No matter how much structure we create in our lives, no matter how many good habits we build, there will always be things that we cannot control — and if we let them, these things can be a huge source of anger, frustration and stress.
The simple solution: learn to go with the flow.
Zenhabits
Have you ever heard or read about checking your “local co-op” or “county extension” office in regards to gardening, lawn care, or agriculture? It is in reference to a larger national network that provides all sorts of education and assistance to you about the environment and agriculture. Why is it the best garden resource? Because you have experts in your local area that you can call for assistance, at no charge. Flowers, lawncare, pest control, vegetables, it doesn’t matter. If you can grow it, they can help.
Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES)
The Cooperative Extension System is a nationwide, non-credit educational network. Each U.S. state and territory has a state office at its land-grant university and a network of local or regional offices. These offices are staffed by one or more experts who provide useful, practical, and research-based information to agricultural producers, small business owners, youth, consumers, and others in rural areas and communities of all sizes.
There are two kinds of dietary fiber, soluble, and insoluble. Soluble fiber can mix somewhat in water; it is not completely dissolved, but is in solvation. It creates kind of a goo, or gel. Insoluble fiber does not mix with water. Both provide roughage by helping things move along in your digestive system. Fiber is to your lower gastro-intestinal system like a bottle brush to a bottle. Keeps the gunk from sticking to the sides as it cleans.
Fiber 101: Soluble vs. Insoluble Fiber
popurls
popurls is the dashboard for the latest web-buzz, a single page that encapsulates up-to-the-minute headlines from the most popular sites on the internet.
Mirepoix is the French name for a combination of onions, carrots and celery (either common Pascal celery or celeriac). Mirepoix, either raw, roasted or sautéed with butter, is the flavor base for a wide number of dishes, such as stocks, soups, stews and sauces. Mirepoix is known as the holy trinity of French cooking.
Here is a basic mirepoix recipe from Recipezaar.
Alltop
(taken from about Alltop) We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. We’ve grouped these collections — ”aggregations” — into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, celebrity gossip, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh. At each Alltop site, we display the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single page — we call this “single-page aggregation.”
You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points — they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In this way, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation.”
Alltop [via Web Worker Daily]
Some of you who read this blog still smoke.
AHA Scientific Position Cigarette smoking is the most important preventable cause of premature death in the United States. It accounts for nearly 440,000 of the more than 2.4 million annual deaths. Cigarette smokers have a higher risk of developing several chronic disorders. These include fatty buildups in arteries, several types of cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (lung problems). Atherosclerosis (buildup of fatty substances in the arteries) is a chief contributor to the high number of deaths from smoking. Many studies detail the evidence that cigarette smoking is a major cause of coronary heart disease, which leads to heart attack.
Just quit. You know it’s bad. Read more from the American Health Association here:
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4545
In my household, the kids say to their Mom on their way out the door “Bye, love you.” She responds with “Bye, love you too.” It’s said almost the same way as in “Don’t forget your umbrella, it’s raining out.” “Ok, got it, thanks.”
I grew up with a hug, a kiss on the cheek, and someone standing by the window or door to wave me off, as well as the “I love you”. So this interaction seems somewhat foreign to me, almost as if it’s the wrong way to do it. Of course it’s not the wrong way, but interestingly, it’s my first reaction, and I’m still not use to it, not even after these past three years that my fiancee and I have been together. I’ve discovered that it’s part of a somewhat dysfunctional family system when I was growing up. More posts on that later to be sure, but this point is a simple one. My perception is that the interaction between Mom and Daughter ought to be more involved, like I had known as a child. The fact of the matter is it doesn’t have to be. The interaction isn’t wrong. My “how I think this should be” is wrong. That’s an example of how thinking can be distorted by dysfunctional family systems. The dysfunction here is not the actual interaction between parent and child. It is that I believe I am right in my thinking, and I think it should be done that way. I think I am right because I am an adult, and having had children I know the right way and the wrong way. It’s the same way my parents raised me. It’s right. I know. Just ask me.
Socrates said “the unexamined life is not worth living.” As I examine mine, I see things I hadn’t noticed before. And I can fix the broken things too. That is pretty empowering. If you look at your self closely, and honestly, it’s easy. Really. Open yourself up to it.
I thought I’d begin with what this blog is about. For some reason, that became difficult. In the face of difficulty, maybe it’s best to keep it simple. So if you’ll forgive me, it’s a modern renaissance blog. It’s about discovering the world within and the world without. I hope you learn as much as I do from it. –Ken
Renaissance Man. Also called Universal Man, Italian Uomo Universale, an ideal that developed in Renaissance Italy from the notion expressed by one of its most accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), that “a man can do all things if he will.” The ideal embodied the basic tenets of Renaissance Humanism, which considered man the centre of the universe, limitless in his capacities for development, and led to the notion that men should try to embrace all knowledge and develop their own capacities as fully as possible. Thus the gifted men of the Renaissance sought to develop skills in all areas of knowledge, in physical development, in social accomplishments, and in the arts. The ideal was most brilliantly exemplified in Alberti—who was an accomplished architect, painter, classicist, poet, scientist, and mathematician and who also boasted of his skill as a horseman and in physical feats—and in Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), whose gifts were manifest in the fields of art, science, music, invention, and writing.
“Renaissance Man.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 23 Feb 2008, 07:56 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 27 Feb 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Renaissance_Man&oldid=193452318>.
Dimidium facti qui coepit habet - Half is done when the beginning is done. ~Horace