Since my dad retired, he’s been spending a lot of time on his hobby, which is German travel.
My dad has been interested in Germany since I was a kid, but it has only been in the last decade or so that his interests have really taken off. He first visited Germany when I was a kid, perhaps 6 or 8 years old; he went there on a business trip and managed to weave a little personal sight-seeing in.
The next time he went to Germany it was with his mother. They looked up distant cousins in Germany and visited them.
Since those trips, my dad has been back to Germany quite a few times, including several times since he retired. One of his most passionate subjects is how to travel in Germany by train, which he insists can often be done for much cheaper if you don’t buy the unlimited train passes. In fact, my dad’s whole philosophy is that you can travel for less in Germany if you avoid the all inclusive vacation packages.
Another way that my dad cuts costs is by making sure never to book a last minute vacation, but to always schedule everything and buy tickets way in advance. He also shops for deals on airfare and often flies during the off-season, when everything is cheaper.
For a long time, my doctor had me on a ton of medication. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to the conclusion that so much medication is not really good for the human body, so I’ve been weaning myself off of it.
Surprisingly — or perhaps not so surprisingly — there are a lot of natural alternatives to medication. For instance, if you have high cholesterol (high LDL, the bad kind of cholesterol), you can lower it by drinking 8 ounces of not-from-concentrate grapefruit juice, or eating a half a grapefruit, every day. The grapefruit has something in it that lowers cholesterol. Unfortunately, it also increases the strength of certain other drugs, so be careful if you decide to switch to a more natural approach to lowering high cholesterol!
Another way you can eliminate drugs is by finding alternative medicine pain relief. There are actually quite a few different ways of managing chronic pain without resorting to drugs. One of the most scientifically supported methods is using magnetic therapy products. Studies have proven that magnets can successfully be used for chronic pain management – the health magnet, when placed over the afflicted nerve, prevents the nerve from transmitting its pain signals to the brain.
These are just a few examples of how natural foods and treatment methods can replace medication — and its potentially harmful side effects!
With all the doom and gloom in the news about the housing market, many people are afraid to buy real estate right now. The truth is, though, that it’s a good time to buy in Florida. Florida real estate is actually doing pretty well — foreign buyers have been helping keep the market afloat, encouraged to do so by the fact that the American dollar is worth less in the global economy now, and many baby boomers are looking to retire in Florida. The area is growing and real estate values are on their way up.
A great way to invest in a home is to build your own Florida custom home. Custom home builders in FL are in high demand right now — with overseas owners, vacationers, and retirees moving in, most new residents want beauty and form in their home as well as function. In other words, more people are looking for their dream home instead of just a house, and there are plenty of custom luxury home builders in FL to make sure they get it.
The biggest advantage to hiring a Florida luxury home builder, of course, is that you get to choose everything in your home — from the floor plan to the very fixtures. However, custom homes also tend to be worth more than their older, plainer counterparts, so it truly is an investment you can count on.
The vet came out to visit my horse a couple of weeks ago. One of the first things he commented on was that my horse isn’t as big as he probably should be for 3 years old. It’s true — my horse is only about 14 hands (a little over four and a half feet tall) at the withers, which is the bony rise above a horse’s shoulders, usually right about where their mane ends.
Another owner at the barn also had a small three-year-old, so the vet talked to us about ways to grow taller for our horses. He said that sometimes improper nutrition will stunt a horse’s growth, but if you give them really good nutrition they could still catch up. I personally don’t think my horse will get any more height growth, however.
For one, I saw his mom before we rescued him, and she didn’t look that big either. We don’t know what his sire looked like, so for all we know he was really short too!
But for two, my horse has already been given really good nutrition since we rescued him. We knew he was really malnourished and probably stunted when we got him, and we had enough sense to try to remedy that then. All the good feed we gave him then didn’t help him grow taller, though, so I think this may just be how tall he was supposed to be — or maybe he was just so badly stunted that it couldn’t be reversed!
Backyard pools are popular with many homeowners, especially in hot climates and resort areas such as Florida. As a result, Tampa pool builders and Orlando pool contractors are in high demand.
If you are working with a Florida pool contractor to get your pool built, you already know that having work done in your backyard can be a little stressful and overwhelming. To help lighten your mood and remind you to look forward to the advantages of a backyard pool, here is a list of what NOT to do in your backyard pool.
Drive your truck into it. Yeah, someone really did this.
Murder someone and bury them under the pool. Okay, I got that idea from a movie: Sexy Beast, starring Ray Winstone. He kills Ben Kingsley and buries him underneath the tiled floor of his pool.
Commit suicide. A.J.’s botched suicide attempt in The Sopranos comes to mind.
Get stuck in a drained pool. Russell Crowe’s character does this in A Good Year.
Well, you get the picture. But on a more serious note, do make sure you use your common sense, and set pool safety rules for your family to make sure that no one gets hurt in your backyard pool!
