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Public restrooms – can’t stand them!

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We are the proud new owners of an HDTV. Our first Plasma! We got it on Saturday after a three week wait for the back ordered TV and we’ve been watching just about everything we can ever since!

Any other Plasma owners out there? A few people tried to discourage us from getting a plasma because they tend to work best in dark rooms, but the one we got (a Samsung PN50B850) has quite a bright picture and the room we put it in, our living room, is on the North side of the house so it’s never very bright.

We love it so far.

What I didn’t love was the wait at the store when we went to pick up the new TV. My husbands cousin kindly met us at the store with his SUV so he could help us get our new TV home and once we got in the store we had to wait for the salesman that we’d been dealing with for about an hour. Sure, I could have been served by someone else, but he’d redone our bill so our warranty would start on the day we picked up the TV rather than when we’d paid for it three weeks before and there was a mistake on the bill so I had to talk to him.

While we were waiting I had to use the washroom at the store. That’s one thing I dislike doing … using public washrooms. I don’t know why … well … ok, the fact that most of them are dirty and smelly is probably the main reason. Oh and I hate using the type of hand dryers where you have to push the button to start it. I’d rather use the ones that just start automatically. With the push button ones I kind of feel like i have to wash my hands again or use Purell to clean them.

Hey I’m a nurse and I know how many germs are out there sitting on things!

So – do you cringe when you have to use a public washroom too or am I just a little too much of a germaphobe?

Following people with similar interests on Twitter

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Do you use Twitter? If you do, did you make a short bio for your account?

I made a bio and in it I list that I’m an ER nurse. I didn’t get too many followers at first via listing that fact, as more people decided to follow me because I’d listed gardening and photography and dog owner in my bio as well.

Lately though I’m getting a lot of friend requests form RN organizations, fellow nurse and even some medical travel types of businesses.

I don’t talk about being a nurse on my blogs or on my Twitter account very often – mainly because I’ve been on medical leave from my work for about five years now due to Crohn’s disease. I’m sure I’d talk more about it if I were back to working regular shifts.

I do like connecting with fell ow nurses on Twitter as I can keep up on some things that are going on in the field. Even though most of my Twitter nurse friends are in the US and I’m in Canada there are a lot of similarities in our practices.

Do you connect with people in your profession or via things you’ve listed in your bio on Twitter?

I can’t get over this head cold

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I’m so ready for this head cold I have to be over!

I don’t think anyone likes having a cold, but I haven’t had one for about fifteen years and I guess the fact that I haven’t had to go through this at least once a year has made it even harder to bear now that I do have a head cold. LOL

I blame my brother! He was here just after Christmas and he was supposed to be over his cold, but it came back just as he arrived and about two weeks after he left to go back home both my husband and I started getting the sniffles.

So I guess I’ve had the sniffles for two weeks, but my cold started to really get bad not this past Monday but the Monday before that. I spent all of last week in misery. My cold was so bad! My nose wouldn’t stop running. I think I used about three boxes of tissues last week – enough to cover all the tile in my kitchen I think! Yeah – gross.

Now this week my symptoms are better than there were last week, but I’ve got a cough and I’m starting to have bad fevers so I’m wondering if my cold is going to turn into bronchitis or pneumonia. God I hope not!

I always get really sick for about a month when I get a cold. Like I said, my husband had the sniffles too and then his cold symptoms got worse for about two days and then he was pretty much over it except for some minor sniffles.

I’ve been taking decongestants and even tried using a nasal spray last week (the nasal spray didn’t help so I’m not using it now). The medicines didn’t help much at all.

How do you handle a cold when you get one? Do you take medications and then feel a lot better after a day or so, or area you like me and stay sick for weeks?

Cellulite – what to do?

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When it comes to looks and appearance, cellulite is probably one of  the worst issues to deal with. But exactly what is it, and why do women seem to suffer more from cellulite than men, and some women more than others? And  is there anything you can do about it? Here you might find some answers to this problem.

When fat is  stored in the body resulting in the skin appealing lumpy and uneven, you are likely to suffer from cellulite. It is often called orange peel skin,  resembling the look of skin being pinched. In general, cellulite is more commonly found on the hips, buttocks and legs, more than other parts of the  body.

The difficult truth about cellulite is that it is made up of exactly the same kind of fat, or ‘adipose tissue’, as any  other. Adipose tissue  sweeps up fat that the body wants to store as an extra amount of energy. When the  blood is exposed to a high concentration of sugar for a very long time, coming from calories, the body stores this in adipose  tissue.

What gives cellulite its characteristic appearance is the fact that the adipose tissue almost squeezes itself in between the  rather stringy connective tissue that makes up the skin. It is a little bit like butter being squeezed through a  knitted sweater. The butter will come squeezing through the various holes in between the strands of wool and you’ll get an  effect very like cellulite in the body.

It particularly affects women because we put on fat in a totally different way to men. In men, adipose tissue settles more around the waist and abdomen, as well as close to internal organs.  Women however, tend to build up adipose tissue around hips and thighs, and this is more likely to create visible  cellulite. Also,  the adipose tissue squeezes through connective tissue if it is more elastic, and sadly as we all get older, our connective  tissue tends to loosen up.

But enough of the science – how to get rid of Cellulite?  The key is simply to lose weight and there are two main ways to do this. Firstly, use up more energy than you put into your body as calories. It is useful  to exercise, as using up energy is only one result of exercising. The metabolic rate in your body will increase with aerobic exercises done regularly,  resulting in using up more energy stored in the body. It also helps improve muscle tone.  As working  the muscle fibres in the skin results in tighter muscles, cellulite will become less visible.

Losing weight can also be achieved by making sure your blood sugar levels are stable,  when avoiding eating all those lovely sugary things we like so much. To achieve this, it is best to  stay away from foods containing lots of sugar, French fries, white bread that has been processed, noodles, rice and alcohol.  As the body needs blood with a high concentration of sugar to be able to store fat, it will be  physically impossible to gain weight.

Massage and creams that hydrate the skin are also used often. T hese will have the effect of swelling the skin around the cellulite to temporarily reduce the lumpyness associated with  it. There is no long-lasting substitute for a low-calorie, low sugar diet that is fairly high in protein, fruit  and vegetables however. Treating cellulite is the same as treating any other fat in the lobby – the only ways to fight it are exercise and diet.






Solving Your Home Gym Dilemmas

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You could very easily perform a search on the internet and see that there is almost and never ending variety of home gym equipment available. But is it the price of the equipment that gives you results?

Of course not! You are smart enough to know that a thousand dollar stair climber sitting in your house will have you slim in a few months. However many people suggest this thinking by their actions. They decide to do something about their fitness and or weight and they dead off on their search . Yes, off to research the latest equipment. It does not matter if it is treadmills, resistance exercise bands, stationary bikes, a Total Gym or a huge home fitness center.

In the end you have to use the equipment. But what occurs so often is that you purchase the new equipment but only use it for a short time. Soon the new equipment is a decoration or a place to hang things. Next you start to feel guilty but soon you need your space back.

If this does not ring true with you then you are either on your first round or a dedicated individual.

One way to help resolve this is to realize that you can get fit with some very basic equipment. What about a jump rope for example. Are you able to jump rope for even 5 minutes straight? Very simple equipment, very little room and yet you can do some excellent cardio work.

For another example, consider exercise bands like Bodylastics, these bands are small, low cost and yet provide you with a great many options for resistance exercises. Imagine being able to do squats with more then 200 pounds of weight training  in your bedroom or anywhere for that matter. When you are done working out you simply place the bands in a storage bag in the closet with your compact carido equipment known as a jump rope .

Now even if you get side tracked and stop exercising, there is no large piece of equipment staring you in the face. Next time you get the urge to begin working out again you just simply find that small container on the shelf and start working out.

This is a great solution that solves your home gym dilemmas. Equipment like this is low cost and it uses little space so you can keep it year after year using it when you choose. You will not have to get upset with yourself because you wasted lots of money again on some new whim to work out. Your home gym is in the closet.

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