When you have a small living room, it won’t hurt if you have a few larger pieces. These larger pieces act as the focal point of your living room. Use a larger sofa or media as the focal point and accessories with smaller pieces.

Use lighter shades of green, blue and yellow for your walls. These lighter colors help open up the room and give it a more airy feel. If you want a cozier feel to your living room, use darker shades of red, blue, brown and black.

To help further open up the room, use mirrors and glass table tops. Mirrors reflect light and give the illusion of a larger room. Make sure that the mirror reflects a view or an ornamental item to enhance the room. Use glass table tops to give your small living room an open feel (put kids into consideration), rather than using hard wood table that further shrinks the room.

Avoid using heavily printed upholstery for your seating and sofa. Use light, monochromatic colors that match. Avoid mix and match of colors as well, as it makes the room look smaller and tight.

Use light gauzy and filmy fabrics for your window treatments. These fabrics let natural light pass through and adds more personality to your living room. Do not overdo and avoid using heavily printed fabrics in a small living room design.

Make sure that your small living room is open and has no blockage. A heavily furnished living room looks more like a cluttered space rather than a living space. Avoid putting too much furniture and accessories. Remember that less is more: less clutter and less furniture means more space. Small living room designs are made for small spaces and defining and putting only essential items will be more than enough to complete the style.

Blend furniture and wall colors to create an open flow. Match your furniture color/s with your wall coloring to make the small living room look and feel larger.

Small living room designs don’t have to be bland and boring. Use decorating themes to enhance the ambiance of the room. Stick to only one theme when decorating, otherwise it will only look cluttered and confused.

If you want to accessorize your small living room, choose the items that will compliment your furniture and fixture. And make sure these items are also functional to help you keep the room spacey and clutter-free.

Choose the right-sized fixtures and accessories. Do not over-decorate your small living room; instead, look for items that will help make the room look bigger. Choose reflective items such as a good-sized glass-top coffee table, a wall mirror and a few functional items that add style and class to your small living room design.

Experience is the best teacher. Study your finished living room design and see if it is appropriately done. If you feel that the space is too tight, rearrange your furniture and see the finished product. Designing your small living room should not only satisfy your eyes but your experience. Your choice of small living room design should help you achieve comfort and style.

Chat rooms are one of the most interactive Internet areas, and a favourite stop for kids. A chat room is an Internet area where you can have live, real-time conversations with many people at the same time. Think of it as a telephone party line—except that you type rather than talk. Everyone can see what everyone else writes, but you can still be as anonymous as you want.

There are different levels of supervision in chat rooms. Some are open environments with no moderation; some have leaders who moderate the discussion; while others have monitors who assess what people write before anyone else gets to see it. If people misbehave, these live monitors can reprimand them or even kick them out.

Chat rooms can give kids a wonderful opportunity to:

Talk to like-minded people in a controlled and kid-friendly environment
 

Make new friends anywhere in the world, and keep in touch with old ones
 

Chat one-on-one with people they might not otherwise get to talk to: teachers, community leaders, even experts in topics that interest them

Chat rooms do have their downside, though:

Chat room participants who don’t follow online rules of Netiquette can end up hurting others. “Flaming,” the unrestrained expression of emotional or strongly worded opinions, is common in chat rooms.
 

Discussions may be sexual or violent, or promote hateful attitudes or offensive activities.
 

The anonymity of chat rooms can encourage some people to harass others—girls, in particular, may encounter verbal sexual harassment.
 

More than any other place online, chat rooms are cruising grounds for pedophiles and other predators trying to make contact with young people. In the anonymous atmosphere of the Internet, where kids feel free to be honest, conversations can quickly become intimate.
 

If children do develop online relationships with strangers they meet in chat rooms, this can lead to them being cyberstalked, sent pornography, or even pressured to arrange a real-world meeting. This is very rare; but it does happen, and the risk must be taken seriously.
 

Kids, especially older one, may deliberately take risks by participating in chat rooms they find titillating. They may engage in flirting, or even cybersex.

Guidelines for chat-room safety

Young children (under should not use chat rooms at all
Real-world rules apply equally in cyberspace. Just as we teach young children not to talk to strangers in the street, we should also teach them never to talk to strangers in chat rooms.

Older kids (8-13) should only use well-monitored chat rooms
As mentioned above, chat rooms are monitored in different ways. Some use live monitors, while others rely on software that automatically shuts people out for using inappropriate language. It’s best for parents to choose a kids’ site that uses adult monitors. (However, keep in mind that even in a monitored chat room, there’s nothing to stop an adult from pretending to be a child and joining in the conversation.)

Know which chat rooms your teens visit, and who they talk to
Ask your teens about which sites they frequent, and who their chat buddies are. Visit their favourite sites to check out some of the conversations. You should encourage teens to only use monitored chat rooms.

Teach kids to always protect their personal identity
Remind your kids never to reveal information about themselves, their friends or family. Encourage them to use gender-neutral nicknames, so that no one can tell whether they’re male or female. (It’s especially important for them to understand that nothing is private online. Many chat rooms archive their conversations, and make them available on the Web.)

Children should never leave the public area of a chat room
Some chat rooms offer users the option of going into private rooms, or sharing private messages (PMs) that no one else can see or monitor. Children should never let themselves be lured out of the public area. (For information on chat room predators, see Online Predators.)

Teach your kids how to respond to uncomfortable situations
Kids should never respond to messages that make them feel uncomfortable or frightened. They should tell an adult right away, and avoid that chat environment in future.

Children should never arrange to meet someone from a chat room without informing a parent or other adult first.
Any meeting with an Internet friend should take place in a busy public place, with an adult present.

Use the resources on the right-hand side to learn how to reduce the risks associated with chat rooms.

Find More Room Articles

If your partner is going away for a few days, tell her that you are worried about her so you have organized a bodyguard to look after her. Then give her a small teddy bear.

Buy a packet of glow in the dark stars and stick the stars on the roof above your bed to spell out a message such as “I Love You” When the lights go down, your message will be revealed!

On a special occasion, buy your partner eleven real red roses and one artificial red rose. Place the artificial rose in the center of the bouquet.

Attach a card that says:

“I will love you until the last rose fades.”

Buy the domain name of your partner’s name if it is available for example http://www.TanyaJohnston.com. Create a web page containing a romantic poem and a picture of a rose. When your partner is surfing the web, casually ask whether she has ever checked to see whether her domain name is taken. Let her type it in to discover her page.

TheRomantic.com 101 Romantic Ideas

IDEA # 5

Buy a stylish hand mirror and give it to your partner as a gift. Include a card in the box saying

“In this mirror you will see the image of

the most beautiful woman in the world.”

IDEA # 6

Take a book that your partner is reading and using a pencil, underline letters in a section of the book she has yet to read to spell out a love letter. For example in the following exert from a novel, the underlined letters come together to spell out the secret message “I love you”

The palace was a labyrinth, their passage through it tortuous and interminable. Initially they passed from building to building under the sodden sky. Steve’s feet ached; he might have laughed at himself, the tireless traveler, grown too soft from his months in the city to walk any proper distance. Abruptly the guards halted.

The underlined letters will make your partner curious and with a bit of luck she will write them down. Spend time to encode a proper message such as “Dear Belinda, I love you honey”

IDEA # 7

Have flowers delivered to your partner’s workplace. She will not only enjoy the flowers but will also receive comments and attention from her office mates which will add to her enjoyment.

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IDEA # 8

While walking with your partner on a weekend getaway, pick up a smooth stone and say that you’re going to keep it as a special memento of your trip. Later, have a message such as

“I Love Rebecca”

engraved into the stone by a jeweler and give it to your partner.

IDEA # 9

Drive into the country, find a grassy hill and lie with your partner and look up at the clouds.

Play the kid’s game of looking for shapes in the cloud formations.

IDEA # 10

Get a piece of paper and some crayons. Draw a bright childlike picture with a smiley sun and two stick figures holding hands. Add labels with your two names pointing to the stick figures. Write “I Love You” inside a heart.

Next get a large formal envelope. Place your drawing inside and type up a formal address label of your partner’s work such as:

For the immediate and urgent attention of:

Rebecca Jones

Level 20

Collins & Smith Solicitors

New York

Mail it to your partner so she receives it in the middle of a busy day.

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IDEA # 11

Memorize one of Shakespeare’s love sonnets and recite it to your partner when you are in a romantic setting like a botanical garden. Don’t just suddenly start reciting poetry as this will just sound corny.

While you are cuddling your partner, ask in a joking manner, “So is now a good time to recite a love poem to you?” She will probably say yes, expecting you to come up with something of the “Roses are Red…” variety.

Instead, look into her eyes, smile and recite the sonnet while you gently stroke her face. Try the sonnet below. If this is too long, just memorize the first four lines and the last two.

Shakespeare Love Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest,

Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

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IDEA # 12

If your partner has to work late, take a lunch box and fill it with some of her favorite things such as chocolates, herbal tea, cookies, a small teddy bear.

Next, get a piece of paper and write

“Michelle’s Late Night Survival Pack”

Draw a big red cross below this and stick the paper to the top of the box. Tell your partner to open the box when things get really tough.

IDEA # 13

If you are walking by a park, visit the swings and give your partner a ride. This will often bring back happy memories from her childhood.

IDEA # 14

Leave a long stem rose where your partner will find it with a note on it saying:

“Thank you for coming into my life.”

IDEA # 15

If your partner is starting a new job, buy a copy of “The Sound Of Music” sound track. Tape the song, “I Have Confidence” onto a tape and add your own message at the end of the song saying,

“Good Luck honey, I have confidence in you.”

Give the tape to your partner to play on the way to work in the car.

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IDEA # 16

Buy a small decorated cardboard box, a sheet of colored tissue paper, some massage oil and a blank card.

Line the box with the tissue paper. Place the massage oil in the box and write the following message on the card:

I know a great Masseur.

For an appointment ring:

(Your Phone Number)

IDEA # 17

When your spouse has had a really long hard day, run a hot bath for her. Pour some fragrant bath oil into the tub and gently bathe her from head to toe. Carry her into the bedroom. Gently towel her dry and tuck her into a freshly made bed with a kiss on the forehead.

IDEA # 18

For this idea you will need a portable CD player. If you and your partner have a favorite song, get a copy of it on CD and take it with you when you go away for a romantic weekend.

When you are in a romantic spot, ask your partner if she would like to dance. Place one earpiece in her ear and one in your own and enjoy your private dance floor.

This technique is particularly effective if the romantic spot you have chosen is somewhere where people would not normally dance, for example, the top of the Empire State building at sunset or on top of a mountain during a camping trip.

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IDEA # 19

If your partner has a pet that she adores, at Christmas, in addition to buying a gift for your partner, buy a small present for her pet.

IDEA # 20

Go for a walk on the beach. Trace out the shape of a large love heart in the sand. Sit inside the heart and cuddle your partner as you watch the sun go down.

IDEA # 21

Invite your partner to go for a walk. Get a back pack and pack the following items: A picnic blanket, a selection of fruit in small containers eg. strawberries, grapes, watermelon and kiwi fruit. Some cheese and crackers. Some sandwiches. A small tin of caviar. A half bottle of champagne and two plastic champagne glasses. If your partner asks what’s in the backpack, just say a jacket and some lunch.

When you find a romantic spot, ask if she would like to stop for a bite to eat. Open your pack and remove the items one by one to set up your picnic. The last item you remove should be the glasses and champagne.

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IDEA # 22

If you play a musical instrument, create a romantic environment in which to play for your partner. For example, let’s say you play the saxophone. Contact your partner’s roommate and arrange for her to make sure that your partner steps out onto the balcony of their apartment at exactly 9.30pm.

Drive to her apartment and set up before hand. Place a large sparkler in the music holder of your sax and light it as your partner steps on to the balcony. Play something slow and romantic.

IDEA # 23

Use this idea if your partner is going to work and you are staying at home for some reason (Perhaps you are sick or are working from home).

Say goodbye to her at the front door and then immediately send an email to her work address. The email should simply say,

“Miss you already”.

The email will be in her in-box when she does her morning email check.

IDEA # 24

If your partner has long hair, take the time to brush it using long slow strokes. This is particularly effective after she has had a shower or when she is getting ready for bed.

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IDEA # 25

On a special occasion like your partner’s birthday, plan a treasure hunt for her. The fun begins when you suggest going for a walk on the beach.

When you get to the beach, carry a small bag with you. The bag contains a bottle that you prepared earlier. Inside the bottle is a treasure map. To make the treasure map look authentic, burn the edges with a match.

As you are walking, slip the bottle out of your bag and let it drop to the sand near the water’s edge. You may have to pause and kiss your partner to do this unnoticed. Walk a little further up the beach then turn around and retrace your steps to ‘discover’ the bottle.

On the map have a dotted line leading from the beach to a nearby cafe. At the cafe, your partner won’t know what to look for so suggest that you just sit down and have a cup of coffee.

When the waitress delivers the coffee, she suggests to your partner that she might find what she is looking for under the coaster. When your partner turns over the coaster she finds a key taped to the bottom. Obviously you will have to set this up before hand with the waitress. Most waitresses will be happy to help a romantic guy out with this type of thing.

At the next stop on the map, your partner finds or is given a spade. Then at the last stop on the map your partner finds a large ‘X’ made up of two crossed sticks. She digs and discovers a locked box. The key unlocks the box to reveal her present.

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IDEA # 26

Invite your partner on a date by sending her a plain brown envelope containing a tape. On the tape, record the Mission Impossible sound track and then record yourself saying, “Your mission if you choose to accept it is to make your way to Café Venoli, 123 Park Lane at 18.30 Eastern Standard Time. There you will rendezvous with a stunningly attractive man wearing a red carnation. The future of the free world is now in your hands. This tape will self destruct in five seconds.” Then record ten beeps from a stopwatch and record yourself saying, “Would you believe ten seconds…” Its corny but it usually gets a laugh!

IDEA # 27

Contact your partner’s family and ask if there was anything she always wanted when she was a little girl.

For example if she always wanted a porcelain doll, buy one for her birthday. She will not only appreciate the gift but also the fact that you were thoughtful enough to find out what she always wanted.

IDEA # 28

Organize a professional photo shoot to obtain a portrait of the two of you as a couple. Frame the picture and put it somewhere prominent. Remember to make sure you give your partner plenty of notice so that she can get ready.

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IDEA # 29

Write a note saying

“I thought of you today, and it made me smile.”

Leave the note somewhere where your partner is sure to find it.

IDEA # 30

For Valentines Day, buy your partner a charm bracelet with at least 14 charms.

Remove all the charms and let your partner ‘find’ one charm each day for the first fourteen days of February. On Valentines Day give her the bracelet and any remaining charms.

IDEA # 31

When you and your partner are in a shopping center or airport, stop at one of those booths that allow you to take an instant photo and print them out as stickers.

Choose a romantic background and kiss your partner while the photo is being taken.

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IDEA # 32

If your partner has voice mail at work or on her mobile, leave a message saying

“Just wanted to let you know that I’m thinking of you.”

She will appreciate this anytime but especially when she is going through a rough period.

IDEA # 33

Organize a mystery trip for you and your partner. Some travel agents will organize mystery packages where the destination of the trip is kept secret until you are actually on the plane or arrive at the destination.

IDEA # 34

Buy some rose petals and place them behind the sun visor on the passenger side of your car. Take a post it note and write, “I Love You” on it and stick it to the back of the sun visor.

As you are driving to a romantic destination, look at your partner and tell her she has a mark on her cheek. She will pull down the sun visor to use the mirror and be showered in rose petals and see your note.

IDEA # 35

If your partner is going on a trip, pack a small present into the corner of her suitcase that she will find when she is away.

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IDEA # 36

When you and your partner are having an anniversary, buy two champagne glasses and get them engraved with your names and the date, for example:

Mal and Kate

7 May 2002

Go to the restaurant where you have made your reservations and request that when you and your partner arrive that your champagne be served in your special glasses. This will be a great surprise for your partner and a wonderful keepsake for you both.

IDEA # 37

On a special occasion such as your partner’s birthday, buy twenty-four red roses. Arrange to meet her at a specific spot in a shopping mall before going out for dinner. Get to the shopping mall early and position yourself around the corner from your meeting spot.

Ask a guy who is walking by whether he would mind helping you out. Give him a rose, point out your partner and ask him to walk up to her and say, “Happy Birthday Meagan” and give her the rose and then walk away. Repeat this with eleven other guys. Choose guys who are not too good looking and choose guys of different ages. A nice touch is to have the last rose delivered by a small child who could even by accompanied by his parents.

After the first twelve flowers have been delivered, approach your partner with the twelve remaining roses.

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IDEA # 38

Always listen for things that your partner reminisces about and jot them down somewhere. For example, perhaps she talks about the ice cream that she had from a particular shop when she was a little girl.

When a special occasion comes along, check your list of things that your partner talks about and try to recreate one of them, for example, visit the shop and buy a tub of ice cream making sure that the name of the shop is on the container.

IDEA # 39

Create a love montage by collecting some photographs of you and your partner, some ticket stubs of places you have visited and any other small odds and ends that have special meaning to you both.

Take these items and get them professionally framed in a three dimensional montage. Alternatively, buy a frame and create a simple montage yourself.

IDEA # 40

Buy an ornately carved wooden box which is lined with green or red felt. Find an old fashioned key and place it in the box.

Next, get a small gold plaque and have it engraved with the words

The Key To My Heart

Fix the plaque to the inside of the top of the box so that it can be read when the box is opened.

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IDEA # 41

Buy a tree with your partner and plant it in a special spot. Each year on your anniversary, have a glass of champagne next to your tree and talk about how your love and the tree have grown.

IDEA # 42

If you shower first in the morning. Steam up the bathroom and write a message such as “Pete Loves Kathy” on the mirror for your partner to read when she uses the bathroom. This also works on car windows when it’s cold.

IDEA # 43

As a special gift, name a Star after your partner. A number of astronomical agencies allow individuals to name stars and you receive formal documentation identifying the star that you have named. See the following website for details:

http://www.theromantic.com/gifts.htm

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IDEA # 44

Find a comic strip that relates to something that you and your partner have shared together, for example perhaps you both work in the same office and you find a Dilbert cartoon that relates to the politics at your workplace.

Enlarge the cartoon using a photocopier and use white-out to cover the cartoon text. Type up your own text that relates to you and your partner and paste it in the appropriate places and then photocopy the cartoon again so that it looks like your text was the actual text of the cartoon.

For an added touch, get your customized cartoon laminated before giving it to your partner.

IDEA # 45

When you and your partner are enjoying a restful time away, organize to wake up early one morning and go to a scenic spot to watch the sun rise.

This may seem difficult but it is something which is definitely worth doing at least once. Seeing a new day being born is something really special to share with your partner.

IDEA # 46

When you have access to a spa, create a romantic atmosphere by placing some candles around the tub and some rose petals floating on the surface of the water.

As your partner enjoys the water, serve champagne and chocolate covered strawberries before joining her.

TheRomantic.com 101 Romantic Ideas

IDEA # 47

Create some love coupons that your partner can exchange for romantic favors.

For example you could have a coupon that reads

This coupon entitles the bearer to:

One Foot Massage.

Use by 07/08/2045

Use a date many years in the future if you want to suggest that you and your partner will always be together. Get 50 love coupons at this site: http://www.theromantic.com/lovecoupons.htm

IDEA # 48

On a warm summers night, organize a backyard picnic. Spread a picnic blanket on the ground and get together some snacks, chocolates and champagne. Lie down on the blanket with your partner and gaze up at the stars together.

IDEA # 49

Next time it is raining really heavily, go for a walk with your partner. Forget the umbrellas and the raincoats. Run through the streets together, jump in puddles and get totally saturated.

Pick her up, twirl her around and kiss her while the rain falls. Taste the water off her face and hold her close.

When you get back home have a hot shower and then share a warm drink preferably in front of an open fire.

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IDEA # 50

Organize a hot air ballooning trip as a special surprise. Most trips begin with a glass of champagne before you float over the countryside with your partner.

IDEA # 51

When your partner is sitting at a table or desk, come up behind him or her and give her a back, shoulder and head massage. Finish with a gentle kiss on the cheek.

IDEA # 52

Place an ad in the paper on a normal day saying something like:

Dear Amanda,

With you by my side, everyday

feels like Valentines Day.

Thank you for being you.

Love,

Graham

IDEA # 53

Buy a book that you and your partner are both interested in reading.

Read one chapter each night in bed with each of you taking turns to read out loud.

This can be a great alternative to television.

TheRomantic.com 101 Romantic Ideas

IDEA # 54

When your partner is having a shower or bath, take her towel and place it in the dryer to make it really warm and then wrap her up in it when she is done.

IDEA # 55

Photocopy your hand and fax a copy of it to your partner with a message saying, “Do ya wanna hold hands?”

IDEA # 56

Next time you order a pizza, ask to have it cut into a heart shape before it is delivered to your home.

IDEA # 57

Buy a box of chocolates and very carefully open one side of the plastic wrap so that you can gently slide the box out. Open the box and place a love note inside. Then slide the box back into its plastic wrap and reseal it.

IDEA # 58

Rent a tandem bike and go for a ride with your partner. At the end of your ride have a picnic in the park.

TheRomantic.com 101 Romantic Ideas

IDEA # 59

If you are away on a business trip, document a day in your life for your partner. For example:

‘A Day In The Life Of Mark’

6am: Just woke up and thought of you – Wish you were laying next to me. Well, I better get ready for work.

7am: Am on the train. It’s crowded; everyone looks like they are half dead. I miss ya heaps.

8.30am: Have just organized my day, it’s going to be a busy one.

9.30am: Am in the middle of a really boring meeting. I am trying to concentrate on this months sales figures but I keep thinking of your beautiful eyes.

…

6.30pm: Thank goodness the day is over. I am counting the days until we’re together again.

Send your letter to your partner. This is a wonderful way to tell your partner how often you think about her during the day and to share your life with her in a special way.

TheRomantic.com 101 Romantic Ideas

IDEA # 60

Speak to your partner’s family and find out what her favorite book was when she was a little girl.

Buy a copy of the book and read it to her in bed.

IDEA # 61

Write an email story with your partner. Start the ball rolling with an email that says something like:

Chapter 1:

This is the story of Pete and Kate who met at a friend’s engagement party one summer afternoon.

The email can then continue to develop the beginnings of a story which can be completely fictitious or a combination of fiction and reality.

Finish your email by saying, “And now for Chapter 2, its over to you…”

IDEA # 62

Buy a kite and on a windy day find a park and fly the kite with your partner.

If you can afford it, buy a large kite that you control with two hand lines. These kites are great fun.

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IDEA # 63

When you and your partner are planning to go out for dinner, suggest that you have an ‘Adventure Dinner’. Here’s how it works

Set the timer on your stopwatch to count down twenty minutes. Next, ask your partner to choose a number between 5 and 10. Lets say she chooses 7.

Give your partner a coin and tell her that at every 7th intersection, she has to flip the coin. If it is heads you will turn left. If it is tails you will turn right. When your watch timer goes off you have to both keep a look out for the nearest place to eat.

This is a fun way to get out and about and try new places to eat.

IDEA # 64

When you and your partner are going somewhere special, get your camera, buy a new roll of film and wait for her to come out of the house.

When she appears, act like a professional photographer and go wild taking pictures of her with the flash. While you are taking photos, bombard her with questions as though she was a famous actress and you are trying to get a scoop for the magazine you represent.

Not only is this fun but you will also get some great photos to look back on together.

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IDEA # 65

When your partner is sick at home, take a day off to look after her.

Rent some videos, make her some soup, wrap her up in a blanket and just be with her.

IDEA # 66

When you are having dinner one night, ask your partner about the things she has always wanted to do.

Later on, write these things down so you don’t forget them and over time try and help make them happen. For example she may say that one thing she has always wanted to do is swim with dolphins. Find out where she can do this and organize it for her as a special surprise.

IDEA # 67

Rent the video, “An Affair To Remember”. Buy some popcorn, champagne and chocolate covered strawberries and have a special film night at home.

IDEA # 68

Go to the drive in but instead of sitting in the car, spread a picnic blanket on the ground. Light a candle and buy popcorn. Cuddle your partner and enjoy the film.

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IDEA # 69

Create a personalized magazine cover for your partner. To do this, get hold of a good quality photo of her and a copy of a popular entertainment magazine.

Take these two items to a print shop or graphic design agency. Ask them to scan your partner’s photo and develop a magazine cover with the lead story being, “The 30 most beautiful women of 2003″.

When you get the cover, stick it on the front of a real magazine and ask your local shop owner whether you can place it in the magazine rack. Organize to meet your partner at the shop before going out. When she arrives, tell her that you are just looking for a magazine. Let her browse the rack and discover her magazine.

IDEA # 70

Fill the trunk of your car with helium balloons. Drive to a romantic spot in the country to go for a walk. The ideal spot is somewhere up high with a clear view of the surrounding countryside.

Get out of the car and act as though you are about to set off for your walk. Make sure your partner is closer to the car than you and then throw her the keys and ask if she can get your jacket from the trunk while you tie your shoelace.

When she opens the boot the balloons will be released. You can also place a sign saying, “I Love You” on the inside of the trunk so that it will be revealed when the trunk opens.

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IDEA # 71

On a special occasion create a unique present for your partner by buying two white t-shirts and some fabric paint. Draw half a heart and the letters LO on one t-shirt and the half a heart and the letters VE on the other t-shirt.

When you walk down the street holding each other close, the heart will be made whole and your message of love revealed.

An example is shown below.

IDEA # 72

On a hot summers day, buy two large water pistols and take them to the beach with you.

Pull them out and throw one to your partner and then have a huge water fight.

IDEA # 73

Share your food with your partner. When you go out for a meal, hold a forkful up to her mouth and say, “You’ve got to try this.”

Sharing your food and even feeding each other is a great way to become closer as a couple.

TheRomantic.com 101 Romantic Ideas

IDEA # 74

Compliment your partner in public. If you are talking in a group and it is appropriate to the conversation say something like, “Kate makes the most incredible roast.” Squeeze her hand while you are talking about her.

IDEA # 75

Arrange a special day off from work. Start with breakfast, go for a walk in the park, go shopping, have afternoon tea in a cozy cafe and finish off with a romantic dinner.

IDEA # 76

Buy a gift voucher for a facial at a local beauty clinic and place it in a card accompanied by the message,

A special treat for

someone special

IDEA # 77

Even if you are just going down the road to buy some milk, act as though you are returning home after a major adventure.

Say something like, “Well it was touch and go there for a while with the snow and the wolves but I made it!” and then give your partner a huge bear hug.

TheRomantic.com 101 Romantic Ideas

IDEA # 78

Send your partner a thank-you note. For example:

Dear Bec,

Thanks for helping me move house.

Having you there made a huge difference.

I really appreciate your help and your love.

Tim

IDEA # 79

If you have kids, organize for them to stay at their grandparents for the weekend.

On Friday evening, announce that the weekend is yours and start planning how you are going to spend your special time together.

IDEA # 80

Give your partner a magic gift box. Every month, place a new small gift in the box for her to discover.

IDEA # 81

Research your partner’s favorite hobby and identify a gift that is really useful for her. The more specialized the gift the more impact it will have. Talk to her friends and family and use the Net to find the information you need.

TheRomantic.com 101 Romantic Ideas

IDEA # 82

Go to a masquerade ball. Send an invitation to your partner telling her to meet you at a specific spot at the stroke of eight.

Wear a mask and when you meet her, don’t say a word. Just take her hand and lead her on to the dance floor.

IDEA # 83

On Thursday, ask your partner to pack a bag for the weekend. Tell her she’ll need casual clothes and walking shoes but don’t tell her what you have got planned.

Pick her up after work on Friday and drive to a romantic bed and breakfast for a romantic weekend of relaxation.

IDEA # 84

When you are relaxing at home one night, take two large sheets of paper and some pencils or crayons. On each piece of paper, draw the outline of a large crystal ball sitting on a stand.

Tell your partner to look into her crystal ball and draw what she sees five years in the future. Do the same thing yourself and then come together to share and discuss your drawings.

IDEA # 85

Create a loving nickname for your partner. This could be the name she was called by her family when she was a little girl or something that is special just for the two of you.

TheRomantic.com 101 Romantic Ideas

IDEA # 86

If you are musically inclined, write a love song for your partner. Call it something like “Natasha’s Song”.

Produce a professional looking manuscript, print it out and get it framed. Record your song onto CD and take a photo of your partner and get a print shop to create a CD cover if you can’t create one on your computer.

Place the framed manuscript and the CD in a box and give it to your partner as a special gift.

IDEA # 87

Pick your partner up for a date and blindfold her before driving to a special destination.

Try to make the destination something really unexpected like a table set up at the top of a cliff or a dinner on a boat or old-fashioned ship. It needs to be something that will have an impact when she removes the blindfold.

IDEA # 88

Have a really big pillow fight. Set up for it by buying two pillows that are filled with feathers. Put holes in the pillows so the feathers will start to fly and then attack your partner when you feel the time is right.

IDEA # 89

Get out into the great outdoors. After a day of hiking, build an open fire. Sit by the fire with your partner, toast marshmallows and watch as the embers of the fire climb into the night sky.

TheRomantic.com 101 Romantic Ideas

IDEA # 90

If your partner uses a computer, take a photo of the two of you and get it scanned at a print shop (or scan it at home) and store it on disk as a .bmp file.

Transfer the file onto your partner’s computer and set the image as the computer’s wallpaper.

To do this on a Windows machine, select Start / Settings / Control Panel / Display. Choose the Background tab and click the Browse button to find your .bmp file.

IDEA # 91

If you are artistically inclined, do a life drawing course, practice until you are confident and then ask your partner to pose for you.

IDEA # 92

Take your partner to a carnival or festival. Try the following:

(1) Food festival

(2) Jazz festival

(3) Wine festival

(4) Music festival

TheRomantic.com 101 Romantic Ideas

IDEA # 93

Develop a video time capsule. Start with the two of you sitting together on a couch introducing the video. Say something like, “It is currently July 14th 2002. We have decided to make this video so that we can watch it together on our 25th wedding anniversary.”

Then have a section where you talk to the camera by yourself, telling the camera how you feel about your partner and why you love her. Get her to do the same thing. When you are done, place the video in a bank vault and on your 25th wedding anniversary you will be able to look back in time and reminisce about everything that you have shared.

IDEA # 94

If you are in a secluded spot near a beach or lake and the weather is warm, go for an impromptu skinny dip with your partner.

IDEA # 95

This one is great for long distance relationships. It takes a bit of organization but if you can pull it off, it is sure to be a surprise that your partner will never forget. Organize to catch up with her regularly over the internet using either a chat room or an Instant Messenger program. Then arrange a secret trip to meet her without telling her that you’re coming.

When it comes time for your usual chat over the Net, arrange for a close friend back home to log on using your nickname while you position yourself outside her door. Phone your friend on your mobile and be speaking to him in real time. Tell him to type in the following sentence, “I really miss you honey, I wish I could be there and just reach out and knock on your door.” As soon as he has sent the message, knock on the door!

TheRomantic.com 101 Romantic Ideas

IDEA # 96

Buy your partner a gold fish in a bowl and give it to her with a card saying,

“Of all the fish in the sea,

you’re the fish for me!”

IDEA # 97

Go for a drive either early in the morning or at dusk. Get a CD/tape that contains sounds of nature such as Sounds Of the Rainforest and play it as you hold your partner’s hand and drive.

IDEA # 98

The day before your partner’s birthday buy some helium balloons, streamers and flowers and hide them in a closet.

When your partner has fallen asleep, string the streamers around the room and bring out the balloons and flowers. Place them around the bed so that your partner wakes up to a real birthday surprise.

IDEA # 99

Spend a leisurely afternoon with your partner in a large book shop such as Borders where you can browse the shelves, share a coffee and sit down to peruse your purchases.

IDEA # 100

If you can afford it, hire a sports car for a weekend. Pick up your partner and give her a long white cashmere scarf to wear with her sunglasses. Go for a drive along the coast with the top down.

TheRomantic.com 101 Romantic Ideas

IDEA # 101

Serve your partner breakfast in bed. Try the following:

(1) A poached egg in the shape of a heart – you can pick up a heart shaped poacher at most shops that sell kitchen wares.

(2) French toast with cinnamon and maple syrup.

(3) Cereal.

(4) Fruit juice.

(5) A fresh flower.

I am committing a crime against the doctrine of precise writing by beginning this narrative with a generalization: good, bad and all places in-between, people are products of their parents’ childhood experiences. In fact, people are often trapped by their parents’ rules of engagement in regards to dealing with their offspring. There’s the rigid, pseudo-fascist “do as I say or your ass is mine” militaristic parenting, the “do your thing, go with the flow; make love and be free” hippie-style non-parenting, and the ultra-confusing (for the children) schizoid mixture of lovingly devoted tenderness and attention combined with emotional and/or physical abandonment, shaming and debasing techniques, and/or raging brutality that creates adult neurotics at the least, monstrous socio-paths at the worst.

Now, let me direct your attention to a person who is the perfect embodiment of my generalization: Douglas Beauregard Lacherlich, whose name is, of course, a pseudonym. I have given him that appellation not because I wish to protect his privacy, but rather, the name fits his awkward, disproportionate personality and body better than a Speedo, in contrast to the seemingly arbitrary one given to him at birth.

I’d heard about Dougie B. two years before I actually met him.  I was in Raley’s Supermarket on Folsom Boulevard (located in the “charming” little city known as Rancho Cordova, California), talking to my friend Linda (also a pseudonym, this time to protect her anonymity) as we meandered through the vast aisles of food and other products.  She picked up an item; it might have been pickles or some type of salad dressing, then put it back on the shelf.

“I can’t buy that right now, “she declared. “I promised my husband that I wouldn’t spend any more money this month.”

I was confused by that statement.  She lived in an upper middle-class neighborhood, and the two of them made very comfortable salaries as computer technology professionals for the State of California. Naturally, I had assumed that she could readily afford a jar of salad dressing or pickles.

“Well, we have to help out my husband’s brother,” she explained.

Of course, that statement aroused my journalistic curiosity.  I had worked for an adult day program several years earlier, supposedly to teach my developmentally delayed clients self-expression through poetry. More often than not, I was a glorified babysitter (who did everything a good sitter would do, including change diapers), referee, and alarm clock, since most of my well-medicated students could not resist sleeping during class. I wondered if Linda’s brother in law was like my former students.

“Is he developmentally disabled?”

Suddenly, she became flustered.

“No…he’s not disabled…well, he has disabilities…he has trouble walking, and he hasn’t been able to work…I think he has learning problems, but he’s not…you know, retarded or anything like that.”

That was confusing. I had figured the brother-in-law was in his late teens or early twenties and had a milder form of diminished mental capacity that made him unable to manage his personal affairs, but capable of living independently with some supervision. This was the case for some of my former clients, whose older siblings had become their conservators when the parents had either died or become too old to care them.  As usual, my assumption was wrong.

“How old is your brother-in-law?”

“He’s in his early fifties, somewhere around there.”

That revelation surprised me.

“Early fifties?  Why do you have to support him?  Doesn’t he qualify for Social Security and SSI?”

Linda appeared to be very embarrassed.

“I don’t know…it’s a really long, complicated story.”

My mind was buzzing with questions typical of someone who has read far too many books about co-dependency and co-dependently wants her friend to benefit from this knowledge: Don’t you know that when you enable a full-grown man, you put him in the “Peter Pan” role, and he becomes the maligned, resentful yet dependent child in an adult body?  Fortunately, I remembered the old adage, “takes one to know one”, and kept my mouth shut. Since I have enabled many full grown adults as recently as yesterday, I recognized my own hypocrisy that time. Clearly, this was an issue that had a profound effect on my friend’s life, and I didn’t want to cause her any more discomfort than I had already.  I apologized for being so nosy, and wandered off in search of the non-fat, plain yogurt that I customarily eat for breakfast.

Fast forward to August 31, 2010, the day my podiatrist informed me that I was scheduled for posterior tibial tendon surgery on October 1. The aforementioned tendon had been badly frayed by my reckless, tomboyish ways (sliding into first base, playing tackle football) in childhood and massive weight gain as an adult.  A lifetime of being careless with my health finally caught up to me when I got into bed one night and had the very painful sensation of a strong, electric jolt in my right foot, followed by some inner tissue wrapping around one of the cuneiform bones the way a severed fan belt wraps around the nearest part of a car’s engine.  (This happened to me while driving west on Interstate 50 one sweltering100 degree day.)

A phone call and a hurried appointment with my podiatrist the next morning confirmed that my posterior tibial tendon had finally snapped, and there was no way to repair it without surgery.

However, this was not particularly upsetting to me.  Since July 11, 2001*, I have had the following surgeries:

Roux-en-Y gastric bypass

Emergency transfusions for menorrhagia ( life-threatening loss of blood due to abnormally heavy menstruation)

Uterine ablation with dilation and curettage

Hysterectomy

Three stomach hernia repair surgeries

Complete replacement of my left hip

By the time my podiatrist scheduled me for posterior tibial tendon/arch reconstruction, I was emotionally immune to the surgical process.  To me, the most difficult part was surgery prep, when the poor anesthesia nurses had to find a vein that didn’t dance away from the IV needles. I learned to joke about the “electric slide” tendencies of my veins to ease the nurses’ anxiety.

My doctor informed me that even though I was a surgery veteran and not at all nervous about going under the knife, foot surgery was “probably the harshest” of the orthopedic procedures. Former patients reported they were in extraordinary pain after surgery, and I would need four to six weeks of intense rehabilitation to learn how to take care of myself without the use of my right foot and leg. After my stay in a rehab facility, I needed to be living in a place that was completely handicapped accessible.

“You won’t be able to put any pressure on that foot for six months,” he told me.  “And you will be in a heavy cast for at least that long.  You can’t climb stairs at all the way you did after your hip replacement.”

That ruled out the house where I was renting a room at the time.  There were very steep steps leading to the front door and back doors, and there was no room for a wheelchair ramp on either stair case.  In fact, even the interior of the house was completely inaccessible for someone with my condition because the door frames were too narrow for a wheelchair.  The situation was clear—I really needed the surgery, which meant that I had to find another place to live.

My friend Linda offered a viable solution to me: her brother-in-law, Douglas B. Lacherlich, had been looking for a roommate to share the costs of the house that he owned with his brother and mother.  His mother, who was 94 at the time, had to go live in an assisted living facility.  The facility required every penny of her measly pension funds plus a supplement from the State of California to pay for her care. This meant Dougie could no longer depend on his Mom to pay for half of the monthly expenses, especially since they were more his income from state disability could pay. He had rented out his mother’s old bedroom in the past, but the roommates never lasted for long. That should have been a foreshadowing moment for me when I found that out, but at the time, I was more concerned with finding a suitable place to live after surgery. Dougie’s habitat, which was actually a fair looking mobile home, had a ramp and doors wide enough for a wheelchair.  That was good enough for me.

During my last appointment before surgery, my podiatrist told me, “Sure, you can walk on that foot; but you wouldn’t want to.” I’ve had a practice of trying to prove to my doctors that all of their education, training and years of experience means nothing when it comes to my body. This belief was validated by my friends who, like me, struggled with weight issues and disliked seeing doctors because they tended to tell us the truth about our conditions. However, since I’ve lost a significant amount of weight and kept it off, I’ve discovered that my fear of doctor visits has been removed. Not only that, my doctors have literally saved my life on several occasions, which brought me to the conclusion that it would be prudent to follow their advice and stay off my foot before surgery. I ignored my martyr complex that kept telling me that I could do all the packing and moving by myself, and my daughters eagerly (they know me well) took over.  Within one week, they gathered my meager belongings (“Mom, do you really need so many books?”) and moved them to my room with a view of my former high school’s baseball field.  Best of all, I had my own bathroom! I looked forward to enjoying a shower or sitting on the toilet without embarrassing interruptions. All I had to do was sail through surgery and rehabilitation, then settle into my new abode.

Time for a cliché insert “Easier said than done.”

This is the short version of my post-surgery experience:  “MORPHINE! OH, GOD, MORPHINE, PLEASE!”

No more “brave martyr suffering in silence” for me.  That role was possible to pull off after the equally painful Roux-en-Y gastric bypass because I had a morphine pump, which was set to deliver a prescribed amount of the sweet pain killer every eleven minutes.  I watched the clock anxiously for that moment of salvation.  However, there was no morphine pump after my posterior tibial tendon/arch reconstruction surgery. The nurses gave me some pills every four hours that was totally incapable of relieving the vicious, fiery, whole body-encompassing agony, which was what I experienced within seconds of waking up in the recovery room.

This pain did not subside in any substantive way until after my second week in the rehabilitation center.  By the way, my rehabilitation experience caused me to make the following resolution: I will take much better care of my body so I would never have to be a pain-in-the-ass patient like the ones in the rooms near mine.  It is NOT cool to wake up fellow medical care consumers at three a.m. with screams that sound like harpies being sent to the bowels of hell.  I wish I could say that I was compassionate and understanding of their overwhelming confusion and miserable situation, but I found myself muttering that those poor souls were fortunate I was unable to walk.

After three weeks, I was more than ready to go to my new home.  I didn’t care that I had very briefly met my new roommate a month earlier, and hadn’t talked to him since that time.  I wanted OUT of that rehab center, and I did not want to wait until a family member or friend got off work in the evening to pick me up.  I made arrangements for Paratransit to transport me.

My last morning in the rehabilitation facility was a rough one. The nurses had to scurry to give me my last breakfast, help me pack up and sign me out. After a very pleasant mid-morning ride and conversation with the Paratransit driver, I breathed a loud sigh of relief when the van pulled up my new abode. While the driver was operating the hydraulic lift that would transfer me from the vehicle to the sidewalk, Dougie lumbered out of the front door to the porch with his hands on his hips.

“I was wondering what was making all that racket”, he said.  “That thing sounds like it needs some WD 40.  You ought to tell your mechanics to fix that.”

The driver and I exchanged puzzled looks, and I shrugged.  That’s one hell of way to greet people you don’t know very well, I thought.

As the driver pushed me up the ramp in my wheelchair, he called out, “Just ignore that bush that’s growing through the boards there. I was going to cut it down, but I didn’t feel like it.  I have a hole in my foot that won’t heal and the doctor drained about a quart of pus out of it the other day, and I have to stay off of it.”  (I’ve since learned that he had been “staying off it”, i.e. laying in bed for about five years.)

“Jesus,” the driver muttered through his teeth.  He was a very decent and courteous man, in my opinion.  I discovered we were both “friends of Bill*”, although in different programs.  We talked about our recovery experiences, and he told me that he was once “a very bad guy” who had been in a Mexican gang and did prison time for his various escapades.  Even though he had been feeling depressed in prior weeks, he realized that the problems he was experiencing were vastly preferable than the ones he had during his gang-banging days. We had been laughing about that just before Dougie appeared on the porch.

“Acceptance is the key,” I whispered as we arrived on the porch close to Dougie.

“Thank you.”

I was surprised my recovery friend heard me.  Unfortunately, that slogan didn’t help much during the exchange that followed.

“You know, you should turn her around the other way,” Dougie still had his hands on hips.  “It’ll be easier to get the chair through the door.”

“Mister, I’ve been at this job for ten years now.  I know what I’m doing. Could you move out the way, please?”

“Yeah, well, I’m just trying to help you out.” He reluctantly stepped aside so the driver could wheel me in backwards through the door, as Paratransit had trained him to do.

“I know a lot about loading and unloading things.”  For reasons that I would discover over time, Dougie could not let the issue rest.  “I drove trucks for years, and I used to haul everything from heavy machinery to grain…”

I could see my friend was struggling with the concepts of patience and acceptance as he undid the safety straps from my chair. Silently, I began repeating the “Serenity Prayer” for both of us. I really didn’t need that dorky-faced, marshmallow-looking, bespectacled galoot of a man who obviously knew nothing about fisticuffs to discover what it is like to piss off a former gang member. Besides, it was nearly eleven, and I hadn’t taken any medicine since five thirty that morning, which was when a nurse jolted me out of sleep after another night of trying to block out the screaming with pillows over my head.  By the time my friend and I arrived at my new home, my foot was radiating pain all the way to my teeth, and I really needed to lie down. Unfortunately, Dougie seemed completely unaware that he was not only testing my friend’s patience, but mine also.

“…and my supervisor told me that I was the best damned driver he ever hired.  That’s because I knew what I was doing; I could tell if the load I was driving was going to be too heavy and slow me down, so I would tell him, that load is way too heavy, and that icy road through the Sierras is enough to make someone like me spin out of control.”

“And he says to me, Doug, I tell you what—I know you’re an excellent driver. And you know what you’re doin’ not like these other bastards around here. So I tell you what…if you can get that load in on time, I’ll pay you triple.  So we shook on it, and I got that load to Susanville with two hours to spare!”

“I came back and told him he better pay up, triple, just like he said.  And you know what? That old bastard looked at me and called me all kinds of sons-of-a-bitches because he couldn’t understand how I’d done it. And told him, look, old man, just pay me my money. And the old coot paid it, too.  He better had, because he knew there’d be hell to pay.  He knew my old man, and my old man would’ve brought the whole house down around him.”

Dougie crossed his arms over his chest with a satisfied smile and waited for our reaction.  My friend seemed to be gritting his teeth as he wrapped the safety strap into a tight ball.

“Um, thank you for all your help today,” I told him.

“Yeah, you ought to get those lazy-assed mechanics over there in that Paratransit shop to fix those brakes.  A good friend of mine was a supervisor there, and he says to me, Doug, why don’t you come to work for me?  But I told him, no, I make more money hauling cotton than old sick people.”

That was enough for my friend. “Look mister, I’m just doing my job, okay?  I don’t need your comments or anything else, all right?”

He gave me a better-watch-out-for-that-one look. “Take care, sis.  I’ll be seeing you.”  With that, he let the screen door slam violently behind him.

“Hey, you’re lucky that door didn’t break,” Dougie called after him.  “I would’ve made Paratransit replace it, and you’d be paying for it out of your check!”

My plaster-encased foot was throbbing by then, and my head didn’t feel much better.  But I could have sworn I heard my friend yell, “F**k you, motherf***er,” as I turned my chair towards my bedroom and headed in that direction.

“I can’t believe that guy,” Dougie exclaimed, following behind me. “I ought to call up Paratransit and complain about him.”  

Over the successive hours, days and months of my infirm, it became a typical scenario: I would retreat to my room as quickly as possible while he walked behind me, jabbering away about some nonsensical event that took place within the realm of his desperate imagination.

The stories he told me were numerous, but the trope was always the same.  Dougie the hardest working, most efficient and capable employee ever, Dougie the wise counselor to friends and family members who seek out his advice (but never follow it), Dougie the neighborhood avenger and conquering hero, who has frightened thieves, vandals and high school gang members with his presence and his shiny, professionally sharpened knives. (“They all know me, Big D! And they know what I can DO with my knives!”)

Because I am supposed to be working towards acquiring the virtues of patience and kindly acceptance of every single person on this planet, I listened to his soliloquies as much as any human being can before shouting, “Stop the madness!”  The only method I could deploy to avoid his continuous need of an empathetic audience was to declare my post-operative achiness the reason for my silence and hurried exit.  Obviously the concepts of patience and kindly acceptance of my fellow human beings have remained well beyond my grasp. I yearned for the old Angela, the pre-Bahá’í/12- step recovering person.  The former Angela had been more comfortable in her dealings with people because she employed soul-piercing glares that promised (and on occasions, delivered) major damage to a person’s body.  As a consequence, that Angela never had to deal with roughly hewn social misfits like Dougie. Someone like him has probably meandered within my range of attention, but never registered in my brain as a person of interest. The tiny amount of “patience” that I have managed to acquire over the past twenty five years has been tested to its limit whenever Dougie follows behind me, yammering away. My level of irritation raised even more when he stood in the doorway to my bedroom while he continuing his stories.

“I’m trying to educate you!” he exclaimed during one of his sermons-at-my-door because I was probably showing signs of extreme annoyance. The subject of my “education” was the more effective way of chopping up lettuce, knowledge he proudly acquired by working for years between firings as a prep cook. Admittedly, my over-inflated ego took great offense to that declaration. It is my belief that someone who is functionally illiterate may not presume to “educate” a person who has finished a master’s degree program in English.

An excerpt from one of life-according-to-Dougie-fables: “I tried to show that dumb-ass chef he didn’t know the difference between sugar and salt!” I’m sure the chef didn’t appreciate his attempt at “education”, either.

After several minutes of silence (during which I am praying, “Is there any remover of difficulties save God?”[1]), he sighed reluctantly.

“All right, I’ll leave you alone.  Do you want the door open or closed?”

“Closed, please.”

Of course, there are reasons why Dougie behaves in socially unacceptable ways.  He was a change of life baby, born when his mother was forty years old.  She had been a widow for many years, and raising two sons by herself.  One day, she attended a parent-teacher conference and met Dougie’s father.  He was a widower and a single parent, too.  They eventually got married and produced Doug after a year, much to the chagrin of his older half-brothers, who chose to beat up on him as much as possible while he was growing up.  His father was a fork-lift driver for the Nabisco Company who was, like his son, illiterate.  He ruled the home with the proverbial iron fist and a sailor’s vocabulary.  Dougie’s mom was the perfect match for his father: “full of piss and vinegar,” he once told me.  She preferred to bark out commands at her offspring, punctuated by ear-piercing screams when they weren’t followed precisely to her satisfaction. If Dougie and his brothers remained defiant, they were given the “just-wait-‘til-your-father-gets-home” line, which meant their Pops tanned their hides “something fierce” (as my mother used to say) after he came through the door.  No, they were definitely not the Cleavers.

I’ve been amazed over the years by the number of people have approached me—let’s say at a bus stop, or in the waiting room at a doctor’s office—and before I know it, their life story comes tumbling out of their mouths . This is extremely bizarre to me; I never utter a word to anyone unless spoken to first.  Even then, I am wary about revealing details about myself.  This is the direct result of my mother’s teachings: don’t trust strangers; what happens at home; stays at home.  Yet people like Dougie have revealed some of the most intimate details about themselves to me without a single indication of reserve. I find that incredible.  I can be forthcoming about myself in writing, but I clam up when it comes to personal interaction with people I don’t know very well.  I wonder how Doug and others come to the place in their lives where they are willing to pour out their hurts and failures into a porous cup like mine.  Certainly, I can do nothing more than listen, and I barely manage to do that.  I’m too conscious of the fact that my personal ongoing crises (“I want some of Zelda’s deep-dish Chicago style pizza, NOW!”) require most of my attention and remedial measures. If I’m not praying, I’m on the phone discussing these problems with someone who understands the unbelievably insane manner that I process situations and react to life. That’s why the tendency of people to voluntarily share their stories with me is baffling.  I can’t get out of my own head enough to be concerned with them With Dougie, the reasons he is desperate for another person’s attention have become apparent over time, though the dribbling of personal truths that he would spontaneously reveal between his heroic epics.  He has been abandoned as a child and an adult– physically, emotionally and spiritually.  His father and brothers (except for one of them), were physically and verbally abusive.  His mother screamed instead of talked, and kept herself emotionally distant from him instead of giving her baby boy a reassuring hug and kiss.  I’m sure it didn’t help his situation much to be relentlessly needy and emotionally sensitive, either.  The role he etched out in his family was tattletale, and his brothers physically expressed their displeasure with that whenever he played his part. Even as a adult, he has maintained the pattern of finding out “the scoop” about other people, and sharing that intel with the ones he considers to be in positions of power.

Or he would provoke people, ostensibly on an unconscious level, but he would get himself into situations (like the verbal conflict with my ex-gang-banger friend) where he would need to be bailed out either by a parent, or these days, an authority figure such as the managers at Paratransit.  It’s him versus his brothers, over and over again, the proverbial “I gonna tell…” syndrome being played out in adulthood.  He’s the six feet, five inch man-child who’s never been picked for the team, doesn’t get the girl and cries to an uncaring mother about it.  He might as well share his pain with a total stranger because he’s accustomed to cold, distant family members. Perhaps it’s even comfortable in its familiarity. 

He once told me that he has had only three girlfriends in his entire life, and every one of them dumped him for another guy within one month. No, that’s not entirely correct.  One hopped into a car with one of his friends after agreeing to his girlfriend for five minutes.  I’m not proud of the fact that my initial response was a gigantic belly laugh, which I choked down with a gulp of water.

According to collected wisdom of people who know more about life than I do, Dougie and I have some important spiritual lessons to learn from each other. I have a suspicion that mine has to do with being patient and loving with the people I come into close contact, even those who are extremely annoying to me and everyone else around them. There are slogans around 12 step groups that offer me moments of relief whenever I contemplate undertaking this mission: “Easy does it.” “Progress, not perfection.” “Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.”  I believe I’ve nailed the “slowly” part.

So what about Dougie’s spiritual lesson?  Well, I don’t know, and frankly, it’s none of my business.  I have to pick up and get rid of my own garbage, which is pretty malodorous after years of piling up into a ripe, composting heap.  However, I hope his lesson would be to learn how to take care of himself so other people, like the one brother who still bothers to speak to him, won’t have to. I also wish he will stop re-creating his emotional abandonment issues with the few people he still has in his life.  Who knows?  If he’s successful, the girl who jumped in his friend’s car might be willing to go for a do-over.

align=”left” size=”1″ width=”33%”

* Prior to 2002, I had given birth to three children, had a reconstruction of my right cheekbone (due to spousal abuse/domestic violence) and a tubal ligation.

* “Friends of Bill” refers to Bill Wilson, one of the co-founders of Alcoholic Anonymous. His “friends” are the members of not only A.A., but the numerous groups that have emerged over the years based on the original program.

[1] A prayer revealed by the Ba’b, one of the Prophet/Founders of the Bahá’í Faith http://info.bahai.org/.

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Executive Summary

            This is a remarkable book about how to change things when change is hard. It can be about you, a job, friends, or even family. Change is very difficult and hard to do without a little motivation. The book helps you to look at things in a different way than you had before. Seeing the good things about why you should change and why it was better before.

            One way Dan and Chip Heath, the authors, explained it in the book was that we have two parts to us. We have the emotional side (the Elephant) and the rational side (the Rider). Most of us think that the Rider always controls the Elephant, but in most cases it’s the other way around. The Elephant somehow ends up controlling the Rider. It’s like they talked about in the book, about someone trying to go on a diet. Your Rider side wants to look slimmer and eat healthier but your Elephant side loves those cookies and fast food. The Rider and Elephant both need to be on the same page to be able to work together but usually this isn’t the case.  Your heart may want one thing but your mind may want another. That is the Rider and the Elephant at war.

            This book teaches you have to be on the same page with your emotional and rational side. It teaches you how to react to certain situations that are very simple and easy to do. Now they aren’t saying change is easy, by far it is one of the hardest things in your life depending on what it is that you are fighting to change. There are better ways to make a change than probably what most think. Most likely they are plain and simple but you have to set forth a goal to achieve this change. One can’t say, “Hey I want to lose weight soon” and just automatically it starts to happen. No! One must set realistic goals as “Hey I want to lose 10 pounds in the next 3 months. This is your rider and elephant starting to work together. Your elephant now has motivation and your rider has direction.

            Switch is arranged around a correlation (immediately visual and sticky). When we are making a decision we’re often torn between our rational, logical reasons and our emotional, intuitive feelings. Tell the Rider what to do, provide a good argument and the Rider will do it. The Elephant, on the other hand, represents our emotions, our gut response. The Rider might like to avoid those chocolate chip cookies but there is very little the Rider can do if the Elephant really wants it. To complete their comparison they include the Path they are travelling along. If the Rider can direct the Elephant down a well prepared Path then there is a good chance for change. The Path might represent, for example, access to user friendly technology or effective office space design. Switch is arranged in three parts: Direct the Rider, Motivate the Elephant and Shape the Path.

The Ten Things Managers Need to Know fromSwitch

1.            Our emotions can overwhelm our rational thought, while relying solely on rational behavior can “overanalyze and over think things.”

2.            There are better ways to make a change than probably what most think. Most likely they are plain and simple but you have to set forth a goal to achieve this change. One can’t say, “Hey I want to lose weight soon” and just automatically it start to happen. No! One must set realistic goals.

3.            What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.The book considers change at every level- individual, organizational, and societal. All change efforts usually have something in common: “For anything to change, someone has to start acting differently.” But the question is always that, Can you get people to start behaving in a new way? Dan and Chip mention in this chapter that “In our lives, we embrace lots of big changes- not only babies, but marriages and new homes and new technologies and new job duties.” So that means that it is quite possible for people to change.

4.                  What looks like laziness is often exhaustion. The Elephant and Rider are usually on two different pages and trying to persuade the Elephant often exhaust your mind. For example, When you try so hard to stay away from fattening foods because you are on a diet, you mind will get exhausted and won’t want to find the temptation any longer forcing you to finally give in. The Elephant will usually win over the Rider.

5.            The Rider part of our minds has many strengths.“The Rider is a thinker and a planner and can plot a course for a better future. But as we’ve seen, the Rider has a terrible weakness- the tendency to spin his wheels. The Rider loves to contemplate and analyze, and, making matters worse, his analysis is almost always directed at problems rather than at bright spots.

6.            We are all human but sometimes we tend to make the default planbecause that was the first plan given to us and when looking at the facts we look at the negative side, which then leads us to our first decision, which may not always be the best.

7.            Make sure your goals are reachable and specific. If not then you may tend to go in circles when trying to achieve your goal. Taken small steps are best way to achieve any big time change in your life. Too big of a step can end up being too overwhelming and cause you to give up more easily.

8.            “In highly successful change efforts, people find ways to help others see the problems or solutions in ways that influence emotions, not just thought.” “In other words, when change works, it’s because leaders are speaking to the Elephant as well as to the Rider.” Change only works if the Elephant and Rider are working together.

9.            The gates of large goals are lined with small accomplishments. Remember to compliment yourself when completing little steps towards your goal, it will help motivate you.

10.            “Any new quest, even one that is ultimately successful, is going to involve failure.You can’t learn to salsa-dance without failing. You can’t learn to be an inventor, or a nurse, or a scientist, without failing. Nor can you learn to transform the way products are developed in your firm, or change minds about urban poverty, or restore loving communication with your spouse, without failing. And the Elephant really, really hates to fail.” So how is it that you keep the Elephant motivated to not give up? “The answer may sound strange: You need to create the expectation of failure- not the failure of the mission itself, but failure en route.”

Full Summary of Switch

Introduction

This book teaches you how to be on the same page with your emotional and rational side. It teaches you how to react to certain situations that are very simple and easy to do. Now they aren’t saying change is easy, by far it is one of the hardest things in your life depending on what it is that you are fighting to change. There are better ways to make a change than probably what most think. Most likely they are plain and simple but you have to set forth a goal to achieve this change. Through the entire book Dan and Chip use the example of an Elephant and a Rider, the Elephant is your emotional side and the Rider is your rational side. A person can’t say, “Hey I want to lose weight soon” and just automatically it starts to happen. No! One must set realistic goals as “Hey I want to lose 10 pounds in the next 3 months. This is your rider and elephant starting to work together. Your Elephant now has motivation and your Rider has direction. “Anytime the six-ton Elephant and the Rider disagree about which direction to go, the Rider is going to lose. He’s completely overmatched.”

Our emotions can overwhelm our rational thought (the reason for the elephant-driver metaphor; the elephant is bigger than the driver), while relying solely on rational behavior can “overanalyze and over think things. Chances are you know the people with Rider problems, your colleague who can brainstorm for hours but can’t ever seem to make a decision.”Switch dedicates itself to change processes that manage both aspects — direct the rider and motivate the elephant— along with a third segment, Shaping the Path, that details the steps once driver and elephant are mastered.

Managing our “driver and elephant” brains also include surroundings. Tweak the Environment covers how a person should not simply blame people, but also account for the situation: “What looks like a person problem is often a situation problem.” The Heaths advocate small tweaks – “even small environmental tweaks can make a difference” – and examine “action triggers” – the associations of one action to another – to address habits.  Occasional clinics pull the segments together in situations set in organizations. Relating a business process to everyday happenings bring the idea to “script the change” into a living concept that, well, sticks in your mind.

Switch makes the psychology behind its thesis accessible. It identifies the basic psychological conflicts that can lead to poor choices or derail the most complex business team. It makes its points using narrative, yet the stories are rooted in scholarly sources. It explains in straightforward terms. Great books broaden a reader’s world outlook, and the Heaths broaden outlooks very well. They do it with an optimistic tone that strengthens their points and the utility of their concepts.

Overall I found Switch an excellent starting point to discuss change in a professional or organization. Not only does it stand well on its own for learning how to manage and infuse change into a given situation. Change isn’t easy, so to speak, but Switch makes the process of change easier.

Three Surprises About Change

What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.The book considers change at every level- individual, organizational, and societal. All change efforts usually have something in common: “For anything to change, someone has to start acting differently.” But the question is always that, Can you get people to start behaving in a new way? Dan and Chip mention in this chapter that “In our lives, we embrace lots of big changes- not only babies, but marriages and new homes and new technologies and new job duties.” So that means, that it is quite possible for people to change.
What looks like laziness is often exhaustion. When you try so hard to stay away from fattening foods because you are on a diet, you mind will get exhausted and then you will finally give in.
What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity. “If the Rider isn’t sure exactly what direction to go, he tends to lead himself in circles.”

Direct the Rider

Directing the Rider isn’t an easy task. The elephant most of the times seems to disagree with the rider making it very difficult for the rider to go in the correct path.Often the heart and mind disagree. Consider a person who wants to wake up at 5:45am to go workout but the other side of us when the alarm clock goes off doesn’t like waking up to plain darkness in the morning and just wants to snoozes for a few more minutes. That’s an example of your heart and your mind having a disagreement. So how do we make this switch? There are three main points in this book that you need to remember when trying to make that switch which is:

To Direct the Rider- Script the critical moves

Motivate the Elephant- Shrink the change

Shape the Path- Build a habit

Find the Bright Spots

            The rider part of our minds has many strengths. “The Rider is a thinker and a planner and can plot a course for a better future. But as we’ve seen, the Rider has a terrible weakness- the tendency to spin his wheels. The Rider loves to contemplate and analyze, and, making matters worse, his analysis is almost always directed at problems rather than at bright spots. You can probably recall a conversation with a friend who agonized for hours over a particular relationship problem. But you can remember an instance when a friend spent even a few minutes analyzing why something was working so well?” The Rider will spin his wheels indefinitely unless he’s given clear direction. That’s the one reason you always need to direct the Rider. You want to show him exactly where to go, how to act, and what destination to pursue. “And that’s why bright spots are so essential, because they are the best hope for directing the Rider when you’re trying to bring about change.”

Another major point Dan and Chip Heath make in this chapter is about “solutions-focused brief therapy” which is about digging around for clues about why you act the way you do instead of asking about your childhood. Solutions-focused therapists do not care about your childhood like other therapist may; they tend to go at finding out what the problem may be in a different way. In a brief story about a lady and her golf swing, they explain what they mean by using “Solution-focused therapy.” They explain, “Most people, including most therapists, believe the change process has to be complicated and difficult. ‘No pain, no gain’ is the general rule of thumb.” This brief story shows otherwise. “At one point, her golf swing started misfiring, so she went to a golf pro, thinking her technique needed a major overhaul. She noted that the golf pro didn’t do anything archaeology. He never said, “You obviously have a fear of winning. Did your father intimidate you as a little girl? Instead, all he did was suggest a minor modification: relaxing her tight grip on the club.” She was peeved at first by the advice given to her but realized later in her game that her balls were going straighter and were improving. This type of therapy uses common techniques for discovering potential solutions. Finding the bright spots is a critical part in helping to solve problems and be a major thing for businesses. It’s stated in the book, “There is a clear asymmetry between the scale of the problem and the scale of the solution. Big problem, small solution. Big problems are rarely solved with commensurately big solutions. Instead, they are most often solved by a sequence of small solutions, sometimes over weeks, sometimes over decades. And this asymmetry is what the Rider’s predilection for analysis can backfire so easily.” “When the Rider analyzes a problem, he seeks a solution that befits the scale of it. If the Rider spots a hole, he wants to fill it, and if he’s got a round hole with a 24-inch diameter, he’s gonna go looking for a 24-inch peg. But that mental model is wrong. You need to think the question, “What’s working right now?”

At the very end of the chapter they give you a list of 24 words of “emotion” found in the dictionary and said that only 6 of them are positive words. It seems that people are more focused on the negative things than the positive. It is stated, “A group of psychologists reviewed over two hundred articles and concluded that, for a wide range of human behavior and perception, a general principle holds true: “ Bad is stronger than good.” It was said that a study was done and participants were given a photo of bad and good events and they spent more time viewing the bad ones.” Also, if you think back to when talking to a close friend about someone and a lot of it was good but just a little was bad, you always tend to remember and talk about the bad. The researchers in this book call this “positive-negative asymmetry.” Dan and Chip Heath consider that if a person uses, “These flashes of success-these bright spots- can illuminate the road map for action and spark the hope that change is possible.”

Script the Critical Moves

In this chapter Dan and Chip talk about “decision paralysis.” “More options, even good ones, can freeze us and make us retreat to the default plan. This behavior clearly is not rational, but it is human.” Discussed in this chapter is a good example of this. A doctor told his patient that she was going to need surgery and then realized after checking with the pharmacy that there was one medication that hadn’t been tried. “Now the doctor faced a dilemma: Should he prescribe the untried medication, even though other medications had failed, or should he go ahead and refer the patient for surgery? When doctors were presented with this case history, 47 percent of them chose to try the medication, in hopes of saving the patient from going under the knife. In another variation on the dilemma, another group of doctors were presented with almost exactly the same set of case facts- except this time, the patient’s pharmacy discovered two untried medications. If you were the patient with the arthritic hip, you’d be thrilled- certainly two nonsurgical options are better than one. But when the doctors were presented with two medications, only 28 percent chose to try either one.” Why would they do this? Does it even seem to make sense? “The doctors were acting as though having more medication options somehow made medication a worse bet than surgery. But if 47 percent of doctors thought medication shouldn’t have tipped them toward surgery.” This is where the doctors used “decision paralysis.” We are all human but sometimes we tend to make the default plan because that was the first plan giving to us and when looking at the facts we look at the negative side, which then leads us to our first decision.

Point to the Destination

This chapter demonstrates pointing to a destination or “goal” that you want to reach by a certain date. Make sure that it is a reachable goal that you can stay on and one that makes you want to reach it. In this chapter the example they use is a group of first graders who weren’t even at the kindergarten level and some couldn’t even hold a pencil. The teacher used a great way to help the students and herself reach a goal. She told them, “By the end of this school year, you’re going to be third graders.” She didn’t mean literally but it made the students admire what that would feel like and made them feel good. The teacher made this decision very carefully knowing what level the children were at and when they had to end up at the end of the year. She made sure the goal was realistic and reachable. “One of her first efforts was to cultivate a culture of learning in her classroom, calling her students “scholars” and asking them to address one another that way.” When others would come to see the class, “she introduced her class as a group of scholars and asked them to define the term for the guest.” The students would then tell the guest and of course want to go home and tell their parents what they had learned in class. It always makes one happy when they have accomplished part of their goal and can then take that information that they gained and transfer it and teach it to someone else. They also say in the put about praising yourself in some way for what you have achieved and for how far you have come, which will then have you wanting to keep moving forward to achieve your entire goal. “When you describe a compelling destination, you’re helping to correct of the Rider’s great weaknesses- the tendency to get lost in analysis. Our first instinct, in most change situations, is to offer up data to people’s Riders: Here’s why we need to change. Here are the tables and graphs and charts that prove it. The Rider loves this. He’ll start poring over the data, analyzing it and poking holes in it, and he’ll be inclined to debate with out about the conclusions you’ve drawn. To the Rider, the “analyzing” phase is often more satisfying than the “doing” phase.”

“Goals in most organizations, however, lack emotional resonance. Instead, SMART goals- goals that are Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant and Timely- have become the norm. A typical SMART goal might be “My marketing campaign will generate 4,500 qualified sales leads for the sales group by the end of Q3’09.” These types of goals will get your motivated and because it is a reachable goal, make you set forth more of an effort to achieve it.

Find the Feeling

In this chapter it is a matter of reaching the Elephant inside others. Kotter and Cohen said, “that in most change situations, managers initially focus on strategy, structure, culture, or systems, which leads them to miss the most important issue: The core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people, and behavior change happens in highly successful situations mostly by speaking to people’s feelings. This is true even in organizations that are very focused on analysis and quantitative measurement, even among people who think of themselves as smart in an MBA sense. In highly successful change efforts, people find ways to help others see the problems or solutions in ways that influence emotions, not just thought.” “In other words, when change works, it’s because leaders are speaking to the Elephant as well as to the Rider.”

Shrink the Change

The gates of large goals are lined with small accomplishments.  In this chapter the authors Dan and Chip Heath  propose that the only way to get to your larger goals is to accomplish smaller goals first, and build momentum.  They call this “Shrink the Change.”  It is a fascinating concept and one that I tend to believe in.  They provide numerous examples including businesses, financial and sports success. Here is one example of how it works: Two car wash companies offered a promotional deal.  The first company’s offer was to give you a stamp when you bought a car wash. Get eight stamps, get a free car wash.  The second company’s offer was a free car wash after ten stamps. The difference…the second company gave the customer two stamps to begin with. Both offers are the same. Buy eight car washes and get one free.  However with the second company the consumers’ perceptions, feelings and beliefs led them to think they were 20 percent on their way to their goal.  A few months after this promotion, the second company had a 34 percent market share versus 19 percent for the first company. This story is intended to illustrate that the further along you are to your goal the more you will work towards your goal.  When we are overwhelmed with a task, it is often because we have had no success on that task. However when we have some success, it is easier for us to build on that success, and keep going. The authors recommend lowering the bar first, and then raise it after you have had some accomplishments.  When you set the bar high from the beginning, you may become overwhelmed.  This contributes to individuals, and even teams, to give up before they even get started. “The Elephant has no trouble conquering these micro milestones, and as it does, something else happens. With each step, the Elephant feels less scared and less reluctant, because things are working. With each step, the Elephant starts feeling the change. A journey that started with dread is evolving, slowly, toward a feeling of confidence and pride. And at the same time the change is shrinking, the Elephant is growing.”

Grow Your People

When you struggle to change something big about yourself, especially if its something completely new, you will have up and down moments. As Dan and Chip put it, “Any new quest, even one that is ultimately successful, is going to involve failure. You can’t learn to salsa-dance without failing. You can’t learn to be an inventor, or a nurse, or a scientist, without failing. Nor can you learn to transform the way products are developed in your firm, or change minds about urban poverty, or restore loving communication with your spouse, without failing. And the Elephant really, really hates to fail.” So how is it that you keep the Elephant motivated to not give up? “The answer may sound strange: You need to create the expectation of failure- not the failure of the mission itself, but failure en route.” This chapter teaches you to have a “growth mindset,” which will help you to conquer more challenges and not think so much about failure. “People with a growth mindset- those who stretch themselves, take risks, accept feedback, and take the long-term view- can’t help but progress in their lives and careers.” It is said that business people tend to reject the “growth mindset” because of the way we think. We think in two stages: “You plan, and then you execute.” We do not have a “learning stage or practice stage in the middle.”

Tweak the Environment

“When some guy cuts you off in traffic, you probably think, instinctively: What a jerk. What you almost certainly don’t think to yourself is, Gosh, I wonder what’s wrong that he is in such a hurry.” It’s crazy how we don’t think in that way. Most of us have been in this type of situation where we are running late for something very important and wind up driving like a crazy maniac and have people wanting to call us a jerk as well. It is very easy to judge someone by what they do. A good example of how to tweak the environment in a situation where a child is always late to class is for “The teacher to lock the door when the bell rings so that latecomers are stuck in the hallway.”This teaches that student to make sure he is on time or he will be standing outside the class.

Build Habits

This chapter helps you break your bad habits. “People are incredibly sensitive to the environment and then culture- to the norms and expectations of the communities they are in. We all want to wear the right clothes, to say the right things, to frequent the right places. Because we instinctively try to fit in with our peer group, behavior is contagious, sometimes in surprising ways.” When we think about our habits most of us think about the bad ones: “biting our fingernails, procrastinating, eating sweets when we’re anxious, and so on.” Most of us don’t think about the good habits that we have.” To change yourself or other people, you’ve got to change habits. Habits tend to change when the environment changes.

Rally the Herd

In this chapter it’s about looking around to see what others are doing versus what you think you should do in a particular situation. In a study, a group of students were put in a room alone to fill out a survey when others were put three at a time into a room. Smoke then began to come through the air vents in which most of the students that were by themselves alerted someone about the smoke while in the room with a few people, only a few alerted someone about the smoke coming through the vent. They sat in the room looking at what each other was doing instead of getting up to let someone know. The point is that when someone isn’t sure of something around them or doesn’t feel comfortable, they tend to look at others for answers.

Keep the Switch Going

In the final chapter it talks about taking step by step to reach your goals. When you take small steps you will get farther than if you were to try and take a giant step because it may seem to get to overwhelming and then you may give up. As Dan and Chip write, “The first thing to do is to recognize and celebrate that first step. You’ve directed the Rider, you’ve motivated the Elephant, you’ve shaped the path- and now your team is moving, or you’re moving.”

The Video Lounge

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb-SdduiUMk

This video is Chris Brogan giving main points of what is in the book and why you should read it. He talks about the three main points in the book: the Elephant, the Rider, and the Path. He explains what Dan and Chip Heath talk about through their book and how it is a must read.

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Contact Info: To contact the author of this “Summary and Review of Switch,” please email Jennifer.duplantis-2@selu.edu or Jenniferduplantis@gmail.com. 

Biography

David C. Wyld (dwyld.kwu@gmail.com) is the Robert Maurin Professor of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. He is a management consultant, researcher/writer, and executive educator. His blog, Wyld About Business, can be viewed at http://wyld-business.blogspot.com/. He also serves as the Director of the Reverse Auction Research Center (http://reverseauctionresearch.blogspot.com/), a hub of research and news in the expanding world of competitive bidding. Dr. Wyld also maintains compilations of works he has helped his students to turn into editorially-reviewed publications at the following sites:

Management Concepts (http://toptenmanagement.blogspot.com/)

Book Reviews (http://wyld-about-books.blogspot.com/) and

Travel and International Foods (http://wyld-about-food.blogspot.com/).                

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74. Sing in on http://www.getref.com where you get reff. by been a reff of other members.
75. Print fake cheqs and let them on public places
76. You can say in banners and advets… “You loose money.. you can get it back in (place here your refflink)”
77. Sold or gift cheap products with your refflink
78. Make an ads in Craigslist
79. Make a plain pilot write your refflink on the sky.
80. Place business cards in the entrance of the credit cards
81. Make cards that say “Valid to sing in free on “your reflink”
82. Buy a package of CD’s or DVDs and make that runs a txt with your refflink and gift them
83. Print cards on vistaprint.com
84. Find pens, pencil, papers, etc with your reflink.
85. Begin online games free and let your banner in any of them.
86. Place the reflink in your car and make ride all days .
87. Use your refflink as your name in msn.
88. Place your refflink in cars of employments conventions.
89. Place a paper in the advert section of restaurants, coffes, cybers, etc
90. trick people to sing in
91. Say “if u sing in and write on forum you can see a monkey dancing”
92. Make a stamp and place in cards, papers, etc
93. Say that you will help them when they been your referrals.
94. Write an article.
95. Paint your reflink on the street.
96. “promote” yourself with a familiar name on forums
97. Reserve on festivals an fairs.. and place a laptop with wifi to the people can test the system and subscribe them (some PTC sites will ban all members from the same sing in computer)
98. Make Cross-link with your site, blog, articles, posts y classified.
99. Make shoes full of ink and to have your refflink on bottom and walk for every where
100. Open an store that have as name your reflink
101 Make calls to all people on the Guide (not in night please, i tell u for experience )
102 Gift Porn Videos with your refflink.
103 Place in your front door your refflink
104 Make a banner that say: “My life is better now thanks to (your refflink)”
105 If u have a frind that appears on TV, give him a sticker with your refflink
106 Name to your first baby as your refflink.
107 Place on newspaper ads that says “(Any name) Dies Because make alot of money in (your refflink)”
108 Gift basseball balls with your refflink to kids in the streets, you can place too “repair windows with money that you can make on (your refflink)”
109 Make a virus that display your reflink every 5 minutes on the screen.
110 When you make a deposit in the bank let a card with your reflink in the money and in the place of the deposit forms.

http://www.blogtipsdantrik.blogspot.com

Related Ball Room Dancing Info Articles

Tango Description:

Tango can be described as an “earthy” and “dramatic” ball room dance, with the walking movements being dominated. It is sometimes “slow,” and other times a bit “fast” and “sharp” dance.

Beginning of Tango:

Tango is one of the different types of ball room dance, which is considered to be the third couple dance in the dance history. It began to evolve somewhere at the beginning of twentieth century. Tango is believed to be danced in Paris, London and New York in 1907-1914, but the real origin came from Buenos Aires. Many people believe, that in the late 19th century, Buenos Aires was filled with immigrants from Europe and Africa, who slowly developed friendship among themselves. They found a way to reduce their sorrows by giving rise to a new style of music and dance, which was named “Tango.” The Historians also have an argument, that this name has come from the African drum beat tan-go, or from Latin word meaning” to touch.”

Tango Dance Styles:

Tango can be danced in a variety of styles, with different types of music. The main Tango style will always have an “open embrace” and a “closed embrace.” In a close embrace, the couple is very close to each other, usually touching their shoulders and heads. While in an open embrace, the couple stands further apart to allow a wide range of movements. Tango styles geographically may range from Argentina style-American style-International style.

Argentine style:

The core of Argentinean style Tango is bandoneon, often accompanied by a band including guitar, piano, one or two violins, but never has a drum beat. In Buneon Aires a Tango dance style was popular for crowded dance floors in the early 1950s. It was called as a “Brownian motion” dance, being random and changed in many directions. Argentine Tango can vary from very open, leader and follower connecting at arm length, to very closed, in which the connection is chest-to- chest.

American style:

American Tango has adopted the features of both Argentine and the International styles.Tango Mannita is a classic American Tango, built on four variations;(slow, quick, quick, slow).It is considered to be a medium tempo dance, with a beat of 2/4 or 4/4. American Tango uses more slow steps with quick contrasts.

International Style:

International Tango dance involves sharp snaps of the head from one position to the other and twists with big movements.

Besides these geographical Tango styles, we have a variety of other Tango dance styles as:

Salon-style Tango:

In this Tango  style, the couple dances with an upright posture, can be either a close or an open embrace.

Milonguero-style Tango:

This is typically danced with a leaning position in which the dancer’s shoulders are normally joined. Most of the times, it is danced in a close embrace. The couple usually maintains a constant upper body contact.

Orillero-style Tango:

This is a Tango dance style, in which the dancers maintain a distance among each other to allow both dance partners to make steps outside the embrace. It can be danced in both, open and closed embrace.

Club-style Tango:

It is the fusion of both the salon and milonguero styles. It is usually danced in a closed embrace, but the female partner is allowed to make movements freely.

Tango Nuevo (New Tango):

It is a new style of Tango which emphasizes on the new moves and steps in Tango dance style. It is usually danced in an open and loose embrace, with an upright posture.

Fantasia (Show Tango):

It is a style of Tango usually danced in stage shows, with combination of different Tango dance styles.

Canyengue:

It is a historical tango, danced in a close embrace, with bent knees.

Tango music and steps:

Tango is one of the ball room dances, which allows the dancers to simply translate the music into their physical motion.

Basic rhythmic patterns:

The Argentina Tango is danced with a standard meter of 2/4, creating “quick-quick” steps called the “corrida” or running steps. For learning Tango dance, there is 8-count basic pattern to be learned. This 8-count pattern is divided into four parts.

1. the Salida, (the exit) on beat 1, is the point of departure,
2. the parte caminada, on beats 2,3, and 4, (the walking part),
3. the trabada, on beat 5, which suggests joining together, or cross-step,
4.the natural resolucion, on beats 6,7 and 8, bringing the couple together to the entire set of steps.

By repetition of these basic 8-count steps, you can learn Tango easily.

Arthur Murray dancing schools offers various dances and styles techniques that are related to ball room dancing which are considered to be the dancing for the privileged. This is considered as the most entertaining and elite dance styles. Some of the styles taught in ballroom schools include the following categories-Tango which is danced by two a male has to give the lead to the female. The various moves used all make the dance look beautiful to the onlooker .Waltz is danced to slow beats one of the slow and most attractive and rhythmic styles ever. When this dance is performed more closely towards each another dance style is Foxtrot is a dance style, gives a dancer flexibility to combine the slow and fast movements together. Viennese Waltz-This style of Ballroom dance is based on the original form of the Waltz dance. Lastly we have Quickstep Style of Ballroom dancing which includes many steps with quick momentum.

Arthur Murray also offers Salsa dance classes which involve the following styles- Cuban dancing style this style entails dancing as interplay between male and female gender and feeling the music. This emphasizes Latin cultural context with emphasis on sexual interplay, teasing, and everyday experience colombian salsa which involves dancing which is characterized by breaking backwards diagonally instead of moving forwards and backwards. Lastly salsa dance school practice other types of salsa dances without the forgetting the los angels salsa dance which emphases on sensuousness and musicality.

Also ballroom dance schools offer a tango dance lessons for individuals and couples. Tango dance is considered to be a sexy dance of seduction where two partners especially a male and a female team up to dance together which has been popularized by movies and popular cultures. Tango dance lessons are considered to be difficult by they are easy for beginners since it involves slow rhythm and move. Tango dances lesson offers different tango techniques and styles that exist for example Tango Canyengue which involves dancing by sharing one axis, dance in a closed embrace, and with the legs relaxed and slightly bent another technique is Tango Nuevo which is associated with those who enjoy dancing to jazz- and techno-tinged and electronic music. There are various other techniques that are offered in ball room dances schools as well as salsa dance schools.

Related Ball Room Dancing Articles

It is a given fact that women do love dancing! Nobody can argue about this, even men! It is as if there is something in their genes that lead them to kick out on the dance floor and sway those hips. It is within their body system that only they can understand. It is like us, men who love watching sports and even our wives or girlfriends can’t stop get the remote out of our hands. I can’t even remember a girl who does not love to dance.

Let me ask you this question, has your wife or girlfriend asked you to take up swing dance lessons? If not better prepare your answer. As for me, I just give my wife an answer like this “I am still on the fence regarding swing dance lesson”. I did get away with this lame excuse. I don’t know if the same excuse would work out for you.

As of the moment, it is really quite easy to get dance lessons. Before anything else, have you been acquainted with the movie “Shall We Dance”, starring Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez (hot and sexy Latina teacher) and Susan Sarandon (Richard’s wife)? This is what men who are of the same situation as I am are going through or will go through. It is a story of a family man who wants to learn how to ball room dance for the sake of his wife. But this isn’t the same how swing lessons are. It’s quite similar in the sense that there is a need to have a female partner but the beat is different. You are going to fling, through your partner out in the air and catch her before her head gets hit on the floor. Quite an adrenalin rush really. But it looks fun for the young.

It’s serious business we are talking here. I am pretty sure that when my wife will ask me to take swing dance lessons, I will go for it or maybe enroll into those fancy dance schools and have a hot and sexy Latina teacher who just look like Jennifer Lopez. How wonderful is that?

Seriously, if you are considering taking swing dance lessons yourself you need to enroll for one. You can start running your fingers right on the yellow pages and look for a dancing school. Na, just kidding! Just go to Google and you will find what you are looking for. Have fun dancing!

For more useful information, please visit our website: THE KNOWLEDGE BASE, and look for the SELF IMPROVEMENT section.

You’ve tried the whole Gym thing, but it just wasn’t for you. The temptation to just sit in front of the TV, to curl up with a good book, or to spend a little extra time at your computer is just too big. Who wants to head to the gym right now anyway?

There are many other options to get more active that don’t include jogging, weight lifting or other “traditional” ways to work out. Here are a few ideas to get you moving

1) Chase your Kids around the Yard
You’d be surprised at how much of a work out you’ll get playing catch with your kids. Time will fly while you are having fun and your children will enjoy the extra time with you. Just get out there and play.

2) Turn up the Music and Dance around the Living Room
While you’re dusting, putting up dishes, straightening up the kids’ rooms, or after you’ve been sitting around for too long, just play some of your favorite upbeat music and dance around in the house. Not only will you get your heart rate up, but you’ll also have more fun doing some of those chores.
 
3) Plant some Flowers
When the weather is nice, just get out there and plant some flowers. Or you could start a little vegetable garden, trim some hedges, cut the grass, or plant a tree. You get the idea. Just get out there, enjoy the sunshine and fresh air, and play in the dirt. Yes, this actually counts as exercise in our book.

4) Go for a Walk with a Friend
Take a walk and invite a friend to come along. I’ve had some of the best conversations while on a walk. Getting to chat with a friend makes the time fly by and before you know it you’ve been walking for 30 minutes.

5) Listen to some Music or an Audio Book while You Walk
Again, keeping your mind on something else will make the time fly by and you’ll get some extra fun out of your walk. You may even want to consider getting an MP3 Player. You can easily add what you want to listen to and go for your walk.

6) Sign up for a Yoga or Pilates Class
Consider starting a yoga or Pilates class. Both of these workouts are pretty low impact and won’t leave you sweaty and sore (mostly). You may also enjoy meeting some new people in the class.

7) Take some Dance Lessons with your Partner
Ok, here is the tough part: Convince your partner to take some dance lessons. Dancing will give you quite the workout and it’s just plain fun and of course romantic. Think about all your options here. You can pick from anything from Ball Room Dancing, to Line Dancing, to Latin etc. Pick something that sounds fun to you and go for it. You’ll enjoy the extra one on one time with your partner as well.

Go for a Swim at Your Local YMCA or Aquatic Center
Swimming makes for some great exercise. It is low impact and easy on your joints. Start by swimming a few laps, or play in the pool with your kids.

9) Go for a Bike Ride
Take the entire family on a bike ride. You can ride through your neighborhood in the evenings or plan a longer trip for the weekend. Pack a picnic for extra fun and start peddling.

10) Go for a Hike
Look for some hiking trails in your area and go for a hike. This could be a fun activity for you and a friend, or take the entire family along. Start with some easy trails and work yourself up to some longer or steeper trails.

Go ahead, pick one or two of the activities and get moving. I’m sure you’ll come up with plenty of versions of your own. The most important thing is to find something you enjoy, so you’ll stick with it. Get out there and get moving today.

SEXY SAICY BALLROOM DANCING ON SHARON