Archive for September 20, 2011

4 Ways That Apples Help You Keep Healthy

September 20, 2011 / Twix / No comments

It’s autumn, fall, the season for harvesting, and the time of year when apples come in season. There are over 7,500 cultivars, or varieties, of apple, each of them with their own textures, flavors, and uses. No matter what variety you pick or how you choose to eat them, apples all share a number of great health benefits. Here are four ways that an apple a day keeps the doctor away.

Apples Contain a Large Amount of Water

If you have trouble keeping up with your 8 to 10 glasses of water a day, eating apples can help. On average, about 80% of the mass of an apple is water. Water is vital to your body’s daily functioning – the human body can go three weeks without food, but less than three days without water. The sweet taste of apples and the variety of textures and flavors they come in makes taking your daily requirement for water just a bit sweeter.

Apples Can Lower Cholesterol and Help Reduce Weight

Fiber helps to block cholesterol re-absorption, allowing it to pass through the system instead of lingering inside the body. Due to their fiber content, apples aid in the regulation of bowel movements. One apple contains about 20% of the daily recommended amount of fiber intake (5 grams), so an apple a day delivers more fiber than many “high fiber” breakfast cereals. Because of their fiber content, apples can also serve as a weight loss aid by reducing the amount of consumed fat that is absorbed by your body. In addition, the fiber found in apples apples can help with weight loss and heart disease. To get the most fiber content, eat your apple with the peel, as two-thirds of the fiber content is found in an apple’s peel.

Apples Strengthen Bones

No, not due to calcium, but apples do contain other bone strengthening compounds. Phlorizin, a flavanoid found exclusively in apples, along with boron, can help post-menopausal women reduce the risks and complications of osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a medical condition that causes the thinning of bone tissue and bone density, and it occurs when the body fails to produce enough new bone or the body absorbs too much of the old bone. Post-menopausal women are exceedingly susceptible to this. Boron and phlorizin may help protect these women from osteoporosis by aiding in the increase of bone density.

Apples Contain Cancer Fighting Antioxidants

Antioxidants and their cancer-fighting abilities have been quite the buzz lately, and though it may be humble, the apple contains many antioxidant compounds. Apples are especially rich in a flavinoid compound called quercetin. According to a medical study performed in Finland of almost 10,000 people over the course of 26 years, participants with the highest consumption of apples developed lung cancer at a rate of less than half that of their counterparts who ate few to no apples. A Cornell University study of the affects of apple consumption to breast cancer in rats found that rats who were fed three apples per day were 39 percent less likely to develop breast cancer.

Yesterday

September 15, 2011 / Twix / No comments

Heya. I’ve been kind of busy, going back and forth to interviews, cleaning the apartment, and, for most of yesterday, braiding my hair for 8 hours straight. Woo, that took awhile, but I’m happy with the results. 3 months of easy maintenance! :D I got to watch a pretty damn great anime called Steins;Gate while I was doing it, so I might be finishing that today…

Doctor’s appointment in a bit, but after that it’s writing and executing some notes that I took a few months ago in regard to writing. Gotta get serious about this freelancing thing.

Update for 9-8-2011

September 8, 2011 / Twix / No comments

Today is one of those days where I feel exceedingly overwhelmed. There is some sadness mixed in there, too. However, tomorrow is my last day at this assignment. I’m still a little mixed up in my mind about what direction it is that I want to take things. I know that there are areas that I am strong in now, and that there’s areas that I’ll need help in. I’ve already gotten some ideas together for my blog endeavors…

Man. Hopefully my brain rights itself soon. This murky, cloud-over-the-head feeling is not fun. :(

HOWEVER.

Last night I wrote the most difficult scene of /Matters of the Heart/. I started it out thinking that it’d be pretty simple, but when I got into it, I was shaking and almost cried a little. I don’t think I really realized, grasped, how horrifying and terror-filled something like this would be. I kind of feel bad for putting Rebekkah through this… It came out pretty decent, but I know that I’m going to fine tune the hell out of it. I think I want to work on some of the lighter scenes for awhile…

Getting Over Fears

September 7, 2011 / Twix / No comments

For the longest time, I was afraid to publicly publish my works. It was a combination of things: a lot of it was my mother telling me that people would steal my ideas. She also told me a lot about the California Raisins. (It’s related, I think, to why I hoard paper. It doesn’t help that the whole identity theft thing has kicked in as of late. That’s a digression.) I was also afraid that people would reject the things that I’d written and think that they were bad or horrible or no good.

Then one day I started to share my fanfiction. People liked it. They loved it. People started asking me for more. I found out a few years ago that a story I thought I’d lost was loved so much by another person that they archived it on their site. I started sharing my original stories, about my mythology, and people created fanart.

For awhile, I lost track of who and where I was, and I stopped writing.

I’m writing again now. I’m starting to share again, too. I feel like a baby horse who was just born, but has to learn to walk as soon as she can. I am trying things out, shakily, but then getting better at them with practice. I am learning to share with others again, too.

It’s nice so far. I started by sharing with friends – a safe choice – and now I’m sharing again with strangers. But this time, instead of Shameru Mizunori, Tearyne Glover’s name is attached to it. I’m hoping to get the short novella finished, so I can edit it and perfect it for my audience. Shortly thereafter, I’d like to make it into a visual novel.

I’m excited. A lot of the time, I am scared. I don’t want to work on it. What if I ruin it? What if people don’t like it? But when I hear that chorus starting in my head, I have to immediately shut it out. I have to tell myself, the little filly who is trying to learn to walk, to keep walking. If I ever want to be able to gallop and clear high hurdles, I have to learn how to walk and get good at it.

Rainfall

September 6, 2011 / Twix / No comments

There was rain today.

I saw it on the way in to the tents as I was ushered in, with people trying to hold umbrellas over my head to keep the moisture out; it wouldn’t do much good. The entire world seemed muggy and hazy this afternoon. Was would not be the correct word, though, because it is still raining, even now. I cannot see it falling, from my position in the backstage area, but I can hear it, and I can still smell it. The smell of sweets and spices from the surrounding marketplaces have been drowned out by that of warm, wet earth and fresh water as it falls from the sky. I can still hear people’s reaction to it as well. Workers are running in and out of the area outside of my door, yelling directions and orders at one another. Grab the line, don’t let the costumes get wet. Move this over a few feet, what in the Goddess’ name are you doing? On and on bark the calls, echoing down the halls to where I am now. Cast and crew alike are left wondering when the rain will let up.

Wondering if the rain will ever let up.

There is supposed to be a show today, but I’m not entirely certain that people will come now that the weather has gotten bad. No one is.

Continue reading “Rainfall” »

Things That Motivate Me

September 6, 2011 / Twix / No comments
  • Having a house
  • Braces
  • Being able to contribute to college educations for my nieces
  • Pride in the abilities of my siblings and trying to set a good example for them
  • Paying my car off
I’ve found that having more material goals and aspirations has helped me out a lot, ironic as it sounds. I did not value money, so I didn’t really understand the value of it. I’d just keep on keeping on at customer service jobs, because I was happy. I didn’t really ever stop to think about how much my expertise in the field and my skills were worth. Hell, I didn’t even know that my writing was worth anything. But through a bunch of things coming together in recent years (one of which admittedly is my relationships with my motivated, educated, and success driven boyfriends of Christmases past and present), I have gotten used to realizing that my abilities have the potential for monetization.
Those things that I do really well? Well, they’re actually worth a lot. And for once in my life, I am acting like it.

Random Learnings/Motivating the Self

September 6, 2011 / Twix / No comments

Lord, I just read one of the most encouraging things ever about blogging, writing, and content creation. Just gotta stay focused, keep creating. I can do this. I try to write a blog post to my personal blog every day, just to say that I’ve done something. And I write a few things for Textbroker when there’s something I can piece together. Maybe I’ll go back to doing art history pieces. I really want to talk to my professor again, but some things happened last semester.

Oh school. I have so many dirty, horrid four plus letter words I want to call you. But I won’t. I’ll just stay focused on keeping focused. And getting things done. I think that’s part of why I like Google+ so much, actually; it keeps me writing and creating. It’s like I’m blogging like I used to.

Godspeed to Venus Williams

September 1, 2011 / Twix / No comments

She was just diagnosed with Sjrogen’s disease, an auto-immune disease that my mother also suffers from. It is really debilitating, and I can understand why she’d want to drop out of the tournaments right now. Sjrogen’s attacks, primarily, your joints. Here’s wishing to the talented young lady – and all other sufferers from this disease – a journey filled with strength and support. You are not alone.

KaaliBilli.com is Live

September 1, 2011 / Twix / No comments

The webspace for my game development endeavors, Kaali Billi Innovations, is live. Head on over there to read up on things of that nature. Stuff will be transferred. People will rejoice. Yay.

The Sims Social – Bug Report

September 1, 2011 / Twix / No comments

This morning I got on The Sims Social, and I noticed that my llama investing quest had been set back two steps. I’m now again on the part where you have to Check Your Llama Investing Portfolio in two hours and have one hope. That’s the stage I was in yesterday at 5:00 pm. Why did this reset? What is going on?

 

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