Volunteering - An Update

This is a guest post from SimplyForties senior correspondent Carma who's keeping busy and enjoying her retirement!

Another “opportunity” to volunteer came my way this winter. I was asked to serve on the Board of Directors of our small community within a community and I said I would. My dear husband took his turn at this job and his efforts benefited our development with some new measures and refinement of others already in place. He has continued to serve by being willing to serve on some other committees when asked. So I thought I had better take my turn.

One of the limitations on people willing to serve is that they be year-round residents as it is felt that the seasonal people would not be on hand should an emergency arise during the summer. This definitely limits the number of available people. With certain jobs, my opinion would be that a seasonal resident could function just fine, especially given the ability we have these days for instant communications should a vote become necessary. This is something I may try to address during my term on the Board. Ah well - that’s another subject.

So far we have had one meeting and I found it interesting. I suspect that the issues having to do with grounds maintenance will usually be those which take up most of the meeting time as we pay for lawn care with our association dues and it never seems very satisfactory. The job of Course and Grounds Chairman is not one I aspire to and don’t envy the person who holds it.

My job on the Board, sort of by default, is that of Treasurer. We have a management company which provides the bridge from one board to the next and which actually handles most of the financial business of the community, but the Treasurer has to sign checks and stay aware of whether we are maintaining our budget or finding ways to pay when we exceed the budget. I sign the checks and generally keep an eye on expenses. Income is pretty well set within the limits of our association dues.

I find that we only meet every other month unless something out of the ordinary arises - so that is only six times a year for a meeting, but the time devoted to the job outside of meetings is also part of the package.

My second job is that of chairman of the Social Committee. Our community has a series of golf tournaments followed by dinner during the winter season, which runs from October through April. Dates must be reserved with the club and couples found to host each of them. I’ve already decided that any month without a volunteer host and hostess will be cancelled. As our population ages, we have many more people coming to the dinner than playing in the golf scramble in the afternoon, so perhaps some of those events will gradually morph into dinner only.

In addition to the monthly get-togethers we have a block party, usually in the fall, to welcome back the seasonal people and to meet and greet old and new friends. Everyone brings something to eat and their own drinks - we set up tables in one of our dead-end courts and gather round to eat, drink and talk for awhile, which gives residents a chance to reconnect.

Because ours is a golf course community, we have several working Boards of Directors floating around. The Country Club itself has a Board, the residential community as a whole has an Association Board, and each of the three smaller communities like ours has its own Board. Overkill? Perhaps, but I don’t think ours is unusual in this. There are details that have to be dealt with in any group housing venture. Every condo assocation has a board, too. It is apparently the only way to insure that conditions will contribute to the enjoyment of this retired life.

So, if you are asked to serve on your community board - don’t automatically refuse but be aware that you will be contributing to the good of the whole in a positive way.

Keep Fit in Your Home Office With 8 Simple Tips

This is a guest post by Lloyd Burrell. He writes reviews for people who want to buy office desks: l shaped desks, corner models, compact workstations, computer desks and office reception desks.

Rare is the office where you can stand and do your work some of the time. Fashion designers may stand at their drafting boards part of the time. Artists may leap up if inspired and walk around contemplating. Most of us sit on our derrieres for 8 hours, because this is the only way that we can work at computers and use all of our latest electronic devices. If you do sit at your desk for long periods, then most certainly, you will feel numb in certain parts of your body like your legs and your rear. Arms may also start to feel tired and your neck can get stiff.

Here are some simple and easy to implement tips for rejuvenating your tired and aching body parts and most will not surprise your co-workers if they happen to wander by your cubicle on the way to the water cooler.  Depending upon the amount of space you have, some of these exercises will also help on long plane flights Many can be done while in place, jammed into your airline's narrow seat.

1) Posture, posture and stand up straight! Your mother probably told you to stop slouching and this holds true for all adults at the office. Slouching back into your padded leather office chair will get you nowhere except a stiff neck, tingly butt and pins and needles in your elbows. Keep your vertebrae aligned and they'll be good to you all day. Adjust your computer monitor or any other video screen so that you look straight at it. Between your chair and the monitor you will be able to set yourself up for a good line of sight.

2) Change headphones from time to time. If headphones are tight your ears will feel pressure and start to tingle or get hot. You can change the side that the earpiece is on or literally change sets of headphones. Those light ones that loop over your ear are nice. They look pretty good and don't mess up your hair.

3) Rearrange your desk every now and then. Repetitive movement when you reach for things over and over again can cause muscle strain. This is similar to keyboard use and your forearms, which are subject to carpal tunnel syndrome. For the latter, circle your wrists and flex your fingers. This is a good one for the plane ride, too.

4) Move around the office several times a day. You can walk to the water cooler or down the hall. Anything to stretch out the old muscles. This is important on a plane. You can do a few private stretches while waiting in line for the bathroom.

5) Stretch at the office whenever you can. Shake out the tiredness from your limbs but don't overdue it. Going from sitting in your chair for 4 hours straight to jogging around the office could be too much if you aren't used to it.

6) Always drink plenty of fluids (pure water is fine) and take a breathe of fresh air or a brief walk, if you can. Even if it's raining outside or cold you can walk around your building and stretch out those legs.

7) Nutrition is another easy way of keeping fit at the office. Eat healthy and avoid the usual sugary snacks. Your body will stay fresh longer if you beg off artificial preservatives.

8) A simple yet effective exercise is shrugging your shoulders. Shrug upwards then shrug downwards. Don't forget to breathe. Repeat several times. You can rotate your shoulders as well.

Do spinal stretches while in your chair. Sit upright and clasp your hands behind your head. Exhale and twist to the side. Crane your head but not like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. Hold and inhale, then face the front again. Change sides and repeat about twenty times. Do this one about three times a day if you can and your upper body will get toned and you'll have more energy.

Ease neck tension by exhaling and dropping your chin towards your chest. Inhale as you rest your right ear on your shoulder (close as you can get) then exhale and return your chin to its normal position. Repeat for the other side and do the exercise a few times more. Practice breathing deeply by placing your feet flat on the floor and sitting upright. Inhale and then exhale four times from your stomach area.

Try to fit in as many of these easy exercises as you can. At the end of the day you'll have enough energy left to walk out the office door with a bit of a spring to your step!

A Couple of Lebanese-American Recipes

This is a guest post by Lisa Shoreland is currently a resident blogger at Go College, where recently she's been researching graduate nursing scholarships as well as human resource scholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys creative writing, practicing martial arts, and taking weekend trips.

I always considered myself blessed for growing up in an ethnically diverse family, especially when it came time to eat during the holidays. My mother’s side of the family, who were of British and Irish descent always served up classic Americana. Fresh homemade pies, turkey, and ham were always on the menu. I remember being intrigued by my great-grandmother’s pressure cooker, what wonders of the palette that magical device could serve up!

My father’s family was a little different though. My grandfather is half-Italian, half-Polish and my grandmother full blooded Lebanese, and each one of those heritages had its place at our dinner table. Sitting next to the Polish kielbasa and halupkis were the Italian rigatonis, pickled eggplant, and artichoke hearts, and then of course the Lebanese hummus, mammoul cookies, and kibbe. Although no manner of words could ever describe how wonderful of a cook my grandmother was, I do think it honors her to share a couple of her recipes here.

While these cookies are fairly traditional, some people may find the kibbe to be a little too exotic for their tastes. It is somewhat similar to pate being made out of ground lamb, but is typically eaten raw. (I guess it’s also commonly cooked, although I’ve personally never had it this way.) It is eaten by scooping it up with Syrian bread and dipping it into olive oil. Unfortunately, I don’t have her recipe for making Syrian bread, but I imagine pita makes acceptable substitute. If you prefer to eat the kibbe cooked, just roll it up like a meatball and lightly fry it in a little olive oil. Consuming raw meat carries some risks, make sure to ask your butcher if the ground lamb you are buying has been processed on equipment that has come into contact with any raw pork. If you are unsure, don’t take a chance. Kibbe’s not the same cooked, but I hear that it’s still quite delicious.

Lebanese Mammoul Cookies

Ingredients

Filling

3 ½ cups of chopped walnuts

½ tsp of cinnamon

½ Stick of melted butter

½ cup of sugar

½ tsp of nutmeg

2 tbsp of vanilla

Dough

6 cups of cream of wheat

½ cup of oil

½ tsp of cardamom

1 cup of flour

1 ½ cups unsalted butter

Pinch of salt

Yeast

1 package of dry yeast

½ tsp of sugar

½ tsp of flour

¼ cup of warm water

Steps

1.     Mix the dough ingredients together and let stand overnight.

2.     Mix the yeast ingredients together and allow it to rise.

3.     Mix the filling ingredients together.

4.     Add the dough to the yeast mixture adding in 1 ½ cups of warm water.

5.     Cut the dough into small rectangular pieces. Smear each piece with a thin layer of filling. Roll into a tube. Sprinkle with sugar.

6.     Place the cookies on a baking pan and bake for 15 minutes at 400 degrees or lightly browned.

Lebanese Kibbe

Ingredients

2 lbs ground lamb

2 ½ cups bulghur wheat

2 onions

1 tbsp of salt

1tsp of black pepper

½ tsp of red pepper

¼ tsp of cinnamon

2 tbsp raw mint

Steps

1.     Rinse the bulghur wheat and cover in cold water. Let it sit for a half hour.

2.     Strain the wheat through cheesecloth to remove excess water.

3.     Mix all ingredients except raw mint together in a bowl, using your hands. Keep a second bowl of ice water nearby and continuously wet your hands while mixing. The end result should have a consistency somewhat like a raw meatball, or meatloaf.

4.     Form the kibbe into a loaf. Finely chop the mint and sprinkle on top.

Moving House: How to Keep the Cost Down

A frequent guest poster here on SimplyForties, this post is by Alban who is a personal finance writer at Home Loan Finder, a home loan comparison website.

Moving house can cost you a lot of your time, but when it comes to safely moving your possessions and getting your new home just right, you’re willing to go over the time budget. However, moving house can be just as draining on your financial resources and to avoid adding cash flow stress to an already busy and stressful time, you need to move smart, to keep your costs down.

1 – Move on the weekend

Not only are you looking at costs associated with physically moving your belongings into your new home, but your time costs money too when you take time off of work. As a result, if you take days off during the week to organise the move and transport boxes and furniture, you are costing yourself money if you are paid by the hours you work, or you are losing valuable personal days if you are on a salary.

Instead, get organised after work or on weekends and if you have to move over the course of two weekends instead of one week, you are spending a few extra days, but you’re saving a lot of lost earnings.

2 – Do as much as you can

There is little doubt that moving house is going to require some outside help whether you hire professional movers or you simply hire a truck or a trailer. At the same time, you can keep your moving costs down by doing as much as you can yourself, and by enlisting friends and family to help too.

A DIY move is by far the cheapest way to go in terms of finances but it can be much more time consuming unless you have friends or family members with trailers or utes who can quickly and easily move the large items, or a lot of boxes at once. At the same time you should also be doing your best to load cars to their limits and have friends and family do the same.

If you’re wondering whether doing a DIY move is the best option, do some quick – but realistic – calculations to work out how many trips you’ll need to make and how much fuel that will cost. Then consider whether it would be cheaper to hire a truck or a professional moving company.

3 – Hire equipment

If you find that it is cheaper to hire a large truck, you’ll be able to make one or two trips to and from your new home, rather than endless trekking back and forth in your small car, poking and prodding your belongings until they fit in your little hatch.

The keep the costs down when you hire equipment, work out exactly how much you have to move and how far you will be going. For example, if you’ve bought a new fridge, a new bedroom setting and are throwing away your old couch rather than moving it, then a lot of the large heavy items are being delivered to your new home and you won’t need to pay for a very large truck to move your boxes all in one go.

However, if you have a lot of large items to move, look to hire a truck with an automated tailgate to lift items in and out for you to save your back and reduce the risk of items being broken. Plus, make sure you book a truck or trailer well in advance to avoid the higher costs which can come from a last minute decision.

4 – Repair your rental

If you are moving out of a rental property, make sure you complete any small repairs such as plastering painting or gardening to fix up the property and take care of any damage or wear and tear you may have caused. This can then result in a positive final inspection and help ensure you get your whole bond back, rather than forfeiting the bond because of some minor bumps and nicks.

5 – Hire smart

If you don’t have any big and burly friends who are available to help you move, then you should consider hiring professionals to make the job easier and safer for you and your belongings. When you are choosing a professional removalist, get the most for your money by shopping around for the best company based on their reputation, and don’t discount word of mouth.

A professional moving company will also have insurance, to protect and replace any items which are lost or damaged in the move – which is more than most friends will offer. Professional movers will wither charge by the hour, or by the size of your house – that is, how much there is to move. Your decision on pricing should be determined by your moving route, and whether there is likely to be a lot of lost time in traffic, if you live close to the city for example.

You can also save money on professional movers if you are organised when they arrive. Have all of your boxes and items ready to be moved, and keep people, pets and children out of the way – this is where friends and family can come in handy, in packing and cleaning, or directing and babysitting.

6 – Reduce the move

To save you both time and money when you move house, make sure you are only moving the items you need. When you move house it is the perfect time to get rid of all the things you don’t want, need or use – and you need to be honest.

Look at possessions and furniture with missing or broken parts and decide whether they’ll ever be repaired. Cull your clothes and shoes by getting rid of everything you haven’t worn in the last 12 months because if it doesn’t fit you it’s just taking up space, and costing you time and money.

You’ll feel refreshed as a load lifts from your shoulders when you are able to clear away years of hoarding, laziness and forgotten junk, in place of a new start in a new home.

Want to Learn More About Alternative Energy?

Brian Jenkins, a member of the BrainTrack.com writing team, contributes content about many different education topics, including college degree programs in environmental science. For more information about BrainTrack, check out our Facebook page.

Alternative energy has been described as energy derived from sources that don't use up nonrenewable resources or harm the environment. Alternative energies includes solar, hydropower, biomass, wind, geothermal energy, and hydrogen power. Other, more unusual sources of energy are also being investigated. For example, a company called Fibrowatt constructed the world's first power station that generates electricity by using poultry poop as a fuel!

In order for alternative energies to become mainstream people must learn how they work and what benefits they have over fossil fuels. Let's take a look at some of the best online resources for learning about alternative energy:

Learning About Renewable Energy

This web page is provided by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). It covers a wide range of renewable energy sources, including geothermal, biomass, wind, solar, hydrogen, geothermal, ocean, and hydropower. It also provides information about energy delivery and storage basics, using renewable energy, and advanced vehicles fuels basics.

Maine Solar House

The owners of this home have been harvesting the sun since 1995. Their website provides information on topics such as solar electricity, solar design, solar heat, and solar power backup. Learn about solar powered houses from people who have actually live in one!

Biomass Rules, LLC News

This useful web page covers numerous topics and provides a large number of articles on biomass. If you're not a biomass expert, you will be after spending some time on this site.

U.S. Department of Energy

The DOE's website provides extensive information about renewable energy sources. Sit back, relax, and enjoy some cheese puffs as you watch videos on subjects such as geothermal heat pumps!

Water Science for Schools

The U.S. Geological Survey features its "Hydroelectric power: How it works" article. In addition to learning about how hydroelectric dams work, folks can learn about the water cycle, the physical and chemical properties of water, how water is used in the U.S., and water conservation.

Exploring Ways to Use Biomass Energy

This is another informative web page provided by the U.S. Department of Energy. Biomass is used to generate electricity, fuel vehicles, and develop bio-based products. It can come from many different sources, including garbage, wood, alcohol fuels, and landfill gasses. Biomass is commonly plant matter grown to produce heat or generate electricity. If you heat your home with wood or bio-based pellets, then you are using biomass energy.

Solar Today Magazine

This magazine is produced by the nonprofit American Solar Energy Society (ASES). The magazine has been published for more than 23 years. Visitors stay current on the latest technology policies, advances, and analysis. The magazine reports to being the leading renewable energy magazine for consumers and professionals.

SolarPower.org

Interested in learning how to create your own home solar system? Check out this website.

Find Solar

Solar heating (or solar thermal) systems allow you to harness energy from the sun in a practical and cost effective way. An effective system will collect up to 70 percent of the sun's energy that reaches the system and transfer it to you. This website explains how the systems work and offers tips for installing solar hot water systems. The website is a partner of the American Solar Energy Society.

Solar Power Financing Options

Interested in obtaining an energy efficiency mortgage that applies to solar power systems? There are FHA and VA energy efficient mortgages. Fannie Mae and the EPA, via its ENERGY STAR program, provide home loans that are available for solar water and space heating systems and solar photovoltaic electricity systems.

These are some of the top educational Web sources about alternative energy. Check them out if you're interested in more environmentally friendly ways to power and heat your home.

The Green Life: Eco-Friendly Food Tips

This is a guest post by Lisa Shoreland who is currently a resident blogger at Go College. Recently she’s been researching  school grants and blogging about student life. In her spare time, she enjoys creative writing and hogging her boyfriend’s PlayStation 3.  To keep her sanity she enjoys practicing martial arts and bringing home abandoned animals.

When you stop to think about it, there’s a lot more to food than just eating. Food is made from specific ingredients, most of which are grown, modified, processed, and preserved – any number of steps can be included in the process of making food. Then there’s packaging, marketing, and distribution, which often involves driving long distances just for the convenience of having a certain off-season produce item available in a grocery superstore. And after you consume your food, you’re usually left with packaging to dispose of and leftovers to store or throw out. The processes behind the simple concept of food are complex and often harmful to the environment. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to make everything about the process of eating more eco-friendly. The following tips can help you select, purchase, eat, and clean up after foods in an environmentally friendly way – and you can enjoy healthy, delicious meals at the same time.

Buying Eco-Friendly Food

As much as possible, buy organic and local foods. You should have access to a local farmers’ market at least during the summer months and maybe more consistently if you live in a warm climate. By purchasing your food from a farmers’ market, you’re helping the environment in several ways:

·       You avoid the harmful effects caused by mass food transportation, such as fuel waste and air pollution.

·       You avoid causing damage to the environment due to pesticides and other chemicals used on inorganic produce.

·       You support the local organic industry, helping it to grow and attract more responsible consumers.

You may also be able to join an organic co-op or buying club, which provides you with seasonal fresh produce year-round for a fee. You can find your own local co-op by selecting your state from the online food co-op directory.

Preparing Meals

Try not to waste water or energy when you make your meals. This can be as simple as defrosting items in the refrigerator instead of running them under warm water. It’s also helpful to avoid running water while you prepare produce for cooking. For example, rather than keeping the water running as you clean ears of sweet corn, you might fill a small bucket with water and use that to rinse any residual silk or pieces of husk off of the corn.

Disposing of Packaging and Waste

If you have any space at all in your yard, start a compost pile. Simply stack cinder blocks to form a low-walled square and start collecting organic waste to create compost for your garden. Instead of throwing out peelings, husks, shells, and other waste from produce, throw them onto your compost pile and enjoy the benefits in the spring when you start using the compost as garden fertilizer. When you dispose of packaging, make sure it’s as compacted as you can make it. This means collapsing boxes and other large items to minimize the size of your trash bag – every little bit helps. It’s also important to recycle what you can, according to your neighborhood’s policies.

Storing Leftovers

Try to avoid buying storage containers for your food. Instead, clean out and reuse plastic fast food containers. This is a twofold environment saver: you won’t be supporting the plastic container industry and you’ll be saving something that would normally be thrown into a landfill.

By trying out some of these tips in your everyday eating routine, you can increase the healthiness of your food and prevent environmental damage. You might even bring a friend along the next time you go shopping at the local farmers’ market – buying in bulk is another great way to minimize packaging waste.