From the category archives:

cowboy bedding

Happy Relationships: Change Your Appearance

by discount designer bedding on January 14, 2010

One of the chal­lenges of even the strongest long-term rela­tion­ship is the dif­fi­culty in keep­ing things fresh and new.

We are crea­tures of habit, devel­op­ing rou­tines that work for us with­out our hav­ing to think about it. It allows us to move through fast-paced lives with­out hav­ing to make every lit­tle deci­sion on a daily basis. We don’t want to stop and think about which sock to put on first, which way to drive to work, what kind of gas to put in our car, how to stack the dish­washer or fold our clothes.

Habits make life so much more sim­ple that it frees up our ener­gies to con­front the big deci­sions and prob­lems we have to face. How­ever, habits also dis­tance us from what we do because our mind is not engaged, When some­one else points out that we “always” do some­thing a cer­tain way, we are amazed because we are unaware. Once we’ve moved beyond the ado­les­cent and young adult exper­i­men­ta­tion phase, we tend to fall into the rut of wear­ing our hair a cer­tain way, how we put on our makeup, the kind of tele­vi­sion shows we watch, the choice of foods we eat, and the lifestyle we pursue.

That is why the sneaky mar­ket­ing men aim their mes­sage at young age groups who are the ones most likely to try some­thing dif­fer­ent. The size and the pur­chas­ing power of the baby boomers may be extra­or­di­nar­ily large but they are sel­dom tar­geted by major adver­tis­ing cam­paigns because they are com­fort­able with the choices they have made and are unlikely to really hear mes­sages about alter­na­tives in which they have lit­tle interest.

Within our last­ing rela­tion­ships, we also fall into habits. They range from unwa­ver­ing go-to-bed-at-night and get-up-in-the-morning rou­tines to the day of the week we go out, the restau­rants we fre­quent, and the way we com­mu­ni­cate (or fail to com­mu­ni­cate) with each other. We are so used to being around our part­ner that, despite the affec­tion we may feel, we stop see­ing each other with the won­der and appre­ci­a­tion we felt in those first heady months.

Shak­ing up our lives by dump­ing old habits can make us feel younger and alive. Chang­ing our appear­ance, even a few times a month, makes us look at each other through new eyes and makes us focus on each other in a dif­fer­ent way.

Women can more eas­ily and rad­i­cally change their looks because female hair­styles are so much more var­ied than those of men. A wig (or sev­eral), in a totally dif­fer­ent color, with appro­pri­ate makeup adjust­ments, can affect your response to each other. A man can tem­porar­ily grow a mous­tache, a beard, or side­burns, and elicit new atten­tion from his sur­prised wife. An out­ra­geous new piece of cloth­ing for a spe­cial date can trans­form your inter­ac­tion with each other.

Many of us love cos­tume par­ties whether some­thing dra­matic at Hal­loween or an only-black-and-white graph­ics event or a get together with friends wear­ing the clothes we loved in high school.

Be cre­ative! If you usu­ally dine out in busi­ness attire, get some cow­boy gear and go to a west­ern saloon for some line danc­ing. If your usual night out is at a bowl­ing alley, dress to the nines and have a drink at the most expen­sive hotel in your area, rub­bing shoul­ders with the movers and shak­ers. Try a latino night­club, hot dogs on the pier, or drinks with fruit and lit­tle umbrel­las at a sushi bar. Dress in your skuzzi­est clothes and visit a lux­ury car show­room to laugh at the con­ster­na­tion you cause. Use that tux you rented for your niece’s wed­ding when you visit the local pizza par­lor and see the buzz you create.

The city of Las Vegas has a won­der­ful ad cam­paign about “What hap­pens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” It speaks to our desire to do some­thing totally dif­fer­ent and out­ra­geous to escape the par­a­lyz­ing pas­try of our nor­malcy — but with the assur­ance that we can return with­out ill effects, no burned bridges forc­ing per­ma­nent change.

Shak­ing up our appear­ance can shake up our part­ner and our mutual inter­ac­tions. Do it for the excite­ment and do it for the fun. As another ad cam­paign sug­gests, “Just do it.”

Dr. Bola pro­vides a com­pli­men­tary copy of “Seven Super Sim­ple Tips: Keep Your Mar­riage Fresh” from which this arti­cle is taken. Steal it at: http://www.dietwithanattitude.com/SuperSimpleTipsMarriage.html

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Six Steps for Pursuing Purpose

by discount designer bedding on January 13, 2010

Each of us has a spe­cial pur­pose or mis­sion, and I have been in search of mine since I was a child. From child­hood until my early twen­ties, I sus­pected my mis­sion was to go into the min­istry. When the other boys were play­ing cow­boys and Indi­ans, I was dressed in long robes build­ing altars, and as a young adult I would lie on my bed for hours pray­ing to God for a sign. One never came.

For most of us, pur­pose is not some­thing that is revealed through a burn­ing bush. Instead, we stum­ble onto our life’s pur­pose. An impulse may lead us to a new place, and that new place leads us towards another, until even­tu­ally we find a spot that feels right. This spot is our pur­pose, and it often turns out to be a place we never con­sid­ered or envisioned.

There are hun­dreds of books avail­able on how to “mine” mis­sion, and they tout a wide vari­ety of meth­ods includ­ing jour­nal­ing, art, and cre­ative visu­al­iza­tion. But in my expe­ri­ence, it’s hard to extract pur­pose. Some­times it doesn’t pay to pur­sue pur­pose. It finds us — and only when we are ready.

I now believe pur­pose unfolds as we unfold and that pur­pose is intri­cately tied to liv­ing an authen­tic life, for only when we live authen­ti­cally can/does pur­pose reveal itself.

There is no for­mula for dis­cov­er­ing pur­pose that works for every­one, but these six steps helped me. Per­haps they will help you too.

One: Dis­cover authen­tic­ity through self-discovery. I am still search­ing for authen­tic self; it’s a life­long process. Still, at no time in my life have I felt closer to my authen­tic self than I am now. For exam­ple, I am just now begin­ning to dis­tin­guish my wants and needs from parental expectations.

Two: Live an authen­tic life. Never before has my life so clearly reflected my true Self. I am not as afraid to show peo­ple who I am, and I do fewer things to gain oth­ers’ approval and more things that bring me pleasure.

Three: Lis­ten. The root of the word voca­tion is vox (Latin for voice). To find our true voca­tion, we have to lis­ten to our inner voice. I pay atten­tion to day and night­time dreams, intu­ition, energy level, emo­tions, and my body. Oprah once wrote in her mag­a­zine of the same name, “If you pay atten­tion to these cues — to the times you’ve felt most joy­ous, most fully engaged, most con­nected to your­self and oth­ers — you’ll always be guided to the next best place.”

Four: Act. Inven­tor, designer, and philoso­pher R. Buck­min­ster Fuller is quoted in Lucia Capacchione’s book Vision­ing: Ten Steps to Design­ing the Life of Your Dreams, as say­ing, “What you actu­ally do within twenty-four hours of hav­ing a cre­ative idea will spell the dif­fer­ence between suc­cess and fail­ure.” To dream is not enough, we have to do some­thing with the dream. For me, doing starts by putting the idea in writ­ing. Every year, I write a busi­ness plan, and I revised it when­ever I get a new idea. I add a new goal along with the action steps to imple­ment it.

Five: Remain open. Not only do we have to do some­thing with our dreams, we have to be open and not tied to a par­tic­u­lar out­come. We have to sur­ren­der, and we have to trust. I have found that find­ing pur­pose is often a cir­cuitous route; one path leads to another, and fail­ures often lead to ulti­mate success.

Six: Be patient. Patience is not one of my virtues. I have to remem­ber the story of Jake McCord, an out­sider artist who lives in Thom­son, Geor­gia. After fin­ish­ing a paint­ing, Jake places it in his front yard to “sea­son.” When eager col­lec­tors try to buy one of these pieces from the yard, Jake says firmly, “It ain’t ready yet.” Jake knows not to rush it; when the time is right, it is right. The same is true for pur­pose; we have to be patient and remem­ber, “It ain’t ready yet.”

Some­times I feel I am liv­ing my mis­sion, and at other times I feel I am not. Five years ago, I wrote a per­sonal phi­los­o­phy: “To know your­self is to know God, and to share your­self is to serve Him/Her.” Since then, I have strived to live my phi­los­o­phy through writ­ing, teach­ing, coach­ing, and speak­ing. Still, some­times some­thing seems to be miss­ing, and I have to ask, “Am I ful­fill­ing my mis­sion right now or still wait­ing for the burn­ing bush?”

I hope that in this moment I am ful­fill­ing my mis­sion to the best of my abil­ity, and at the same time, I hope I am stay­ing open to all the possibilities.

“The Career Engi­neer,” Randy Siegel, helps clients elec­trify their careers and trans­form their lives by becom­ing high volt­age com­mu­ni­ca­tors?. Sub­scribe to “Stand”>http://www.powerhousecommunications.com/newsletter.htm” >“Stand in Your Power!” his eNewslet­ter at www.powerhousecommunications.com

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The 2006 Fall Season is Fast Approaching and Fredericksburg, Texas is Ready

by discount designer bedding on January 13, 2010

Copy­right © Joshua Geary Best Online Results, (http://www.BestOnlineResults.com)

The days are grow­ing shorter and shorter; the trees will soon be turn­ing shades of red as the 2006 Fall Sea­son is com­ing to the Lone Star state. Autumn is the sea­son of cel­e­bra­tion for Fred­er­icks­burg, which will host sev­eral fes­ti­vals dur­ing the Fall Season.

There are plenty of prepa­ra­tions to be made still for all of these excit­ing fes­ti­vals. The Texas Mesquite Art Fes­ti­val runs from Octo­ber 13 through the 15th. The Fred­er­icks­burg Food & Wine Fest hap­pens on Octo­ber 28th, and who could for­get the German-Texas Style Okto­ber­fest on the first week­end in Octo­ber, on the 6th, 7th, and 8th. Good-natured and con­tests abound, such as the Okto­ber­fisch Fly Fish­ing Fes­ti­val and Tour­na­ment on the 20th through the 22nd of Octo­ber. The fly fish­ing tour­na­ment is nation­ally rec­og­nized and is ideal for fish­er­man who delight in Texas fly-fishing while leisurely enjoy­ing one of the finest rivers Texas has to offer. Folks in town will hap­pily wel­come in the start of hunt­ing sea­son, too.

With all this excite­ment, lodg­ings can be hard to find in the town of Fred­er­icks­burg. Hotels are already fill­ing up quickly with book­ings, and the charm­ing Bed and Break­fasts’ and Inns in the area are pop­u­lat­ing just as fast. The solu­tion to this is sim­ple as well as afford­able; for a taste of the out­doors as well as a place to hang your cow­boy hat, bring your RV. The mild weather of autumn in Fred­er­icks­burg means that your RV stay will be a taste of adven­ture with all the com­forts of home. There are plenty of places in the Texas hills in which to camp and enjoy the beau­ti­ful scenery and per­haps take advan­tage of hunt­ing sea­son or good fish­ing, too. Best of all, you are still only min­utes away from the bus­tle of the Fred­er­icks­burg festivities.

The 2006 Fall Sea­son is fast approach­ing and if you are look­ing for a Texas Hill Coun­try Per­fect Vaca­tion Des­ti­na­tion, then the Llano River RV Park (web­site: http://www.LlanoRiverRVPark.com) and the city of Fred­er­icks­burg, Texas awaits you. Just 30 miles north of Fred­er­icks­burg, the Llano River RV Park is nes­tled along the banks of the Llano River at its deep­est part. It is a great place to RV and fly fish with the fam­ily. See you soon!

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Discover How To Care For Your Cat, So They Are Happy

by discount designer bedding on January 13, 2010

All in all, it is an odd rela­tion­ship that man has estab­lished with cat. Toward no other domes­tic ani­mal does he show such split feel­ings of admi­ra­tion and resent­ment, which is some kind of a com­ment on man, for the cat, is con­stant. She has always been cat.

The cat is dif­fer­ent from the dog. She serves no one, know­ingly or will­ingly. Her one accom­plish­ment the hunt­ing of mice, rats and other rodents is self taught. The man does not live who can claim to have trained a cat to per­form a task for human ben­e­fit. For their own con­ve­nience, cats have learned var­i­ous small maneu­vers, like open­ing doors, but they do not and will not herd sheep, carry mes­sages or run back to the ranch seek­ing help for jammed up cow­boys. There are no police cats, no watch cats, and no sled cats.

The cat does not even come when she is called, unless it suits her.

In 1953 the Amer­i­can Can Com­pany, which pro­duces con­tain­ers for com­mer­cial pet foods and was there­fore inter­ested, dis­cov­ered in a sur­vey that there were 26,700,000 domes­tic cats in the United States.

By domes­tic cats is meant cats who, how­ever casual their mem­ber­ship, belong to human fam­i­lies. Most of them 13.2 mil­lion were found to be farm cats. Seven mil­lion were city cats, and 6.5 mil­lion lived some­where in between.

The South had the most cats, 9.7 mil­lion, the Far West the fewest, 3.2 mil­lion. The East had the most urban cats, 2.4 mil­lion, the Mid­west the most farm cats, 5.8 mil­lion; no sur­prises there.

Over­all, 29 per cent of the nations fam­i­lies had one or more cats. Farm fam­i­lies had the most cats; nearly half of them owned three or more. The nation­wide aver­age was 2.21 cats per cat own­ing fam­ily. Low income fam­i­lies were found to be far more likely to have cats than were the high income families.

Cats are not the least bit uncer­tain about their abil­ity to take care of them­selves. This, how­ever, does not dis­cour­age the peo­ple with whom they live. By close obser­va­tion of cats habits and pref­er­ences, they learn to do for cat many of the things cat ordi­nar­ily would do for her­self. This is known as cat care.

Your first duty is to pro­vide your cat with a bed. Her pref­er­ences are in accord with uni­ver­sal stan­dards. It should be warm and dry, of com­fort­able size, bug free and pro­tected from drafts.

The only other arti­cle of fur­ni­ture an indoor cat needs is a pan. There are cats that, by some stroke of fate, have learned to use the human toi­let, but yours prob­a­bly is not one of them. Buy a pan. Enam­eled metal is best and eas­i­est to keep clean. It should be large enough for the cat to maneu­ver in com­fort­ably, but the sides should be low. It should be kept in one loca­tion, and it may be filled with sand, shred­ded news­pa­per or sawdust.

A house trained mother cat will teach her kit­tens to use the pan, but if you should by chance acquire one that never got the word, it is easy enough to set the kit­ten straight. First, show it the pan. Sec­ond, after each meal traipse the kit­ten over to the pan and keep it there with­out using undue force, of course until it performs.

Dis­cover How To Care For
Your Cat, So They Are As
Happy And Healthy As Can Be

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Hello From The Canadian Rockies — Part 2: First Impressions Of Calgary

by discount designer bedding on January 13, 2010

As so many times before, I used my Air­miles to book our flights to Cal­gary (with the West­jet Air­miles Mas­ter­card you get to fly out west for only 1600 Air­miles instead of hav­ing to use 3000 Air­miles in high sea­son with other air­lines). As an astute trav­eller you have to look at every option of cut­ting your travel costs and Air­miles is one of my favourite tools. A direct flight took us from Toronto to Cal­gary in about three and a half hours.

We arrived at the Cal­gary Air­port at roughly 11:25 am and the weather was rather over­cast on arrival with an out­side tem­per­a­ture of –12 degrees Cel­sius. Because we only had about a day in Cal­gary, an offi­cial tour of the city was going to really give us the lay of the land and Joce­lyne Mor­ri­son from Time Out For Tour­ing was there to pick us up. Joce­lyne her­self hails actu­ally from Que­bec, but has been liv­ing in Cal­gary for the last 10 years. And it turns out she loves the city and is an absolute expert in it.

The first thing that struck me upon arrival were all the stat­ues and sculp­tures located at the bag­gage carousels, all with dif­fer­ent themes. Obvi­ously Cal­gary likes to enter­tain its vis­i­tors while they wait for their lug­gage at the air­port. The next sight that caught my atten­tion was a vol­un­teer dressed up in a bright red vest and cow­boy hat who was there to wel­come tourists. Joce­lyne explained that Cal­gary actu­ally is a city of vol­un­teers: 7 out of 10 Cal­gar­i­ans vol­un­teer their time for a good cause, and vol­un­teers were some of the main rea­sons why the Cal­gary Olympic Games in 1988 were the first Olympic Games in his­tory to actu­ally make (rather than lose) money.

Joce­lyne packed us into the tour­ing van and off we went on our very com­pact explo­ration of Cal­gary. The first thing that struck me about Cal­gary was its topog­ra­phy: it is located in a rel­a­tively flat area with a num­ber of long, stretched out low-lying hills. On good days you can actu­ally see the Rocky Moun­tains to the west, but unfor­tu­nately the weather was over­cast, so we didn’t get to see the Rock­ies today.

Cal­gary is divided north-south by the Bow River, and Cen­tre Street divides the city’s east from the west. As a result the city has 4 quad­rants with streets run­ning north-south and avenues run­ning east-west. So in order to find an address you always have to know whether it is in the north­west, north­east, south­west or south­east quad­rant in Cal­gary. Joce­lyne explained that many of the streets in Cal­gary are named after native names, eg. Deer­foot Avenue (appar­ently named after a native per­son who was a really fast runner).

Nose Hill is one of the most promi­nent hills in Cal­gary; it is a long-stretched out topo­graph­i­cal fea­ture with­out much veg­e­ta­tion. Joce­lyne explained that this type of land­scape is pretty much typ­i­cal of Cal­gary as a prairie city. Much of Calgary’s nat­ural land­scape is a mix between grass­land and semi-arid forests. When it gets very dry in the sum­mer, there are a lot of grass fires.

Cal­gary is also a boom­ing city. Cranes are every­where, and new sub­di­vi­sions are grow­ing out of the ground like mush­rooms. Essen­tially only the down­town area has high­rise build­ings, while the res­i­den­tial areas out­side of the core mostly con­sist of single-family homes rather than high­rise apart­ments. Cal­gary, as the “Energy Cap­i­tal of Canada” and the cen­tre of Canada’s oil indus­try, is expe­ri­enc­ing rapid eco­nomic growth and peo­ple from all over Canada are migrat­ing here. The pop­u­la­tion today is roughly 1 million.

Next we drove by McMa­hon Sta­dium, where Calgary’s Stam­ped­ers foot­ball team is head­quar­tered. This sta­dium was also used for the open­ing and clos­ing cer­e­monies dur­ing the 1988 Olympic Games, another rea­son why Cal­gary made money on these games: by reusing and refunc­tion­ing exist­ing facil­i­ties. Pru­dent finan­cial man­age­ment at work.…..

The next big item on the itin­er­ary was “C.O.P.”: Canada Olympic Park, a place so inter­est­ing it deserves its own story. After our guided tour through the Olympic facil­i­ties we drove on the Sarcee Trail to get into down­town Cal­gary. Com­ing into town from the west side we had a very nice view of the clus­ter of sky­scrap­ers down­town. While dri­ving in through the res­i­den­tial areas, Joce­lyne explained that a large num­ber of res­i­den­tial con­do­minium devel­op­ments are going up down­town. One exam­ple of the pop­u­la­tion explo­sion was the move of Cana­dian Pacific’s head­quar­ters from Mon­treal to Cal­gary in 1996 when 700 fam­i­lies moved into town at the same time.

Cal­gary pays a lot of atten­tion to the qual­ity of life of its res­i­dents. The city has hun­dreds of kilo­me­ters of walk­ways and trails, par­tic­u­larly beside the Elbow and Bow Rivers. Doglovers in par­tic­u­lar have it good here since the city pro­vides many off-leash areas to its dog-owners. 55 golf courses are located in the imme­di­ate vicin­ity of Cal­gary and golf is a very pop­u­lar pas­time here.

We entered the down­town core and Joce­lyne pointed out the Gulf Canada and Cana­dian Pacific head­hquar­ters. The last steam loco­mo­tive used by the CP Rail is on dis­play out­side the CP office tower. The two sky­scrap­ers of Bankers Hall dom­i­nate the sky­line, one with a sil­ver roof, the other with a golden one. We went up the Cal­gary Tower, built between 1967 and 1968 orig­i­nally as the “Husky Tower”. It holds a revolv­ing restau­rant and today it was offi­cially closed for a pri­vate func­tion, but we had a chance to catch an ele­vated view of the city.

Just last year the Cal­gary Tower added a glass-bottomed view­ing area. Joce­lyne men­tioned that for a spe­cial occa­sion a horse was brought up for a photo op, but the horse would resist any efforts of being coaxed onto the glass-bottomed area. I can only under­stand that too well because when I was stand­ing there look­ing straight down, it made me feel very squea­mish too.

Our dri­ving tour con­tin­ued towards Fort Cal­gary, Calgary’s old­est land­mark. Fort Cal­gary was founded in 1875 as a North West Mounted Police Out­post and today it houses an inter­pre­tive cen­tre and a museum. Joce­lyne explained that the explo­ration of the west pro­gressed dif­fer­ently here than in the United States in that rela­tions with the native tribes were rel­a­tively peace­ful. Prime Min­is­ter John A. Mac­Don­ald founded the North West Mounted Police, which later on became the Royal Cana­dian Mounted Police. The police arrived in the west before the set­tlers and estab­lished rela­tions with the natives.

The Ingle­wood neigh­bour­hood is located adja­cent to Fort Cal­gary at the con­flu­ence of the Elbow and the Bow Rivers. It’s an attrac­tive neigh­bour­hood with old trees and estab­lished homes and sur­rounds a nice com­mer­cial street with many restau­rants and antique shops. Joce­lyne then took us into a res­i­den­tial neigh­bour­hood called “Scots­man Hill” which offers a tremen­dous vista of the Cal­gary Sad­dle Dome and the Stam­pede grounds, set against the back­drop of the down­town sky­line. A won­der­ful view…

She then took us past the grounds of the “Cal­gary Stam­pede”, Calgary’s most famous event. What origj­nally started as an agri­cul­tural fair has evolved in a yearly 10-day city­wide cel­e­bra­tion of west­ern hos­pi­tal­ity and tra­di­tions and includes chuck­wagon races, rodeos, rides and a Grand­stand Show extrav­a­ganza. This year’s Stam­pede will take place from July 7 to 16, 2006.

Back down­town Joce­lyne took us through a for­mer indus­trial area called “Eau Claire” which has been con­verted into one of Calgary’s most pop­u­lar down­town res­i­den­tial dis­tricts. On our drive through down­town Joce­lyne pointed out a typ­i­cal Cal­gar­ian fea­ture: the “+15s”: ele­vated walk­ways con­nect­ing high­rise tow­ers so peo­ple can walk between com­mer­cial build­ings shel­tered from the ele­ments. These “+15″ walk­ways con­nect var­i­ous shop­ping areas and malls and allow you to explore Calgary’s down­town core with­out ever set­ting foot outside.

The name came about because these walk­ways had to be at least 15 feet above the street below. Cal­gary is build on bedrock, and con­trary to Toronto or Mon­treal which both have a vast net­work of under­ground walk­ways, Cal­gary has cho­sen to pro­vide weather shel­ter through ele­vated walkways.

From there we crossed the Elbow River and entered the Kens­ing­ton neigh­bour­hood, one of Calgary’s pri­mary restau­rant and shop­ping areas. Our guide pointed out a store owned by famous Bel­gian choco­latier Bernard Calle­beaut who makes sweet local del­i­ca­cies. I heard some peo­ple say that these are the “best choco­lates in the world”.…

The next area on our menu was the Uptown 17th Avenue neigh­bour­hood, another area packed with restau­rants and shops. Last but not least, after tak­ing us on 4th Street, which also houses lots of eater­ies and funky sto­ries, Joce­lyne took us all the way to our bed and break­fast, the his­toric Twin Gables B&B, where we got to set­tle in after our sneak peek at Calgary.

It was a whirl­wind 4 hour tour through town and by the end of it my head was spin­ning with all the infor­ma­tion. But Joce­lyne did a phe­nom­e­nal job of acquaint­ing us with her cho­sen home­town and it was a per­fect intro­duc­tion to Cal­gary — “The Heart of the New West”.

For the entire arti­cle includ­ing pho­tos please visit
http://www.travelandtransitions.com/stories_photos/calgary_first_impressions.htm

Susanne Pacher is the pub­lisher of Travel and Tran­si­tions (http://www.travelandtransitions.com), a pop­u­lar web por­tal for uncon­ven­tional travel & cross-cultural con­nec­tions. Check out our brand new sec­tion fea­tur­ing FREE ebooks about travel.

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Ecuador: Perhaps the Perfect Family Destination

January 13, 2010

Quito, the sec­ond high­est Cap­i­tal city in the world, is con­nected by daily direct flights to America’s gate­way cities of Miami, Hous­ton and Atlanta.

The city of Quito has not only been des­ig­nated as a United Nations World Her­itage Site, but it lies at the foot of South America’s most spectacular–and easy accessible—active volcano. […]

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North Dakota Real Estate

January 12, 2010

When the Sioux Indi­ans are men­tioned, thoughts trail to North Dakota. The vast stretches of rolling plains, and dip­ping val­leys inspired numer­ous cow­boy folk songs. The rich fer­tile loam soil of the North Dakota makes it ideal for agri­cul­tural activities.

The shim­mer­ing wheat fields in late sum­mer are in them­selves a sight to behold. […]

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Scandalous Behavior: What Happens at the Afterparty, Stays at the Afterparty!

January 12, 2010

Musi­cians work hard. They write for days. They rehearse like fiends. Drag heavy gear here and there. Sweat like pigs on stage. Put marathon hours in at the record­ing stu­dio. Work their fin­gers to the bone…well, at least into some pretty gnarly cal­luses. But, musi­cians also like to […]

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Dog in Print: Five Dogs you Must Bring Home

January 12, 2010

Call­ing all dog-lovers! Dogs have made some of the most unfor­get­table char­ac­ters in lit­er­a­ture. It’s not uncom­mon for chil­dren to become as attached to a dog in print as the real thing. Puppy love comes in all forms. In fact, I believe I can trace my canine-cravings to my ear­li­est days of read­ing, when […]

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A Cancer Survivor Story: The Power of Will

January 12, 2010

I learned the power of will dur­ing my can­cer jour­ney through a very unusual process: I called it “Shower Sequenc­ing”. Since the can­cer was in my neck and ton­sil it was impor­tant to keep the lymph mov­ing there. I dis­cov­ered that a method of cre­at­ing move­ment in the lymph was to first run hot water […]

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Get Comfort in Oklahoma Vacation Rentals

January 12, 2010

. Do you want some cow­boy adven­ture through lovely moun­tains, large ranches and deep canyons; then surely Okla­homa can ful­fil your dreams. It has fine din­ing, cul­ture and his­tory. Thus, it is right to say that it is a nice place to expe­ri­ence. And, if you really want to enhance your expe­ri­ence and enjoy­ment in […]

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2009 Dodge Ram: a Serious Pickup Foe

January 11, 2010

When the word “pickup” is men­tioned, the Ford F-150 is expected to cross one’s mind. The leg­endary F-150 has been the best-selling pickup for 31 years now. But F-150 is now fac­ing a seri­ous com­pe­ti­tion in the 2009 Dodge Ram.

The new Ram pickup was launched at this year’s North Amer­i­can Inter­na­tional Auto Show dur­ing the first […]

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Florida Gators and Little Minnows!

January 11, 2010

Mem­o­ries of last spring’s fish­ing trip to Florida help warm up the night as I sit next to a glim­mer­ing fire in the den of my home here in north­ern Alabama, lis­ten­ing to the sleet bounce off the win­dow panes. Spike the cat gen­tly meows in his sleep next to the fire­place, no doubt […]

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The World is your Oyster

January 11, 2010

Brian has always been a dreamer. Even as a small boy, play­ing Cow­boys and Indi­ans with the other chil­dren, his imag­i­na­tion would run riot. The vil­lage green became the Wild West as he gal­loped around, astride a fan­tasy Sil­ver, and he was the Lone Ranger, with his best pal George as the loyal Tonto.

Whilst […]

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Austin Texas: Gateway to Hill Country

January 11, 2010

One of the most pop­u­lar tourist des­ti­na­tions in Cen­tral Texas is Hill Coun­try, a scenic region with amaz­ing nat­ural attrac­tions, quaint coun­try towns and lovely hills and val­leys. Austin is the gate­way to this fan­tas­tic recre­ational area steeped in his­tory and South­ern charm. The Texas Hill Coun­try wel­comes more than 5 mil­lion tourists each year, […]

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How to Act on Your First Date? – Part 2

January 10, 2010

Let me ask you, what are the most INTERESTING top­ics to humans in gen­eral? Right â?? drama, vio­lence, scan­dal, and com­edy that is painful to one of the par­ties involved. Here are a few good ideas for con­ver­sa­tion that come to mind:
â??So whatâ??s with The Osbournes being MTVâ??s #1 show of all time? I guess […]

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How to Improve Your Basketball Skills

January 10, 2010

Dear baller,

Whether you know it or not, admit it or refuse it, get it or don’t get it, the men­tal aspect of your game is just as or maybe even more impor­tant to your­bas­ket­ball suc­cess than the actual skill you have or hold. With­out mas­ter­ing the men­tal game, your tal­ent will never fully be displayed […]

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Stressed Out? Try Barbeque Therapy!

January 10, 2010

It’s dif­fi­cult to be stressed out when you’re sit­ting on your back porch at mid­night in the sum­mer­time, with a good book, cold drink and a halo of hick­ory bar­beque smoke swirling around your head.  The meat was siz­zling and the smoke, apart from shoo­ing the mos­qui­toes away, was heav­enly with the aroma of meat, […]

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Stressed Out? Try Barbeque Therapy!

January 10, 2010

It’s dif­fi­cult to be stressed out when you’re sit­ting on your back porch at mid­night in the sum­mer­time, with a good book, cold drink and a halo of hick­ory bar­beque smoke swirling around your head. The meat was siz­zling and the smoke, apart from shoo­ing the mos­qui­toes away, was heav­enly with the aroma of […]

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5 Best Ways to Have a Blast in Mazatlan

January 9, 2010

When it comes to Mazat­lan, the ques­tion is never what to do but how to actu­ally learn to have the best of every­thing it can offer. Most def­i­nitely, you will real­ize that 24 hours will never be enough to expe­ri­ence a real Mazat­lan lifestyle.
Thus, just so you don’t end up miss­ing half of your […]

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