Copyright 2006 Melissa Galt
The Guest List
Mix this up, singles and marrieds, age mix. We learn more from those beyond our generation. I typically have both clients now friends, vendors now friends, and friends.
Involve your guests. Give them a chance to bring something, be specific it makes it easier. For example, you can ask everyone to bring a favorite wine, or bubbly, or perhaps at the holidays they can bring an ornament, you can always do potluck and bring a dish. (Keep up with this or you’ll wind up with too many chip and dip and no dessert or salad!)
You can do a game party and have everyone bring a favorite game, or a charitable donation and have everyone bring something for Goodwill. Everyone is more comfortable bringing something.
Be clear in expectations. Make the invitation clear with date, day, time, dress (give examples, this seems the biggest issue), occasion, what to bring, what to expect (a good time by all certainly), directions, parking and such. Don’t leave room for questions it will streamline the RSVP process and reason to attend.
The Menu and Presentation
Bite-size makes a difference. This is important, all of us have been stuck at a buffet with a plate in hand and food requiring a knife and fork, and no tables to set the plate down and carve. There is nothing more uncomfortable than popping an oversize bite in your mouth and being immobilized while attempting to reduce its size before swallowing.
Finger food makes it easier. Pasta with sauce is clearly not finger food. Make it easy on guests and have mini-kebobs, skewered or tooth picked items, stuffed mushroom caps (button mushrooms, not jumbo!) salmon on toast points and such. Food that doesn’t require utensils is fun and simple.
Color is delicious. Make the food colorful, if not inherently so then with garnish. Presentation matters and people eat color. All brown, even if a toasty color is boring, add green, red, and yellow with peppers, parsley (tried but true), herbs and spices, sliced veggies and fruits. If it looks appealing it will get eaten.
Tell them what it is. Rarely do I attend a party where anyone has taken the time to put signage on the food. This counts, not only does it remove the mystery but potential allergic reactions by unsuspecting party goers that don’t know what is inside. This can be done tastefully with place cards or even small ceramic markers.
The Decorations and Mood
Start at the front door. I make sure that you know I am having a party from my front door to the back door. Whether it is signage, balloons, props, a special entry, my guests feel the mood at the beginning. It adds excitement and anticipation and gives them something to talk about.
Leave room for guests. It is easy to overdo and forget that you do need room for guests, not just party props and decorations. You also need to make room for glasses to be set down, plates to be parked and such. Put out coasters as a hint, and be sure that you have places they can leave empty plates. Be creative but consistent. Sometimes it is tempting to throw in everything but the kitchen sink, don’t. Consider using no more than three colors in any scheme and select one or two shapes to focus on. I do a lot with gold, silver and a third color each time, and use stars and diamonds as my preferred shapes. Repetition gives continuity and reinforces my theme. This works for holidays, Oscar night, a gambling affair, and more.
Give something away. I always like to leave a basket by the front door with a take away gift for my guests. This is my thank you for them being there. It can be as decadent as a mini-box of Godiva truffles or as silly as a bag of sand for a summer gathering with beach toys. It needs to relate to the event and be personal.
Real vs. Plastic. Well I have to say that for ease of party without full staff I go plastic on plates, but never on glasses. I don’t mind a load or two of glassware at the end of the night, and plates and cutlery can be tossed. Others will disagree and insist on those glass plates so popular, too often they look scratched up, overused and dull. Go with real china and make if fun with a party set, if you don’t want plastic.
Size counts. Please don’t be stingy and use those silly 6 plates for food, give your guests a real 10 plate and avoid the need for standing around the buffet table grazing because they can’t get enough on a plate to enjoy it. Use a separate plate for dessert items with fresh flatware.
The Art of Hosting
Get involved. If you don’t have a good time, then neither will your guests. You will need to ensure that all of your preparations are complete and you have time to mix and mingle. They are coming to see you, not watch you work.
Get outside help for food. You can hire a caterer, go pot luck if on a tight budget, or split the difference and do it with help from Whole Foods and Eatzi’s or any other gourmet prepared food source. Doing it all yourself is admirable, but not often feasible in time and effort.
Get outside help on service. Hire a bartender even if just to pour wine for the night. You can go pro or ask a neighborhood college student (of age of course). You may want to consider serving help too, or ask a couple of good friends to help you keep up with the food and empty plates.
Sometimes it may seem that you just live to go from one worry to the next. Does this sound familiar?
If it is, then you are about to discover a way of getting your life back and creating the future of your dreams!
So what is negativity and how is Hypnosis going to help you?
Imagine that you are wearing a pair of blue tinted sunglasses, everything that you see has a blue tint. Now imagine wearing a pear of rubber gloves and everything that you touch will feel ‘rubbery’. Now imagine burning incense and noticing everything smells nice.
Notice how the glasses, the gloves and the incense change all of your perceptions! For instance, without these, things seem ‘how they should be’ – completely natural, however with them everything seems unnatural.
Now that was a metaphor to explain a point, but what has it to do with Negativity?
Well like wearing gloves, when you have negativity, it allows everything to feel negative.
So where is your negativity and how do you get rid of it?
A part of the mind called the ‘Sub-Conscious’ is where negativity sets up camp… In a way it seems like a disease, affecting every thought and emotion, sometimes causing the sufferer to lose night after night of sleep worrying about thing that have maybe never bothered them before.
Hypnosis, EFT and NLP can all be used to effectively eliminate negativity, however we use all three as to make sure that it goes away and stays away!
If you are tired and always regretting not doing the things that you have always wanted to do because of negativity, please contact us to arrange your appointment, to see how Hypnotherapy and Self Hypnosis can help you further.
You will be amazed just how quickly you will see the benefits!
Mount Monadnock in Jaffrey, New Hampshire is North Americas most climbed peak, and reputed to be the second most climbed mountain in the world, after Mount Fuji in Japan.
Though Ive been close to the mountain on other trips Ive never climbed it, and really was a tad perplexed by its popularity. So recently I decided to hike to the summit with one of my sons and see what all the hullabaloo was about.
We arrived at the Mount Monadnock visitor center at around 8:30am, and knowing it was going to be a warm 80+ degree-day, ensured we had plenty of water, and energy snacks. This is a carry-in carry-out park and though you can buy water at the base shop, food purchases are limited.
There are two popular trails up to the summit: White Cross and White Dot. The White Dot is steeper, and as it was our first climb on the mountain we chose the “easier,” and a little longer, White Cross Trail.
MOUNT MONADNOCK IS NOT A WALK IN THE PARK
Even on the White Cross Trail, climbing Mount Monadnock is not a “walk in the park.” Its an arduous hike to the summit – after all youre climbing 1,900 feet in a relatively short distance.
The lower section of the trail is dense wood and so the main attraction is identifying the variety of trees and plants along the path, and keeping your focus on the next step. At a little over half-way up the mountain youll come to a clearing where youll get magnificent views of the southern and western areas of the Monadnock region.
As you climb above 2,500 feet the spruces become stunted and barely reach your shoulder.
At around 2,700 feet youll have an unobstructed view of the bare and rocky summit, and just 100 feet further the White Cross and White Dot Trails connect, and youll follow the White Dot to the bare summit.
The climb to the summit of Mount Monadnock from here was the most exhilarating for me. Most of its above tree line and as you climb youll have stunning views of the surrounding area.
THE WRONG CHOICE BACK TO BASE
My son and I reached the summit after climbing for about 1 hour 40 minutes. We had clear vistas of Mount Wachusett in Northern Massachusetts, and Vermonts Green Mountains to the west.
We took a few photos and found a quiet protected spot for a well-earned rest. As wed climbed up on the White Cross, we decided to return to base on the White Dot Trail – big mistake!
The White Dot Trail is the most popular, and we found ourselves descending on the steeper trail at the height of hikers using the trail to ascend. On many occasions we had to wait for a long line of hikers coming up to pass, before we could go down.
We got back to base after being on the mountain for a little over 4 hours.
MOUNT MONADNOCK IS PLENTY A MOUNTAIN FOR MOST
I am no longer perplexed why so many people climb Mount Monadnock. Its a wonderful experience, and most people in reasonable condition can make it to the top. Id recommend taking the White Cross Trail to the summit and back down if you dont do a lot of climbing. If youre an ardent hiker then youll probably enjoy the challenge of the White Dot Trail, and then come back down the White Cross for some varied terrain.
The state park has over 40 miles of trails, and so the ones Ive mentioned are not the only ones on the mountain and to the summit. A number of longer trails can be found on the eastern, northern, and western flank of the mountain.
My son and I enjoyed the hike, and we both came to realize you dont have to climb Everest to experience the wonder of this planet – Mount Monadnock is plenty for most.
The Monadnock State Park is located off Route 124 near Jaffrey, New Hampshire, and is open all year round. But the best times to climb are late spring through to the popular fall when the weather is more predictable, and the views stunning.
Eczema is a form of dermatitis, or inflammation of the upper layers of the skin. The term eczema is broadly applied to a range of persistent or recurring skin rashes characterized by redness, skin edema, itching and dryness, with possible crusting, flaking, blistering, cracking, oozing or bleeding. Areas of temporary skin discoloration sometimes characterize healed lesions, though scarring is rare.
The most common types of eczemas are:
* Atopic eczema (aka infantile e., flexural e., atopic dermatitis) is thought to be hereditary, and often runs in families whose members also have hay fever and asthma. Itchy rash is particularly noticeable on face and scalp, inside of elbows, behind knees, and buttocks. Experts are urging doctors to be more vigilant in weeding out cases that are in actuality irritant contact dermatitis. It is very common in developed countries, and rising.
* Contact dermatitis is of two types: allergic (resulting from a delayed reaction to some allergen, such as poison ivy or nickel), and irritant (resulting from direct reaction to, say, a solvent). Some substances act both as allergen and irritant (e.g. wet cement). And some substances cause a problem after sunlight exposure, bringing on phototoxic dermatitis.
About three fourths of contact eczema are of the irritant type, which is the most common occupational skin disease. Contact eczema is curable provided the offending substance can be avoided, and its traces removed from ones environment.
* Xerotic eczema is dry skin that becomes so serious it turns into eczema. It worsens in dry winter weather, and limbs and trunk are most often affected. The itchy, tender skin resembles dry cracked river bed. This disorder is very common among the older population. Ichthyosis is a related disorder.
* Seborrheic dermatitis also known as cradle cap in infants and dandruff causes dry or greasy scaling of the scalp and eyebrows. Scaly pimples and red patches sometimes appear in various adjacent places. In newborns it causes a thick, yellow crusty scalp rash called cradle cap which seems related to lack of biotin, and is often curable.
Eczema diagnosis is generally based on the appearance of inflamed, itchy skin in eczema sensitive areas such as face, chest and other skin crease areas. However, given the many possible reasons for eczema flare ups, a doctor is likely to ascertain a number of other things before making a judgment.
Dermatitis severely dries out the skin. Keeping the affected area moistened can promote healing and retain natural moisture. This is the most important self-care treatment that one can use in atopic eczema.
The use of anything that may dry out the skin should be discontinued and this includes both normal soaps, dish soaps, detergents and bubble baths that remove the natural oils from the skin.
The moistening agents are called ‘emollients’. The rule to use is: match the thicker ointments to the driest, flakiest skin. Light emollients like Aqueous Cream may dry the skin if it is very flaky.
Emollient bath oils should be added to bath water and then suitable agents applied after patting the skin dry. Generally twice daily applications of emollients work best and whilst creams are easy to apply, they are quickly absorbed into the skin and so need frequent re-application.
Ointments, with their lesser water content, stay on the skin for longer and so need fewer applications but they must be applied sparingly if to avoid a sticky mess.
This information on eczema is presented as information only and should not be interpreted as medical advice. If you or someone you know suffers from eczema, consult a professional for the latest treatment options available.
Permission is granted to reprint this article as long as no changes are made, and the entire resource box is included.
Reasons for Replicating Data
According to a study done by Krishna Bharat and Andrei Brodner there are several reasons why data are replicated or why mirror sites are created Load Balancing, High Availability, Multi-lingual replication, Franchises or Local versions, Database Sharing, Virtual Hosting, and Maintaining Pseudo Identities.
In load balancing, replication of data is done to decrease the servers loads. Instead of just having one server to handle all the traffic from web surfers interested in the data or content, the site is mirrored or the data replicated so that the traffic is split between two or more servers.
Data are also replicated to make them more highly available. An example of this is when data are mirrored within the same organization for geographical purposes to make them easily available.
Multi-lingual replication of data is also very common. Data translated into different languages are very useful for reaching a wider audience who all need access to the same data. Good examples of multi-lingual replication are many Canadian sites that are the same in everything except for the language of the content wherein English or French is used.
Data is also replicated for franchises or local versions of data. This happens when data or content is franchised to another company, which then offer the very same data or product but under different branding.
Sometimes data is replicated unintentionally. This happens when two independent websites share a common database or file system. The sharing of database sometimes results to mirroring even without the websites intention.
Virtual hosting also sometimes result in mirroring. This happens to services with different websites and host names but use the same IP address and server. What happens is the path to one site is the valid one while the path to the other site simply gives an identical webpage as a result.
The last reason, unlike the first six reasons, is often not a valid reason for site mirroring. This is because mirroring to maintain pseudo identities is often done to spam search engines with different websites of the same content as a means getting a higher page ranking. This reason is considered unacceptable and is one of the very reasons why search engines tend to be adverse towards identical content or replicated data.
Googles Webmaster Guideline about Duplicate Content
Search engines are blatantly against replicated data so much so that Google even has a warning against them in their Webmaster Guidelines. Googles Webmaster Guidelines were a list of Dos and Donts that ought to be followed by websites to help the search engine in finding, indexing, and ranking websites. Following the Dos will of course increase the chance that Google will list a specific website and ran it favorably as well. However, doing any of the Don’ts will of course detract from a websites rank.
In the specific guidelines for quality of the website part, it was stated clearly that websites should not create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content. The term duplicate content is however a dubious term since it isnt clear how many duplicate words it takes for search engines like Google to penalize a page. It can take ten words or maybe an entire sentence, or paragraph, or even need an entire document or page for content to be considered duplicate content. The key thing to remember is that the guideline says to not create pages with substantially duplicate content. So to be on the safe side it would be better to always have a fresh original content. This is however not possible at times especially when quoting articles so that it is your call to determine whether the duplicate content might penalize your website. If your conscience is clear that the duplicate content is there for the users benefit and not to up your page ranking then the crawlers will hopefully interpret it as the same and not penalize your site.
Annoyed Surfers and Speedy Crawlers
Search engines exist to point surfers to websites containing the information relevant to their search string. However, they do not exist to point surfers to different websites containing the exact same or nearly the same information. When surfers click on different links they expect to be getting different web pages with maybe the same or different take on the same topic but with definitely different content. However there are many sites out there with partial duplicate content and even the exact content simply replicated. Clicking on mirror sites irritate surfers since it is only a waste of time waiting for the same thing to load twice or maybe even more times. This is especially irritating if the site happens to be a spam site whose content is not of a good quality. Due to this problem web crawlers now do not crawl exact duplicate and near-duplicate web pages or websites that they have determined from a previous crawl. This means that the mirror sites not crawled will not even make it to the search engines results listing since only one of the duplicates is indexed by the web crawler. Because of this search engines will not have more than one of the mirror sites among its results listing thus avoiding irritating the web surfers.
Satisfied surfers are not the only result of the new technique crawlers use. Search engines benefit as well since not having to crawl mirrored pages lessens the load of the crawlers and thus speeds up crawling. The bandwidth is also saved because of this resulting to a faster more efficient crawling operation wherein the web crawler can cover and index more significant websites.
Valid Mirrored Sites
However, for valid mirror sites like those mentioned above (multi-lingual, franchise, etc.) there should be no worry since search engines have provisions for such things and take into account the motive behind them. You can help your mirror site by making sure that you follow all the other guidelines to get noticed and ranked by Google. Following the guidelines will surely help not only your ranking with Google but with other search engines as well.
I have been turned down several times by some ignorant gallery owners on both sides of the fence for their lack of interest in African Art. In their words African Art is primitive. The sad thing is that our so-called elites gallery owners do not get it too. In most cases they are worst and very ignorant and nave about African art. How long are we going to allow these false monsters of the past run wild in our present time?
I have realized that truth is usually a hard pill to swallow but we must confront our past for a better tomorrow.
We have been forced to look down on ourselves. They held our minds captive with the television, print media, history books or documentaries of their explorers that were written supposedly for them, but ended up in our nations schools bookshelves for mind alteration and economic exploitation. Maybe I am missing something; please tell me the expectation of an educator who thought the grand children of Amina in Nigeria, that River Niger was discovered by Mongo Park.
The same River Niger, where their grand ma, Anina bath, swam, fetched water, they have known and played in the river all their lives and in fact the legend had it that their grandpa Obi was among the men that guided and guarded the strange White man from the wild beast of the jungle. Instead of a letter of appreciation, their great grand children are forced and feed lies of the incident in the name of education.
They constantly used whatever they can to accomplish their vision. The invention of television became an effective tool for manipulation of generations with ease using Jacobs vision power of increase, Genesis 30: 31 43, for their negative agenda. There is power in what we hear and see. That is more reason they will never show you good side of Africa.
During the era of European avant-garde artists, there were prolific African Artists such as Aina Onabolu and many others whose works were never considered modern. Obviously including them in their modern era will mean making them equal with their counterparts in Europe. You know what that means to black man who was supposed to be picking cottons. European modern art was the biggest scam on African Art. They took the best of our forefathers and kicked us to the trash.
They knew what they were doing and the effect of these centuries of bad seeds is what we see today in Africa and beyond. It is very common to see African professionals, highly educated but with no knowledge of self and very much whiter than the white, if you know what I mean. I have walked into a financial firm in Atlanta, owned and managed by some Nigerians and the issue of African Art came up, One of the owners was asked what type of art do have hanging on your wall. You need see him go off with pride and talked eloquently on modern art at the end he declared that he doesnt want to be associated with African Art.
You can imagine how that made me feel, having studied art and taught art professionally to hear a Nigerian elite in the position of power and influence, to promote our arts and culture, out rightly rejected his inheritance. I didnt wait to ask why? He went off again to talk about crime and the world image of Nigeria. At this point I struggled to hold myself
from exploding before other nationalities in the company. I am by no means in support of any crime but if man should disown his nation because of crime and western media propaganda, the problem is way deeper than it appears. I asked him again respectfully if any of these nationalities working in Nigeria have pulled out their oil drilling machines and abandoned their mansions in Nigeria since the 419 propaganda started? I didnt see him jump up with an answer this time. Tell me where there is no fraud and crime.
This nice brother is one of the millions of African souls lost to this false and mean world of conspiracy and selfish vision of racism and imperialism. You might be wondering what is this got to do with modern art. But the truth is that, there was nothing modern about the works of the European avant-garde artists other than punch of copycats, imitators and plagiarists in conspiracy with their racist writers, art critics and art historians to make wrong right. Once again they gave themselves names, cubism, modern art and shoved it down our throat like always.
They covered the truth of plagiarizing African Art and started their usual evil naming ceremonies for their selfish goals. Who named the Primitive Art and Modern Art? Take a close look at their so-called primitive art and look at the modern art and decide for yourself. Who named the Tribal Art? These are the same people whose lists of names consist of Negro, Aborigines, Nigger, and Black, Gypsy, White, Red, Yellow, and People of Color to mention a few. What good has these names done to mankind other than division and control. Let us face the truth, because truth is the heart of freedom. There is more to names than we can imagine hence God had to change peoples given names to accomplish his mission in their lives. It has been and will always be demonic and its time to reject such names for our true purpose and relationship with one another.
Lets look into more facts in the part 2 coming soon.