was in this moment that I realized that I have a talent that I was ignoring.

When I made the decision not just to become a creative writer but to pursue it, I felt something that I hadn't felt in a long time - whole. It might sound weird or cheesy, but it's true. By reconnecting with the writer in me, I found the missing piece of my soul. I felt empty for a long time and always attributed it to the loss of close friends and family members that I experienced in high school.

Sure, the loss of those people effected me greatly and a couple of them played a big role in who I am today, but the reason my soul was hurting and felt incomplete was because I had shut off a large part of my soul from myself. Now that it has been released, I feel whole, complete, and happy. I may not be published yet, but I am finally heading in the right direction. I am not just sitting on the edge waiting for my wings to grow and wondering if I'll ever fly, I am stretching them out and flapping, waiting for the wind to catch me!

I would like to know - What is your dream? Are you living it? If not, why not? How does that make you feel?