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LET'S TOUR THE SITES AND FIND THE TREASURES! 
July 1, 2010 For ten years the deer kept me from growing my three favorite flowers: tulips, roses, and zinnias. The deer owned the back yard, and then they came out front every summer to eat apples from the apple tree. They were everywhere and ate everything, but they seemed to especially enjoy tulips, roses, and zinnias. Then one bright summer day the apple tree fell over. First it leaned toward the street, then it simply fell over. I did not take this event as a gift from God, but I should have, because the deer quit coming around front. EXCEPT, EXCEPT one old doe who comes around front once every summer. She eats all the blooms and buds from my yellow daylilies, then disappears for another year. But maybe, I thought, the deer in general and the doe in particular would let me grow tulips, roses, and zinnias in the front yard, so long as I planted them out by the street. And that is why I spent two months double-digging that rose bed out by the street. And why I breathlessly planted all the things deer most love in that bed. What would the old doe do when she came to eat my daylilies? Would she venture out by the street and eat the roses too? The daylily buds grew bigger; one of them popped open. And the old doe came around the house at dawn and ate them all, blooms and buds. Then she wandered over to the rose bed and chowed down on my baby roses. Deer do enjoy a good rose. And then she wandered down the bed and sampled everything else – all the lovely things I’d planted there in the hope the deer wouldn’t eat them. I was devastated. BUT she’s never come back. A few days later some late red-orange daylilies began to bloom – they are still in bloom as I write – and she’s never eaten a one. I lost some baby oriental poppies, but not all of them, and the roses are making a comeback. Plant life goes on. Deliverance! I think. Janette ----Table Of Contents---- 1. I Has A Hotdog 1. I HAS A HOTDOG I used this site a couple of years ago, but it’s still one of the funniest sites out there, with new, hilarious items every day. DOG IN SLOW MOTION. Look at the glossy coat on that dog! Reminds me of the time my Uncle Ronald shot a moose. Aunt Gladys tenderized its steaks to the best of her ability and cooked them and cooked them, but at the dinner table people’s knives and forks bounced right off the meat. So they turned the whole moose into mooseburger and fed it to the dogs. All that winter the dogs bounded about the place, barked with great vigor, and had marvelous glossy coats. Don’t know what Nelson, the dog in this video, had been eating, but it probably wasn’t moose. Moose would have given him more pep. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQuWxXeMvig FIND DOG-FRIENDLY RESTAURANTS AND OTHER PET SERVICES: 2. DOES COFFEE REALLY WAKE YOU UP? Not exactly, it seems. According to a recent U.K. study, the alert feeling you get after your regular morning coffee just brings you up to your normal state; that is, the normal state you’d be enjoying if you weren’t addicted to caffeine. The researchers said that people who regularly took in caffeine but got none during this study “reported a decrease in alertness and an increase in headache, neither of which were reported by those who received caffeine.” Well, if you’re addicted to caffeine, you already know about caffeine withdrawal symptons. The bit about morning alertness is new, however. Or sort of new. I’ve several times gone off caffeine, enduring the two weeks of headaches that ensued and drinking lousy tasting decaffeinated tea (it was always the lousy tea that got to me). And then, if I gave myself a big mug of good-tasting real tea, I got a tremendous burst of energy. Which felt wonderful. So wonderful that the next day I tried a pot of real tea and got a much smaller burst of energy. By the third day I got practically no boost and was once again hooked on caffeine, but it didn’t matter. The great tasting tea was worth it. http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20100603 CAFFEINE CONTENT OF FOOD AND DRUGS. You may be surprised at the array of things that can hook you on caffeine: http://www.cspinet.org/new/cafchart.htm BUT COFFEE CAN IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH! Yes, really. According to the research reported below, coffee appears to “lower your risk of diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and colon cancer.” Also to “lift your mood and treat headaches.” http://men.webmd.com/features/coffee-new-health-food DECAF WORKS TOO. According to this study, either regular coffee or decaf lowers the risk of diabetes: http://longevity.about.com/od/diabetesandhealthaging 3. PREVENT DIABETES WHILE LOSING WEIGHT Millions of Americans are not only overweight but pre-diabetic, meaning that, unless they change course, they will develop diabetes. And many of the foods that reduce diabetes risk can also help you lose weight! Find below a quick look at foods that lower risk of diabetes, and then please take a look at the next item: http://www.ehow.com/facts_5172517_ 4. LOSE WEIGHT EATING UNTIL FULL If you study this information from the MAYO CLINIC – and please do study it – you will see that the whole grains and legumes that help prevent diabetes leave you feeling full longer and help you lose weight. And the fruits and vegetables that help prevent diabetes are also high in water and help you lose weight. You don’t have to fork over money for expensive diet drinks. You can sit down with a pen and paper (or an empty computer screen) and, knowing the foods you and your family do and don’t like, figure out a healthy diet you can live on and lose on. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/weight-loss/NU00195 A SIMPLE CALORIE COUNTER. They used to tell us at Weight Watchers never to let ourselves get really hungry. Strong hunger pangs have destroyed millions of attempts to lose weight because, when you’re really hungry, you throw caution to the winds and eat vast quantities of whatever is handy. So, oddly enough, some toast or a slice of watermelon when you start to get hungry midafternoon can save your diet. http://www.thecaloriecounter.com/ 5. DISPOSABLE DIAPER SAVES INFANT’S LIFE Hard to believe, but it happened. http://gimundo.com/news/article/disposable-diaper-saves-babys-life/ 6. ODDBALL PLACES ALL OVER When you travel by car in America, the wide open spaces get boring after awhile. So why not check your route with ROADSIDE AMERICA to find unexpected local attractions, some of them downright weird? There are, for example, several two-story outhouses out there in the hinterlands, just waiting to make your day. http://www.roadsideamerica.com/ 7. KITES ON AND OFF THE BEACH Try KITES ON A ROLL, which sells kite making kits that will help you and/or your kids make a kite. OR MAKE DRAGON KITES, BUTTERFLY KITES and more. Click on CRAFTS, GIFT IDEAS in the lefthand column, then on “What You CAn Do With Kites.” Or watch ... GREAT KITE VIDEOS. Go to HUMOR, ENTERTAINMENT in the lefthand column, click on “The Weird And The Wonderful.” 8. FARMGAL HELPS YOU PRESERVE THE GOODNESS OF SUMMER My grandmother had a root cellar, and in the fall she gathered in bushels of potatoes and carrots from her garden and apples from the orchard. On the cellar walls were shelves laden with jars of fruit and vegetables, jams and jellies, and pickles she’d canned herself. I adored her pickles. At Thanksgiving and Christmas the rest of the family looked at the turkey and dressing. I looked at the crab apple, beet, sweet, and dill pickles and the stuffed green and black olives, which latter were served only on great occasions. My grandmother sat by me and would sneak ugly brown meat and dressing and potatoes and gravy onto my plate, pushing aside the pickles and olives. The juice from those wonderful red beet pickles always stained the gravy a nasty color, which served it right, I thought, and I of course had no intention of eating it anyway. If you’ve got a garden and would like to do some old-fashioned farm-type preserving, FARMGAL can tell you how to can, freeze, dehydrate and pickle: And FARMGAL has an excellent guide to old-fashioned pickling. If you don’t have a garden, why not get some little cukes and dill from a farm stand? The stuff you get in the grocery store has artificial dill flavoring and tastes like it too. http://farmgal.tripod.com/PicklesRelish.html REAL KOSHER DILLS: FARMGAL has good recipes, but neither she nor my grandmother knew how to make kosher dills. You might say that kosher dills are city pickles. They entered the American experience over a century ago on the Lower East Side of New York, an area where poor Jewish immigrants began new lives as Americans. The immigrants may have been poor, but they knew a good pickle. Real kosher dills have no vinegar, and they should have fresh dill and lots of garlic: http://www.life123.com/food/canning-preserving/ LESLEY’s kosher dills are a bit simpler: http://www.lesleycooks.com/canning/delipickles.htm 9. TOP 10 SITES THAT HELP YOU FIX YOUR COMPUTER YESSS! This is the kind of thing you need a lot when you need it at all. Note that one of the top forums is in Australia, which could be really handy when things go wrong in the middle of the night in the U.S., as the Australians are then somewhere in the middle of their day. And of course helpfully speaking English as they go about their business. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ 10. CLEAN AND SPEED YOUR COMPUTER CLEAN USELESS FILES SAFELY FROM YOUR COMPUTER: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/clean-up- FREE TONS OF HARD-DRIVE SPACE: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ 11. THREE SIMPLE COMPUTER REPAIRS ANYONE CAN DO To be honest, I don’t think of replacing my RAM as a general rule ... or ever, actually. But if you’re the kind of person who does, this item is for you. And you might want to be thorough: notice in the second paragraph that troubleshooting is underscored? Click on that and a whole new list comes up. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-simplest 12. TWELVE IDEAS ON HOW TO TAKE BETTER PHOTOS Excellent advice on going from “just taking pictures” to the art of photography. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ BASIC APERTURE AND SHUTTER SPEEDS FOR BEGINNERS: 13. MAKE AMAZING PANORAMAS FOR FREE You don’t even need Photoshop for this one. If you have Windows XP or above, you can download the WINDOWS LIVE PHOTO GALLERY from MICROSOFT. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-make- 14. IDIOT’S GUIDE TO PHOTOSHOP This is a free pdf manual that leads you through the complexities of PHOTOSHOP. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ INTRODUCTORY PHOTOSHOP SKILLS FOR THE BEGINNING PHOTOGRAPHER. MAKEUSEOF came out with this just a few months after the pdf manual. I’m not sure why they did this, but since both are free you may want to investigate both and see which you like best. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ 15. TALK TO YOUR PARENTS BEFORE THEY’RE SICK When my mother was in her early sixties, she and I discussed what we’d do if she became incapacitated. She decided to make me a co-signer on her bank account. Eleven years later she had a massive stroke that took her speech and paralyzed her on her right side. I was then able to pay for her plane fare from Florida to Virginia from the bank account on which I was cosigner. I took care of my mother in my home in Virginia for the last thirteen years of her life, and eventually we of course had to get a power of attorney, but we did not have to deal with that during the first stunned and grief stricken months. MICHELLE SINGLETARY has sound advice in this column: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ PANDIA HAS IT ALL. Whether you’re a Boomer trying to think ahead, a young person concerned about aging parents, or a senior needing information on the challenges he or she faces, PANDIA has “senior health” websites you can search: http://www.pandia.com/cgi-local/ The 1000 BEST SITES in the lefthand column also has a GOOD SENIOR SITES section that includes “The Right Housing For Independent Seniors” (how to stay out of the nursing home), and “Staying Independent,” which is about just that. You’ll find some good things in both sections. |
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