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We are all — like it or not — job searchers.
It doesn't matter whether we're employed or unemployed. The modern working world shifts swiftly and unexpectedly. One moment we're secure, the next we're pounding the pavement, so keeping our minds tuned to job search best practices is a wise and cheap insurance policy.
Allow me to help you be wise and cheap. (Or something like that.)
I recently came across a list of sensible job interview tips by Ford Myers, a career coach and author of "Get the Job You Want, Even When No One's Hiring."
One tip in particular struck me: "Set the stage for effective follow-up. Developing your follow-up strategy BEFORE the interview will even enhance your behavior DURING the interview."
(Those of you who already have a job should think about this advice in terms of a meeting with your boss, whether it's an annual review or just a chat about an idea you would like to pursue. It's as applicable to that as it is to a job interview.)
I spoke with Myers, and he said this: "What most people do is they just show up for an interview. They haven't even done any research in most cases; they haven't studied about the person or the company or the culture. It's a huge mistake. It's like lambs to the slaughter."
So to make sure you properly prepare, think about how you want to position yourself once the interview is over.
"Let's say the interview goes really well," Myers said. "What do I want to get out of it? What is my objective? Most people say, 'I just hope I come out of it alive.' That's not good enough."
Most of us have heard the goal of a first interview is to secure a second interview. That's correct, but you need something new to talk about in that second meeting.
Myers suggests you think of yourself less as a job candidate and more as a consultant. Ask probing questions during the initial interview: "What are the challenges, what are the needs, what are the company's biggest problems, what have they tried, what has worked or not worked. When you come back for the second interview, you're going to walk in with a presentation which is based on the notes you took and everything you learned at the first interview."
This is about trying to be in control of the process. You don't let an interview happen; you grab hold of any part you can and lead it in a favorable direction.
"When the interview ends, the worst thing you can do is say, 'OK, I hope to hear from you, bye,'" Myers said. "You want to maintain control. You say, 'I see our meeting is coming to an end. Can you please tell me what the next steps are and when I can expect to hear from you? And if I don't hear from you by next Tuesday, can I call you?' You want to keep the ball in your court."
And if the interview tanks, don't surrender: "Say after 20 minutes, the interviewer says you're just not the guy for this job — do you just get up and leave? No. Ask the person, 'Can you tell me why?' You might learn something. Or maybe they say you don't have enough experience working with outside clients, and you say, 'Well, actually I have a lot of experience with outside clients. May I tell you about it?' Then you tell them something that got missed in the interview, and five minutes later you're back in the game."
Maybe both you and the interviewer acknowledge you're not the best fit for the job, but you happen to know a person who would be ideal. Don't be afraid to recommend someone else. You're not getting the job anyway, but you could leave a remarkably good impression on the interviewer.
"They might say, 'You're really an unusual guy, I like the fact that you have a positive attitude,'" Myers said. "They might say, 'Hey, I left a company a year ago, and I happen to know they're expanding and looking for someone with your particular background. Why don't I call them.'"
The bottom line is you want to squeeze every bit of value and potential out of the interview. Maybe you get a second interview and walk away with the knowledge to impress. Maybe you don't get a second interview but at least get some sound feedback. Or you make a good connection with the interviewer, knowing that every good connection helps.
This is zooming in on one element of job searching, an element that can help immensely with the process. It gets you thinking strategically and playing out different scenarios.
And, as I mentioned earlier, it's applicable to both workers and job seekers. There have been many times in my career when I've met with someone to suggest an idea and walked away with no clear concept of how the idea resonated or when I might get more feedback.
If you don't think ahead, you lose control of the situation.
"Whether you're working in a McDonald's or as CEO of a company, you want to have these skills and be thinking about these things," Myers said. "It's not about job search; it's about career management. Nobody's going to manage your career for you."
So take job search advice when you can get it, whether employed or unemployed. It's my favorite kind of insurance policy — wise and cheap.


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Building Contractor Directory For > Delaware > Hockessin
Builders in Hockessin, Delaware
Find Hockessin, Delaware DE local builder, building companies, and building contractors near you for residential and commercial building repair or new building. Get free estimates, bids, and quotes.
Use the builder directory below as a guide to compare, shop, and find a commercial or residential builder to build your house, business, or home improvement project. Use the Nearby Cities links to find additional builders near you in your area.
Use the Submit Project button above for the fastest, most efficient way to get free estimates. Instead of wasting time contacting building contractors individually, take 2 minutes to fill out our simple form, and anonymously email it to multiple building contractors simultaneously. Then you will start receiving free quotes from multiple building contractors in your area. You can also click on Login to edit your project(s), and manage the bids you receive. There is no better way to do your comparison shopping.
Preferred Builders in Hockessin, Delaware
Jeffs Paint Works
Phone: 609-704-7532, Ask For: Jeff Haak
Description: With experience in painting for over 15 years, our goal is to provide quality, professional service for "all" your painting needs.
It is our mission to exceed customer expectations and to provide peace of mind through knowledge and exper
Delaware Valley Painting Inc.
Phone: 267 252 6991, Ask For: Jay Cooper
Fax: 215 826 9129
Description: Quality interior and exterior painting at affordable pricing. Residential, commercial and institutional. You name it we finish it. Also we have a finish carpentry crew and carpet crew.
Other Builders in Hockessin, Delaware
Custom Fit Builders
Sobieski J F Mechanical Contractors Inc
Active Rooofing & Siding
Deck Guy
|Available Options
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
NIC at Sandpoint Proctors:
• Will ensure that tests are kept in a secure place, such as a locked drawer or file cabinet to protect the integrity of the tests.
• Will provide a secure quiet environment for the students in a location that can be observed at any time.
• Will always ask to see a photo ID before the student is allowed to test.
• Will follow the directions given on the tracking form completely.
• Will open the calculator and check for notes or written material on the inside of the lid.
• Graphing calculators must be specifically listed on the tracking form by the instructor. Otherwise only 4 function or scientific calculators may be used.
• Will report any irregularities to the instructor.
• Will not be related to the student, i.e. a family member.


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Battlefield 3's new armoured Kill expansion, out later this month, reminds me why I only play maps that have tanks in them, and why I only drive tanks when I'm on them.
I mean, um, sure, you could be that tiny little man running around an enormous map with your skin just sitting there all ready to get shot to pieces...or you could be the guy in the 25-ton tank driving around blowing shit up.
Armored Kill is out, well...if you've got a Battlefield premium subscription, it's out on September 4 for PS3 and September 11 for PC and 360. If you don't, it's out on September 18 and 25 respectively.


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I admit, I haven't been using my beta access to its fullest since I got it a couple of months ago. The other night, however, a tweet came across my timeline regarding friending options and so I updated my game and hopped in to test it out. Afterwards, the person I was partied with and myself decided to fuss around with pet battles. I was flying around to look for critters to battle with my Spectral Kitten, listening to dance music very LOUDLY, when I heard it.
It was a woman's voice saying something.
I blinked and looked around. Since I was still in Stormwind limits, I figured it must be an event with buggy zone sound. I asked in party chat if they had heard what I did and they said no. I wondered what it might be but I looked back in my chat log and saw this:
The warm embrace of Tarecgosa's presence encircles you.
For anyone that doesn't have a completed legendary staff, this is the text emote that the staff randomly pops up from time to time. I've always really loved that little touch; I saved Tarecgosa's essence and now it is a part of me. It is there to comfort me when I need it. It's like a little hug when I'm doing stuff in-game. My question then was, "Does this mean there are voice emotes as part of the staff now?"
Due to the addictiveness of pet battles I was in beta for another three hours. My emote popped up again and then I very distinctly heard her voice.
"Your deeds will live on forever in the memory of the blue dragonflight."
I admit, I started freaking out (in a good way) at that point. I started doing a little digging and it turns out that according to the two MMO-Champion threads that I found (that only got a couple of responses, what gives?) that the staff has a random choice of 5-6 voice emotes when the staff says something to you. It seems like this little easter egg was added in a content patch at the end of July. I am really stoked about this, obviously, as a staff wielder and a dragon fanatic.
But what does it mean? My boyfriend pointed out that they've always done little Easter egg stuff with legendaries even after their relevance. (Remember what happened when you brought Atiesh into Shade of Aran's room?) I want to think that it might be something significant; some additional lore might be down the road or us Dragonwrath holders might be allowed to keep our staves longer into the expansion. I know that this probably isn't true and it breaks my heart to think that I will have to put down my wonderful staff in a couple weeks; I won't hear Tarecgosa's voice again unless I'm AFKing. This is just another regret along with having to weapon-swap just to turn into a blue dragon as well.
Getting a Dragonwrath was such a game-changing experience for me and not just because I had a piece of lore strapped to my back. My experience getting the staff and all the feelings that went along with was so important to me and validated a lot of things I felt about myself – that I was good enough, that I deserved this. Add to this the fact that Blizzard finally decided to give a little more story to some of the female characters in their world (even if Tarecgosa's time in this plane was limited) and I was a part of that? Mind-blowing.
So many times in game, hearing voices has meant that something evil was lurking around the corner, undermining our confidence in ourselves, our friends, our sanity. This is a distinct change from that and I am glad for it. I know this won't mean much to most people, that it is just a collection of pixels, but it warms my heart. There is a wonderful lady dragon's spirit watching over my gnome, protecting her. Cheering her on from another realm. I know that I will miss having this constant presence gone from my game after it being part of my everyday life for six months now. Still, I have a feeling she won't be very far from my thoughts.
When I was flying up to the Skyfire to go to Pandaria this morning, I heard her whisper to me.
"Never give up."
I won't.


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Monday, July 5, 2010
healthy living
more matchbook labels from my collection here. plus, a little history.
wow, this is my 499th post! give away to follow?!
take care!
8 comments:
- nath said...
wow, lovely collections! and congrats 499!
- July 6, 2010 at 1:32 AM
- gina said...
Yes yes!
Happy to have been along for
part of the ride - 499 and
- July 6, 2010 at 6:12 AM
- prof. tim said...
Now we need 500 matchbook covers for the 500th post. Do it! Your fans demand something great.
- July 6, 2010 at 7:36 PM
- Kickcan and Conkers said...
I have these too (hence my kickcan & conkers banner). Love them!
- July 7, 2010 at 8:50 AM
- kindra said...
thanks everyone——it's so nice to know you all visit here.
gina: are you THE Gina who makes the surprise balls? do you have an email?
Deborah: they're the best gems, right?! where did you find yours?
- July 7, 2010 at 1:27 PM
- gina said...
Yes I'm the maker of
surprise balls. Funny
thing... I was trying to
find YOUR e-mail address!
Looking forward to hearing
from you!
- July 8, 2010 at 11:00 AM
- Kickcan and Conkers said...
I found mine on ebay :)
- July 20, 2010 at 3:41 PM
- screen printed t-shirts said...
You've got such a great eye! This blog is filled to the brim with such inspiring graphical bits and pieces. Could spend hours on here! :)
- January 22, 2013 at 9:34 AM


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Streamstown LAP
Streamstown Local Area Plan Documents. Click on the links to view the PDF's.
This Local Area Plan has been extended until the 9th Febraury 2019.
Local area plans and variations can be purchased at the following costs:
Full printed suite €100 euro (includes Map, Report, SEA and AA) (PDF)
CD's €15 (PDF)
LAP Map €25 (PDF)
A3 Colour Booklet €50 (PDF)
A4 Colour Booklet €35 (PDF)
A4 Black/White €20 (PDF)
Small miscellaneous documents €10 (PDF)
Contact Us
Telephone (01) 8905543
Email [email protected]
You can also visit us at the Planning Counter, County Hall. Main Street, Swords, Co. Dublin – Monday to Friday from 9:30am to 4:30pm.


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Gunners loanee wants permanent deal
Brought to you by
Arsenal midfielder Denilson has said he wants to remain with Sao Paulo rather than return to north London at the end of the season reports talkSPORT.
The 23-year-old Brazilian star is currently enjoying a season-long loan spell back in his homeland, but endured a difficult introduction after he was sent off twice in his opening three games for his new club.
After five years at the Emirates Stadium, Gunners boss Arsene Wenger allowed Denilson to leave in favour of a move back to South America, and it is unclear at this stage whether or not the player remains in Arsenal's long-term plans.
Either way, Denilson has made clear his intentions to impress in the final six months of his loan spell, in a bid to win a permanent deal at Sao Paulo.
"Personally, I'm very sad that the season will finish this way," he said in an interview with Radio Globo. "Of course there's still a game remaining and there is hope for the Libertadores.
"I still have six more months, I hope to cool off a little, enjoy the holidays with my family, to return more professional and get things right next year."News Now - Sport News


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Team GB: Who will make the final squad?
David Beckham set tongues wagging today when he threw his hat into the ring for the Team GB captaincy today, with the 36-year-old admitting he would 'love' to be handed the skippers armband.
Team GB boss Stuart Pearce has already sent out letters to a long list of potential players – over 200 in total – and while 11 have reportedly turned down the chance to be part of the team for the London Olympic games later this year, there is still plenty of talent for the former Manchester City boss to choose from.
Of the three over 23 players, Beckham appears a dead cert alongside Ryan Giggs. Both men represent the best their respective nations have had to offer over the past fifteen years - and in global competitions only a global icon will do to lead out the side – step forward Beckham.
The third over 23 spot represents something of a dilemma for Pearce, however.
Pearce must of course address the needs of all four nations and keep the respective governing bodies onside after the swirl of discontent that has surrounded the team for well over a year now.
That means the third over 23 will likely go to a Scottish international, with Charlie Adam and Jonny Evans in the running to make the final cut.
Elsewhere, Jack Rodwell, Gareth Bale, and Aaron Ramsey are sure bets for the final squad having already featured in promotional pictures released last year, while the former England defender will want to embrace the spirit of the sport in the Olympics and give plenty of exciting young talents the chance to make a name for themselves.
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Connor Wickham are both likely to feature, while Jordan Rhodes could be at a Championship or even a Premier League club by the time the games come around thanks to his prolific goal scoring record.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Pearce's squad are the England players left behind by Fabio Capello that he is allowed to pick from.
Andy Carroll has yet to find his feet for Liverpool since making the switch last summer, while Tom Cleverly's injury worries this season make him an outsider for Poland and Ukraine but a favourite for the London Olympics.
Chris Smalling, Kyle Walker and Phil Jones could all potentially make the final cut with the seniors but are also in the running to be named by Pearce.
Here, GMF selects the XI men charged with representing the British Isles for the first Olympic games held in London for over.
Remember the rules: Only three players over 23 can be selected, the squad must consist of 18 players including two goalkeepers, and any players taking part in the European Championships must be discounted.
What do you think of our selection?
GMF Team GB Squad:
Craig Gordon; Neil Taylor, J, Steven Caulker, Chris Smalling; Aaron Ramsey, David Beckham, Gareth Bale, Jack Rodwell, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain; Connor Wickham, Andy Carroll Subs: Jack Butland, Tom Cleverley, Martin Kelly, Jordan Rhodes, Scott Sinclair, Ryan Giggs, Keiran GibbsNews Now - Sport News


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Roads defects and maintenanceSummary of roads defects and maintenance carried out in financial year 2018-19. The data should be considered in conjunction with the accompanying PDF of the "Road Safety...
Availability of ultrafast broadband in Perth and KinrossBroadband SpeedAvailability of Superfast (% of Premises) – Percentage of premises that have at least Superfast Broadband coverage (30Mbit/s or greater, includes premises with...
Customer Service Enquiries January to June 2018A summary of the number and type of inquiries received by Perth and Kinross Council from January to June 2018
Air quality management areaA designated area where certain pollutants exceed certain levels and therefore need a Detailed Assessment. In PKC nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter have been identified.
PKC WardsElectoral ward boundaries for Perth and Kinross council. For more information on using the data see...
Wind turbines by planning applicationLocation of wind turbines with relevant planning application information.
Special Landscape AreaDesignated landscapes within Perth and Kinross which merit special attention, either because they are of particular value and warrant protection or because they are degraded and...
Scottish Vacant and Derelict Land Survey 2016A survey issued by the Scottish Government to establish the extent & state of vacant & derelict land in Scotland. Local Authorities return data to the SG for checking.
Primary School CatchmentsBoundaries for primary school catchment areas excluding Roman Catholic schools.
Employment Land Audit 2015The Perth and Kinross Employment Land Audit is prepared annually to provide up to date and accurate information on the supply and availability of employment land for business...
Community CouncilsCommunity Council boundaries adopted in November 2011.
Polling placesLocation of polling places to be used for elections in PKC from 2011 onwards.
Secondary School CatchmentsBoundaries for secondary school catchment areas excluding Roman Catholic Schools.
St Ninians Episcopal School CatchmentSt Ninians Episcopal School Catchment Boundary (Whole of PKC)
Green BeltPerth Green Belt from the 2014 Perth & Kinross Council Adopted Local Development Plan
Roman Catholic Secondary School CatchmentsBoundary for the Roman Catholic secondary school catchment area
Polling districtsParliamentary polling district boundaries are used to manage elections. They are sub-divisions of the 2007 electoral ward boundaries.
Employment Land Audit 2016The Perth and Kinross Employment Land Audit is prepared annually to provide up to date and accurate information on the supply and availability of employment land for business...
Roman Catholic Primary School CatchmentsBoundaries for Roman Catholic primary school catchment areas
Scottish Vacant and Derelict Land Survey 2015An annual survey issued by the Scottish Government to establish the extent and state of vacant and derelict land in Scotland. Local Authorities return data to the Scottish...


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Salmon Caviar
Osetra Caviar
Trout Caviar
Cod caviar
Pink Caviar
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Snail caviar
Shipping & Returns
Privacy Notice
Conditions of Use
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About Company
Jajka z kawiorem z łososia
Encyclopedia of caviar
Salmon Caviar
Osetra Caviar
Trout Caviar
Cod caviar
Pink Caviar
Roe products
Snail caviar
Pacific Pink Salmon - 213g. Natural Product
Shipping & Returns
Package & Delivery
Online shop offers you red and black caviar of the highest quality. Our company can boast of long-term experience in wholesale purchase, storage, distribution and delivery of caviar. That's why making a purchase at our shop you can be absolutely sure that all the norms and standards are rigidly followed.
We sell black and red caviar of premium and first-class quality made from fresh fish. The caviar is packed up in vacuum tins and glass jars in which the product is kept safe. We also thoroughly examine every item before sending it to our clients so that it has no defects and meets the certificate.
As requirements to caviar storage are quite high, we send caviar packed into a special cool box that is able to maintain the necessary temperature during transportation. Moreover, we send each parcel with express courier so as to minimize the time of delivery that is only 2-5 business days. So even in hot summer weather you can be 100% sure that your caviar will be delivered to you quickly and in excellent condition.
Shop has developed a well-organized delivery process that that permits us to send caviar to any country of the European Union in the shortest time. So we can guarantee that all the delivery and storage conditions will be followed and you get your parcel in time. The search and purchase of your favorite caviar has become much easier with online storer.
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I contacted ACM as our office coffee machine, just was not working property. ACM serviced the machine according to the manufacturer's specifications, but then Gary (Technician) did additional series of checks and tests to minimise the possibility of potential issues. Gary also showed us what we were doing wrong, so now we have our coffee machine giving us what we need……the perfect cup of coffee.
TWAG Investments Pty Ltd.
I recently bought a coffee machine from ACM, the La Vibiemme Domobar Super Lever. It is making good coffee. I am proud to own it. Excellent machine and the one that I feel any home barista would love to have it. Thanks ACM for helping me to buy a good machine.
I am quite happy with the build quality & ergonomics of ECM Technika IV – Rotary Profi that I bought from ACM. It stands gleaming & proud in one corner of my kitchen for all to see & drool over. I suppose this will be a family air-loom and be passed down from our generation as inheritance to the family when time comes. Good job ECM. And Thanks ACM for suggesting me to buy this machine. Now steaming the milk has really become an effortless task for my wife.


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Raw Therapee is an open source image processing tool which provides a huge range of ways to enhance your digital photos and other images. (As the name suggests, it's intended for use with raw files from digital cameras, but the program can also import JPEG, TIFF and PNG files.)
The vast array of high-end novices will quickly confuse the image processing novice, but if you know what you're doing then there's a great deal to explore here.
RAW image quality may be enhanced by a good range of demosaicing algorithms, for instance: AMaZE, DCB, fast, AHD, EAHD, HPHD & VNG4.
Colour handling controls cover everything from simple channel mixing and RGB curves, to white balance, HSV, vibrance and more.
Would you like to enhance details? The Detail pane contains no less than seven options: Sharpening, Edges, Microcontrast, Impulse Noise Reduction, Noise Reduction, Defringe and Contrast by detail levels. And each of these is highly configurable, so for example select Sharpening and you can choose the algorithm (Unsharp Mask or RL Deconvolution), radius, amount, threshold and more.
And you also get great exposure controls, a stack of powerful lens/ geometry correction tools, EXIF/ IPTC metadata editing, batch processing, command line control, lots of configuration options, and the list goes on.
Beginners should look elsewhere, then, but if you're familiar with this kind of high-end image processing tool then you'll get a lot out of Raw Therapee. Its interface is occasionally clunky and performance isn't always as good as the authors appear to think, but there's an enormous array of processing power on offer and it's a great way to get the very most from your digital images.
What's new in 5.6 (see what's new for more)?
- Pseudo-HiDPI support, for a smooth and sharp user interface regardless of screen size.
Ability to move tools to a new Favorites tab.
- "Unclipped" processing profile, to make it easy to save an image while preserving data across the whole tonal range.
- User-adjustable tiles-per-thread settings in Preferences > Performance, for users who want to find optimal values for their system. The default value of 2 tiles-per-thread performs best overall.
- Hundreds of speed optimizations, bug fixes, and overall improvements.
Powerful, professional and packed with high-end image processing features, Raw Therapee offers a host of ways to enhance and adjust your digital images.


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Lyell Canyon
The John Muir Trail/Pacific Crest Trail follows the Lyell Fork through most of Lyell Canyon. Mile 28.
Maclure Creek
Maclure Creek is a great camping spot to recharge before climbing Donahue Pass the following day. Mile 34.
Morning up Donahue Pass
Navigating the switchbacks towards Donahue Pass near Maclure Creek. Mile 35.
Hiking Towards Mount Lyell
Hiking up Donahue Pass below Lyell Glacier. Mile 35.
A reminder leaving Red's Meadow that we've only hiked 36 miles and have 165 to go. Mile 61.
Tammy and her foot dressings at Deer Creek.
Mono Creek Footbridge
Evening at the Mono Creek Footbridge, crossing the North Fork of Mono Creek near Lake Thomas A Edison. Mile 88.
Mono Creek Climb
The sun coming up through the trees on the switchbacks south out of Mono Creek. Mile 88.
Tammy and her daily routine.
Selden Pass
Early morning on Selden Pass, looking towards Marie Lake. Mile 100.
Sallie Keyes Lakes
The trail in between Sallie Keyes Lakes in early morning. Mile 102.
Piute Canyon
Evening at the campsite where Piute Canyon and the Piute Creek intersect with the John Muir Trail. Mile 109.
The Muir Aspen
Trail lore says that John Muir signed his last name into this aspen in 1901. The signature looks old enough. Mile 110.
Pack String
A mix of horses and mules cross the South Fork of the San Joaquin River packed with supplies. Mile 112.
Darwin Creek
Darwin Creek where it intersects the John Muir Trail. Mile 121.
Patti and Tammy at the campsite near Darwin Creek.
Evolution Lake Reflections
Early morning reflections in a small pond near Evolution Lake. Mile 122.
Muir Hut
Hikers enjoying a break in Muir Hut, on top of Muir Pass. Mile 128.
Le Conte Canyon
Evening looking towards Le Conte Canyon from above Starr Camp. Mile 132.
One of the many switchbacks climbing up to 12,100' Mather Pass. Mile 150.
Mather Pass South Side
A hiker ascends Mather Pass from the south side. Mile 151.
Tammy, Mary, Margie, and Patti taking a break after Mather Pass. Mile 152.
Upper Basin
Traveling south in Upper Basin, Looking towards Striped Mountain, Mount Pinchot, Mount Wynne, and Pinchot Pass. Mile 152.
Sky Pilot
Sky Pilot, a rare wildflower only found at high altitude, on Pinchot Pass. Mile 161.
All images copyright John Peltier and protected by Pixsy


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I was gone for seven weeks.
Correction: I came back on the first day of my seventh week away from my whole entire life.
It's been so long since I've written anything here, and so much has happened in that expanse of time, that I can't even remember what's already been said. I suppose I could go read my own archives, but that somehow feels like cheating. On myself. With myself. There's a vibrator joke in here somewhere.
I was gone for seven weeks. So much has happened in that time.
My oldest son's voice dropped while I was gone. I called one day and had no idea who was on the phone. I wasn't even sure it was a *human*. That boy is going to make some choir director's baritone dreams come true. He also got his schedule for high school while I was gone. After 14 years of parenting, I have now officially missed a milestone. I can't believe how awful that feels.
My youngest child, my daughter, she kept her squeak but refined it. Like the baby fat that sheds itself overnight, the roundness of her words molted away and was replaced with sharp angles, strong bones, and complex adjectives. I came back to a girl-child, a woman-in-progress, someone who spent the summer learning, for the first time, how to be feminine from someone other than me. Now I condition her hair all wrong, but she'll still gives me butterfly kisses in the early hours of the morning when no one else is looking. I'll take it.
My middle son is the most eerily inconsistently consistent human being I have ever met. Nothing about him has changed in the slightest. It is amazingly comforting to come back to one familiar thing.
I left Phoenix with a 10X15 storage locker and the hope that everything would work itself out...and not much more. I had to go; I had to go for my job, I had to go for my sanity, I had to go for him and his family to start finding their own way through this together. I had to go, and I went, and I had no clue what was going to happen once I was on the other side of more flips of a calendar than I'd ever relinquished control of my family to before.
Relinquishing control is not my strong suit. Josh and I got into a massive fight in, oh, week two because he and his sister were being such control freaks and undoing each and every one of the many meticulous plans I'd so carefully laid out, all pressed and starched, on the edges of the beds for the time I would be gone. Because I'm not a total hypocrite, oh no.
Turns out, letting go is a lot easier when you're in free fall and there is nothing to latch on to.
This summer was a long, slow, drawn out, slow-motion leap of faith. It wasn't even a leap so much as a leaning over the edge until I had no choice but to fall. It was terrible and frightening to be gone for so long, and I am so glad that I was. I think I had to be. I think I had to let everything settle down the way it wanted to, not the way I wanted to orchestrate it to.
I think I had to let the kids father spend the summer with him in his own way - not the way I would want, expect, or even tolerate, honestly, had I been within a 10 hours drive of them, but it wasn't my summer with them so really, it isn't my place to dictate how it went.
They lived.
They're happy as shit to be home.
The end.
I think I had to be very, very humbled by the love and support that I sometimes forget I have in my corner of the ring. My kids' godfather and his brand new wife and their brand new baby basically gave me a home when literally did not have one, some company, some perspective, and the best homemade ice cream you will ever put into your body. My best friend talked me off a lot of ledges, and watched over me even when I wasn't sure I wanted to be watched over. My old, old buddy (who *gasp* doesn't have anything to do with teh internetz and is therefore unlinkable) fed me some wine when I needed it, played me ridiculously loud rock and roll in the parking lot, just like we used to do a million years ago, and reminded me of who I used ot be before I tripped and fell into this damn hole again.
I think I had to be ready to let everything change, and I think I was gone just long enough that everything did exactly that.
And now we have this home - a house that I took sight me-unseen (the kids and their dad came to check it out, and the kids said, "uhunno, i guess it'll do, grunt", and that, like cookie, was good enough for me). We still haven't met our neighbors (though I've met their unsecured wifi signal, howdy) (don't you judge me) and my garage still looks like this:
But my living room, MY living room, myveryownlivingroom without a drunk guy on the couch sucking all the energy out of it, looks like this:
And my daughter's room looks like this:
And my sons' room looks like this:
And that is, of course, blackmail for later, when they are really being a-holes and also have girlfriends. Have blog and iPhone; am not afraid to use them.
(Also, judge not the dorm room. They had loft beds which clearly will not fit. Ikea run for twin frames forthcoming. Until then, that room is merely a crystal ball of their almost-immediate future, with less ramen and porn.)
I am not showing you my room. Last night, my son told me to flipping clean it up already, mawm, jeez. When a 14 year old is disgusted with the way you're living, it's time to reassess.
But really, what matters to me most right now isn't the way the couches I got for $125 on Craiglist while I was gone (score) perfectly fit this space I accidentally ended up in, or the way the sun rises through the blinds in my windows and makes everything look sparkly and full of promise every single day now that I'm back, it's that under this roof, there are three smiles. Three real, relaxed, not contrived, not manic, not hiding anything behind them smiles.
I was gone for seven weeks. That's why. And now I get to start on forever, finally.


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New Zealand is pulling all the stops for the upcoming Lord of The Rings film, 'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.'
The country's capital, Wellington, will be renamed "The Middle of Middle Earth" during the film's premiere. The New Zealand Post has unveiled a Hobbit-inspired coin as part of their legal tender. Wellington's airport even added a massive Gollum sculpture to remind travellers that when it comes to the Lord of the Rings, New Zealand goes big.
Now the country's national airline, Air New Zealand, is adding another contribution: a Hobbit-themed Boeing 777 jet, emblazoned with a massive decal of an ad for the movie. The plane has yet to be unveiled but those who've seen it say it's of epic proportions.
"The hobbit imagery will cover the length of the 73m Boeing 777-300ER aircraft — the longest aircraft in our fleet — it will take six days and nearly 400 man-hours to install and at 830 sq m it's the largest ever graphic to be applied to an aircraft," said Mike Tod, a rep with Air New Zealand, in an interview with The West Australian .
According to the NBC News, the plane/massive, flying billboard will play a vital role in bringing in more visitors to New Zealand
"It puts us out there and creates more awareness. And it gives people more of a reason to actually select New Zealand to travel," said Jodi Williams, head of international marketing for Air New Zealand.
Back in October, Air New Zealand released a promotional Hobbit-themed in-flight safety video, which has since gone viral.
'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey' will hit theatres come Dec. 14 in Canada and on Nov. 28 in New Zealand.
Also on HuffPost


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Lena Dunham: The New Queen of Comedy's First Vogue Cover
Through her hapless alter ego Hannah Horvath, Lena Dunham has brilliantly captured the anxieties and ambitions of a generation. Nathan Heller meets the hardest-working millennial in show business.
"Three bells!" someone shouts from the far end of the Girls soundstage, and in the dark beyond the blazing lights the crew grows quiet. It's late summer, in the urban tangle of Queens, and Lena Dunham—showing no hint of exhaustion after months of writing, directing, and acting—is shooting the show's season-three finale. She's sitting on a bed, wearing the sort of tank top and bright-green pants favored by her character, Hannah Horvath. Standing opposite her, head in a towel, is the actress Allison Williams, who plays Hannah's highly strung friend Marnie. A pair of cameras are trained on Dunham's face. The sound rolls. Clapper boards snap shut: "A-camera mark!" "B-camera mark!" And in the silence that follows, Dunham transforms from one of the most powerful women in TV into the confused, questing neophyte she brings to life on-screen.
This morning, they are shooting a bedroom tête-à-tête. Over several takes, Dunham and Williams embellish the script with improvisations, trying to catch each other off guard. At one point, Dunham adds a laugh line about "chromosome sorting." At another, she dreams up a gag about adopting chinchillas. "Let's reset," she says after the second take. "Did that feel closer, Jenni?"
Jenni Konner, an executive producer on the show, is seated in a director's chair nearby. She is Dunham's professional partner, and, in many ways, the other half of her creative mind. Where Dunham is hyperverbal, Konner is wry and laconic, but they share a fast wit and a sense of the Girls comic style. Making a quick pass through a writer's script, Konner might fine-tune its voice, adding an "Honestly" to the start of a line for Shoshanna—Zosia Mamet's chatterbox character—or adjusting the rhythm of a back-and-forth. (Dunham calls her "the queen of recognizing what a scene is missing.") Konner, now in her 40s, also brings the vantage of an older generation to the show. Their dynamic is familial, too; on the set and in life, she and Dunham are nearly inseparable.
"Lena, will you tuck your necklace in, baby?" she says, as they start another take.
"Sorry, my love," Dunham calls back, pausing to tidy herself up. Her hair, which she cut short after shooting for the second season of Girls finished, has grown out to a trim, breezy bob. She has large and attentive chestnut-colored eyes, a ready smile, and a tendency to gesture with her hands that Saturday Night Live parodied in a Girls takeoff last fall. (The skit added a new girl from Albania—Blerta, played by Tina Fey.) "Hey, Danielle," she says now to a crew member. "Could we get that cat toy for Allison to wave at me at the end?"
"Sure . . ."
"Thanks," she says, tossing the cat toy to Williams after a brief test of its aerodynamic properties. Williams brandishes the toy gleefully, and they pick up in the middle of the scene.
Since Girls launched in 2012, the 27-year-old Dunham has become to comic television roughly what Bob Dylan was to sixties folk: She's not the first person to wield her form and her subject (middle-class postcollegiate life), but she does it with such unmatched skill, charisma, and vision that she's now the genre's uncontested master, the standard other people strive to reach. After the show won the Golden Globe for its first season, networks rushed to fill their slots with Girls-like sitcoms. Young people chase small-screen careers the way that they previously dreamed of movie-house immortality. Dunham's ability to speak for a hyperconnected generation rich in entitled ambition but poor in practical know-how has carved a trenchant cultural portrait; in her shadow, TV comedy has started seeming relevant again—and very cool.
The show's third season marks a turn in its development. Hannah is working a steady job in a new café run by her friend Ray (Alex Karpovsky), and once more dating the inveterately bizarre but true-of-heart Adam (Adam Driver). She's back in touch with her imperious friend Jessa (Jemima Kirke)—who's surfaced, impatiently, in rehab—and is trying to rebuild their rapport. "She's involved in more solid relationships," says Judd Apatow, one of the show's early champions and executive producers, observing that the late 20s bring a new set of problems. Girls, praised for its unvarnished naturalism, must now depict its characters in the most authentic act of all: growing up.
For Dunham, that process started a long time ago. Though her characters tend to be muddled, haltingly motivated young women, Dunham herself is a model of industry. In addition to carrying a heavy writing, acting, directing, editing, and producing load for Girls, she has been working on a documentary film and developing a second HBO series. She's contributed first-person essays to The New Yorker, taken the odd assignment (recently, she interviewed Judy Blume for The Believer), and will soon release her debut book: a comic memoir she composed in free time that she doesn't really have.
"She writes constantly," says Williams. "Late at night, early in the morning, constantly." Dunham writes on planes; at the Girls studio; and, not infrequently, in bed. (It is her great ambition to be the sort of writer who sits down to work, but she hasn't ever gotten there; the small white desk she set up in her apartment is used mostly by her boyfriend, Jack Antonoff, a guitarist in the indie band Fun.) She says, "I actually work pretty well within the whirlwind of my life."
Her collaborators tout not only her rate of production but her speed. "Where it takes me 20 years to write about my 20s in a really honest way," says Konner, "it takes her 24 hours to, like, have gone on a bad date, experienced it, had pain about it, gone home, metabolized it, and turned it into art. It's the fastest system I've ever seen." (Williams calls Dunham an "aggregator of humanity.")
"The fact that she's able to do it in the moment, as it's happening, is her unique talent," Driver says. "Maybe it's just good genes?" He adds: "Plus we get to see each other in these weird intimate settings. Her, myself, and our boom guy Jason have just gone through a lot in a small, enclosed room."
As much as Girls is known for its naturalism, it is famous for its startlingly frank depictions of sex—unshy, sometimes unflattering portraits that the critic Elaine Blair, in a New York Review of Books essay on the topic, praised as an "example of what sex scenes are good for." "There was a sense that I and many women I knew had been led astray by Hollywood and television depictions of sexuality," Dunham says. "Seeing somebody who looks like you having sex on television is a less comfortable experience than seeing somebody who looks like nobody you've ever met." In Girls, she often films herself bare-breasted. Once, she did the same with Becky Ann Baker, who plays Hannah's mother. ("They waited until I got into my 50s to say, 'Will you show your breasts on television?' " Baker says in mock lamentation.) "She's not being naked just for the sake of being naked," observes Zosia Mamet.
In _Girls'_s second season, Hannah had a brief but intense dalliance with a much older, very handsome doctor (Patrick Wilson) with a Zeitgeist-appropriate Brooklyn brownstone. Dunham was surprised to find how controversial their pairing became. "Critics said, 'That guy wouldn't date that girl!' " she explains. "It's like, 'Have you been out on the street lately?' Everyone dates everyone, for lots of reasons we can't understand. Sexuality isn't a perfect puzzle, like, 'He has a nice nose and she has a nice nose! She's got great breasts and he's got great calves! And so they're going to live happily ever after in a house that was purchased with their modeling money!' It's a complicated thing. I want people ultimately, even if they're disturbed by certain moments, to feel bolstered and normalized by the sex that's on the show."
On the Girls set, late that morning, Dunham has left the bedroom to block out another scene. "So, let's just read this first and see if there are any cuts or changes," she says to Baker and Peter Scolari, the actor who plays her father: They are preparing to film a telephone conversation set partly in the Horvath home kitchen. (Later she'll film the other half of the exchange in Hannah's bedroom as her character applies a garish coat of makeup.) Glancing around the kitchen set, Dunham has some ideas. "I thought we could have you, like, rearranging your spice rack when the phone rings," she says to Scolari. She instructs Baker to come through the kitchen door, holding another phone: "I recently caught my parents on two cordless phones, three feet from each other, and it was the funniest thing ever."
Dunham, Baker, and Scolari run through the scene. "Hey, Mr. Peter?" Dunham says to Scolari. "Since you don't have caller ID on that phone, could you say 'Hello' instead of 'Honey'?" When Dunham is at work, she speaks with the cheery exactitude of someone trying to place a complicated catering order over the phone. "All right—where we at?" she asks the crew.
"We're at 'roll set,' ma'am," somebody says. "It's yours."
Dunham sits back in her chair. "OK, guys," she says. "Action!"
On a chilly afternoon in autumn, Dunham calls to ask whether I want to have tea, and I meet her at the stately Brooklyn Heights building where she's lived for the past couple of years. "I used to walk my dog by this apartment building in high school," she says. "I was always getting in trouble for my dog peeing in the courtyard, which is technically illegal. I'm like, 'Someday, I'm going to live in that building!' " After Girls took off, she moved in with a sense of private triumph.
Dunham's apartment is quirky, well appointed, and—considering that she sits at the center of one of the most coveted television-comedy enterprises today—concertedly unostentatious. There's a small galley kitchen, hung with a fading schoolhouse photograph of her grandmother in Connecticut and pepped up with a hot-pink Hello Kitty microwave. The dining area comprises a square four-person table. In the living room—large enough to fit a big TV, a couch, a desk, some shelves—she has hung work by her family and friends: Dunham's mother, Laurie Simmons, is an acclaimed artist best known for her photographs of miniature, dioramic domestic scenes, while her father, Carroll Dunham, is a painter celebrated for his vibrant biomorphic abstractions and top-hatted figures with phalluses for noses. (More recently, he has been exploring the female anatomy; his daughter calls the abstract drawing in the dining area "the only work of his that I could hang without people being like, 'So, what's the deal with that penis on your wall?' ")
Nearby, Dunham has arranged what she refers to as her "salon wall," a small selection of professional-type artifacts: fan letters from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks; a birthday drawing from the New Yorker cartoonist and Girls producer Bruce Eric Kaplan; a portrait of Zosia Mamet by Jemima Kirke; and other cherished works. Much of the furniture in the apartment Dunham took from the Girls set.
She now shares the place with Antonoff. They met on a blind date arranged by his sister, the designer Rachel Antonoff, whose work Dunham admires. Dunham had just emerged from a string of idle or exasperating romantic experiences, and her career was climbing rapidly to altitude. "I'd been like, If I never date again in my whole life, I'll be fine with it! I want to work and rescue rabbits and be a notable eccentric!" she says. "I had a whole romantic idea about singledom, and then, of course, that's the moment when you meet someone that you really care about." She and Antonoff are taking a new apartment nearby in a couple of months. But, for the moment, they're still here, in the comfortable place that's let Dunham maintain the productively low profile she prefers.
"I have a really great private existence, almost more like a memoirist or a columnist would, and less like an actor would," she says. "Which I enjoy, because I can't overstate how much I hate leaving the house." Dunham sees her apartment as an extension of herself: She couldn't undertake bold feats of self-disclosure in public—the stories of her sexual history, the portraits of her family life, the nakedness—if she didn't have it to return to. "No one would describe me as a private person, but I actually really am," she explains. "It's important for me to have a lot of time alone, and to have a lot of time in my house by myself. My entire life sort of takes place between me and my dog, my books, and my boyfriend, and my private world. To me, privacy isn't necessarily equated with secret-keeping. What's private is my relationship with myself."
Dunham spends several weeks each fall in Los Angeles, where both Apatow and Konner have families: It is easiest to do video editing for one season, and brainstorming for the next, on the West Coast. "I like Los Angeles, but more than two weeks and I start to get a very sad feeling," she explains. "You eat well there, and you take hikes, and my dog"—a rescue pet named Lamby—"loves it, but ultimately it's not the right place for me." In most contexts, she still feels like a Hollywood outsider. "I went early on to a party at a really famous person's house. They had a private chef there making pizza, and I remember the dog was wearing a bow tie. Every time I looked around, it would be like, Is that someone I know from camp? No, that's Ashton Kutcher. It was such a weird scene. I remember thinking, I don't feel at home here, and no matter how long this is my job, I will never feel at home here. And if I do start to feel at home here"—her brow furrows—"someone should really worry about me."
Newly back from L.A., she's at last been able to turn most of her attention to her book, which she calls "a slightly kaleidoscopic version of a memoir." Due to appear from Random House in the fall, the volume, illustrated by her friend Joana Avillez, is made up of unchronological autobiographical essays that, Dunham thinks, attend to her life's milestones. In the style of her previous nonfiction, it's an exercise in comic self-revelation, "I really will have exhausted my personal life as a subject after this book enters the world," she says. "And I kind of feel OK about that."
Dunham's life has been in the limelight for a long time. When she first appeared in Vogue, in 1998, she was eleven. It was as part of a spread about "a New York pack of fashion-conscious kids"; she displayed a Helmut Lang–inspired shift she'd sewed herself, dropping confident pronouncements on the state of the late-nineties fashion industry. "I really like Jil Sander, but it's so expensive," she told Plum Sykes. "I find Calvin Klein really hard to respect because he's everywhere. I view him as a clothesmonger."
"I think I heard my mother describe someone who wasn't an artist as a 'monger,' " Dunham says today. (Her assessment of Klein has turned around in the years since.) The piece ran with some photography, but Dunham wasn't among the kids pictured. This bothered her, especially when she recognized one of the girls who had been shot—"in trademark braces," the caption observed—as another student at her Brooklyn school, Saint Ann's: Jemima Kirke. The twelve-year-old Kirke was wearing "a pair of seventies patchwork trousers worn low-slung, a cashmere sweater from a flea market, and Adidas sneakers." Dunham didn't know Kirke but, on spying the trademark braces at a dance one night, went up to introduce herself. They became fast friends.
By then, Dunham had a creative identity. "Because there were two artists living and working in the house, there was always a sense that you had to be working on something," she recalls of herself and her younger sister, Grace (currently a senior at Brown). "I remember my parents always referred to the place where we did our homework as our 'office.' "
As a teenager, Dunham wrote poems, short stories, and what she calls "virtually unperformable plays," some of which were staged through the school's drama program. "All my plays were about abortion clinics—girls waiting in an abortion clinic, trying to make the Big Decision," she says, an irony because, erotically, she was still naive. (Dunham's first knowledge of sex came from A Fish Called Wanda.) She listened to Alanis Morissette, Joan Osborne, Sleater-Kinney, and Jewel ("angry girls"). She loved Friends and Saturday Night Live but reached for higher entertainment, too. "I worked at the video store, and I learned a lot about movies by shelving them," she says. "Anything that seemed like it was from Sundance circa 1995, I watched. I loved Beautiful Girls. I loved Isabel Coixet—My Life Without Me. I remember saying to people, 'I'm into indie movies!' I didn't really know what that meant."
"She wasn't nearly as successful in the world of kids as she was in the world of adults," her mother recalls. "And because she wasn't interested in a lot of other kids, she had, really, a lot of time to make stuff."
"I thought of myself as relatively unpopular," Dunham says. "It wasn't anybody's fault—I didn't go to high school with mean kids—but I didn't feel part of it. . . . I didn't really start to feel like I had friends in a real way until I graduated from college and became engaged with the people I'd be engaged with professionally."
Even in high school, though, she found good company in books; the young Dunham was a fan of Philip Roth, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath, whose confessional style struck a chord. She came to regard candor as a powerful inventive tool: one that offered the energetic release of an uncorked bottle but also created a bond between artist and audience. It promised something better for her, too. "I had really bad OCD. I was really lonely at school. I felt a lot of shame," she explains. "Seeing what I thought was people lightening their own load, or lifting their own burdens, by writing about them or singing about them just made the world seem more open."
One fall afternoon, far from Brooklyn, Dunham takes her seat under a canvas-colored garden canopy at the Chateau Marmont and waits for some of fashion's wunderkinds to unveil their recent work. It is the afternoon of L.A.'s CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund show, a display of new creations by the finalists of the name-making fellowship for young designers, and Dunham holds a place of honor at the end of the impromptu runway. She is dressed in an elegantly tailored, café crème–hued knee-length dress by Reed Krakoff, one of her favorite designers.
"I am sitting next to David Beckham," Dunham says to Konner, who's joined her. "Color me nervous."
"I might get pregnant," Konner deadpans, not missing a beat.
Soon after David and Victoria Beckham rush in and take their seats, the show begins. Dunham is a careful and avid observer of the stylish parade; seeing the preppy-bohème menswear of Ovadia & Sons she pivots toward Konner and begins fanning herself in a mock swoon.
Because, like Sex and the City before it, Girls traces a playful line between the fashion Zeitgeist and caricaturish excess—Shoshanna's torqued and twisted updos, Hannah's baby-doll stylings and high-wattage makeup—some people have presumed that Dunham's sartorial palate is as unformed as her character's. It's not true. One of Dunham's babysitters was Zac Posen; he hand-made her a high school–graduation dress in the early 2000s, and still frequently sends her his latest creations. Her taste these days is both exacting and eclectic. Often she wears Erdem, Marni, Miu Miu, Peter Jensen. "I've always loved Comme des Garçons; I've always loved Yohji Yamamoto," she says. "I'm into Charlotte Olympia flats. I really love a Prada bag because they always have one weird detail that you didn't think about. I always wear J Brand jeans because the waist is high . . . a low-cut jean is a problematic thing for me." As a self-described "jewelry hound," Dunham often finds herself donning work by Delfina Delettrez, Pamela Love, Irene Neuwirth, and Suzannah Wainhouse. In casual settings, she prefers bulky, playful necklaces—"like a kindergarten art teacher," she jokes—which she buys from artisans on Etsy.
In addition to tracking the fashion world closely, she's become a kind of spokesperson for young women who want to express themselves stylishly but with personal whimsy, and a vocal critic of the stereotype that fashion belongs only to a tiny group of superslender people terrified of breaking rules. For almost as long as Dunham's work has been in the public eye, she's spoken openly and often about her body type, pointing out that not every strong and enviable woman on the air must resemble a runway model. "She's an individual—that's how she carries herself in her life, and that's how she carries herself in her own personal style," says Erdem Moralioglu, who designed Dunham an elegant but edgy floor-length black dress for last year's punk-theme Met gala. "I thought, How great—Lena has these amazing tattoos on her back and arms. Let's have a sheer panel in the back and take off the sleeves!"
Dunham's comfort in her own skin—even when bared—has become part of her cool iconoclasm. It's the reason many people see her as the voice for a new generation of empowered young women, and it's slowly helped to shift the norms of female charisma on-screen. After Howard Stern referred to her, last year, as a "little fat chick," Dunham told David Letterman she was delighted by the label; she joked that she wanted her gravestone to be, "like, 'She was a little fat chick, and she got it going!' " Apatow commends her resilience: "The praise hasn't thrown her, and the criticism hasn't thrown her, which is remarkable. I would be naked and crying under my pillow."
A couple of hours after the show, Dunham has changed into a strapless, lime-green evening dress, also from Reed Krakoff's resort collection, to cohost a dinner for the young designers at Bouchon, in Beverly Hills. "I love clothes that have eccentricity and wit to them," she says. She admires her mother's designer wardrobe and sartorial freedom—an approach Dunham summarizes as " 'We're artists! We can do what we want!' My mother's six inches taller than me and ten pounds lighter, but somehow I can wear her stuff," Dunham says. "Now sometimes she borrows my clothes, which is very flattering. That did not used to happen."
Directing appeals to Dunham, she says, because it lets her make good on every dream she's ever had. "I wanted to be a fashion designer. I wanted to be a babysitter. I wanted to be an architect," she explains. We are sitting in Brooklyn Heights's Happy Days Diner, an old Saint Ann's hangout, and the hurried sotto voce of three teenage girls drifts from the next booth. "Every fantasy job you have as a child is encompassed in the act of filmmaking." At Oberlin, where her career first took form, she began her first feature-length film, Creative Nonfiction. When that made it to the South by Southwest festival, Dunham flew to Austin, Texas, where she found herself in a car with a filmmaker named Alex Karpovsky. They hit it off. "Someone so young, their voice is typically much more derivative," Karpovsky explains. "Lena picks up a lot of subtleties in human behavior and language and interactions." Dunham, who was starting to attract attention with a popular Web series, Delusional Downtown Divas, wrote him a part in the feature she was then working on—as she did for Kirke, her mother, her sister, and some other friends.
Tiny Furniture, the result, was a preternaturally mature indie film made largely in her parents' apartment, on a $45,000 budget that Dunham raised herself from private donors. It follows Aura, a college graduate at loose ends—a kind of proto–Hannah Horvath—as she returns to New York to live with her family.
The film asks to be viewed autobiographically, but its artist mom is distinct from the real Laurie Simmons. And though Dunham was, at that point, a recent college graduate living with her parents, those who know her say the two are unalike. "That character couldn't write a script like Tiny Furniture and get the movie made," Simmons says. "When she lived at home, after college, I would go into her bedroom late at night, and she'd have fallen asleep amid a heap of cell phone, laptop, books, scripts, pencils, papers. She was in her bed covered with work." Dunham had already begun the elaborate shadow theater that she would carry into Girls and public life: a self-inflected world that was true enough to life to put in the line of scrutiny, but different enough to leave her some maneuvering room behind the screen.
Tiny Furniture won the Best First Screenplay title at the Independent Spirit Awards. Today, it's part of the Criterion Collection. It also brought Dunham to the attention of Judd Apatow, who offered her help and counsel if she ever needed it. "I felt an instant connection to her work, because it reminded me of movies that I admired," he says. Around the same time, HBO called her in for a meeting and commissioned her to write four episodes of a series. "It was that thing of ignorance being your best friend," she says after lunch (turkey-burger melts) has arrived. "I didn't really know what a pitch was. I sort of just started talking about the kind of show I wanted to see. Like, 'I haven't seen a show about people like my friends, who just finished college and are really confused. It's that moment between being a kid and being an adult. Text etiquette, blah-blah-blah.' "
Within days of the show's debut, in April 2012, it was clear that it would be one of the most discussed dramatic efforts of the year. No one was more surprised than Dunham. "I expected 'I like it!' or 'It's annoying!' But the kind of 'What's this doing to our culture?' conversation was shocking," she says. So was the scrutiny it brought. "Especially if you were a teenage girl who felt a little bit invisible, who felt a little bit like"—she puts on plaintive voice—" 'Boys don't see me, my teachers don't give me good grades. . . .' It took me a little while to play catch-up."
Many of her biggest mistakes, Dunham says, have taken place on Twitter. At one point, she upset, as she puts it, "the entire country of Canada," by mindlessly tweeting a quip about dressing up as the victim of a pair of notorious north-of-the-border serial killers—"me, at three in the morning in Europe, being like, 'What's a funny joke about a Lifetime movie?' "
In such moments, she thinks about an observation Antonoff made one day when she was feeling low. "He's like, 'You know what's hard? People want the person who wants to share it all. But they want the person who wants to share it all minus foibles and mistakes and fuckups. They want cute mistakes. They don't want real mistakes.' If I placed that many censors on myself, I wouldn't be able to continue to make the kinds of things that I make. And so I just sort of know there are going to be moments where I take it one step too far."
Like Mary Richards, Murphy Brown, and Carrie Bradshaw—women who wanted just a little more from their times—Hannah Horvath is a creature of her moment. Over poached eggs and quinoa at Soho House in West Hollywood, Jenni Konner tells me that she and Dunham have spent some time dreaming up various flamboyant ways for Girls to end. "We were at South by Southwest, in separate rooms, talking on the phone to each other, lying in bed, and I think we were just trying to figure out how everyone died—like Six Feet Under?" she says. In more earnest moods, they wonder about Hannah's fate in life. "I go back and forth constantly about whether I think Adam is right for her," she says. "As he's evolved, he seems righter for her. But would we really wish a crazy actor on anyone?"
Dunham says, "I do want to see the characters into a new phase—from early 20s into late 20s seems a good chunk of time. But I have no interest, at this point, in marrying them off or seeing their children." She would rather end the show a bit too early rather than a bit too late; she and Konner are thinking, vaguely, of a terminus in the next three years, whenever the moment and conditions feel right.
There's Dunham's own next stage to think of, too. She and Konner are launching their own production company, called A Casual Romance. First up is a documentary they've been making about Hilary Knight, the 87-year-old writer and Eloise illustrator, and a new TV series for HBO based on the life of Betty Halbreich, the pioneering Bergdorf Goodman personal shopper, who is also in her 80s. They hope to launch projects and then turn them over to talented filmmakers (as they did with the Knight documentary, directed by Matt Wolf). Their general subject, as they see it, is the challenges and triumphs of modern womanhood, and if Girls has been a young, trepidatious look forward, subjects like Halbreich will allow them to assess lifetimes of female accomplishment from the vantage of age.
"I'm still young, and when you're young it's all fast-moving, the way a baby grows in the first two months of its life," Dunham says. As many onlookers have pointed out, her life quandaries now are hardly comparable to those that her struggling young characters face; her skill, effort, and confidence have carried her so far behind the realm of basic young-adult problems that, at one point, I ask whether she may have achieved her way out of a subject. Dunham smiles and gives the sort of charmingly multivocal answer—part blundering ingenue, part self-aware professional—she is known for. "I still go to a party and say something embarrassing to someone, and then write them a weird e-mail about it the next day, and then write them a text because I think they didn't get the e-mail," she says. "No matter what happens with your level of success, you still have to deal with all the baggage that is yourself."


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Greenpeace recently attended the 8th science committee meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, held on August 10 in Busan, South Korea. All the delegations from governments, industries and scientists gathered and discussed the tuna stock status to make recommendations to the tuna committee later this year. Our passionate activists were there to remind them that tuna stocks are declining due to overfishing and to express their hope they will make the right decision for the future of our oceans. More than 60% of the world's tuna are caught in the Western and Central Pacific oceans.
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I'm so excited to share that the home feature I styled made the cover story for Country Living magazine, June 2012!
Styling a house for a magazine feature requires a lot of planning.
Editor in Chief Sara Gray and Senior lifestyle editor Natalie Warady of Country Living magazine loved my scouting shots of the breakfast room and saw the potential for a cover story.
Moving ahead, we discussed what would set the mood for a lovely summer cover.
Moving ahead, we discussed what would set the mood for a lovely summer cover.
Breakfast anyone? After all what's more enticing in June on your getaway weekend than starting the day with a lovely summer breakfast setting - at a table covered with pretty blue and white linens, glass bottles of happy daisies and all of fixins's of seasonal summer fruit and muffins?
The furniture and architecture was all there, so in this case it was all about the table top props and styling the table to set the mood. Add to that, the magical work and lighting finesse of Photographer Miki Duisterhoff and editorial direction of Natalie Warady and we had a recipe for success.
Styling a cover requires creating options and bringing a lot of propping choices. We had many scenarios but here were two. Check out the subtle changes. Which is your favorite?


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marketingdiner needed a new button or icon design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 72 designs submitted by 22 freelance designers.
The Marketing Diner
I am a recent-MBA graduate from Vanderbilt and have had this blog and podcast for over 3 years. The concept started as a way to network but has taken on more importance as I've been hired by a social media marketing and PR agency.
It benefits my job greatly for me to evolve my intellectual capital like this blog into something that helps move the firm forward. I've re-invented the format of the podcast to include more marketer voices, a call in line and integration with the crowd-sourced question and answer service Aardvark.
Ultimately, with the multiple platforms the blog and podcast has to exist on, I need something more than just my horizontal logo. In fact, my goal is to have the blog reflect my personality but be enough to stand on its own.
Young, dynamic marketers. Readers of mainstream marketing blogs but who are searching for something to reflect more of their comfort with social media culture. Marketers who have a desire to integrate smart business strategy into what was a formerly amateur-oriented social media marketing.
I need a square icon to integrate into the regular marketing diner logo (see uploaded file). The icon has to be simple and recognizable enough to be picked out amongst other small square logos such as on the iTunes directory or on a Twitter stream (i.e. it should be recognizable and distinct at scales as small as 48 x 48 pixels or perhaps even smaller)
Colors can vary based on what you believe to stand out most but should fit in with the color template on the blog as it exists now (http://blog.marketingdiner.com)
The ultimate goal is to exude the theme/tagline of the show - "Feed Your Brand, Not Your Ego." Or, in other terms, making decisions based on data, analysis and smart strategy relavent to your client and what will move the consumer agenda forward and not just what makes the biggest statement about who you are/your ego.
I am trying to avoid just using the initials of the show "MD" but the winner of the contest will probably be someone who brings forward a strikingly simple design with a lot of innovative impact. Think abstract, think clean design think immediately recognizable and not easily confused for something else.


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Hammers knock on Saints door
West Ham closed the gap on league-leaders Southampton on Saturday with a 3-1 win against Derby at Upton Park as Saints slumped to a 2-0 defeat at the hands of Bristol City.
The Hammers, who came back from one goal down, are now just two points behind Southampton at the top of the Championship after extending their unbeaten run to six games.
A 36th-minute debut-goal from Tamas Priskin put Derby ahead but a goal from Carlton Cole on the stroke of half time leveled the score at the interval.
Kevin Nolan scored an impressive 22-yard volley to put his side ahead before Mark Noble converted a penalty with 15-minutes left to play.
Sam Allardyce praised his promotion-chasing side's second-half performance; "We weren't very good in the first half, let's face it.
"We changed to 4-3-3 and got the best out of our players. We saw better movement, better options and more fluent football."
Derby manager Nigel Clough believed the game could have been different had his team took a lead into half time; "I hope we could have got the 1-0 at half time," he said.
"But what it does to us and the effect it gives to West Ham, they came straight out of the blocks in the second half and put us under pressure."
High-flying Southampton still sit top despite a 2-0 defeat at Ashton Gate.
Bristol City, who find themselves in the relegation zone, scored two second-half goals courtesy of Albert Adomah and Nicky Maynard without a Southampton reply to extend their impressive unbeaten run to five games.
Saints who suffered just their third defeat of the season were left to rue missed chances.
Elsewhere in the Championship, Blackpool in sixth played out an eventful 2-2 draw with 8th-placed Birmingham.
Marlon King broke the deadlock before Stephen Crainey and Neal Eardley scored for the Seasiders. Nikola Zigic scored in the 87th minute to snatch a draw.
Third-placed Cardiff extended their unbeaten run to seven games after Joe Mason's second-half header secured a 1-0 win against Nottingham Forest.
Middlesborough were held to a 1-1 draw against Peterborough at London Road after an impressive 81st-minute strike from Paul Taylor cancelled out Matthew Bates' 54th-minute header.
Barnsley shocked fifth-placed Leeds to win at Elland Road for the first time since 1990, after a hard-fought 2-1 victory. First-half goals form Ricardo Vaz Te and Craig Davies were enough to see off United despite an impressive free kick from Ross McCormack just before the hour mark.
Hull succumbed to a 3-2 loss at the hands of Burnley as the away side scored three goals in the last twelve minutes in a thrilling encounter. Jay Rodriquez scored deep into injury time to seal the victory after David Edgar scored twice in four minutes for Burnley to cancel out Matty Fryatt's earlier brace for Hull.
Ipswich suffered their fifth-straight loss in despairing fashion when Reading come out on top in a five-goal thriller. Two-injury time goals from Reading at Portman Road made Blues boss Paul Jewell feel 'sickened' by the defeat.
South-coast clubs Brighton and Portsmouth both earned points with Pompey playing out a 1-1 draw with Leicester and Brighton taking all three points at home to Coventry.
Both Crystal Palace v Millwall and Doncaster v Watford ended goalless.News Now - Sport News


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Which NBA Team Had the Worst Christmas Uniforms? — Sports Survey of the day
The Christmas Day NBA games are becoming quite the tradition around the country, but why did the NBA feel the need to give the teams different uniforms?
Many teams have a uniform that hasn't changed colors or logos in years, and some teams change their style quite often. So why did every team elect to wear ugly uniforms on Christmas?
It's the day the NBA pretty much has to itself, except 24 hours of 'A Christmas Story,' of course. It was odd to see the Boston Celtics in a solid-green uniform. The Nets usually wear a simple black-and-white, but elected to wear gray on Christmas.
Every team was wearing a solid color, or close to it. The New York Knicks may have been the worst of all, with bright orange. In high definition, it was like watching a glowing radioactive team of mutants. The Bulls, Heat and Clippers all wore solid red. It was even hard to read the lettering on some of the uniforms.


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Home >> Course Descriptions >> College of Education
Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Reading Programs
Three semester hours.
This course focuses on methods, materials, and organization of reading programs, with emphasis on the scope and sequence of the total reading program from pre-K through 12th grade. Theories, principles, and strategies for designing and implementing developmentally appropriate reading programs will be reviewed and programs will be evaluated to prepare the Reading Professional to make appropriate instructional decisions. Attention will be given to professional development models and professional ethics. Prerequisites: Graduate standing.
Home - General Information - Student Services -
Academic Undergraduate Regulations -
Undergraduate Degrees - Academic Graduate Regulations -
Graduate Degrees - Course Descriptions - Faculty -
Appendix A - Appendix B - Appendix C - Appendix D


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When some people vacation, they take their homes with them.
Those are the people Irene Rawlings and Mary Abel write about in Portable Houses, a book devoted to all sorts of movable shelters and the people who created or renovated them. The examples featured in the book range in elaborateness from a canvas miner's tent to a Boeing 737 jet and include a tree-hung tent, a few gypsy and sheep wagons and a Ski Haus that resembles a science-fiction rover. There's even a 1966 Airstream trailer decked out by designers Victoria and Richard MacKenzie-Childs in their signature whimsical style.
The book isn't intended to be a how-to manual, but it does include some helpful information for would-be owners such as what to look for, what to avoid and what a similar portable home might cost.
Available from: Amazon ($15.37)
The miner's/wall tent (seen in photo) above available from Cabela's and Wall Tent Shop.


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Seeking caretaker position in ghost town or mining property. I do not need income, have VA pension. Can provide more than adequate security along with my dog. Remote is not a problem.
Right here . . . . .
- Wolfgang -
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Seabreeze Campground & Cottages sits on the rugged edge of the Atlantic Ocean - known as Nova Scotia's Eastern Shore. In a landscape dominated by inlets, rocky outcrops, beaches and islands, nature provides the palette for an idyllic camping vacation. Our setting on the crystalline waters at Fox Island truly fits the bill of Nova Scotia's "ocean playground", where birding, beach combing, paddling and ocean fishing are all within a stone's throw... and just a short walk takes you to a fresh water lake for trout fishing.
Seabreeze is a place where simple pleasures can be relished, whether it is solitude you seek, or sense of community. Nights with campfires, mussel boils on the beach, spontaneous jam sessions, our potluck Saturdays and friendly neighbours make this a happy spot. We have an abundance of amenities, including a common room and kitchen for rainy days. Choose from tent sites overlooking the ocean, well-treed serviced sites for RV's, many with ocean views, or our cozy cottage and RV rentals.
You'll know you've arrived when you wind down to the ocean's edge.
Copyright © 2019 Seabreeze Campground. All rights reserved.


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Maternal IV fluids linked to newborns' weight loss
A newborn baby's weight loss is often used to determine how well a baby is breastfeeding, and concern about a baby which loses too much weight may result in supplementing breastfeeding with formula. However, many women receive IV fluids during labor, and new research published in BMC's open access journal International Breastfeeding Journal shows that some of a newborn's initial weight loss may be due to the infant regulating its hydration and not related to a lack of breast milk.
A group of Canadian researchers looked at relationships among the IV fluids a mother received during labor (or prior to her caesarean section), neonatal output (measured by diaper weight), and newborn weight loss. They found that during the first 24 hours following birth there was a positive association both between the IV fluids given to mothers before birth and neonatal output, and between the neonatal output and newborn weight loss. At 60 hours post birth, the time of the average lowest weight, there was a positive relationship between maternal IV fluids and newborn weight loss.
"Nurses, midwives, lactation consultants, and doctors have long wondered why some babies lose substantially more weight than others even though all babies get small amounts to eat in the beginning," said principal investigator Prof Joy Noel-Weiss from the School of Nursing at the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Health Sciences. "It appears neonates exposed to increased fluids before birth might be born overhydrated, requiring the baby to regulate his or her fluid levels during the first 24 hours after birth."
Prof Noel-Weiss added, "We should reconsider the practice of using birth weight as the baseline when calculating newborn weight loss in the first few days following birth. For mothers and their breastfed babies, accurate assessment of weight loss is important. Although more research is needed, based on our findings, we would recommend using weight measured at 24 hours post birth as a baseline."
Alongside this article, the researchers have provided a standardized method for clinicians to collect and analyze data about newborn weight loss in their own maternity site, in the hope that this protocol will help them to make informed decisions when assessing newborn weight changes.


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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Terminally-ill cancer patients are less likely to get aggressive end-of-life treatment, such as chemotherapy in the last two weeks of life, when they talk with their doctors early on about how they want to die, according to a new study.
Treatment aimed at keeping those patients alive at the end is often expensive and may not improve patients' quality of life or comfort. Such therapies usually involve more time in the hospital rather than at home or in hospice care.
"Aggressive care at the end of life for individual patients isn't necessarily bad, it's just that most patients who recognize they're dying don't want to receive that kind of care," said Dr. Jennifer Mack, the study's lead author from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
"We should at least consider having these discussions soon after diagnosis if we know that a patient has incurable cancer," she told Reuters Health.
Her team's analysis involved 1,231 people with advanced lung or colon cancer who died over a 14-month period during a larger cancer study. Researchers interviewed patients or their caregivers about whether and when the patients had discussions with their doctors about end-of-life care.
Mack and her colleagues also checked medical records for signs of those discussions and for any treatment and hospitalizations cancer patients had in their last month of life.
They found that most patients - 88 percent - had end-of-life discussions, but more than one-third of those took place less than a month before the patient died, when their health was likely already deteriorating. Close to two-thirds of the talks happened while patients were in the hospital.
Almost half of study participants received aggressive, life-prolonging care, Mack's team reported Monday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Those who'd had end-of-life discussions more than a month before dying were 50 to 60 percent less likely to get that extra treatment than patients who put off those talks or didn't have them at all.
Patients (and their caregivers) who reported having the discussions with doctors were almost seven times more likely to end up in hospice than those who didn't recall end-of-life talks.
"A lot of patients don't want (aggressive treatment), but they don't recognize that they're dying or that this is relevant for them," said Dr. Camilla Zimmermann, head of the palliative care program at University Health Network in Toronto.
But, she told Reuters Health, "The earlier you discuss these things, the more options you have. If you wait too long, you end up having these discussions with someone you don't know, that you just met, in an inpatient setting," instead of with your primary doctor.
Mack agreed.
"If we start these conversations early, then patients have some time to process this information, to think about what's important to them (and) to talk with their families about that," she said.
Aggressive end-of-life care is also expensive. According to data from the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, 32 percent of total Medicare spending goes to caring for very sick patients in their last two years of life, often because those people are in and out of the hospital. In the early 2000's, that spending was equal to about $46,000 per chronically-ill patient.
Zimmermann, who wasn't involved in the new research, believes it's never too early for doctors, patients or caregivers to initiate discussions about end-of-life preferences - even if it can be an uncomfortable topic.
"There are many opportunities while that incurable illness is still being treated… to also focus on what happens if this doesn't work," she said.
"I think people are afraid that bringing up these discussions is going to make them die. Bringing up these discussions is really going protect them from an outcome they don't want in the end."
SOURCE: bit.ly/gPtMdm Journal of Clinical Oncology, online November 12, 2012.


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At WSP Opus Research we are committed to making the world work better
We provide a broad range of high quality research, specialist consultancy and laboratory services to improve the design and performance of infrastructure for commercial and government clients.
We have a proud history dating back more than 50 years to the New Zealand Ministry of Works when we provided experimental research that informed the design and construction of major national infrastructure projects, such as hydroelectric power schemes and state highways.
Today our researchers work in multi-disciplinary teams to address challenges as diverse as transportation safety, road performance, and the resilience of communities and businesses to major natural hazards.
We also provide specialist consultancy services and materials testing and analysis for engineering construction materials. Our management and operating practices are accredited to the International Quality Management System ISO 9001, and many of our laboratory services have ISO 17025 accreditation. Our team includes engineers, chemists, physicists, materials scientists, environmental scientists, geographers and behavioural scientists.
Read our client newsletter In-Touch and our latest brochure
Subscribe to the InTouch electronic newsletter for the latest WSP Opus Research news
Our capability and experience in research covers:
In transportation we provide a wide range of research and services, including road networks, public transport, active transport such as walking and cycling, and the integration of transport with land use. In buildings, structures and utilities, our work addresses the design and durability of new and existing buildings, structures and utilities. In the environmental area, much of what we do is about achieving more environmentally sustainable infrastructure, and understanding the effects of infrastructure on communities.
We also work to improve the health and resilience of both society and businesses by providing research and consultancy services to government, businesses and communities. We do a significant amount of work relating to increasing the resilience of our urban areas to natural hazards, and making cities more liveable.


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One in six is affected by hearing loss
Sixteen percent of adults experience hearing loss to the extent that it adversely affects their daily life. One of the major causes of hearing loss is ageing. Another common reason is exposure to noise. Some diseases can also lead to hearing problems.
Tinnitus is sounds in the ears or head which do not come from external sound sources. Almost everybody experiences temporary tinnitus, but many have permanent tinnitus which some find very annoying. Many people with tinnitus often also have a hearing loss.
Report "Hearing Loss - Numbers and Costs" (pdf)
Download press kit about the report (zip-folder)
Your situation
I have hearing loss
What should I do?
I might have a hearing loss
What should I do?
Somebody I know has a hearing loss
How can I help?
I have Tinnitus
What can I do?
My child has hearing loss
What should I do?
Hearing loss
Hearing loss is a natural consequence of getting older. Another common reason for hearing problems is exposure to noise. But hearing loss can also be caused by other factors. Hearing loss can have a range of consequences. The implications differ from person to person, but most people with hearing impairment suffer some social, psychological and physical problems as a result of their hearing loss. In most cases, hearing loss is treated with the use of hearing aids or hearing implants such as cochlear implants.
The ear
A hearing loss occurs when the ear's ability to conduct sound from the outer ear, through the middle ear into the inner ear and further into the brain is damaged or reduced.
About hear-it.org
Hear-it.org is a non-commercial web site and has been established to increase public awareness of hearing loss. Hear-it.org is one of the world's leading and most comprehensive websites on hearing, hearing loss and tinnitus and how to treat and live with hearing loss or tinnitus.


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Nashville Wedding Cakes
Leland Riggan and her team at Dessert Designs continue to be a monumental fixture in the Middle Tennessee wedding industry which is something that so many brides are thankful for as they embark on their journey to have the ultimate cake at their wedding. Offering a wide selection of custom-designed wedding cakes that can be delivered within Nashville and surrounding cities such as Franklin, Brentwood, Belle Meade, Green Hills, Hendersonville, and more, Dessert Designs produces cakes that leave their clients and their guests speaking positively of their experience for a very long time. The beauty of the artwork combined with what you too will claim to be the ultimate tasting wedding cake results in a product that is "Stunningly Delicious".
Gift Cakes
Share the love for cake by using the user-friendly shipping service of Dessert Designs' gift cakes. Now, some of your most favorite flavors are available in gift sizes and can be shipped virtually anywhere in the U.S. Order here online, tell us where to ship them, and soon your special friends and family will be enjoying the spectacular taste of a treat from Dessert Designs.
Event Cakes
Celebrate that special up-coming event with a custom cake that marks the event by personalizing the cake to the person or event being celebrated. What makes it even easier is that you can now order those cakes right here online, specify the pick-up date, and we'll have the order ready for you to celebrate while leaving behind all the worries about what you'll do about the dessert. We've got you covered.


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I suppose turning the snarky campy queens of RuPaul's Drag Race into the snarky, campy, evil queens of Disney is a logical step, but that doesn't make Chicago (and Tumblr) artist Justin's work any less fun to look at. Start your engines with Latrice Royale as Ursula.
All images via Dezignjk.
Chad Michaels as "Ladyprimp Tremaine," Cinderella's stepmother.
Manila Luzon as Cruella De Vil.
Raven as Snow White's wicked queen.
Sharon Needles as Maleficent.


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|Bread slices
|Cream style corn
|3/4 cup
|1/2, chopped
|1, chopped
|Pepper powder
|1/2 tsp
|Tomato sauce
|1 tsp
|As needed
|Corn flour
|2 tblsp
|Sesame seeds
|1 tsp
|1 tblsp
- To Prepare the stuffing,Heat a pan with oil and add the chopped garlic. Fry for a minute and add the chopped onions and fry till transparent.Add the cream style corn and mix well.
- Add pepper powder and sauce and fry till you get a thick stuffing.
- Trim the edges of the bread and roll with a rolling pin to make thin squares.
- Prepare a batter with corn flour with 1/4 cup of water.Spoon 2 tsp of the stuffing in the bread .
- Apply the corn flour batter in the sides of the bread.Roll the bread carefully.Seal the sides.
- Give a quick dip in the corn flour batter and sprinkle or roll over the sesame seeds.
- You can deep fry or shallow fry in a pan. Make sure you fry all the sides if you are shallow frying. Fry until crisp.
Serve hot with tomato sauce.


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Cytokeratin intermediate filaments in mouse trophoblast giant cells were labeled with a rat anti-cytokeratin monoclonal antibody and visualized using green-fluorescent Alexa Fluor® 488 goat anti-rat IgG. Nuclei were visualized with blue-fluorescent DAPI.
Methods and Materials
Trophoblast giant cells generated by Stealth RNAi silencing of OCT4 expression in cultured mouse embryonic stem cells
Materials Needed
KnockOut™ D-MEM (GIBCO®)
Leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF, ESGRO)(Chemicon)
KnockOut Serum Replacement (KSR)(GIBCO®)
Stealth RNAi duplexes designed to OCT4 (NM_013633) (Life Technologies™)
Lipofectamine™ 2000 transfection reagent (Life Technologies™)
Phosphate-Buffered Saline (PBS) 7.4 (10X), liquid (GIBCO®)
Methanol-free 16% formaldehyde solution (Polysciences)
Bovine serum albumin (Sigma)
Triton X-100 (Sigma)
rat anti-cytokeratin (University of Iowa Hybridoma Bank)
Alexa Fluor® 488 goat anti-rat IgG (Molecular Probes®)
Prolong® Gold antifade reagent (Molecular Probes®)
DAPI (Molecular Probes®)
Sample Preparation
Mouse embryonic stem cells (mESC) cultured in serum-free medium (KnockOut™ D-MEM supplemented with L-glutamine, nonessential amino acids, -mercaptoethanol, penicillin/streptomycin, leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF, ESGRO) and 15% KnockOut™ Serum Replacement (KSR)) were transfected with Stealth™ RNAi and Lipofectamine™ 2000 transfection reagent. LIF was present in the media throughout cell culture and transfections. Transfected mESC were cultured out to 6 days.
Note: Information and protocols for the RNAi probe design and transfection can be found here.
Sample Preparation
- Remove media from live cells and fix cells for 15 minutes in 4% formaldehyde solution.
- Wash cells 3 x 5 minutes in PBS.
- Permeabilize cells by treating for 10 minutes with PBT (0.1% Triton X-100 in PBS).
- Wash cells 3 x 5 minutes in PBS.
- Block cells for 1 hour in antibody blocking buffer (10% normal goat serum (NGS), 1% BSA in PBT; PBT = PBS + 0.2% Triton X-100).
- Incubate cells with 5 µg/ml of anti-cytokeratin monoclonal antibody in antibody blocking buffer for 45 minutes.
- Wash cells 3 x 10 minutes in PBT.
- Incubate cells with 5 µg/ml Alexa Fluor® 488 goat anti-rat IgG in 1% BSA/PBT for 30 minutes.
- Wash 3 x 5 minutes in PBS.
- Incubate cells for 20 minutes with Alexa Fluor® 635 phalloidin, diluted 1:40 from stock solution.
- Wash 3 x 5 minutes in PBS.
- Label cells with 0.2 µg/ml DAPI in PBS for 1 minute.
- Wash 3 x 10 minutes in PBS.
- Mount the specimen in ProLong® Gold antifade reagent.
Mounting Reagent Preparation and Sample Processing
- Remove the ProLong® Gold antifade reagent from the freezer and allow the vial to equilibrate to room temperature. Using an external heat source to warm the vial is not recommended, as this may decrease the long-term stability of the product.
- Remove any excess liquid from the specimen and apply 1 or 2 drops (depending on the surface area of your sample) of the antifade reagent to the specimen. Cover slide-mounted specimens with a coverslip; for specimens mounted on coverslips, place a drop of antifade reagent onto a clean slide and carefully lower the coverslip onto the antifade reagent to avoid trapping any air bubbles.
- Allow the mounted sample to cure on a flat surface in the dark. Curing time may vary from a couple of hours to overnight, depending on the thickness of the sample and the relative humidity of the surrounding air. For long-term storage, seal the coverslip to the slide after curing to prevent excessive shrinkage of the mounting medium, which can result in sample distortion. After sealing, store the slide upright in a covered slide box at <=-20°C. Desiccant may be added to the box to ensure that the slide remains dry.
To view the samples immediately, secure the coverslip at the corners using nail polish or hot wax to prevent the coverslip from moving. Leave the edges clear to allow the preparation to cure.
Note: The antifade properties of ProLong® Gold antifade reagent improve slightly the longer it remains in contact with the specimen. To further reduce photobleaching, minimize the exposure of fluorescently labeled specimens to light by using neutral density filters, and expose samples only when observing or recording a signal. Optimize image capture by using a minimum of optics, high-numerical aperture objectives, relatively low magnification, high-quality optical filters, and high-speed film or high-efficiency detectors.
To further reduce photobleaching, minimize the exposure of fluorescently labeled specimens to light by using neutral density filters and expose samples only when observing or recording a signal. Optimize image capture by using a minimum of optics, high-numerical aperture objectives, relatively low magnification, high-quality optical filters, and high-speed film or high-efficiency detectors.
For more information on this experiment, check out the following reference:
Differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells following RNAi-mediated silencing of OCT4 and Nanog
Shelley R. Hough, Ian Clements, Peter J. Welch, Kristin A. Wiederholt, Stem Cells First published online February 2, 2006 doi:doi:10.1634/Stem Cells Jun 2006; 24: 1467 - 1475
Table 1 - Instruments
|Objective Used
|Zeiss Axiovert 200M with CoolSnap HQ 12-bit digital camera
|40x 1.2 NA water immersion
|Filters Used
|Alexa Fluor® 488
|Excitation: 330WB80
|Excitation: 475AF40
|Dichroic: 400DCLP
|Dichroic: 505DRLP
|Emission: 450DF65
|Emission: 535AF45
For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.