My November Adventures

November was a bit of a mess of a month. I was close to a burn-out after back to back film festival coverages and its why it took a while to wrap up the remaining films for those festivals. Luckily, that’s all done. With work also being an explosion of work, its been quite the crazy ride. I don’t foresee December being a lot better but at least, the slowed down posting schedule got my focus back on writing posts. With that said, not a really exciting month overall but still a few things to talk about plus at the end, there’s some December plans.

Not talking about any new projects until December’s wrap-up or January’s beginning of the year post as I have some final decisions to make on some possible changes or a new project/segment.

Blood in the Snow Festival

The ranking for the feature films (with the except of one Parallel Minds that I didn’t see):

1. Come True (Review)
2. For The Sake of Vicious (Review)
3. Anything For Jackson (Review)
4. The Return (Review)
5. Hall (Review)
6. Bloodthirsty (Review)
7. Bleed With Me (Review)
8. Shall We Play? (Review)

Overall, Blood in the Snow Festival was a good one. There were some really fun discoveries and some good direction on the stories that were being told. All the reviews for the feature films are up. I usually do something for short films but it already took so long to get this batch done that I haven’t had time to do that. I might still go back and highlight a few that I thought were rather unique and entertaining.

New Restaurant

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New restaurant opened up yet and its a Hong Kong style noodle shop who has both curries but even more for the fish soup base that they have for their noodle soup. The noodle soup is ordered similar to what you’d do for Japanese ramen where you get to pick the base, the type of noodle and then 2 toppings. The soup itself actually has quite a bit of extra ingredients added in. I had the combo which included a drink and mine was the lemon ribena which is something very much part of the Hong Kong landscape. Can’t go back to visit in this current landscape but at least there’s food to make me feel more connected, right?

New Spices & Masks

The husband had some company coupon codes sort of deal so we went ahead and took a look at the catalogue. I have some fun candles on the way that didn’t make it on this post but we ordered the spices kit from Gourmet Inspirations. So far, we’ve only tried the Veggie Fusion which adds a nice kick to the veggies.

As for the masks, the Instagram posts says it all. I’ve tried a few companies that make masks and Hop La Gogosses is by far my favorite so I’ve returned a few times. Not to mention, they are close so when I have time, I usually try to do a pick-up instead of getting it delivered. They have these custom ones so you get to choose the front and back from a range of choices.

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Black Friday Haul

• Best Buy: Chromecast
• Google Play: The Almost Gone, Very Little Nightmares
• Cineplex: Rental: Guns Akimbo
• Steam: Gnog, Jenny LeClue Detectivu, Celeste, Transference, Sea of Solitude, The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories
• Xbox Ultimate Game Pass

Black Friday has pretty much mostly been an online deal even before the whole pandemic landscape so seeing as I did overall spend less this year, I ended up picking up on some of the sweet deals online for games and such. The only physical item I got was a new Chromecast. Our old Chromecast was starting really casting some things really well and was starting to get a little tempermental so we changed it and it seems to work better.

Everything else was mostly gaming related. Xbox Ultimate Game Pass for PC was dropped to $1/month and that’s great since I had a few games to catch up on so my next month of gaming is pretty much sort out since when I cut my subscription 2 months ago, I still had a few games that I hadn’t tried out yet.

As for Cineplex, there was some good rentals but the one that I’ve been meaning to watch is Guns Akimbo so that’s going to be done soon.

Christmas Marathon & Upcoming Plans

End of November means that its time to welcome in the Christmas Marathon! Christmas movies have been fairly slim pickings but thanks to Netflix releasing an immense amount of Christmas movies (whether good or bad), there’s a little more selection. Hopefully enough to fill out these few weeks leading to Christmas. It should start tomorrow December 1st if all things go well.

A quick mention on December plans while we’re at it. I’m trying to work out all the backlog and releasing some more current release stuff, mostly TV (Netflix and Chinese Drama TV binges). I’m going to blend it all in this month while catching up with some 2020 TV series that I’ve missed or didn’t finish. Fingers crossed that I can work on as much as possible.

That’s it November Adventures!
Nothing too exciting and just a lot of spending overall.
What have you been up to?

Wine Recap – November 2018

Welcome to the November 2018 edition of Wine Recap!

This past month, we’ve been slightly on a break due to various reasons. One is due to decrease of alcohol due to some health stuff my husband is dealing with. We wanted to lower the alcohol consumption to lighter varieties and we’re having this feeling that perhaps he has grown an intolerance to white wine so we’ll see how this segment shifts from here on out. The second is that the SAQ, which is the entity that governs our alcohol distribution in Quebec, is having union negotiations and strikes and such and for personal reasons, its been making us going less so I’ve picked up only two things from the grocery store this past month.

With the holidays coming up, I promise that December will make up for this month. I’d say I’m about 80% positive that it will.

Beach Day Every Day

Producer: Beach Club
Alcohol Content: 6.5%
Location: Quebec

A light refreshing alcoholic drink is really what Beach Day Every Day is. Its a drink great to have on a hot summer’s day. Very fitting for its name. It actually tastes a lot like Crush with hints of alcohol, making it a rather relaxing one to have. I bought this one at the grocery store (maybe an IGA, if I remember correctly).

Henry’s Hard Soda

Producer: Blitz-Weinhard Brewing Co.
Alcohol Content: 4.2%
Location: USA

Surprisingly, it seems that I’ve been choosing a lot of citrus flavors. This one is an orange flavor which actually didn’t taste of alcohol at all but almost felt like I was drinking something identical to Crush or any other orange soda. You can’t say that its not true to be fair. Its pretty tasty and the orange flavor is full, plus it also wasn’t too sweet. I don’t mind drinking this one again, although I am curious what the other flavor tastes like. It should be coming up in next month’s since we bought one can of each flavor from the grocery story (Metro in this case).

Revisit: Madjack Iced Tea

Just to keep it real (and because there wasn’t anything else here), I did end up buying a pack of Madjack Iced Tea flavored drinks this month. It spanned over the month to drink so that is also why we didn’t buy much of anything else. It is always our fun light drink to have. For my initial thoughts, check out April 2018 recap HERE.

That’s it for this “wine” recap.
Not any wine at all but its the alcoholic content that matters in this segment. Its alcoholic drinks in general (for anyone new here).

My Weekly Adventures: Another NaNoWriMo Begins!

Welcome back to another My Weekly Adventures! It feels like forever that I’ve done an actual post on this and not just a random vacation or announcement post. It feels good to be back with this.

Lets get going!

Halloween month!

Halloween is finally over! It was a fun run learning all about Scream and Evil Dead franchises. It also had a few rough moments but it was great to finally see what this is all about. I didn’t get as much as I had wanted to do especially in the reading part or even TV part but work and real life kind of took over and they usually take priority. Still, a ton of you dropped by to comment and like and show your love for both the franchises. Thank you so very very much! I appreciate it. I actually just wrapped up Scream Season 2 so a TV Binge should be coming up fairly soon. I did try my absolutely best to keep a little fall themes going to not just be all horror.

I have already started brainstorming new franchise (s) to cover next year. My awesome Game Warp co-host Elwood suggested Candyman trilogy. I didn’t know that there were three movies so I will have to try to figure that out. Definitely a good choice. I am also looking at Final Destination or Joy Ride. Or maybe totally just changing it up and going back to random horrors. Any suggestions?

NaNoWriMo month!

I can’t believe that it is already November. This year went by so fast. November also means that its time for a month to construct another novel that I won’t get around to edit. I really should. This year, I have two ideas floating about. Something of a thriller. I never wrote one of those and I am not sure if I am up for it. The ideas are more drafts and to write 50000 words feels like a stretch for either of the plots. I always make it work. NaNoWriMo is the time I use to try out writing and formulating different genres so it could be a nice challenge. I will keep you all filled in. If any of you are also part of NaNoWriMo and want to be writing buddies, we definitely should to keep each other accountable.  Talking about that, in the hour before NaNoWriMo took off in the Eastern time zone at midnight, I went hunting down to see if Word Nerds was doing some more word sprints. They helped me out so much last year. In fact, it got me into a habit of even doing word sprints on my own when I couldn’t make it. And they did have one with Write All Year as a Twitter word sprint and I joined in for a 15 minutes then 30 minutes word sprint and hit my word count for day one and a little over.

As I got ready for bed, I have a good idea of even how to possibly mesh the two plots I was thinking about together. Just change the setting and voila! Lets hope that it all works out! Let the writing begin. I’m embracing what they call “Plantser. I got a vague outline/idea and basically winging most of it.

November Plans

With all that said, my life will mostly be consumed with work and home stuff and preparing for winter and Christmas. I can’t believe I am already talking about that. I do have lots of material all ready to be written and as usual some festivals to visit. It might not all be exciting but I am trying out something a little different on this month. It isn’t a far stretch from anything I have done just getting up to date with times and what I have time to do. This month primarily will be jumping back in time to review some 90s teen comedies and the likes. Not sure why. Perhaps all the stress at work made me more inclined to do so and it works well with a stressful November with a genre that is not what I am writing. NaNoWriMo means that I might not have as much time to write for the blog as regularly. I’m trying to keep things simple and light. Hopefully you all understand. 🙂 I also started planning for December which might be a little different from the normal holiday movies (since I’m running a little short on choices). That will be for the December update though.

Cute Kitty Moment

 

Upcoming:

• Event: MTL a Table
• Movies: 90s movies and other random stuff

*GASP* November is here ALREADY!!

That also means that NANOWRIMO officially starts today.

Last year, I managed to get my word count for day one on track and that thought powered me on the last 10 days of November when I only had 5,000 words in the bank.  45,000 words in a week was a long shot but I gave it my all and wrote a crap of a novel that I’m still working on editing.  I will finish editing it but I’m only about a quarter of the way done.  I don’t intend to ever publish that one but its a nice reminder that when I put my heart to something, it will be done, even if it means losing some sleep, drinking lots of tea and looking at the ceiling for countless hours looking for inspiration while sitting in my room hours on end. Last year, my Hong Kong trip got in the way and I know that to finish it, would be tough, but I did it!

So why would I do Nanowrimo again this year? I’m working on my discipline; being able to sit down to get through my 1,667 words a day.  Plus, a really awesome idea hit me a few months ago in my dreams (literally) and its been kind of constructing is layout in my mind ever since. The direction changes all the time and I’ve never sat down to draft it or even brainstorm and outline it but I figured spontaneity worked well for me last year.  I might as well give that another go.  At least, it’ll give me more freedom 🙂

Now, why am I telling you all this?

I’m not going to post segments of my story like some other bloggers do.  I just can’t. I’ll still be thinking its a load of garbage and then possibly have a nervous breakdown.

The point is that, things will change around here a bit.

1) Book reviews will be on hold.  I go through literary abandon where I don’t read so that it doesn’t allow me the chance to copy someone else’s ideas but create my own and be immersed in my own story. This sucks because I was reading Ender’s Game and looking forward to seeing the movie. Guess that will have to wait…

2) My posts may drop to once a day (if not less).  I slowly want to keep it that way as I figure out a new direction with my blog for next year. We’ll see what happens 🙂

3) I’ll try hard to do movie reviews but maybe I’ll stick in some random TV series posts 🙂 Thats what I do when I write as background noise.  Its that or music. It will be less as well in order to keep my focus on my  novel.

4) There will things that stay the same.  Photo challenges will keep going up, weekend personal posts as well.  I want to keep the Pinterest one going as well.  I’m going to be doing another one (or two) workout challenges for November so I’ll keep that on biweekly update 🙂

5) Maybe because of this I’ll do some more piano covers, but thats really up for some debate. What do you think?

Thats all I really have to say!

After November, we will hit Holiday season here.  I haven’t figured out what direction to take that but for sure, there will be a movie marathon.  Just need to decide on which ones 🙂

For now, the madness has already begun as of my bus ride this morning at 8:30am.  I think I’m at approximately 500 words or so.  I write in a notebook so that makes a bit harder until the end of the day to tally up.

Thats the November update! 🙂 If there is anything you’d like me to post about, just ask! I’ll be needing lots of inspiration for this month’s post!

How many of you are also in this NaNoWriMo craze? Is this your first year? What type of novel are you writing?

Daily Prompt: Procrastination

Daily Prompt (August 18): What have you been putting off doing? Why?

Dear old procrastination!

Its funny, one of the reasons these daily prompts are always up later than the day of is just for that same reason and also because I procrastinate or as I call it, take a break, from reading blogs or anything in general so they pile up! Do you guys know, I read about 5 posts this weekend and I had managed on Friday to catch up with all the posts.  By Monday, I managed to have almost 500 posts in my inbox *faints*.  BUT, we are not here to talk about my reading posts slower than usual.

This morning, I sat and looked at my calender/schedule/notes whiteboard next to my bed and I wanted to make sure everything was up  to date.  Whenever I look at that board, there is one item that always gets pushed back and pushed back because it never has an end date.  You know what that is? Editing my first draft of that NaNoWriMo novel that I cranked out in something like 10 days last November.  I’ve opened up that file with the intention of editing it over and over again but somehow I can’t get much done.

In June, I managed to get a few chapters (like 5 meaning about 20%) edited but I realized why I lacked the motivation to do it.  Last November, when I thought up this story, it was all in the moment.  Now, I can’t find that feeling I had for it when I first wrote it.  I know I want to edit it.  Its not that I want to publish it but I never like starting something and not finishing it.  Plus, its my baby.  You have no idea how proud I was when I reached my goals 2 hours before the deadline after writing and writing and writing non-stop for a full solid week.  I loved that feeling and I tried so hard to get there. Now, I just need the right self pep talk and the right push to just get it done!

Let’s hope before the next NaNoWriMo comes around in November I’ll at least have this edited one time! I’m pretty sure if I feel good enough about it at the end, I’ll kick in those perfectionist values and edit it another time before I bind it as a personal reminder of my first ever unpublished novel and something to remind myself that when I put my heart into something, I can achieve anything!

I’m going to beat you one day, Procrastination! And it’ll be soon!

What have you been procrastinating? Are you in for the next NaNoWriMo?

Nothing can stop me now, I’m a winner! UPDATES!!

December is here!

November went by in style for me.  I can now calmly and tell you in full consciousness that I won NANOWRIMO. Woohoo! I validated my word count last night nearing 11pm with 50,104 words.  Maybe that doesn’t sound amazing to you.  I just screenshot the chart of word count for you.  Look at it!

On last Sunday night, I wanted to quit.  I had about 5,000 words written.  Let me tell you again. We need 50,000 words by the end of November 30th.  Seriously, it was crazy, only 10% was done.  Yesterday, even though I was still working really hard to catch up and make a last minute win, I still had doubts with less than 40,000 words done. Believe me, I had another blog already written in my mind. Honestly,  it didn’t matter at that point if I actually made it across the finish line and won because for one thing, my goal this year was to beat my 23,000ish words from last year.  I did that around Wednesday, but face it, even at 25,000, I was only halfway there with less than two days to write the second half of the novel. Seriously, I had the title of the post even if I lost.  It would’ve have been, “I Lost But I Won”.  You know why I say that? I was at 5000 words at the beginning of the week.  Even if I ended with 30,000 words, it basically took me one week to get this all down on paper. I have achieved the impossible in my mind.

Now you know what? When there is a will, things will happen for you.  I put all my focus and energy on this.  I breathed my novel and every word of it.  I wrote standing up on a crowded bus and my brain was constantly thinking of scenarios for what to happen next.  So to everyone who thinks there are impossible things out there, some times you just need to step back and take it step by step. My novel happened with every 1000 words countdown and its finished! You want something to happen: you need to focus and strive for it! There were people who thought I was crazy but sometimes, you need a bit of that “don’t care what happens” attitude to make things happen.  That definitely happened yesterday when I managed to get more than 12000 words down to reach the finish!

I’m a Winner! Yay! This was a long week of self control and perseverance and now it deserves an intermission for a victory dance.

UPDATES!

On another note, Hong Kong month was the focus of November.  I tried post every day and for the most part, it worked.  This last week did stop me a bit from posting as much. I will try to finish off Hong Kong posts this weekend and on Monday, we start CHRISTMAS MONTH!! I already have a Christmas movie marathon with over 20 movies.  This time I’ll do it a bit different from the Halloween movies and try to review them all.  Of course, baking and cooking resumes now that I’m back at home.  I’ll head out in town to get some photography done and hopefully share some of Montreal’s Christmas festivities! Expect a lot more crafts near the middle of this month, I’ll be making gifts for the family once I figure out what to do exactly!

Just a short update for everyone!

Have a great weekend and I’ll be checking in soon!

Its Go Time… (and a few updates!!)

Its November everyone! Do you know what day it is and why its so significant? NaNoWriMo begins on November 1st and lasts throughout the whole entire month.

Anyone here doesn’t know hat NaNoWriMo is? Its short for National Novel Writing Month, which means that you need to write 50,000 word novel in this very month of November.  Thats a total of 1,667 words per day.  Its my second year doing this.  I like the challenge and I’ve always wanted to write a novel.  I don’t plan on being published on anything but lets just say that its a personal accomplishment.

Last year I had to resort to writing a daily prompt about 300 Spartans (link right there) poking me in the back and still I only reached around 23,000 words.  Not even halfway.  I have no one to blame but myself.  This year I’m ready to take it on.  I actually have less of a plot than before but now I’m a bit more experienced and I’ve learned that if I sit myself down and focus to finish up those remaining words for 1-2 hours, I’ll be on track.  Last night, I waited till midnight and initiated by starting to write for half an hour before I fell alseep.  Starting is the hard part, but once you do, it just keeps you going.

So point is, I’m not advertising for NaNoWriMo but if you are doing it or would like to try it out, just head on over to their site and sign up.  Its just day 1 after all.  Last year when NaNoWriMo ended, I felt that it had given me a sense of happiness.  It gave me a certain focus that helped me move forward.  I love the feeling that it just made me want to do it all the time and with every spare minute, whether I was on the bus or on lunch break, my brain would just keep thinking about the novel, jotting down notes, writing in my notebook on hand.  Pen and paper never left my hand.  Its the commitment that draws me to this.  The fact that I can really commit to something and feel a passion for what I’m doing.  If you are interested, you can always stop by that post and take a look at how I felt about last year right here!

What I can’t believe is that November 1 is here already!  Why I am writing this post is to ask all of my readers to not panic when I’m not putting up as much.  I’m still going to stay on track with my photo challenges and hopefully writing challenges (those a bit slow), the random writing prompt.  For the second half of the month, I promise you I’ll bake more.

So why the second half of the month? Thats the second GO! for me.  With NaNoWriMo, at the same time, I’ll be on vacation soon.  I mean in a few days soon hence the packing mentioned above.  I will be going to Hong Kong for 2 weeks.  I do have a few travel/photography posts planned so it should be a fun month.  Maybe I’ll just dedicate it to Hong Kong.

So point of this rambling:

1) To tell you that I may post less frequently as I don’t have free internet there. I’ll have to get up at some crazy hour to sit at Starbucks to write while I’m in Hong Kong.

2) NaNoWriMo will also affect my writing schedule as it will take most of my brainpower so expect less writing and more photography.

3) I’m asking for your help.  I’d love to hear what you want me to do in Hong Kong.  Anything in particular you’d like me to visit or post about? Anything you’ve heard about or seen or want to know more about.  I would gladly fulfill the suggestions: Food, Restaurants, Scenery, Landscape, Culture, Museums, Theme Parks, etc.  Something you’ve heard of that you’d like me to check out.  You can put a comment or if you’d like, send me an email at kim.tranquildreams@gmail.com.  You can even tweet me if thats what you’re into.  My twitter account is on the side of the page so you can follow me there.

A BIG THANK YOU!!!

Above all, I’d like to take this moment to thank everyone of you.  I’m doing this update for all of you because you have made October into the best blogging month and motivated me quite a bit.  My blog was always just so hard to keep going because I didn’t have a lot of connections or friends that were into this so it was going slow but sometime in October, you all came around and helped me out.  In October, my views quadrupled from the previous month.  I’m even a few away from 100 followers.  You are all amazing me!  In thanks for all this, I try very hard to keep up with everyone’s blogs because you all have something wonderful to offer whether its photography, travels, baking, movie reviews.  All just awesome stuff.  I’m taking this opportunity now to thank you all again.  I promise you that I will work hard to bring you some more fun stuff!

JUST ONE MORE THING:Same deal as for Hong Kong.

If there is something you like or you don’t see as often and you enjoyed, tell me about it.  I’d love to hear some feedback from all of you.  Do you want more photography? More baking? Although those are in abundance.  Maybe more writing? Book reviews? Piano covers?  Movie reviews (not just theatre visits)?  Just on a side note, I am making some plans to expand certain segments.  Even if you just want to send a friendly encouraging email, I’d love to see it.  Blogosphere is a wonderful place to connect with people and I’ve had some nice conversations through commenting on blogs.  I’d definitely love to hear your suggestions! So email, tweet, comment..whatever pleases you.