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Energizers!

A good observation from The Happiness Project on how to be more energetic and how it will affect others around you.

Energy (or lack of energy) is contagious. If you feel energetic, you’ll help the people around you feel energetic, too. And that makes them feel happier, too. In fact, studies show that being an energizer was one of the strongest predictors of a positive performance evaluation at work.

I buy that.  Think of the best performers in your office.  They probably get a lot done but they are almost always very energetic as well.


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Cutting a Christmas Tree

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Following our family tradition, we went and cut our own Christmas tree for the 3rd time in a row.  This year we did much better than last year – Jacob not only didn’t get scared but he was a big help.  He checked on Caleb and me regularly, pulled the tree most of the way back to the truck and offered to help me carry the bottle and blanky.

For my part, I had never hiked through a forrest with a baby on my chest, a blankie and a bottle in one hand and a six year old holding my other hand.  It was lots of fun and we didn’t slip on the ice even once!

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Women that have epidurals are less likely to breastfeed

Women that have epidurals are much more likely to stop breastfeeding before six months. Epidurals ‘hamper breastfeeding’:

Three-quarters of those who had no analgesia were breastfeeding at 24 weeks, compared with 53% who received pethidine or epidurals.

The epidural is also tied to trouble breastfeeding in the first week.  They don’t know why, but one theory is that the epidurals make the babies more sleepy and it’s harder to breastfeed them.

I had an epidural against my wishes. (Well, the epidural wasn’t against my wishes – being tied to the bed was.  Once I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed, sit up or turnover, I gave in to an epidural.)  And I quit breastfeeding after a month – a very hard decision.

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The Rich Spend (Relatively) Little on Housing

People with average net worths of $6.8 million owns homes worth $545,000.  Since the average price of a home in the US is $264,540, I think we can safely say the rich don’t necessarily spend lots of money (percentage wise) on their homes.   Maybe it’s because they didn’t want to spend all the money on the bills a big home generates – they wanted to save and invest their money.

On the other hand, I know several people with $500,000 homes that have no where near $6 million in net worth.  Those big homes are one of the reasons they will never have $6 million!


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How to be happy

This CNN article talks about happiness and about how we are terrible at remembering what made as happy and even worse at figuring out what makes us happy.  A couple of tidbits:

  1. Invest in experiences instead of things:
    "One mistake that people seem to make is if they invest in durable goods
    when some studies suggest they’d be happier if they invested money in
    experiences."
  2. Ask other people who have done it how much they enjoyed it:
    "If I wonder what it’s like to become a lawyer or marry a busy executive
    or eat at a particular restaurant, my best bet is to find people who
    have actually done these things and see how happy they are."  Although he does say that people are terrible at remembering how happy they were, so maybe the best thing is to find someone who is actually doing it, and ask them!

So basically, do your reasearch to figure out if something will make you happy!


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Our ATV was stolen!

We just had an ATV stolen out of our truck sitting in front of our house.  Frank is smoking a turkey so he happened to be going outside a lot so we know it was stolen between midnight and 1am.  When we called the police the police officer remembered it going north out of town on a Chevy truck.  He put out a wire to the the county sheriff and the police departments of the two towns north of us.  But all the guy(s) that stole it need to do is pull into a garage and wait a few days until the police forget and move on to bigger things.

I googled "stolen ATV" and found three sites for reporting stolen ATVs – so it must be a common and very frustrating problem.  As far as I can tell the sites don’t do anything.  You just get to register that your ATV was stolen.


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Write a comment on Stormy’s Corner!

You can leave a comment on any post by clicking on the word "Comments()" at the end of every post – you can practice on this page by clicking "Comments(0)" below.

Blogs are about conversation – share your experiences, thoughts and ideas!  Although this is my blog, it’s not just about me – it’s about all of you reading it, so please feel free to leave a comment or two!

Here’s my promise in return:

  • I won’t delete a comment just because I don’t agree with it.
  • Profanity is bad.  I will delete any comment that contains profanity – any kind of profanity.  If you post lots of comments with lots of swear words, I will prohibit you from posting any more comments.  It gets old reading rude posts and deleting them.
  • Rude comments are bad for conversation.  I reserve the right to decide what is rude versus what is contentious.
  • Spam is bad.  Spam includes posting six comments to one post that all say the same thing is spam.

I have lots of silent readers – I’d like to hear what you think.  Many
of you only tell me in person or via email – just post your comments!
They are good and others should hear them.

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Buying Kids’ Clothes on eBay

I buy all the kids’ clothes on eBay.  I always search for "lots" which are large lots of clothes – they are usually the best deal.  For example, a mother might sell a "lot" of 4 year old clothes – all of her kid’s 4 year old clothes when he outgrows them.  Another way to find good deals is to use the advanced search option to search in the kids’ clothes category for all lots that have zero bids.  Usually those are lots that have bad pictures, bad titles or bad descriptions but they might still be good clothes.

I also bought lots of maternity clothes on eBay when I was pregnant.

Also, don’t forget eSnipe when you go to do your bidding!


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The Secret to Buying on eBay

Frank called me the eBay Queen today.  I told him the problem was I’m the eBay Buying Queen and I’d much rather be the eBay Selling Queen.  I’ll tell you the secret to buying on eBay: eSnipe.  eSnipe lets you set how much you are willing to bid on an item and how close to the end you are willing to wait.  Then it bids for you.  So you get to set what you think the item is worth – no bidding past what you think it’s worth because you got involved in the bidding frenzy.  And no getting outbid at the last second because you don’t bid until the last second.  I usually tell eSnipe to start bidding three seconds before the end of an auction – no human can outbid that.

So I win lots of auctions but I never pay more than I think something is worth.

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This Is Why We Dive

Some very cool underwater pictures.  I especially like the one of the turtle.  Flickr: The This Is Why We Dive Pool.

I have been really, really wanting to go back to the British Virgin Islands.  We haven’t found another family with kids to go with though.  I want to get a catamaran and go snorkeling everyday.