A Dose of Vampires

Since I have been watching the Vampire Diaries lately, I feel like I should also try to share it to the people I know. Of course, I can’t share the links for the videos because I don’t have any video. What I do have are the books. Well, e-books, actually. But I want to share it to whoever wants to read it. Below are the links for the first six books of The Vampire Diaries. There is a seventh book, but it’s not due to come out until next year. I hope you guys enjoy!! 🙂

01 The Awakening

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02  The Struggle

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03 The Fury

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04 Dark Reunion

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05 The Return: Nightfall

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06 The Return: Shadow Souls

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Numerology

I had my name and my birthday analyzed earlier today. I’m not saying that I a totally into numerology. I was just curious, and I was excited to read that the results were quite accurate. Anyway, I want to share it here. I hope I don;t offend anyone who does not believe in numerology or metaphysics. 🙂

Your Inner or Soul’s Urge: This is spiritual and emotional expression more than physical. It is your heart-felt desires, your incentive, how you look at life. Here are your areas of personal satisfaction.

Number: 1 Usually not very emotional, you are in this life to take action. You want to lead and direct. You are independent at heart and desire to reach your goals by your own efforts and intelligence. You have a strong creative force with many original and interesting ideas. There is much inner strength available to you. Rarely do you shirk responsibilities. You are proud of your abilities and seek opportunities to display your strength and usefulness. Others will respect and help you, like a true leader deserves, so long as you acknowledge and validate the interests and desires of others as well as your own. Be kind and generous, and you can be a recognized leader. You can display conceit and intolerance of people who are considered inferior — boastful, egotistical, critical, impatient of trifles — especially when you feel impeded. When you are headstrong, impulsive, or highly willful, you may appear contrary, bossy, dominating, or egotistical. You tend to be impatient with those who are resistant to change. You can be reticent, and can lack self-confidence. Sometimes you won’t take a stand for fear of hurting others. Yet, something continually keeps urging you forward. You want your home, spouse, and family to be a credit to you. Overall, you are loyal in friendship, fair in business, a safe leader, and work diligently. You are capable of great accomplishment.

Your Personality: This is physical expression more than spiritual or emotional; your outer self, the way you express when meeting others. It may or may not be the real you.		Number: 11 Neat and clean; that’s your usual appearance. With a pleasing personality and gentle manner. You appear cooperative, diplomatic, and tactful. And you appear to adapt easily to varied circumstances and people from diverse backgrounds. When you don’t get your way, you can become cunning and scheming, which may give a contrived or hypocritical appearance. You attract people who want to be of assistance. You can be subtle and work behind the scenes to accomplish desired ives, being successful more through diplomacy than by coercion. Try to wear soft, flowing, and neat clothing rather than loud and showy or plain and colorless.
Your Quiescent Self: Stripping away all outside influences, aspirations, ambitions, “shoulds”, and “shouldn’ts” — this is you when you are alone; just you and your dreams..		Number: 11 You are a Spiritual Leader, able to guide many along the road of your Truth. Your words are inspired. Your eyes glow with the unshakable divinity of your spirituality. You sense there can be glory in martyrdom, provided it inspires others to The Way. Your thoughts and pleasure are you as an effective leader to the glory of goodness and all people you meet are or become part of your spiritual family.
Your Destiny or Ultimate Goal: This is your desired lifetime accomplishment. It is a key to a useful and happy life, and to feeling fulfillment during your latter days.		Number: 3 Your destiny lies in areas of creativity and its use to help people find inspiration and joy in living. As you express your artistic talents, your beauty, and an optimum mix of sincerity and joy, you come closer and closer to fulfilling your destiny — which also includes popularity, personal happiness, romantic love, and money. You have integrity and are kind, patient, cheerful, artistic, creative, and a constant source of pleasure. And use your inspiration and imagination to spread your happiness by direct people contact and by writing, speaking, music, painting, decorating, or acting. You are a social person and enjoy entertaining and being entertained — talkative and usually well dressed.
Your Life’s Path: Here are clues to what fate has in store for you. It indicates the type of encounters, events, and opportunities you are likely to experience along your physical life path.		Number: 4 Your life is filled with things practical, or making them so with patience, care, and accuracy. You have a strong sense of what is right and are naturally honest, conscientious, and sincere. You are a worker and can be decidedly dedicated to your goals. In your work, you can be loyal, intense, and dedicated to the job at hand. You tend to be practical, and like to have your facts straight before beginning a project. You can handle money well and tend to keep resources in reserve. You tend to be conservative and protective, with a strong sense of dignity and worthiness. Your path holds possibilities for great attainment. The rewards come because of patience, service, persistence, hard work, and dependability.
This Year’s Path: Here is what you are likely to encounter this year — your feelings, your predominant perspective, and the type of situations, circumstances, and opportunities you tend to attract during the calendar year.		Number: 3 This is the year to express your inspiration, your imagination, your creative thought, and your deep emotional feelings. You desire to do more entertaining this year and accept more invitations. Take time off to enjoy yourself. You can give color and warmth to all levels of living. Be artistic. Express yourself joyfully. Now is the time to follow those inspirational and imaginative ideas you are so excited about. Follow your desire for self-improvement; the year is rich with opportunities for inner growth. It is a colorful and eventful year, with pleasure, opportunities for travel, enjoyable social activities, and entertainment coming your way. Allow your abundance of cheer and optimism to guide you.
Next Year’s Path.		Number: 4 This is a practical year; no long leisurely periods for dreaming, personal indulgence, or careless living. It is a time to build the firm and secure foundation upon which your future depends, using practical values and steady application. It is also the time to work out the details of that project you’ve been thinking about. Read the fine print of all transactions. This is the year to find where you stand in life, and to be practical about it — to pay attention to details. This year demands a lot of work, not only to improve the present but also to build practical foundations for the future. Your diligence brings commensurate rewards. With good sense, you can meet all requirements and experience satisfactory gain. Your gatherings, meetings, parties, and trips are mostly related to work or business. As part of the practical focus of this year, attend to health matters.
Last Year’s Path.		Number: 2 Harmonious associations are very important for you this year. The year’s success and good results will be obtained through diplomacy, cooperation, tactfulness, and good relationships. It is a year for receiving and sharing rather than aggressively pursuing your own way. Your intuition and emotions are enhanced this year. It is a busy year, with endless demands on your time. It is easier to work with others rather than doing things by yourself. Your plans and developments may experience periods of delay. No need to worry about that. Things move slower this year. The year can revitalize your peace of mind. It is a good time to strengthen your friendships.

The Greatest Advice

Again, I am going to share a very inspiring email message that I received last year. I hope that you enjoy this message as much as I did. There are really very good pieces of advice here. This piece was written by Rick Warren. Happy reading!:)

THE GREATEST ADVICE

Rick Warren

 

 

Don’t date because you are desperate.
Don’t marry because you are miserable.
Don’t have kids because you think your genes are superior.
Don’t philander because you think you are irresistible.

Don’t associate with people you can’t trust.
Don’t cheat. Don’t lie. Don’t pretend.
Don’t dictate because you are smarter.
Don’t demand because you are stronger.

Don’t sleep around because you think you are old enough and know better.
Don’t hurt your kids because loving them is harder.
Don’t sell yourself, your family or your ideals.
Don’t stagnate.

 
Don’t regress.
Don’t live in the past. Time can’t bring anything or anyone back.
Don’t put your life on hold for possibly Mr. Right.
Don’t throw your life away on absolutely Mr. Wrong because your biological clock is ticking.

 
Learn a new skill.
Find a new friend.
Start a new career.
Sometimes, there is no race to be won, only a price to be paid for some of life’s more hasty decisions.

 

To terminate your loneliness, reach out to the homeless.
To feed your nurturing instincts, care for the needy.
To fulfill your parenting fantasies, get a puppy.
Don’t bring another life into this world for all the wrong reasons.

 
To make yourself happy, pursue your passions and be the best of what you can be.
Simplify your life. Take away the clutter.
Get rid of destructive elements: abusive friends, nasty habits, and dangerous liaisons.
Don’t abandon your responsibilities but don’t overdose on duty.

 

Don’t live life recklessly without thought and feeling for your family.
Be true to yourself.
Don’t commit when you are not ready.
Don’t keep others waiting needlessly.

 
Go on that trip. Don’t postpone it.
Say those words. Don’t let the moment pass.
Do what you have to, even at society’s scorn.
 

Write poetry.
Love deeply.
Walk barefoot.
Dance with wild abandon.
Cry at the movies.

Take care of yourself. Don’t wait for someone to take care of you.
You light up your life.

You drive yourself to your destination.
No one completes you – except YOU.

 
It isn’t true that life does not get easier with age.
It only gets more challenging.

Don’t be afraid. Don’t lose your capacity to love.
Pursue your passions.

Live your dreams.
Don’t lose faith in GOD.

Don’t grow old.
Just grow YOU.

When you give someone your time, you are giving them a portion of your life that you’ll never get back.
Your time is your life.

That is why the greatest gift you can give to someone is your time.
Relationships take time and effort, and the best way to spell love is T-I-M-E because the essence of love is not what we think or do or provide for others, but how much we give of ourselves.

The Best Kind of Love

A friend sent me an email message which was pretty inspiring. I am sharing it to you guys. Even if you’re not in love, you will find this article very moving. It was written by Annette Paxman Bowen. She is an author and has written a couple of very good books. You may want to google her out if you want to read more from her. This one is call “The Best Kind of Love”.

The Best Kind of Love
Annette Paxman Bowen

I have a friend who is falling in love. She honestly claims the sky is bluer. Mozart moves her to tears. She has lost 15 pounds and looks like a cover girl. “I am young again!” she shouts exuberantly.

As my friend raves on about her new love, I’ve taken a good look at my old one. My husband of almost 20 years, Scott, has gained 15 pounds. Once a marathon runner, he now runs only down hospital halls. His hairline is receding and his body shows signs of long working hours and too many candy bars. Yet he can still give me a certain look across a restaurant table and I want to ask for the check and head home.

When my friend asked me “What will make this love last?” I ran through all the obvious reasons: commitment, shared interests, unselfishness, physical attraction, and communication.

Yet there’s more. We still have fun. Spontaneous good times. Yesterday, after slipping the rubber band off the rolled newspaper, Scott flipped it playfully at me: this led to an all-out war. Last Saturday at the grocery, we split the list and raced each other to see who could make it to the checkout first. Even washing dishes can be a blast. We enjoy simply being together.

And there are surprises.

One time I came home to find a note on the front door that led me to another note, then another, until I reached the walk-in closet. I opened the door to find Scott holding a “pot of gold” (my cooking kettle) and the “treasure” of a gift package. Sometimes I leave him notes on the mirror and little presents under his pillow.

There is understanding.

I understand why he must play basketball with the guys. And he understands why, once a year, I must get away from the house, the kids – and even him – to meet my sisters for a few days of nonstop talking and laughing.

There is sharing.
Not only do we share household worries and parental burdens – we also share ideas. Scott came home from a convention last month and presented me with a thick historical novel. Though he prefers thrillers and science fiction, he had read the novel on the plane. He touched my heart when he explained it was because he wanted to be able to exchange ideas about the book after I’d read it.

There is forgiveness.

When I’m embarrassingly loud and crazy at parties, Scott forgives me. When he confessed losing some of our savings in the stock market, I gave him a hug and said, “It’s okay. It’s only money.”

There is sensitivity.

Last week he walked through the door with that look that tells me it’s been a tough day. After he spent some time with the kids, I asked him what happened. He told me about a 60-year old woman that had a stroke. He wept as he recalled the woman’s husband standing beside her bed, caressing her hand. How was he going to tell this husband of 40 years that his wife would probably never recover? I shed a few tears myself.

Because of the medical crisis. Because there were still people who have been married 40 years. Because my husband is still moved and concerned after years of hospital rooms and dying patients.

There is faith.

Last Tuesday a friend came over and confessed her fear that her husband is losing his courageous battle with cancer. On Wednesday I went to lunch with a friend who is struggling to reshape her life after divorce. On Thursday a neighbor called to talk about the frightening effects of Alzheimer’s disease on her father-in-law’s personality. On Friday a childhood friend called long-distance to tell me her father had died. I hung up the phone and thought, This is too much heartache for one week.

Through my tears, as I went out to run some errands, I noticed the boisterous orange blossoms of the gladiolus outside my window. I heard the delighted laughter of my son and his friend as they played. I caught sight of a wedding party emerging from a neighbor’s house. The bride, dressed in satin and lace, tossed her bouquet to her cheering friends. That night, I told my husband about these events. We helped each other acknowledge the cycles of life and that the joys counter the sorrows. It was enough to keep us going.

Finally, there is knowing.

I know Scott will throw his laundry just shy of the hamper every night; he’ll be late to most appointments and eat the last chocolate in the box. He knows that I sleep with a pillow over my head.

I guess our love lasts because it is comfortable. No, the sky is not bluer:
it’s just a familiar hue. We don’t feel particularly young: we’ve experienced too much that has contributed to our growth and wisdom, taking its toll on our bodies, and created our memories. I hope we’ve got what it takes to make our love last. As a bride, I had Scott’s wedding band engraved with Robert Browning’s line “Grow old along with me!”

We’re following those instructions. “If anything is real, the heart will make it plain.” There are some people who meet that somebody that they can never stop loving, no matter how hard they try. I wouldn’t expect you to understand that, or even believe it, but trust me, there are some love that don’t go away. And maybe that makes them crazy, but we should all be blessed to end up with that somebody who has a little of that insanity. Somebody who never lets go. Somebody who cherishes you forever.

Hope you find this kind of love in your life.

Quotes From 11 Minutes

I was browsing through my ebooks earlier today when I chanced upon Paulo Coelho’s book, 11 Minutes. I remember it took me a very long time to finish the book. It was unsual because I normally finish books in less than a day. It was more unual because I’ve always loved Coelho’s books and I never put them down once I start reading.

But this book was very different. For the first few pages, I was really bored. I felt like I’ve read better books before, and I was surprised that I wasn’t enjoying my favorite author at all. However, I kept the faith and read on. Coelho didn’t become my favorite author for no reason, so I kept telling myself that I will get to the part, eventually.

And I did. I did not even know I was already enjoying the book. All I knew was that I could not stop reading anymore, and I started taking notes of the lines that touched me the most. I realized then that this was one of the books I’d read over and over again.

For today, I would like to share the most unforgettable lines from 11 Minutes. These lines have a universal truth in them. At one point or another, we all experience the same things that were described in the novel. If, by any weird chance, you have read the book yet, then you should scour the internet fot an ebook, or head to your favorite bookstore and grab your own copy. You’re going to need it because this book is one that you will keep on reaching for whenever you feel the need to read about love, sex, and relationships.

1. Really important meetings are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other.

2. Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even the they’re not.

3. The strongest love is the love that can demonstrate its fragility.

4. At every moment of our lives we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss.

5. Sometimes you get no second chance and that it’s best to accept the gifts the world offers you.

6. If I must be faithful to someone or something, then I have, first of all, to be faithful to myself.

7. It is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone’s mind is love.

8. Humans can withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness. It is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings.

9. All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement… Freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves the most.

10. In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel.

11. No one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.

12. The great aim of every human being is to understand the meaning of total love. Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.

13. Profound desire, true desire is the desire to be close to someone.

14. What is real always finds a way of revealing itself.

15. The most important experiences a man can have are those that take him to the very limit; that is the only way we learn, because it requires all our courage.

16. When a teacher helps someone to discover something, the teacher always learns something new too.

17. Pain and suffering are used to justify the one thing that brings only joy: love.

18. I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure.  It’s all a question of how I view my life.

19. In all the languages in the world, there is the same proverb: ‘What the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.’  Well, I say that there isn’t an ounce of truth in it.  The further off they are, the closer to the heart are all those feelings that we try to repress and forget.  If we’re in exile, we want to store away every tiny memory of our roots.  If we’re far from the person we love, everyone we pass in the street reminds us of them.

Books to Read

I am currently trying to compile a list of books that I am planning to read for 2010. I don’t care if they are classical, non-fiction, or thriller. As long as they are good reads, I’d gladly spend precious time poring over the pages. I have already come up with several; however, I still think that there are so many other books that are begging to be read.

I came across this list of 1001 Books to Read Before You Die. I have to say that I have only read a few out of the entire list. I’ll include some of the book from that list on my 2010 list. If anyone of you have some suggestions, you are most welcome to comment or send me a message. Thanks all!!!

God bless us all. Don’t forget to thank God for the blessings and good things we have received today.