Nov 21, 2014

Happy Friday

Laughing is the best and easiest calorie burner.

I plan to burn a bunch of calories laughing and enjoying a Happy Friday!

Alascattalo Day

November 21, 2014 is Alascattalo Day. It is described as a day to honor humor in general and Alaskan humor in particular. The day is named after 'alascattalo', said to be the genetic cross between a moose and a walrus. It has been celebrated in Anchorage for over 25 years.

A mild-mannered moose named Morris met a witty walrus named Wanabelle.  It was love at first sight, and soon the moose and the walrus were wed in the church down the way. Within sixty weeks, Morris and Wannabelle welcomed into the world a wee little weeble who made their love complete, and the first Alascattalo was born.

White Meat, Dark Meat

White meat is white because of the chicken's lack of exercise. White muscle is suitable only for short, ineffectual bursts of activity such as, for chickens, flying.

Dark meat, which avian myologists (bird muscle scientists) refer to as "red muscle," is used for sustained activity, mainly walking. The dark color comes from a chemical compound in the muscle called myoglobin, which plays a key role in oxygen transport. That's why the chicken's leg meat and thigh meat are dark and its breast meat (primary flight muscles) is white.

Other birds, such as ducks and geese, have red muscle (dark meat) throughout.

Holiday Home Hacks

Remove permanent marker by using toothpaste on it.
A Lint roller is perfect to dust your lampshades with.
Use bread, or a damp paper towel, or play-doh to pick up broken glass or spilled glitter.
Cut a grapefruit and add salt to clean stubborn tub dirt before company arrives.
Wrap your light strings around a hangar to keep them from getting all tangled.
Make a Christmas tree from jello shots to keep the fun going. You can use orange jello for Thanksgiving.


Compulsions, Obsessions, Anal, and OCD

The holidays are the time many people meticulously clean the house and fastidiously prepare large tasty meals. Both of these activities can seem obsessive or compulsive, but neither is considered medically significant. However, for some, these obsessions and compulsions last all year.

Anal retentive (anal) is used to describe a person who pays such attention to detail that the obsession becomes an annoyance to others, and potentially to the detriment of the anal-retentive person. Traits include orderliness, stubbornness, a compulsion for control, as well as a generalized interest in collecting, possessing, and retaining objects. Those who are anal can take pleasure in organizing and re-organizing, in keeping things neat and in their proper place.

Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) people can have obsessions, compulsions, or both. OCD is a mental illness. Usually the person has a feeling that they are staving off unspecified doom, such as "Something terrible will happen if I don't wash my hands exactly seven times and tap my toes in rhythm." The acts of those who have OCD may appear paranoid and potentially psychotic. However, people with OCD generally recognize their obsessions and compulsions as irrational and may become further distressed by this realization. Those who have OCD suffer extreme distress from a disruption in their routine.

Obsessions are intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry. If the obsession is with a certain activity, performing it, or thinking about performing it later does not relieve the stress, pressure, or obsession. We all have things that distract us from our daily businesses, but those with true obsessions try to make them go away with no success.

Compulsions are repetitive behaviors that a person must perform, such as checking to make sure the front door is locked, organizing items in groups of arbitrary size, or keeping things in a specific order or position. Compulsions are aimed at reducing the associated anxiety. Most often these rituals become not just a part of daily life, but the person feels that they must repeat them every day in order to keep something horrible from happening.

Bottom line - If you must get things done perfectly and meticulous, you might be anal, but if you must get things done perfectly and meticulous or you will be continuously and seriously agitated and upset, you could have OCD.

World Headlines

There is a wonderful headline site to get all the news in the world on one page. You can compare what different countries say about the same topic. It shows no pictures, has no ads, and shows just headlines. You can get the world news update in minutes, then waste the rest of the day answering email. http://www.veryquiet.com/news.php

Bitter, Sweet, and Salty

Salty and sweet are distinct tastes which our taste buds are usually able to detect. However, if you add salt to some foods, they do not taste salty, but become sweeter tasting. This is because salt is not just a taste, it is also a taste enhancer.

Bitter and sweet cancel each other out to some degree. Think of adding sugar to naturally bitter coffee and you get the idea. It cancels/masks the bitterness. Some people add a bit of salt to the grounds before making coffee, for the same reason.

Pineapples are sweet, but also have some bitterness to them. If you neutralize the bitterness, it should taste sweeter. Adding salt can do this. When salt mixes with the pineapple, the salt splits up into sodium and chloride ions. The chloride is tasteless and our tongues ignore it. The sodium bonds with the acids in the pineapple and forms a similarly tasteless salt, but the bitterness effectively disappears. What remains is the sweetness of the pineapple. Add a little bit of salt to your fresh pineapple and enjoy the enhanced sweetness. It also works with watermelon, oranges, grapefruit, dark chocolate and other foods that are both bitter and sweet. Perhaps this is one reason why it is said that bacon is the food that makes other foods taste better. My father always salted apples before eating and usually paired with extra sharp cheddar cheese.

Adding salt works less well with canned or other processed fruits as many are already artificially sweetened.

Genius Study Results


Sleep Calories

Many variables that go into the calorie-burning equation, such as age, sex, weight, metabolism, diet, and physical and nonphysical daily habits. The two most important factors in determining how many calories you burn while sleeping are weight and number of hours slept. On average, a person burns between 0.4 and 0.5 calories per pound, per hour. For example, a 100 lb. person burns 40-50 calories per hour. In eight hours of sleep, this person will burn approximately 360 calories.

A pound of muscle burns fifty calories a day on average and a pound of fat burns nine calories. A leaner, more muscular person is going to burn up to five times more calories per pound.

If you weigh 160 pounds, you burn 69 calories per hour while sleeping, the FitWatch website calculates up to 552 calories burned during eight hours of sleep. A 120-pound person burns about 51 calories per hour sleeping, or 408 for eight hours; a 200-pound person burns 86 calories per hour, or 868 for eight hours of sleep.

Fifteen minutes of laughter a day will burn ten to forty calories, depending on a person’s weight and the intensity of the laughter.  A study by Loma Linda University found that laughing raises the levels of immunoglobulins, which ward of disease, by fourteen percent. Laughter also has other benefits, including increased pain tolerance, relief of emotional stress and a workout for the muscles of the diaphragm, abdomen, back, and shoulders.

Free Friday Laugh


Nov 14, 2014

Happy Friday

"By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property." Voltaire

We can all appreciate the excellence of another Happy Friday!