The first thing to do is look at the curb appeal of your home. While you may think having pink flamingos in your flowerbed are great, other people may pass on your home all together because they hate pink flamingos! These are the types of thing you have to think about. So clean up your yard and take out anything that may not look great to just about everyone. Next, check and make minor repairs that could improve the overall look to the home. Check and see if your painting needs to be refreshed at the same time.

The last thing you may need to do is hire someone to help you stage your home. When you are selling a house you need to present the inside as a neutral space so the potential buyers can envision their furniture and personal items in the home. Many stagers will either consult with you or do it for you and you will need to choose the best way to go for your situation. Working with a good local realtor also will help you.

My wife and I have been slowly working our way toward eating locally grown foods but we have run into a rather large snag; our love of coffee! We live in the center of the country and while we have several coffee places that roast their own coffee, the coffee bean is being brought in from around the world. To try and get an alternative to coffee, I looked into tea. You can get some teas that are grown in the US but they aren’t local either.

So we are looking for an alternative to coffee for our morning drink. We have seen hot cranberry juice but that’s not a local product where we live either. I’m not sure about the rest of the country, Southern CA, Southern Florida and South Texas excluded, but eating locally is a lot harder than it appears on the surface! I know it can be done since our ancestors did it. We have so much at our grocery stores to choose from that is not locally grown it really wakes you up to what is trucked in to an area. And for one, I don’t even like the thought of giving up my morning coffee!

One of the things fall brings with it is the quiet between the rustlings of the leaves. It won’t be long until everything is still and you can hear nothing but the city around you. It is in those moments, above all others that I so appreciate my wonderful water feature that Teacup Gardener did for me several years ago. They talked to me before dirt was ever turned to find out what I was looking for before designing and installing my wonderful rock waterfall.

Before this, I had done some research and looking into doing it by myself but just never seemed to have the time to get it all together. I guess what I really wanted was the same ease I get when I walk along the streams in the mountains; to enjoy the running water without any work! I was really glad that Robert and Beth were referred to me by a mutual business associate because I had confidence in them before I ever met them. The fact that they delivered on the design and the implementation within budget and on time was just a plus. I highly recommend Teacup Gardener if you are remotely close to the Nashville, Tennessee area.

The very first time I had to get up in front of people I had a guy tell me to “picture all the people out in the audience naked and you will bee just fine”. Well, I went out to the podium, looked up and saw a man in the front of the room sitting on the first row who weighed over 350 pounds and as I struggled to picture him naked I slowly found myself getting nauseated. I them looked to another part of the room and saw a beautiful young women and started to picture her naked and had to stop because more than the bile from the first guy started rising. In other words, picturing people naked did not work!

So what does? Now that I have spoken hundreds of time in front of various sized audiences, I can say there are two things that I have found that help me tremendously; breathing and conversation. I simply remember to breathe before, during and after the event. This alone keeps me calm and balanced. Once I get to the stage I simply have a conversation with the audience. I look them in the eye, I laugh if appropriate and I cry if appropriate and everything in between. I stay open and honest just like I do when I converse with my friends and it has served me well for many years since that first experience.

For every story you hear about someone in America not receiving the care they need from their insurance company you hear a story about the care people are not receiving in another country, be it the UK or Canada. Though I understand why these stories from other countries are brought up, I really don’t care what is happening in other countries because we need to fix what is wrong with our healthcare system. That means looking beyond the comparisons that people are stretching to be made and look at the problems we have in the current system.

Unfortunately, in America as well as other countries around the world, money talks and if you have more money to spread misinformation than the truth then the truth gets lost. I like many of my friends are tiring of the lies that are flying around and scaring the devil out of so many people that only watch TV or listen to the same radio programs and nothing else thus not getting a balanced viewpoint. We will never be able to improve the healthcare situation unless we start with the facts and truths. It is time to put political views aside and do what is right for the people in America. AARP is one of the largest watchdog organizations that are keeping very good tabs on what is true or not. Check out HealthActionNow.org to find out the facts on Health Care Reform.