I bought my original Magic Bullet Model MB1001 mini blender online in 2005.  Friends had one and paid about $50 for it, so I price shopped and found one on eBay that I got for $22 including shipping.  It’s lasted me – this will be the 5th year.  I mostly use it to make hummus and tahina sauce, so it’s cutting parsley and garlic too, not exactly light duty.  Yesterday, right after I made some fresh babaganoush, the motor died.  Drat.  Now I had an entire 21 piece set of something that I no longer had a working base for.  Well, I only ever used the base and one container anyway.  I went online and Googled Magic Bullet Model MB1001 to see what other people have said when theirs died on them. Continue reading →

A week ago I wrote that My Sleep Habits Are Morphing Again and yesterday was no different.  I’d gotten the August Horizons Magazine off the the printer at 6:00am and it was a day I could rest and relax and snooze all day if I wanted to.  However, each time I fell asleep the phone rang.  Finally about 6:00pm I just went into bed and darkened my room and slept until 3:00am.  It was one of those good sleeps, where you wake up for a few moments every few hours and just bask in the feeling of the sheets and the breeze from the fan and know you don’t have to be up for hours and hours.

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The last couple of months, fresh watermelon has been my snack of choice. It’s the only thing I let myself eat when I’m watching tv.  The problem is I’ve been cutting up so many watermelon rinds to compost that I thought ” I need to try pickling some”.  I did and they turned out surprisingly awesome.  I am not one for complicated recipes or something that has lots of steps and keeps me in the kitchen for hours.  I went online and began looking at recipes for pickles and saw everything had to be soaked overnight and boiled and fermented for weeks.  Forget that.  I remembered an episode of Chopped where someone made a  pickled relish during one of the challenges, so I Googled “quick pickles” and began reading at the links that came up. Continue reading →

I wrote on Facebook last week: Psychic friends: I am looking for a file for husband No. 5 and it’s not in the file cabinet – please use your spidey sense to tell me where it might be.  I got some good responses and Brenda Elizabeth wrote to me: “Hi Andrea! I saw your post and the first thing was I smelled mold, it could be a moldy box, moist damp room in your house, like a patio with plants, I see green in the room too. Then I heard the words “3rd bedroom”.  Hope this helps a little, finding lost stuff is not my strongest talent but I got clear information on this one so I thought I would pass it on.” Continue reading →

I remember the first time I did heart breaths. It was back in the 1970’s in a group encounter session. We all sat in a circle and paired with the person next to us. We faced each other, chairs a little offset, my right hand over her heart, her right hand over mine. Left hands over right hands. Then we gazed into each other’s eyes silently for four minutes, breathing together. It was very powerful. I’ve also done this alone, hand over my own heart, gazing into my eyes in the mirror.

I’m glad that encounter groups, no matter what you call them – sensitivity training, team building training, leadership training – are becoming more mainstream and popular, especially with kids and young adults.  MTV has a new reality show called If You Really Knew Me.  The pitch reads: In high school, there are the students who rule the school — like jocks, cheerleaders, and the popular kids — and the ones who get picked on — like nerds, emos, and outcasts. That’s just high school, right? But what if you could change that? Continue reading →

Easy Money

I watched Penn and Teller on Showtime the other night, the 8th season of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! Penn and Teller are notoriously outspoken comedians who crusade to expose the inherent hypocrisy of many popular beliefs and cultural institutions.  In Penn & Teller: Bullshit! Season 8 Episode 5: Everyone wants to get rich quick, but are multi-level marketing schemes really the answer? Penn & Teller reveal the truth about direct-sales companies that market everything from sausages to sex toys.

I learned about network marketing in 1971 when a friend became a recruiter and distributor with Glenn Turner, his Koscot mink oil cosmetic line and his success-motivation course called Dare to Be Great.  I knew 5 co-workers who were selling the same thing, so I figured out that the real product wasn’t skin softener, it was recruitment.  While I agree the Dare to be Great motivation course was inspiring, the ones I knew selling Koscot only listened to the tapes and went to the meetings and paid for workshops in the hopes of networking to sell at the event.  All trying to sell to each other.  But they couldn’t see that.  They’d been mesmerized by the pitch.  It seemed like the whole “motivation course” was just to psych them up about selling the product. They didn’t see that. Ultimately, none of them recouped their investment and most spent a lot of their own money.  I’m glad I got that lesson early. Continue reading →

You know that thing you think about that drives you crazy to think about?  Stop thinking about it.  The only thing that drives you crazy is your thoughts, and you have the power to choose which thoughts you keep thinking.