Grab Bag Trivia Test:

Q. Half of all 
Americans live within 50 miles of what?

Q. Most boat owners name their boats. What is the most popular boat name requested?

Q. If you were to spell out numbers, how far would you have to go until you would find the letter ‘a’?

Q. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser printers have in common?

Q. What is the only 
food that doesn’t spoil?

Q. Which day are
 there more collect calls than any other day of the year?

Answers can be found at the bottom of this post.

Grab Bag Poll:

What is/are your favorite product(s) that you have purchased from a TV commercial or infomercial… the ones that actually WORK? I have a couple I will be sharing, but I want to gather your favs as well.

Here’s just a sample of some of the “Hall-of-Famers” in this category:

Please share your TV-driven guilty pleasures in the Comment section at the bottom of this page. I will post some or all of the products in an episode to come.

Grab Bag Photoshop School:

I’ve had Adobe Photoshop, in various iterations, on my computers for years and years. I probably use about 2% of it’s capabilities, not because I don’t want to, but because the program is SO flipping complicated.

But I’ve found some websites that offer free tutorials. I have been gazing over them, and trying some that offer methods that will be most useful for me. Here are some examples and the sites that offer them. Each of these tutorial sites offer far more than just the examples I show here.

Click on the PHOTO to link to that specific tutorial, or the WEBSITE NAME to link to their tutorial listings.

 

PSD TUTS+

This specific tutorial might be very useful for those who love their photos, just not the other people in them. 😆

Remove a Person from a Photo

 

 

ALFOART

 

 

 

 

DESIGNIOUS TIMES

 

 

(Check out the original images that were used to make the one above.)

 

 

CREATIVE FAN

 

 

 

PHOTOSHOP TUTORIALS

 

 

WEGRAPHICS

Grab Bag Giddy Grub:

Hmmm… Do certain kinds of food make us happier?? Seems there may be more reasons to reduce our intake of animal protein than dietary and cardiovascular concerns.

Personal statement… I am not a vegetarian. However, in the last few years, I have reduced my intake of red meat to once a month or so, and I have increased my non-animal meals to several a week. I think this is a good thing.

I’ll let the good boys (Drs. Oz and Roizen) at RealAge tell you what’s up:

These dinner sides don’t just make your waistline little. They put a serious smile on your face, too.

We’re talking about carrots and eggplant, squash and lima beans, and just about any other vegetable you can get your hands on. Research confirms that people who eat the most vegetables have the brightest moods.

Load Me Up
In a study, the people who loaded up their diets with vegetables and skipped meat altogether had happier moods compared with the people who included any form of animal protein (fish, chicken, or beef) in their diets. Which was a surprise to the researchers who assumed the brain-friendly fats in fish would be key to emotional well-being. But it turns out that vegetables — as well as plant-based proteins like nuts — have a mood booster of their own called alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). ALA is a plant-based fatty acid that helps keep a lid on an inflammatory compound linked with depression. (Do this for 20 minutes today and you’ll feel happy for 12 hours.)

Plant Joy
Yep, eating lots of vegetables and no meat had lots of emotional upsides in the study — including less anxiety, less depression, and less hostile feelings. But if you’re not ready to go vegetarian, don’t fear. There are plenty of other ways to get some extra happy into your day, like exercising more, stressing less (deep breathing exercises work wonders), and spending extra time doing the things you love. (One more trick: Spend more time with your good-natured pals. Here’s why.)

Grab Bag Remember December:

Back on December 26th of last year, I shared some info on how the little caps at the end of our chromosomes, called telomeres, can dictate the signs of aging (and by that, I mean visible signs, like more  wrinkles, gray hair, as well as brittle bones, heart disease and cancer, just to name a few delights and highlights of the aging process). That post mentioned stress, lack of exercise and a poor diet as the great “telomere guillotines“.

Now, new research shares some very interesting results showing a distinct telomere benefit to those with higher levels of omega-3 consumption… high omega-3 fish or supplements (my choice is Krill Oil). According to a post on RealAge.com;

Telomeres guard DNA the way plastic shoelace tips stop your sneaker laces from fraying…. Scientists suspect that the omega-3s in fish dinners (or lunches, or supplements) activate the body’s antioxidant defenses against telomere-munching free radicals. These healthy omega-3 fats may also boost activity of a telomere-pampering enzyme called telomerase. Which probably helps explain why the volunteers in a recent study — who all had heart disease and were in their 50s, 60s, and 70s — showed such dramatically different telomere length. During the 5-year study, telomeres appeared to shorten three times faster in the people with the lowest blood levels of omega-3s, compared with people with the highest levels.

And here’s a telomere fun concept I found, reported from research at King’s College in London:

King’s College London examined more than twelve hundred non-alike female twins aged between eighteen and eighty years and found those with more than one hundred moles were half as likely to grow osteoporosis as those with less than twenty-five. People with abundance of moles are known to generate white blood cells having long telomeres.

So….. don’t hate your moles, bulk up on salmon and/or omega-3 supplements, and your telomeres should look like this:

Grab Bag Trivia Answers:

Q. Half of all 
Americans live within 50 miles of what? 



A. Their birthplace

Q. Most boat owners name their boats. What is the most popular boat name 
requested? 



A. 
Obsession

Q. If you were to 
spell out numbers, how far would you have to go until you 
would find the letter ‘A’? 


A. One thousand.

Q. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser printers have in common? 



A. All were invented 
by women.

Q. What is the only 
food that doesn’t spoil? 


A. Honey Q. Which day are
there more collect calls than any other day of the year? A. Father’s 
Day

Grab Bag Brain Game:

Yahtzee… without all the noise (there IS bad music, but you can hit MUTE for that) 🙂

Ya! Dice

Grab Bag Funny Stuff:

It’s the 21st Century and….

1. You accidentally enter your PIN on the microwave.

2. You haven’t 
played solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list 
of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 
three.

4. You e-mail the 
person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for 
not staying in touch with friends and family is that they 
don’t have e-mail addresses.

6. You pull up in 
your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is 
home to help you carry in the groceries.

7. Every commercial 
on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.

8. Leaving the house 
without your cell phone, which you didn’t even have the first 
20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

9. You get up in 
the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.

10. You start 
tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

11. You’re reading 
this and nodding and laughing.

12. Even worse, you 
know exactly to whom you are going to forward this 
message.

and a Video Funny Stuff following up on “The King’s Speech”:

Thanks to Soheir K. for this!