Chef Eddie, a master chef and certified caterer, is powerfully serious about his sauces. He’s spent years devising and concocting his brews. When you taste ’em, you’ll be craving ’em. Edmund Patrick “Hoboken Eddie” McCarthy starts with the highest quality ingredients and then mixes them with a secret array of herbs and spices to conjure-up his tastebud tantalizing sauces.

Chili Pepper magazine recently chose Hoboken Eddie’s Specialties of Hoboken, as an official winner in their famous Fiery Food Challenge. The Challenge is one of the oldest and most prestigious contests in the world of hot and spicy food. More than 50 culinary educators, chefs, and food writers chose Hoboken Eddie’s sauce from hundreds of entrants. Eddie’s Sauce knocked their spurs off!

Jacqui’s Preemie Pride is a Labor of Love. The journey with a preemie is a hard one, but babies are sooo resilient. Born two months early in 1985, Jacqui stayed in the NICU at Georgetown University Hospital for five weeks. Then, she spent another ten days in a level two NICU unit at Shady Grove Hospital, She is now a healthy, happy twenty eight year old.

Jacqui looked so small, so fragile, and sort of like a dressed up science experiment. Always a fighter, at one point she had to be paralyzed for 2 days because she continued to pull her life support equipment out. Her parents were scared to death, but also so proud that she was determined to live, thus “Preemie Pride”.

The Preemie Pride clothing line is designed for preemies and small newborns. Made with 100% soft cotton knit, open shoulders and front so your baby can lay on top of the clothing and then the clothes wrap around them and close with velcro, without disrupting i.v. and picc lines.

Parents can now dress their baby, but medical personnel can remove clothing in seconds if necessary. The soft cotton against the skin helps your infant get accustomed to touch. The clothing is designed so nothing is pulled over your baby’s head or face. There are no struggles with little arms and legs. This makes for very easy, simple dressing possible in bright, happy colors and prints.

Jacqui’s Preemie Pride is a small business, trying to make a difference in the lives of premature and hospitalized infants and their families. The clothing is made in the U.S.A. by local ladies in Smithsburg, Maryland.

Click here to visit Jacqui’s Preemie Pride

We started out in a garage, not because it would make for a nice story about humble beginnings, but because the company was literally trapped in a garage. Both doors were jammed. The whole structure was encased in concrete. The only way out required MacGyver-esque heroics.

Lacking the paper clips and pudding to create an explosive device, we instead had to make due with a stockpile of board games and plans for rapid expansion. It was a million-to-one shot, but what choice did we have?

We started by selling off our board game stockpile – one single board game deal each day. As business slowly grew, we added a word puzzle platform for the growing community of board game and puzzle enthusiasts. Community contributed puzzles appeared on Tanga along with the deal of the day, and thousands came to rejoice in a shared love of puzzles and deals.

Eventually these board-gaming heroes freed us from the isolated garage and the small company stepped into the sunshine and a world of possibilities. First, we decided to put on sunglasses (obviously). Shortly after that, we added LOLShirts and BelleChic to our Tanga network so we could provide even more great deals on shirts and handmade goods. There was much rejoicing across the dealscape, but we weren’t finished. Then in 2013, we partnered with DiscountMags.com in order to bring Tanga enthusiasts the best magazine deals.

Now long removed from the garage, and sadly having to say goodbye to the puzzles along the way, we remain focused on providing customers with the absolute best deals on the Internet on thousands of products with your favorite brands. Since our start in that dusty garage, we have listed over one million deals and shipped over three million orders.

It’s a tiny geodesic dome built for a grand total of two hundred bucks by Jeffery the builder at Aprovecho, ” a regional resource for researching, demonstrating, and educating the techniques and strategies of sustainable living” that will be a story on its own.

“To begin the project I constructed a nine-foot, ten sided deck using wood salvaged from a torn down shed and concrete pier blocks that were found on site. I built small walls, known as ‘pony walls’ to raise the dome so the occupant could stand in the middle. I then built the dome structure from pallet wood fastened together using plumbing wire around hubs made from PVC pipe.” So said Jeffery Hart of Jeffery the Natural Builder. Calling an experts and having your issues fixed by PIC Plumbing is a good idea.

Jeffery also said “While working on the dome I began to think about “pod living”. Sleeping in a “pod” bedroom like my dome and having central cooking, bathroom and social areas. Possibly having many pods in a co-housing style housing arrangement. This would mean the occupant must go outside and interact with the world around them more often, encouraging a lifestyle that is more connected with nature. For example, going outside between waking and eating breakfast allows them to notice the small, everyday changes in the seasons and catch many more of the special moments in a day: The brisk dawn, migrating birds or a salmon sunset.
When talking about this idea, many people bring up the cold and rainy days. These are the days when you would normally never venture outside, and so you miss many of these moments.”

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

“The foxes have holes, and the birds of heaven have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” and so it is today for many of his followers. Despite all the warnings about the snares laid by moneylenders, despite the fact that gage mort is literally translated as a pledge to give up one’s life, millions have lost their homes through mortgage exploits, and their quality of life through the service of debt.

Find Out How to Get Your Life Back!

In Singapore, the challenge of feeding a growing population is pushing the concept of urban farming to new heights. A super-efficient vertical farming system is producing greens for 5 million residents.

“Can we supply enough food for everyone on the planet?” is a question plaguing leaders around the world. In Singapore SkyGreen offers one example of how this might be possible, “not just technically, but economically”. By increasing their food security while reducing the impact of food production on global climate change, SkyGreen is 10 times more productive per square foot than conventional farming.

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

When we align our objectives with the Divine will, when we strive for the attainment of a worthy goal, when we begin our work with a well defined plan, and when we have ability to work together with others effectively, we have already achieved the trajectory for success. For we know that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Learn how to enjoy boundless opportunity and unlimited progress!

A new means of generating electricity, one that utilizes bacteria to harness the energy of evaporating water, has been created by researchers from the Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.

The method could potentially be used to capture the energy released by ponds, harbors, and other bodies of water when the Sun warms them (causing evaporation), according to the researchers.

The newly created prototype generators work by harnessing the movement of a sheet of rubber that’s coated on one side with bacterial spores. As the sheet dries out, it bends, and as the humidity rises, it straightens out — the energy of these movements is then captured and used to drive a generator.

A soil bacterium called Bacillus subtilis wrinkles as it dries out like a grape becoming a raisin, forming a tough, dormant spore. Unlike raisins, which cannot re-form into grapes, spores can take on water and almost immediately restore themselves to their original shape.

Simply increasing the humidity from that of a dry, sunny day to a humid, misty one enabled the flexible, spore-coated plank to generate 1000 times as much force as human muscle, and at least 10 times as much as other materials engineers currently use to build actuators.

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

When we align our objectives with the Divine will, when we strive for the attainment of a worthy goal, when we begin our work with a well defined plan, and when we have ability to work together with others effectively, we have already achieved the trajectory for success. For we know that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Learn how to enjoy boundless opportunity and unlimited progress!

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

When we align our objectives with the Divine will, when we strive for the attainment of a worthy goal, when we begin our work with a well defined plan, and when we have ability to work together with others effectively, we have already achieved the trajectory for success. For we know that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Learn how to enjoy boundless opportunity and unlimited progress!

From womb to tomb we are bound to others past and present … and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future. — Cloud Atlas, David Stephen Mitchell (1960-) Author

In the extremes and the opposites we find the balance. We need a bit of stress to help us acquire a Stress Hardy aspect. We also need a bit of an indulgence in the Voluptuous to appreciate the fullness and lavishness of beauty.

Peace,
Jim

            VOLUPTUOUS

Definition: fond of pleasure; sensual; luxurious

            STRESS HARDY

Definition: able to maintain stability when faced with the state of bodily or mental tension resulting from factors tending to alter an existent equilibrium; emotional flexibility

Balancing Qualities: clarity, relaxation, understanding

Quotes:
The mind can go either direction under stress – toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training. — Frank Herbert (1920-1986) Dune

1. Know your life goals. Decide to concentrate on what is worth being, rather than what is worth having.
2. Stop measuring your life in quantities and begin to think in terms of qualities.
3. Cut back on the “I’ve got to do everything” idea – delegate.
4. Spend some quiet time to read; stare into space.
5. Cultivate a deep friendship.
— Jane Brody (1941 – ) Type “A” Behavior: Don’t Rush Your Life Away
Note: Brody also advises that we cure “hurry sickness” and conquer hostility.

Comments:
• Exercise helps create stress hardiness – all kinds of exercise: physical, emotional (friendship), psychological (reflecting), and spiritual (meditation).
• All qualities are progressive. Compare a current concern to a previous one. Earlier you would have folded, but now it is less of a big deal. It used to be heavy, but now you take it in stride.
• If you are escaping your stress with drugs or alcohol, you are doing so to relax and forget. But you should know your shortcut does not work in the long run. The next time you reach for the temporary solution, do something to move you onto a healthier path.
• There is hard stress and soft stress. What is soft stress to one could be hard stress to another. But you know what you are capable of without too much trouble; and you know what really gets to you. Usually what you think will be hard stress is not too bad once you get into it. Anticipated difficulty is most often worse than the real thing. Soft stress is necessary in developing your quality of stress hardiness. Hard stresses you survive will eventually be good for you too.
• There are real‑life examples of positive qualities under very stressful extremes. Studies done on prisoners of war show the survivors are the people who are the most flexible – people who can assess the situation, eat whatever is available, and do whatever is necessary. The question is where to draw the line. If the decision is survival at all costs, then it would be okay to betray your comrades. The situation dictates the extremes, but the individual dictates the boundaries. This internal/external combination governs whether a normally positive quality is negative, or a normally negative quality is positive.
• In order to measure your individual level of stress hardiness, you need to stare at the edge. The situation can be accumulative, a build‑up of stress; something relatively minor could push you over that edge. On the other hand, if you’re well rested, have a good self‑image, are chemically balanced, healthy, and mature, you may be able to handle even a major blow smoothly.
No one can avoid the difficulties and stresses of life. Nonetheless stress should be managed so you do not get too overwhelmed. Stress, to a greater or lesser degree, is exhilarating and a major player in positive growth. If something is difficult but you are coping, even if you are out of your depth, you are discovering your stress threshold. As you grow, this threshold changes – it expands.
If you are faced with stress beyond your ability, you have no choice but to discover some way to deal with it. You will find you do have some methods. Note what they are and use them to your advantage – even if you dislike them. Until you learn something differently, these methods are all you’ve got. Keep your eyes open and your options varied.

Considerations:
• Forgiveness induces stress hardiness. Somebody being a jerk provokes stress. The greater ability you have to forgive them, the less stress you will feel. If the person is behaving wrongly toward you on purpose, remove yourself from the situation or confront them directly, maybe even legally.
• If your reactions are limited to your defense mechanisms, you are almost required to follow those patterns in nearly all conditions. But if you have an abundance of options to choose from, you can respond more appropriately to individual situations. In order for these multiple options to be of any use, you should develop the presence of mind to choose an alternate action in that crucial split second before your automatic response triggers itself. Expand your repertoire.

Observations:
Stress Inducers
blame, cruelty, deadlines, fear, guilt, holding grudges, being overwhelmed, pet peeves, pressure (internal or external), regret, resentment, and worry

Stress Reducers
acceptance of people and situations, association with a loyal pet, balance between work and relaxation, creativity, deep breathing, entertainment, exercise, friendliness, goal accomplishment, healthy diet, laughter, love, massage, meditation, musical appreciation, playfulness, positive attitude, REM sleep, removing yourself from the presence of stress, rewarding yourself for progress, romance, sensitive touch, sex, stimulating conversation, stretching, and varying your routine

Tips:
• The more control you have the more power you feel.
• Stress‑hardy people like a challenge and view difficulty as opportunity.
• Negative stress can be flipped to positive stress when you realize the growth value inherent in the turmoil.
• If you have a noble reason for doing what you’re doing, you will be highly motivated. Stress, then, becomes more acceptable. Committed people do what they like to do, and do something about the stress they experience.

Symbol: water off a duck’s back

Consider the Source

Nickel titanium, also known as nitinol, is a metal alloy of nickel and titanium, where the two elements are present in roughly equal atomic percentages.

Nitinol alloys exhibit two closely related and unique properties: shape memory and superelasticity (also called pseudoelasticity). Shape memory is the ability of nitinol to undergo deformation at one temperature, then recover its original, undeformed shape upon heating above its “transformation temperature”. Superelasticity occurs at a narrow temperature range just above its transformation temperature; in this case, no heating is necessary to cause the undeformed shape to recover, and the material exhibits enormous elasticity, some 10-30 times that of ordinary metal.

Commercialized nitinol in the form of Flexinol® Actuator Wire can flex and contract when a specific amount of heat or current is applied to it and is made specifically for linear actuators to replace small motors or solenoids thanks to shape memory and a change between the wires weaker, low temperature form (martensitic) and its stronger, high temperature form (austenite).

When the Flexinol® is in its martensitic form, it can be formed and bent into different shapes. However, when an electrical current of ~200mA is applied to the wire, or is heated to ~100C it reverts to austenite form and recovers its previous shape with great force. Additionally, you can anneal it at ~500C (use an industrial furnace or simply a lighter) to whatever shape you would want, next once that current or heat is applied it will return to that new shape.

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

When we align our objectives with the Divine will, when we strive for the attainment of a worthy goal, when we begin our work with a well defined plan, and when we have ability to work together with others effectively, we have already achieved the trajectory for success. For we know that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Learn how to enjoy boundless opportunity and unlimited progress!

For years, one of the best ways to achieve the open-plan bedroom has been to install a Murphy bed—a hinged bed that folds vertically into a wall closet when not in use. Various legends have it that in the early 20th century, William Lawrence Murphy applied for a patent on the device, which he devised in order to turn his bedroom into a parlor to make it socially acceptable for him to entertain ladies. (Or, less salaciously, maybe the idea was for him and his wife to entertain in their modest home.) Either way, the Murphy bed surged in popularity in the ’20s and ’30s when buildings like those in Tudor City on the far east side of Manhattan were developed; special Murphy bed closets made these diminutive studio apartments more livable during waking hours.

The fold-up wall bed has quietly been making a resurgence in recent years, as the world’s population becomes increasingly urban, family sizes are shrinking, more people are choosing to live alone, and the price of real estate in crowded cities becomes more and more unaffordable. Companies around the world are designing beds that disappear into walls, can be stowed via remote control, or are even stored on the ceiling.

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

“The foxes have holes, and the birds of heaven have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” and so it is today for many of his followers. Despite all the warnings about the snares laid by moneylenders, despite the fact that gage mort is literally translated as a pledge to give up one’s life, millions have lost their homes through mortgage exploits, and their quality of life through the service of debt.

Find Out How to Get Your Life Back!

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