Brian Johnson, our marketing assistant at LWL Worldwide, sent us an interesting article yesterday.

It’s about a placebo pill developed by a woman who wanted to control her niece’s hypochondria by giving her some kind of pill — preferably not a drug, since her mother-in-law (also a nurse) had suggested Motrin.

Since placebos were not readily available at the drug store, she decided to develop one for kids called Obecalp (”placebo” spelled backwards). Basically a gummy candy that’s meant to taste bad so children think it’s medicine.

The whole article in the NY Times is here.

Okay, hold on a second… I sense good intentions from the inventor — after all, she didn’t want to give her children or her niece REAL drugs — but, come on! What the heck are we trying to teach our kids with this kind of “solution”?

Click HERE To Continue > > >

Well, for the past several months Barry and I have been looking at EVERY house in the local market that fell within a certain price range.

But we’re picky… we need somewhere we can live and work together 24/7, since we work out of the home. We need a place that has room for two offices (we work separately because when one of us is on the phone, interviewing someone or chatting up business associates and JV partners, or recording audios or screen-capture videos, both of us need to be able to concentrate, and not be interrupted).

And of course, we also need someplace with a separate bedroom for the baby that’s both near our bedroom, and my office, so he/she (we’re now affectionately calling the baby Mango instead of Peanut since that’s about the size he/she is) can get immediate attention when required, and when not sleeping right beside me.

We need a nice yard, where we can work outside if we want, or get some fresh air while still having privacy, or meditate and connect with nature… and we need to be away from noisy streets for sanity, and so we don’t have traffic noises in every recording we do.

We also need room for our home gym and our video studio. We need a big walk-in closet (yes, NEED, or else we have to live in an uninspiring mess). And we need modern bathroom and kitchen facilities, with a double sink in the master (because that’s what we’re used to) and granite or tile counter tops in the kitchen, including an island in the middle (because that’s what we like).

Yup, we need the perfect house… but we want this champagne-grade house on a beer budget.

And finally we found it… or, perhaps, it found us…

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Since I’ve been pregnant (or at least, since I’ve know about it at 6 weeks) of course I haven’t been drinking any wine — even though in Europe pregnant women drink it without consequence, and in Canada they used to say a glass “every now and then” was okay — because here in the U.S. it’s Zero Tolerance (no alcohol for pregnant women).

Actually they’re just being safe, because some studies have shown it takes much more alcohol than a glass of wine every few weeks to cause problems — BUT since they “don’t know” how much is safe, they just say “none at all”. Better safe than sorry, and I’m fine with that, even though I feel they’re probably being over-cautious.

But I really have missed my wine — not so much for the alcohol, but because I enjoy the taste, I enjoy the antioxidant health benefits, and I enjoy the ritual of sipping a fine beverage from a fancy glass.

Enter my savior… Sutter Home Fre (alcohol-removed) wine!

Click HERE To Continue > > >

Yesterday I went back to my acupuncturist to see how the sugar allergy treatment went… but I’ve been having severe digestive issues the past week again, and we found out it was related (for the second time, now indicating a “pattern”) to a combination reaction — requiring a second treatment for the same food group.

Last time that happened, Dr. Doss decided the “combination” was physical and emotional… so he had done an emotional clearing, and I didn’t have to avoid any foods for the first time during these sessions.

This time it seemed to be physical though.  He didn’t treat me with any needles (like he said last time, my body is allowing less and less needles to be used each time) and ended up doing acupressure instead of acupuncture.  That treatment included a Shiatsu-type massage at the back of my head and neck, and the massaging of my lymph glands, which are for some reason swollen and tender.

It was nice, but I was kind of hoping for another BodyTalk emotion-clearing session, and not having to avoid foods again (since we treated sugar, I had to avoid fruit too — and that’s what I crave more than anything, especially since I was thinking we’d move on to grains and the “limited” diet for that one INCLUDES all fruit).  No such luck… it was a regular treatment, and I had to avoid the sugar all over again.

Not that I minded so much avoiding refined sugar — after all, I did that for 10 years of my life — but I have never avoided fruit, except when I was a kid and didn’t really care for it, and during some of these other acupuncture allergy treatments (like Vitamin C and Vitamin B).

Oh well, hopefully that’s one of the last times ever, since I should now be cured… and now, just writing about it, I’m getting another craving for fruit, so it’s time to go and eat some!

Keep Unwrapping the Mysteries of Life!

May 15 is Bloggers Unite for Human Rights day… where the call is out for bloggers to “use their space to make the world a better place”.

There are many human rights issues that deserve to be talked about. My personal issue though, is with the way journalists have often been treated, and now — through expansion — censorship of the internet.

Barry made a great post on his blog about Net Neutrality that is a good place to start on that topic. If you publish OR consume content on the internet; if you like to be able to go to whatever sites you want, regardless of what ISP you choose; if you actually want to receive emails that you subscribe to; then you need to care about Net Neutrality.

And of course, this is just an extension of the censorship that has been going on in mainstream media for years. The internet is the media of the people — anybody can create a video, audio, article, e-book, or nearly any kind of content and distribute it online, including very professional “radio” and “TV” shows that are webcast or podcast rather than broadcast… and is in essence “the medium of all media” in the way that you can mimic any other form of media online (be it print, TV, radio, or anything else).

The true “journalist” — even in mainstream media — really believes that they are working for the people, and publishing our “right to know” for the good of all. But true journalism doesn’t really exist in mainstream media, try as hard as the reporters might.

Yes, journalists around the world are being wrongfully jailed, tortured, and even killed for publishing (or attempting to publish) stories that certain countries want to censor and keep under wraps. Those governments don’t believe that people have the “right to know”…

Click HERE To Continue > > >

Today I went for another acupuncture session, and this time we’re focusing on the sugar allergy. Wow, I’ve been avoiding sugar for many, many years, and although I don’t plan on going crazy on the refined stuff, I’m so happy to be ridding my system of all sensitivity to it — because it’s in almost everything!

Yes, I can remember many times when I thought I was avoiding sugar, only to feel like crap afterwards and knowing that some of it snuck in… restaurants in particular love to put it in every sauce, dressing, marinade, or just on the grilled chicken breasts that are supposed to be pure.

Now, I just finished my 6-hour avoidance of sugar like after every treatment (the food changes, but the procedure stays the same) and that’s the last time I HAVE to (rather than CHOOSE to) avoid it.

So anyhow, the number of needles went down again… I just ended up with two in the back of my neck. And I enjoyed the treatment a lot, because this time the doctor asked “out of the blue” if I’d been getting headaches (well, he actually got that message from my body, but it seemed to come from nowhere).

I admitted that yes, I had been getting them quite often over the past week or two… and that I used to get them a lot, but they had greatly subsided except for very recently.

So he gave me an acupressure treatment on the back of my head and the sides of my neck, where it was so tender that it hurt like heck for him to press, but felt good at the same time because I could feel the pain melting away. I call that a “good hurt”.

One of those instances where it’s true to say, “No Pain, No Gain!”

It was almost as good as getting a full massage… which reminds me, I’m due for another one soon!

Except this was a bonus massage, because it means that sugar will no longer be an issue for me. Sweeeeet!

Keep Unwrapping the Mysteries of Life!

Well, it’s been Doctor Week around here… four appointments for various things all squished into three days.

The last appointment was at the Maternal Fetal Medicine Clinic in Medford (the biggest city around here) where they did some specialized Ultra-Screen tests for our baby, since I’m an “older” mom (meaning over 35).

Finally we got to see Peanut’s face, seen here in the ultrasound printout… a whole lot different than the small “bean” I saw a month ago!

We’re still not sure if it’s a boy or a girl, but bets are coming in on both sides.

It was quite an interesting experience though… besides the fact that we also saw the baby in 4-D (a picture is on the next page), we discovered that we have a larger-than-average baby — which wouldn’t be an issue except that it meant I couldn’t get the blood tests that were supposed to be part of the special screening.

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Saturday evening, Barry and I took an impromptu drive through Colonial Valley, a nearby little oasis of wildlife that we had never visited before, but had heard all about the beauty.

And it was almost as good as going to the zoo… maybe even better, because we got to see animals in their wild habitat, calmly co-existing with humans (as well as a few that were domesticated, and also co-existing with humans).

The first deer I saw, bounding along the grass towards the road we were driving on, prompted me to gasp in delight — which scared the heck out of Barry, who was driving.

Right beside him were three more deer, casually grazing beside the road. We drove by slowly, and I took a couple of pictures from the car.

Then we came across the herd pictured above — nine of them all together — and I had to get out of the car to get closer for this picture, with one of them looking right at me.

By the end of the drive we had seen 16 deer in total… all within about the span of an hour or so. Who can say they’ve gone out for a casual drive and seen 16 deer within an hour? I was pretty impressed by the whole thing.

In fact, when Barry said whoever saw the next deer would be treated to dinner, I manifested the 16th one almost immediately.  I looked around, then straight ahead, and said, “There it is… crossing the road up ahead.” And there it was.

But it wasn’t just about deer…

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Barry and I recently discovered a really cool online course about how to utilize and optimize Camtasia (or other screen-capture programs) to create impressive videos to establish a modern online presence, drive traffic to your site, build a list, create products, make money, and more.

Of course, the lessons are Camtasia tutorials — appropriately enough — and laid out in a logical and self-explanatory way. Because of this, you can find exactly what you want to learn, and target your viewing to that specific video, so you don’t waste hours searching through unrelated content for those advanced techniques you’re dying to try (as soon as you can figure out how to do them… which now you can!)

Up until now, I’ve mostly used Camtasia for tutorials of website tactics, and for recording and editing webinars. But I’m realizing more and more that it’s a feature-packed tool I can be doing a lot more with.

Here’s a video I created using one of the techniques outlined in the bonus section of this course:

Yup… that’s a caricature of me, and you can easily do the exact same thing. The possibilities with just this one little gem are nearly endless — no need to worry about a bad hair day or not knowing what to say on camera, because the cartoon you (or another random cartoon character if you prefer) just performs flawlessly, right on cue.

I’ve only really begun to dive into everything that’s offered in this course… but the techniques I’ve discovered already have been worth the price of admission.

You obviously know how important it is to use video these days for search engine placement, traffic from various sources, buzzworthiness, and appeal to the internet generation.

This Camtasia course will show you that the options for creating those videos are a lot more varied than you might have thought.

Keep Unwrapping your Success!