Home/End of January

Hey all! So, despite the weather that was trying to keep me from arriving at home I made it :D Yay!! This time with no incidents along the way, which is awesome. Anyways, so it is the last day of January, and I have very little to show for it...so I decided to show off some of the instagram pictures that I took this month (really, not very many, but that's the way it goes I suppose). Enjoy :P

Alright, I guess I should probably go do something useful :P I will have more updates as the week continue (maybe even a climbing update! It's been a while since I've had one of those...). Have a great week, my friends!

Love,

Sara :)

Musica Monday

So, I have been racking my brain for what I should use for this week's Musica Monday. I decided to go back to one of my older posts and put it into Pandora! I really must say that that is a really wonderful way to get new music, btw! For this week I have decided to use a band called Jem. I found them when I looked back into the group The Pierces. They actually sound quite similar (or so I'm told :P), but all I can really say is that I find her voice interesting and nice! I hope you enjoy her music as much as I have been as of late :D

This song also apparently appeared in the Sex & the City movie! Fun fact there :P
Have a good Monday! I only have 3 days left of my class this month!! Then it's time for another week long break, then back again for my last semester of school! :D
Love,
Sara :)

Sleeping Healthy

So, I realized that I haven't done a post about being healthy lately, it used to be I had a blog entirely for that, but seeing as I no longer have more than one blog (which could change in the future?? looking for opinions on that!) I suppose that I will have to just add some up here. Today's topic is going to be about something called sleep (radical, I know!) and the different theories surrounding it.
There is a hormone made in the brain called Melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone that signals to the body when it is time to start preparing for sleep. In a recent study by the Journal of Applied Ergonomics, when you use a backlit digital table, such as a iPad or laptop computer, for two hours before bed your Melatonin level drops by an average of 23%. This can change depending how bright the light is and what you are doing on the tablet. Without getting into the scientific details of the study, pretty much when you use a bright screen for an extended period of time before you try to sleep, you are suppressing the hormone that tells your body that it is time to sleep, meaning you are going to be less likely to be able to sleep well. (Information originally found in FITNESS magazine and the link above) This can also be connected to excess use of cell phones before bed, which is not recommended. Using these types of screens doesn't allow your brain to settle down and start considering sleep because it is too busy doing other things; it is similar to trying to fall asleep when your roommate comes in a turns on the light after you are comfortably in bed and almost asleep: you wake up and takes a bit longer to fall back to sleep. This drop in Melatonin has also been linked to some cases of cancer, especially breast cancer in women, as well as heart attacks.
Another thing to consider about sleep is that a lack of sleep can lead to an increased risk of cardiovascular problems. It can also lead to an increase in potential for psychological issues and emotional distress. I haven't looked at a lot of research on this, supposedly women are more prone to these, but researchers aren't positive since the majority of studies have been performed on men. Yet, a study at Duke is putting this idea out there now, so perhaps there is something to it?
A lack of sleep has other consequences which I am sure many people have experienced, I know that I am slightly ashamed to say that I have. A lack of sleep can lead to a disruption in learning and attentiveness. While this may not be a big deal for weekends or for days spent at the house, but a disruption in learning can affect schoolwork for anyone in school as well as work performance in general. If you can't stay awake during school or work, your performance will inevitably decrease which isn't something that is very helpful or positive. A disruption in attentiveness can do the same things for school and work related issues, but it can also lead to other problems such as inattentive driving, or walking, or just being generally unaware of your surroundings.
Alright, I've gone through a bunch of negative things about lack of sleep, but I do think that they are important to know! On the other hand, 1-I'm almost done with this post and 2-I'm going to add a little positive flair at the end :D
I know that there is always more stuff to do during the day, and there just isn't enough time to get all the sleep that you may need, but if you get enough sleep and are productive during the day (the hard part....believe me I know) then you will be better off than not getting enough sleep! FITNESS magazine online provides a great story called "5 Steps to a Good Night's Sleep" which I think you should all read if you get the chance because it has some very good points!
All in all, get enough sleep, my friends, and life will just seem a lot better :D Let me know what you guys think about me having a fitness section for this blog or if I should create another blog entirely for just fitness ideas like this, I promise that I would listen to all the opinions and take my decision from there! :)
Also, I started trying out Tai Chi....it's interesting, more of a workout than one might think!
Happy Saturday!
Love,
Sara :)

Image from here

Fun Facts about Dracula (1931 film)

In continuation of my month of monsters in movies, today was a viewing of the 1931 film 'Dracula', staring Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula. I am again going to present you with some fun facts (I should add that these facts come from IMDb and my classmates/teachers). Fun facts are fun :D

-There was a Spanish version of this movie made at the same time as this one was being filmed. They used the same set, just filmed at night rather than during the day.
-The spiderwebs in Dracula's castle were made by shooting rubber cement from a rotary gun. (That would be so much fun!!)
-This is one of the few movies that was shot in order of how it is seen in the movie.
-There are two versions of this movie in English. Each has a different soundtrack; one originally from the 1930s and another more modern one with music by the Kronos Quartet (quite good I think).
-At no point in the film does Dracula sport fangs, one part of the myth and book that was left out.
-Upon his death in 1956, Bela Lugosi, who plays Dracula, was buried in his black silk cape that he wore in this film. He was Dracula even until the end of his life (talk about the role of his life
-It seemed that after this movie Lugosi almost believed himself to be Dracula (I may do a post on him later, his life was interesting concerning this movie).
-David Manners, who played John Harker, never saw the film after it came out, by his own choice.

I hope that you have enjoyed these fun facts! The purpose of making these is to just share with people (like I said they are from other places online, mainly IMDb, so don't cite me) because I enjoy them so much!
Happy Friday!! Have a good weekend, my friends!
Love,
Sara :)

Magic of Reading

I create this post as I am just over half-way through the book Dracula by Bram Stoker. It won't be very long, but I wanted to get this down. For the past several years, pretty much since I entered high school I haven't had a lot of free time to sit down and read a book for the fun of it. When I was little, I used to lose myself in books and could spend many hours reading without a hitch if I found the book interesting. This past month (though the class is not yet over) with my class, Monsters: Myths & Movies, has really brought back to me this love for reading and for getting lost in a book and trying to understand the characters! Not only that but finding a magic in the books in the way that they can take you to another world for a while, or simply back in time to the victorian age or medieval times, or across the globe to Egypt or Transylvania (can you tell what I'm reading now? :P). Welcome back into my life, reading for the fun of it! I'm sure starting next semester and after graduation that we will be seeing much more of each other :D
Have a good night, my friends!
Love,
Sara :)

Fun Facts about Altered States

We watched the movie 'Altered States' after class on Friday and in preparation for a film discussion on Monday. I thought that I would share a few fun facts about this rendition of the Jekyll and Hyde myth.

-The actual director (Ken Russell) used was the 27th choice as a director. In essence, no one really wanted to make this movie.
-It was also the first American movie directed by British director Ken Russell.
-Members of the cast and crew of this movie tried the isolation tank, where our main character experiences his hallucinations. William Hurt actually hallucinated while Blair Brown found it very peaceful.
-During the hallucination moments in the film, several of the 'hell' scenes were taken from the 1935 drama 'Dante's Inferno'.

Alright, that's about all that I have for now, I'm not feeling too philosophical right now. I guess more artsy...check out my deviantART page if you want! Here! Yea.....so enjoy!
Love,
Sara :)

Musica Monday

For today's Musica Monday, I'm going to go back in time to 2002 (ok, it's not that far behind us, but i mean 10 years still!) to look at an old movie. The movie is Spirit: Stallion of the Cimerron, to be exact (oh, and SPOILER ALERT, for those of you who haven't seen the movie yet). In 2002, Bryan Adams and Hans Zimmer created the soundtrack for this moving animated film about a wild horse finding his way home in the old west. This soundtrack has become one of my favorite movie soundtracks and I believe that it is very well put together. I enjoy the songs sung by Bryan Adams as they fit the movie very well, they are also very pretty and beautiful and nice to listen to. I'm going to post two songs from this soundtrack today, one is called 'Here I Am' and the second is 'Get Off Of My Back'. These two are my favorite on the CD, and for the parts of the movie they are in, they are quite appropriate.

'Here I Am' is about the beginning of life and when you realize who you are and where you are supposed to be in the world. It is played both at the beginning and at the end of the movie, when the horse finds his way home. It is a song about finding yourself and accepting who you are and showing the world...quiet like.

'Get Off Of My Back' in the context of the movie means quite literally get off of my back. In this scene, the stallion is literally trying to get people to stop riding him. But in a more philosophical way, I suppose it could be meaning more towards letting a person do what they want, don't try and change anyone or anything about them because they are who they are for a reason.

I would also highly recommend watching this movie if you haven't when you get the chance! I did put up the video that included the part of the movie in hopes of catching your attention to watching the movie itself! It's really quite good! :)

I guess I am in a more philosophical mood right now, I mean I have to read some of Dracula later. Plus I did write a paper this weekend about the philosophical connections between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and several modern day renditions in television and comics. There are surprisingly quite a few actually! I'll talk a bit about that tomorrow I think...maybe, I'm not sure yet. If you haven't figured it out, except for Musica Mondays, I kinda post when I have something to post about and when I get the chance! I'm not very good at keeping up with this whole daily posting thing, but as long as I get a few in every week, that's about my goal. Alright, sorry about the longer post today, but I kinda was in a rambling mood. Plus it's like -9 degrees outside right now, not counting windchill and the fact that I'm up on a hill, so it's like -30-ish? I'm not sure, but whatever it is, it's cold!
Happy Monday!
Love,
Sara :)