Day 80- Forever Peaceful

Today’s first for the “one new thing a day for 100 days” New Year’s resolution happened while on a quick work break stroll.  Amazing ten minute gift! Mahalo, Lorraine 🙏.  The first was a 5 minute tutorial on Tahitian Dance – great for the hips ;).  I lucked out as I passed by the door right when class was starting.  I had never been on this particular street before so the pass by was completely by chance and the teacher was extremely friendly.  After I inquired about future classes, she gave me the schedule and said ‘if you have five now, come in for a taste’.. so fun.

Te Hau Nui means “forever peaceful” in Tahitian and through sharing the art form, THN School of Hula hopes to convey the beauty, grace, joy, and power of Polynesian dance..

DIY Mason Jar Prism Light

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Today’s first for the “one new thing a day for 100 days” new years res was to make a mason jar prism light.  At the end of a long day it was a good break for the mind.. fun craft project that takes under one hour.  Mine is still drying, but hopefully will end up looking like the online pinterest final product pictured at the bottom of this post.

Supplies You Will Need To Make A Prism Mason Jar Light:

  • Mason jar
  • Round glass decorative elements
  • e3600 glue (or any glue rated for affixing to glass)
  • Ribbon or twine
  • Tea light
  • Lighter
  • Brushes

Step 1: Apply Glue To Mason Jar

Apply E3600 glue in small patches in a well-ventilated area with your brush. Apply glue to a small area on jar, working from the base of the lid downward.

Step 2: Apply Glass To Mason Jar

Add glass elements over the glue. Take your time planning out the design, as some round glass elements may be bigger than others. Once the area is dry, move on to the next, slowly covering the body of the mason jar. This process takes a few hours, so no rush!

Step 3: Finishing Touches

Once your glass has completely dried, remove lid top and tie a pretty ribbon or twine around the lip of the jar. Insert tea light into candle and enjoy..

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Day 78- rail turns

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Today’s first for the “one new thing a day for 100 days”  today’s first for the “one new thing a day for 100 days”” New Year’s resolution was to stick 180 turns while train track rail balancing..  my goodness could spend a whole afternoon walking on train track rails, it’s so fun!  Great for balance practice ..

Helpful tips:

*keep knees slightly bent

*engage core, keep spine straight and tall

*eyes on the horizon rather than down at feet

*arms out to sides with shoulders relaxed to aid in balance

(Unaided, a person’s center of balance is located just beneath their ribcage, about halfway from the ground to the top of a person’s head. This means that we balance from this part of our bodies. Carrying a long pole lowers our center of balance, just as holding out our arms to the sides does. If the pole is long enough, a person’s center of balance can be lowered to their knees, ankles or even the tops of their feet. A lower center of balance makes it easier for anyone to balance while walking across even a narrow rope.)

Day 77- a fortunate stroke of serendipity

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure..

Today’s first for the “one new thing a day for 100 days” New Year’s resolution came at an opportune time ..  sometimes the stars just align.   I was walking into Home Depot to pick up some engineered wood for a simple stand up desk I’m piecing together for my office and lo and behold cross paths with a gent looking to donate his.  The size was on par with my measurements give or take an inch, nice work Mr. Serendipity!

Serendipity means a “fortunate happenstance” or “pleasant surprise”. It was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754. In a letter he wrote to a friend, Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had made by reference to a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip.

 

Day 76-Los Gatos library

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Today’s first for the “one new thing a day for 100 days” New Year’s resolution, was to join the Los Gatos independence library. I was working in the area today  and needed a place to work on taxes… What a beautiful building, wonderful place to hone in and focus on a task at hand.

I am a huge believer in environmental impact on human psyche.   Clean, sharp, and sleek elements sure do help to sharpen my focus!

 

Day 75 – Relish in Receiving

Wish I could do today’s first for the “one new thing a day for 100 days”new years resolution for the next 25 days and call the mission complete!  My first on this fine day was an unexpected treat at the gym I go to – Free Massage by Alexis.

As a licensed massage therapist, I felt particularly grateful for this experience as it had been awhile since I received and I was reminded of what a gift it is.  The power of touch is profound.  It heals, influences, grounds and soothes.   It’s no wonder our skin is our largest organ (with an area of ~20sqft).  It is the pathway to touch – one of our most important and most powerful functions.  Touch is as vital as food and security for long term wellbeing…(*added interesting facts about our skin below the pics..)IMG_7918

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Interesting Facts About our Skin!

  • The average adult has approximately 21 square feet of skin, which weighs 9 lbs and contains more than 11 miles of blood vessels.
  • The average person has about 300 million skin cells. A single square inch of skin has about 19 million cells and up to 300 sweat glands.
  • Your skin is its thickest on your feet (1.4mm) and thinnest on your eyelids (0.2mm).
  • The skin renews itself every 28 days.
  • Your skin constantly sheds dead cells, about 30,000 to 40,000 cells every minute! That’s nearly 9 lbs. per year!
  • Some sources estimate that more than half of the dust in your home is actually dead skin.
  • Dead skin comprises about a billion tons of dust in the earth’s atmosphere.
  • Your skin is home to more than 1,000 species of bacteria.
  • Skin that is severely damaged may try to heal itself by forming scar tissue, which is different from normal skin tissue because it lacks hair and sweat glands.
  • Skin can form additional thickness and toughness — a callus — if exposed to repeated friction or pressure.
  • Some of the nerves in your skin are connected to muscles instead of the brain, sending signals (through the spinal cord) to react more quickly to heat, pain, etc.
  • Your skin has at least five different types of receptors that respond to pain and touch.
  • Changes in your skin can sometimes signal changes in your overall health.

Day 74- power of the parking lot pause

Today’s first for the ‘one new thing a day for 100 days’ new years resolution was to practice what I preach and use the power of the 3 minute pause to change my thought patterns.  At the start of my 7 hour corporate wellness gig at Paxata (a data preparation tool company, similar to Excel) it hit me hard – I was depleted.  Lack of sleep, too many life changes at once and heavy traffic had thrown my system into shock.  My mind, body and spirit were not happy.  While the thought of crawling into a dark cave and sleeping for a week was enticing, I had to do quite the opposite – show up bright eyed and help heal others for 7 hours.  I had to figure out a way to feed my system positive energy and do it quickly.  I opted for a 3 minute meditation, face to the sun, in the parking lot instead of extra caffeine  and wow did it do the trick.  After the short pause, my system was once again thinking logically.  Yes, I was tired, but no  – I did not have to find that cave 😉 – I had an opportunity to go help people and I would show up with gratitude for the experience.  It was wonderful.  And I cannot wait to go to sleep tonight knowing the job got done, and done wholeheartedly 🙂

Day 73-view from Chaminade terrace (and mourning dove love!)

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Today’s first for the “one new thing a day for 100 days” new years resolution was another diamond in the backyard scenario.. my goodness I bow to ‘google’ for the 15 magical minutes I soaked in tonight.  I was finishing up work at my new office and realized I needed a ‘first’ for the day.. after google-ing good places to catch the sunset nearby, I discovered that a 6 minute drive away lives Chaminade Resort & Spa.  En route to the suggested – by foursquare – terrace view, I spotted a dirt trail and dropped into what felt like a tropical rain forest .  In actuality it was the santa cruz mountains (though much of the SCM is considered a temperate rain forest *Temperate rainforests are coniferous or broadleaf forests that occur in the temperate zone and receive heavy rainfall.*

This mourning dove was precious, even struck a pose for me..

View from terrace:

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Day 72 – yi to wu

Today’s first for the “one new thing a day for 100 days” new years resolution was to learn how to write and speak the numbers 1 to 5 in Chinese (Mandarin)  (the top row of characters seen below).

Number One to Ten in Chinese : Stock Photo

  • 1: 一 (壹) yī (pronounced yee)
  • 2: 二 (Traditional:貳) èr (pronounced uhr)
  • 3: 三 (Traditional:參) sān (pronounced sahn)
  • 4: 四 (肆) sì (pronounced suh)
  • 5: 五 (伍) wǔ(pronounced woo)

Wild to think that 1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese..

  • The current population of China is 1,386,443,014 as of Monday, March 13, 2017, based on the latest United Nations estimates.
  • China population is equivalent to 18.47% of the total world population.
  • China ranks number 1 in the list of countries (and dependencies) by population.
  • The population density in China is 148 per Km2 (383 people per mi2).* U.S. is 84 per mi2
  • The total land area is 9,390,784 Km2 (3,625,800 sq. miles) *U.S. is 3.797 million sq. miles
  • 59.1 % of the population is urban (819,767,019 people in 2017)
  • The median age in China is 37.3 years.

Day 71 – Credence in Craigslist

Today’s first for the “one new thing a day for 100 days” new years resolution was having unbelievable success in finding a room & solid roommates on craigslist.   For the first time the tangible reality exceeded the virtual description – thank you William!  Looking forward to moving in to the new space this week.  AA727F9C-02BA-4C5F-B39E-B4415EE23E97

I grew up in a world sans ‘internet’ and what a wonderful childhood it was.. yet today the beauty of cyberspace shed its light on my reality.  I would never have stumbled upon this hidden gem in the santa cruz mountains if it were not for craigslist.  I left the experience yearning to learn more about this web and encountered some interesting info…

The internet has become something that billions of people can access around the world. Since the birth of the internet as we know it in 1991, it has become a place where millions of people can log into social networks such as Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter and share ideas, opinions and their lives with those closest to them…

10 random, interesting facts about the internet:

  1. It is 8478 days old
  2. The first registered domain name was symbolics.com
  3. Twitter has 271 million monthly active users.
  4. one million babies have been born from people who met on match.com
  5. the amazon logo is indicating you can get everything from A to Z.
  6. 500 million tweets are sent per day
  7. a single google query uses 1,000 computers in .2 seconds to retrieve an answer.
  8. as of 2013 there were 1 billion websites on the internet
  9. 100 billion emails are sent everyday.
  10. Gangnam style by Psy is still the most viewed youtube video of all time with 2 billion views.