On the same day as election day, I also recieved my Gohonzon, an object of devotion in Nicherin Buddhism. I was introduced to this form of Buddhism by my friend Ricardo weeks prior and haven’t turned back since. As time goes by, I will share more about what I’m learning. In the meantime, you can click here to learn more.

Last but not least, I’ll leave you with the lyrics to one of my favorite songs from the early ’90s. These words describe some of what I’ve been experiencing lately. Until next time…

——————–
Save the Best for Last
sung by Vanessa Williams
——————–

Sometimes the snow comes down in June
Sometimes the sun goes round the moon
I see the passion in your eyes
Sometimes it’s all a big surprise
’cause there was a time when all I did was wish
You’d tell me this was love
Its not the way I hoped or how I planned
But somehow it’s enough

And now we’re standing face to face
Isn’t this world a crazy place
Just when I thought our chance had passed
You go and save the best for last

All of the nights you came to me
When some silly girl had set you free
You wondered how you’d make it through
I wondered what was wrong with you

’cause how could you give your love to someone else
And share your dreams with me
Sometimes the very thing you’re looking for
Is the one thing you can’t see

But now we’re standing face to face
Isn’t this world a crazy place
Just when I thought our chance had passed
You go and save the best for last

Sometimes the very thing you’re looking for
Is the one thing you can’t see

Sometimes the snow comes down in June
Sometimes the sun goes round the moon
Just when I thought our chance had passed
You go and save the best for last

You went and saved the best for last

Anyways, I also had my own health scare a few weeks ago.  I was at work when I started experiencing chest pains on my left side. I jokingly told my coworkers that I thought I was having a heart attack and they all bust out laughing and soon I joined them. However, the next day the pain was still there. Then the following morning at 5:30am, I woke up sweating and having a hard time breathing. I knocked on my brothers bedroom door to tell him and he quickly rushed me to the ER .

As soon as I mentioned chest pain, the ER staff did not delay to rush me to the doctor. They drew a lot of blood and injected me with this iodine thing that made me feel like I peed myself.  Then they did a CT scan to make sure I didn’t have some type of clot.  After what felt like hours of waiting, the doctor finally came in to tell me that they found nothing. He gave me a prescription for pain killers and had me take one with some crackers and apple juice. I burped, felt better and it all suddenly made perfect sense. I had bad gas.

As for my weight loss efforts, I have lost about 20 pounds since I last wrote about wanting to lose weight. Most of my success is due to me incorporating more raw foods into my diet and getting more physically active. Eventually, I will write more details on how I was able to achieve this.  It hasn’t been a walk in the park and I did reach a plateau as a result of straying off the wellness path. Good news is that I have been able to maintain my weight and am now ready to pick up where I left off. My goal is to lose the remainder 20 pounds by December 31, 2008.

Well, that’s all for now. Be safe.

“Will the real McCain please stand up?”

Anyhow, this video is a short, a little sad, but a definite reality check. Life comes at you hard sometimes and all you can do is roll with it. This too shall pass. Peace.

Mom

In case you’ve never heard of AND1, it’s a basketball tour of some of the most talented street ball players around. They have had yearly tours all over the U.S. for a while now and my brother is a big fan of the series. Well, a couple of years back he came up with this idea to have fun with it, and created this unofficial sequel on flip side. Without further delay, I present to you AND2. Enjoy!

I have been dealing with a lot of personal dramas, one of which I wrote a little poem about. I normally don’t write poetry, but I was up most of the night and felt this intense desire to share my experience with others. This is the first poem I’ve written in years, so keep that in mind as you read this. Peace.

——————————-

Temptations
by Natasha Pierre-Louis

Your are so beautiful,
Why didn’t I notice you before?
You are delightful,
Your presence moves me to the core.

I want to touch you,
but that probably wouldn’t be fair.
You don’t belong to me,
your owner’s standing over there.

But I don’t mean no harm,
I have no intent to steal…
No need to sound the alarm,
I simply wanted you to feel…

I promise I won’t take
something that doesn’t belong to me.
I promise I won’t break
someone else’s property.

Alas, I better go,
The temptation to steal you is so strong
That person doesn’t know
but my intentions are so wrong.

Maybe one day you’ll be
free to come home and live with me.
Till then we’ll wait to see
if you are truly my destiny.

————————-

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

~ by Derek Walcott ~

I came back home and worked a little more until I started to get sleepy. I saved my file, but then my system froze. “No big deal”, I thought to myself. I then did a forced restart and went to bed.

This morning, I was up by 8am and ready to get back to work. I did my lil morning routine, got myself some grapes and checked my emails. Then I fired up Photoshop and was ready to go. I open up my file, only to see a black page with red stuff on it, no layers to be found.

“This must be some kind of error,” I thought. So I restarted Photoshop, but still the same deal. I did a lil searching around in Google only to find out that others have experienced the same thing before, and that my file got corrupted. After trying many PSD recovery software, I came to the conclusion that my work may be lost forever.

I then decided that it was time to do a disk check. This caused some issues at first, but I was finally able to run it. Unfortunately when it got to stage 5 of 5, I got a “Hard Fail”. I then did a Bios diagnostic test and that also failed. To make a long story short, my hard drive is dying. I am just grateful I caught it in time.

Between this morning and now, I can honestly say that I experienced the 5 stages of death, but in this case it is the slow death of my hard drive:

1. Denial - For 2 hours straight I was in a state of denial that my file may actually be corrupted and was hell bent on correcting the problem.
2. Anger - This is when it got really interesting. I came really close to throwing my laptop across the room at least 10 times today. Really close.
3. Bargaining - I then prayed that God would work a miracle and fix my file. I promised that I would create a back up in case this should ever happen again. No such luck.
4. Depression - I then got really sad. I am still really sad.
5. Acceptance - I finally accepted that this kind of stuff happens. At least I can say I learned something from all this - to always back up my work files on a separate drive. Silver lining in the cloud? Maybe.

   I then proceeded to back up my files on an external hard drive and called the warranty company to ask them to send a box. The tech guy was annoying and kept asking if I did a recovery. I had to help him understand that I was almost certain that my issue was more of a hardware issue rather then a software problem. He eventually saw it my way and my box is in the mail.

So the moral to the story is: Get other people to do design work for you so that you don’t have to deal with this BS. No Seriously, please learn from my mistake and keep a backup of your work files on a separate hard drive. Ok?

To start off, Happy Independence Day everyone!! I hope you have a safe and fun weekend. The development for this site had to be put on a temporary hold as I had a bit of a stomach issue the past couple of weeks. This weekend, I feel better then ever and am ready to pick up where I left off.

Yes that’s right, while you all over do it on ribs and barbecue chicken, I will be at my computer, working on my site. But I do have every intention to not miss any fireworks tonight. Be safe.

(Disclaimer: This new declaration is not applicable outside of natashasworld.com. Any attempts to use this declaration is done at your own risk.)

——————-

I promise you there is a method to my madness. I know it may appear that I haven’t been updating this blog often, but it is all an illusion. You are in a dream state, and things are not as they seem…

Ok, to be real, I needed to take a brief hiatus from this site. Before I go any further, I would like to take a few seconds to give my blog a quick hug for neglecting it for the past couple of weeks:

*~HUGS NATASHA’S WORLD BLOG TIGHT*~

As I was saying, I was dealing with some serious designer block issues (amongst other things), to the point where I was considering going back to farming. If you’re confused as to what farming has to do with anything, check out my Tagged video for more info.

Anyhow, after months of staring at a blank Photoshop canvas, I was starting to get desperate. I work as an HTML Developer who also needs to be able to design. No Design could mean No Pay. The moment that I decided that I would do anything to get my creative juices flowing again, God stepped in and I recieved an email from Shawn Casey regarding Justin Blake’s Manifestation Meditation Tool. At first it flipped me out a bit because he started talking about how it could be alien technology. But then I was like, “Natasha, who are you kidding? Aren’t you the same one that believes in the possibility that humans may be half monkey, half alien? Pulease!” Yeah, I know….

So out of desperation and the fact that it comes with a 6 month money back guarantee, I decided to give Manifestation Meditation a shot. The experience was very relaxing and I fell asleep. After I woke up, I felt rested but wasn’t sure if it worked. I then sat in front of my computer and started up Photoshop…

Would you believe me if I told you that the same night I was able to create a new header and template for my site? It was the most progress I’ve had in months. Maybe it was a placebo affect, but who cares… something worked!! I can’t wait to try it out on some other stuff to see what happens. If you want more information, click here. If you should decide to try it, please let me know your results.

Lastly, I haven’t abandoned my weight loss efforts. I have been in a secret little competition that I will write about more in future post. Cool things are happening behind the scenes, and a new layout is finally under way. Stay tuned and have a blessed day!

In other news, I am still working on a new look and feel for Natasha’s World, but it’s going to take a little longer then I thought since I’ve hit a semi-designer’s block. As I work a few things out here’s a little entertainment for you. I first saw this video over at Jia’s and I knew I had to share it with y’all. I must warn you, there is profanity in this video and the reenactment that the boy is doing may be a bit disturbing to some of you. But this is reality and you have to admit that this kid is a great actor. Let me know what you think.

However, since we’re on the topic of politics,

CONGRATULATIONS SENATOR BARACK OBAMA, YOU RAWK!!!!

Yesterday was an historical day, and I am grateful that me and my family are here to witness it. When I first announced that I was supporting Senator Obama, this was my main reason:

We no longer have to look to entertainers who have no clue what it means to be a good example as role models for success. Change is here. Everytime you start to forget how much you can achieve, go to Google.com and type Barack Obama.

June 3rd, 2008 confirmed it.

In other news, natashasworld.com will soon be getting a complete facelift. I’m working on a new template and will be adding a couple of new sections. Stay tuned!

Regardless of what anyone says, I have a hard time believing that Hillary’s comment was innocent and that she didn’t mean to imply an ill fate for Obama.

Then, just when you think it can’t get any worse, Liz Trotta from Fox News makes one of the most appalling comment I’ve heard since this election started:

She later offers the following apology, but it’s a little too late. No apology can excuse such a comment…

I pray that God looks over Obama and his Family.