when it rains it pours.
Once again - the cancer word enters my life
barrett's esophagus = "we have to keep an eye on this because it could become cancerous"
You have a hernia.
Seriously.
Kidney stones - "we can't do anything until then - but you need to be aware because the chances are high you might have an attack..."
"and well, there is nothing we can do for your pain."
Thank you very fucken much.
Waited almost two hours to hear this.
my body realignment session was very troubling.
Lots of things going on in my uterus (no, not a baby, but apparently, some deep seated emotional traumas that i had in my childhood) and heart and head.
Too many emotions, too many symptoms, too many things.
Oh back, don't break on me now, because this is just the beginning to the summer of pain, stress, and overall hell...
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Happy Anniversary 2 us, and other wonderful things
unday was our one year anniversary! How time has flown by. Speaking of time flying by, I was a part of a wonderful event - my old high school was open to Alumni from 1977 to 1987. Over 500 people attended. I saw lots of old friends, and even older friends - from grade school! Oh what a blast it was. Danced the night away (my toes are actually numb. I think I pinched a nerve cause my heels were too high to dance in...), and the next day, had a getaway with the hubby down south. Not a big outing, but we got to go to our fave romantic French Bistro and see the sights. We capped it all off by coming home to flowers and a beautiful card from a family friend and mom. And to keep with tradition, ate our giant wedding cupcake which I had taken out of the freezer for that special occasion.
Hello Jason,
wow.
Here is to new beginnings.
Another year - a celebration of all things remembered and hope for the future - a future filled with hope and happiness.
One year, and so much has happened...
And then I get this email which floored me.
Talk about a weekend filled with wonderful moments - each one a precious gift.
HelloI have a new book out titled: Achieve Anything In Just One Year:
Be Inspired Daily to Live Your Dreams and Accomplish Your Goals.This is a self improvement, motivational and personal development book
that is designed to be read on a daily basis. One page a day for one year.
Each page starts with an inspirational quote, followed by a discussion of that
day's topic, and ends with a task or an assignment for the reader to follow.I am looking for Amazon Reviewers such as yourself to review the book.
If you are interested please reply with your mailing address and I will
send you a copy of the book.Thank-You and Have A Great Day!Jason HarveyAuthor, Entrepreneur, Life CoachAchieve Anything In Just One Year:Be Inspired Daily to Live Your Dreams and Accomplish Your Goalshttp://AchieveAnythingBook.com
Hello Jason,
I can't believe what amazing timing receiving this email is! I am so deep in a rut with my life, it's not even funny. I have spent days and nights hiding in my apartment, wishing that I could just disappear, and have been looking for a way out for some time now. Being bi-polar, and over the past two years, dealing with both parents battling cancer, along with my own outrageously complicated health issues has completely drained and hopeless. YES! I WOULD LOVE TO READ YOUR BOOK!!
I have already written a few reviews on amazon.com and I know that people have been reading, so it would be my pleasure to write something for you, and as far as what I'm reading as in terms of the reviews of your book on your site - it looks quite amazing!
I truly believe in coincidences, but this one is a gift. I had spent the whole afternoon at Barnes and Nobel (was in the states for the weekend) in the "self help section" scouring titles, hoping for something to "jump out at me" - to give me a lifeline to a life that once held so much promise and hope. (and another coincidence, I had sent away for tourist information about NS and NFLD as I have been wanting to visit that part of the country, enchanted by the beauty of the east coast - and see from your contact info - are from Nova Scotia!)
Thank you for contacting me and I will be eagerly awaiting your book!
wow.
Here is to new beginnings.
Another year - a celebration of all things remembered and hope for the future - a future filled with hope and happiness.
Thursday, June 03, 2010
my 2 cents...
Whenever I can put my 2 cents in to help somebody out, it brings me great pleasure when I now that I've made a difference for them in their lives.
When I was looking online about bounce flash accessories, I know I had to share my story.
I had been struggling with bounce flash issues for some time before I decided to bite the bullet and deviate from the standard "bounce flash accessories", and the fact that this one looked like a space ship did not help the issue, but I'm so very glad I did.
Panda eyes (or raccoon eyes) are a problem when shooting and bouncing a flash. Light bounces on a ceiling for example, and then falls straight down onto the face. The falloff most often seems to be hindered by the brow bone, which in turn, acts as a shade, which then creates a shadow in the eye socket area. Voila - you have instant panda eyes.
I have learned from experience that nobody likes to look like the living dead and no amount of post processing will save a photo that does not have enough detail/information to pull out of it. Sure, you can cheat and add some "catchlights" into the subjects eyes, but that only acts as a band-aid. It won't take away the fact that your "bounced subject victims" will still look like they have been up for 72 hours straight. Quite literally, not a pretty picture.
And then along came Lumiquest Pro Max 80/20 bounce flash device. I decided to go whole hog and get the Lumiquest Promax System (complete with bounce cards, silver, white, gold, diffusion screens etc.) but what worried me was a) the bulk of having all these extra gadgets on my flash (as if a huge flash was not cumbersome and obtrusive enough) and b) the fact that it looked like something out of a science fiction movie. But after seeing the results, I was sold. Hands down, this was one of the best investments I had ever made for my flash photography assignments.
The 80/20 does just that - 80% goes up and gets bounced onto whatever "ceiling" and the 20% then gets deflected onto the face of the subject. And sometimes, 20% is all you need! The result - an overall pleasant glow around the subject, as well as a nice uniform illumination on the face. NO MORE PANDA EYES!!! The colored inserts (along with the white card), give a wonderful extra punch, without the knockout of a bare unit. The diffusion that covers the grid is similar to what a diffusion box would give you. Perfect soft diffused light, just enough to illuminate the face.
I was also very thankful and excited when my futuristic bounce accessory saved the day during a wedding in a church where the ceilings were 200 + feet high. Unless you have a gigantic power pack strobe, there is no way, a regular "bounced flash" will save you. I pulled out my 80/20, attached the gold insert (it actually covers the grid on the inside), and presto!! A soft warm glow that was perfect for the wedding photos, and yet, unobtrusive enough to not get people rubbing their eyes from the "atomic bomb flash" of the larger Metz flashes...
So yes, this Lumiquest diffuser looks a bit strange to some, and impressive to others (to my surprise, not many photographers use this), the results speak for themselves. Don't expect this system to light up an entire room, or be able to light up a group of more than 10 people @ more than 10 feet away, but in situations where all you get is one chance to get the "perfect shot", this accessory is simply perfect!
When I was looking online about bounce flash accessories, I know I had to share my story.
I had been struggling with bounce flash issues for some time before I decided to bite the bullet and deviate from the standard "bounce flash accessories", and the fact that this one looked like a space ship did not help the issue, but I'm so very glad I did.
Panda eyes (or raccoon eyes) are a problem when shooting and bouncing a flash. Light bounces on a ceiling for example, and then falls straight down onto the face. The falloff most often seems to be hindered by the brow bone, which in turn, acts as a shade, which then creates a shadow in the eye socket area. Voila - you have instant panda eyes.
I have learned from experience that nobody likes to look like the living dead and no amount of post processing will save a photo that does not have enough detail/information to pull out of it. Sure, you can cheat and add some "catchlights" into the subjects eyes, but that only acts as a band-aid. It won't take away the fact that your "bounced subject victims" will still look like they have been up for 72 hours straight. Quite literally, not a pretty picture.
And then along came Lumiquest Pro Max 80/20 bounce flash device. I decided to go whole hog and get the Lumiquest Promax System (complete with bounce cards, silver, white, gold, diffusion screens etc.) but what worried me was a) the bulk of having all these extra gadgets on my flash (as if a huge flash was not cumbersome and obtrusive enough) and b) the fact that it looked like something out of a science fiction movie. But after seeing the results, I was sold. Hands down, this was one of the best investments I had ever made for my flash photography assignments.
The 80/20 does just that - 80% goes up and gets bounced onto whatever "ceiling" and the 20% then gets deflected onto the face of the subject. And sometimes, 20% is all you need! The result - an overall pleasant glow around the subject, as well as a nice uniform illumination on the face. NO MORE PANDA EYES!!! The colored inserts (along with the white card), give a wonderful extra punch, without the knockout of a bare unit. The diffusion that covers the grid is similar to what a diffusion box would give you. Perfect soft diffused light, just enough to illuminate the face.
I was also very thankful and excited when my futuristic bounce accessory saved the day during a wedding in a church where the ceilings were 200 + feet high. Unless you have a gigantic power pack strobe, there is no way, a regular "bounced flash" will save you. I pulled out my 80/20, attached the gold insert (it actually covers the grid on the inside), and presto!! A soft warm glow that was perfect for the wedding photos, and yet, unobtrusive enough to not get people rubbing their eyes from the "atomic bomb flash" of the larger Metz flashes...
So yes, this Lumiquest diffuser looks a bit strange to some, and impressive to others (to my surprise, not many photographers use this), the results speak for themselves. Don't expect this system to light up an entire room, or be able to light up a group of more than 10 people @ more than 10 feet away, but in situations where all you get is one chance to get the "perfect shot", this accessory is simply perfect!
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
it's like Sex and The City, but for guys...
I was bored, and needed to flex my writing muscles, and after seeing: "the Hangover", i thought i would try my hand at critiquing. I think i did a not bad job if I do say so myself...
it's like Sex and The City, but for guys...
The first thing that hit me the moment I saw four guys preparing for a wedding (which immediately sent off the "eye-rolling/groaning-plot-line-alarm-bells) was - "somebody/or group is going to be involved in some sort of messed up romantic adventure where one person is the "lady/man in waiting", while everybody else becomes the satellite planets out of orbit", and well, i was right. And so begins The Hangover...
Sure, it's a funny film - slapstick and outrageous, but nothing that you would not have expected if you had seen similar "any dude's version of Thelma and Louise" genre films (Pineapple Express anyone?). Adventure comedies are built in with the implication that the viewer suspend his belief and better judgment that: "this is just way too outrageous to happen in real life", for example, the scene where Alan (Zach Galifianakis) stumbles into the bathroom for a (sloppy sleepy morning) pee after a night of intense party-going and finds a tiger lounging on the bathroom floor. Yea, it's not what you would expect, and elicits some laughs in the way Alan has a delayed reaction to it, and by this point in the film, you have been waiting for something "this over the top", but how this (tiger) is used as a vehicle to introduce a pretty gratuitous character that does nothing to drive the plot along, in my opinion, is just lazy. I mean - this is Mike Tyson's Tiger? But most puzzling, is why Mike Tyson?!! This guy has as much presence as a piece of wet cardboard. The BABY has more personality than this 'has been boxing star' and does a hell of a lot more for this picture than what seemed to me as a "superfluous tribute" and an excuse to have bragging rights on the part of the director/producers to say: "Hey! I got Mike Tyson to act in my film - isn't he AWESOME?" But i digress...
Mid point in the film - Alan's character is becoming more charmingly neurotic, Stu (Ed Helms, who in my opinion, is a complete gem in this film, and does a lot to save it from comedic mediocrity) not only loses his tooth, but begins to lose his mind, and Phil (Bradley Cooper) is the ringleader who is trying to keep it all together, and Doug (Justin Bartha) - the groom to be? Well, he's off somewhere, unconscious, being a trivial psedo-main character who is resurrected at the end of the film, and unbenounced to him, saves the day. Throw in a weak cameo appearance from Mike Tyson who plays himself, Jade (Heather Graham), a stripper with a heart of gold, who did a wonderful job at pulling it off, and a few other supporting characters: the lady in waiting - Tracy (Sasha Barrese), the father - Jeffrey Tambor (who is such a brilliant actor, and should have had more than just a few lines in this film, and perhaps, in doing so, might have been able to add more comic oomph with his deadpan humor), Rob Riggle and Rachel Harris), all seem to stumble around in a metaphoric drunken like haze, much as the main characters do throughout the film.
And my main point to this review - is that for me, this film basically comes off as "Sex and the City" for men. It's a feel good buddy film about 4 misfits involuntarily getting into strange compromising situations that inevitably bring them all together as a close knit group of old friends. it worked for Michael Patrick King, why could it not work for "the Hangover"? Alan is a provocative Samathan Jones (modify Samantha's sexuality and transform it into a fearless savant who is the first to take a leap into the outlandish and unknown), Stu is Charlotte, a dizzy, clueless heart-of-gold lost soul who finds inner strength in the end to be true to her/himself, and Phil is Carrie Bradshaw - quirky, yet introspective and logical in an abstract enough sense to see the fuzzy silver lining in what seems to be a drug/alcohol soaked cloud. What about Miranda/Doug? This deadpan, overly analytical low key prototype character punctuates the film, but does not have enough of a "out of the ordinary" personality type to really make them entirely endearing (or give them enough room to be completely over the top, at least not in this film) but manage to be the metaphorical anchor to the dynamic of the foursome.
So in summation, is this film worth seeing just because it is entertaining? Sure - if you don't expect too much of the plot or characters. It does have it's shining moments (Alan's mental calculations at the casino), almost everything that Stu does and says, but the end of the film left me feeling jilted and after the 100 minutes I had invested in this tour de force, was hoping for a neater ending, and was not impressed by how it seemed to be embellished by some loosely stitched together punny/sight gag threads. Save your $ and get something really funny like "Superbad", which in my opinion, is like the gift that keeps on giving, one humorous layer at a time.
The first thing that hit me the moment I saw four guys preparing for a wedding (which immediately sent off the "eye-rolling/groaning-plot-line-alarm-bells) was - "somebody/or group is going to be involved in some sort of messed up romantic adventure where one person is the "lady/man in waiting", while everybody else becomes the satellite planets out of orbit", and well, i was right. And so begins The Hangover...
Sure, it's a funny film - slapstick and outrageous, but nothing that you would not have expected if you had seen similar "any dude's version of Thelma and Louise" genre films (Pineapple Express anyone?). Adventure comedies are built in with the implication that the viewer suspend his belief and better judgment that: "this is just way too outrageous to happen in real life", for example, the scene where Alan (Zach Galifianakis) stumbles into the bathroom for a (sloppy sleepy morning) pee after a night of intense party-going and finds a tiger lounging on the bathroom floor. Yea, it's not what you would expect, and elicits some laughs in the way Alan has a delayed reaction to it, and by this point in the film, you have been waiting for something "this over the top", but how this (tiger) is used as a vehicle to introduce a pretty gratuitous character that does nothing to drive the plot along, in my opinion, is just lazy. I mean - this is Mike Tyson's Tiger? But most puzzling, is why Mike Tyson?!! This guy has as much presence as a piece of wet cardboard. The BABY has more personality than this 'has been boxing star' and does a hell of a lot more for this picture than what seemed to me as a "superfluous tribute" and an excuse to have bragging rights on the part of the director/producers to say: "Hey! I got Mike Tyson to act in my film - isn't he AWESOME?" But i digress...
Mid point in the film - Alan's character is becoming more charmingly neurotic, Stu (Ed Helms, who in my opinion, is a complete gem in this film, and does a lot to save it from comedic mediocrity) not only loses his tooth, but begins to lose his mind, and Phil (Bradley Cooper) is the ringleader who is trying to keep it all together, and Doug (Justin Bartha) - the groom to be? Well, he's off somewhere, unconscious, being a trivial psedo-main character who is resurrected at the end of the film, and unbenounced to him, saves the day. Throw in a weak cameo appearance from Mike Tyson who plays himself, Jade (Heather Graham), a stripper with a heart of gold, who did a wonderful job at pulling it off, and a few other supporting characters: the lady in waiting - Tracy (Sasha Barrese), the father - Jeffrey Tambor (who is such a brilliant actor, and should have had more than just a few lines in this film, and perhaps, in doing so, might have been able to add more comic oomph with his deadpan humor), Rob Riggle and Rachel Harris), all seem to stumble around in a metaphoric drunken like haze, much as the main characters do throughout the film.
And my main point to this review - is that for me, this film basically comes off as "Sex and the City" for men. It's a feel good buddy film about 4 misfits involuntarily getting into strange compromising situations that inevitably bring them all together as a close knit group of old friends. it worked for Michael Patrick King, why could it not work for "the Hangover"? Alan is a provocative Samathan Jones (modify Samantha's sexuality and transform it into a fearless savant who is the first to take a leap into the outlandish and unknown), Stu is Charlotte, a dizzy, clueless heart-of-gold lost soul who finds inner strength in the end to be true to her/himself, and Phil is Carrie Bradshaw - quirky, yet introspective and logical in an abstract enough sense to see the fuzzy silver lining in what seems to be a drug/alcohol soaked cloud. What about Miranda/Doug? This deadpan, overly analytical low key prototype character punctuates the film, but does not have enough of a "out of the ordinary" personality type to really make them entirely endearing (or give them enough room to be completely over the top, at least not in this film) but manage to be the metaphorical anchor to the dynamic of the foursome.
So in summation, is this film worth seeing just because it is entertaining? Sure - if you don't expect too much of the plot or characters. It does have it's shining moments (Alan's mental calculations at the casino), almost everything that Stu does and says, but the end of the film left me feeling jilted and after the 100 minutes I had invested in this tour de force, was hoping for a neater ending, and was not impressed by how it seemed to be embellished by some loosely stitched together punny/sight gag threads. Save your $ and get something really funny like "Superbad", which in my opinion, is like the gift that keeps on giving, one humorous layer at a time.
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