Learn Or Do

It’s Throwback Thursday and I thought this might be a good day to talk about my latest reawakened obsession – jigsaw puzzles.

As a kid, my Mom and I did jigsaw puzzles on a card table in a corner of the living room all winter long.  I loved putting the puzzles together – the more pieces, the better.  We had a whole shelf in our toy closet that was nothing but jigsaw puzzles because we loved doing them so much!  But there were drawbacks – the card table that got in everyone’s way and lost pieces to name the worst things.  And the obsession passed after Mom passed away and I got older.

But recently I discovered a website called Jigsaw Planet – and I’m crazy about it!  It’s all the fun of solving the puzzles I remember – but no lost pieces and no need to store all those puzzle boxes either!   You can even create your own using photos on your computer or tablet.

Give it a try!  Here’s the link to the site:  www.jigsawplanet.com

Headaches are probably the most common ailment there is.  We’ve all had them – stress, poor eating habits, poor lighting/glare and allergies are just a few of the triggers.

According to an article I found, there are 17 types of headaches (relax – I’m not going to list them all!) with the most common type being a tension headache.  But as common as tension or stress headaches are, there is little known about what physically causes them.

Doctors and researchers agree the likely cause of tension headaches is probably related to the contraction and inflammation of muscles surrounding the skull.  The contractions and inflammation lead to spasms which translate into pain like a band around your head, a sore neck or pounding in your temples.

Your first reaction to a tension headache may be to reach for an aspirin or other over the counter pain reliever but there are other effective methods to quiet that pain.  Have you tried massage? A hot shower?  A cold pack?  Some people swear by essential oils for relief.  What works for you?  Let me know in the comments!

The biggest To-Do on my list right now?  My taxes.  I can’t believe I’ve procrastinated again!  I have all the paperwork together so it’s just a matter of sitting down and entering it all into my tax software.

The first income taxes in the U.S were imposed with the Revenue Act of 1861 to help pay for the Civil War.  That was a flat 3% tax on all incomes over $800 and was rescinded in 1872.

The 16th Amendment to the U.S Constitution was ratified in 1913 cleared the way to the federal tax system we know today.  The 16th Amendment states:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

You can read a full history of taxation in the U.S. on Wikipedia – and now that we know the history of our income taxes, I better get to work!

Do you have your taxes filed or are you a procrastinator too?  Let me know in the comments!

Yesterday was April Fools Day, a date that is a famous first!  Mother Nature sure pulled a good prank yesterday with cold and snow across a large portion of the U.S. but do you know how the tradition of pranks of April 1st got started?

If your answer is no, you’re in good company – nobody really knows where the tradition came from.  Here are a few of the theories:

• A switch from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar in the 16th century changed the first day of the year from April 1 to January 1.  So people that missed the change were “fooled” and the pranks grew out of that.
• Another possibility is that it grew out of the Greco-Roman festival of Hilaria which was celebrated following the spring equinox and featured masquerades and pranks.
• Some even say April Fools has a Biblical origin – in a 1769 edition of The London Public Advertiser, the following explanation for April Fools was printed:
  • The mistake of Noah sending the dove out of the ark before the water had abated, on the first day of April, and to perpetuate the memory of this deliverance it was thought proper, whoever forgot so remarkable a circumstance, to punish them by sending them upon some sleeveless errand similar to that ineffectual message upon which the bird was sent by the patriarch.

No matter how it started, there have been some epic pranks pulled in the name of April Fools Day – click here to see a list of some of the most famous.  What is the best prank you’ve ever pulled or had had pulled on you?  Let me know in the comments!

Just in time for Easter Weekend – FUNNY BUNNIES!

Happy Easter to all who celebrate!

The musical Hamilton put me on an American history kick.  I’ve read the Ron Chernow biography of Alexander Hamilton and have biographies of George Washington and John Adams on my reading list right now.  But have you ever heard of the Coercive Acts?

The Coercive Acts – also known as the Intolerable Acts – were passed by the British parliament 244 years ago this week in response to the Boston Tea Party.  This response consisted of 4 major acts:

• The Boston Port Act which closed down the port of Boston until such time as order was restored and the colonists repaid the Crown for damages of the 342 chests of tea destroyed in the Boston Tea Party.
• The Massachusetts Government Act took away the Massachusetts colony charter and restricted town meetings to one per year.  It also turned  the Governor’s Council and almost all government roles into royal appointments rather than elected positions.
• The Administration of Justice Act making British officials immune to any criminal prosecution in the Massachusetts colony.  This was accomplished by giving the Governor the ability to move any trial out of the colony – even back to England.  And in those days, long distance travel was an prohibitively expensive affair when you factored in time away from fields and businesses.
• The Quartering Act requiring the housing or quartering of British troops on demand – even in colonists’ private homes.

The British Parliament thought that these measures would isolate the radical Sons of Liberty but boy were they wrong.  The harshness of the measures brought actually brought the colonies together and instigated the committees of correspondence that lead to our First Continental Congress and then the Revolution.

Want to know more?  Check out the Wikipedia article on the Intolerable Acts.

My gym recently put in a Vibration Plate.  It’s a platform that vibrates side to side, back to front and up/down while you work out on it.  I played on it for a couple of minutes the other day and it made me laugh – all I could think about was those crazy vibrating exercise machines with the belt on them from old TV shows!  But it also made me curious about just exactly how I should use it and what its benefits are.

According to Livestrong.com, a vibrating plate makes you constantly tense/relax your muscles to maintain your balance so you get greater muscle activation with every movement you make.   So you can get results with a shorter workout.  Sign me up right?

The gym trainers and all the articles I’ve read recommend doing traditional strength, flexibility and core exercises on the plate like squats, lunges, push ups, hamstring stretches and planks.  The trick is to start with low vibration and repetitions and work your way up since the plate increases the intensity of every move you do.  Most articles recommend starting with 10 minutes and working your way up to 30 minute sessions.

I’m sold!  Can’t wait to try the machine out now that I know more about it!

Do you want to know more?  Check out these articles:

• Home Fitness Guru
• Livestrong.com
• Fitday.com

 

Last week I told you I’m a firm believer in to-do lists.  And sitting here staring at the calendar ready to turn to April, I’ve started my Spring Cleaning To-Do list.  This may be one of my favorite lists of the year because I actually like to clean.

So bring on the summer furniture arrangement, washing windows and cleaning carpets!  This year, I’m adding another chore – I’m doing a Rejuvenate treatment to my wood floors.

The floor by the windows in my dining room has gotten sun-faded and I found a product on Amazon to fix that!  I’ve already tested it on a little piece of the floor and it worked.  So now it’s time to move out the table and chairs, roll up the rug and get busy with the whole floor.  I can’t wait to see it in its restored glory!

Want to try Rejuvenate yourself?  Check it out on Amazon.

Let me know what your favorite Spring Cleaning chore is in the comments!

For a lot of my friends, Spring Break is all about college tours.  And that got me thinking about which college was the first one established in the United States.  I thought it was the College of William & Mary – but I was wrong.

The oldest college in the United States is actually Harvard.  Founded in 1636 by the “Great and General Court of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England” and chartered in 1650, the college didn’t gain the name Harvard until 1639.  The name Harvard came from the minister John Harvard who bequeathed his own library (all 400 books) to the institution. In recognition of John Harvard’s bequest, the Great and General Court ordered “that the colledge agreed upon formerly to bee built at Cambridg shalbee called Harvard Colledge.”

John Harvard’s bequest is just part of the Harvard Library which is the largest academic library in the world.  Today, the library is home to 20.4 million volumes, an estimated 400 million manuscript items, 10 million photographs, 124 million archived web pages, and 5.4 terabytes of born-digital archives and manuscripts.

Today, there are approximately 22,000 students at Harvard – and the annual cost for the 2016-2017 academic year without financial aid was $43,280 for tuition and $63,025 for tuition, room, board, and fees combined.  Fortunately for you parents, more than half of students receive scholarship aid with the average grant amount at $50,000.  In fact, Harvard distributes more than $170 million in financial aid annually!  Want to know how much it would cost for you to send a student to Harvard?  Check the calculator here.

If you’re one of the people on tour this week, good luck finding a school that will give you the education and college experience you’ll love!

Here’s your Friday Funny – hope you don’t have to work this hard to get out today!