Balling Melons on the 4th

Just in case you’re wondering what I was doing on the 4th of July, let me tell you that for most of the afternoon, I was balling melons--cantaloupes, honeydews, and watermelons. I’ve balled melons before and therefore knew that the activity would exhaust me.

Therefore, just in case you’re wondering why it took me most of the afternoon to ball my melons, let me tell you that it was because I needed to take a rest every once in a while. In fact, that is what I am doing right now.

At this writing, all my melons have been balled with my nifty melon-balling tool. The balls are all chilling in glass containers in the ‘fridge.

Just in case you think I should be all finished, let me tell you that I still have to carve out the watermelon halves so they will become the decorative bowls to hold the melon balls.

And, after that, I am going to lay down and have a really good rest!

Just in case you want to make melon balls for the 4th, or any summertime picnic for that matter, let me tell you that I wish I had consulting this nifty recipe before I started balling my melons. Otherwise, I would have cut open my melons with a decorative edge as in the photos on the recipe site I found on the EHow website in an article called, “How to Make Watermelon Balls.”

If you scroll down, you’ll also see photographs and links to: How to make a fruit salad bowl out of a watermelon; how to carve a watermelon boat; how to carve a watermelon bowl; and most importantly, how to find a sweet watermelon.

OK, enough of my yakking. Time to get back to carving out those watermelon decorative bowls.

What were you doing on the 4th? Or, if you’re in Canada, on the 1st? Dominion Day?

Lost City of Atlantis found between Scotland and Denmark

OK, maybe not the lost city of Atlantis, or, maybe it is. It is an ancient land submerged by the sea, formerly the home of woolly mammoths. Scientists are studying the lost land of Doggerland:

After a 15-year project to unearth the truth about Doggerland, its history has finally been pieced together through painstaking analysis of the bottom of the sea and artefacts brought up from the depths. It was a huge strip of land situated between Scotland and Denmark that existed between 18,000 and 5,500 years BC before being swallowed up by the sea.

Britain’s Real-Life Lost City of Atlantis Found at the Bottom of the North Sea

Missing Nora Ephron

I just saw that Nora Ephron died last week. What a loss. Her movies, such as Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, are a couple of my favorites. There are some lovely memories of her from friends and colleagues at this link. Do you know she loved to cook? Since Julie and Julia was also hers, it shouldn’t be a surprise. She was 71 and she died from leukemia. Poor thing. She evidently struggled with it for a number of years. Who knew? She kept her illness to herself and only a very few close family members and friends. She’s probably best known for the line, “I’ll have what she’s having,” after Meg Ryan’s fantastic fake orgasm in restaurant in the movie When Harry Met Sally. It feels like a black hole in the space where she used to be. She will be sorely missed.

Encouragement for budding authors from Jack Canfield

I just learned that the first Chichen Soup for the Soul book was turned down by 144 publishers. I knew it had been turned down many times, something like 46. But 144! That’s phenomenal. Also, the authors’ first agent returned the book to them and told them that no one wants to publish it.

Jack Canfield says that they had a “divine obsession” to have it published. The problem was that books of short stories don’t sell. Also, the publishers said they didn’t have a platform, because they weren’t celebrities or big names. Even though they were speakers, they were not famous speakers.

Jack says that they went from local obscurity to national obscurity.

Today, I listened to a very informative and inspirational webinar hosted by Steve Harrison of Radio Television Interview Report. Through them, I was interviewed on Coast-to-Coast AM after my first book, The Golden Ones: From Atlantis to a New World came out.

New “Cover” photo on my Facebook page

I just uploaded a gorgeous sunrise “cover” photo for my Facebook page. I took this photo as we waited for the “Queen of the North” ferry boat to begin it’s northern passage from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert in Birtish Columbia. I love sunrises. They are so hopeful. Check it out:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Carol-Chapman/111868652215851

140 million people worldwide strongly agree that the Mayan prophecy means the world will end this year

I’ve been thinking about that poll, the one done by IPSOS for Reuters News. They surveyed 16,262 people in 21 countries and found out that:

One in ten (10%) respondents in 21 countries agree ‘the Mayan calendar, which some say ‘ends’ in 2012, marks the end of the world’ – 2% strongly agree, 8% somewhat agree. 

One in seven (14%) global citizens believe end of the world is coming in their lifetime

So, today I looked up the population of the earth and it was 6,840,507,003  in 2010 (and steadily rising so it’s more now) according to the World Bank.

That means that 10% of approximately 7 billion people or 700 million people worldwide believe that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012 and therefore the world will end. 

Even if you just take the 2% that, according to the IPSOS survey, “strongly agree,” you’re still talking about 140 million people.

That’s a lot of people believing the world is going to end this year!

A whole lot of people.

Sleep research: Longest dreams occur just before awakening

I remember reading somewhere that your longest dream occurs just before awakening. Evidently, as the night goes on, you start by dreaming a short dream, then a while later, you dream a longer dream, and so on. That means that if you don’t sleep a full night, you don’t get the opportunity to have your longest dream with the most information in it.  It also means that your longer dreams provide the most opportunity for communication from your subconscious and hence your soul. This may explain why getting enough sleep is the first step in furthering dream recall, which can lead to psychic information.

Dream recall improves with sleep

During the question/answer period at the end of a recent talk in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, one woman asked me what she could do to improve her ability to remember dreams.

Dream recall is important, because one way to improve psychic ability is through dream interpretation. Of course, if you’re not remembering your dreams, you’re losing out on that opportunity for soul communication, the basis of psychic ability.

I told her that, in my experience, the first thing to do is to make sure you get enough sleep.

Interest in December 21, 2012 Mayan prophecy greater than expected!

On the evening of Thursday, May 31, I spoke in Toronto, Canada on: Do Mayan Shamans Believe the World Will End on December 21, 2012?

I felt afraid that maybe no one was really interested in the 2012 Mayan prophecy anymore since 2012 has arrived and nothing’s happened. But, I guess, because December 21, 2012 is still in the future, more people turned up than I expected. In fact, we had a full house.

When the slide with the actual Mayan prophecy came up in my PowerPoint presentation, one girl even ran up to the front and took a picture with her cell phone! I guess people really want to know what exactly the ancient Maya had to say about December 21, 2012.

Near the end, I felt worried that the presentation might go longer than advertised. (There had been some technical glitches that slowed things down at the beginning. )Therefore, I said to the audience that I could just tell them what my next videotaped interview said instead of playing the video. (My PPT presentation had videotaped interviews embedded in it.)

“No!” they shouted, with a disbelieving laugh as if I had to be kidding, “We want to see it!” So, I played it.

I felt happy that I could present information they wanted!

Building blocks of life on earth could have come from space

Scientists studying meteorites on Australia and Antarctica have discovered that they contain adenine and guanine.

OK, before you go, “What!!!?”

And, “What does that have to do with life on earth?”

Let me explain that, as I understand the article at Learning Mind, of the 12 meteorites studied, 11 contained adenine, which is a component in building the “stairs” of DNA, and guanine, another key component of DNA, was found on eight.

Haven’t you wondered: “What started the evolutionary process?”

According to these scientists, the crucial components such as the adenine and guanine, could have landed on earth on meteorites and had an extraterrestrial origin:

Two of the 12 meteorites contain exotic particles that are very rare on Earth, thus demonstrating that the building blocks of DNA must have been formed in space. The discovery confirms the theory that a set of prefabricated sections on a meteorite or a comet could have given rise to life on Earth.

DNA has an extraterrestrial origin

That’s pretty exciting! By the way, by extraterrestrial, I’m pretty sure the scientists meant it to mean, “from outside the earth,” rather than “an alien on a spaceship.”

On the other hand, I don’t know about you, but for me, as soon as I see, “extraterrestrial,” I think, “aliens.”