Of books, writing, and life in general
Today we’re featuring The Crystal Keeper trilogy by author Laurisa White Reyes. I’ve read her fantasy books The Rock of Ivanore and The Last Enchanter and really enjoyed them (read my reviews of those books here and here). The Crystal Keeper takes place before The Rock of Ivanore.
Read more about The Crystal Keeper and enter the giveaways at the end of this post for a chance to win a Kindle Fire or an $100 Amazon gift card or PayPal cash. What a giveaway, huh?
Or should I say, woman crush Friday? Sounds weeeird. Anyhoo, I found out about BBC TV series The Fall when I was reading an article about American actors in UK TV shows. The beautiful Gillian Anderson was on the list and I remember the article saying her ‘convincing’ British accent probably stemmed from the fact that she lived in London when she was a young girl. I know, that’s such a random and irrelevant detail to remember, but I love crime drama so I was intrigued by The Fall and decided I must watch it.
The show is one of those series with hour-long episodes and short seasons. Season 1 only had five episodes. Gillian Anderson plays Stella Gibson, a senior police officer who’s leading the task force investigating the murders of young women in Belfast. Stella Gibson is beautiful, strong, successful, calculating, focused, and very driven. She comes off as unfeeling and her colleagues seem to think she doesn’t have any emotion at all, but we can see that that’s not entirely true. She feels deeply for the murdered women and won’t stop until she catches the killer, who happens to be played by the equally beautiful Jamie Dornan a.k.a. Christian Grey (ugh).
Yup, I’ve a new girl crush. I’ve been girl-crushing on Gina Rodriguez (Twitter, Instagram) ever since I started watching her TV series Jane the Virgin late last year. I’m actually a couple of episodes behind since I haven’t kept up with the series after the mid-season break, but I’m gonna catch up soon, you can be sure about that. It’s just a really fun and entertaining show.
If you’re not familiar with Jane the Virgin, the story is basically like this: Jane, who is in her early 20’s, is a virgin and she’s pregnant. Not by a miracle, of course (Gasp! Inmaculada!) but by accident – she was mistakenly artificially inseminated by the gynecologist who was filling in for Jane’s actual doctor and was feeling out of sorts after she caught her wife cheating, and who happens to be the sister of the baby daddy and the secret ex-lover of their father’s hot wife. Are you still with me? Hah.
Last month I decided that I should keep a fitness journal this year. I was kind of obsessing about the Blogilates Fit Journal – which looks pretty cool (though it’s too structured for me and would probably be wasted on me) – and I was thinking maybe keeping a journal might help me be more consistent, so I decided to transform one of my unused notebooks into a pseudo “fitness journal.” I selected one with unlined pages and started logging in my workouts.
I was able to log in a few workout sessions before my whole fitness journal plan went kaput. Hah. It was around the time that Carpet Head gave me this “Wellness Datebook” by The Spa. I was ecstatic when I got it because it meant I can use it instead of the unlined notebook and save the other one for whatever mighty writing ventures I can think of in the future. Haha. I copied my records of my previous workouts into the datebook and that was the last time I opened it. HAH. I stopped working out days before Boracay Open and still haven’t started working out again days after Boracay. I know, I’m terrible.
Anyway, I think my grace period has ended and I should be starting my workouts again so I’m hoping to revive this “fitness journal” thing this month.
To jumpstart this “revival,” let me tell you a little bit about The Spa Wellness Datebook and what’s in it.
There’s a contest about this topic over at Positive Writer. Fat chance I’ll win because the number of entries to these contests is ridiculous, but this is a good writing exercise and we must practice our writing, mustn’t we, precious? Plus the dude with the glasses in the photo above has convinced me it’s worth a try. Thank you, dude with glasses. Look at him, he’s got a light bulb on his finger.
Every year since 2009, the Ultimate Warriors have joined the annual Boracay Open International Beach Ultimate Competition and, this year, for the third time in a row, we made it to the finals in Pool B. Woot.
The first time we made it to the finals, we lost to DUO, the club team from UP Diliman. Last year, we won against the Sexual Harassment Panda Experience, a team of players from different parts of the globe. This year, we were up against another Manila team, Pancakes. Unfortunately, we didn’t win this one, but, hey, this is our third year in the finals! Plus two of our players won individual awards! Carpet Head bagged a spot on the Mythical 4 for Pool B, while Ced (who plays for DUO which didn’t field a team this year) bagged the Finals MVP award for Pool B. YAYYYY.
Featured image from www.elnidoresorts.com
Got a few minutes? Good, ’cause this is a really long one. We had a five-day weekend in Manila when the Pope visited the country last month. Carpet Head and I decided to take advantage of this long weekend and go away somewhere nice. We saw a list of top 10 beautiful resorts in the Philippines (for the life of me I can’t remember the link now) and we decided to go to Lagen Island El Nido Resorts in Palawan. Gorgeous place, I tell you. It’s a bit on the pricey side, but it’s a beautiful, BEAUTIFUL place. I cannot say that enough.
There are two ways to get to El Nido from Manila. One is to take a flight via Island Transvoyager Inc. to Lio Airport in El Nido and then take a boat to the island resort you’re booked in. Another way is to take a commercial flight to Puerto Princesa, take a six-hour ride to El Nido and then take the boat to the island. Carpet Head and I decided that we didn’t want the stress of a six-hour land trip so we got the 3 PM chartered flight on Friday afternoon.
I don’t really review a lot of children’s picture books on the blog, but when I got an email from the editor of Beyond the Pale, a fantasy and paranormal anthology I featured a while back, I couldn’t say no to his latest work, Monster Goose Nursery Rhymes. When I read that this new picture book would have things like manticores, hydra, centaurs, and other interesting creatures, I was curious!
Read on to find out what other monsters and creatures of myth are inside Monster Goose Nursery Rhymes and read my thoughts on the book.
Today I would like to ramble about reading. Rather, about NOT reading any damn book at the moment. I apologize in advance for the utter uselessness of this post.
With the exception of The Hunger Games, I have not read any of the books featured on my blog header image. WTF, right? Lies, all lies! Haha. Well, these books have been on my ‘to be read’ shelf for a while now. In case the titles aren’t really visible, these are what’s on that stack of lies books: