I used to think naps were a luxury - one I could afford, but wouldn't make me fat. Latinos take siestas and Japanese have inemuri; but my Puritan heritage made me feel guilty about napping because I wasn't accomplishing anything.
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Where did all the people go?
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Joiner? I didn't think I was a joiner. I wasn't a Brownie and I left the Girl Scouts before I had to earn a camping badge. I don't camp - unless you call surviving power outages camping.
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What a difference a day makes - unless you're going through life on automatic. Scientists are no help. They say we shouldn't sleep late even if we have the chance. Supposedly not getting up at the same time every day has a negative effect on our biorhythms. Obviously, those scientists don't have young children.
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Whatever happened to truth in advertising? I live in Los Angeles, where what you see isn't necessarily what you get. Face lifts, breast implants, liposuction - we're walking billboards for plastic surgery.
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How did the iconic Rice-A-Roni become "The San Francisco Treat"? In 1946 a Canadian woman married an Italian immigrant, who worked in his father's, San Francisco, pasta factory. Because housing was scarce after WWII, the couple rented a room from an Armenian woman, who taught the Canadian woman how to make Armenian pilaf. When the couple had their own home, the Canadian woman made the pilaf for her brother-in-law. Inspired by the 1950's interest in convenience food, the brother-in-law suggested putting the pilaf in a box. After four years of experimenting in the pasta factory's test kitchen, the pilaf was turned into a one-pot, convenience food. Rice plus macaroni became Rice-A-Roni, the (made in) San Francisco treat.
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When a Swarthmore College student turned a guided tour of the Web into a detailed journal of his life, blog communication was born. That was in 1994. By 2007 that one blog had grown into 106 million blogs. Seventy-six percent of them document personal experiences to share with others. The 15 most popular words used in communicating those experiences are blogger, blog, stupid, me, myself, my, oh, yeah, ok, post, stuff, lovely, update, nice and a four-letter word that begins with "s". Although that word isn't in my dictionary, Merriam-Webster proclaimed another four-letter word to be 2004's word of the year. That word was blog.
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India's Tata Motors is about to do what car manufacturers said couldn't be done. It's about to release the Nano, a $2,500 car. The Nano, which is 10 feet long and 5 feet wide, has 4 doors, can accommodate 4 adults and is expected to get 47 miles per gallon. The company's chairman compares the start-up production of 250,000 Nanos with the invention of the airplane and the moon landing. Considering the present gridlock on India's roads, other comparisons come to mind - like the sinking of the Titanic and the crash of the Hindenburg - and thinking of those took only a - Nanosecond.
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As of July 2008 California banned the use of hand-held phones while driving. Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Washington, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands have a similar law; and I was fine with that until I heard about new research from Japan. According to the research, drivers think they are safer when they are using hands-free phone options; and because of that, they are driving faster and having more accidents. Knowing this, people who think all phone use should be banned while driving should call their legislators - from a land line.
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When I got married, I got a life partner. My husband got a housekeeper and a cook. He also got a laundress and a social secretary. After we had children he got a nanny to take care of them - a nanny who didn't get days off. This explains why men remarry sooner after divorce. Unfortunately, second marriages are statistically less successful than first marriages; and third marriages are statistically less successful than second ones. Obviously, good help is hard to find.
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