03.24.2009

Hello everyone! I hope you're all enjoying Spring so far. Its still chilly here in Maryland, but this morning I noticed the forsythia blooming. Spring is my favorite time of year...its great to shake off the winter!
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Just for fun! Get a celebrity couple name (like Brangelina or Tomkat) at this site;
http://www.namemasher.com/default.aspx

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Healthy Living

You take care of your family....but do you remember to take care of yourself? If you don't, you could be putting yourself at risk for heart disease, which is the number one killer of women. If you make some small changes to your diet, you can make a big impact on your health. By making healthy eating a lifetime habit, you will get a powerful tool that will help control your weight, reduce cholesterol and lower your blood pressure, which are all risk factors for stroke or heart attack.

Stop eating so much fried and processed foods. Instead, eat more fruit, vegetables, low fat dairy prodcuts, lean meat and fish.
Be aware of the fat in the food you eat. Avoid trans fasts. Instead, aim for foods that are low in total fat, saturated fat and cholesterol.
When grocery shopping, look for the American Heart Associations heart check mark to find foods that have been verified to be low in saturated fat and cholesterol. For more information, and to create your own "heart healthy" shopping list that you can print out, visit

http://www.heartcheckmark.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=2115

In addition to these healthy eating tips, give yourself the gift of health this year for your birthday, and make an appointment for a checkup to talk to your doctor about how you can reduce your risk for heart disease.
Start moving! Walk briskly for half an hour five days a week. If you don't have 30 minutes, you can break it up into 3 ten minute walks...but of course, always check with your doctor before beginning any type of exercise program.
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If your car needs repair and you're wondering how much it should cost, go to RepairPal to get a general estimate. Just fill in what kind of car you have, they type of repair needed, and your zip code. RepairPal will give you an estimate of what it will probably cost in your area.
http://repairpal.com/
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Just for fun! Create a virtual kaleidoscope!

http://www.zefrank.com/byokal/kal2.html

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COOL PICK
If you're looking for an online community of friends but feel that you're too "grown up" for MySpace of Facebook, then "Not Over The Hill" might be the place for you! At Not Over The Hill you can create your own page, post to forums, share pictures, play games, write blogs and more. Its specifically designed for people over the age of 40, and its completely free! Check it out...
http://notoverthehill.com/
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For an "ultimate guide to shelf life" of food and drink, click on

http://www.stilltasty.com/
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Goodbye and Hello
by Barbara Anthony

Goodbye, ice skates,
Goodbye, sled,
Goodbye, winter,
Spring's ahead!

Goodbye, leggings,
Goodbye, snow,
Goodbye, winter,
Spring, hello!

Hello, crocus,
Hello, kite,
Goodbye, winter,
Spring's in sight!

Hello, jumprope,
Hello, swing,
Goodbye, winter!
Hello Spring!
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Post Secret is a website where people post their secrets on a post card anonymously. Some of the entries are sad, some are funny...and some are disturbing. Check it out, but be warned, sometimes there is slightly risque content.
http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

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Hello friends! I have to keep reminding myself it's still March because it's feeling very mid-Aprilish around here. We had crocus blooming last week. This is a flower that suddenly popped up in our yard three years ago and I had no idea what it was. This year I thought to email a picture to Lib and she told me what it was--thanks Lib! The trees are budding and I think the forsythia will be out very soon and I'm loving every minute of it. On a completely different note, I like to watch old Let's Make a Deal shows on GSN. Today one of the prizes was 1,000 gallons of gasoline and the value of the prize was $350. Can you imagine?!! Take care and have a great week. ~Toni
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=Tips from Cheryl=

Cleaning Silk Flowers and Foliage Most are made of nylon or polyester and come with plastic stems, so they can be washed in cold water with several drops of mild detergent. Carefully swish the flowers around to remove dust, rinse and let air dry. Blowing flowers with hair dryer on cool setting a couple times a month should help keep dust to a minimum.

Cleaning Diamond Jewelry For a quick clean, dip each piece of diamond jewelry into just a bit of rubbing alcohol. Use a soft clean toothbrush to carefully remove any debris, rinse and buff dry. Your diamonds should sparkle nicely.
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Is yellow your favorite color? Here's what it means around the world:

~In Egypt and Burma, yellow signifies mourning.
~In tenth-century France, the doors of traitors and criminals were painted yellow.
~Hindus in India wear yellow to celebrate the festival of spring.
~If someone is said to have a “yellow streak,” that person is considered a coward.
~In Japan during the War of Dynasty in 1357, each warrior wore a yellow chrysanthemum as a pledge of courage.
~A yellow ribbon is a sign of support for soldiers at the front.
~Yellow is a symbol of jealousy and deceit.
~In the Middle Ages, actors portraying the dead in a play wore yellow.
~To holistic healers, yellow is the color of peace.
~Yellow has good visibility and is often used as a color of warning. It is also a symbol for quarantine, an area marked off because of danger.
~“Yellow journalism” refers to irresponsible and alarmist reporting.
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Put foil under your ironing board cover to help insulate it. The foil will help heat the underside of the item you are pressing.
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Wise words from Phyllis T. : If you must have dessert, choose something that you can share with the person you're eating with. That way, you only get half the calories!
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*In 1963 the University of Mississippi Medical Center accomplished the world's first human lung transplant and, on January 23, 1964, Dr. James D. Hardy performed the world's first heart transplant surgery.
*Borden's Condensed Milk was first canned in Liberty.
*In 1902 while on a hunting expedition in Sharkey County, President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt refused to shoot a captured bear. This act resulted in the creation of the world-famous teddy bear.
*Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, on January 8, 1935.
*In 1884 the concept of selling shoes in boxes in pairs (right foot and left foot) occurred in Vicksburg at Phil Gilbert's Shoe Parlor on Washington Street.
*The first female rural mail carrier in the United States was Mrs. Mamie Thomas. She delivered mail by buggy to the area southeast of Vicksburg in 1914.
*The first nuclear submarine built in the south was produced in Mississippi.
*The rarest of North American cranes lives in Mississippi in the grassy savannas of Jackson County. The Mississippi Sandhill Crane stands about 44 inches tall and has an eight-foot wingspan.
*Blazon-Flexible Flyer, Inc. in West Point is proclaimed to make the very best snow sled in the United States, which became an American tradition. It is called The Flexible Flyer.
*Friendship Cemetery in Columbus has been called Where Flowers Healed a Nation. It was April 25, 1866, and the Civil War had been over for a year when the ladies of Columbus decided to decorate both Confederate and Union soldiers' graves with beautiful bouquets and garlands of flowers. As a direct result of this kind gesture, Americans celebrate what has come to be called Memorial Day each year, an annual observance of recognition of war dead.
*The largest Bible-binding plant in the nation is Norris Bookbinding Company in Greenwood.
*In 1834 Captain Isaac Ross, whose plantation was in Lorman, freed his slaves and arranged for them to be sent to Africa, where they founded the country of Liberia. Recently, representatives of Liberia visited Lorman and placed a stone at the Captain's gravesite in honor of his kindness.
*The first football player on a Wheaties box was Walter Payton of Columbia.
*Greenwood is the home of Cotton Row, which is the second largest cotton exchange in the nation and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
*The oldest game in America is stickball. The Choctaw Indians of Mississippi played the game. Demonstrations can be seen every July at the Choctaw Indian Fair in Philadelphia.
*The Vicksburg National Cemetery is the second largest national cemetery in the country. Arlington National Cemetery is the largest.
*D'Lo was featured in "Life Magazine" for sending proportionally more men to serve in World War II than any other town of its size. 38 percent of the men who lived in D'Lo served.
*Mississippi suffered the largest percentage of people who died in the Civil War of any Confederate State. 78,000 Mississippians entered the Confederate military. By the end of the war 59,000 were either dead or wounded.
*Pine Sol was invented in 1929 by Jackson native Harry A. Cole, Sr.
*The world's largest pecan nursery is in Lumberton.
*Root beer was invented in Biloxi in 1898 by Edward Adolf Barq, Sr.
*The Mississippi River is the largest in the United States and is the nation's chief waterway. Its nickname is Old Man River.
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Gas guzzler
Short of being on the receiving end of a fat government bailout, there was no way Juan Zamora could pay the bill. Zamora of Washington state says he pulled into a Richland, Wash., Conoco station and used his PayPal debit card to pay for $26 worth of gas for his Camaro. But when he arrived home, he had a message on his answering machine from PayPal asking him to verify a gas purchase of $81,400,836,908. Yes, over $81 billion. To add to his frustration, PayPal pegged him with a $90 overdraft fee, and he had to explain the error to two separate corporate representatives before convincing anyone that his Camaro doesn't hold $81 billion worth of gasoline. Representatives for PayPal, who have refunded Zamora the overdraft fee, explained that his customer number may have been switched with the cost per gallon.
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Writers Read http://www.whatarewritersreading.blogspot.com/ helps broaden your book search in two ways: The website introduces writers with whom you might not be familiar and asks them what they are reading. Their answers provide clues to their worldviews, which may help you decide whether to follow their leads or not.

Flashlight Worthy http://www.flashlightworthybooks.com/ recommends "books so good, they'll keep you up past your bedtime." It has lists of favorite reading club books and favorite locked room mysteries, favorite books of the "famous & accomplished," and various children's books lists. You might not agree with all the suggestions, but they provide good starting points. The website allows readers to suggest books that should be added to various lists and to provide lists of their own.
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A social network for people who love books...http://www.shelfari.com/
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Keep track of all the information about your things (from electronics to antiques) in one place.http://www.mythings.com/
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Being familiar with your grocer's aisles can help you to not make impulse buys. Every store has an aisle or two that has no temptations for you (pet food, paper goods, baby supplies, cosmetics, and so forth). Make that aisle your passageway to the departments you need at the back of the store. Why tempt yourself by walking down the candy aisle?
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How to get the best life out of your bulbs: Turn off incandescents if you're leaving the room for more than five seconds; CFLs if you'll be gone for at least 15 minutes.
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E. Irvin and Clarence Scott

The year was 1879. E. Irvin and Clarence Scott arrived in Philadelphia from Saratoga County, New York, and together they opened a company that produced a product that was only spoken of in whispers. Imagine the scene: a small East Coast dry goods store ... a polite gentleman walks in ... he eyes the shelf with a certain product ... walks around a bit, picks up a box of soap, just for appearances, and finally grabs a product in a plain brown wrapper. The product? Toilet paper.

The Scott brothers' company was one of the early producers of the product. In earlier times, people used corn cobs or old newspapers in their privies. Since they were selling an unmentionable product, the Scott Paper Company saw no need to shout about it. Instead, they sold the toilet paper to merchants who would sell it either with no brand label or with a label of their own. It took a pair of eyes from another generation to change this view.

It was Irvin's son Arthur Hoyt Scott who urged the older Scotts to advertise their products. They began labeling their toilet paper "Waldorf Tissue," which was advertised as "soft as old linen." By 1907, the ScotTissue company was well known. In that year, a shipment of long tubes of tissue, which were cut down to size at the factory, was deemed defective. It was too tough, not at all like tissue. The company was stuck with a railroad car full of paper it couldn't sell. Again, Arthur had an idea. Why not cut the paper into towel-sized sheets and sell it as "paper towels."

The product was offered to the public as SaniTowels. At first, they mostly were sold for use in public buildings, but as the price dropped, people were able to buy them to use in their homes. In 1931, the company changed the name of the product from SaniTowels to ScotTowels.
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~Marie's Laughter~

A woman burst out of the examining room screaming after her young physician tells her she is pregnant. The director of the clinic stopped her and asked what the problem was. After she tells him what happened, the doctors had her sit down and relax in another room and he marched down the hallway where the woman’s physician was and demanded, “What is wrong with you? Mrs. Miller is 60 years old, has six grown children and nine grandchildren, and you told her she was pregnant?” The young physician continued to write his notes and without looking up at his superior, asked, “Does she still have the hiccups?”
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Vic Damone -- Vito Farinola
Rodney Dangerfield -- Jacob Cohen
Charlie Daniels -- Charles Edward Daniel
Ted Danson -- Edward Bridge Danson III
Tony Danza -- Anthony Iadanza
Bobby Darin -- Walden Robert Cassotto
Doris Day -- Doris Kappelhof
Dizzy Dean -- Jan Hanna Dean
Jimmy Dean -- Seth Ward
Sandra Dee -- Alexandra Zuck
John Denver -- Henry John Deutschendorf
Bo Derek -- Mary Cathleen Collins
John Derek -- Derek Harris
Angie Dickinson -- Angeline Brown
Bo Diddley -- Elias Bates
Phyllis Diller -- Phyllis Driver
Jean Dixon -- Jeane Pinckert
Troy Donahue -- Merle Johnson, Jr.
Kirk Douglas -- Issur Danielovitch Demsky
Mike Douglas -- Michael Delaney Dowd, Jr.
Patty Duke -- Anna Marie Duke
Bob Dylan -- Robert Zimmerman
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Unusual town names for Colorado:

*Climax
*Dinosaur
*Hygiene
*Last Chance
*No Name
*Parachute
*Security
*Tincup
*Yellow Jacket
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If you're ordering something from a website and want to avoid future spam, or if there's someone you'd really like to be honest with but only if you can remain anonymous, then register for a temporary e-mail account at http://www.guerrillamail.com/ It's free, and you'll be able to use the address to receive messages for 15 minutes and send them for 60 minutes. After that--poof!--you never existed.
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Did you know when you type a phrase into a search engine you're broadcasting your interests and personal information? Some search companies gather, store and sell analyses of such data strings. That's why you whould never search your full name and Social Security number or your name and password. Also:

Don't sign up for email with your favorite search engine. This makes it easier to link you and your interests.

Use a variety of engines and computers for searching. This makes it more difficult to profile you.

Find out if your ISP uses a static IP address system, and if it does, periodically request a new IP address (essentially your computer's address).

Use software that masks your computer's address, like http://www.anonymizer.com and http://www.anonymouse.org.