10 Things I Learned This Week--#57 (books, fitness, charities, Tebow, fun, tips)

Play The Cat/Dog Trivia Today:

The Innocence Project

After watching "The Wronged Man" on Lifetime this week, I found out I can help those wrongfully convicted through The Innocence Projcet.

For Your Protection

In an email from my cousin, I found out it's better to use wasp/hornet spray instead of pepper spray against an attacker because The wasp spray, they told her, can shoot up to twenty feet away and is a lot more accurate, while with the pepper spray, they have to get too close to you and could overpower you. The wasp spray temporarily blinds an attacker until they get to the hospital for an antidote.

UPDATED 2/5/10 7:25 P.M. Better read the label first though--found this anonymous comment when I got home and thought I should include it here:

Don't Use WASP Spray!!! Read the label!!! It states it's a violation of Federal Law to use WASP spray other than to deter WASPS! It would be awful if you were sued or prosecuted by the FEDS for attempting to protect yourself with this product. Use pepper spray! Key chain pepper spray fires 10 feet and the larger canisters fire up to 25! Pepper spray is safe, natural, used by police and works on those which cannot feel pain (i.e. those under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol). Not a single WASP spray manufacturer will tell you to use their product in this fashion!!

Tim Tebow

Over at Word Journey I found an interesting post about Tim Tebow. Did you know the doctors advised his mother to abort him? Makes you wonder how all those other aborted babies would have turned out if they were given the chance to live, doesn't it? He's going to have an ad run during the Super Bowl so watch for it. Here's the link to the post: Tim Tebow Super Bowl Ad Inspries. Here's a link to an opposing opinion: A Super Bowl Ad We Can Do Without. Which side are you on? Personally, I'd rather do without all those beer commercials.

My Secret Blog Giveaway

This week I went through all my comments during the past year on My Funny Dad, Harry blog to see who my top commenter is to determine the winner of my secret blog giveaway and discovered that Jude at Mature But Not Senile had the most with 20. Congrats, Jude! Hope you enjoy the book!

Fitness-Bones and Burning Calories

From my Biggest Loser calendar, this week I learned that strength training helps harden your bones. Any exercise that strengthens muscles also seems to slow the rate of bone loss. "We should lift weights in order to help us build as much muscle as possible to rev up our metabolism and maintain our bone density."--Jillian Michaels I MUST make time to workout on a regular basis.

This made me feel better: In A Closer Look At The Evidence by Richard & Tina Kleiss I read that

During intense concentration, your brain can burn as many calories as your muscles use during exercise. Intense thinking can be as physically exhausting as a physical workout. More than 100,000 chemical reactions per second can occur within your brain.

(from Letting God Create Your Day, Vol. 2, p. 59.) That must be why just sitting and reading is at least better than just sitting and watching TV. So my blogging buddies, use intense concentration when you wrote those posts and read others blogs and burn those calories!

FAST Forward

I finally discovered if I hit that Fast Forward button on my remote THREE TIMES while watching a taped show, it does actually zip FAST.

Childrens Books

This week I explored a Children's book series called Choose Your Own Adventure by Garth Stein. These are so good, I'm doing a whole post about them this coming Monday--be sure to look for it. If you can't wait, the website all about them is www.cyoa.com. These are so fun!

Flat Stanley

Thanks to the Sevin Family, I learned who Flat Stanley is and invited him over. I'm posting about this tomorrow night.

Visit Half Past Kissin' Time for more Friday Fragments.

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7 Things I Learned This Week-Part 19

My Funny Dad, Harry Giveaway

When visiting Mountain Woman's blog at Red Pine Mountain, I saw she's having a book giveaway contest for four copies! All you have to do to enter is leave a comment that you would like to enter. There are some other things you can do to get more chances to win. The drawing will be June 12 for Father's Day. I was glad to see there were some who wanted it! Click here to head on over to enter!

Anti-Monkey Butt Powder

Kathy at "The Junk Drawer" discovered this product at her drug store and actually took several photos of it. This is a new product to me; never knew there was such a thing. Here is the link to her post about it: Do You Have A Monkey Butt?.

Birds & Squirrels

My new animal fact I learned this week is that sometimes birds attack squirrels. You can read all about the bird-squirrel fight at Forest Fight at The Everyday Adventurer.

Self Defense

I found a great post this week about teaching kids self defense at For Your Protection. There is also a link in the post to a whole video series about different ways kids can get away from an abductor here: Expert Village. If I had kids, I'd sure want them to know how to defend themselves.

Coolest Horse

At Just Wondering, I came across this video of the coolest horse ever. I never knew a pony could ride in a car and live inside a house, answer the phone and bring his owner a beer from the refrigerator. It even laid on the bed! I wonder if the horse is happy or if it wouldn't rather be out running. What do you think? Watch this video: The Coolest Horse,

How To Protect Your Address Book

This came from an email sent to me by a friend. I'm not guaranteeing it works, but it's simple enough to give it a shot. This trick won't keep the virus from getting into your computer, but it will stop it from using your address book to spread further, and it will alert you to the fact that the worm has gotten into your system.

Here's what you do:

First, open your address book and click on 'new contact,' just as you would do if you were adding a new friend to your list of email addresses. In the window where you would type your friend's first name, type in 'A'.

For the screen name or email address, type AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA
(mailto:AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA)

Now, here's what you've done and why it works:
The name 'A' will be placed at the top of your address book as entry.

This will be where the worm will start in an effort to send itself to all your friends. When it tries to send itself to AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA (mailto:AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA), it will be undeliverable because of the phony email address you entered. If the first attempt fails (which it will because of the phony address), the worm goes no further and none of your friends will be infected. You'll also get an undeliverable message which alerts you that a virus has entered your computer and you can take care of it.

Osteogenesis Imperfecta

From reading "Handle With Care" by Jodi Picoult, I learned Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) is a rare bone disease where a person's bones break very easily--just by getting bumped, falling down, or even sneezing. The person with this disease is generally very short too. Much of their time is spent in the hospital and living with casts which is extremely costly.