Minella’s thoughts and articles

Tips & resources for losing weight naturally & safely.

If You’re Overweight, Slim Down for Better Health
Overweight people have an increased risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, and other illnesses. Losing weight reduces the risk. This brochure tells you how to lose weight safely.

Ask Your Doctor About Sensible Goals
Your doctor or other health worker can help you set sensible goals based on a proper weight for your height, build and age.

Men and very active women may need up to 2,500 calories daily. Other women and inactive men need only about 2,000 calories daily. A safe plan is to eat 300 to 500 fewer calories a day to lose 1 to 2 pounds a week.

Exercise 30 Minutes
Do at least 30 minutes of exercise, like brisk walking, most days of the week.

The idea is to use up more calories than you eat. You need to use up the day’s calories and some of the calories stored in your body fat.

Eat Less Fat and Sugar
This will help you cut calories. Fried foods and fatty desserts can quickly use up a day’s calories. And these foods may not provide the other nutrients you need.

Tips for Cutting Calories and Fat

Eat plenty of vegetables, fruits, and grain products like bread and rice.
Eat only small, single servings of foods high in fat or calories.
Eat less sugar and fewer sweets.
Drink less alcohol or no alcohol.
Choose foods whose labels say low, light or reduced to describe calories or fat.
Choose 1 percent or skim milk products and reduced fat cheeses.
Replace ice cream with fat-free frozen yogurt.
Replace sour cream with fat-free or low-fat plain yogurt.
Make sure fish, poultry and meat are lean. Trim skin and fat.
Broil, roast or steam foods.
Eat a Favorite Rich Food, Sometimes
Read full article - Lose weight naturally

By MAGGIE GALEHOUSE HOUSTON CHRONICLE

A hurricane and a recession could easily spread a serious case of the bah, humbugs this season.

But not for the Christmas fanatics. For these self-taught decorators who transform their homes into holiday havens thick with Santas, ornaments and things that go blink in the night, Christmas always arrives early and stays late.
A tale of two Michaels

For every Christmas addict there is an enabler. And between the months of October and December, this pretty much describes Michael Briden and Mike Lowery.

“I have the inspiration, and he has the installation,” Briden deadpans.

Briden is the collector, favoring glass ornaments by Christopher Radko and Santa figurines by Brian Kidwell and Jim Shore. He decorates each of the holiday trees in the Heights bungalow he and Lowery share — no small job, since there’s at least one tree in every downstairs room.

Lowery does the traditional “dad” jobs: hangs garland around the window frames, puts the toppers on each tree before Briden starts to decorate, picks up ornaments on his way home from hunting and fishing trips.

Every year, the two transform their handsome bungalow with sage green walls into a holiday wonderland where first-time guests are hard-pressed to focus on anything but the dé cor. As Lowery says, “Christmas has definitely exploded in this house.”

It helps that the pair co-own Another Place in Time, a garden center in the Heights that sells some of the decorative items and ornaments Briden collects.

Briden, who is also a loan operations manager at Integrity Bank, admits that he is particular about the quality and presentation of his collections.

He likes his Santas to look friendly, not scary. He enjoys creating new vignettes with his Christmas ornaments; this year, Santa’s Sweet Shop appears in his kitchen window, with a jar of gingerbread men and cookies and glass candies. And each of his Christmas trees has a theme, from the hunting and fishing tree in Lowery’s room, to the Grinch tree in the bathroom, to the slim and showy “Feathered Friends” tree in the family room.

The show-stopper is “The Night Before Christmas” tree, which gathers Santas, reindeers, gifts and all the usual Christmas Eve suspects.

When one goes to so much trouble to create a Christmas atmosphere, it’s a shame not to share it. Briden estimates that he and Lowery host half a dozen social gatherings every December so that friends can see the house.

As thrilled as Briden is with this year’s décor, he is always in the market for something new. Gazing at his animal tree, he ticks off the rarer ornaments that adorn it. A buffalo. A rhinoceros. A skunk. A giraffe. But he can’t help but notice what he’s missing.

“I don’t have a platypus,” Briden says, “and I don’t have any dinosaurs.”

The holiday decorating gene is strong with Jennifer Emshoff. Growing up in Klein with a mother who’s a part-time interior designer, she learned early that every holiday deserves festive dé cor and special dishes.

So when Emshoff, a senior contract analyst with El Paso Exploration & Production, moved into her Eastwood bungalow in 2001, it was a fait accompli that the holidays would be well-represented.

Her Christmas decorating schedule begins the day after Thanksgiving at her childhood home, when her mom starts pulling out her own Christmas finery. Emshoff is always on hand to assist.

“I give her all day Friday,” she says, “then I come back and start working on my own house. It takes two full days for the inside and then a night to put up the lights on the outside.”

This year presented a new challenge for Emshoff, who recently transformed her bright blue and yellow living space into a richer, ranchy style, with dark leather and rustic touches. This meant a new backdrop for Christmas.

Dominating the living room is a full-size white tree with shiny, multicolored ornaments, many with a Texas theme. On the floor of the dining room, ranch meets Christmas in a pair of ceramic cowboy boots stuffed with holly and red berries. The formal dining table is set for Christmas dinner and a long kitchen counter that usually serves as the bar has become a winter village.

Read full article: For some, Christmas is more than a tree, gifts

MUMBAI (AFP) — Indian technology giant Tata Consultancy announced on Thursday a sponsorship deal with Formula One team Ferrari, bucking predictions that the sport could collapse in the global economic crisis.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) will display its logo on Ferrari cars during the 2009 season, a company statement released in Mumbai said.

“TCS has entered into a historic agreement with Ferrari for an enhanced technology and marketing partnership,” it said, without giving financial details of the deal.

Last week Formula One agreed cost-cutting measures following a meeting of the FIA World Motor Sport Council in Monaco.

The sport’s governing body is clamping down on costs as it struggles to survive the global credit crisis.

Honda’s recent shock withdrawal from the Formula One raised fresh fears over the future of the multi-million dollar sport.

TCS has been a technology partner of the Ferrari team since 2005.
Source
Permanent link to this post: http://blog.automoton.info/2008/12/tata-signs-sponsorship-deal-with-ferrari/

For every $100 spout on a house in 1950 the investment rose slightly through 2002, then soared to about $192 in 2006, adjusting for inflation. Then confidence in dried up, and the bust began. Rick Wallick moved into a new, three-bedroom $200,000 home in Maricopa, Ariz., in October 2005. Today, the well-informed in is worth $80,000.

The disabled software engineer stopped making mortgage payments this month. His $70,000 down payment is now trashy. His dream house will be foreclosed on next year.

“We’re so far underwater it’s not funny,” says Wallick, 57, who had to revenue to his original home in Oregon to care for a sick family member and tend to his own medical problems.

Wallick, one of the hardest-hit victims in one of the states hit hardest by the houses crisis, lost 60 percent of his home’s value in three years.

His story is an extreme sample, but home values have fallen so sharply since hitting a historic peak in the spring of 2006 that many Americans are wondering how much more prices can settle. As painful as the decline has been, history suggests home values still may have a long way to drop and may take decades to return to the heights of 2 1/2 years ago.

“We will never see these prices again in our lifetime, when you rearrange for inflation,” says Peter Schiff, president of investment firm Euro Pacific Cap of Darien, Conn. “These were lifetime peaks.”

The boom in home prices — fueled by heavily leveraged loans built on low or even no down payments — made it light to forget that housing values had been remarkably stable for a half-century after World War II, rising at roughly the same clip as income and inflation. Prices soared in most of the country — especially in Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada and metro areas of Washington, D.C., and New York — during a abbreviated period of easy lending, especially from 2002 to 2006. That era is now over.

So far, home values nationally have tumbled an ordinary of 19 percent from their peak. As bad as that is, prices would need to fall as least 17 percent more to reach their traditional relationship to household gains, according to a USA TODAY analysis of home prices since 1950. In that scenario, a $300,000 house in 2006 could be good about $200,000 when real estate prices hit bottom.

The price plunge has wiped out trillions of dollars in stingingly equity and caused the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Susan Wachter, professor of sincere estate at the University of Pennsylvania, fears that foreclosures and tight credit could send home prices falling to the full stop that millions of families and thousands of banks are thrust into insolvency.

“Homes are different than other goods and services,” she says. “The fragility of our banking system is tied to the value of homes.”

Bailiwick values have fallen before — during the Great Depression and in Texas after a 1980s oil boom, for example — but those drops were a reply to other economic forces. This time, the housing price collapse is the cause of the nation’s broad economic troubles, not at most an effect.

“If we have another 20 percent decline in prices, we’ll need another bailout of banks similar to what we at most did,” Wachter says.

Other economists see a brighter picture in the long term. Wachovia economist Adam York expects cosy values to keep falling until 2010 but is optimistic they will recover.

“The one saving grace is the population is growing by 3 million people a year,” he says. “They neediness to live somewhere. That means more roofs.”

50 years of steady values

Until recently, homes were unwavering, unspectacular investments, not get-rich-quick schemes.

Nationally, the typical existing home was value roughly the same in 2000 as it was in 1950, after adjusting for inflation, according to Yale University economist Robert Shiller.

Newly built homes in general were bigger and more expensive than older houses. As time passed, that meant Americans lived in larger, more valuable homes comprehensive. But a house, once constructed, grew slowly in value. California in the 1970s, Texas in the 1980s and Florida on-and-off for a century were awesome exceptions to the rule.

Despite only modest increases in value, homes were smart investments. Owners lived in a company, then got their money back when they sold. That’s a better deal than renting. Borrowers got tax breaks, too, and built equity that could be leveraged into bigger houses as their incomes grew.

From 2002 to 2006, houses went from being a tortoise to a hare in the investment superb. Home sale profits and relaxed lending standards such as lower down payment requirements and adjustable-judge mortgages (ARMs) made it possible for buyers of all income levels to pay more for houses.

When the housing bubble began to deflate in 2006, biography had a sobering lesson to teach. Home values had closely tracked three common-sense measures for many years:

Gains: Home values floated at about three times average household income from 1950 to 2000. In 2006, the common household income was $66,500. Under the traditional model, home prices should have been about $200,000. Instead, the typical available sold for $301,000.

Rent: Homes traditionally have sold for about 20 times what it would cost to rent them for a year. In 2006, houses were selling for 32 times annual split.

Appreciation: Existing homes grew in value by less than 0.5 percent per year, after adjusting for inflation, from 1950 to 2000. From 2000 to 2006, domestic prices rose at an average annualized rate of 8.2 percent above inflation and peaked with a 12.3 percent rail in 2005. Housing prices began to fall in the second quarter of 2006.

Inflation could help homes recapture their old prices, if not their value. But when inflation is factored in, residence prices might not return to their 2006 peak for many years. Housing prices are meaningless if you don’t adjust for inflation, says Schiff, the investment forewoman.

He points out that gold peaked in 1980 at $850 an ounce in response to inflation and the Iranian pawn crisis. It never recovered. Today, it sells for about $750 an ounce and would have to top $2,000 an ounce when adjusted for inflation to meet its value in 1980.

“That’s the nature of bubbles,” Schiff says. “The price never comes back.”

Read full article - Why home values may take decades to recover

By: Kathy Hester (View Profile)

Earlier this year I got myself a dwarf Meyer lemon tree. I have wanted one for a few years. It was only two feet tall, but already covered in green baby lemons. Now, six months later, I have about eight juicy yellow Meyer lemons to cook with.

It looked beautiful on my deck, and the white flowers were very fragrant. Unfortunately, I had to cut off the branch that was blooming to get rid of an unidentified icky pest that was trying attack it. I’m not sure if I’ll be harvesting much next year, so I want to make the best of what I have now.

In a warm climate, you could plant it outside, but I’m keeping mine in a pot. This way I can enjoy the green foliage inside during the winter and bring it outside for the summer.

If you haven’t used Meyer lemons before, you are in for a treat. They are sweeter, more of a cross between a mandarin orange and a lemon. Also the skin is much thinner. In fact, so thin that when I hit it on the counter to get it ready to juice, it busted open and went all over me and the floor. Let that be a lesson you don’t have to learn first hand!

Read full recipe: Vegan Caesar Salad Dressing with Meyer Lemon

Following the establishment of its UK branch earlier this year, Zephyr are pleased to confirm international business partner contracts for Germany and South Africa. The new business partners will distribute the Zephyr PASSPORT family of terminal emulation products.

Houston, TX (PRWEB) December 14, 2008 — Following the establishment of its UK branch earlier this year, Zephyr are pleased to confirm international business partner contracts for Germany and South Africa. The new business partners will distribute the Zephyr PASSPORT family of terminal emulation products.

In Germany, Zephyr is represented by UBS Hainer GmbH (www.ubs-hainer.com), who manages and supports PASSPORT products at such customer accounts as Allianz Suisse, Daimler Bank AG and Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW).

In South Africa, Zephyr is represented by JMR Software Ltd (www.jmr.co.za), who supports Zephyr products at First National Bank (FNB), Business Connexion (BCX), Cadiz and others.

“We have a wealth of current international customers and many new prospects that we feel will benefit from having fully trained partners in their own countries” said Russell Martin, Zephyr Vice-President Sales and Marketing. “Familiarity with local business practices and the ability to support the Zephyr products and business model is essential”.

“We really want to send a clear message to international organizations that use Attachmate®, MicroFocus® (formerly NetManage®), IBM® and other terminal emulation products: Zephyr can save you substantial sums of money with an easy and transparent change to PASSPORT”, Martin continued.

PASSPORT 2009 is slated for release in January and will have localized language support for the Italian, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese markets.

Zephyr Announces Business Partners in Germany and South Africa

As the recession devastates the banking, brokerage, retail and automobile industries, landlords and commercial real estate brokers in lower Fairfield County ponder when and if the office market will be the next victim.

The region could be vulnerable because financial service companies rent much of the office space in Greenwich and Stamford. Greenwich has been called the nation’s unofficial hedge fund capital.

“We are still in a very good market. However, a lot of our clients are financial services companies,” said Jim Fagan, senior managing director of the Westchester County, N.Y., and Connecticut operations of New York City-based Cushman & Wakefield Inc. commercial real estate. “They include everything from hedge funds to reinsurance companies to investment banks, not to mention advertising agencies and other professional services companies.”

Those former mainstays in the office market will be shrinking, he said.

“As tenants try to lower their fixed costs, they are slimming down their commercial real estate exposure, where it is practical and pragmatic,” Fagan said. “The market is going through an adjustment. While it was white hot in July of 2007. It certainly is less than that now.”

John Hannigan, principal of Choyce Peterson commercial real estate in Stamford, said, “The quantity of tenants looking to grow has decreased precipitously.”

Reported office vacancies are not really bad - yet.

In the third quarter, 17 percent of the 14.5 million square feet of office space in Stamford was available for lease or sublease, up slightly from 16.4 percent at the same time last year, according to an average taken from five real estate firms. Available space are locations that are empty or slated to become vacant soon.

The numbers do not include large, single-occupant buildings such as the main UBS AG investment bank and trading floor in downtown Stamford.

But vacancy reports might not tell the whole story, said Jeff Gage, executive managing director at the Stamford office of Chicago-based Jones Lang LaSalle commercial real estate. Some companies have space they are not using but will not admit it unless a broker approached them about subleasing, Gage said.

Sublease space, that which is leased but currently unused, is rising in Fairfield County, he said.

“We are going to see vacancy rates going up to 25 percent or higher (countywide),” Gage said. “My guess is that 40 percent of that will be sublease space.”

The big subleases include 112,000 square feet that UBS put on the market at 201 Tresser Blvd. in Stamford at Purdue Pharma’s headquarters. Others in the city are 50,000 square feet from Legg Mason at First Stamford Place and 120,000 square feet at 290 Harbor Drive.

Greenwich has smaller office vacancies, but its 4.8 million square feet of office space depends largely on financial services, hedge funds and private equity firms. About 9.3 percent of the town’s office space was available in the third quarter, which was unchanged from the same time last year.

“Greenwich and Stamford are not immune from the downsizing and reorganization from a new model of doing business,” said John Goodkind, managing principal at the Greenwich office of New York City-based Newmark Knight Frank commercial real estate. “The days of abundance are gone.”

“Large users are unlikely to make decisions on space unless they have to,” he said, referring to lease expirations.

On the positive side, Goodkind said many people who had worked for hedge funds, financial institutions and banks will be looking for office space in which to start their own companies.

“We have already seen significant numbers of new companies looking for smaller spaces,” he said. “That will be the mode for the next 12 to 18 months.”

But Gerald Celente, a trends forecaster known for gloomy predictions, said the downturn in the retail sector will affect office space because fewer customers will exist for service firms such as ad agencies.

“In 2009, the focus will broaden to include a range of calamities that will leave no sector unscathed,” Celente said in a report issued by his Rhinebeck, N.Y.-based Trends Research Institute. “Next in line is retail, which accounts for some 70 percent of consumer spending, 26 percent of which is holiday sales.”

“Add to the (retail) empties the commercial space vacated by defunct financial firms and an array of troubled businesses from restaurants to architectural firms, to high-tech operations, to offset printers, etc.,” the report said. “The inescapable result (that we predicted over a year ago and is only now being discussed in the business media) is a commercial real estate bust that will be costlier, wreak greater havoc and prove more intractable than the residential market decline.”

Local landords, by contrast, are more optimistic.

“We have been here before (in a recession), and we will get through it,” said Jo Ann McGrath, director of leasing for the Merritt 7 Corporate Park in Norwalk. “We just have to stay positive.”

She said the 1.4 million square feet of office space in Merritt 7’s six buildings is 95 percent occupied.

A 51,000 square feet sublease might occur in the complex’s 301 Merritt 7 building. Applied Biosystems is moving out of 301 Merritt 7 in July because it merged with Invitrogen Corp.

Applied Biosystems’s lease expires in 2011, and it has an option to sublet the space, McGrath said.

Margaret Carlson, director of leasing for New York City-based RFR Realty’s seven office buildings in downtown Stamford, said the market is slowing, but not to a crisis stage.

“We are still continuing to sign deals, and we are starting to see concessions for tenants creep in,” Carlson said. “Velocity is slowing down, but we remain optimistic. There are a lot of deals out in the marketplace, and we do not have a lot of sublease space in our portfolio.”

RFR’s Stamford buildings are 90 percent leased, she said.

Another landlord representative, Jeff Newman of W&M Properties, said the recession offers a chance to recruit new tenants. W&M manages First Stamford Place and Metro Center office complexes in Stamford and the MerrittView office building in Norwalk.

“We are well-positioned to ride out a down market,” Newman said. “We always have more than enough cash flow to cover debt service and operating needs.”

Gage of Jones Lang LaSalle predicted rents will drop 20 percent to 30 percent during the recession, which offers local companies a chance to move into better buildings.

In March, Stamford-based Choyce Peterson began telling its clients to pursue renovation subsidies and lower rent from landlords.

The average asking rent for Class A office space in downtown Stamford is $48 per square foot per year, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

“We have been out there ahead of this (recession) news and have been meeting with many area companies to help them navigate these tough economic times, with regard to their office space,” said Hannigan of Choyce Peterson.

“The smart landlord are the ones who will lead the market in (lower) pricing,” Gage said. “If you follow the market, you are already too late.”

- Staff Writer Peter Healy can be reached at peter.healy@scni.com or at 964-227
Read article source - http://web-best.info/2008/12/for-rent-is-office-space-the-final-frontier-in-financial-crisis/

Source: For rent: Is office space the final frontier in financial crisis?

A West Valley man does not need many hands to make light work — he has two to make 18,000 of them light up his front yard.

Dan Nelson has made and bought Christmas decorations for about eight years, and he is planning to expand his collection.

“Every year, I just want it to be brighter,” Nelson said. “I have more lights in my shed — in boxes that I don’t take out — than most people put up.”

“I think he’s obsessed, but I think it’s a good obsession,” said Jewel Nelson, his wife.

Dan Nelson, an architect, became fond of making Christmas decorations after a friend had asked Nelson to help with his. Ironically, the friend lived on Christmas Street.

Nelson got hooked.

“People go on vacations, and I buy Christmas lights,” he said.

In his front yard, Nelson has 10 ?plywood angels representing his granddaughters and 11 gingerbread boys representing grandsons. Each of them has a name written on it, and its eyes are painted, respective to the grandchild it represents.

Nelson said he made 21 reindeer for his friends and family members during the second year.

Among other decorations are reindeer and moose, three wise men and a nativity scene, a snowman, two soldier boys and pine trees, all decked out in lights and connected to 10 outlets. Onlookers can also hear Christmas songs in the background.

Nelson said he started getting his house into a festive mood the week before Halloween. He has since spent every weekend adding decorations.

Although the rest of Bluebird Drive doesn’t shine as brightly as the Nelsons’ home, neighbors don’t seem to mind. One of the neighbors, Randy Garcia, let Dan Nelson use a corner of his yard to set up some moose and pine trees.

“We’re actually waiting for Dan to expand all the way over,” Garcia said.

Nelson’s lights shine from 5 to 10 p.m. every night and help Rocky Mountain Power survive the country’s economic crisis.

“I don’t look at [the electricity bill],” Dan Nelson said. “We’re on a year-round [billing plan], and it goes up every year. I probably wouldn’t do this if I looked at it.”

He said that he’s trying to buy more LED lights, which run cooler and therefore save energy.

“It’s not like we’re saving anything because he keeps adding more stuff,” Jewel Nelson said.

Read full source - Front yard decorations get more elaborate for WVC couple

If you can judge a prophet by his followers, maybe you can judge a composer by the quality of musicians who are inspired to champion his music. And if that’s so, then Elliott Carter - the subject of a weekendlong celebration at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in advance of his 100th birthday Thursday - is doing something right.

The two-day bash, sponsored by San Francisco Performances, included a showing of Frank Scheffer’s documentary film “Elliott Carter: A Labyrinth of Time” and lectures by musicologist Robert Greenberg. But the chief focus, naturally, was the music, which got bold, impassioned and strikingly eloquent performances from artists devoted to Carter’s work.

Saturday’s concert by the Pacifica Quartet - violinists Simin Ganatra and Sibbi Bernhardsson, violist Masumi Per Rostad and cellist Brandon Vamos - was a complete tour through Carter’s string quartets, from the expansive breakthrough of the String Quartet No. 1, written in 1951, to the Fifth Quartet, which joined the catalog in 1995.

And on Sunday afternoon, pianist Ursula Oppens gave a similarly comprehensive overview of the composer’s keyboard works. The recital was anchored by his two major piano compositions - the Piano Sonata (1945-46) and “Night Fantasies” (1980) - and bedecked by a handful of shorter pieces dating from the past 15 years.

What came through most stirringly in both events was the devoted sense of advocacy that Carter seems to engender in performing musicians. As difficult as much of his music is for the listener, the difficulties it entails for instrumentalists - from both a technical and interpretive standpoint - can only be more profound.

Yet here were artists clearly delighted and eager to dedicate themselves to making the best possible case for this music - and succeeding in doing so.

Here is full article: Music review: Elliott Carter celebration

We all long for a quiet night’s rest. But, for some of us, the snoring just blasts our eardrums!

It’s loud and it’s irritating. But, is it serious?

Patti from Pitman, N.J. e-mailed:

“My snoring wakes me up. Could this be a warning of a problem?”

Sometimes, snoring can just be annoying to your bed partner and annoying to yourself. But, sometimes, snoring can be the indication of a more serious problem like sleep apnea.

Sleep apnea is a common condition that leads to interrupted breathing for very short periods of time during sleep, usually the result of narrowed airways. Untreated, it can lead to health problems including, high blood pressure, memory problems, weight gain, and headaches.

“It’s associated with nighttime awaking or daytime sleepiness, so if that’s something that is occurring where you snore at night, you awake and feel tired, you’re sleepy during the day, you should talk to your doctor about perhaps having a sleep study done,” Dr. Helena Schotland said.

Doctors may recommend a device called a CPAP, which helps keep the airway open.

Darrell from Philadelphia asked:

“I have sleep apnea, but the device hurts my nose.”

“Just because you don’t like your particular mask doesn’t mean that you are stuck with it. There are a huge number of masks. Some are nasal masks that go over your nose. Some are nose and mouth. There are also little nasal pillows that are just little prongs that go over your nostril that are great for people with claustrophobia,” Dr. Schotland said.

Other treatments include:

Weight loss
Sleeping on your side instead of on your back
Read full story - The Snoring Has to Stop!