Fun Trivial Facts

Well, as promised, tonight we provide some more fun trivial facts. Even though this may be a short week for many, the stress of the holiday can be almost worse than working a full 5-day work week. So, to help you lighten your load, here are some fun trivial facts to annoy your friends and entertain at the Thanksgiving dinner table:

Did you know that Benjamin Franklin thought that the turkey was so American that he wanted it as our National symbol instead of the Bald Eagle?

Until 1863, Thanksgiving Day had not been celebrated annually since the first feast in 1621. This changed in 1863 when Sarah Josepha Hale encouraged Abraham Lincoln to set aside the last Thursday in November "as a day for National Thanksgiving and Prayer."

90% of American homes eat turkey on Thanksgiving Day and 50% eat turkey on Christmas.

Mature turkeys have about 3,500 feathers. The Apache Indians considered the wild turkey so timid that they would not eat it or use the turkey's feathers on their arrows.

It appears that turkeys originated in North and Central America. Evidence indicates that they have been around for over 10 million years. So, if you think the bird on the dinner table is tough, perhaps it was an OLD turkey...

Did you know that a spooked wild turkey can run at speeds up to 20-25 miles per hour? They can also burst into flight approaching speeds between 50 and 55 mph in a matter of seconds. That is great, except for the fact that they can only fly for short distances. Don't try getting a domestic turkey to fly, they cannot.

Turkeys can have heart attacks. When the Air Force was conducting test runs and breaking the sound barrier, fields of turkeys would drop dead. I bet the farmers were a tad irritated about that... I suspect this only relates to farm raised (domesticated) turkeys. I can't imagine that wild turkeys would be so delicate. The wild turkeys are very cunning...

Wild turkeys have excellent vision and hearing. Their field of vision is about 270 degrees which is why they continue to evade some hunters. They (the turkeys) can also see in color.

While the turkey has excellent hearing, they do not have ears

Turkeys (again domestic) can drown if they look up when it is raining.

A 16-week old turkey is called a "fryer", a 5 to 7 month old turkey is called a "young roaster" and a 1 year old turkey is called a "yearling". Any turkey older than 15 months is called "mature" (like so many of us...)

Turkey breeding has caused turkey's breasts to grow so large that the turkeys fall over...

A turkey's head changes colors when it is excited...so do some people I know...ooohh, shouldn't have said that ...hehehe..

Lastly, each year the President of the United States pardons at least one turkey. During the Bush (W.) Administration, his dog almost ate the pardoned turkey...ooops... All the pardoned turkeys live the rest of their natural lives without worrying about being someone's dinner.

Really last...the earliest claim of presidents pardoning turkeys was mentioned by George W. Bush in 2001. According to his statement, the origins of the president pardoning a turkey date back to Abraham Lincoln, who pardoned his son Tad's pet turkey while Lincoln was president.

Hopefully you enjoyed your Turkey Fun Trivial Facts for this week.

Have a wonderful holiday weekend and don't forget to say a prayer of Thanksgiving to our soldiers who continue to protect our freedoms.

Until tomorrow (or most likely Sunday since I will be preparing/cooking TURKEY and the fixings starting tomorrow evening...)...

Monday Funnies and Fun Facts

Welcome to Monday's Funnies (new addition) and Fun Facts. Since Mondays are usually pretty tough on many, providing some silly jokes and useless fun facts should help put a better spin on what may have been a pretty grueling day. Tonight we are going to add a few jokes to the fun trivial facts. I am not very good at telling jokes (usually mess up the punch line) but perhaps there are many of you out there who have impeccable timing. How many of you also deal with engineers in your day-to-day business dealings? Tonight we are going to poke a little fun at this very interesting profession. Enjoy this week's installment of Fun Facts.

"Two engineering students were walking across campus when one said, 'Where did you get such a great bike?'

The second engineer replied, 'Well, I was walking along yesterday, minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, 'Take what you want.'

The first engineer nodded approvingly, 'Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn't have fit.'"

This Monday was particularly difficult for me. At one point, I had two decisions to make, neither of which were what I wanted to do. I decided that if I must choose between two evils, I was going to pick the one I ever tried before....

Have you ever noticed that the hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread?

If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don't have any film... (I know a few of those...)

For the fishermen out there - There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore looking like an idiot... (you know who you are...hehehe)

When you were a kid, do you remember Popeye the Sailor? He ate spinach to get strong and get out of bad situations. My parents also insisted that spinach was loaded with iron which makes you stronger. Guess what? Popeye and our parents were wrong. In reality, spinach has no more iron in it than any other vegetable. This spinach misconception dates back to the 1950's when a food analyst made an error while calculating the iron in spinach. His decimal place was off by one place, suggesting that spinach had ten times as much iron content than it really did. Now you can go back to your parents and tell them that you KNEW spinach wasn't all it was cracked up to be...(I still love spinach though...).

Current news in Arizona, they have finally tallied all the votes and have now passed a law allowing medical marijuana to be dispensed in the state. Did you know that Marijuana was not illegal in the United States until October 1st, 1937, when Congress passed the "Marijuana Tax Act"? The total debate time on the House of Representatives floor concerning this issue was 90 seconds. This act did not actually ban the substance - it simply stated that one could not sell marijuana without a license. Of course, Congress refused to issue any licenses. Congress finally banned marijuana outright in 1970. Now the states are slowly allowing it back legally in medical instances. California was first, now Arizona has followed suit...

And, one last poke at my favorite profession - engineers - "Normal people... believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet." - Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle

Hopefully this brightened your Monday and hopefully you can use some of what was posted in Monday Funnies and Fun facts. Have a wonderful remainder of the week.

If you are looking for a second income or a home based business opportunity, perhaps we have something that would interest you. We have several business opportunities ranging from Stem Cell nutrition, to Pre-Paid Legal Services, nutritional juice drinks to waterless vehicle detailing services. Please feel free to ask us about some of our business opportunities, we may have something that would work well for you.

Until tomorrow...

How to keep blogging

Last night we talked a little bit about how to stay motivated to continue posting blogs. We covered some pitfalls of blogging and how to possibly get past the excuses... Tonight we are going to continue our theme on how to keep blogging. I was never very consistent writing in my diary as a child, so am constantly amazed that this blog has been going for over a year now.

The biggest difference between blogging and writing in a diary is that when blogging, you may not be divulging your innermost secrets, you are actually talking with others. At least that is how I view blogging. It really is no different than being a reporter writing a column for a paper. The biggest difference is that usually what you print will post without any editor checking your work. Not sure if no editor is a good idea, but hey, at least you get to say what you want to say when you want to say it. The downside is that depending on discussion topic, you could easily alienate your readers. That is a risk you take though, every time you take up the proverbial pen and paper (or keyboard and computer screen...)

So, the question is, how to keep blogging when your ideas may be running thin, or you just aren't in the mood. As we touched upon last night, theoretically, you should have a backlog of written blogs already scheduled to post, but some of us don't have THAT much to say at one time of the week. One of the tricks I use to keep my blogs short, but useful is to basically bribe myself. There are things I would really rather be doing on some nights of the week. In order for me to enjoy those activities, I make myself blog before the activity takes place. That is an amazing way to inspire blogs.

If you know what you want, and see a definitive end to your blogging day, you tend to get more inspired than if you saw the whole evening stretching out in front of you with no sense of urgency. Granted, some people are not driven well by deadlines, but I have found setting specific deadlines does keep the ideas flowing better. Sort of like a synthetic procrastination. You have a deadline to make, and that could be when you do your best work.

Another trick that has been helpful, is to not over think a subject. This may sound a bit odd, but it may make more sense once explained. You have a blogging idea, you research the daylights out of that idea. You now have squished in your brain a ton of information on your topic, and suddenly you are in a brain vapor-lock. You now have too much information vying for position on your blog page. What I have found helpful is to write down what you know, or want to say, in outline form and then put the outline away for a day or two. Yeah, that doesn't help the blog you want to write tonight, but it will make a much better article tomorrow. If you give your brain some time to absorb and process all the information it obtained, you will find that if you give it a day or so, your ideas crystallize and your article will practically write itself.

There are times when you need to give your brain the opportunity to process and compartmentalize the information you have been stuffing into it. Otherwise, you may end up putting too much information in your article and losing people along the way. In today's rushed life, we only have a little time to dedicate to relaxing and/or informative reading, so it is important to provide good information, but not information overload. Keep it short, effective and sweet. You will have more fun writing, and your readers should have more fun reading.

Tomorrow, we will switch subjects, (to help prevent the aforementioned information overload) and you will just have to dial in to see what the new topic will be.

If you are looking for a second income stream are interested in starting your own home based business, our website might have something to interest you. Please let us know if you have any questions regarding earning a second income or starting your own home based business. We would love to hear from you.

Until tomorrow...

More Habits for a Successful Home Based Business

Yesterday we covered two habits for creating a successful home based business, persistence and beginning with the end in mind. Today we are going to back up just a bit and go over what you need in order to create good habits to create a successful home based business - knowledge, skills and desire.

Stephen Covey defines a habit as, "the intersection of knowledge, skill and desire." Let's break down those three items tonight with an eye towards your home based business. You need a knowledge of what it is you want to promote or sell. Knowledge is what you may have learned through talking with other people who are currently working in the particular area you are interested in. You may have also picked up your knowledge from books on how to market, or promote your business.

Knowledge is the theoretical information. You have learned from gathering information, but at this point in time, you may or may not have the experience from the knowledge that you gathered. You have learned what to do, but you have not yet done anything with that knowledge. You need to have the knowledge of the products or services you plan on providing before beginning your home based business.

Skill is the ability to do what you have gathered in the knowledge phase. Are you effective at marketing yourself or your business? Are you good at talking with people on a stage? If it is a service you are providing, are you very experienced in providing that service? You should not be a high-wire walker if you are afraid of heights. Also, if you do not know how to clean cars effectively, going out and starting a detailing business may not be the best thing to do. You need to have the skills to do the task if you expect your home based business to grow and develop.

The third piece of this puzzle is the desire. If you have a very strong desire to do something, like start a home based business, you will find the means to get the business off the ground. If you have the knowledge and skill but no desire, your business will go nowhere. It is the desire that fuels your driving of the business, but it not just desire by itself. You may have a strong desire to be a high-wire walker, but if you do not have the skills (i.e. you are afraid of heights) you will not get very far in that chosen career. Also, if you have the desire and the skill to be a high-wire walker, but don't have the slightest idea how to do it, then again, you will not succeed in your chosen endeavor.

According to Stephen Covey, the various habits we are discussing are formed when your knowledge, skills and desire converge. You need all three in order to develop a useful habit. Otherwise, you will probably not be successful in your new business. The good news is that as you acquire knowledge, skills and desire, you will also develop better and better habits. It becomes almost a self-fulfilling prophesy, as you succeed, you work more to succeed, and that then adds more success to the equation. This is a upward spiral, and an awesome thing to experience. This upward spiral, the acquisition of knowledge, skill, desire and the subsequent habits, may not always be fun to do, but in the end, you will reap the rewards of a successful home based business.

Tomorrow we will go back to discussing more habits to help your business either become successful, or become more successful. Usually the more successful you are, you may find you can attract more income to you and other people will be attracted to you. Your success will help draw other successful people to you who you can then also learn from.

Until tomorrow...

Helping Others

Today we had a lot of fun first thing in the morning. I did get up relatively early (since I went to bed around 1 am) and made a cup of coffee to enjoy in the relative morning quiet. As I was sitting in the kitchen enjoying my cup of coffee, I noticed two hot air balloons drifting towards the house with the sun rising behind them. If I had a whole cup of coffee in my belly, and subsequently in my brain, I would have remembered to take a picture, but that thought didn't occur until hours later.

Well, as I was enjoying the beautiful sight of two hot air balloons and a sunrise over the mountains, I did go over and prod Steve to get up and also enjoy the view. He was none too thrilled about being prodded, he had gone to bed sometime around 4am (I think) so was more than a little groggy. After he did get up to see the balloons, he woke up completely. It was then that we noticed one started getting very low near the house. That was when Steve got the bright idea to see if we can go to where they would be landing and watch the landing. Well, with only a partially drunk cup of coffee in me, we started dashing around the house getting prepared to chase a balloon. I didn't realize how groggy I still was, but it took almost a minute to find socks and shoes. By the time we were ready to go (in about 2-3

minutes) we noticed that once of the balloons had already landed, and we had no idea where.

Luckily, the second balloon was still in the air, low, so we knew it was going to land somewhere relatively close. As we got the truck going, that darned balloon started going back up in the air. Now I figured that we were going to be chasing a balloon for miles, but Steve really wanted to see them land, so off we went, trying to guess where this balloon will wander. You really don't appreciate how much the balloons are pushed around by the breezes until you start trying to determine where they are going to land. We drove to two of the local parking lots we know balloons have landed in the past, only to look up and see that balloon drifting off in another direction.

After a bunch of driving, stopping, turning around, driving some more, (and me worrying about getting in an accident) we finally saw the gondola drop below the roof lines of the homes. It didn't look like they were going to land in any parking lot, it looked like they were landing in an open field. In Arizona, open fields consist of all kinds of prickly cactus, so we were really curious how they were going to land and pack the balloon without tearing it to bits. Once we finally found the open field they landed in (right next to the highway and residential homes) we then had to find a place to park the truck.

As we were driving around looking for a parking place (this residential neighborhood did not have roads wide enough to park) we almost bumped into the balloon. What the pilots of the balloon had done was to sort of land in the field, then keep the balloon hovering just above the ground. Two of the people in the gondola got out and started pulling the balloon along (like in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade), over a fence and down the street. That was where we came nose to nose with the balloon. I almost split my side laughing, Steve was not amused. He then rolled down the window and asked if they needed help hauling the balloon down the street, which they did. SO, STEVE LEAVES THE TRUCK and tells me to park it somewhere....great, now I have to find a parking spot...fun...while he happily lends a hand pulling this giant hot air balloon down the street.

By now, there is a large crowd of children out on Christmas holiday following the balloon. There is also car and truck traffic, since the balloon and gondola are being pulled down the center of this residential street. I manage to find a spot to stop the truck, and get out to watch the mini parade. It was quite a spectacle, and no camera to take a picture. There were people in bathrobes standing on their front porches watching the balloon go by, the kids were running all around, and the cars and trucks were slowly driving behind. After about a block or two, they were able to find a relatively cactus free spot to pull the gondola and balloon out of the street. It was here that they were able to deflate the balloon and safely pack it up.

Of course we all stayed around to help pack the balloon. How may times to you normally have the opportunity to really touch a hot air balloon, let alone assist in packing it? The packing took only about 30-45 minutes and it is amazing how small that whole thing got. The balloon was 105,000 cubic feet, I don't know how tall it was, and the gondola was made of wicker, over a steel frame. The gondola looked like it would hold a total of 4 people, and there was no place to sit. I guess if you are hot air ballooning, you really don't want to sit, you want to stand and see all that you are floating over.

Seeing the balloons, getting to watch one land, and helping pack the balloon was a great way to start our day. We had a lot of fun and got our exercise while we were at it. Someday we will also take a ride in the hot air balloon, it really looks like it would be a lot of fun.

Take care, talk to you tomorrow...

Personal Development - The Reactor Factor

I know that I mentioned Steve was quoted in a new book by Marsha Petrie Sue. I have finally carved out some time to really read this book (and not scan the pages) and thought you might be interested in the contents of this book. I am not going to give you the short version of the whole book, but there are some items I have found that are very helpful and I want to share them throughout the upcoming weeks.

This new book, "The Reactor Factor - How to Handle Difficult Work Situations Without Going Nuclear", by Marsha Petrie Sue is a handbook that provides exercises and tools to help you respond positively instead of reacting inappropriately. What I really like about the format of this book is that even though there are exercises in the book, Marsha provides those exercise pages on her website too, so you don't have to scribble all over your book. That is a huge plus for me, I hate writing in books, I grew up very old school, you did NOT write in your books... Also, by writing the exercises on separate paper, you can loan your book out to other friends without fear of them seeing what you were thinking or what situations you may see yourself in.

The first chapter in this book, Deciding to Decide: Take it, Leave it, Change it, is something that I wish I had read when working in the Corporate world. The thoughts contained in this chapter crystallize what I had to learn the hard way. It takes what you would really see as common knowledge and intuition and puts it right in front of you. After reading the chapter, I realized that I made those decisions, and can see how I worked them through, but it would have been really nice to have not relied on intuition and actually have a process that brings to the forefront the thoughts that are kicking around in your heart and in your head. How many times have you been so stressed about a situation that you felt you were paralyzed and couldn't make any type of decision?

The Deciding to Decide chapter outlines basically the three choices we all have to make. Most of us make these decisions unconsciously. By making you conscious of your thought processes, you become more aware of the reasons for your actions, and can probably improve your situation because you are more aware of the root of the problem and can now write down essentially a decision chart before you react. Even for those of us self-employed people, this chapter is extremely useful. Sometimes you don't understand why your head may say to do one action, but your heart may be directing you to go a different direction. By being able to outline the processes, you are no longer just reacting, you are responding methodically and logically to the situation. In the long run, you will find that you are more comfortable with the decisions or non-decisions you made. This process helps you gain control of what you may feel is an uncontrollable situation. Once broken down into its basic options, it is so much easier to decide to decide. Even a non-decision is a decision. but at least after reading this chapter, you are consciously making the decision to not do anything and will feel better about yourself because of it.

This book is a great read, once you get started, you really don't want to put it down. I had originally expected to fall asleep to this book (I find self-help books generally help me to sleep, not much else), but that is definitely not the case here. You will find that you have to force yourself to put the book down because as you read, you find more and more tools to deal with difficult situations. We all see these situations and it is exciting to see a process to work the problems out. You can order the book by clicking on the book picture in the upper right hand side of our website, we do not receive any money or compensation for promoting this book. This is information that everyone who works should have at their fingertips.

Until tomorrow...

Personal Development

Believe it or not, but I have spent the majority of the day trying to learn stuff. It was kind of neat, I have been out of school for a few years (hehehe...) and needed to get back into learning again. Right now, my brain feels like mush, but also like I just ran a marathon.

Learning is necessary for you to stay at the top of your game, whatever your game may be. People look to exercise their bodies, but often forget to exercise their mind. If you do not continue to expand your knowledge, you will end up having the world pass you by. Even if you are not a technology buff, it is important to keep learning something new every day.

If you don't learn new things, you also won't have anything fun to discuss when you are with your friends or family. How many times have you gone to a family gathering and heard someone repeating the same story over and over and over ad nauseum? If you had spent even 15 minutes a day on personal development, you would have something interesting to add to any conversation, either with new or old friends.

Everyone has something they are interested in. Find out what you enjoy, then either go to the library (yeah, I know I am dating myself) or go on the Internet to research your interests. I always think of the Internet as one giant library. You can find all kinds of things you want to know about, but also some things that you didn't know you were interested in. I remember the first time I wandered around the Internet, I thought, there was really nothing I needed to see there. Now I use the Internet to research items, questions, subjects. I have used it to look up product reviews (I spent hours looking up stats on different hepa vacuums) to determine what I wanted to purchase and looking up pricing for the products to determine where to purchase.

Looking up stuff on the Internet is as unlimited as your imagination is. If you want to have some fun, go to www.Ehow.com. They have a top "How To" article. You can roam all around that site and find all kinds of things to learn about.

For those of you who like to read encyclopedias (I love doing that), go to www.Wikipedia.com. The main page has featured articles along with "in the news". From there you can wander around to your heart's content. You may see a bird outside of your home, you can go look up what type of bird it is, what it's behaviors may be, where it lives, etc. All this information may seem like trivia, but it is constantly exercising your brain. After a while, you may want to spend more than 15 minutes a day on personal development. I would recommend not going over your time limit too much, you don't want to burn out on the learning. If you stop sooner than you wish, you will look forward to learning more tomorrow.

If you are not into reading on the computer and are on limited funds, check out a used bookstore. They usually have all kinds of fun things to read. I found a really neat used bookstore in Custer. I wish I had more time to explore that store, but the rally took up the majority of my time. Next year I hope to get into Custer a little early so that I can explore more of the local shops (in particular, the used bookstore).

Keep an eye on our website, www.hawgwash.net, I am in the process of doing a major re-working of the site and hope make it more pertinent for people to use. Take care.