Posts

Posted on

Donuts for Breakfast

There are plenty of branded donuts to choose from when you want to have donuts for breakfast. The grocery stores caryy Hostess, Entenman, Little Debbie, and their own bakery produced selections. There are also specialty bakery stores, such as Krispy Kreme and Dunkin Donuts.

Personally, my favorite donut bakery is the Shipley Donuts. There are only a handful of those stores around town, and none of them are on the normal route to my office. So if I want to pick up some donuts on the way to the office, I either go out of my way 15 minutes to the bakery and then get stuck in traffic on the way back or I go by the one Krispy Kreme store that is on the commute route.

I like Shipley enough that I would be willing to go by there on my way home and keep the donuts overnight for presentation the next morning. That’s not as good as freshly baked, but at least they have the full flavor of the Shipley recipes. But the Shipley stores close down mid afternoon, and the best donuts are sold out each morning to customers who drive over in the morning and get first choice. So I am resigned to only having Shipley donuts once in a blue moon and when I get the ocassional urge to treat the office with donuts, they will just get the convenient Krispy Kreme glazed.

Posted on

The Dinner Hour

As a kid we were encouraged to go outside and play every day after we returned home from a day of school. Most days, except in the dead of winter for about a month, we had at least an hour or two of daylight to play in the yard or with friends in the neighborhood. But at six o’clock, we were all expected to be home, cleaned up, and ready to eat dinner.

Everyone in our upper middle class neighborhood was expected to eat dinner at six o’clock except for my friend, Sandy. That family was headed by an Army General, and he required dinner at five o’clock. I suspect that a good part of that is because he had to start his day earlier than the white collar dads who had 9 to 5 jobs. The military runs on its own time, and the General leads by good example.

As an adult in today’s world, I almost never get to eat dinner by six o’clock. Most nights I don’t even get home from work until after six. My dinner has been pushed back to seven o’clock most nights. I wonder if the kids from the ‘hood are finding the same thing happening in their lives, or if they have been able to stick to the six o’clock hour for their dinners now?

Posted on

A Good Night’s Sleep

Sleep is such an important human condition. Sometimes I hate the way that our bodies require sleep – it is such a disruption to the day or night to have to stop and lie down for 6 hours. But a good night’s sleep is important to your health and ability to function well the next day.

On a good night, I might be able lie down for 8 hours. To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I’ve slept longer than 8 hours uninterrupted. Most night’s I’m good with between 6 and 8 hours of good sleep.

There are several considerations to a good night’s sleep and one of the most important is a comfortable, supportive bed. This becomes even more important as our bodies grow and mature, with our skeleton and muscles needing proper support and rest. The right bed can mean the difference between a completely relaxing and sound sleep, or a night of tossing and turning with fits of wakefulness.

As we are moving to a larger house this summer, I have had my eye on certain pieces of new furniture that I would like to replace or add to our household. In my opinion, the most important room in the house is the master bedroom. Everything else in a house can be replaced or substituted outside of the home, but the one main reason a man comes home at night is so that he can climb into his own bed.

Shopping for a new bed is worth a little time and effort to find the right bed, considering how important the bed is to a good night’s sleep. I found a web site called www.time4sleep.co.uk with all kinds of bed types – a large variety of styles and different types of beds for every home or person.

My favorite beds on this site are the storage beds. There are different types of storage options and they make the bed very practical. Since the bed takes up so much space in the room, it makes total sense to me to make good use of the space under the bed to store items not used often. These bed make storage either attractive or hidden, at a cost similar to beds without the storage features.

Posted on

Inauguration Day

This morning started early for everyone in Washington, DC. This is Inauguration Day for President Obama.

There were already huge crowds of people on the Washington Mall and scattered along the transport route from the Blair House to the Capitol steps. Officials are estimating that there will be up to two million people in Washington to witness this historic event.

It is sunny but bitter cold, as is typical in the Washington D area in January, They expect temperatures to stay in the teens, and just south of the D area they are predicting snow showers for Southern Virginia. I think it is symbolic that Obama is facing very cold weather but that the sun is shining, with warmer weather ahead. I hope that sets the tone for his first few months in office.

Posted on

Looking Better

Talking with my sister this afternoon, we got onto the subject of cosmetic surgery and medispas, and how the whole business of looking good or looking better has really taken off this decade. I think a lot of that has to do with the medical advances, with new surgical procedures, new pharmaceuticals approved and on the market, and the development of laser technology.

My sister, on the other hand, says that the media is to blame – or to take the credit, depending upon which side of the argument you choose to take. The media shows perfect women and men, with shows all about losing weight, getting makeovers, and how to dress. The success of shows like The Biggest Loser” and “What Not to Wear” make me think that her argument has merit.

Personally, I think most people do care about how they look and they pay attention to proper grooming, coordinating their wardrobe and reflecting a certain amount of conformity to fashion and current styles, such as the new eyeglass frames or the length of skirts and even pants.

That’s why businesses like “Make Yourself Amazing” at www.mya.co.uk are creating a strong internet presence, with informational articles and photos of before and after that help convince people to seek out self improvement procedures.

Did you know that the most common cosmetic procedure is for eyelids? The second most popular cosmetic procedure is rhinoplasty – also called a “nose job.” And the third most popular is liposuction surgery.

All of these procedures have a reason they are so popular and are well accepted by society for both men and women. So the question remains – is it due to the media, pure vanity of this generation, or because the technology has improved to make it available at a reasonable cost?

Posted on

Voice to Text

Looking at most of the PDAs that have evolved into iPhone’s and clones, the focus has been to include some method of typing the alphabet and numbers into the equipment to send outgoing messages. Some have slide out keyboards with itsy bitsy QWERTY keys, some have teeny weenie buttons to be pressed in a different order, with lots of shift key and control key pressing to make all the characters workable. Some have touch screens that click when pressed. But most of them require the user to hunt and peck to send out their text message or twitter.

Now a company in England is releasing their new program that converts voice to text and works with the cell phones, called VoxLinks. I read about it online in a UK publication.

How cool is that? No more stylus, no more fat finger typos, no more squinting in the dark to find the right buttons. Just talk and turn your outgoing message or incoming voicemail into a text message. And if you subscribe to the Vodaphone service for your cell provider, you’ll get the software free. Awesome.

Posted on

Business Bumps

The big story last month when the talking heads were trying so earnestly to convince Americans that the big money bailout was necessary was that the bailout money would increase the credit available to businesses. After all, businesses need credit to survive and to grow. The common example given of why businesses need credit was to make payroll, but it can also be to buy new equipment.

That logic of needing to borrow to make payroll really bothered me. If a business routinely needs to borrow money to make payroll, then in my opinion it is not a viable business.

However, having been in business for a long time, I recognize that all businesses have ups and downs throughout their life cycle, and it can be really tough to make ends meet when you have even a small series of setbacks. That is why I think most businesses need to have at least one good source for raising emergency cash, such as www.onlinecheck.com, and that second only to paying taxes, a business needs to make sure that it’s employees get paid. That is why arranging for a Merchant Cash Advance makes a lot of sense. You go online to make the arrangements – it is fast and easy.

Sometimes a customer goes bankrupt or has a big problem where they cannot pay the bill owed to your company. If you were planning to use that money to pay your own bills, it can be the domino effect of your business not paying its own bills, and then your suppliers or vendors cannot pay their own bills, and so on. But a responsible business owner will at least make sure that the employees are paid.

Posted on

Snow or No

Tomorrow the weather forecasters have declared that we will have snow. Somewhere. Maybe here, maybe north of us, maybe east – up on the plateau. But we shall have snow in the area.

Since Monday is a legal holiday, the snow will not mean that schools have to close. They are already closed. So if it does snow, I hope the homebound kids have enough on the ground to play with. Maybe some sledding downhill and a few snowmen.

And I certainly hopes it all melts by Tuesday morning so that traffic is not snarled.

Posted on

Flying Car’s Maiden Voyage Underway

A link from Yahoo’s front page shows the world’s first road worthy flying car.

I’ve watched it three times and I’m still not sure how the car takes off and gets the clearance height it needs, as in liftoff. Still, it’s a cool idea for remote locations and maybe a tourist toy. Urban and congested areas would be a traffic control nightmare, but that’s been shown in some science fiction movies as a futuristic daily reality. Three cheers for the guy who came up with a working model!

Posted on

Car of the Year

Does anyone else think that the annual North American International Auto Show is a little tainted this year with the boo-hoo of the Detroit 3 automakers saying they are broke? So when you are broke its supposed to be OK to party all week in Detroit and brag about how great everything is?

OK – I know that they made these plans – and probably already paid for most of it – months ago. It’s an annual thing. Maybe its the perfect confidence booster. Maybe they’ll be announcing some fantastic new cars that everyone will rush out to buy as soon as they hit the street. Let’s hope.

The interesting news in the Chicago Tribune from the Auto Show this morning is that they announced the “2009 Car of the Year” is the Hyundai Genesis. This is the first time Hyundai has won an award in the 15 years it has been producing automobiles. The Genesis is Hyundai’s top of the line sedan and maybe it’s worth considering if you are in the market for a new traditional car this year. Personally, I want to hold out for a new hybrid or total electric car. I’m hearing good things about plug in the car at night and go about 40 miles each day without having to buy gas. Now that’s what I’m talking about.