Keep your cool

Dear Friends,

Now that the days are longer and hotter, the electric bills for many are skyrocketing. Air conditioning can be such a blessing, but using it too freely results in large electric bills. So here are some tricks for staying cool and comfortable all summer long without breaking the bank.

First, make sure your AC air filter is clean. If not, replace it so the air conditioner doesn't have to work so hard to pull air through the system. Then turn your AC up a bit. 19 degrees may feel great, but it requires a lot of electricity. To save energy, it is generally recommended to keep your summer thermostat at 26 degrees or above. One way to make 26 degrees seem cooler is to use your ceiling fans, or even floor fans, to keep the cool AC air moving through your home. Ceiling fans can shift the temperature by several degrees and may even make it possible to keep the thermostat a little higher than 26. Of course, power cuts … you can’t help.

Another way to cut costs and keep things cooler inside is to close the blinds on windows that get a lot of sun exposure. Keeping the inside shaded helps keep your home cooler. And remember, lighting your home with incandescent bulbs generates a lot of unwanted heat, so consider making the switch to energy efficient CFL bulbs or LED lighting to save money on two levels.

The summertime is our outdoor time, so get out of your house and into other cool environments during the heat of the day. Sit in a greenly garden and read under a shady tree, enjoy a movie, or visit the mall. Have a short cool shower before you go out, or better yet, go swimming. You might even pack a picnic meal and plant yourself under the shadiest tree at the park for a couple of hours. You'll save money, stay cooler and have fun.

There are also lots of great ways to keep your body cooler, whether you are inside or outside. Dress smartly for summer weather. By all means, avoid silk and synthetic, heavier cottons, and dark-colored clothing that absorb and hold heat next to your body. Investing in summer clothing made of lightweight and light-colored micro-fiber will reflect the light's rays and heat away and will keep you cooler and more comfortable.

You can also do a lot with what you choose to eat and drink. For example, eat less at mealtime, but more frequently throughout the day. Smaller meals don't need as much metabolic heat to digest. Enjoying chilled fruit is a great summertime treat that also helps lower your body temperature. And be sure to drink plenty of water to stay hydrated.

If you are trying to keep the thermostat turned up this summer, give these tips a try. They work for me and I hope they will help you stay cool and comfy all summer long.

Have a great week.

Women are wiser

The Obedient Wife' There was a man, who had worked all his life, had saved all of his money, And was a real miser when it came to his money. Just before he died, he said to his wife...'When I die, I want you to take all my money and put it in the casket with me. I want to take my money to the afterlife with me.' And so he got his wife to promise him, with all of her heart, that when he died, she would put all of the money into the casket with him.

Well, he died. He was stretched out in the casket, his wife was sitting there - dressed in black, and her friend was sitting next to her. When they finished the ceremony, and just before the undertakers got ready to close the casket, the wife said, 'Wait just a moment!' She had a small metal box with her; she came over with the box and put it in the casket. Then the undertakers locked the casket down and they rolled it away. So her friend said, 'Girl, I know you were not foolish enough to put all that money in there with your husband.' The loyal wife replied, I cannot go back on my word. I promised him that I was going to put that money into the casket with him.' You mean to tell me you put that money in the casket with him!?!?!?' 'I sure did,' said the wife.. 'I got it all together, put it into my account, and wrote him a cheque.... If he can cash it, then he can spend it.'

Age that matters

Dear Friends,

I certainly don't consider myself "old." To be honest, I am not sure what age qualifies as old today. I think that being old is more connected to a mindset. That said, I am certainly not in my twenties any longer, and my body occasionally reminds me that it is not as flexible as it once was. Getting older is a fact of life. No matter how we much we would like to avoid it, the clock will continue to tick and we will grow older. It's inevitable!

Personally, I hope that I will age gracefully, but I do hope I can keep my mind snappy and youthful.

Fortunately, I've got some positive news about staying young mentally. Apparently our brains don't age the same way our bodies do. In a Harvard study, researchers compared the differences in brain activity between younger and older subjects focusing on the firing between the front and back of the brain in each group. This front and back mechanism is called the "default network" and is activated when we need to use our memory. As you would imagine, the twenty-year- olds had the best responses when it came to this part of the study. The older subjects tended to have a weaker connection in their "default network."

Yet surprisingly, nearly half of the older adults maintained brain activity that was similar to the twenty-year-olds. I was very pleased with this news, friends. Scientists attribute this younger, fit mind in an older body to good old-fashioned exercise, meaning cognitive exercise in this case. And they provided it by putting a group of 75-year-olds through several months of rigorous mind exercise. And after that, the subjects exhibited the memory abilities of people many years, sometimes even decades, younger.

So, in a nutshell, the more you exercise your brain, the better it will work and the longer it will last. According to researchers, when we "workout" our brains through mental exercises, we are actually building cortical tissue that helps our brains last longer. Unlike fat cells, the more brain cells we have, the better. That's because those extra brain cells are like insurance for the mind. If we are able to store up and maintain a good number of brain cells, then this reserve will help us to cope with the natural loss of cells that occurs with age.

Mental exercises that help build brain cells include reading, doing math, and playing games that call for strategy and matching. Your computer is a good source for such material. There are loads of brain boosting workouts available to play online, to load onto your pc.

Friends, you might want to consider adding brain exercises to your daily physical regime. Many of us are particularly fond of Sudoku, in addition to regular physical exercise of brisk walking and yoga. It never hurts to start early when it comes to taking