Duelin’ Deals Blog by Marlaine

Things have been wild here and I’ve been writing like a maniac in a lot of places. My eHow articles total over 100 now and it’s getting seriously hard to keep track of all of them now. I have been adding links to my recipes on the Recipe page to the left. Here is a link to my featured articles on eHow – MarlaineMarie on eHow – so far.

On April 5, 2009, I was the featured member of the day. Considering there are thousands of really good writers on eHow – I am very surprised and pleased by this honor! I am especially happy with the Zing Into Spring And Avoid Dog Dangers article – that’s our Noodle Doodle racing after one of her favorite toys – Porkie. That girl has an old refinished wooden soda crate full of toys but she picks out her top 20, no matter how deep I hide them. And yes – she’s Buffalo Butt Girl again!

Ahhhhhhhhhhh Spring!

Also check out the How To Make A Perfect Hard Boiled Egg – Cyclecyco (my very cool brother) surprised me by doing that cartooning on my bowl of boiled eggs and I loved it so much that I never colored them at all!

Eggs Refused Dye Job Til Terms Were Met!

Have a Happy Easter and a Wonderful Year Every One!

Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, formally called Vienna, Midori….. (I had ME on my first computer – 2000.) XP came out in 2003? Vista showed up in 2006. Windows 7 is scheduled for early January 2010. Midori is still way in development but whispered to be coming out in 2013. (Obviously a bit of planned obsolescence here!) Each update costs about $400. And each version has more spyware in it and greater and greater DRM – Digital Rights Management – included. (In otherwords, don’t count on downloading anything to your computer that MIGHT have a copyright infringement issue. Even copying your own paid-for CDs or DVDs to your computer as a backup, which is legally allowed, is being blocked by Microsoft software, citing DMCA and the RIAA rules which don’t allow you to bypass encryption – and can put you in jail!)

Microsoft is also in the process of trying to establish an internet based operating system that would store all your computer files on an internet data base and effectively will not allow you to have your own files on your computer – in the Midori Operating System. You will not have a choice once it comes out – you will have to let Microsoft have a copy of everything on your computer if you install Midori. In other words, your computer would not be in your control in your home if you do not have the internet or access to it. Even on the internet, Microsoft would have complete access to everything on your computer. And they say they are doing you a favor………………………. by storing your information on their servers.

Hmmmmmmmmmm………. if my bank buys that Operating System and uses it, I am going to close all my accounts with them.

If you had downloaded Ubuntu/Linux instead of XP – you would now and forever have free downloads to all the new operating systems and updates that are constantly coming out from Ubuntu – in effect, making your Operating System forever free, including the original installation. If you request it, Ubuntu will send you – completely free of charge – copies of their operating system on CD. Yes I said COPIES, as many as you want – completely free of shipping or handling or any charges! Hand them out to your friends, relatives, or students. The CDs are either for Desktop or Server (if you want to host databases, websites, and other internet business) systems. You can use them to install on your computer or to boot from the CD to just give Ubuntu a try.

Sigh – if that wasn’t enough, it comes with everything you need to get running fast. You choose what you want to install on your computer from an almost endless list of software. Most of it is on the CD but an internet connection is needed to upgrade to whatever the newest, coolest, fastest, best software is available. Allllllllllllllllll for FREE!

Here is a quote directly from the Ubuntu home page:

The Ubuntu promise

* Ubuntu will always be free of charge, including enterprise releases and security updates.
* Ubuntu comes with full commercial support from Canonical and hundreds of companies around the world.
* Ubuntu includes the very best translations and accessibility infrastructure that the free software community has to offer.
* Ubuntu CDs contain only free software applications; we encourage you to use free and open source software, improve it and pass it on.

I am putting up a much more detailed explanation of Ubuntu up on eHow because it is seriously a great Operating System. How to Get Ubuntu – A Totally Forever Free Operating System! With all this crazy stuff Microsoft is doing – including some of the lamest commercials I have ever seen – I welcome an alternative to Windows! We design websites and have two good computers. Brad has Ubuntu on his and I keep Windows XP on mine – no I do NOT want or will I ever get Vista!!!!!! My father-in-law, Norm, has told us that Vista is problematic over any software that is not genuine – including all those movies they buy from a local store that they want to save to their computer to watch. (DVDs do run hot on a computer while you are watching it and it’s easier on your DVD Rom to just save it to watch later.) Internet
Explorer will not install on Ubuntu which makes checking web page design a little pain in the rear. Browsershots.org is a very handy site that lets you test out all of your designs on all of the browsers out there to see what works or doesn’t – especially on Internet Explorer, which is usually the one that has major glitches because it is not W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standards compliant.

I just finished an article concerning diabetes that I did for my brother, Cyclecyco. Our mother had diabetes and so did quite a few of our other relatives – on both sides of the family. I hope that this information is compact enough that those who need quick info find it helpful and easy to read. I did a whole lot of research on the subject and got pretty tired of reading four or five pages of long winded info that bored me in order to get a tidbit or two of real usable help here and there.

Here is the article in its entirety:

How to Treat And Control Diabetes Type 1 & 2

By MarlaineMarie on eHow

Type 1 diabetes requires daily insulin shots. Type 2 diabetes gives you more options for successful treatment, including oral medication, diet and exercise. Eating the right foods can help reduce the need for insulin even in Type 1.

Test your blood sugar often using whatever equipment has been ordered for you. Always take medications as prescribed, whether it’s oral or insulin injections.

Weight reduction can often reduce your medication or eliminate it if you are a boarder line diabetic. Daily exercise stimulates all the organs in the body and helps to reduce weight – of course. The body itself can produce everything you need to be healthy. A daily workout of 15 minutes a day can help get the body right.

Set up a meal plan you can live with and stick to it. Try new foods but pay attention to how they effect you. Have sweet things only as a special occasion treat!

Eat proteins in moderation but try to include some in every meal because they help even out the swing of insulin and glucagon production while countering the surge of insulin that carbohydrates produce. Eat fish, soy protein and poultry over red meats and avoid high fat content. Reduce sugar based things like soda and liquor.

Even fat is major in maintaining your hormonal balance, blood sugar level, increasing your immune system, giving you energy, and helps control hunger by producing a peptide hormone that triggers a sense of fullness 10 to 20 minutes after eating. It also helps give you supple skin, glowing hair and better nails. Eat natural fats – saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated. Avoid oxidized or rancid fats, trans-fatty acids and hydrogenated fats – that are in foods like peanut butters, margarine, non-dairy creamers, some mayonnaise, and deep fried foods.

Carbohydrates are considered sugar by the body and are stored away if not used by physical activity. You need carbs to keep the insulin–glucagon balance. A no carbohydrate diet will cause your insulin level to drop even further. Complex carbohydrates break down more slowly in the digestive tract, causing a less dramatic surge in blood sugar levels – and your brain needs the glucose that carbs produce. So if you are more active – more carbs and vise versa.

Non-starchy vegetables are also important because they contain fiber and important vitamins, minerals, and micro-nutrients your body needs to get and stay in balance.

Foods that significantly help regulate insulin and/or blood sugar:
Apple – beneficial because of its pectin.
Artichoke – contain large amounts of insulin.
Bananas – ripe and baked.
Butter milk – the lactic acid stimulates the pancreas, which produces more insulin.
Yogurt – strong antibacterial and boosts the immune system, while helping the pancreas produce more insulin.
Onions – virtually a cure all. Strong antioxidant and helps the body regulate itself.
Oats and oatmeal – it helps stabilize blood sugar and contains antioxidants.
Broccoli – great source of chromium that helps regulate insulin and blood sugar. It is also another cure all food for many diseases as well. It also has anti-viral and anti-ulcer properties, too.
Legumes – (Fava beans, anyone? Perhaps garbanzo, kidney or lima beans, instead?) beans and soybean products help regulate the blood sugar levels. One half cup a day reduces cholesterol by about 10%.
Garlic lowers blood sugar levels and increases insulin. Highly recommended for diabetics.
Groundnuts – (peanuts) help control blood sugar and a handful a day is recommended.
Grapefruit is excellent because it not only controls blood sugar but can help prevent diabetes in those who are at greater risk of developing it.

Tips & Warnings:
* Even if you have a food or drink you can’t give up – reduce the intake. Savor every bite or swallow – hold it in your mouth and let it linger. You will enjoy it longer – isn’t that the point of eating it? Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
* Oh – and as an added tip – olive oil. Give yourself a facial with it and let it soak in. Your body will absorb the best parts of it and benefit your skin as well! Or do a hot oil treatment on your hair with it! Shower or wash off after 20 minutes.
! This information is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment. Consult with your doctor if you are contemplating any major changes such as an new exercise regime.
! No matter what you might eat that regulates insulin and blood sugar, always do the daily blood checks!

One of my first friends on eHow – WriterGig – writes great articles on how to earn money online. She’s published a great book titled, How to Earn Passive Income at eHow.com!

It explains, in detail, how to earn money online by writing for eHow. I have personally seen my income going up every month by leaps and bounds. Even my brother, CycleCyco, has been earning money on his articles without doing much after uploading the articles he’s written. WriterGig can explain it a whole lot better than I can. Her recent blog post headline is:

My Work At Home Mom Blog
Thursday, October 2, 2008 eHow Earnings Just Shy of $900 for September

She is not kidding either! She shows her earnings page on her blog post! It is the legit earnings page I see when I log into my account, too – just not as much income yet! WriterGig – Congrats on your success! That is just a stepping stone to what she will be earning next month and then more the month after that!

One of the first things I learned about websites and making money online was concerning passive income as the best possible way to set up earnings that continue to build. The second thing was the mantra – Content is Everything! The third – Have multiple streams of income to truly make decent money working on the web. I know that eHow is a great way to make money every month.

I have just been writing writing writing lately. Mostly for eHow and Marlaine’s Musings blog. I’ve accomplished one of my goals – 75 articles written and posted on eHow! My next goal is to write and post 100! I see some people putting up 100 articles in their first month on eHow but their content is short and sometimes pointless. I have been trying to go the extra 10 miles to find out all I can about something – even if it is something I already know a lot about – and give extra tips and hints whenever I can. I do the same thing for Marlaine’s Musings quest guides and general guides for Runescape.

Someone on eHow said that they wished someone would write guides for WoW like the guides I have up for Runescape, making me tempted to go try World Of Warcraft out – but I’ve been told that it’s mostly a war game so not quite what I am looking for. I will probably look into it soon though.

I am working at putting together some kind of blog or site that I can start “managing” my eHow articles in a more logical and organized way. On eHow, they show what catagories you have articles in but……. you can’t go to that author’s articles on those subjects specifically. eHow sent a notice that they will be redesigning their tools and setup but it won’t be implemented until November. There is a lot of time between now and November. Even I am having a problem remembering all the articles. I need to store my eHow articles somehow…. So we’ve decided on a domain name of StoreHows.com. We haven’t got anything online yet but we did buy the domain name already. I’ll be working on the design for a couple of days and then we’ll start with a blog.

A friend on eHow recently lost her main account, losing over 500 articles! She has no idea how that happened but I can almost guess. If any of you have tried to earn money with AdSense – you might have experienced the “You have been banned for suspect clicks” syndrome with no other explanations or communication from AdSense once they “kicked” you. Brad and I experienced that and could never get an answer from them about why. We changed to AdBrite and they work with their clients a whole lot nicer! You can have suspect IP addresses blocked or even your own so you don’t accidentally click your own ads. I always put adblock on when I go to my articles on eHow, or when I work here or on Musings. I wish I didn’t have to use ads at all though…….

The days of submitting an article or story to a publication and selling all copyrights are over now though with the way the net works! Even when I was submitting hard copy to magazines, I never submitted to places that bought All Rights….. Selling First Rights is fine – I’ve sold to Woman’s World, Star and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, among other places, and was paid fairly well but reprints rights are still mine! (I am trying to find the best ways to use my work and eHow so far has been the best for me.)

All that aside, I suggested to my friend that she should always make copies of her work for just-in-case. I do routine backup as I work through pieces I am working on but after giving her that tidbit of advise – I checked my “database” of articles. Raised eyebrow! I shall cut to the punchline here and save the sarcasm for later – I only had 24 of my 75 articles saved as posted on eHow! Tisk! Sure, I had lots and lots of saved drafts. I gather info, write up a brief draft and then tweak and fiddle with it, adding more research and whatever. Then I start working on the final draft on the eHow site, using their extended wizard. Rarely is the last draft I wrote in my word processing program the same as the one that ends up online! I spent most of yesterday copying and pasting the articles as they appear into a special file. I set up a document file much like the My Documents that is just for my writing! Now I am backing that up on a memory stick that my wonderful In-Laws in Australia sent to me! Mum and Dad – my writing files are over 900 MB now – Thanks again! (Lordy I would be so sick if I lost all that writing!) Eventually all that content (and more) will end up online somewhere – snickering! Geeeeeeeeeee – just finished the backup and it’s 1.01 GB now – see, I have been writing like a maniac!

I am starting to plan a cookbook, too….. Easy, Quick, Inexpensive, but don’t invite the Food Police to dinner!

One of the articles I have a draft of for this blog is how to make your computer run faster. You can find it on eHow but I will put it up in here soon. For now, I have more articles to write and designs to work on……

Have a great rest of the day!

As you may or may not have noticed, our main Duelin’ Deals website has gotten a complete re-design. It is now a lot more search engine attractive and visually attractive as well. I love it! Thanks to my adorable hub, Brad Floyd! I wanted the site to look like the blog – again thanks to Brad for some serious modifications to my blog as well!

I have been so dang busy writing articles for eHow on MarlaineMarie that I have a ton of stuff to add to Duelin’ Deals! I have things to add to the recipes and the Make Your Own Lists! I am deciding on how to list other things here, too, because I am getting so many articles up that it’s getting hard to search for specific topics.

Whenever I need to find something out, I do research, research, research. When I got my first “real” computer in 2000, I had so much trouble with it that I never did my work on it! (In fact, I had so much trouble with my first computer that Gateway replaced it after a year with a slightly bigger and better computer, telling me that I won the Stump The Tech contest!) I kept using my SmithCorona Word Processor and was forced to use floppys to save about 50 pages of text only per flop. (There are about 100 flops I can’t use because of different formatting that leaves ghost formatting even when you use conversion programs – drat!) And I wrote out my notes in long hand in spiral notebooks – in fact, I have cases of spirals full of all sorts of info.

I love doing research! When I researched the history of my parents’ house, I found 12 of the 13 names, birthdays and actual headstones (in three different grave yards!!!) of the first settlers’ children – and they first moved onto the property in 1838~! The Historical Society was flabbergasted because records were kept only from 1852 on for births in the old court house. (Oh Lordy, I wish that research was all on a cd-rw or ten instead of 20 or so spirals…) So when I put an article up on eHow, you can pretty much bet I did the research first!

If you ever go to an old court house to find records from the early settler times, if you love old wording or need old wording for a story, start with places that still have hand written records. They have huge, thick volumes written in a beautiful hand in the Racine County Court House in Wisconsin. The wording is obviously from a different age when the word “Greetings” was often written at the top of a legal document! Even as I was doing my research, the Court House was changing over to computer storage so those hand written things may disappear. Sigh……..

The latest eHow article I put up is about something so free and so perfect for this site that I am going to put it up in it’s entirety here!
That’s right – a real deal for anyone with a computer, a headset and/or mic & speaker combo, and a desire to talk to people for hours for free!

Skypee!

Here is the article:

Skype is your line to the world for free! You can call anyone from your computer to their computer – absolutely free anywhere in the world! You can run it all day and it really feels like you are in the same room with the person or people you called. My husband’s family lives in Australia and we are in Wisconsin. He calls them, they answer, and we leave the line open for hours on end! Relatives come by to say hi, too! His and mine! It’s incredible!

Go to the Skype link to find the download page and more info! There’s zero lag and the audio is crystal clear! You can use a webcam and upload videos. If the person you are calling is not on the net, just leave a message! The sound quality and stability is way beyond any of the instant messengers with almost no drop out!

The download page will automatically give you the correct type for your computer. (Skype is included in all Linux Operating Systems in the installation package managers.)
All of the following are compatible with Skype:
Windows
Windows (Business version)
Windows (Beta)
Mac OS X
Linux
Windows Mobile
WiFi phones
Cordless phones
3 Skypephone
Nokia N800/N810

Just download, install, set up an account, add others who have a Skype account, (or ask people you want to talk to to set up an account, too), click their user name, and wait for them to answer – just that easy because Skype’s simple auto detects set everything up for you.

To be honest, I was just going to write about Skype because we use it frequently for hours at a time. It gives my husband a chance to talk to his parents and family on any whim or impulse. Since his parents’ time zone is so different, it’s usually “tomorrow” there – when it’s Friday night here, it’s Saturday morning there! The reception is so crisp and clear that you can hear them in other rooms of the house – like when they go answer the door or go to the kitchen! We use a microphone and the speakers so both my husband and I can hear everything. An added benefit to Skype is that we can send documents, links to great sites, or photos over the Skype interface while we talk – hands free. This service – computer to computer – is absolutely free! You can literally “call” another computer and then leave Skype open 24 hours a day without paying one extra penny!

But….
While looking at the download page, we discovered their great long distance and business rates! Primefalcon and I wish we had known about this when he was still in Australia – we used MSN at the time and it was so unpredictable that we never knew when we might get a good connection! So we ended up using the phone and paying a fortune!

Use Skype as your basic low rate long distance for $2.95 a month and you can call anywhere in the United States or Canada on landlines or cell phones for an unlimited time and unlimited calls at any time of the day using your computer to their telephone using the Skype Plan! Voice mail is included free! Just click the link above for more info on international long distance!

Their plan for business is terrific, too, and we will get it when we get enough business to justify it!

* The connection is so good you almost forget you are on an audio device!
* You can work on your computer while on Skype with no problems whatsoever!
* The connection is so good, the person you are talking to can hear you whisper! Be careful! Smiling!

Brad and I called Brad’s parents while I was working on the above article and it just made it so easy to remember the great things about Skype! We were chatting away and our girl, Gypsy, was squeakin’ and squirrlin’ her little Happy Toy (as we call it so she goes to find it specifically in her mountain of toys) and Brad’s Dad, Norm, asked if we had gotten a bird. Because we are just so used to our happy girl playing away on her own, we had to think about what Dad might have been referring to.

Gypsy is over 85 pounds and nearing 7 years old but she still plays alllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the time! I wouldn’t have it any other way! What is seriously unusual about her is that she still has her first toy from puppyhood – that little brown teddy bear! Sure it’s beat up but it’s still whole! When I had decided to get a pup, I also started cruising rummages and the Goodwill store for a few “sacrifice” toys. Things that I would let the pup have but take away the second any stuffing got pulled out. (Do not allow your pup to tear anything to shreds! The pup learns a bad lesson that way! They can also get very sick if they swallow too much of that stuffing! Get a toy or two that can withstand those little needle puppy teeth!) Since I was raised with German Shepherds in an AKC Kennel, (Yes one kennel run had my name on it and I had to spend time in there occasionally!), I also had a starter toy box of things that outlasted all the other puppy-hood beloveds before Gypsy.

Take a look at her happy toy……

Noodles, alias Gypsy, uses her noodle and puts her toy up on Brad’s or my chair the second we get up. This girl will stare at the toy as if it got up there by itself until we get back. She will even keep her nose pointed at it while sneaking a peek at either of us to see if we’ve noticed her delinquent toy! When my brother visits, she gives him a toy and he puts it next to him on a table or window sill – she will stare at it patiently for a good hour or more, waiting for him to throw it for her! While getting this pic, and about 15 others, she stared at it constantly as I got the camera out, set it up and took shot after shot. Her paw is in about 8 of the pics and all the rest show her staring at it. Shaking head – when she does something, I can pretty much be sure she will wait so I can get some pics! Wish everything waited like that!

We so love our girl!

I will have to take more time tomorrow to discuss the new page to the left. It’s all the Mixes and Makin’s Recipes I’ve been putting up on eHow lately. All of the recipes use common ingredients around the house or ingredients that can be purchase inexpensively at Aldi’s or even Pick ‘N Save on sales. I will be adding to the page as I add more of my mixes to eHow. To see all of my articles, that deal with a wideeeeeeeeee range of subjects, visit MarlaineMarie at eHow.

Try to stay cool, Midwesterners – dang this humidity is horrible!
To all – stay happy!
Smiling!

I did another article for eHow about How to Get Better Gas Millage. Have a look at my other articles while you are there – the subject base is getting bigger.

I was going to work on the Make-Your-Own-Mixes page before I got caught up working on the other article. I want to add the MYOM page to this blog because it really helps save a LOT of money if you can make mixes from ingredients you have on hand. I just need to get a few more recipes written up! You can see a couple of them up at eHow now – an easy biscuit mix and chicken spice mix. I have the usual habit of all pinch and glop cooks – writing things on a piece of paper without labeling it in any way until it proves itself worthy of a name. As I try something, I’ll write what I threw in there and later, stick it in an old wooden box my Grandma gave me – if it tasted good. The problem with that is……….. what was it? Shrugs – if I can’t tell from the notes, I try making it again. After all, if it didn’t turn out the first time, I would have tossed the note out. Probably….. Because of eHow, I try to be more precise …… most of the time. Clearing throat and continuing…….

Here is the article I put up on eHow:

How to Get Better Gas Millage

Everyday steps can help you save time and money without being a fanatic about it. Gas prices are getting incredibly high but there are easy ways to save gas and get better millage!

* If you don’t have a vehicle that’s good on gas, consider getting one!
* Check prices at different gas stations – it’s amazing how the price can fluctuate within a 10 mile radius! But don’t go out of your way to check, just pay attention.

Step1
• Replacing a dirty air filter (about every 3,000 miles) can improve your gas mileage by as much as 10%
• Adjusting your tires to the proper inflation every week can improve your gas mileage by around 3%
• When starting up and slowing down, do so in a slow, gradual manner. You could save up to 35% in gas economy! Coast down hills. (Your brakes will bless you with a longer life as well!)
• Use cruise control when you can on freeway driving.
• I don’t know about you, but I fill up when it late and cool. It doesn’t seem as though as much gas vapor comes out while you’re filling up.
• Get a tune up or do your own tune up. Check you owner’s manual for specific guidelines.
• If you don’t need a premium grade of fuel – don’t fill up with it! Today’s cars are most fuel efficient with the grade of gas recommended by the manufacturer and might even be damaged by higher grade gas!
• Turn off the vehicle when you park and wait. Anything over 5 seconds is wasting gas! Or is it 3? You get the point, don’t you?
• Don’t drive as much – plan trips ahead of time and make the most of wherever it is you are going, starting with the farthest destination. Consolidate errands as much as possible and cut down the times you cold start your car – saving gas and time!
• Don’t speed! Fuel efficiency drops once you go over 60 mph. The EPA estimates that each 5 mph driven above 60 costs you an extra 20 cents a gallon.
• Extra weight in the trunk or passenger compartment makes the engine work harder and uses more gas so lighten up as much as possible.

Step2
Dirty Oil! Don’t change your oil so fast! The myth is that engine oil should be changed every 3000 miles. Maybe older cars needed a change that often but today’s cars run cleaner and the oil has improved a lot, especially the synthetic oils. Most auto manufacturers recommend oil changes at a minimum of 5,000 miles – some even say up to 10,000 mile intervals under normal driving conditions! Even you can see when the oil is dirty but if you aren’t sure, take a good look at it on the dip stick right after having your oil and oil filter changed. It will be a bit golden and clear. The darker and cloudier it gets, the more likely it needs to be changed.

Step3
If you can’t change the oil yourself, go to a place like Valvoline. We bought a used car two years ago and wanted to get the oil changed – ASAP! The person who checked our car over said the oil was great and we didn’t need a change yet! That’s right! We were told we didn’t need a change yet. The next time we went in – about 3 months later – we were again told we didn’t need it changed by a different person. They also check all fluid levels every time we stopped, filling up whatever was necessary (radiator, windshield wipers – they would have added oil if we needed it), and adjusted the tires. We had it checked two more times before they actually said it was a good time to change it! The coupon I received in the mail brought the oil and oil filter change down to a little over $30 with tax! The last time we stopped, our Valvoline specialist was named Curtis. Just as every person I’ve ever talked to there, he was friendly and smiling, helpful and really earned our nickname for him – Courteous Curtis! Great place and great guy! (Wish we had stock in this company!)

As an added note, I have never gone to Valvoline with a question and been shuffled off. They always try to help. When a windshield wiper was ripping, the technician told me about it and when I asked how much they would charge to fix it for me, he said that we could get a replacement blade a whole lot cheaper from one of the car parts stores. Yes – that’s right! He said it would be easy to replace it ourselves, but if, by some chance, we couldn’t, just come on back and he would see what he could do. Smiling! This was not just a come on to a woman driver or something of that nature because my husband was sitting right next to me in the car and talking with the technician as well! Our Valvoline dealer must make sure he hires genuinely nice people and I feel completely at ease when we pull up to the garage!

When I went out to take the pic of the gas gauge of our car, I let Gypsy have a little run outside, too. I took the pic of the gauge, locked up the Taurus and wondered where Gypsy was. I turned toward the back yard, hoping to see her and – GASP! I saw a big, harry creature sneaking up on me! Yup – it was sneaky Gypsy pretending to be a wolf again! Notice the technique she’s perfected? She also held still for another 10 pictures, each nearly the same! The very first time she did it when she was under a year old, she hid behind the grill, which really didn’t hide her very well. Now she’s getting really good at hiding her 85 pounds – sort of reminding me of Wiley Coyote actually!

She might be more convincing if she wasn’t always holding some toy or another! Oh well, she’s getting better – that’s what counts!

I did the following article for eHow but today, when I actually noticed that it’s July 14, 2008 – I realized a stunning difference from last year. It’s going to get to 87 or 90 in a day or two and I’m not worried at all! We don’t even have our window air conditioners set up and don’t plan to either! Why? I guess I took my own advice! See the bottom of this article – Step 10 – for the answer!

How to Stay Cool In The Heat

By MarlaineMarie
I’m Melting! I’m Melting!

Summer’s coming. Northern mid-western people get used to being cold. I call it having Winter Blood. We kept the heat down under 60 degrees most for the winter and now it’s getting warmer. 75 is hot? – ha! – or so most of you say. Our tips to stay cool as we acclimate may just help the rest of you all summer! After all, during spring here in Wisconsin, we can have temperatures of below 40 degrees Fahrenheit one night and over 80 degrees the next day. It’s hard to adjust.

Things You’ll Need:

* Need to notice things that generate heat.
* Ice cubes in the freezer – make extra and store in a half gallon container of some kind.
* Blinds or shades on the sunny sides of your home.

Step1
First of all, pay attention to things in your home that generate heat. That satellite dish or cable box could be throwing an awful lot of heat. Light bulbs throw heat too – remember those easy bake ovens? They used just one light bulb to bake a cake! Even your scanner’s plug in point could be throwing a lot of heat. Check everything and if you aren’t using it, and it’s not inconvenient to unplug it – pull the plug! Turn off lights that you aren’t using. Get a good sun sensor night light that will only turn on when it’s dark if you need a bit of light somewhere. Definitely turn off the computers over night so they can cool down, along with the room they are in. This will also save on your energy bill!

Step2
When you go to bed at night, pull the shades or blinds on the sides of your home that get hot in the morning. The sun comes up in the east and sets in the west – of course but as the seasons change, the sun may move a bit more north and south depending on where you live. Pull the shades down on other sides before the sun shifts to those sides. Keep the windows closed on the hot sides – hot air coming in doesn’t cool anything down. If you have a couple really hot windows, consider getting some white insulated poster board for crafting projects and just slip it between the glass and blinds before the hot hours – it reflects the suns rays and blocks incoming heat. Try to use light colored window treatments for the part closest to the windows. Think about planting a tree or high bushes, (far enough from the house so the roots don’t cause problems with the house’s foundation), that would shade the windows in a few years.

Step3
To keep the kitchen cooler, plan meals that can be microwaved or made the night before without using the oven. I will be putting up “Mom’s Tuna Salad” recipe soon and a variation I came up with because my husband doesn’t care for tuna. If you make enough of the whole meal salad for a couple of days, think of it as a day without either oven running (stove or micro) and a day off from cooking! If you want to make something you can’t microwave – try to make it on a burner instead of in the oven. The burner throws less heat and – saves on your energy bill, too!

Step4
One of the points that your blood constantly circulates through is at your wrists. It takes about 3 minutes for all your blood to pass through those points and putting some wrapped ice there will cool off your whole body by lowering your core temperature and the effect will last for an hour at least. You can also fix a bucket of ice water to put your hand in. Never use ice directly on your skin because it can cause damage. The relief is almost immediate. Use this technique if someone is suffering from heat stroke! You can also make yourself a cooling foot bath – it’s amazing how much cooler we feel when our feet are cool. If your tap water doesn’t come out cold, add some ice cubes to the foot bath. Not too cold or you may get the shivers!

Step5
Spray yourself with water! Take a quick, cool shower and don’t towel off. Let your clothes soak up the water and then let the damp clothes help keep you cool! Use a spritz bottle of clean water on your face and arms and let it dry naturally. Get your shirt wet before you put it on – at least the sleeves.

Step6
Drink lots of water even if you’re not thirsty! You have to replace what you lose from perspiration to prevent dehydration. Adding ice will also help cool you off but if it’s too cold, your body will use more energy bringing it up to your body temperature so it can be used which increased your core temp. Avoid lemonade, iced tea, and other sugary drinks but especially avoid alcohol if you are feeling over heated.

Step7
Your body releases a lot of it’s heat through the soles of your feet, the palms of your hands, and your scalp. Keeping these areas cool makes a surprising difference – so take off the hats unless you are in the sun. Go barefoot if you can. Hold a glass of iced something instead of setting it down on a table and let the condensation drip on your skin.

Step8
If it’s really bad, use a quart freezer bag of some kind and fill it with ice. Dampen a washcloth and wrap it around the bag. Use this on your face, forehead and neck, moving it around for a while and then hold it on your wrist for as long as you can stand it – up to three minutes. Then use it on your ankles and shins ——— ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ——- you’ll feel much cooler soon. Repeat as often as you want and where it feels the best.

Step9
Extra note – June 2, 2008……… I had a “feeling” before we went to bed last night and closed all the windows in the house. When I took out our dog this morning, it was over 85 degrees outside. It was only 74 in the house with only one fan going. In the cooler hours of the night, we put a fan in the window to pull in the cool air and, now that I know it’s getting warmer, we close the windows before it starts getting hot out.

Step10
Extra Added Note! July 14, 2008. We had a flood early in summer and I’ve had one box fan running on medium constantly to help dry things up in the basement. I can not tell you how surprising the side benefit has been! With it running quietly in that big basement, the air has been pushed up the air ducts and into our living area. Any one with a basement knows it’s always cooler down there. It’s been acting like a central air conditioner! We’ve had 90 degree days but never uncomfortable enough – even at night – to turn on the air conditioner! We close the windows before we go to bed, especially if it’s going to be humid the next day, and run only a couple of fans. (You can feel when it’s starting to get humid!) One box fan is placed near a floor register and points to our computer room across the hall. It is amazing!

Here’s another extra great tip – half fill a saved bottled water bottle with water and freeze it. Later, fill the rest of the way for a great, long lasting bottle of ice water! Slip the bottle into a thermal cup when not sipping to keep it cooler longer!!!!!!

Tips & Warnings
* If you fill a tall glass with ice cubes and blow into it with it pointed toward your face, the forced air will cool you down like an air conditioner.
* It’s better to acclimatize yourself to the heat rather than staying in air conditioned rooms. Then it’s not as shocking to go outside when you have to go somewhere.
* Keep drinking lots of water or something with electrolytes in it to keep your body hydrated.
* Eat lighter and smaller amounts of food at one time.
* When it’s really hot, avoid heavy physical work if possible – try to do things later when it’s cooler.
* Putting a bowl of ice cubes in front of a fan really works!
* As the season changes, hold off any cooling techniques as long as possible to let your body start to acclimate.
* If your body temperature goes above 104 °F (40 °C), it is a life-threatening situation. If it goes up to 113 °F (45 °C), you definitely need to get help or call 911.
* If you can’t sweat but your temperature is high, call 911!
* Using a paper fan with your hand can actually raise your body heat – so don’t!.

Just like using humidity in the winter to allow your heater or furnace to work more efficiently, humidity in the summer increases the discomfort levels. Fans help dry the air when the humidity is high.

Recycle and Reuse can be interchangeable adjectives. As more and more garbage gets dumped more and more places, it’s time to step back and think things over before tossing stuff into the bin! Maybe even step back and think things over before you buy whatever it is you may end up throwing out!

First of all – look at the packaging your purchases come in. If you have – say – a jug of fabric softener for your wash, buy the refill carton of fabric softener instead of a new bottle of it. It’s usually less expensive than the bottle anyway! Use a damp, matchless sock and pour about a tablespoon of fabric softener on the sock, rub it in, and then into the dryer – cheaper, easier, and no gunk to clog your dryer filter like those dryer sheets! I almost always miss the rinse cycle anyway and we all have a matchless sock or ten lying around! Mine is a goofy color that I can’t miss in the load – but you can always mark it somehow if you know you’ll never find the match. I will be adding more “Make Your Own Mixes” soon, but making your own reduces a whole lot of packaging and you can be sure of it’s freshness. Save containers with good tops and strong, durable bodies – like peanut butter jars and cottage cheese containers. Or cruise the thrift stores for glass jars with good lids!

I will be adding more “Make Your Own Mixes” soon but making your own reduces a whole lot of packaging and you can be sure of it’s freshness. The recipe for making your own biscuit mix that I put up on MarlaineMarie at eHow is so easy and handy that I keep some in the fridge all the time. You can also add a quarter cup of the mix into the chicken coating to lighten up the Oven Fried Chicken.

This may be drastic but we have pretty much stopped drinking sodas that come in bottles or cans. We make sun tea with a packet of drink mix powder for a flavored type tea. Cyclecyco, my brother, has a great recipe for sun tea on eHow. We also make glasses of lemon aid with concentrated lemon juice and sugar in a glass of ice water, as desired and “to order”. Since I can’t make root beer, my fav, we pick up a bottle once a month – maybe or Mountain Dew for Primefalcon. We also save those individual sized bottles from bottled water that we got for free as a reward for a $50 purchase – or some such – and fill them half way with water and freeze. Later, fill up the bottle with water and you have long lasting ice water.

Put things out on the curb a day or two before the garbage pickup that are no longer wanted but usable – like replaced furniture or appliances. Even if someone picks those things up to resell, fix & keep, or take to a salvage yard, it’s better than ending up in a land fill!

Donate old eyeglasses to The Gift Of Sight to help out someone who can’t afford a pair.

Take old computers to Staples, Office Depot or Best Buy – they offer in-store e-waste recycling. Best Buy also recycles used appliances. Dell, Toshiba and Sony recycle computer products.

Recycled motor oil can be made into a lubricant or fuel. Save used oil in a clean container with a secure, leak proof lid. (A funnel and rinsed out gallon milk bottles work great for this and recycles those jugs as well!) Recycle the used oil filter, too. Check out Earth 911 for places to recycle your oil and filter by zip code, along with other great tips about how to recycle.

Mulch or compost your grass cuttings instead of bagging them. Mulching is by far the easiest and most beneficial to your lawn by putting nutrients back into the ground. You will save on fertilizer as well! Cut often and not as short, mulch and use less fertilizer. By NOT cutting your lawn within an inch of its life roots, you give your lawn a better chance to resist the heat without turning brown, too. Also, gently hose down animal droppings if you have a dog instead of bagging. Talk about great nutrients for your lawn! Cut when necessary and not as short, mulch and use less fertilizer – can’t get much easier than that!

Gently used or like new toys can be donated to The Salvation Army, Vietnam Veterans of America, or a local shelter for homeless families or battered women with children.

Keep a bag of bags. Instead of buying new garbage bags, we use plastic grocery bags whenever possible. (Sorry – the paper bags disintegrate the moment water or condensation hits so are not very useful for recycling with most things!) Also – double wrap your frozen items with the grocery bag you brought it home in by simply twisting the top and tucking under. Most of us don’t double wrap stuff in the freezer the way we “should” – this is a quick easy way to do it as you put your groceries away! In addition, we often shop at Aldi’s – and we keep a supply of used grocery bags in the trunk of our car since Aldi’s does not supply bags for free. An added note: I’ve purchased a few of the bags Aldi’s sells for $.10 each and they are worth it – you just don’t need many. I also bought a library canvas bag and have been using it for years now – well worth the money!

I have actually purchased items for their packaging and potential continued use. The brand of cat treats I buy comes in a simple bag but usually doesn’t open and close easily. I bought another brand for it’s container about 7 years ago and keep refilling it with the treats my cats loves. BTW – my cats were not crazy about the treats that came in the container originally but I “made” them eat them before I bought a new bag.

Don’t buy things in single serving packages! What a horrid waste! Single serving hot dogs – are you guys kidding? How about an 8 pack and throw it in the freezer until needed, then a nice zip sandwich bag for the ones left over? No one is so bad at cooking that they can’t do a hot dog in the mike – are they? Just downright lazy and wasteful!

Gypsy agrees – single serving hots dogs are really dopey! She want’s the whole pack!

I’ve been so busy cleaning the basement and writing for Marlaine’s Musings, other various blogs, and eHow that I hardly finish an article and I have to go somewhere else. So I am taking the time to tell everyone who reads this blog to go to my link at MarlaineMarie@eHow for some really good money saving recipes. I have been adding a whole lot of tips that I learned during my “food” days in restaurants – or should I say salad bar days?

One thing though…… it is murder when you work in a kitchen during the summer! I was a chef’s assistant during one of the hottest summers on record – I never want to me that hot again. ….and my husband is from Australia! I say to Brad again —— No – we will never go visit your parents during Australia’s summer time! He came to Wisconsin during a very very hot summer in Australia – I think it was even record breaking. February 2006… People’s pcs were popping all over the place in Australia, I heard. Not only did Brad come during his country’s record breaking heat wave, I had won a trip to New York in a writing contest and we ended up in a hotel across from the Central Park Carriage Ride start point about an hour before New York’s Storm Of The Century hit!

(I won 5th place in a world wide romance writing contest – all expenses paid! One of the winners was from Scotland! One was from England!) We had three days of snow and nowhere to go but watch the drifts grow from our 46th floor room! We were supposed to have a beautiful Valentine’s Day carriage ride through Central Park but our plane back to Wisconsin ……. sigh….. talk about another whole convoluted story! I’ll have to save that for another time because I have to get going soon!

Here’s a pic from our room in New York……. That’s about 6 or 7 stories of snow down there! Dang good thing I had a good LLBean winter coat that fit him! (MUM – he can still wear it, too, so my cooking hasn’t changed him that much! Hehehehe!)

Brad and I play Runescape and that’s actually how we met. We “Tell Juna Stories of Our Adventures” in the Tears Of Guthix repeating mini-game. Our real adventures might actually entertain her more than our game adventures! Smiling………. read Marlaine’s Musings for more amusing tales of our Runescape Adventures!