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Normally I write about something fun to do with the kids on Saturdays, but today I'm going to write about something else we like to do on Saturdays (and on other days too) – homework.
No, really, Bean loves homework. She doesn't find it a chore or boring, which is I think due to the way we do it with her, but also maybe just down to the type of child that she is. She thrives on reading, writing and creative things. She behaves badly when she is bored so I like to keep some things around for her to do, such as handwriting practice, simple sums or spellings.
When she was little I would sit her at the dining table and she would paint or colour and I would do the ironing. Now she sits and does some 'homework'. I call it homework but she doesn't get most of it from school, I devise things for her to do.
The easiest is to buy some handwriting / spelling / maths exercise books. You can find these quite cheaply in book shops such as The Works and she will happily sit there completing that while I iron away. While I am making breakfast we work on spellings – I downloaded a list of words (This website has some great resources) and we are working our way through learning how to spell those.
We read to her every night and she reads to us. If we have a spare hour on a Saturday we might sit down together and work on some simple maths questions.
The trick is to do it little and often, stop before they get bored and keep it interesting. We have no routine with it, and don't force her to sit down and do it when she doesn't want to (which is hardly ever). Bean loves doing her homework and I can really see the difference it is making at school. I want to give her the best chance and start in life and I think that by encouraging her academic progress at home this will help.


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Strong progress has been made to combine college students with disabilities into basic-training school rooms. Special schooling lecturers work directly with college students who have special wants all through their school years. Your baby may be able to get a special education instructor in addition to different services corresponding to an assistant teacher or occupational therapist , or special gear or expertise to help with learning. As with any teaching interview, I recommend you familiarize yourself with potential questions beforehand.
Rochelle, that's nice that you just had good experiences subbing for particular education. There is nothing unsuitable with expressing your idealism, but you additionally should be real looking about your expectations for this job and your college students. This trainer greets the candidate as they enter the constructing, gives the instructor a tour of campus, and answers any questions the candidate may need.
Education and Training — Knowledge of principles and methods for curriculum and training design, educating and instruction for individuals and teams, and the measurement of coaching results. Develop particular person academic plans (IEPs) designed to advertise students' educational, physical, or social development. Once a instructor is employed, I assign one other teacher from within the department that can function a mentor.
Special schooling college students have numerous wants that require special consideration and understanding to meet. All of the Special Ed. lecturers I even have worked with have been incredibly keen to the wants of their students, great communicators and have had a decided perspective for their college students success. Concept-based mostly learning as well as venture-based studying that's significant, not merely activities for particular schooling students.
No matter what stage of special training and age group you will be working with for the given position, differentiated instruction will be a huge component of the job. Employees in these occupations often need several years of work-associated experience, on-the-job training, and/or vocational training. I actually have damaged this article down with particular pattern interview questions and some of the most typical answers for them. A wealth of fabulous and useful data for anybody searching for a place as a Special Ed. trainer.

subset: commoncrawl


text: Wanna convert GoPro HERO6 Black HEVC to H.264 video, so it can be played on devices like Xbox, Samsung TV… that are not HEVC-compatible? In this article, we covers two methods for you. Solution 1. Convert GoPro HEVC Videos to H.264 Using HandBrake Open HandBrake Under "Source Selection" on the left side bar, select "File" and choose Read more


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ZEAL Optics recently released the first in a series of videos I'm creating featuring people who aren't athletes. The majority of us aren't rich and famous, but that's okay. The series celebrates the people out there who are living life to its fullest without fanfare, spotlights, blogs, photographers, or POV videos. they do what they love and love what they do.
I shot this video of Rich Tilton in the fall out on Antelope Island. I chose Rich because he's a super friendly guy who is humble, kind, and just gets out there every day and does something active. On the day of our shoot, the skies were clear and the colors of the land were a palette of autumn browns as the season was transitioning to winter. The aerial segments were shot with a GoPro on a drone and I used my Canon DSLR for all the rest. We only had an afternoon together, so we were quick to capture as many different shots as possible before I had to head home and barbecue dinner.


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Rodizio is a popular type of restaurant service, mostly found in Brazil. In a Rodizio-style service customers do not order food in the traditional manner, nor do they just serve themselves from a buffet. Instead, is a blend of the two, where customers serve themselves to the salad bar and also assortments of meats are brought to the table for picking and choosing.
Children 0 to 6 - complimentary ( 8.50 for each adicional kids )
Children 7 to 12 - $16.99


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Turning for the homestretch, Big Brown swept past Recapturetheglory, who had taken a narrow lead from Cowboy Cal, and from there it was just a formality as Big Brown cruised to the finish line.
Your heart sank when you lost the 20 bones you just forked over to the sketchy guy at the party with the bag of cash. But the real tears came when Eight Bells sighed a final horsie breath right there on the track.
You thought nothing could bring a smile to your face. Even Cinco de Mayo margaritas were a little saltier this year, from your tears. But, then, Thursday night came around, and you started to feel your heart race again.
Because it's Lost night, kids!
Here's what went down this week, in an underage girl's uterus:
Locke, Ben, and Hurley look for the cabin. On the boat, a "friend" helps Sayid escape. Crazy Keamy learns that Michael told Ben all about him. He gets crazier. He kills the doctor. Frank reluctantly flies Keamy back to the island, but he drops a phone to the islanders, hoping to save them. Locke finds the cabin and talks to Christian and Claire (!) inside about how to save the island. A flashback tells us about Locke's early past.
Here's what we learn:
1. I need to find a boyfriend. I always get scared during the cabin scenes and clutching a throw pillow just isn't the same.
2. Locke was born to an underage mother, Emily, and an older father. In an earlier episode, his mother had told him that he was immaculately conceived. I'd like to point out that this may have been a flaw on the writers' part. I believe she was trying to say that Locke " like Jesus " was not conceived through sex. Many people mistakenly refer to this as "The Immaculate Conception." But, The Immaculate Conception was actually when Mary (Jesus' mother) was conceived "without sin" (but through sex.) Trust me. Look it up. I was raised Catholic. And 10 years of CCD should at least give me some Lost cred.
3. Locke shows Hurley the mass grave.
4. Richard visited Locke at least twice as a kid. Nestor Carbonell!
5. The dude from The Wire (who works for Widmore) visited Locke and first gave him the idea to go to Australia. We can only assume that he knew that Locke was being watched by Richard, and therefore, Locke could bring Widmore closer to the island? Another confirmation that Widmore chose the people on the plane.
5. Locke may have been aware of his powers and talents as a kid, but denied them because he wanted to be a tough guy.
6. Ben is jealo of Locke, who is now the chosen one. Boo Hoo, Ben!
7. The way to save the island is to move it. Huh? Fingers still crossed that the whole island is a giant submarine!
8. Claire is crazy creepy now. Does anyone think maybe she did die in that explosion?
9. The cabin was originally built as a place for DI member Horace and his wife to have some nooky.
11. Poor people suck. Here's why: Next week, I will be in Louisiana volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, so I will have to take the week off from this column. I'm sorry! Destiny is a fickle whore.
Turning for the homestretch, Big Brown swept past Recapturetheglory, who had taken a narrow lead from Cowboy Cal, and from there it was just a formality as Big Brown cruised to the finish line.


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We know it takes an entire shop to get the job done day after day. That's why we want to showcase your entire team during SMP's 100th anniversary celebration with our special 'Shop Team Selfie Challenge.' Take a group selfie with your technicians and employees, and upload with #MyShopTeamSelfie to enter.
The technician shortage is a big problem facing the industry. On the second episode of the Aftermarket Insights podcast, we hear from three different people about the issues and opportunities that abound.
SMP announced on April 19th that it celebrated its 100-year anniversary. Over the years, SMP has grown by leaps and bounds from the company that Elias Fife founded in 1919. The company now employs approximately 4,400 people, generates over a billion dollars in net sales, operates in more than 25 facilities around the world, and is a leading independent manufacturer and distributor of replacement parts in the automotive aftermarket.
Replacing the Engine Oil Cooler on a F-250 with a 7.3L Powerstroke engine is a complicated job. In this video, our master technician shows you how to perform job correctly.
To account for the burgeoning diesel market, we have fully invested in diesel. Today, BWD® Diesel offers thousands of diesel parts across hundreds of unique diesel categories for popular applications including medium-duty trucks.
The Evaporative System Integrity Module, also known as an Evaporative System Integrity Monitor or ESIM, is a key component of the EVAP System on many late model Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, RAM Trucks, and Fiat vehicles.
Do you have an idea for a part that we should offer? We want to hear from you directly.


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American Water Increases Quarterly Dividend by 12 Percent
American Water Increases Quarterly Dividend by 12 Percent
This is the fifth consecutive year American Water has increased its dividend
VOORHEES, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- American Water Works Company, Inc. (NYS: AWK) announced today that its Board of Directors increased its quarterly cash dividend payment from $0.25 to $0.28 per share, a 12 percent increase. This is the fifth consecutive year, since the company's IPO in April 2008, that the quarterly dividend has been raised.
The increased payment is consistent with American Water's dividend practice, which is to link dividend increases to earnings per share growth and target a payout ratio between 50 to 60 percent of net income.
"Last year American Water committed to establishing dividends that are more aligned with our financial performance," said Jeff Sterba, president and CEO of American Water. "On a compounded basis, our annualized earnings have increased by 14 percent from 2010 to 2012. This dividend increase is in recognition of this earnings momentum and demonstrates our commitment to striking the right balance between increased dividend payouts to shareholders and continued proactive investment in our systems on behalf of our customers."
The increased dividend will be payable on June 3, 2013 to all shareholders of record as of May 24, 2013.
American Water offers a dividend reinvestment and direct stock purchase plan called American Water Stock Direct, which enables stockholders to reinvest cash dividends and purchase additional American Water common shares without any brokerage commissions or service charges. Stockholders and other persons may obtain a copy of the Plan prospectus and an enrollment form by contacting American Stock Transfer & Trust Company ("AST") at 888-556-0423, visiting AST's website at www.amstock.com, contacting American Water's Investor Relations at 877-310-7174 or by visiting the Investor Relations page at www.amwater.com.
This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. The offer is being made solely through the Plan prospectus.
About American Water
Founded in 1886, American Water is the largest publicly traded U.S. water and wastewater utility company. With headquarters in Voorhees, N.J., the company employs approximately 6,700 dedicated professionals who provide drinking water, wastewater and other related services to an estimated 14 million people in more than 30 states and parts of Canada. More information can be found at www.amwater.com.
Click here to subscribe to Mobile Alerts for American Water.
American Water Works Company, Inc.
Edward Vallejo
Vice President, Investor Relations
Maureen Duffy
Vice President, Communications
KEYWORDS: United States North America New Jersey
The article American Water Increases Quarterly Dividend by 12 Percent originally appeared on Fool.com.Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Copyright © 1995 - 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.


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Rare performance of Bloch's Schelomo by George Neikrug/
We have just posted the Part 1 of Ernst Bloch's Schelomo with George Neikrug on cello.
An intensely emotional performance that exhibits a rare musical vulnerability. Neikrug's sound is poignant and when he plays in the upper registers of the G string, achieves a sound that is stunning.
I was amazed to find out that this was not the best take. Apparently during an earlier take which the artist himself described as "the best one", the old radiators in in New York's Studio 8H started clanging as the heat went on. Even so, this so called "2nd best take" is no let down.


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- Our doctors have extensive bronchoscopy training.
- We combine other technologies with the bronchoscope for increased accuracy.
- We take the time to go over test results with patients, making sure they understand what their results mean.
Let's say that you've been coughing or experiencing discomfort in your chest, but the cause remains a mystery. Your doctor might order a test called a bronchoscopy. This allows visual examination of your throat, airways and lungs for signs of blockages or disease.
In this routine test, a physician slips a flexible device called a bronchoscope through your nose or mouth, down your throat and into your lungs. At its tip, the bronchoscope is equipped with a light and camera. The bronchoscope has been used by doctors for decades, but physicians at Yale Medicine increasingly combine it with other imaging technology to gather more accurate information. "These additional tools can act like a GPS system to help us find a growth in the lungs, for example," says Jonathan Puchalski, MD, a pulmonologist and director of Yale Medicine's Interventional Pulmonology Program.


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Assault on Precinct 13 (2004) DVD July 26, 2006Posted by cultmovies in Action & Adventure.
Our Price £11.99
This is a very high quality original import.
Availability: In Stock
- Region: Region 3
- Length: 104 Mins
- Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
- Languages: English & Other
- Subtitles: English & Other
- Screen Aspect: Anamorphic Widescreen
Free Postage, the price you see is the price you pay!
- Ethan Hawke
- Laurence Fishburne
- John Leguizamo
Directed by:
- Jean-Francois Richet
Thisfaction remake by theidirector Jean-Francois Richet tells a story about police precinct on its last dayiofioperation must become a temporary jail for theiprisoners and notorious criminal, Marion Bishop.(Laurence Fishburne)..
By nightfall among snowstorm, theipolice station is under seized by theirogue cops intent on taking down Bishop before he testifies against them in theicourtroom, Sergeant, Jake Roenick.(Ethan Hawke).and theiremaining prisoners find themselves fighting for their lives. They have to band together just to survive this one night.
Special Features


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OTHER NAMES: Black CurlewLatin Etymology: Plegadis ("sickle" in Greek) falcinellus (derived from sickle in Latin)
Adult Glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus) in non-breeding plumage at Lowdam, Nottinghamshire - March 2014
Weight: 485-580g
Length: 48-66cm
NO UK STATUS / IUCN Red List Status: Least Concern
The Glossy Ibis is the only Ibis species which naturally occurs in the UK - it is an approximately mallard sized bird that arrives in this country as a vagrant, although increasingly so. It seems to settle in marshland and wet meadows where it probes the ground with its long curved beak. It is a cosmopolitan species, found on every continent but declining across Europe - apparently the British individuals are from Spain, one of the few places where the population is increasing.
Related Species:
Order: Pelecaniformes
Family: Threskiornithidae
Genus: Plegadis
Subspecies: None - monotypic
UNITED KINGDOM - A regular vagrant, getting increasingly common
- A single vagrant bird seen at Lowdam seen in March 2014.
Further Notes: Arkive, BirdForum Opus, IUCN Red List, RSPB, Wikipedia, Xeno-canto


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Phoenix Has Risen 2018
WA Ultimate and Bunbury Ultimate Club are proud to present Phoenix Has Risen 2018. This event is open to all WA teams wishing to take part.
Phoenix Has Risen is recognised as the the official seeding event for WA Clubs wanting to qualify for the Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships (AMUC) to be held in Ballarat on October 26-28 OR the Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships Division 2 (AMUCD2) to be held in New South Wales on October 19-21.
Phoenix Has Risen 2018 Details
When: September 8th and 9th (Saturday and Sunday)
Time: 9.00am – 5.00 pm (Both days)
Venue: Hay Park North Fields, Parade Rd, Withers WA 6230.
Format: Mixed gender event, Gender Ratio Rule A.
Cost: $50 Team fee + $60.00 per player.
Registration is open now!
Registrations close on 30 August 2018.
The City of Bunbury have a range of affordable accommodation options for those participants from outside of the Bunbury region.
To find out more about what accommodation is available head to: https://visitbunburygeographe.com.au/
Check out the official Facebook Event Page.
Payments of the team fee and player fee are due upon registration.
Eligibility Requirements
Rules Accreditation
For Phoenix Has Risen 2018, ALL players on your roster must obtain a 'STANDARD' rules accreditation.
A minimum of 6 players must have their 'ADVANCED' accreditation (the 6 players must include your Captain and Spirit Captain).
Players can gain accreditation at: http://rules.wfdf.org/accreditation
Players can register to login at: http://rules.wfdf.org/register/
If you are not sure if your accreditation is current:
1) Go to: http://rules.wfdf.org/accreditation/accreditation-registry
2) Download the WFDF Accreditation Registry spreadsheet
Appoint a Captain and Spirit Captain
Each team must have an appointed Captain and Spirit Captain. Aside from their team responsibilities, the appointed captain will be the point of contact for the team by the tournament organisers both in the leadup and during the tournament.
The role of the Spirit captain can be found at the following link: www.wfdf.org/downloads/doc_download/525-spirit-captain-role.
Fees and Deadlines
Fees and deadlines for the Phoenix Has Risen 2018 are as follows:
Team Registration Fee Due
$50 per team upon registration
Upon registration of your team.
Player Registration Fee Due
$60 per player upon registration
Upon registration
Team and Player Registration Closes
Team and Player Registration Closes
30th August 2018
Captain and Spirit Captain are registered
This needs to be clearly identified on your team registration rosters
30th August 2018
Rules Accreditation Due
Proof of all players rules accreditation level and status
5th September 2018


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Rustavi Two Again
The saga of Rustavi Two took a few more twists in recent weeks as first the Georgian Supreme Court court ruled that control of the television station should be given back to its former owner, Kibar Khalvashi. In the following days the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) recommended that decision not be implemented, restating that position in an appeals decision a few days later. The temptation on both sides to simplify the issues around all of this is strong. For opponents of the government, this is proof that the Georgian Dream (GD), now in their fifth year of in power, is authoritarian, tolerates no opposition and is ultimately just an extension of Bidzina Ivanishvili, who in this view, is the only real power in Georgia and has murky and nefarious ties to Moscow, or in the words of former MP Gia Baramidze, "perform's Putin's plans in Georgia."
Supporters of the Georgian government see this very differently. For them,, this is a case of a court making a decision based on a reasonable assessment of the facts, thus constituting evidence of judicial independence. A statement by the government asserted, "(T)he ownership rights have been disputed in the court for several years now. This case has been judged by three instances of the independent judiciary and the final decision of returning the TV Company to its legal owner was made by Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court by unanimous decision of nine Supreme Court Justices."
Obviously, neither of these interpretations are exactly right. While it is tempting to argue that there are elements of truth in both these positions, a more useful approach might be to point out that important insights lie outside of these two shopworn positions. It should, of course, also be remembered that ownership of Rustavi Two is in reality a complicated question. Moreover, the disagreement over who the rightful owner of Rustavi Two is grew out of an environment from roughly 2007-2012 when media ownership was generally a non-transparent web of relationships aimed at ensuring that the government had full control over the media. The shifts in the ownership of Rustavi Two during this period led directly to the current controversy. The fact that Rustavi Two is an important part of the media landscape today does not change that.
While Rustavi Two was has been a significant voice in Georgia, during most of the last four or five years it was essentially a mouthpiece for an opposition that was largely discredited by the Georgian people. This does not preclude Rustavi Two from having played an important role, but it was a far cry from say Woodward and Bernstein in the early 1970s. Being a voice of the opposition, however, is okay in a democracy and is part of media freedom. Similarly, harassing those opposition voices should have no place in a democracy.
A related point is that while Rustavi Two has often been outspoken, and less frequently eloquent, in its criticisms of the government, it has rarely been impactful. Rustavi Two's constant, and thematically unaltering, drumbeat of criticism against the GD-that Ivanishvili is running the entire country, that the GD is beholden to Russia, that they have engaged in widespread election fraud and the like-must strike the government as dishonest, tiresome and annoying, but it in no way poses, or increases, a political threat to them. Therefore, any repression of Rustavi Two does more damage to the reputation of the GD government than anything Rustavi has said or done in the last four and a half years. It is not at all clear that the GD understands this, otherwise they would have sought a way to resolve the ownership controversy that did not threaten ongoing broadcasting from Rustavi Two.
More broadly, the most recent round in the long saga of Rustavi Two lays bare the extent to which democratic culture has not been internalized by Georgia's political elite both inside and outside the government. Much of the tension could have been diffused, and much support could have been won by the government if a leader in parliament, or even the Prime Minister, had made a public statement, with support from his entire government, to the effect of. "Rustavi Two is a valuable part of media and political life in Georgia, but the rule of law is also important. We need to find a way to reach a compromise." The Prime Minister's proposal to establish an independent media ombudsperson "consisting of the most reputable international media rights observers." is a step in this direction. Comments by President Margvelashvili stressing the need for free media were also very helpful. These statements may be helpful, but do not change the potential impact of the court decision.
Supporters of Rustavi Two have engaged in peaceful demonstrations stressing the need for free speech and free media in Georgia. Nonetheless, the speed with which opponents of the GD went back to the well of claiming the country is run by one Russian autocrat, does not exactly speak to a nuanced or deep understanding of democracy, or even recent Georgian history, on their part. Moreover, this argument got a fair amount of traction in the west in 2013 and 2014, but is no longer an effective strategy.
It is also becoming clear that the UNM strategy of securing strong allies in the west no longer really helps them and is a detriment to Georgian democracy. The UNM's friends in the EPP and the right wing of the American Republican Party enabled them as in recent years they went down a rabbit hole of dysfunction, accusing the government of being Russian stooges and holding on to the bizarre belief that it was only a matter of time until former President Saakashvili was returned to power. Better friends of the UNM would have helped the party recover from its defeat in 2012 by urging them to come to terms with the problems of their decade in power. This is still the case today as UNM, or rump UNM, allies in Europe particularly have not simply pointed the problems this court decision raises for democracy, but have repeated opposition talking points and raised alarms about Georgian democracy that are not entirely proportionate to the problem at hand.
This recent Tweet from Jacek Saryusz Wolski, an MEP affiliated with the EPP "As expected, Georgia's government waited with takeover of @Rustavi2tv last independent TV until it got visa-free from naive EU" exemplifies this. It is perfectly appropriate to speak out agains the Rustavi Two decision, but a real friend of Georgian democracy might have spoken out with equal vehemence during periods of UNM led democratic rollback. A real friend of the UNM wold have helped them craft a more effective and forward looking post-2012 strategy. Instead, the EPP continues to throw rhetorical red meat to the UNM, while doing little to actually move Georgian democracy forward.
Georgian democracy will be stronger if Rustavi Two is allowed to continue to broadcast, but Georgian democracy will also be stronger when the rest of the world recognizes what occurred with regards to this issue between 2004-12. Although it is usually better to look forward than backward, it is often difficult to look forward if the past is misunderstood, in some cases deliberately, by those seeking to advise about the future. Western institutions, many of which now represent countries that are experiencing their own crises of democracy will have more credibility when they begin to recognize this.
A big part of the challenge for Georgia is that this case, like many major political issues is almost universally seen as a struggle between two political forces. There is obviously a great deal of truth to this, but it also necessarily makes it very difficult to arrive at solutions that are creative and strengthen democracy. For example, given the longstanding ownership problems related to Rustavi Two, the way to address this problem might have been to establish a committee of some kind on media freedom and ownership to ensure the survival of Rustavi Two while finding a compromise solution to the ownership issue. This would have been a big win for the Georgian government demonstrating their commitment to democracy, while leaving a loud but not particularly Rustavi Two in place. Instead, as is usually the case, the default setting of the same tired political fights won the day,
Georgia does not benefit from having every policy dispute or court case reduced to the same political question. When that happens, as it did again with regards to Rustavi Two, the merits of the case, and the positions of both parties, are obscured and a thoughtful solution conversation is all but precluded. The ECHR decision indicates that Rustavi Two will remain on the air, at least for now, but this issue, and the Georgian polities inability to constructively address it, is unlikely to go away.
The Georgia Analysis is a twice monthly analysis of political and other major developments in Georgia. Lincoln Mitchell is a political development, research and strategic consultant who has worked extensively in the post-Soviet region. If you would like to be on the Georgia analysis mailing list or are interested in more research, analysis or consulting for your business, government, campaign or other organization, please email email@example.com.


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Applications now open for secondary school places
Parents across Leeds are being reminded to get their applications in for their child's secondary school place for next September.
Although it is only early in the summer holidays, families with children starting secondary school in September 2015 can already start applying for their child's school place.
Parents and carers are being encouraged to visit Leeds City Council's website – www.leeds.gov.uk to complete an online application for their child's secondary school place, before the closing date of 31 October 2014. For those applying online, offers will be emailed on 2 March 2015.
Councillor Judith Blake, executive member responsible for children and families, said:
"Our school admissions team does a huge amount of work every year, for this academic year alone they dealt with over 8000 secondary applications – each one special and important to the family that submitted it.
"To get the best chance of being allocated a preferred school it is very important that families submit their application before the deadline and include five schools they would like their children to attend – in order of preference. We also strongly advise parents to include their nearest school to maximise their chances of getting a local place.
"Deciding which school is best for your child is an important decision and, with so many good schools in Leeds, is not an easy one to make. A lot of work has gone into making the admissions process as straight forward as possible and the online form is quick and easy to fill in."
The online application process is easy and secure, however people who would prefer to fill in a paper application form, can obtain one from the 'documents' section on the admissions pages of the council's website and return it to: Leeds City Council, PO Box 837, School Admissions, Leeds, LS1 9PZ or hand it in at any school office. Paper copies of the application form are also available from the One Stop Centre at Great George Street or by calling 0113 222 4414 to request one. People who apply using a paper form will be posted their offer by 2nd class post on 2 March 2015. These can take up to a week to arrive.
To help parents and carers make the right decision, the council helps provide the Choice Advice Service - a confidential service which provides impartial advice, guidance and information to families applying for secondary school places for their children. It has lots of useful information about secondary schools in Leeds, including OfSTED reports, league tables, transport and uniform information, and admission policies. They provide impartial advice about all aspects of the admissions process for secondary schools.
To use the service, people can email firstname.lastname@example.com or phone 0113 395 1200 for further information.
• It is important to apply by the deadline otherwise the application cannot be processed with those received on time and the child can only be offered one of the remaining spare places.
• It is important to list up to five schools as the child will be considered for every school listed.
• Parents must apply for a school place using the address where their child lives for the majority of the time.
For media enquiries, please contact:
Emma Whittell, Leeds City Council press office, on (0113) 2474713
Email: email@example.com


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VP of product strategy and operations promoted to help activate advertising intelligence and digital media solutions across media and device
Exponential Interactive, the global provider of advertising intelligence and digital media solutions, has promoted VP of product strategy and operations, Doug Conely, to the position of chief strategy officer.
In his new role, Conely will be responsible for helping to shape the company's go-to-market strategy as the owner of product strategy and operations. He continues as a member of Exponential's executive management team alongside CEO and founder Dilip DaSilva, CFO John Rettig, CRO John McKoy, CMO Philip Buxton and Steve Jones, chief strategy and operations officer at Adotube, the in-stream video advertising business that Exponential acquired in 2012.
DaSilva commented: "Doug has played an increasingly significant role as we've streamlined our messaging, products and operations across our media divisions. He has taken on increased responsibility for our go-to-market strategy and the operational side of our products. Meanwhile, his insights team has collaborated with marketing to significantly increase the visibility of our data and intelligence."
Conely said: "We build our own technology at Exponential so one of my main tasks is to ensure my team works closely with our engineers to ensure we focus on creating products that continue to help advertisers and publishers be more effective in digital advertising."
Prior to Exponential, Conely worked as a strategy consultant and investment banker before joining Yahoo's European Strategy and mergers and acquisitions team. During his four years at Yahoo, he became increasingly involved in its display advertising strategy and led the integration of behavioral ad network Bluelithium in Europe. He then moved into ad product strategy where he was responsible for behavioral targeting and building Yahoo's data partnership with Nectar. He has a Masters in Engineering from Cambridge University.
Conely will continue to be based in Exponential's London office.
About Exponential
Exponential Interactive (www.exponential.com) is the global provider of advertising intelligence and digital media solutions to brand advertisers.
Our e-X Advertising Intelligence Platform combines proprietary audience data and technology to deliver advertising intelligence that enables smarter, better-informed marketing decisions.
Our audience engagement divisions - Appsnack, AdoTube, Firefly Video and Tribal Fusion - apply advertising intelligence to deliver high-impact, high-engagement campaigns across display, video and mobile media.
Exponential offers solutions in 22 countries and reaches more than 450m unique users worldwide every month.


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The State of Fandom Studies 2018: Liz Ellcessor & Tom Phillips (Pt. 2)/
Liz Ellcessor
You raise some of what I find to be the stickiest, and most interesting, issues in studying fans and their relationships to celebrity. What kind of engagement is valued, by which participants? What is real, what is fake, and how does social media alter these descriptors?
"Authenticity" is a useful, but limited, heuristic for describing these (and related) circumstances. Much scholarship on social media and celebrity, which often bleeds into fan studies, attempts to trace the negotiation of seemingly "authentic" forms of self-presentation and communication. Limited disclosures, performances of friendship or affinity, and specific fan interactions are usually considered part of this authentic display by a celebrity. However, there's been less attention to how being "authentic" is relevant to being a part of or participating in fan spaces.
Dyer's notion of the star as both ordinary and extraordinary could be equally applied to the figure of the fan--and potentially the scholar--in these interactions. The fan is both engaged in normative, mainstreamed behaviors and doing something unusual; the scholar is both a fan and something more. We're all negotiating these dynamics within the boundaries of given possibilities.
This is one reason I've come to enjoy fan and academic communities that center disability--they often have a much more open range of practices considered acceptable and authentic means of participation. The host of accessibility options at WisCo, and the annual dance at the Society for Disability Studies both indicate a devaluation of a performed authenticity in favor something more variable, and potentially intimate.
Tom Phillips
Fan culture and fan studies alike have been so reliant on creating or reporting on hierachies. I begin to wonder whether scholars can actually reconcile the various hierarchal relations within and between different fan culture - what may be "authentic" to one set of fans is not necessarily going to apply to another. For wrestling fans, for example, part of the appeal is the blurring of lines between real/fake, authenticity/inauthenticity. The pleasure of asking questions regarding authenticity for wrestling fans is not necessarily a pleasure that would be shared by fans of other texts. Without a clear overarching theory of how fan communities function, is fan scholarship doomed to simply present different case studies over and over?
You mention communities around disability and how they frame authenticity and performance. Your thinking around this is evocative of positive research trends we're seeing at our annual FSN conference. In the past couple of years there has been a move away from papers which present a fandom with a framing of "that's interesting, isn't it?", to a framing of "this is important." Lori Morimoto, Rukmini Pande, and Lori Kido Lopez are among those who have, already in this blogging process, spoken about such important and worthy topics of study with a real drive to get at the heart of their value to contemporary culture. The work of these scholars is influencing my own research - I'm now trying to study that which is valuable and useful. This for me, is the future of fan studies.
Liz Ellcessor
The dilemma about case studies - and what can be difficulties in identifying "importance" within or between case studies - seems to me to be a challenge for media studies more broadly. The shifts you identify in the framing of fan studies respond to this with a commitment to choosing case studies that speak to importance, value, or utility. This is perhaps particularly helpful when speaking to people outside of fan or media studies, for whom ideas that we take for granted as both interesting and important may be novel.
Regarding my work about disability and fandom, I have actually bristled at the notion that this is (more) important than other case studies. There can be a paternalistic framing in which the study of marginalized groups is both hailed and dismissed as "important"; much as cultural ideas about disability both valorize and minimize disability through the language of "special needs" or "differently abled," asserting that something is academically important because of its connection to a marginalized group can further distance that field of study from the mainstream.
Thus, my hope is that fan and media studies can do the hard work of taking on insights from nonwhite, disabled, non-Western, and other case studies in order to reevaluate the norms, theories, and subjects that are mainstream.
Tom Phillips
I definitely agree with you on the presence of that paternalistic framing. Here in the UK with our Research Excellence Framework - the system for assessing the excellence of research in higher education - there is an emphasis placed on the originality, rigour, and significance of the work. This latter category is that which the notion of "importance" would fall under, which perhaps explains trends I've seen towards more "valid" topics of study. As a result, it seems like fan studies is still having to fight for legitimacy on some fronts. On Henry's podcast series How Do You Like it So Far? I heard William Proctor talk about the lack of fan studies expertise used in mainstream discourse for The Last Jedi. He makes an excellent point - it does seem as if the reporting of fandom and popular culture relies less on scholarly voices than other topics.
The challenge for fan studies scholars, then, is to differentiate ourselves from the swathes of pop culture commentators who exist. And we can do this in precisely the manner you suggest - taking on insights from marginalised communities and applying elsewhere. It's our job as researchers to challenge (often inaccurate) representations of groups both marginalised and mainstream alike.
Liz Ellcessor
Yes, there is a challenge in participating in larger cultural conversations; the expertise of fan (and/or media) studies is easily misunderstood as analogous to any well-informed fan or audience discussion. And, really, many of the popular culture commentators do an excellent job! I regularly assign Anna Hamilton's work to my students, for instance.
In part, I see this as a success of our field and related fields; people with undergraduate degrees in media, gender, or other forms of critical study are applying that training and producing interesting observations and analyses. This is exactly what we want our students to do in class, and afterwards!
The other side of that, however, is that I wonder to what degree we need to be explicit about the kinds of research methods and practices that are part of fan studies and related scholarship. What we teach, and see replicated in popular discourse, is not necessarily the same as the work that we do. Whether it's copious interviews, in-depth industry or archival research, or the hard work of contextualization, scholarly expertise comes out of processes that most commentators don't have the time (or support, or funding) to undertake.
Tom Phillips
I really love your positivity, Liz! I think sometimes scholars (and I'm speaking from experience here) may get too bogged down in their own research agendas. But you're right - the next generation of scholars (and/or commentators) will always need that guidance to be more media literate particularly in relation to theory. One of my proudest moments as part of the FSN is seeing, year after year, new scholars and new communities grow and develop.
I think that explicitness about methods and practices is precisely the way forward. Not that journalistic approaches are not rigorous, but as a scholarly community we can demonstrate the thoroughness required of good research practice. On large scale research projects I've been involved with - concerning Alien, Star Wars, and Game of Thrones - a recurring motivation is to counter popular assumptions. Through thousands of survey responses we're able to corroborate or dispel existing discourse, precisely because we have the time and resources to do so (as you mention).
So perhaps the gap for fan studies scholars will always be there. It may just be a case of our scholarly community having to be more proactive in adding to the number of voices out there. Part of me wonders whether this all comes back to the tensions of aca-fandom, but I think that's a whole other conversation to be had!


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NYTimes has a post about the reinvention of News Media.
What will get your attention in Paypal founder Omidyar is joining Bezos efforts in media.
Pierre M. Omidyar, the founder of eBay, revealed last week that he would back the journalist Glenn Greenwald and his colleagues in a newly conceived news site to the tune of $250 million. Just over two months ago, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, spent the same amount to personally buy The Washington Post. That's half a billion dollars dropped into serious news production, a sector that investors in distressed assets have been fleeing.
And Steve Jobs wife is investing as well.
It doesn't stop there. In July, Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Steve Jobs, invested in Ozy Media, a news start-up, joining a group that includes the angel investor Ron Conway; Larry Sonsini, a lawyer from an eminent Silicon Valley law firm; Dan Rosensweig of Chegg.com; and David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer.
What are some of things these people are thinking?
"I think that technology could help find a way to actually do important journalism for our democracy that can impact many more people and help serve it to a general-interest audience in a way that can be commercially sustainable," Mr. Omidyar said. (A separate article has more excerpts from the interview with Mr. Omidyar.)
Or some may just be dreaming.
This unfolding partnership will be fun to behold. For all their differences, the news and technology businesses share a kind of utopianism, an idealistic belief that the work of human hands can make life better for other humans.


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YOUR support
Superar Suisse is grateful for your support.
The Music classes at Superar Suisse are free of charge for the children and their parents. In this way Superar Suisse creates equal opportunities for everyone.
Support Superar Suisse with a donation. You can support Superar Suisse with a one time donation or become a constant supporter. Below you can find various donation options explained. Superar Suisse is also very grateful for donations like vouchers for refreshments to be used at rehearsals and concerts.
Support us with your membership and become a part of Superar Suisse!
With you membership you will be part of an extraordinary initiative and support us directly in our daily work with the children of Superar Suisse.
At the moment Superar Suisse is looking for musical instruments of any kind! Do you have a violin in the basement or a trumpet standing in the corner, that you no longer need? Bring them over to us! Our children are happy about every instrument – whether string or brass, as in this way they can discover the world of music and join a Superar Suisse orchestra. If you want to bring your instrument to us, here is the address: Superar Suisse, Weststrasse 182, 8003 Zurich, Mon-Fri, 9-12 / 14-17.
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monthly rent for an instrument: CHF 50.00
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This year for Christmas we're headed to Colorado for a little skiing and family time. With that said my Christmas attire is all about being cozy and warm.
The only thing missing from my morning outfit is hot coco and a cozy fire :)
Happy Holidays!
I love those boots and the cozy Christmas morning pjs. So cute!
This looks SO comfy and cute, I love it! Have a great time and an amazing Christmas! xoReplyDelete
I want that sweater!! Sounds like you've got a great Christmas planned this year! Have so much fun!
And p.s. saw on your gooogle account that you went to CSULB, I went to Fullerton :)
perfect and so practical for a cozy christmas morning/evening! LOVE that sweater!
happy holidays!
Ooooo I love getting cozy in winter. Sadly our winters never get that cold. And it's summer right now in Australia so I'm dreaming of cold weather! I love your cozy choices.ReplyDelete
So cute and cozy! Those slippers look perfect :)
Nine to Five
Love it! I'm all about cozy & comfy on Christmas! Happy Holidays!ReplyDelete
i want to be in the sweater right now! it just looks so warm & cozy & just perfect.ReplyDelete
That sweater...yes please!! Thanks for linking up :)ReplyDelete
I love this look! So comfy and cozy! :)ReplyDelete
Get your own home based job in data entry, copy pasting, clicking and different more jobs
Yay! Sounds like you're going to be having a lovely white Christmas! Love the cozy clothes - that is the best way to celebrate!
What an amazing way to spend Christmas! Those outfits looks invitingly comfortable. Wish I had a fireplace. :( But, I'll settle for some hot chocolate.
That sweater is fantastic!! So cozy!! Happy Holidays!!ReplyDelete
Love the sweater dress! It's going to look great with those boots!
Penniless Socialite
Enter My December Giveaway!
That sweater dress is amazing, it looks so cozy and warm and cute!ReplyDelete
Happy Healthy Home (Blog) a part of several affiliate networks. This means, by clicking on and/or purchasing items via links posted on this blog, I may receive a commission. Sponsored posts and brand collaborations are always disclosed and any gifted items are marked c/o. All opinions are, as always, my own. Working with brands and affiliates makes this blog possible and helps me put a little money away for Emerson's college. If that's cool with you, it's cool with me. ;-)
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Forest Glen camp. Tee - Blue/Gold
Forest Glen camp. Tee - Blue/Gold
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Get this classic Forest Glen "camp." tee & showoff your pride in Texas & your love of camp!
• Printed on super soft ring spun Anvil tees
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• Graphic printed across chest w/ small Forest Glen logo at top of spine
Add To Cart


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DYI | How To Fundraise Yourself
Whats a Campaign?
Starting a campaign is easy. Follow these steps to learn more…
Step 1: Plan It Out
What are you passionate about? What do you love to do? What are you good at? What could be a fun way to fundraise? After you decide what you want to do, pick a name. Pick a photo. And just like that, you'll be ready to start raising money to help bring clean water projects for people in need!
Helpful Tips:
Refine your message and be sure to personalize your fundraising page with photos
Donate to your own campaign to show your commitment and inspire others
Start with your close contacts. Reach out to 10-15 people who you know are supportive of your goals. They should hear about your campaign first, in a personal message. The more personal your outreach is, the more likely they'll make a meaningful gift.
Step 2: Social Support
Once your campaign is set up, tell everyone about it! The more people you tell, the quicker you'll reach your goal. Share your passion with others and watch as they catch the vision!
Helpful Tips:
Once you've demonstrated your personal commitment and gotten your closest contacts involved, officially launch your campaign on social media.
Keep your network updated. Post on social once a week, but vary your content. We suggest rotating between thanking donors, updating them on progress you've made, talking about your passion for clean water and asking them to get involved.
Step 3: Keep Going
It's important that not every message you communicate about your campaign is not an ask for dollars. Share your heart, share about why you want to do this campaign, and share about the impact it will make!
Helpful Tips:
Tell a story about why ATTA is important to you. Remind people why you've chosen to advocate for clean water.
Send a reminder to your contacts who have not yet donated and thank those who have!
Below is an example email you can send to your community. Make sure to not just copy and paste this but to create your own. People want to hear your heart not someone else's.
Here are some resources you may want to use:
Click The Computer To Download


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Free Family PowerPoint Templates
Celebrate your family members through Family Social Sciences and Father's day slides. Embrace each other and remember the good time you had together with free backgrounds for PowerPoint.
Download family members PPT slides, such as Birth of Twins and Sisters in .pptx format and share with everyone in the family.


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TCI RED Managed Network
With a TCI RED Managed Network, TCI is able to remotely program, monitor, and maintain your TCI provided cloud-enabled network equipment, such as firewalls, switches, and access points. Setup and changes to programming (such as quality of service, vpn, vlan, and ssid setup) can be done in mere minutes. Firmware and security threat signatures are automatically updated. When equipment is offline or having issues, we receive notification and are able to remediate the issue. Paired with our TCI RED Maintenance services, we are able to provide you with the best managed solution to keep your network running.
TCI RED Managed Gateway
Take control of your network with TCI RED Managed Gateway. TCI RED Managed Gateway provides remote management of your TCI provided cloud-enabled firewall. With TCI RED Managed Gateway, TCI is able to provide and maintain incident alerting, comprehensive reporting, firewall access policies, VPN setup, user authentication policies, routing rules, gateway antivirus, content and application filtering, intrusion detection and prevention, bandwidth control, and many other features.


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The Microsoft Imagine Academy (IA) provides up-to-date curricula and resources to train and certify students and educators on Microsoft products and technologies. Students gain valuable skills for college and career that will help them succeed in an increasingly digital global economy across these four areas:
Courses range from an estimated 1 hour to 3 hours in time. They each end in an assessment. To earn points for a course, you must successfully pass the assessment at the end.
If you are assigned to an instructor role in IA, you can browse courses, create lesson plans and invite students (or co-workers) to access it. These rights must be given by the MS IA Administrator.
Please contact Holly Martin with Instructional Technology for more information:
Last Modified on October 23, 2017


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The once-legendary Washington Post has been caught once again correcting a high-profile article without noting the correction. The Daily Caller reports that in an investigative piece looking into the prostitution scandal surrounding Sen. Robert Menendez, the original Post article read:
[T]he women's videotaped claims, with their faces obscured, were played on the conservative Web site The Daily Caller. The news site reported that 'the two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, an expensive 7,000-acre resort in the Dominican Republic.
Later, after some pushback from the Daily Caller, the Post posted a stealth correction, without notifying its readers any change to the story had been made:
[T]he videotaped claims of two women, made with their faces obscured, were posted on the conservative Web site the Daily Caller[.]
The edit is important because the Post's original article makes it sound with certainty that its reporting proves that the Daily Caller had been duped by these same prostitutes. Since the original article published, though, the Daily Caller has aggressively pushed back against that claim and provided evidence that the prostitutes recanting their claims to the Post are not the same prostitutes the Daily Caller interviewed back in November when they broke this story.
Regardless, for the Post to go back and memory-hole their original report as though its direct attack against the Daily Caller never happened — to manufacture a lie that the article always said what it said — is unethical and dishonest.
What's even more remarkable is that the very same Post that spends a lot of time lecturing others on the ethics of journalism has done this before. In October of 2011, I busted the Post red-handed scrubbing numerous errors in a high-profile hit-piece launched against Sen. Marco Rubio.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC


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You are invited to participate in an amazing outreach to bless our community!
We are partnering with a country-wide initiative called The Big Give that started in Ottawa in 2009. The vision: a free garage sale and unified day of radical giving. In faith, over 150 churches and ministries across Canada will host The Big Give on June 3rd and we're one of the churches hosting. Why? Because we love to give!
To find out how you can get involved, visit ctftoronto.com/welovetogive


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So last Wednesday our Pathfinder game failed to materialize so Ark's son, aka The Boy, asked to try his hand at GMing. Taking the Rules-Light approach with Labyrinth Lord, it was a magical night, filled with surrealist marvels. Highlights included the goblin chief with plate mail skin swinging a 12 foot long club, a dragon ripping the top off of a mountain, and a case of mistaken identity when a group of friendly NPCs were mistaken for... something hostile, and slaughtered.
The bit that stuck with me, though, was at the end. In the climactic battle, Ark's character went toe to toe with a dragon, who unleashed a ferocious breath weapon, and Ark's character... died horribly.
Now, a friend once told me that you can tell alot by a person by the way they roleplay (a concept which worries me slightly as I think back on some of my own roleplaying experiences). If that is true, then I think it goes doubly so for they manner in which they GM. How they roleplay shows how they interact with peers, how they problem solve, and how they deal with the immutable. How they GM shows how they deal with being the immutable themselves, and dealing with others from a position of power. Are they a "Blue Bolts From the Heavens" type? A Monty Hauler? A Power Playing Mary-Sue-er? I think this speaks to their inner self, which is what made what came next as touching as it was.
My cold black heart was warmed. It's easy to become callous towards the deaths of PCs, and seeing it through the eyes of a child was quite an experience. He's a good kid - a credit to himself, and his Father.


text: The Bluestem grass family – Little, Big, Silver, KR, and others – are our native grass cousins that provide forage when all of the other grasses are wilting. At JVF, Little Bluestem is most prominent and is doing its duty once again as the above-described heat descends upon us. We count on these guys every year at this time and they have never failed us. Bring it on, LB!


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Sippin' and slurpin' olive oil
I must admit, when I was invited to "slurp" olive oil out of a special glass while lunching at the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Atlanta, I was a bit skeptical.
This was no wine tasting, yet the talk was of flavor and finesse, hints of pepper and measures of substance. We were tasting award-winning Ollo Extra Virgin olive oil, straight from Australia. There are two types: Fresh & Fruity (made from early harvest green olives) and Mild & Mellow (made from later season black olives).
When you hear the phrase "super Tuscan," a glorious red wine probably comes to mind. But try this on for size: The olive trees that produce this just-right-for-dipping (or yes, even sipping!) oil include more than 10 superior Tuscan varieties.
At just $11 per bottle, it's a fabulous hostess gift, and something to keep on hand in your own cupboard.


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Name: Julie Hartigan
Business: Juliemar Productions Consulting and the blog "Cooking w Julie"
Location: Hoboken, New Jersey
What's your specialty: I'm a natural-born teacher, who loves to share what she knows with others. I spend much of my time consulting brands that need creative content around cooking and entertaining. This includes developing and testing recipes, writing blog posts and articles, scripting and appearing in videos, and doing live appearances. My biggest clients are Weight Watchers and Bed Bath and Beyond. So I have extensive experience lightening up recipes and healthy eating, while also [helping] people learn how to entertain with ease!
What problem does your business solve: My recipes, videos and posts help people enjoy cooking, eat healthier and feel more confident hosting parties. I assist my corporate clients with reaching and retaining their audience, while on my blog I share the clever cooking and entertaining tips that I've gleaned from projects with a broader audience.
What makes your business unique: As a former engineer and tech consultant who went to culinary school and became a chef, I bring a high level of professionalism and passion to what I do. I'm diligent about research and writing the smartest, most efficient recipes, and making sure they work! Nobody wants to follow a recipe and wind up with a "Pinterest Fail!"
How you got your start: From a very young age I loved food and cooking. I was the kid who would try every new thing and grilled every grandma she met for her best ethnic recipes. In school, I excelled in math, so I followed my head over my heart and earned a B.S. & M.S. in Industrial Engineering. While I had a successful career in technology, the entire time I dreamed of a career in the culinary world. After having my daughters, I decided to go for it, enrolled in culinary school, and haven't looked back! I studied Culinary Arts and Culinary Management at ICE in NYC, was a personal chef to families in Hoboken, taught cooking classes, led culinary walking tours and worked in the Saveur Magazine Test Kitchen and at Food Network. Since starting my consulting business, I've developed and tested thousands of recipes for Weight Watchers, filmed videos for Bed Bath Beyond and other clients, written about cooking and entertaining for everyone from Real Simple Magazine to Fit Pregnancy, helped launch new food brands and hosted live cooking events. I LOVE what I do, and feel like it reflects the real "me".
One piece of advice you have for other food entrepreneurs: Always have a positive, can-do attitude when working with clients. Seek to make their lives easier in everything you do and look for other opportunities to help them. They'll love you and happily refer to you other clients.
One thing you wish you knew before you started your business: Not to be afraid of striking out on your own to do something you truly love! I felt like I needed to stick with a corporate gig for way too long
Your greatest challenge in your business and how you're overcoming it: I spend so much time working on client projects that my own self-branding sometimes falls by the wayside. I'm working to build my own name recognition and a bigger social media following around my work, so I can share my cooking and entertaining tips with more people. (PS: You can find me at CookingwJulie on FB, Instagram, and Twitter and my blog is at CookingwJulie.com.)
What you're most proud of about your business: I'm proud of how much my clients value me and my work, and that they count on me to help them solve business problems. I also love nothing more than hearing that one of my recipes, cooking tips or entertaining ideas made someone's life better or easier!
What's yummy about being a food entrepreneur: I love getting to set my own hours and doing work that I love. Plus my projects feel more like play than "work," so I don't mind doing them at night or on weekends and skipping the 9-5 grind. I have an incredible work-life balance and get to spend tons of quality time with my daughters and boyfriend, and I enjoy plenty of travel and culinary adventures. I have zero regrets about my career change!
Interested in being featured? Contact Us.


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I have a lot of questions. Many of these are of the existential what-does-it-all-mean variety that I suspect I'll never have answers to.
But, for the purposes of this blog, I generally have two big questions that I'm trying to learn more about:
1) What are the ways that nature can enhance our health and happiness?
I think we generally have intuitive sense that nature is good for us, that it's good to get fresh air, to go for a walk, to get a way from it all. As I dig more deeply into this subject, it's amazing to learn just how good spending time in nature is for people and for entire communities. In many ways, it's the perfect antidote to our many of our modern problems, including stress, busyness, and disconnection. Time with nature can reduce anxiety, improve creativity, and boost immunity to diseases like cancer. It can lead to longer lifespans and provide inspiration and a sense of belonging.
2) What are some practical ways to spend more time with nature?
With all of those benefits, it seems clear that many of us could benefit from spending more time with nature. But how to we realistically do that when we feel busy and overstretched? Where do we find time in the day to go outside when the rest of the world is increasingly inside? I struggle with this as much as anybody—even living rurally and being a moderately outdoorsy person, I still have plenty of days where I don't spend any time outside or connected to nature. This is why I'm interested in finding ways to experience ordinary, everyday nature as I am in planning big, wild adventures.
That's where my mind is these days, so I hope that you'll come back and learn more with me!


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April 27, 1997
By WILLIAM FERGUSON
Celebration in the Northwest
By Ana Maria Matute.
University of Nebraska,
cloth, $25; paper, $12.
na Maria Matute belongs to the generation of Spanish writers who began to publish around 1950, when the repressive atmosphere of Franco's Spain joined with the fatalism of Old Castile to produce some truly merciless fiction. Ms. Matute's short novel ''Celebration in the Northwest'' was first published in 1953; the ''Northwest'' of the title is not a geographical region but the name of a cemetery, and the celebration is of death -- most notably the death that results when a circus wagon runs over a small boy. The protagonist, Juan Medinao, is a sad provincial landowner. His laborers are uneducated and vulgar, but at least (it seems to him) they have lives, while he has none. Juan's half brother, Pablo, was born illegitimately to Juan's father and a servant, Salome; Pablo acts as Abel to Juan's Cain, though fratricide does not quite come to pass. Juan simultaneously loves and hates his half brother; he wants him to die, for a series of tangled reasons, and he would like to see him buried on the Medinaos' land, ''among the roots of the oak trees, feeding the branches with the sap of his body.'' Pablo has a sheen of unreality about him, but the portrait of the tortured Juan is utterly convincing in Phoebe Ann Porter's fine translation, which somehow manages to preserve the shattering darkness of the original.
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What to do with the Words
If you have followed the guidelines in Basic Flyer Design: Implementing Your Concept, but want to jump a little further into typography, a number of resources are out there for you.
First of all, you are not limited to the fonts already installed on your computer. No, Comic Sans is not your only choice for getting "fancy." (Nor should it ever be...) Fonts can be downloaded from sites such as Font Squirrel for free. Always check the licensing for each font as you download, to be sure the font is appropriately licensed for your purpose. Some of them are free even for commercial use, just take a quick look.
These are eleven of the fonts I enjoy using for a variety of purposes. I use them often on calendar designs, meal planner designs, occasionally on illustrations, and of course on flyers. All of them can be downloaded and used on your flyer designs. Be sensible about which fonts you select.
Remember that legibility is number one. To test if your flyer is readable, print a preliminary copy and post it up. Walk a number of feet back and see if the words (at least the title) are legible from a reasonable distance. If you can't read the text, likely culprits are:
- The font you selected is not the easiest to read
- The color of the text is not dark enough or does not contrast enough with the surrounding color
- The text isn't big enough
Or maybe you meant it to be that way? You could always draw them in with a great illustration first, but legible text is crucial.
Where do I download those great fonts?
1. Nevis Bold, from tenbytwenty.com
2. Trendex, can be found on Font Zone
3. Contribute, from Fonts Cafe, also home to other "feel good" fonts
4. Base 02, found at Urban Fonts
5. Gentium This may already by installed on your computer. If not, Font Squirrel will help you out.
6. Conspiracy, Font Squirrel
7. Talking to the Moon, for personal use, donate for commercial use
8. Handy George, dafont.com
9. Junction, Font Squirrel
10. ChunkFive, Font Squirrel
11. Harting Plain, Font Squirrel
How do I install those great fonts?
On my Windows OS, I follow these simple steps:
- Download the file.
- Open the zip folder (mine lands in the Downloads folder).
- Double click on the file labeled with your new font (sometimes there are more than one fonts in the folder, you can install each one individually).
- Click the "install" button when the fun box pops up that says "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
- You're done. Enjoy.
For further reading on typography, try these nice articles.
For a quick type guide by Fast Company
A 20 Minute Intro to Typography Basics


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I am in a major creative rut. Every time I sit in front of a screen with the intention of writing, the same sequence of events takes place. I open my laptop. I see 29 layers of unfinished musings on my desktop and am immediately stumped. Then I open the various notes where I keep writing ideas and my brain stages a rebellion.
"No way in hell I'm writing any of that crap," says Muse. Door slams. Silence.
So I go to my default. I plan children's activities. I plan menus. I make to do lists that include planning children's activities and menus. Maybe I start the laundry, do the dishes, figure out what's for dinner because, despite all the posturing, I actually suck at menu planning.
There's always a new project I can use as an excuse for not putting words on a page. The newest one is Christmas. Christmas, you beautiful cornucopia of manufactured obligations. Photo books, family advent calendars, parties, gingerbread houses! And amidst it all I have someone suggesting I put my kid on a restricted diet. So now there's research to do, cookbooks to read and oh so much planning.
You know what I mean. All that mental load stuff we've been talking about for the last few months. It is never ending but it's almost like one of those exploding snake fireworks, the one where the black ash keeps frothing out of a tiny capsule. I can keep producing items for my list but if I really want it to stop, I just have to put my foot down.
And here's where I usually hit a wall. I've written a few paragraphs, come to a decent point and am now left with no clue as to where to take this thing. So I send a text. Check email. Make a coffee. Try not to eat chocolate.
This happens to me a lot. I was in a good groove back in the spring, posting twice a week. I have no idea how I made that happen. Judah was only at the day home once a week and I used all his preschool time to workout so I'm not sure when I wrote. More importantly, I'm not sure how I wrote. These days, idea of writing anything at all sends my muse into the fetal position. The thought of writing two things a week, well that's just crazy talk.
I have figured out one important factor, though. If I ever get back into a groove like that again, I can never take a break. Ever. It's the same as working out. You miss one day, it's fine. You miss a week and you think, screw it where's the remote and that bag of Cool Ranch Doritos? (I just googled to make sure they still make those.)
I fell off both bandwagons as soon as summer rolled around. I missed a self-imposed post deadline. Then the next. Then I let the workouts slide. Next thing I know it's September, I'm back at the gym and my legs are wondering what the heck I'm trying to prove. Meanwhile my muse is still sitting in the corner pretending there's something uber important happening on Instagram.
It reminds me of a quote I heard last spring when I started to put some effort into my fitness regime. That is to say, around the time when I decided to actually go to a gym and not assume driving children all over place counted as "moderate activity." I was doing an online workout and the instructor said, "If you're tired of starting over, stop giving up."
That one hit me like an eight pound hand weight. I was used to hearing her spout out the cheesiest of cheesie motivational quotes, ones that would be written in violet cursive overtop a floral background in your Instagram feed.
You get what you give. This is your time. Find the real you. Life is a box of chocolates so don't eat all the good ones first.
OK, maybe not that last one. The point is I wasn't expecting to feel compelled to write down anything she said let alone put it on a post-it on the bathroom mirror. Even Luke thought it was good, and he's not one for violet cursive talk.
Whether it's working out, eating more consciously, challenging yourself not to yell at your kids or honouring your creative passions, one of the hardest things to do is stay on course. Like Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill, each step can seem impossibly hard, but at least we know our rocks can actually reach the top. We aren't destined to continually start all over again. We have a choice.
I should know. I've walked back down that hill a thousand times, only to find my desire to write staring me right in the face when I get to the bottom. Clearly, I need a plan. Because as I stand here dusting my hands, I am certain of one real truth: I don't want to spend the rest of my life at the bottom of this hill with this bloody rock standing in my way.


text:
Smile because u never know who is admiring you and your smile makes his/her day. So for perfect smile, doctors work hard and provide best solutions and treatments for their patients.
Nowadays many dental centres like Centre dentaire St-Onge provide best services and experience to their patients. These dental clinics have doctors specialised in their field. Dental centres like these are very friendly in nature and provide timeless services like:
- Fast appointments
- Online guidance
- Dental implants
These centres have their own portals and websites through which they interact with their patients and make them aware about follow up appointment with doctors and save a lot of time.
Dental centre provide happy aura because some patients used to fear going to dental clinics like this before but now they are not .Many changes were made in every sector so as are done in medical sector.
More people each year including new and old denture wearers and people with one or more missing teeth are turning to dental implants as a solution for restoring their teeth. Implants these days are more popular than crowns or bridges because they last for lifetime with proper oral care. Implants act like original teeth as they are fully functional in nature and even provide strength to the denture.
Dental centres provide luxurious experience and are designed in order to provide full comfort to their patients of any age. Specialist doctors are appointed by them so that patients feel they were in safe hand.
Fast appointments services save time as no patient have to go to clinic for appointments. These centres have their own websites and portals through which patients approach them.
Awareness is also provided by these centres as their website portals have blogs regarding new techniques invented in dental field and also provide knowledge about oral disease commonly found these days.
Precautions to be taken to save tooth
- Proper brushing after eating your meals
- Flossing
- Avoid sodas
- Timely checkups
So doctors are the building blocks and help patients to smile with confidence. Dental centres like above mentioned have friendly atmosphere and even patients feel satisfied because specialist doctors and staff are hired by these centres in order to provide excellent services and treatments to their patients. Along with smile patients confidence is also increased because after treatment patient can smile easily or comfortably.
In the end they say never frown because you never know who is falling in love with your smile.


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Volume 2 of Secret Santicore 2013 has been released, and I'm ultra proud to be in it. It's friggin' huge, so I've got a lot more reading to do. I like what I've seen so far. Mad thanks to Joey Lindsay for herding all of the cats. Extra thanks to Logan Knight at Last Gasp Grimoire for personally ensuring that my particular cat made the deadline. And here it is:
The delicious request I was permitted to gobble up was, "Dear Santicore, I would like...
A d100 table with random items that occasionally wash up along a stretch of shoreline that is infamous for
shipwrecks, restless souls of the drowned and aquatic ghoul attacks."
So, if your game world happens to have an ocean, I humbly submit this reply for your use-
97) A LoveBomb:
The delicious request I was permitted to gobble up was, "Dear Santicore, I would like...
A d100 table with random items that occasionally wash up along a stretch of shoreline that is infamous for
shipwrecks, restless souls of the drowned and aquatic ghoul attacks."
So, if your game world happens to have an ocean, I humbly submit this reply for your use-
What The Hell Did The Ocean Barf Up This Time?
1) A boot. You rolled a damn 1, what did you expect?
2) An ornate, yet completely seamless, metal box that the player characters couldn't open even if they had access to a nuclear blowtorch. The good thing about it is that the WORST villain in your campaign is willing to forgive all past wrongs, and pay the PC's handsomely in exchange for the box. Gee, I wonder what's inside it?
3) A beautiful, wheezing mermaid who's hopelessly tangled in a fishing net, and slowly suffocating to death. Oh, and she's also a chaotic-evil, human-hating, high-level magic-user who will regain full access to her spells as soon as she's back in the water, so good luck with that.
4) A treasure chest full of a non-gamebreaking amount of loot just lying about all "la-dee-da." One or more of the coins/gems/state secrets/etc. inside of it is haunted as a mother, though. Roll a d6 for each PC who touches a part of the treasure. A result of 1 means that they have a new ghost "friend" until randomquestcruelty is completed. Multiple ones means multiple funs!
5) The first mate of a ship that's currently wrecked on a nearby reef. He's grateful for any PC help, and offers to lead them to the riches on his former vessel before someone else can lay claim to them. Of course, he's actually a murderous fuck who killed everyone aboard, and he doesn't plan on sharing anything with the PC's once they've helped him recover what he wants.
6) A hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore. Watch your feet, bitch.
7) A trail made of large, flat stones which extends out into the ocean past the horizon. They lead to the Far Lands, and only appear once every seven years.
8) A bloated corpse lying face down in the sand with a reasonably valuable weapon on it. He doesn't need it anymore, though. His maw full of razor- sharp shark teeth is all he needs to gnaw the faces off of unsuspecting travellers...
9) A famous painting, rolled up and stored in a waterproof cylinder. Many interested parties, both legitimate, as well as legitimate bastards, would like to get their hands on it.
10) The diary of a time-traveller. MOST of the entries are all boring like, "Breakfast was instructive. Must get used to chewing food instead of absorbilating it", but there are occasionally useful bits of info.
Roll a d10 every time a PC spends an hour reading the journal. Treat a result of 10 like the PC has read the same information that they could have gleaned with a successful casting of one of the following spells:
1.) Identify --on something cool in their possession, or that they'll run across in the near future--
2.) Clairaudience
3.) Clairvoyance
4.) Foresight
5.) Know Alignment --of a being or object the reader has already come into contact with--
6.) Locate Object.
11) Hallucination-inducing kelp. Y'know, the good stuff. Any PC who ingests/touches/smokes it gets to go on an "adventure" in their own psyche. I guess you could let 'em roll a save or whatever. Locals in the know might pay a decent price for the stuff.
12) An incredibly rich and powerful noble who is suffering from total amnesia.
13) A severed human foot with a VERY distinctive toe-ring (or anklet, or whatever) still attached to it.
14) A giant egg. It hatches in d100 hours. Roll on your favorite "All-Of-The-Things" table to determine what's inside it.
15) An astonishingly ripped rowing-slave. Well, a former rowing-slave, unless his former masters catch up with him...
16) A barrel of highly flammable oil.
17) One of the PC's siblings, alive or dead. Your call.
18) A lifeboat. Has a false bottom that's secretly lined with glistening abalone and exotic pelts. And you thought secret door checks were just for dungeons.
19) A mysteriously undamaged and fully functional grand piano.
20) A full-blown Ghost Ship. Like if One-Eyed Willie and his crew had the balls to fight their way out of hell to ratchet up the action at their old place of business.
21) A super-creepy and ridiculously ornate masthead. It looks like Satan fucked a meth-addicted Valkyrie, and this thing is what popped out. A hidden compartment in one of the left breasts contains the crown jewels of a foreign land.
22) A wine cask emblazoned with the label of a well- respected vineyard. The contents are actually vinegary swill, but no one's going to know that until AFTER the sale, right?
23) A tiny, wooden chest. Inside is a mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich. The mutton is, surprisingly, still nice and lean.
24 A huge, bioluminescent jellyfish, full of ghosts and venom.
25 Aqua-Stirges!
26) A marooned group of pirate philosophers. They seek enlightenment, and booty.
27) Poltergeist plus a huge, rusty anchor and plenty of splintered wood. Go!
28) Bizarrely-colored people in search of their queen.
29) Murder victim, PC's implicated. Anyone dumb enough to actually touch the body is immediately arrested by nearby investigators. Time to Scooby it up, and find the real killer. Or, y'know, just a good, old-fashioned jailbreak.
30) A vehicle from another world. Came through a portal that's located deep under the water nearby.
31) Debris and some radio equipment from a 20th century luxury ship. It doesn't matter where or when your game is set. Seems like that strange, metal box is talking, too.
32) A chest full of dried rations.
33) A genie in a bottle. That always works out well.
34) Driftwood.
35) An ornery, giant clam. It has a perfect, massive pearl inside of it, but doesn't seem to be forthcoming.
36) Squid-puke.
37) Formal invitations to a raging kegger at Poseidon's palace.
38) A magnificent Nereid who desperately desires to make contact with a randomly determined PC due to nebulous motivations. You should totally have John Paul White's cover of "Can't Get it Out of My Head" playing in the background.
39) A giant sea-snail with a jaunty outlook on life, and an entire other world inside its shell.
40) A five-pound block of Ambergris. Perfumers will pay a handsome sum for this chunk of whale-poop. Pretty much just looks like a weird, lightweight rock.
41) BLOOD! As far as the eye can see, an ocean of blood...
42) A massive tidal wave that would surely destroy the nearest town/caravan of strippers/city... if the wave weren't mysteriously frozen in time. The wave isn't moving, for now. What stopped it, and for how long?
43) Medieval Michael Phelps, outswimming a shark for shits and giggles.
44) Refugees from the nearest war-torn land in your game. You do have a war going on somewhere in your game, right?
45) An aquatic ghoul, desperately making for land, despite being chained to another aquatic ghoul, and another, and so on all the way down to the anchor the last one is chained to at the bottom of the sea. Rubes.
46) Some poor schmoe who's cursed to count every grain of sand on that beach. You didn't step on the pile he was just working on, did you?
47) Remember the Sirens from the Odyssey? Looks like someone finally gave them a lift off of that island.
48) A floating flower, from which springs a tiny deity with a major case of "small man" syndrome. He's all, "What are you lookin' at, mortals?" I'm picturing him with a minuscule cigar stub and a scruffy five o'clock shadow, but you should run with what works for you.
49) It's not so much that the waves washed something up, as it is that the ocean has turned into a raging inferno. Is the water on fire, or has the water itself become fire? *shrug* I just write the tables; implementation is your problem.
50) Thousands of blackbirds, uncharacteristic for this area, are standing eerily stock-still along the shoreline, almost daring anyone to come near the water.
51) It's just a fucking seagull... Or IS it? ... Yeah, it's just a damn seagull.
52) A jet-ski! Full tank of gas, too.
53) It turns out that this whole "haunted beach" thing is just a big illusion. Who would go to that kind of trouble, and what are they trying to hide?
54) A pleasure-barge making landfall to unleash its boorish and inebriated passengers on a shore excursion in your neck of the woods. On the bright side, you might be able to catch the tail end of an orgyfeast if you hop aboard.
55) Garbage. Tons of it. It seems that the kingdom/country/Republican across the way is dumping their junk into your pristine waters.
56) Just like, really a lot of chalk. Maybe a container ship full of chalk wrecked nearby, or maybe it's some kind of art installation? Either way, free chalk.
57) Moldy rope, and plenty of it.
58) Barnacle-covered remnants of a pier from somewheresville.
59) An invading military force. Could be a full armada, could be a saucy little expeditionary crew. Whatever's clever.
60) You know those seashells that sound like the ocean when you hold them up to your ear? This one sounds exactly like whatever's currently being said at that shadowy, private table in your local tavern. Go figure.
61) An immortal, all-seeing tortoise oracle. Doesn't matter how wise it is though, because you know the PC's are just gonna try to kill it, or use it as a mount.
62) A baby. No, not an orc baby, just the regular kind.
63) A barrel of ale! Huzzah!
64 ) A lodestone.
65) The BEST pebble ever for skipping across the top of the water. Seriously, this bad boy is sleek.
66) The Atlantean/Lemurean ambassador. Try to channel Namor.
67) A fishing net.
68) A sea-demon. You'd think it would go all monster-attack, but nah. Smooth, sophisticated stealer of souls. With gills. Who smells like tuna. Okay, it sounds bad on paper, but he makes it work.
69) Two lovers having sexy time in the ocean-foam.
70) Two drunken assholes beating the tar out of each other in the ocean-foam.
71) Yeah, it's a wizard's tower. A frickin' floating wizard's tower.
72) A trident.
73) A bard's gear. So, it's basically useless crap. Keep right on walking.
74) The manifest of a famous ship that went missing twenty years ago, and a set of footprints leading away from it. It looks brand-spanking new...
75) A box of imported chocolates. Go ahead, treat yourself.
76) A Sea-Chariot meant to be pulled by:
1.) A school of swordfish
2.) Dolphins
3.) Electric eels
4.) A giant seahorse.
77) An orange. That's sure to come in handy at sea.
78) A talking, beached whale. His name's Alistair, and he's soooooo embarrassed by this faux pas.
79) Incandescent sea-slime that will continue glowing in a 20-foot radius as long as it's kept in seawater.
80) Three ladies stirring a bubbling cauldron. One of them's young and hot, but the other two are pretty "meh."
81) A big, addictive Air-Bubble. Once inside it, a character can move at their normal speed on or under the water, and breathe normally, but there's a cumulative 1% chance every hour that they'll become addicted to the sensation, and never leave the ocean. They know this is coming; they can feel it. If the PC succumbs to the bubble's charms, I guess they just become a very interesting NPC.
82) A totally bitchin' dog. Super hardcore, and clearly a good swimmer.
83) Wooden shoes.
84) The world's chillest sea serpent. Imagine your favorite stoner sunning themselves on a rock.
85) An overweight selkie with something to prove.
86) A randomly determined PC's favorite bag/ backpack. Wait, what?! How did that get there? Did someone snag their shit?!
87) A crystal ball. It's not magical or anything. Just a lovely tchotchke.
88) It's a sea cucumber. If you touch it, save vs. magic or swap minds with the sea cucumber. That's right, you just unleashed the soul of a sea cucumber in the body of a wizard, or, like, a hulking barbarian or something. What the hell would THAT be like? Oh, yeah, and you're a big ole water-caterpillar-thing now.
89) A cute, li'l baby seal. Awwwww!
90) A tricorne hat.
91) Cloak of the Manta Ray! Fuck yeah!!!
92) A half-buried metric fuck-ton of rum. Also, some pirates currently in the process of burying it.
93) A randomly determined PC's greatest flaw, embodied in physical form. Don't know your characters well enough to decide what that is? Laaaaaaaaame GM. Lame.
94) A boat oar.
95) A burial at sea that the waves objected to.
96) A viking-ish raiding party, and they look pretty pumped! Locking up the valuables and hiding your daughters isn't gonna cut it this time. The smart move would be to get waaaaaaay the hell out of Dodge.
It's disguised as an incredibly powerful weapon capable of utmost destruction, and no warmonger could possibly resist its charms. It can sense the approach of sentient beings, and will detonate as soon as there are 3 or more of them near it. Everyone within 30 feet of the device must make a save vs. magic when it goes off. Success means that they're just -1 to any attempt to harm others for the next hour due to a marginally increased respect for life. Failure results in them becoming completely enamored of the first person they lay eyes on after the blast. ("Charm Person" or something similar.) The charm effect is permanent, unless someone removes the curse, or the person they're infatuated with tries to murderize them. Make love, not war, man.
98) A truly world-shattering horror. Not Cthulhu, because let's be a little more original here. If you can't think of anything, just go with a twenty-story, snake-headed demon whose secret motivation is to enact the most twisted possible interpretations of Burl Ives' songs. Whatever it is, it's totally above the PC's paygrade though, so taking it on by themselves would equal a quick TPK. Spotting it, and escaping with their lives is the best they can hope for during the initial encounter. If they want to get out ahead of this one, they're going to need to pull out all the stops. They'll need to Machiavelli together an ingenious plan, and schmooze as many monarchs/archmages/etc. as possible into helping them either defeat this thing, or turn it into their pet.
99) An advanced, floating city that has run aground. They should have made that left turn at Albuquerque.
100) A message in a bottle: Roll a d6
1.) A letter from some dude trapped on a desert island, with rough directions on how to get there.
2.) A blood-spattered letter from the future version of one of the PC's that warns the group of treachery from within their own ranks. The handwriting is a perfect match, and any magic or science used to identify the blood will confirm that it belongs to the PC in question.
3.) A love letter written years ago by a soldier for a now-middle-agey NPC woman who the PC's have actually met before. Should they take it upon themselves to reunite the old lovebirds, they'll be pleasantly surprised to find out that Romeo is a wealthy and generous general now.
4.) A desperate plea for help, and/or offer of wealth to anyone who can save the main NPC from that adventure you've been wanting to run, but couldn't seem to get the players interested in.
5.) The deed to that creepy, dilapidated castle on yon barren, remote island. Legally sound, and it might net you a title, but I smell a megadungeon under that sonofabitch.
6.) A treasure map which leads to the Island of the Kooky Kabuki Girls. Genre be damned!


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Review: Down the Rabbit Hole
By Juan Pablo Villalobos
Translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey
Published by And Other Stories
Reviewed by Jessica Patient
Juan Pablo Villalobos' novella, Down the Rabbit Hole is a surreal story about the drugs culture in Mexico, body parts appearing on the news, rooms full of guns and a rollercoaster of a journey to grant a boy his ultimate dream. The dark fringes of life are seen through the innocent eyes of Tochtli (his name means rabbit in Nahuatl, Mexico's main indigenous language), aged seven, whose only desire is to have a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus.
Through Tochtli's viewpoint, the reader witnesses the isolation from living in a compound with his paranoid father, a drug lord. The only people he knows are hit men, prostitutes, servants, corrupt politicians and his tutor, Mazatzin. Death and killing surrounds Tochtli and yet he doesn't seem to understand what is happening. He is only concerned about his hat collection and learning about the Samurai. This unawareness reminded me of Emma Donoghue's Room. Both books combine a serious, disturbing situation with comic observations of the world around the protagonist.
"They definitely killed him, because later I saw Itzpapalotl go past with her mop and bucket."
Tochtli reads the dictionary every night and tells the reader that he knows – sordid, disastrous, immaculate, pathetic and devastating. As the novella progresses, the reader witnesses that Tochtli does not know the real meanings and contexts for these words. Villalobos shows us a character who seems to think he has lots of freedoms. In reality, the reader can see the seclusion that Tochtli is suffering because he is not allowed outside the compound, other children are turned away and he becomes entangled within his father's growing paranoia. Tochtli is trapped by his limitations just like Alice in her wonderland.
"Speaking of the brain, it's important to take off your hat before you put bullets into somebody's brain, so it doesn't get stained."
He desperately wants a pygmy hippopotamus from Liberia to along with his other animals, which are kept in cages, in the garden and are occasionally fed the victims of his father's drug business. Tochtli thinks he is telling the reader the story of getting his hippos but he is failing to understand the bigger picture of his Father's business. Villalobos successfully shows the reader through off hand remarks from Tochtli what is clearly happening in the tragic world around the young boy.
Down the Rabbit Hole was originally published in Spanish in 2010 and Rosalind Harvey translated this edition. Harvey successfully captures the voice of Tochtli, which helps make the book enjoyable. In the past, I have found translated books very dry but Down the Rabbit Hole has restored my faith in translated fiction.
Down the Rabbit Hole is a smart punchy novella and will hold your attention until the end.