Today I tried lemonade with honey instead of sugar. You use the same amount of honey as you would normally use sugar, but I had to add a little more water. 1 cup recipe:

1 cup water
2T lemon juice
2T honey

Stir, stir and stir some more. Honey is thick and takes a little longer to dissolve. Some people recommend heating it in a pan when mixing for this reason. The first sip is a little odd, but by the time you reach the bottom, you feel like you have really done something good for yourself!

They say that the honey helps to reduce pollen allergies and the vitamin C in the lemon juice helps to boost your immunity. Enjoy!

I have a thing for puns that I inherited from my mother. Maybe it is because English is a second language to her, maybe she’s like Michael Jackson was, refusing to grow up. She loved to say, “I need some bread to go buy some bread.” She thought that was so funny. Back then I just rolled my eyes. Now I roll my eyes and smile.

I thought of this when today’s distraction came up at dinner. My father-in-law is down for a rare visit. He asked my niece about her pet frog, which is one of many animals in her household. She answered, “No, he’s not around anymore.” Dad replied, “I guess he croaked.”

All at the table paused and rolled their eyes. Many groaned. At least three of us said, “Oh my God.”

Bad. But funny. I guess young humor never dies.

People are born so that they can learn to live a good life — like loving everyone and being kind.

Dogs already know how to do that, so they don’t have to stick around as long.

This is for the dog lovers.

I had to take about 20 shots before I found the right position and smile. It is best to keep your shoulders back, head slightly tilted and put on your happiest smile. I like the way the light is stronger on one side of my face than the other. I like the depth it gives to the photo. Critiques are welcome!

Ten Tips to Take your own Portrait

1. Set aside an hour or so to fiddle with the perfect light and pose
2. Put on a little more makeup than you normally wear
3. Pay attention to the background and wear the appropriate color
4. Sit near a natural light source
5. Play with the light to compliment your skin tone
6. Sit at an angle
7. Slightly tilt your head while looking at the camera
8. Keep your shoulders back
9. Put on your best smile
10. Don’t give up till you have the perfect shot

Edit your photos with Picasa’s free editor and you can do some pretty cool effects:

Good Intentions

That’s how I started down this writing journey; with a simple belief that the Universe was good and wanted good things for me and everyone else, if only we could accept its kindness. Here’s the back story:

Mindfulness Meditation

I gained the basic belief in goodness through meditation and stress relief techniques learned from Jon Kabat-Zin. His mindfullness training helped me through the worst job of my life. A few years later, I watched What the Bleep Do We Know, a movie about the true nature of reality, because of my strong interest in that topic, along with particle physics.

Dr. Wayne Dyer

Then, right around the time that layoffs were happening  at my work, I got deeper into Dr. Wayne Dyer through one of his PBS specials. I finally read The Secret around that time, which I had often heard of but never read.  Eckart Tolle came next, with the Power of Now. Thoughts were stirring in my mind about intensions and belief, but I had many questions and the lesson was not quite clicking.

Then I got a freelance re-write job for a lady on Scriptlance who wrote an excellent book on the topic. I was deeply immersed in belief and inspiration from this project. I finally understood the power I had to change my life, and guess what? I did it. (Did I sound like Forest Gump just now?)

Belief

Anyway, in less that nine months, I have turned a lay-off into a writing career. While I have not yet met my ultimate goal, I am almost there and I know I will get there. This was all solidified by that assignmnet coming my way. I saw it as one of those “meant to be” moments. It’s hard not to believe in the power of intention when you see it working so effortlessly in your life. In my mind, it all boils down to this:

The things you love to do, you love because God made you to love them. God made you that way so that you would fulfill his plans for you. When you fail to do what you love, you are not fulfilling God’s plans for you. When you do what you love, you are doing God’s work. Doing what you love makes you happy. Happiness is a sign from God that you are on the right track.

It is just such a beautiful and simple plan. It also explains free will. God nudges us towards our destiny, but we must take the right steps to find the right path. God has left all the tools we need on this earth, but we must pick up those tools and use them. You can’t lead a horse to water, so to speak. God won’t lead you to your destiny, he will only encourage you to go in the right direction.

This is why keeping a quiet mind is important. Mediation lets you “hear” God. It helps you to focus the mind, so that you are more attentive and more aware of the clues God leaves, which are like a trail of breadcrumbs leading to your destiny.

Distraction of the Day

If you can get your mind around that, you are ready to move on to today’s distraction. Dr. Wayne Dyer recently aired another PBS special in promotion for his new book, Excuses Be Gone! In this special, he presented a list of the books that have most influenced him. I took a look and found two with some very interesting information that he based his new book on: The Biology of Belief and Virus of the Mind.

The Biology of Belief has to do with topics I am well familiar with, influencing life through thought. I’m just looking for another perspective from this one.

On the other hand, Virus of the Mind offers an entirely new concept to me: Memes. According to Wikipedia, a meme is ”a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, and is transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena.” The idea is that cultural behaviors are imitated without our conscious thought or free will. Sounds like an argument for mindfuless to me. I can’t wait to dive into these!

Hope these books lead you to happiness!

We the Writers Declare Our Independence

This little mouse is incredibly awesome. I am not crazy about the blue tooth software it comes with but was unable to find a better option for the price of the mouse and bluetooth adapter.But it moves smoothly and fits nicely in my hands. I love that I don’t have to worry about leaving my mouse behind when moving from room to room. My PC is always with me, and I like to mix up my day by doing my writing assignments in different areas of the house. Now the mouse is in the card slot and not left behind on the counter or bulky in my pocket.

Set up is a little quirky because you cannot tell when the device is connecting. After fiddling for about five minutes, I was up and running. I bought this one used through Amazon, so it was already charged and ready to go when I got it.

This mouse has a scroll function that takes some adjusting, but after about one or two minutes, I had it figured out. I have read that he PCI version of this mouse do not do well on reflective surfaces (like my stainless steel counter). I am using it on that counter now with no problems. This has an invisible laser, while the PCI version has a red one. Here are some shots of it with my PC. You can see the little “kickstand” on the underside that holds the mouse at the right angle. The dimples for your fingertips make it easy to find where you are clicking and maintain strong control over the mouse.

Here he is playing with this easy to use app:

Today’s distraction was icon files. I have Rocket Dock on my new PC (which I picked up for a STEAL at BestBuy by the way).

Anyway, RocketDock lets you clean up your desktop so it looks like this:

Deselect “Show Desktop Icons”

Instead of This:

Ick!

When you cross over to one side of the screen, it pops up and you can click on a link to your desktop instead, like so:

Rocket Dock Rocks

The program comes with some great icons, but I thought it would be nice to get a classic typewriter icon for my writing folder. Well, this turned into a long and tiresome effort. I’m too picky to just tack on a picture of a typewriter, so I made my own icon. Rocket Dock lets you add icons in PNG format, so no need for a special icon file maker or editor. Only problem, I can’t figure out how to stop it from showing the background. Is this a MS Paint thing? Should I be using a different image editor? Anyway, I put a black background on the thing and that works well enough for me. Maybe you can use the file and fix the problem if you know how…

Here’s the image:

White Background shows up on rocket dock, so I had to scrap this one.

Vista Folder Typewriter Icon

This one works for me. The black background is barely noticeable on my desktop.

If you are easily distracted, send your distractions to jbosari@comcast.net with the subject “Distraction” in the subject line.