text:
Customise my wordpress website, just like the theme
Budget $10-30 AUD
Okay, this is a simple enough job for a Wordpress expert, I just don't have the time or patience to do it.
Basically, I've chosen a theme on my new Wordpress website, but it's not like the theme shown, it needs to be configured to have a full width, no padding portfolio homepage in the link below:
[login to view URL]
My website currently with me trying, looks like this:
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The homepage is the main issue, I just need that configured to be just like the example theme.
Any takers?
98 freelancers are bidding on average $49 for this job
Dear Sir, I will make your website same as theme. Relevant Skills and Experience I am a freelance web designer & developer having 10 year of experience. I am expert in HTML, CSS, Responsive HTML, Bootstrap, Photosh More
On time and On budget I can do all what you want .... I did 311 projects with a rate of 5/5 .... please check https://www.freelancer.com/u/tarekahmed.html Relevant Skills and Experience I have a Professional team for More
Hello sir,i am professional & highly experinced wordpress developer i can do this job with good perfection i m ready to start work right now and can assure best service from my end . Thanks,Manish
As per the requirement mentioned, We are highly desirous to work with you and available to start immediately. I have worked on numerous projects involving website and software. Relevant Skills and Experience HTML,CSS, More
HI My Motion : "No Satisfaction, No Payment" We have expertise in Web Design & Development. Please check our client reviews to determine the quality of our work. Let start now? I am very hard working and always More
Hello Employer, I've read the project description, understood your requirements. I'm sure I can do this job. I'm a full stack developer having more than 5 years of experience in website and software development. More
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Hi, We are a team of professional web designer/developer, we are experts in Wordpress, Joomla, Ecommerce, Shopify, PHP, MySql, Responsive, Bootstrap, HTML 5 / CSS3, Landing page, PSD to HTML, Relevant Skills and Exper More
this is a straight forward job...i can do it within one hour Relevant Skills and Experience i have done this hundreds of times before.. Proposed Milestones $12.5 AUD - install theme $12.5 AUD - make like demo when d More
We have 6+ years experience in PHP, Wordpress, CSS, JQuery, HTML, HTML5, PSD to HTML, Responsive HTML etc. We have ability to modify any pluggins, templates, theams, database etc. Relevant Skills and Experience We are More
Hello Relevant Skills and Experience please have a look at our portfolio link:- [login to view URL] Proposed Milestones $22.5 AUD - 1 $22.5 AUD - 2


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- Premier League
Guardiola has 'no interest' in quick return, claims Fergie
Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson believes former Barcelona boss Pep Guardiola has "no interest" in returning to management at the moment.
Guardiola, 41, is currently in the United States taking a sabbatical from football after stepping away from the Catalan club at the end of last season, although his reported desire to return to the game next summer has led to him being frantically linked with a number of high profile vacancies.
Chelsea and Manchester City have both been repeatedly linked with the former midfielder - while the unfortunate medical news about current Barca boss Tito Vilanova, Guardiola's former No. 2, had sparked talk of a temporary return at Camp Nou.
But Ferguson, who has spoken to Guardiola on a couple of occasions in recent times during trips to New York, does not believe the Spaniard is desperate to return to football any time soon.
"I spoke to Pep a while ago and he said he has no interest in getting back into management at the moment," Ferguson told Eurosport. "His record is fantastic. The trophies he won at Barcelona were quite exceptional and that is his CV - he wins trophies.
"Barcelona have always had that style and played attractive football. He increased that by putting a new work ethic into the players. They work extremely hard to get the ball back and if you combine that with their possession it makes a fantastic team."
Meanwhile, Ferguson has revealed some of the management strategies that have made him such a success at Old Trafford over the last 26 years, after being the subject of a report by the Harvard Business School. The Scot claimed that a mixture of intimidation and encouragement formed the basis of his management style.
"You can't ever lose control," he told academics at the prestigious American university. "Not when you are dealing with 30 top professionals who are all millionaires. And if anyone steps out of my control, that's them dead."
He added: "I tell them that hard work is a talent, too. They need to work harder than anyone else. And if they can no longer bring the discipline that we ask for here at United, they are out. I am only interested in players who really want to play for United, and who, like me, are 'bad losers'."
However, he was keen to stress that he does not operate entirely without compassion - using his method of dealing with dropped players as an example.
"I have been dropped from a cup final in Scotland as a player at ten-past-two, so I know what it feels like," he said. "I'm not ever sure what they are thinking, but I tend to say 'Look, I might be making a mistake here' - I always say that - 'but I think this is the best team for today'.
"I try to give them a bit of confidence, telling them that it is only tactical, and that there are bigger games coming up."

subset: commoncrawl


text:
calculator upgrade
Suggestions and discussion about upcoming features in future BeerTools Pro releases.
1 post • Page 1 of 1
calculator upgrade
I would like to see the calculators linked to the recipe in a way that I can store and print information for later brews...or allow me to copy results to the notes page.
I like to think of it as making bottles...
- Manic Igniter
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text:
Two West Australian Liberal senators have broken ranks with their colleagues in declaring their support for a Labor bill to finalise the deregulation of wheat exports.
The same bill caused division in the opposition during its path through the lower house.
West Australian Nationals MP Tony Crook crossed the floor while his state Liberal colleague Dennis Jensen abstained from voting after earlier telling the lower house he could not oppose the bill.
In the Senate on Thursday, Liberal Alan Eggleston said the end of the single desk and opening of markets had brought great financial benefits to WA growers whose properties were generally larger than those in the east and whose produce was mostly exported.
He said WA stood to benefit most from this legislation.
"It is therefore unsurprising that WA growers have been very vocal in support of the Wheat Marketing Amendment Bill 2012 which if passed will complete wheat marketing deregulation," he said.
Senator Eggleston acknowledged that growers in eastern states disagreed but said it was high time differences in the national wheat market were recognised.
"Because of these differences I believe the growers in each state should have the right to decide their own marketing arrangements," he said.
Fellow WA Liberal Dean Smith said he supported the bill, which would finalise a process started under the former Howard coalition government to create a fully deregulated wheat market.
"The evidence points to the fact that Australia's wheat export marketing arrangements are sufficiently mature and competitive to allow for both the abolition of Wheat Exports Australia and the wheat export charge," he said.
Senator Smith said that charge hit WA growers the hardest.
"Removing the charge sends a powerful signal that we in this place understand that farming is often a difficult task," he said.
But independent Senator Nick Xenophon said without some form of amendment to strengthen this bill, he would not give his support.
"It does not offer enough support and protection for our producers and I believe it will lead to further market concentration and a severe lack of competition in the market and it will disadvantage our producers," he said.


text:
TheKingpin needed a new web page design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 35 designs submitted by 20 freelance designers.
No More Entries Thank You!
Need a Professional Corporate style design for a great online presence
- Easy Horizontal Navigation
- See links in brief for logo, nav links and homepage text
Desired Style:
Corporate & Professional
Accepted File Formats:
Layered Formats (.psd or .tiff)
No More Entries Thank You!
Need a Professional Corporate style design for a great online presence
Easy Horizontal Navigation
The home page will not have too much information. Here is the text that goes on the homepage:
Also included is their logo.
Here is a link to an image that needs to go on the homepage. http://www.netlyte.com/gf/Home-Page-img.jpg
Navigation Links - 8
Main, Our Team, Projects, Garden Style, High Density, Testimonials, Banking, Contact Us


text:
My first year interning at Garmin, a group of us began calling ourselves "The Garminators." Now, 12 of us work here full-time and hang out for lunch and on the weekends. There's at least one person in every division (aviation, marine, automotive, fitness and outdoor recreation). I think it's really neat how we've kept in touch and stayed friends over the years.
— Jason, former intern turned employee
Pack your college gear because you can wear it here.
At Garmin, we don't worry about what you're wearing; we're too busy pursuing the next best thing, and we want you to be a part of that innovation.
You give us 10-12 weeks, and we'll pay you to play with toys, build cool electronics and meet new people — not only at work but at outings, such as laser tag, ice cream socials and more. Now, this is what you've been studying for.
If you're a new graduate or in the early stages of your career, let Garmin show you the way.
Here, it's not "sink or swim"; you get a lot of support from more experienced professionals, who will build on skills you already have so you can create cool new products and accessories.
Are you an engineer? We need your newfound knowledge to bring innovation and new creativity to Garmin.
Are you into maps? We'll take the basic tools and functions you already know and teach you about attributing, digitizing and editing.
We have entry level positions in other areas too — industrial and process engineers, order administrators and contact center representatives, to name a few. If you're ready for the challenge, we're ready for you.
Q: When do internships occur?
A: Our internships occur each summer, between the months of May and August. We are flexible with start and end dates, depending on your school schedule. Internships typically last 10 to 12 weeks.
Q: What areas or departments do you hire interns?
A: The majority of our interns are in the engineering department, but we have had interns in operations, finance, marketing, IT and legal.
Q: Do you have a GPA requirement for your internships?
A: At least a 3.0 GPA is required, but we prefer 3.5 or higher.
Q: Are internships paid?
A: Yes. Internship compensation depends on the position, and rates of pay are competitive.
Q: Do interns get benefits?
A: Yes, but they vary slightly from full-time associates. Interns receive paid time off, vacation and are eligible for the corporate YMCA membership discount. They do not receive health, dental or vision insurance.
Q: What is the best way to get hired as an intern?
A: Attend one of our Career Fairs (calendar) and apply online.
Q: How do I know when you will be at my school?
A: Check out the calendar on our website.
Q: What is the process to be hired as an intern?
A: Search our current internship openings and create an online application. If we feel you are qualified, we will contact you.
Q: How does the interview process work for interns?
A: Typically, If we are interested a recruiter will contact you to conduct a phone interview. From there, you may receive a more technical on-site interview with a tour of the facility.
We also conduct on-campus interviews at some campuses. We will let you know if your college/university is one of those locations.
Q: How should I prepare for my interview?
A: We encourage you to contact your university's Career Services Department. Typically, they offer programs, such as resume reviews and mock interviews. We also encourage you to research Garmin and prepare questions.
Q: What should I bring to my interview?
A: Since we already have a copy of your resume and references, you may be asked to bring in items, such as sample code work or a portfolio, depending on the position. We'll let you know if we want you to bring anything with you.
Q: What would I do as an intern?
A: It varies depending on the projects that we have going on at Garmin at the time, but it definitely will be hands-on work — working side-by-side with a mentor, making real contributions to the company — no getting coffee and picking up dry cleaning!
Q: What are some perks to interning at Garmin?
A: Garmin has a lot of perks, including paid holidays (Memorial Day and Independence Day), accrual of paid time off, product discounts and discounts to the YMCA, just to name a few.
Q: What are my chances of getting hired on full-time after graduating, if I intern at Garmin?
A: We frequently hire our top interns, if interested, for full-time work after graduation.
Q: If I intern there, what is there to do outside of work?
A: We plan lots of fun activities for you to hang out with other interns and get to know the Kansas City area — baseball games, laser tag, bowling, museum tours, amusement/theme parks and so much more.
Q: If I accept an internship at Garmin, how can I connect with other people?
A: For interns, Garmin hosts several activities throughout the summer, including outings to Worlds of Fun, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and laser tag.
For part- and full-time employees, Garmin also hosts regular outings, for full- and part-time associates, so employees can get to know one another.
There also is a group called GenKC that organizes ongoing events to help young professionals enhance their personal and professional skill set.
More questions? See our list of general FAQs


text:
"It's a stupid rule and could have cost me the match," said Maguire, who trailed 5-2 at the time but ultimately won the frame despite giving away 40 points in fouls.
He did not criticise the match referee, Pete Williamson, who correctly applied the rule. Maguire could easily have hit the black off the top cushion but would have left a red on to a corner pocket had he done so.
Instead, he nine times attempted the green and had a go at the yellow as well. His attempts weren't helped by the fact that the side cushion was sliding.
The miss rule as it now stands was never intended to illicit 30 or 40 points from a single snooker.
However, before it was changed players were guilty of not making good enough attempts to get out of snookers.
The way out of all this would be the bold move of simply allowing players to put the cue ball where they liked after a foul. It would also considerably speed up play.
I don't believe this should ever happen in a ranking event because it would negate much of the skill - and drama - associated with top level match snooker.
But you could bring it into a new event as a novelty. I'm sure the new regime running snooker have already considered it.
19 comments:
I've said the same many times but you get the "traditionalists" who shoot you down! They seem to believe the miss rule has been there since the dawn of time but it's relatively new having been introduced "officially" in September 1995. The miss rule is very negative because it revolves around safety and it is ridiculous that a player can score 40 points by default - there's no skill in that. The other problem with the miss rule is that it is not often played at the lower levels of the game because it is so complicated for your average club player. I think the rules of snooker should be able to be applied at every level. By simply allowing the other player to place the cue ball anywhere on the table it will achieve its aim of making players try their best to hit the object ball. It also immediately converts play to attack in one shot rather than having endless minutes go by whilst the referee tries to put balls back into their original places! Come on Barry, be bold and change it for the good of the game (at all levels!).
- 8:27 pm
why not have a penalty of only one point for a foul after three fouls have been made?
- 8:47 pm
Leaving a cue ball in hand would in many situations (incl Maguires) be more costly than the miss rule being applied. It was maguire who snookered himself unluckily and if that rule was applied, it could have cost him the frame. How about giving a certain number of attempts (perhaps 3) and then on the next (4th attempt) if another foul happens, the cue ball can be placed in the 'D' which would give more options, but not necessarily give an easy clearance.
- 10:14 pm
Why not read the rulebook and stick to the rules intention!!!
- 10:37 pm
- Daniel said...
Having ball-in-hand anywhere is too far fetched for me. How about having the option of a free-ball after say 3 misses? Dan
- 11:37 pm
How about reading the rulebook!
- 11:40 pm
I am watching the match on E-sport now,typically, they cut the sequens out. Took to much time!
- 11:58 pm
- Newfred said...
I like the idea of free ball after 3 misses, but not of ball in hand. A player could make a very good attempt from a fluke snooker and leave the whole table on for his opponent with a ball in hand.
Another alternative is simply to change the way the rule is enforced. How about removing the stipulation (effectively) that the player must attempt the easiest escape? How about saying instead that the referee must deem that the player has made a fair attempt at his nominated shot, and issue clear guidance to referees about how this is to be implemented?
- 12:03 am
I agree with Kimball, these other idea's are ridiculous. Mcguire called it "a stupid rule" how and why i ask? Maybe attempting the green off 3 cushion's when it was sliding, was a stupid shot selection.. The rules there for a reason and as Kimball said "read the rulebook".
- 12:26 am
Ball in hand more costly?
If Maguire had been faced with leaving ball in hand after the first attempt to hit a baulk colour, surely he would have been more likely to play for the simple black. That was the intention of the miss rule when it was first introduced wasn't it? But the current rule has not achieved its intention because Maguire would rather have had 10 attempts at a baulk colour than 1 simple shot on the black because he didn't want to leave an easy red.
I don't see that the current rule is achieving its original intention at all. Ball in hand would be more likely to result in players attempting the easy escape rather than the more difficult one!
Ball in hand does not have to follow every foul either, just the ones where the striker fails to contact the ball on. So a regular in-off could still see the cue ball being placed in the D.
A simple rule that could be applied by players at every level.
- 12:37 am
- SupremeSnooker.com said...
Being able to place the cue ball wherever you like after a foul is pretty much a done deal for the Players Championship, isn't it?
- 12:39 am
Maguire could have easily hit the black, instead he chose to play a much more difficult shot. That's the risk he took and he was deservedly punished. I personally loved watching the incident - I was supporting Maguire at the time and willing him to hit the green but it was amusing how the white kept missing the green on both sides so he knew the shot was on, but couldn't get it right.
It added a nice dynamic to the frame, Carter got a 40 point start but Maguire still ended up winning it.
Maguire can have no complaints as far as I'm concerned. He knows the rules, he chose to play a difficult shot whereby he wasn't leaving anything for his opponent (otherwise he wouldn't have been put back in to play by Carter).
The fact he also took on a chancy plant at a vital moment which cost him a frame proves that his judgement in shot selection isn't as sound as say John Higgins and when you're at that level shot selection is what it's all about. He CHOSE to give away 40 points, it wasn't forced on him and I think the miss rule after all it's controvesy since inception is finally in a robust state after years of tinkering. Definitely don't get rid of it now!
- 10:47 am
I think Barry Hearn should play around with the miss rule in this new One frame tourney, the Players Championship and any event that isn't already established. Maybe it's the game that needs to change.
- 10:47 am
Snooker needs updating. We need a ranking event where the colours are moved to different spots. The baulk colours move to the black, pink and blue spots, with high value balls moving to the green, yellow and brown spots.
Mixing things up like this is the only way to save snooker from the farce of the misses yesterday.
- 11:02 am
Why is he moaning, anyway?
He's already admitted that he didn't want to win the match because he is scared of facing Ronnie or John!
- 12:00 pm
I found it supremely entertaining. He had an easy shot, chose to play an insanely difficult green, made the shot in the end and WON the frame.
It is such a tricky concept but I find that every alternative seems to have its own weakness. If there was a logical replacement for the miss rule I would like to see it implemented or at least tested.
- 12:32 pm
- Greg P said...
Personally I think the kicks, and the inconsistency of pockets and cushions, is a much bigger problem that needs to be addressed.
- 5:03 am
- Nott said...
The only thing I saw in those situations was a stubborn and slightly poor Maguire. With a very easy to hit black its a miss everytime, and tbh cushion sliding or not I expect the world #2 to hit it earlier than he did.
My gripe with the missrule is that most referees do not apply the rule as it is written. Its like they don't dare not calling it a miss even when they shouldn't. Safest way out of the spotlight.
Another thing I don't like about the rule may seem stupid but it is what I see down at the club. When players who can hardly make a 16 break uses the missrule like they see it on tv it gets really ridiculous. One could say they should understand why they shouldn't use it but don't we all want to play a game with the same rules as the pro-game?
I think the rule should be simplified.
I like the '3 misses then freeball' option.
- 9:15 am
Why not scrap the miss rule and just have a larger penalty, 10 points or whatever, for not making contact with the ball on?
- 5:31 pm


text:
Style # 209239
AVAILABILITY: Unavailable for immediate shipment.
Logo Crystal Stud Earrings is rated out of 5 by 5.
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Date published: 2013-05-14
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Date published: 2013-02-27
Rated 5 out of 5 by Nique76 from Perfect size I LOVE my logo earrings. They are the perfect size for me to wear to work or out. I got the gold pair but will purchase the silver, Thanks Bebe!!!!
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Date published: 2012-12-01


text:
Occasionally, people ask me questions as if I'd become the Carl Sagan of the adolescent universe. I grant that 22 years of reading 40 reflection papers from each of what now amounts to about 3,500 high-school and college students has given me perhaps a better insight into what teen-agers think than, say, a first-time parent--and surely better than the teenager, but I still have more than a few reminders of my finitude and fallibility. One of them arrived in the mail last Friday, from a group of high-school principals, asking me to give a workshop on teen-age spirituality next winter in Thcson, Ariz.
My first reaction was, of course, selfish: Who wouldn't trade slush for sunshine in March? My second reaction was cynical, the result of trying to teach distributive justice so long to kids whose orthodontia payments alone would gobble up a yearful of welfare checks. That voice from the unredeemed part of me snorted, "Teen-age spirituality! An oxymoron, like dehydrated water." For teenagers, the content of the word "spirit" is the same as in "a spirited pony" or "school spirit"; it has far more to do with surface "personality" than depth of "character."
But then the wee voice of the redeemed part of me whispered, "Psst! You don't know what the hell 'spirituality' even means, do you? As usual, that voice was spang on. I'd heard the word all my life, though—oddly--I rarely found myself using it. I'd written four books about praying. But I didn't, honestly, know what "spirituality" meant. I wonder if many people who use it often do. So I figured: better sit down and teach myself a lesson, to lessen my ignorance and perhaps help someone else.
Spirituality. Spirituality is my spirit-life, and my spirit is my soul--my self, my character, my who-I-am. My intellect is intrigued, but my soul is stirred. It's that potential within me that responds to the numinous and the sacred in nature, in art, in people, in God, that is humbled when it senses how the world is charged with God's grandeur. It's where all the nebulous, unquantifiable aspects of my self reside: honor, awe, genuine sentiment, loyalty, remorse, patriotism, faith, hope, love (when it's purged of self). Just as my hunger for food is in my belly, and my hunger for reasons is in my mind, my hunger to survive death lives in my soul. But the state of my soul-life--my spirituality--is something I can comprehend only vaguely, in a glass darkly, as elusive as the moments that quicken it.
All the scholastic philosophers to the contrary notwithstanding, human beings are definitely not just "rational animals." If that were the limit of our being, we would be merely apes with computers implanted--which is merely a variant of scientism. It is precisely that simplicism that C. S. Lewis lambastes in his masterful The Abolition of Man: the unquestioned rationalist and materialist supposition that underlies most of our educational decisions, even in Christian schools, no matter what our brochures claim. Mens sana in corpore sano. Nope. If that's all we train, we will get what Lewis calls "men without chests"--that is, alternately cerebral and visceral, but not human because we've left out what makes us human: not the visceral, surely, nor even the cerebral, but the spiritual. It is the heart, not the brain (which we share with beasts), that makes us human--and not "heart" in the sense of the sentimentalist, but heart in the sense Gerard Manley Hopkins used for Margaret's sudden understanding of death:
Nor mouth had. no nor mind. expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed.
Neither belly nor brain can account for unselfish love.
Lewis's contemporary, Dorothy Sayers, explains the human soul as well as anyone I've read. In The Mind of the Maker, she says that in the triadic union of the Godhead, the Father expresses himself--his Word--and, in that very self-expression, a power of loving is generated, who is their Spirit. Just so, in the fusion of mind and body, a third power is--or can be--generated: the human spirit. But most of us don't want to--or are unable to—express--or even apprehend--our self. And therefore there is no self; no character, just a "personality."
The reductionists, among whom are most of our students (I don't know why), constantly assert that humans are no more than higher-level animals. Beasts sense dangers even humans can't; dolphins and whales communicate at enormous distances; animal mothers show great "love" for their young, even to the point of self-sacrifice. But the reductionists fail to account for the difference between knowledge and understanding, and between affection and love, which is not a mere feeling but an act of the will. Perhaps the reason is that they have been educated only to know and not to understand, and that they have felt only loyalty and affection but never genuine, self-sacrificial love. An animal might sacrifice for her own, but we can sacrifice even for our enemies. The reductionists fail to realize that no sow, snoozing in maternal bliss in a ringlet of piglets, has her dreams disturbed by the certainty that she will one day die.
The human spirit is distanced from the animal not by a smeary, gradual change but by a stunning quantum leap: the fact that animal nature is a command and human nature is an invitation. No lion refuses to be leonine, but the daily papers are glutted with evidence that human beings refuse to be human. We are free to act precisely like merely higher-level animals--only with the added advantage of the human brain, which raises animal shrewdness to a capacity for saturation bombings and extermination camps. What allows us to call such wretches "inhuman" is not their lack of a body, not their lack of a mind, but their lack of a soul.
The genetic instructions in the human body are what Albert Rosenfeld calls "a framework of opportunities." The lion follows its inner programming automatically, but the human male with big shoulders and strong legs is free to work on them to become a Big Ten fullback-or to take up the violin. Just so with the human spirit. A ghetto kid can turn his squalor into a Horatio Alger story, and an advantaged kid can turn his opportunity into a Jay McInerney story. We are free, and freedom resides in the soul. And we are free to actualize our human potential. Or not.
Just as the hungers of the human belly can be palliated with junk food and the hungers of the human mind sated by the National Enquirer and Sporting News, the hunger of the human spirit can get an ersatz jag from pep rallies and Boy Scout oaths and pop music. Most students I teach quote U2 and Springsteen as if they were T. S. Eliot and Holy Writ. But the result is the same with the soul as with the belly and brain flab. It is why so many of our young, and not-so-young, seem dis-spirited.
The spirit that is the result of conscious marriage of cerebral and visceral is what Romans called anima. Feminine. That view fits the metaphors of the soul and church as the Bride of Christ. Lewis believes, then, that the proper posture of the soul before God, whether in a male or female, is "feminine": not in any way passive, but receptive, fertile, vulnerable, creative. In that sense, God comes to each of our souls, in a daily Annunciation, and asks, "Conceive my Son in you today."
In that sense, then, the process of civilization--of humanization--has been a process of feminizing the macho-savage side of what are only potential human beings. The Viking or knight is merely an Olympic-class butcher without the minstrel to give his slaughter a meaning, a context, to make his story not merely titillate the mind but stir the soul. And Christianity took one quantum leap further: Its hero not only eschewed battle; he conquered by his sheer impotence.
As I struggled this far, the unredeemed voice became positively smug: "See?" The possibility of accessing the teen-age soul seemed a task to daunt Hercules. "Teenage spirituality? In the 1990's? Not an oxymoron; flat-out contradiction."
And yet I sense a soul-life in our young, like the yearning for freedom in the fifth-generation slave. It's in the grain. Except perhaps for the sociopath, it can't be excised from any human being. It's born in us: the itch for Eden.
The Obstacles in the Audience. The new age--since the assassinations and Vietnam and Watergate--has witnessed the death of "Wow!" None of us will be caught again with our hearts on our sleeves. In a class of 30, only one or two will admit having been moved to tears by a film. Patriotism has shriveled to paying taxes and perhaps voting. What leaves the young open-mouthed today? A Trans Am, a beautiful body, a spectacular goal, an explosive rock concert. All external, all soul-substitutes. In order to feel awe, one has, by definition, to feel small in contrast to the stimulus: a mountain at dawn, a star-strewn sky, the beloved, God. But the permanent posture of most youngsters now is not vulnerability but constant defensiveness; not on their knees but with their dukes up.
One reflection paper asks the student for his or her heroes; more and more in recent years, half the students answer, "I don't think I have heroes." It makes sense. A pervasive skepticism began to infect the American spirit after the downfall of the Camelot-Flower Child crusade. No hero or heroine can last long with an army of investigative reporters dogging their Achilles' heels. The media smother us with emotional programming we all know is phony but nonetheless fall for. "Value" is strictly a left-brain commodity, a solid return for your investment.
Another class, about values, pictures a little girl with a $50 bill in one hand and a stuffed rabbit in the other: "If, by some impossible turn of events, you were forced to throw one of those three into a furnace, which would you throw?" In the l00-or-so times I've done it, some wag inevitably says the little girl. Once that's behind us, the majority say the rabbit. Why? You take the 50 bucks and buy another--ignoring, of course, the fact that the money is the girl's. Then, gradually, it begins to dawn on some that the child has very little sense of the value of money, but that the worn-out rabbit is her most precious possession. There are two kinds of value, one easily quantifiable by the left brain, the other not so easily boxed in but resonating in the sensitized soul. Nor is the exercise based on "some impossible turn of events." Forty years ago, people faced just that choice: to process millions of little girls in incinerators, like garbage. Those who agreed to do that still had human minds and human bodies, but they had lost hold of their human souls.
Another reflection is also enlightening: "Given a choice between a job you detested that paid an obscenely high salary, or a job you truly loved but made you, your spouse and family really have to struggle to make ends meet, which would you take?" I've kept a running log, and 85 percent would choose to be miserable with the high salary. Their reasons sound noble: They would rather be unhappy if it gave their families "a good life." Rarely do they consider that their family's happiness might be affected by their week-long misery. Despite the fact that we've previously gone through Erikson's stages of disequilibrium necessary for human growth, no student ever wrote that he or she would be willing to let the children struggle in order to develop spine; they would rather give their children comfort than character. No student ever wrote that he or she would choose a spouse who'd rather have them fulfilled than have a pool in the backyard. There is only one meaning to "the good life," and it has nothing whatever to do with Plato and Aristotle, much less Jesus Christ.
Many adults fail to realize how much "image" dominates the lives of the young. Since the caves, youngsters at puberty have suddenly awakened to an awareness of their faces and physiques: "Mom, am I pretty? ... Is my body wimpy?" But today exploiting that concern is a multibillion-dollar industry. The self-doubtful voices within the child are now amplified and multiplied until their lives are totally surrounded by judgmental mirrors. There are a variety of responses to that pervasive incitement to self-doubt: "cool," conformity, projection, alienation, one-upmanship--among many others. But all of them are reactions based on a judgment about surfaces, about personality rather than character. What you seem to be is far more important than who you are; nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
But if the discovery of one's soul depends on vulnerability, how can we convince youngsters of the crucial importance of laying hold of a self-much less the painful effort of going in quest of it, when they spend most of their time on the defensive?
Not only do the ads and media subvert the search for the soul, but our children's education-both in school and at home-is almost exclusively surface and pragmatic. Teachers and parents fall back on the only motivation for learning they can think of: not to discover a self, a character, a philosophy of life, but to get a good job. Since Sputnik, "everybody knows" math and science are the important subjects, even for an aspiring lawyer or artist. Even the so-called "soft" disciplines like English and history are primarily analytical, left-brain. The object of education is to "master" the data, not to be vulnerable to it and follow wherever the subject chooses to lead. When parents ask, "How ya doin' in school'?" they don't often mean, "Is it exciting?" but "How are your grades?"
The possibility of teen-age spirituality is looking less and less likely. And yet, like any missionary, one becomes hypersensitive to any flicker of interest, any hint there might be hope. The Iroquois let me tag along on their treks; the Mandarins cock a reluctantly quizzical eye at my sextant and my clocks. If parents and teachers can establish credibility with this skeptical audience in nonreligious spiritual areas, there's a chance we might see that squinted face that's saying, "Hey, wait a minute. I may be missing something. You listen to ... God?"
Sensitizing the Soul. The first step is to acknowledge that our primary obligation as Christian parents and educators is not the S.A.T.'s. One would be an idealistic fool to ignore them, but they are not the reason we charge tuition and hang crucifixes in our classrooms. We have a duty to our students' minds, but we have a more profound duty to their souls, to sensitize them, feminize them so that no youngster-especially no boy-needs to apologize for having one. Our task as apostles to the young is to lead them, like God, to understand and express the self-not merely the "sometime spirit" that emerges by chance during a dutiful Mass or during one of the astonishing, numinous, Oh-my-God! moments, but the spirit that is the child's true self. But that will require a major conversion, in teachers and administrators, from our pervasively pragmatic and efficient mind-set.
There is a natural potential in every human person, even nonreligious persons, that responds to the numinous and sacred in nature and art, and, if grace builds on nature, we can begin our movement toward the spirituality that deals with God by sensitizing children early to that more accessible and less intimidating union with the powerful and invisible forces all around them (that are, in fact, the aliveness of God).
In grade school, rather than instruct children about sin (of which they are not yet capable) or about the Virgin Birth and Trinity (which baffled even Aquinas), let us teach them, once a week at least, ways of relaxing and centering themselves, opening themselves to God. Very young children are far better candidates for meditative, receptive, "feminine" prayer than adults. They are less uptight, less defensive, more imaginative. According to Jesus, they are always in the Kingdom. Teach them to feel it, enjoy it, revel in it, perhaps even remain in it.
Sometime in or after first grade, learning gradually ceases being an adventure and becomes a boring chore. My hunch is that we feel we've finally lured them into our lair, and it's time to get down to the serious and efficient business of those S.A. T. 's Of course children have to wrestle for basic skills, but even though learning might not always be fun, it ought always to be intriguing. As "Sesame Street" consistently proves, children learn far faster when their curiosity is piqued, when they are given not answers but problems and sent off in quest of their own answers. It is not as efficient as ingest-and-regurge, but the God we are trying to sensitize them to is quite obviously not as efficient as we'd like, either.
Every year, I'm amazed how many bright seniors have never read Aesop's fables or Grimm's fairy tales. They've never lived with dragons and unicorns. They don't know the stories that, from time immemorial, have allowed children to understand life and their own selves. Thank God for Luke Skywalker, but they have never heard of Odysseus or Theseus or Psyche, tales that would keep alive the itch for Eden in them. By the time they reach me, they are all too ready for the smart-ass Weltschmerz of Holden Caulfield and the winsome pessimism of Kurt Vonnegut.
Take them to the woods and to the beach, away from buildings and billboards, Playboy and Saturday cartoons, Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly. Ask if they can feel a presence there, something beyond the sigh of the wind and the harrumph of the waves. It will not improve their grades; it is more a test of what we teachers and parents truly hold important for our children.
Let children's liturgies be fun. For God's sake, don't preach to them. Let each one tell what God looks like; let each one tell "What I like about Sarah is .... " Don't do it for them. Let the hymns be rousers, what we used to call "Negro spirituals," effusions that rouse both the natural and the supernatural sides of the soul. And at least by junior high, they should be ready for a weekend retreat--perhaps not yet a purely supernatural one, but one where they can break down their ego-defenses in safety, reach out, be vulnerable and unafraid for a while.
In high school, we ought to give at least some time to the same kinds of activities. Granted, a few years ago, we belted the pendulum all the way from the perceptive catechism to the huggy-kissy-touchy-feely-group-grope, and since then have had to give religious ed a kind of academic respectability again. But we have over-compensated. One such exercise is "trust," where one student falls backward and another catches him or her. I've seen boys, who on Saturday skated 90 miles-an-hour, unfazed by being slammed into the boards, turn around maybe five times: "Now, you're there, right? If you try anything .... " Paranoia even among pals. The difference between the hockey game and the exercise was that, on skates, the boy himself was in charge. How do we make such a boy vulnerable to God? Not overnight.
In senior year, I spend. two quarters studying pop-psychology with boys in religious ed. Except for an occasional comment, it's rarely overtly religious, and yet if I can't make them understand how to evolve an adult self, how can I ever stimulate their "teen-age spirituality"? The moral self (ethos, character) is not separable from the spiritual self. Thus, we study how purely analytical, left-brain ideas are often half-witted, that we are all victims of the animal id and the superego taped from our socialization as children, unless we-at no small effort-wrestle for an ego: a self, a character, a personally validated ethic. We study Erikson's stages of development and the natural shocks we encounter as we grow, without which we remain children for life. We study not only the differences in sexuality but the androgynous (masculine/feminine) nature of souls, male or female. And we finish with the nine personality types of the enneagram. (I have never seen any group of classes more sure-fire with seniors than the enneagram. Even in the class after lunch, the somnambulists are bright-eyed and alert!)
Ironically enough, science teachers are especially able to break down the left-brain bias of students and open them to a sense of the numinous--provided they go beyond the confines of the cookbook syllabus. Physics was always the hardest of the "hard" sciences to most people, and still is: the extreme specialization of the analytical mind. From Democritus to Newton and beyond, it had a mechanistic concept of the world, a model in which matter was broken into basic building blocks, passive, leaden. It triumphed in the Cartesian dichotomy between the world (the rea extensa) and the mind (the res cogitans). It was all very neat and predictable.
But since Heisenberg and Einstein and Planck, we know that mass--the hard-edged objects we heft and skin our shins against, the whizzing pellets in the atom--are not really res extensae at all! Mass is nothing but a form of energy. Atomic particles do not consist of any basic "stuff," but are bundles of "tendencies to exist." Electrons are both particles and waves at the same time, and there is only a strong probability of finding a particular particle in a particular place at a particular time. As elusive as God. In the four-dimensional continuum of space-time, you can't really ask how fast anything is going; the answer is valid only relative to where you happen to be standing at the moment. The physicist begins to sound like an Eastern mystic.
As Fritjof Capra wrote in The Saturday Review (12/10/77), both modern physics and Eastern mysticism "emphasize that the universe has to be grasped dynamically as it moves, vibrates, and dances; that nature is not a static equilibrium but that it is a dynamic one." God and God's universe are not nouns but verbs. Both the physicist and the mystic must be "able to attain nonordinary states of consciousness in which they transcend the three-dimensional world of everyday life to experience a higher, multidimensional reality .... The survival of our society will depend, ultimately, on our ability to adopt some of the yin [feminine] attitudes of Eastern mysti¬cism, to experience the wholeness of nature and the art of living with it in harmony."
Most parents want their children to have "the good life," and they believe that a good college is the road to such a life, and that the S.A. T.'s are the narrow gate onto that road. Some spend large amounts of cash for special courses. If Capra is right, they might spend their money more wisely, in the long run, by teaching their children to meditate.
To achieve a teen-age spirituality, we must first prove to our young the undeniable existence of their souls. Then perhaps we can show them the One for whom those souls were made.


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Categories: Explorers, Probes & Pocket Markers : Explorers
Explorers – 5, Double End - Nordent Mfg Inc.
Explorers are used to examine teeth for decay (caries), calculus and other abnormalities. They have thin, flexible tips that taper to a sharp point and come in various patterns. All Nordent Explorer tips are made from spring-tempered stainless steel and are machine ground to exacting tolerances. Each tip is then hand sharpened and formed into its final shape by expert craftsmen.


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The 89th Annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is well underway this weekend, as the three days of practices sessions have now concluded, and teams are preparing for the race on Sunday. With the paddock abuzz that 2011 will be the last year that the hill climb will have a dirt section, things were shook up even further in the 1200cc motorcycle class as PPIHC rookie rider Carlin Dunne from the Santa Barbara Ducati team took the pole position with a qualifying time of 5:35.937 (each classes qualifies on only a single section of the race course, with motorcycles qualifying on the lower section this year). Vying for the top spot on the time sheet, Dunne had stiff competition in the 1200c race class, namely from Spider Grips Ducati riders Gregg Tracy, who crashed during the qualifying session.
Battling with Dunne, Tracy's off occurred due to the cold tarmac conditions, thus losing valuable time. Tracy's practice times from earlier in the day were favorable though, posting a 5:48.798 in traffic earlier in the morning. Dunne's rookie pole debut is a rarity on The Peak, though traditionally it predicts a top-step finish for the rider (no pressure, right?). In order for that to happen, the Santa Barbara native will have to keep Tracy and his teammate Alexander Smith at bay, along with a very fast Mark Cernicky (who writes about motorcycle occasionally). Also in the hunt is Glenn Cox on his KTM SuperDuke R, though Joe Kopp's Triumph Speed Triple has been relegated to an exhibition class, as it falls outside the 1200cc & 7500cc class rules (the 1200cc class is for v-twins only…draw your conclusions on that as you will).


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Sam Wang offers digital perspectives
GREENVILLE � Internationally recognized photographer and educator Sam Wang is the juror for the upcoming photographic exhibition at ECU.
Sponsored by the ECU School of Art and Design, the image exhibition will open with a lecture by Wang at 5 p.m. Jan. 24 in the Speight Auditorium, with an opening reception honoring the artists following in the Wellington Gray Gallery, all in the Jenkins Fine Arts Center.
Wang chose 80 works by 67 artists from 20 states to be included in the show. Images cover a range of photographic processes, including digital imaging, traditional black and white photography, antiquarian and alternative processes.
He awarded five $1,000 prizes each to Brit Erving of Arlington, Texas; Gregg Kemp of Durham; David Simonton of Raleigh; Robert Sulkin of Roanoke, Va.; and Raphael Warshaw of Fairfax, Va.
�The first Photography and Digital Image Exhibition in the Wellington B. Gray Gallery was organized by Gil Leebrick, director, and held in February 1997. The � juror, Olivia Parker, chose a show that was ecumenical in its diversity of photo-based media,� said Tom Braswell, interim gallery director. �In keeping with that tradition, this year�s show is an overview of the pluralism of practice in contemporary photographic art.�
Wang was born in Beijing, China, in 1939 and came to the U.S. to attend Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D., where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in art and later attended the University of Iowa, earning a Master of Fine Arts in 1966. From then until 2006, he taught at Clemson University, retiring from there.
At Clemson, he established the Digital Production Arts program to prepare students for careers in digital animation. His work as an artist covers most formats and processes in photography, both black and white and alternative processes, and he was an early experimenter with digital imaging in the 1980s.
In 2010, �Sam Wang: Four Decades of Photographic Exploration,� was released, documenting his career of art photography and innovation. In 2012, he received the Elizabeth O�Neil Verner Award given by the governor and the South Carolina Arts Commission for service in the arts.
Eighth Photographic Image Biennial Exhibition
Jan. 24-Feb. 23
5 p.m. Jan. 24, lecture by Sam Wang, Speight Auditorium
Wellington B. Gray Gallery
ECU School of Art and Design
Jenkins Fine Arts Center, off Fifth and Jarvis streets, Greenville
Free to public
252-328-6336 or ecu.ecu/art


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Shopify is proud to announce the release of the Shopify Platform!
For the occasion of Shopify's third birthday, we are officially announcing two major releases that will make Shopify better than ever – the Shopify App Store and the Shopify API!
Shopify App Store
The Shopify App Store is another very exciting project that is also released today. It benefits two different groups of people: Shopify storeowners, and Shopify developers.
Shopify storeowners now have the opportunity to add applications to their Shopify store that will allow them to do all sorts of things they have been unable to do before. From custom invoices and sales reports, to pretty much anything else you can imagine! Here's a sampling of the first few applications that are available:
- Pixel Printer – an application that makes printing invoices simple
- PowerReviews App – a full-featured customer reviews application
- Fetch – easy-to-use application for selling digital goods
- Mapify – live geolocation of your customers' purchases
- BaseSync – tool for syncing a store's products to Google Base
In order to browse and purchase new apps, you go directly to the App Store, browse for the application that you want, and then simply click Install and presto!
In the near future, application developers will even be able charge for their apps using Shopify's billing system. This is a big win for users, as any app charges will be included in their regular Shopify bill; and it's a big win for developers, who won't have to write custom billing code for their apps.
Check out the App Store right now to see all the great things that are on there, and keep your eyes peeled for the new apps that will be released in the future!
Shopify API
The Shopify API has been in the works for a long time and is finally ready. We've worked closely with many pre-launch partners that have made the API very robust and we are proud of the final result. The Shopify API will allow developers to create tools that integrate directly with Shopify, and to create applications which will then be sold or offered for free in the App Store.
The API is documented to make it easy for developers to create new applications to be integrated into the Shopify App Store. Interested in becoming a developer and earning recurring revenues from your apps? Check out our Partners page to sign up!
Join 446,005 entrepreneurs who already have a head start.
Get free online marketing tips and resources delivered directly to your inbox.
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You'll start receiving free tips and resources soon. In the meantime, start building your store with a free 14-day trial of Shopify.
11 comments
June 02 2009, 12:21PM
Fantastic! Apps Store looks great and the API will be sure to fill the store with more goodies.
June 02 2009, 12:21PM
Bravo Guys!
June 02 2009, 12:21PM
This is so exciting!
June 02 2009, 12:21PM
That's great !
June 02 2009, 12:21PM
Woo, Shopify – nicely done.
@Ean: Hi Ean, your post is a bit vague, perhaps pop over to the forums (http://support.myshopify.com/discussions) and express your concerns – I, as an avid Shopify fan, would be more than happy to try and get to the bottom of your concerns – plus Shopify staff are more likely to respond on the forums.
June 02 2009, 12:21PM
Bravo guys!
June 02 2009, 12:21PM
This is HUGE! Happy Birthday guys.
June 02 2009, 12:21PM
@Ean: just to echo what iamkeir said, if you can be more specific in your concerns it would be of great help.
Regarding the features being included in other e-commerce systems, Shopify is supposed to be lean – when a shopping cart gets bloated it becomes cumbersome and difficult to maintain. We like to make sure that our features don't just work, but that they work better than everyone else's.
You can get directly in touch with me by e-mailing me at my name @shopify.com and I would be more than happy to address your concerns.
June 02 2009, 12:21PM
Anyone working on a live support chat module? That'd be awesome!
June 02 2009, 12:21PM
Dimitri – I had a question regarding Fetch and have sent an email. Thanks in advance for your help and for your time.
June 02 2009, 12:21PM
Hey guys, where's the so called 'well documented' api? I want to work on some integration….


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Miley Cyrus: Shooting A Music Video With Lil Kim!
Miley Cyrus throws up a peace sign while leaving a private residence on Saturday night (February 2) in the Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles.
The 20-year-old actress/singer joined rappers Lil' Kim and Tiffany Foxx at the "Twisted" music video shoot.
PHOTOS: Check out the latest pics of Miley Cyrus
"Starts with @therealjuicyj ends with @LilKim what a week :)," Miley tweeted early the following morning.
In case you missed the good news, Miley recently signed a new record deal with RCA Records for her upcoming new music!
FYI: Miley is wearing Rad and Refined Vintage Chanel Earrings.
Posted to: Miley Cyrus


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It's already been a year since Dietgirl retired! If you want to catch up, I'm still writing up a storm at my new home – shaunareid.com. See you there!
Author Archives: shauna
Just in case you missed it…
… last month we said goodbye to Dietgirl and I've carried on my adventures in lard-busting and otherwise on ShaunaReid.com.
Here's what's been happening…
- The first monthly check-in of 2013 – how's that 3-2-1 Exercise Plan and the Word of the Year going?
- I ditched my clown pants and found a more positive way to look at weight loss
- I wrote about about Haggis Poisoning and Gareth's unfortunate childhood trauma!
You can get new posts via email or get notified of new stuff on Facebook or RSS feed. There's even a new email newsletter if you fancy the occasional bonus update.
Stay groovy, good people!
Farewell Dietgirl, and a new beginning
This is a long post but I promise I'll make it worth your while.
Short version: I'm not stopping, just relocating! Plus, there's awesome prizes to be won…
Twelve years ago today I started this secret blog. I was lonely, scared and convinced I was possibly the very largest person in Australia. I already had a blog, but thought everyone would disappear if I revealed the true shambles of my life. Who'd want to read about that?
I invented Dietgirl to hide behind; an alter ego far stronger and capable than I felt. I wouldn't need her very long – for I had a spreadsheet! I calculated I could zap 80 kilos in neat weekly installments, so in less than two years I'd slip seamlessly back to my non-secret non-fat blog and begin a sparkly, skinny new life.
Do you reckon Me of 2001 would've freaked out if she'd known I'd be here in 2013? That the spreadsheet still isn't "finished?". Sorry 2001 buddy; it all got a bit messy. But messy in the good way! You took half a decade to lose the lard, then after a few years you found a big chunk of it again. Then there were unexpected adventures… a Body Pump addiction, a move to the other side of the world, a nice Scottish bloke…
…"outing" yourself in the paper, getting your arse kicked in your first and last kickboxing competition…
… writing a book, re-learning to ride a bike…
… growing parsnips as big as cats, going to some brilliant blogging conferences, and shuffling 5K that years later sparked a groovy running community.
And of course, there's all the kind, thoughtful, witty and generous people who read along and shared their adventures too. Incredible strangers who reached out over the interwaves just to say, "Dude, you're not alone". It was bloody awesome.
. . .
I was only 23 when Dietgirl began and now I'm a creaky 35… I'm no longer on a Diet and I'm certainly no longer a Girl! So after twelve years, today I'm hanging up the cape and will be continuing my adventures on my original blog at ShaunaReid.com.
I feel so giddy to be downsizing to one home for my web wafflings, whether that's travels, lard busting updates, cake, perving on sportsmen or general happenings. No more compartmentalising or hiding behind not-at-all-secret identities. I've wanted to simplify things for about three years now but it's taken me this long to get organised! I wasn't kidding yesterday about the procrastination problem.
I'll also be writing more often on the Up & Running blog, with my amateur bumblings providing nice contrast to Coach Julia's Ironman heroics. We'll be exploring the mind and body connection stuff even more this year, as running and fitness is about so much more than sweating! We're also cooking up some exciting new stuff for 2013, including an e-course for those seeking a helping hand to start making exercise part of their life – basically what I wish had existed back in 2001.
So, from now on you'll find me at ShaunaReid.com – complete with a whizz bang foxy new design!
- You can subscribe to the RSS feed here
- I'll keep notifying you of new posts on the DG Facebook page as normal.
- The Dietgirl blog will remain up as an archive in case anyone ever wants to have a nosy around.
Righto… if you made it this far, it's time to CELEBRATE like crazy people!
For the past three years January 15 has meant time for cool prizes in the Dietgirl Birthday Sell Out, a way of saying cheers to everyone for reading. Today feels like the biggest celebration of all, I'm Selling Out once more! It all starts tomorrow at the new digs. So be sure to subscribe or stalk on Twitter or Facebook to find out when the first Sell Out post goes live. And the prizes are ace, I must say! UPDATE: The Sell Out has begun!
Thank you thank you THANK YOU to everyone who's stopped by over the past twelve years. Thanks for your comments, emails, generosity, friendship and kindness. It's been an unforgettable adventure and I'm excited to dive in to the next phase.
See you on the other side! »
My word for 2013
Happy Monday to you! Be sure to come back tomorrow for some DG 12th Birthday goodness!
Do you have a Word of the Year? I always thought it was a frilly idea until I gave it a go last year. My word was present, and turned out to be a groovy way to set a theme, guide actions and remember an intention. Rather than a mega list of to-do's or goals it's a concise little thing to carry around. When things went astray I'd recall the word – whether in my head or muttering it aloud like a loony – and POW, it pulled my head out of the clouds.
Many times I forgot to remember the word (e.g. covered in cake crumbs… Oh yeah! PRESENT! D'oh.), but these things take practice!
Since 2012 turned out okay I'm calling the secret trial a success and have decided to say this year's word out loud. There's always that, "If I tell people, what if I cock it up?" fear but… accountability and all that, eh?
My 2013 word is Focus. It felt like a good one to build on the momentum from the end of 2012 and get that consistency happening. I know what I need and want to do, it's just that tendency to procrastinate, self-sabotage, multi-task and wander down self-destructive and/or time-sucking side streets (e.g. Facebook Street, LOLcat Alley, Binge Boulevard, ho ho ho!).
So I'm focusing…
- On what's important, on what's meaningful, on the little things that make everyday life feel good.
- On only one task at a time.
- On one browser tab or Word doc at a time.
- And not focusing my energy on petty issues, perceived slights, drama that doesn't belong to me, etc etc etc.
To give the Focus a bit of backbone, health and wellbeing wise, I picked three straightforward things:
- Write every day – basically the Morning Pages idea from The Artist's Way book. Every morning you write three pages of stream-of-consciousness waffle. It helps shake out any deranged thoughts and set your compass for the day. I've been doing them for about eight months now but with no real consistency until this last two. It's so helpful to get your ranty pants on first thing then just GET ON with your day!
- Continue the HAM Plan for the eating. Also watching portion size as that's no doubt contributing to the maintenance 😉
- 3-2-1 Exercise plan – 3 cardio sessions, 2 weight sessions and 1 yoga session each and every week.
Two weeks in and it's all going great guns. Focus is a great word for muttering under your breath… must be the F? Also, I'm amazed at how much work gets done when not Alt-Tabbing between a dozen apps and brower tabs. Hmmmmmm.
Apologies to the Up & Runners for having already been subjected to a version of these ramblings on the Forum! 😉
Hope in a disc
How did I end up with so many bloody workout DVDs? I've pondered this a gazillion times these past couple of Dust-Off months and this is what I came up with.
1. The Absolute Awesomeness.
I remember the elation of my first Cathe DVD – whoa this just like Body Pump except I'm home and it doesn't matter how shite my workout clothes are!
I just dig the home workout. I can modify for my dodgy knee or skip high-impact sections, which is much better than paying money for a class that I can't really do properly. I like seeing the evolution of instructor hairstyles and wondering if they get along with their background exercisers, or if one of them is secretly plotting to topple the leader with her own set of DVDs.
2. The Collect-Them-All Syndrome.
Like when you read a great book and urgently want to get your hands on everything they've ever written. Or watch one Scandinavian crime drama and immediately want to watch them all. I went a bit mad with Cathes, Jillians and the Element series, but turns out the majority of them are total keepers!
3. The Diet Book Mentality.
The whole Dust-Off project was sparked when Jillian Michaels' Body Revolution 90 day programme thing was released in the UK. It was over £100 and I hadn't touched any of her other workouts for months, yet I was lusting after it. I scoured reviews and Googled for Before and Afters.
Years ago I quit my diet book habit after noticing the thought patterns… Maybe this one holds the secret? Maybe this one will tell me what to do and I'll bust this lard for good? I'd feel like a twit when I finished reading because it was never anything new. Deep down I already had all the tools I needed; I just needed to get on with it. I reckon I've had a similar thought process with workout DVDs. They're so shiny and revolutionary with never-before-seen moves that sculpt your butt in entirely new ways! Hope in a disc!
But really, the only Revolution I needed was to get back to moving my body on a consistent, sustainable basis. The answers were always within and there was certainly adequate support available on the groaning shelf of DVDs.
So, ten weeks since the Dust-Off started it's fab to be enjoying exercise again. I'm going to give the project a rest for awhile. Firstly as I have a bunch of other things to write about, but mostly because I really enjoyed Bob Harper Week and want to give the workouts another go this week!
The more I look at the Yoga For The Warrior cover with his zen body but crazy eyes, I think he looks like he's steeling himself to levitate…
DVD Dust-Off: Week 6 – 100% Bob Harper
"You love me, remember?" Bob grins into the camera, "I'm the Nice One!"
The Nice One from The Biggest Loser bought out a series of workouts in 2010 called Inside Out Method. I have three and gave them a spin for this 100% Bob episode of the Great DVD Dust-Off.
I reckon Bob must get sick of being called the Nice One all the time. Nice is one step away from dull and snoozy. I think Bob wanted us to know with these workouts that he's actually cool and badass.
They're very stylised compared to a Jillian DVD, for example. There are funky slow motion shots and occasional split screen bits, kind of like the opening credits of Law and Order. There's edgy music throughout, even the yoga one. I thought they'd been filmed in a sepia tone at first, but then spied a stray fluro water bottle in the background. It's just that the whole set is shades of brown – the carpet, the punching bag, the lockers and all their clothes! Très edgy.
As well as sexy styling and Bob hilariously growling, "you said you wanted me as a trainer, well now you've got me", they're great workouts. Bob explains the moves very clearly, starting with a more simple move then adding on stuff. He counts down the seconds like he does on the show too… threeeee tewwww wuhn!
16. Yoga for the Warrior by Bob Harper (2010)
I didn't like this one when first purchased – the guitar riffy bits don't really get me in a zen mood. But I enjoyed it more this time around. I particularly like how he kinda picks on Robert, the only bloke. Are you okay back there Robert? Robert, you can do this modification if you need to.
It's not a Om kind of yoga workout – it moves faster and is more about strength than relaxation. I couldn't really keep up but enjoyed it anyway. It reminded me of how Bob does yoga with his Biggest Loser contestants. All I have to do is develop a creepy crush and expect him to rescue me from my emotional issues then it would be just like being on the Ranch.
Verdict: MAYBE
17. Body Rev Cardio Conditioning by Bob Harper (2010)
It's called "Cardio Conditioning" but there's a lot of resistance work here. There are some cardioish jump squats, jumping jacks, mountain climbers etc, but also compound moves with dumbbells. Since you don't really stop moving you get the heart rate right up. I had to modify the jumps obviously, but overall it was a nice workout and you only need some dumbbells and a small amount of space.
Verdict: KEEP
18. Pure Burn Super Strength by Bob Harper (2010)
I really like this one except for the Orgasmic Girl. She's the one on Bob's right and she never stops grunting and groaning and gurning throughout the whole bloody show.
It's a great total body resistance workout using dumbells and simple moves. I liked the isolation ones, where you just hold a dumbbell out until you feel like your arm is going to fall off. We used to do that at kickboxing and it's awful in the good way. Again I couldn't really keep up with this workout, but it's something to aspire too!
Verdict: KEEP
2012 Wrap-Up
A final monthly wrap-up on the 2012 plans.
Why don't I ever write the end of year wrap-up before the new one begins? I'm busting to get on with the 2013 jibber-jabbering but I want to send off 2012 in a flaming boat… there it goes, over the horizon. Begone with ye!
. . .
December review
The Christmas HAM Plan kicked arse! 31 days of blogging and mindful eats and exercise, done and dusted. I'd say I was about 80% compliant and it's got me fired up for the new year. I wrote a big old post about the awesome lessons learned from the experience, if you fancy reading it. Thanks everyone who tuned in over the month!
. . .
2012 review
2012 was a tip top year and as I wrote in my mega non-fat annual review, I've really got nothing to whinge about. But a quick look at the health and fitness side of things… the main aim of 2012 was to "keep the mind attached to the body". I wanted to stay present in tough moments and not abandon my structured mindfulness tools at the first sign of difficulty.
Was I successful? How do you definine and measure "success"? On one hand, I finished the year the same weight I started it. That's not ideal with my dodgy knee and ongoing irritation at plus size clothes.
But I don't want to get stuck in black/white all/nothing thinking. I've learned a lot in these two years of "regain maintenance". I think that losing what I want to lose will start to happen once I practice what I've learned with greater consistency and focus. Practice practice practice. I feel empowered and squirmy all at the same time, knowing that it's all in my hands.
Now on with the new year! It's Bob Harper Week in the DVD Dust-Off and some fun things coming up. Stay tuned…
2012 – The Year In Dirt
Rain, wind, mud, rot, rain, wind, mud, rot… that was the veggie gardening theme this year! The summer was so wet and miserable and we went batty trying to stay on top of the weeds. Combined with a bit of slackarsery on our part, it was pretty slim pickings…
Remember those humungous parsnips of 2010, of can-sized diameter? 2012 yielded just 1.2 withered specimens.
Our beetroots came to nought and the salads didn't do much either. We had another go at pumpkins but left it too late in the season, and there just wasn't enough sunlight for them to do anything. But they were slightly bigger than the micropumpkins of 2009 so I'm counting it as progress!
The leeks didn't seem to mind the quagmire – we've got quite a big haul of those. Hard to believe that a tiny, tiny seed could turn into something so huge. I've got my eye on Jamie Oliver's Leek and Turkey Pie for Boxing Day.
One thing that really thrived was the rhubarb. I hacked it all back and stewed it up for the freezer then it came back again, so I made rhubarb and apple chutney. After three months in the jar it's really deep and spicy and will be killer with leftover Christmas ham. Woohoo!
Remember my in-laws' wild and woolly allotment? It's been tamed after many many hours of labouring. We grew our leeks up there and my in-laws grew flowers, delicious potatoes and also raspberries and strawberries. They even put up a shed with Birds of Britain posters inside; it's all very civilised!
On the left is November 2011 with the 3ft-deep weeds, and on the right is October 2012 (the weedy path has since been taken care of!).
After the diabolical weather this year I reckon the 2013 tactic will be to not bother with anything but the most grim, hardy and dull veggies that don't mind a frequent drowning! I'm going to give a few kale varieties a proper go too – it's meant to be robust. Anyone had much luck with that?
Happy holidays, lovely people! Hope you have a relaxing one and thank you gazillions for stopping by!
DVD Dust-Off: Week 5
I'm still huffing and puffing my way along in the Great DVD Dust-Off. This week took 8 days. Shhh!
13. Muscle Endurance by Cathe Friedrich (2002)
This is a good old-fashioned 64 minute full-body resistance workout using a barbell and plates, dumbbells and a medicine ball. I did the 45 minute upper body premix. That sounds like a lot of equipment but you can adapt: I don't have a medicine ball so used a dumbbell instead, nae bother. Also, if you didn't have a barbell you could easily substitute with dumbbells.
The disc also contains an excellent 60-minute circuit workout called Boot Camp so it's great value.
This is another goodun for Body Pump fans as it breaks up the moves into separate segments for chest, back, shoulders, triceps and abs. There's a nice variety of moves and Cathe seems to be in particularly cheery mood so it feels like a gym class in your living room. More details and reviews here.
Verdict: KEEP
14. MMA: Boxing by Cathe Friedrich (2009)
This is a good workout if you miss your kickboxing classes like mad but no longer have the knees to do them. I still get my RAH! KAPOW! fix without the soreness. Running for 49 minutes, it's got shades of a Body Combat class where a sequence of moves are broken down slowly then put together. I'd call it an Intermediate workout by Cathe standards which suits me just fine!
The boxing combinations are simple but if you really put your all into them you'll get a good workout. There are cardio intervals that involve some jumping so I just did my own low impact shuffle-around kind of thing. There's a killer core section that uses a dumbbell and it's pure torture. More details and reviews here.
There's also a bonus 20-minute punching bag workout if you happen to have one of those. I wish I did!
Verdict: KEEP
15. Cardio Core Circuit by Cathe Friedrich (2009)
This advanced cardio interval circuit workout requires no equipment aside from big lungs and a good set of knees. It was way, way too much for me. It came as part of Cathe's Shock Cardio System series (which also included MMA: Boxing above) and I love most of the others workouts in that series so don't feel bad that this one has to go. More detail and reviews here.
Verdict: REHOME
DVD Dust-Off: Week 4, with bonus pointless stats
This is the 900th post on Dietgirl! The blog has been alive for 11 years and 11 months, or 143 months, or 621 weeks if you prefer. So that's an average of 6.293 posts per month or 1.44 posts per week.
I also have an enormous spreadsheet that documents the weekly weigh-ins since it all began on 15 January 2001 (albeit with sizeable gaps due to travel, illness and/or denial). I could tell you my average weight loss over those 621 weeks but the number is so small you'd all have to go out and buy a microscope…
. . .
The Christmas HAM Plan is now 11 days strong and strangely enlightening! I lost weight in Week 1 while thoroughly enjoying cake-related festivities. I'm finding the HAM "rules" to be strangely freeing. I'm still blogging up a storm every day… swing by and say hello if you fancy?
. . .
Back to the Dust-Off. The Mothership emailed to "bagsy" the Tai-Chi video from last week. That's one orphan with a new home.
10. Yogalates for Weight Loss with Louise Solomon (2008)
The instructor has a very odd way of saying the word "body" and she says it a lot in this workout. She elongates the bo then the dy fades away. Like BAHWdy. Bahhhhdy? Bohhhhdee. I was so busy trying to figure out just what she was doing to that word I wasn't doing the moves properly and had to start over.
But once I got used to her voice I remembered that this is a fab workout; a hybrid of pilates and yoga as the name suggests. The first half is called Core Toning and features many classic Pilates moves and the second half is called Cardio Enhancer which is more lower body and ab stuff. It's gruelling but her daughter does an modified version which I followed a lot. A worthy home substitute for a class.
Verdict: KEEP
11. Travel Fit by Cathe Friedrich (2009)
I always recommend this one if you don't have a lot of space or dosh – a resistance band only costs a couple of quid. It's 50 minutes of resistance band toning with short cardio intervals. Because it's designed for hotel rooms, there's no jumping around so it makes a great low impact workout. I bought a stronger resistance band to harden it up a bit.
There's no repetition under the rules of the Dust-Off so I'm sad I won't be doing this for awhile. It's so good for when you can't be arsed with equipment. It's a good one to get in the download form for a laptop, phone or tablet for easy travels.
Verdict: KEEP
12. Yoga Meltdown by Jillian Michaels (2010)
This isn't a traditional yoga workout – it's more like yoga intervals. It's fast paced and I was utterly knackered afterwards. It felt more like a body-weight resistance workout than yoga. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if I'm in the mood for yoga I like it quiet and meditative. If I want something more intense I'd rather lift weights. Check out the Amazon trailer to see what you reckon.
Verdict: REHOME


text:
.44 Caliber (.4295) 210 gr. JHCThese bullets were designed for the hunter requiring accuracy, penetration and dependable expansion from a 44 Remington Magnum revolver. In 1982, Sierra introduced the 210 grain #8620 bullet with PowerJacket. The dependable Jacketed Hollow Cavity and PowerJacket design makes these bullets extremely versatile. They are true magnum bullets, featuring a heavy jacket and 1 1/2% antimony core, yet they will expand reliably at 44 Special velocities. These bullets are extremely effective on up to deer-size game. The 210 grain #8620 bullets are intended for larger, more tenacious game, but also are effective for deer-size game. Because these bullets have flat noses and cannelures, they may be roll-crimped for use in revolvers and all rifles with tubular magazines.
|Dia. (inches)
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.160 @ 1200 fps and above
.175 between 1200 and 900 fps
.170 @ 900 fps and below
Price: $33.85Stock Code: 8620
100 bullets
Status: BackOrdered - Out of Stock
This product is currently out of stock, but available on backorder To order by phone, please call 1-888-223-3006
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text:
2 Programs with Dennis Hearst, CCIM, SIOR
Dennis Hearst brings over 30 years of industry experience to CBRE in San Diego. Since 1990, Dennis has exclusively represented tenants and occupiers. He specializes in law firm and corporate tenant representation, built-to-suit representation, client portfolio management and lease vs. own analyses. In the last 10 years alone, he has successfully negotiated lease transactions in excess of $900 million in total consideration and sale transactions in excess of $400 million.
Mr. Hearst began his commercial real estate career in 1980 with Coldwell Banker in Newport Beach, where he spent three years as a broker. He relocated to San Diego and joined Grubb & Ellis, where he worked for six years as a Senior Marketing Consultant, after which he developed his technical tenant representation expertise during 11 years with Cushman Realty Corporation as Vice President and Managing Director of the San Diego office. Mr. Hearst was a Principal with The Staubach Company for four years and a Senior Director with Cushman & Wakefield for five years prior to joining CBRE as Senior Vice President in 2011.
Mr. Hearst has earned the Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM) designation. He served on the CCIM Board of Directors and was 2007 San Diego Chapter President. Mr. Hearst is a CCIM Senior Instructor, teaching the CI 101 and 103 classes in various U.S. cities. He is also a designated member of the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors (SIOR). He has served on the Board of Directors and was 2009 San Diego Chapter President. He is co-chair of SIOR's national Tenant Rep Specialty Practices Board and is a frequent expert panelist at SIOR's Global Conferences. Mr. Hearst has the CoreNet designation Master of Corporate Real Estate (MCR) as well as the MCR.w (Workplace) designation. He has served on the Executive Committee for CoreNet's San Diego subchapter. Dennis currently serves on the Board of Directors of Tech San Diego. Mr. Hearst is a California-licensed real estate broker and earned his B.S. from the University of California, Davis.
Mr. Hearst is a member of CBRE's National Law Firm Practice Group and Healthcare Services Group. Additionally, he is a frequent moderator, panelist and public speaker in the San Diego commercial real estate community. He also chairs the popular Lunch & Learn series featuring topics such as Broker Best Practices, Lease vs. Own, BOMA Measurements and Hotly Contested Lease Negotiation Issues.
2017 - Best of Dirt Law Bundle
Published by San Diego County Bar Association
This bundle includes the following programs:
Dual Agency Law Following the California Supreme Court's Landmark Horiike Decision (1.5 General Participatory Credits)
Published by San Diego County Bar Association
Credit: CA


text:
How to Hit a Golf Ball Out of the Rough, Downhill Bunker, Trees, or Water at Hudson National Golf Club in Croton-on-Hudson
Fairways and greens are a nice strategy, but most of us play from more troublesome lies. Here's how to save your round when you're not in the short grass
By Dave Donelson
(page 1 of 5)
Golf is a game of trouble, and few courses have more of it than Hudson National Golf Club in Croton-on-Hudson. That's why, with a course rating of 74.8 and slope of 145, it's one of the hardest tracks in Westchester. But Director of Golf Theron Harvey can help. He took us to four of the places you don't want your ball to go on that course (or any other), and showed us how to get out of trouble.


text: Have you ever forgotten your Windows 7 password? If you forgot Windows 7 password for your computer login, I bet there's nothing more annoying and frustrating than being locked out of your PC. And forgetting Windows 7 password has long been a problem for many computer users around the world. It's not that difficult to fix Windows 7 password forgot problem. When faced with the problem of forgotten Windows 7 password, many people feel depressed. Actually it's not that so hard to fix the problem. This is due to new tools that have recently been released and also due to some good precautions. And in the following, this article is going to show you how to regain access to your computer when you forgot Windows 7 password. New tools and reasonable precautions to fix the problem once forgot Windows 7 password As we know, there are 3 ways to log into a Windows computer—one is to type in the right password, one to change the password and the final one to remove the password so that you can bypass Windows password to access to a computer. However, use some professional tools which can help you reset or remove the forgotten Windows 7 password is the most efficient and fastest way. Don't believe that? Then let me prove it just right with a very powerful Windows Password Recovery tool. How does Windows Password Recovery Tool work for Windows 7 password forgot? Windows Password Recovery Tool is a professional Windows 7, Vista, XP, etc. password recovery tool. For the whole recovery process, only 3 steps are needed. Step1: You need download Windows Password Recovery Tool Standard and then install, run it on your computer. Step2: Prepare for a blank and writable CD or DVD and then insert it to an accessible computer for burning the ISO image of Windows Password Recovery Tool Standard to the CD or DVD, thus a Windows 7 password recovery disk has been created. Step3: Set the locked Windows 7 computer boot from CD/DVD in BIOS. Once done, you then can reset your forgotten Windows 7 password with this burned disk quickly and easily. Use early created Windows 7 password reset disk to remove or change Windows 7 password. Making a Windows 7 password reset disk in advance is a good precaution to prevent you from being locked out of your Windows 7 computer. Then how to make such a password reset disk and how to use this disk to remove or change forgot Windows 7 password.


text:
The gardens
Villa Margherita has three large gardens on three different terraces. Each garden area has sun beds, chairs and tables so you can relax and enjoy the wonderful landscaping.
Breakfast is included with your stay at Villa Margherita and may be taken in our breakfast room or outside in the garden.
From the gardens you look out over the town of Levanto to the sea beyond.
Make your reservation
Click here and complete the reservation form. We'll answer you by e-mail


text:
brett morgan's Lists
Hershey Elementary School 301 S Lincoln Box 369 Hershey, NE 69143 US
Other Teachers at Hershey Elementary School
Recommended links
- Keyboarding Practice - Typing games to build skills.
- Math Facts Practice - Have fun drilling on math facts.
- Learn about Syllables - A great lesson with activities.
- Figurative Expressions Games - What does "a piece of cake" mean?
- Letter Blocks - Practice forming words from letter blocks.
- Educational Games - Learning games for kids.
- Build English Vocabulary - Games to build language skills.
- Online Writing Courses - Time4Writing classes run eight weeks.
- Online Interactive Curriculum - PreK-8th afterschool & homeschool subscription site.


text:
WOODSTOCK – The McHenry County Mental Health Board will not vote to appoint a permanent executive director until new members are approved and seated by the McHenry County Board.
Mental Health Board President Lee Ellis reassured County Board members in a memo sent Thursday afternoon that final interviews and the selection process will be postponed to a date chosen by the Mental Health Board's new membership – a membership that may not include Ellis.
"In an effort to ensure that the soon to be appointed McHenry County Mental Health Board members have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the [board], understand their obligations and roles as board members, and intelligently develop their independent expectations for an executive director, the final interviews and selection process will be deferred to a future date determined by the newly established [Mental Health] Board membership," Ellis wrote.
The memo came in response to County Board concerns that the Mental Health Board could rush a vote on the new executive the night of March 5, hours after a County Board vote to install new members. Ellis said he will not call a meeting for March 5 as first proposed.
The news came as a relief to Donna Kurtz, chairwoman of the Public Health and Human Services Committee in charge of filling Mental Health Board vacancies. The committee voted Friday to fill three expired seats with newcomers, and not to reappoint Ellis to another four-year term. Ellis is not only the current board president, but also the chairman of the five-member search committee in charge of finding a replacement for former Executive Director Sandy Lewis.
"They are doing exactly what they should be doing. It was very appropriate for them to make this sort of communication, and I commend the Mental Health Board for making this decision," said Kurtz, R-Crystal Lake.
Critics, including Kurtz and the county's largest social service agency, have alleged over the years that the Mental Health Board has become a bloated bureaucracy that spends too much of its property-tax revenue on administration and overhead that should instead be passed directly to agencies treating the mentally ill and disabled, as the board was created by voters to do.
About $4.4 million of the Mental Health Board's $13.15 million in revenue last year stayed internal, according to records. While Kurtz alleges that the Mental Health Board spent 19 percent on administrative costs, Ellis and interim Executive Director Todd Schroll have pegged the number at between 6 percent and 12 percent.
Although Kurtz has been a critic for years, her appointment to the public health committee chairmanship in January by County Board Chairwoman Tina Hill, R-Woodstock, gave her the avenue to pursue change.
The committee last week interviewed a dozen applicants for four Mental Health Board vacancies, including Ellis. Three recommendations moved forward, but Hill decided shortly before Tuesday evening's confirmation vote to pull almost all appointments over concerns that the committee agendas were not in full compliance with the Illinois Open Meetings Act. Hill sent the recommendations back to committee for revotes, with County Board approval set for March 5.
However, County Administrator Peter Austin told board members that the Mental Health Board was inviting them to a tentative meeting that very night at which the finalists for the job would be introduced, questions asked of them, followed by Mental Health Board members entering closed session to "deliberate."
County Board member Ersel Schuster, R-Woodstock, said she is relieved by Ellis' memo. She was one of several board members worried that either the old board would hire the executive director or the new board would be rushed into a decision.
"I think it's a prudent thing to do. I think it was wise, and I thank them for this consideration," Schuster said.
There are two finalists to replace Lewis, who left last November to teach psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University. Schroll, the interim executive director, has applied for the position, but Mental Health Board members will not confirm whether he is a finalist.
Ellis' memo stated that he will call a special meeting of the search committee after the Mental Health Board's regular meeting next Tuesday, and stressed that no candidate will be interviewed.
"I anticipate, and will recommend to the Search Committee, that the committee re-evaluate the timeline for final interviews and selection of an executive director. I personally believe that it is essential for the partially newly constituted board to be familiar with the operations of the [Mental Health Board] before proceeding with the interview process," Ellis wrote.
The Public Health Committee will meet Wednesday morning to vote again to recommend approval of newcomers Robert Routzahn, Carrie Smith and Heather Murgatroyd. If all seven committee members attend, they will be able to break a 3-3 impasse to fill a one-year unexpired term with either incumbent Connie Meschini or former County Board member and Mental Health Board liaison Mary Donner.
Kurtz said she does not anticipate any board members will have a change of heart about the appointments – the committee voted, 6-0, to recommend approval.
"My feeling is, if there is a desire to have withheld the vote simply for a new Open Meetings Act requirement, then nobody should be changing anything relative to the nominees that were openly and honestly chosen by this committee," Kurtz said.
A new Open Meetings Act provision took effect Jan. 1 requiring meeting agendas to be more specific on final action – while the committee's Friday agenda listed candidate interviews, it did not specify that a vote would be taken.
What it means
McHenry County Mental Health Board President Lee Ellis said in a Thursday memo that the board will not appoint a new executive director until new board members are chosen and seated by the McHenry County Board.
The McHenry County Board Public Health and Human Services Committee last week recommended three new faces for seats on the nine-member Mental Health Board. They did not select Ellis for reappointment.
What's next
The committee will meet at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday at the county Administration Building, 667 Ware Road, Woodstock, to revote on its recommendations. The committee's recommendation will go before the full County Board for approval at its next meeting at 9 a.m. March 5 at the county Administration Building.