Accountability Wednesdays: Week 37

Well, I’m a week into my shift, and believe me when I say that I’m ready to go home. No offense, Alberta, but your bone dry air and ridiculous temperature swings are getting on my nerves, just a little bit. I’m longing for the salty East-coast air and the not-quite-as-unreliable weather patterns. Also, I’m dying for a garlic fingers. Man, am I dying for a garlic fingers.

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. Let’s get on with it.

Goal #1: Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.

As per usual I can’t really comment on anything this week because I don’t have a scale. I can tell you that I’ve been pretty good this week for a lot of things. I’m still drinking lots of water (although I caved twice, but I don’t think two cans of pop in a full week is really so bad, do you) and I’ve been eating fairly healthy considering that I have to deal with camp food all day every day. I haven’t been able to get any exercise, because, you know…ridiculously unfit work hours…but I’ve been trying to move and stretch a lot throughout my shift instead of sitting on my backside all day every day. So there’s that, right?

Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my author platform.

It hasn’t been too bad of a week for this one either. I posted an extra video on YouTube to review the contents of my first Ipsy Glam Bag, and I’ve been trying to make sure that I tweet at least once a day. Facebook has been a little slow, but I’m okay with that because I’ve been noticing a slow-but-steady increase in followers and interactions via the other platforms. Long story short, thumbs up for this week.

Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.

Guys…guys…guys…I’m getting super excited. My beta-reader recently got back to me and she had only a short list of minor issues that she thought could use addressing. I’m now in the process of compiling those issues and doing a last run-through of the manuscript to make sure there are no hidden typos. By this time next week I will be fixing those last issues/typos in the main manuscript file, resubmitting to CreateSpace, and from there it will be only 24 hours before I am able to order my proof copies. Those will take five business days to come, and assuming that they look okay, I will then be able to flip the switch, so to speak, and make the book available for purchase. You have no idea how pumped I am. In two weeks my first book could be for sale. I may never sell more than a handful of copies, but you have no idea how fulfilled I will be just to have my book actually be a book. AHHHH!!!!

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

Unfortunately as I am writing this I realize that I forgot to go through and keep track of what I wrote this week, so I’ll have to do that later, but I can tell you that it’s probably somewhere in the range of 2000. I’ve been taking it a little easy this week partly because I think I deserve it and partly because I know that once Nowhere to Hide is set up for sale I’ll be putting my nose to the grindstone and working hard on my next venture. So with that said, look forward to the future! There are great things on the horizon!

Culinary Conflict (or: My Food is Better Than Your Food!)

Have you ever gotten in a fight over food? I’m not talking about complaining that your spouse made meatloaf three times this week, or having to return your fast food burger because apparently “no onions” is kitchen lingo for “ALL OF THE GODDAMN ONIONS”. No, I’m talking about getting into a straight-up debate over the proper way to make a certain food, with one or more of the parties getting genuinely upset in the process.

I recently got into just such a debate with a coworker over the proper way to make donair meat. I said it was made with one kind of meat, he said another. We both had dramatically different methods for actually cooking the meat. And then when we got to discussing the sauce? Let’s just say that things were starting to heat up to dangerous levels.

In the end it turned out that neither of us were actually right (there’s an Alberta method and a Cape Breton method and neither matches the actual origin of the food) but it got me thinking about culinary differences in various areas of the world, particularly areas that are actually very close together.

For example, in Cape Breton we have what we call a “combination” pizza. This includes regular pizza sauce, pepperoni and cheese, onions, mushrooms, and green peppers. If you go to any pizza place on the island (and some of the ones on mainland Nova Scotia) and ask for a combination pizza, this is what you’ll get. But drive a few hours away and ask for one and no one will know what you’re talking about. To get something similar (but generally with at least one ingredient either added or taken away) you have to ask for “the works”. Every so often you’ll find a place with “combination” on their menu, but their version is a conglomeration of every topping they have, as in “a combination of everything“. Similarly, you can get donairs all across Canada, but very few places outside of the Maritime provinces seem to make donair pizza (which is just pizza crust with donair toppings on it).

It has also always amused me how there are certain things (that don’t seem particularly odd or special) that we have at home but just don’t seem to exist in other parts of the world. For instance, in Nova Scotia we have juice bags (literally just juice boxes but in a plastic bag instead of a box) and I have it on good authority that most of the continent has never heard of these. I’ve also been told by friends from the US that they’d never heard of pizza burgers (pizza toppings on a burger bun) or garlic fingers (garlic butter and cheese on a pizza crust and cut into strips). Come to think of it, a lot of these discrepancies seem to be pizza-related. Hmm…

Seriously, how can you people not be rushing to make this RIGHT NOW?!

I guess it just amuses me that things can change so much in such a short distance traveled, and that such innocuous items that are super-common in one area can cease to exist so nearby.

Long story short: I love food, and I think that my food is better than your food. 😛

What do you think? Have you ever gotten into a fight over differences in food preparation? Are there certain foods in your area that you know don’t exist elsewhere? What’s your favorite kind of pizza (because I just want to know)? Please share!

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 8

Okay, before we start with the tears and accusations accountability, I would like to take this moment to thank L. Palmer of The L. Palmer Chronicles, for the “High Five” she recently awarded me as per her recent Hello’s and High-Fives endevour. It was a very cute way to help bloggers interact and get to know each other, and as a result of both the initial post and the follow-up “awards”, I saw quite a lovely boost in visitors. So thanks again, L! We all enjoyed the chance to visit some new blogs and obtain some new visitors of our own. 🙂

Now on to the tears and acc-, uh, I mean accountability.

Health and Body Image Goal

I can honestly say that this one is starting to get somewhere. As I’ve mentioned before I am not the best eater while I’m at home…I definitely took the chance to enjoy some foods I would have been better off without (oh garlic fingers, why do you haunt me so?). BUT, I can also report that I had an excellent week for exercise. I stuck with Jillian Michaels’ Body Revolution and I am currently halfway through week 2 of the 12-week program. It has been much more difficult than I had originally anticipated – whether because it’s a tough program or because I just am that out of shape – but I’ve stuck with it so far and I fully intend to continue on with it during my time out West these next two weeks. It’s only a half hour a day…surely I can handle that, right? Right? Well anyway, hopefully I’ll eat a little better the next two weeks as well. I look forward to being able to report either some weight loss or size reduction by the time I get back home again.

Editing Goal

You saw nothing. You never saw the word “editing”. It’s all some vague dream-like memory in the back of your mind that is rapidly disappearing into the land of the forgotten. You will not flog me.

Moving on.

1,000,000 Word Goal

This week hasn’t been one of my best weeks for sure. I got lazy, no two ways about it. The only writing I did was for this blog, and the posts I wrote amounted to 2224 words. Wow. Pretty crappy, actually. But I defend my choices to roll around on the floor with my daughter and watch every episode of My Little Pony instead of writing. Screw you, I maybe a mediocre writer but I’m an awesome mom.

Anyway, in addition to returning to my new habit of scribbling out as many words as I can in between tasks at work, I hope to get a bit more writing done during travel and while hanging out at camp now that I’ve picked myself up a cheap bluetooth keyboard. I just can’t get used to typing large amounts of text on my tablet (even just these smaller blog posts are painful) but the keyboard works great, so I’ve got high hopes. Wish me luck!

Accountability Tuesdays Week 4

We’ve made it to another Tuesday and that means two things:
1. I’m currently mid-flight on my second of four plane rides that are bringing me back out to Northern Alberta for 14 more straight days of work, and…
2. It’s time to hold myself accountable again. Booooo….

Okay, enought flitting about. Can’t put it off forever.

Health and Body Image Goal
I will say this…my 14 days at home are not good for the waistline. There are just too many opportunities for treats at home, things I can’t have when I’m in camp. Garlic fingers and pizza, fried pepperoni, chocolates and cookies, and way too much soda. It is really quite terrible on the willpower, of which I already have very little. Can you guess where this is headed? I felt pretty decent when I got home for my turnaround,  but after two weeks of fatty snacks and sitting around the house playing with the baby I’m not really in a great way. On that note I’ve got some plans for this shift that involve the use of a set of toning bands and a lot of loose-leaf tea, so here’s hoping for a better outlook next week.

Editing Goal
Should I just hide my head in shame right now and be done with it? You guessed it, I still haven’t so much as glanced at my manuscript yet. I know, I know, I’ve been a very bad author. But, but, my printed copy is in the luggage right under my feet, and I swear it will end up in my hands – along with a good red pen – sometime this week. I promise.

1, 000, 000 Word Goal
I didn’t get as many blog entries written in advance as I was hoping this week, but I still wrote a bit, so let’s count it up. It looks like I only wrote blog posts this week, but I did manage to pluck out 4812 words worth of them. Still not up to snuff, in my opinion, but actually better than I thought I had done, so I guess I’ll give myself a little pat on the back for that. Additionally, since it’s almost the end of the month I thought I would share that I have thus far written a grand total of 20774 words this year. Thats nowhere near the count I need per month to reach my million word goal, but it’s about 20000 words more than I probably would havd written had I not made the goal. So, huzzah, I guess!

Stay tuned for next week’s accountabilities! Maybe I’ll write some love scenes for February. ♥