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Jeff’s Home News

News To Help You Save Time And                                                                                 Winter 2005

Is Falling In Love Like Owning A Dog?

First of all, love is a big responsibility, especially if you live in a big city.  So think long and hard before deciding on love.  On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security.

When you’re walking down the street late at night and you have a leash on love, ain’t no one going to mess with you.  Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable.

Who knows what love could do in its own defense?

On cold winter nights, love is warm.  It lies between you and lives and breathes and makes funny noises.  Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs.  It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.

 

Love doesn’t like being left alone for long.  But come home and love is always happy to see you.  It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life, but you can never be mad at love for long.

Is love good all the time? No! No! Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.

Love makes messes.  Love leaves you little surprises here and there.  Love needs lots of cleaning up after.  Sometimes you just want to get love fixed.  Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper and swat love on the nose, not so much to cause pain, but just to let love know, “Don’t you ever do that again!”

Sometimes love just wants to go for a nice long walk.  Because love loves exercise.  It runs you around the block and leaves you panting.  It pulls you in several different directions at once, or winds around and around you until you’re all wound up and can’t move.

But love makes you meet people wherever you go.  People who have nothing in common but love stop and talk to each other on the street.

Throw things away and love will bring them back, again and again and again.  But most of all, love needs love – lots of it.  And in return, love loves you and never stops.

This celebration of love was written by New York poet Taylor Mali.  Share it with someone you love on February 14, Valentine’s Day!

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Can A Fiery Diet Help Your Heart?

New research says that spicing up your diet might keep you from having a heart attack.

 

How can hot sauces and jalapenos help your heart?  Research seems to point to the possibility that fiery foods block coronary buildup and keep your blood moving.

 

Scientists have determined that cayenne pepper inhibits the production of thromboxanes , which promote clotting.  Cayenne and other chilies are also thought to dissolve already existing clots.  A recent study found Thais who ate spicy diets have a better ability to break down proteins that cause blood clots than those who ate milder diets.

 

Capsaicin , which gives chilies their heat, can help lower blood pressure.  This means capsaicin intake can help prevent damage leading to blood clots.  And that’s not all capsaicin is believed to do; researchers think it also might help lower harmful cholesterol in the blood.  High levels of bad cholesterol are what cause most blood clots, and clots are what cause most heart attacks.

So think about piling on the hot peppers – and even heading back for seconds!

– Adapted from Chile Pepper magazine

 

      What Kids Think Of Love

 ©       Love is like an avalanche where you have to run for your life.      John, age 9

©       I think you’re supposed to get shot with an arrow or something, but the rest of it isn’t supposed to be so painful. 
Manuel, age 8

©       On the first date, they just tell each other lies. That usually gets          them interested enough to go for a second.                        Mike, 10

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Does Your Taste In Music
Reveal Your Personality?

Can the type of music you listen to reveal what kind of person you are?  A recent study at the University of Texas at Austin says it can.  The study had 3,500 participants who also took IQ and attitude tests.  Here are some of the findings:

¯     If you like country, pop or religious music you tend to be a good neighbor, a person who likes to help others, outgoing, agreeable and reliable.  You tend not to be an adventurer.  You probably like sticking to a routine.

¯     If you like classical, blues or jazz, you tend to be tolerant, open to other people’s opinions, open to new experiences and curious.  You probably don’t stick to conventions and you’re probably not athletic.

¯     If you like heavy metal, rock or alternative music, you probably speak your mind freely and you’re a risk taker.

¯     If you like hip-hop, dance or soul, you’re probably talkative or energetic.  You probably aren’t very argumentative, you’ll fight back if you have to, but you probably won’t be the one who started it.

 

– Adapted from Ladies Home Journal

 

The Pressure On Caregiving Employees

Don’t be quick to accuse distracted, tired, or unenthusiastic employees of lack of commitment to their jobs.  Instead, ask them what pressures they may be under at home.  For example, employees who care for family members often spend so much time on all the activities involved with care that they, in effect, work a second part-time or full-time job.

 

Based on information from over 700 of their clients’ employees, ComPsych, a Chicago company providing employee assistance, behavioral health, and work/life services, finds that employees are under more pressure than ever.  It’s important for managers to recognize the demands of caregiving and help employees make use of the resources available to help them.  Stress affects several groups of employees:

 

Employees caring for children.   Parents put in about 30 hours a week taking care of their children, including bathing, feeding, driving them to school, and attending extracurricular activities.

Employees caring for elderly relatives.   Caring for older relatives took up 10 hours a week.  Employees spent time on personal care, travel and chauffeuring, and helping the elderly with their financial, legal, social, and health-related needs.

Employees caring for both children and the elderly.   This group committed as much as 36 hours per week to caregiving – equivalent to another full-time job.  Not surprisingly, these employees reported being short on sleep.  Chances for recuperation were lessened by spending over 18 of their vacation and sick days a year dealing with caretaking and personal issues for which they had no time.

 

Keep in touch with your employees about their caregiving responsibilities and point them to the employee assistance, flextime, and other support programs your organization provides.  It’s an opportunity to recognize employees’ contributions and their value.

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February Is Black History Month

Black History Month is a time to commemorate and honor African Americans who have changed the world.  To name just a few of many:  Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court; George Washington Carver, the scientist who developed hundreds of products from peanuts, sweet potatoes, pecans, and soybeans, revolutionizing agriculture in the South; Charles R. Drew, the doctor who pioneered the idea of the blood bank, saving innumerable human lives; athletes Muhammad Ali, Wilma Rudolph and Michael Jordan; musical artists Chuck Berry, Aretha Franklin and Nat King Cole; writers James Baldwin, Alex Haley and Alice Walker; and a spectrum of “movers and shakers” from Oprah Winfrey and Spike Lee to Sarah Breedlove Walker and Colin Powell.

Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), noted African-American scholar, historian and son of former slaves, founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915, which was later, renamed the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History (ASALH).  He initiated Black History Week, February 12, 1926.  For many years the second week of February (chosen to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln) was celebrated by African Americans in the United States .  In 1976 as part of the nation’s Bicentennial, Black History Week expanded to Black History Month, and we now celebrate it all over North America .

– Adapted from galegroup.com and asalh.com

Some Enchanted Evening

If you’re planning a special evening for Valentine’s Day, you might want to include one of the top 10 romantic movies of all time as listed by the American Film Institute:

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Some History To “Chew” On

We snap it and crack it, pop it and drop it (on the sidewalk, that is).  What is it? 

 

Chewing gum!

 

When did that snapping-cracking-popping-and-dropping habit start?  Actually, people have been chewing on natural materials for hundreds of years, like thickened resin and latex from certain types of trees, various sweet grasses, leaves, grains and waxes. 

 

When colonists came to New England , the Native Americans taught them to quench their thirst by chewing the gum-like resin that forms on a spruce tree when its bark is cut.  In the early 1800s, lumps of this spruce gum became America ’s first commercial chewing gum.  Around 1850, people started chewing sweetened paraffin wax and eventually that surpassed spruce gum in popularity.

 

The next step was chicle-based gum, which arrived in the U.S. in the early 1860s.  Chicle comes from the milky juice of the sapodilla tree which grows in tropical rain forests of Central America .  When the chicle-bearing trees couldn’t keep up with demand, manufacturers turned to synthetic gum bases, like paraffin.  Then, an Ohio dentist used rubber to create a gum product for exercising the jaw, and received the first patent to manufacture chewing gum in 1869.  Today’s gum base is made of man-made latex.

 

William Wrigley, Jr. didn’t invent chewing gum – there were a dozen chewing gum companies in the United States – but he began marketing it in under his own name in the early 1890s.  His Juicy Fruit gum came along in 1893, Wrigley’s Spearmint soon after, and today Wrigley-brand gums are snapped, cracked, popped (and dropped) in more than 150 countries. 

 

– Adapted from www.wrigley.com

How To Shop For Nutritious Food

When you’re out gathering supplies for the ranch, don’t forget to check the labels for nutritional information.  Anything labeled “healthy” should contain at least 10% of the daily value of an important nutrient.  The food should also be low in fat, cholesterol and sodium.

 

You’ll also want to load up on whole grain products, like breads and cereals, dried beans and brown rice.  And remember that pasta is high in protein, B vitamins and iron.  When it comes to buying your greens, it’s most nutritious to choose the greenest.  Dark greens and reds in salad greens indicate that beta carotene and other carotenoids, vitamin C, folic acid, calcium and other nutrients are in the food.