With a little preparation and research, you can tour major cities for next to nothing.
We recently toured New Your City and Washington DC with a cousin from Estonia. We had a limited budget and found some cheap ways of getting around the cities.
Here are some ways you can save substantial money:
Find a friend or relative who lives in the area that you are visiting and ask to stay with them.
Use reward points from credit or debit cards to get a room for free that serves breakfast.
Buy a MetroCard or transportation card that gives you unlimited public transportation rides for one price. In New York, I purchased a card that allowed me to ride unlimited on the train and bus for $7.50 per day.
Go to restaurants that are self serve. Dining as opposed to eating will coast you alot of money. Example are Subways or places where you can get a salad that you fix yourself.
Get a list of all of the free attractions and museums in the city you are in and put together a plan to visit them.
We were able to tour New York City and Washington DC for less than $30 per day per person.
What ways have you found to save money on your travels?
People who do not respect your personal boundaries do not care about you. Life is too short and there are enough nice people to have to deal with people who sap your energy.
There are people at work or in your life that continuosly do things to rock your boat and piss you off. You want to tell them what is on your mind but you do not like conflict or are afraid of ruining the relationship. There is a way of setting and enforcing your boundaries with these people.
This process calls for calmness, persistance and preparation.
Before confronting the offender, you need to decide what is the thing the other person is doing that annoys you the most. Once you have determined this, write down the times and situations when the other person did the behavior in question. Record as many details as possible about the incident. Things like when it happened, what was said and how it made you feel. The key is to have the other person hear and understand your concerns and not get defensive
Prepare for the discussion well before the actual confrontation. If helpful, script or outline the discussion following the format of listing the behavior, when it occurred and how it made you feel.
When you meet with the individual, make sure that it is in neutral territory. If it is held on your territory, the individual will feel attacked and go on the defensive. If it is held on their territory, you will lose the advantage. Get a place where both of you can relax and discuss things.
When verbalizing the points, use “I”statements. Verbalize to the person how you felt when the specific behavior occured. For example, “When that occured I felt hurt and deceived.”
If the person says that they did not do the behavior, calmly cite the specific instances that occured.
After citing the behavior, the specific times it occurred and how it made you feel, state that you will not accept the behavior any longer and if it keeps on occuring, you will be having another discussion with them.
The real test of your boundary will occur after the meeting. If the other person continues doing the discussed behavior after the meeting, call them to the side and reinforce that you will not accept this behavior and that you will continue to call them on it.
Remember that life is too short to deal with people who don’t value or respect you.
Well, I have taken the National Drivers Test and I’ll be damned if my score put me close to the average of the state I am from (New York - Last in the country) and the state I live now (North Carolina - 20th in the nation).
I scored a 75 which says that I drive like someone in New Hampshire which is in the 32nd spot.
According to the national average, if you live in New York, you are in the state that has the lowest score in the country. What this means is that you should pull over your car and walk home.
North Carolina is in the 20th spot as compared to the rest of the nation.
I was born in New York but now live in North Carolina.
What does that say about my driving?
Will my ability go down when I am in New York later in the month?
When I am in North Carolina, should I take the test on my Blackberry as I sip a Starbucks Latte while at a light? Will this moderate the positive impact of driving in North Carolina?
Kimberly Santini is an unbelievably talented painter who paints an animal portrait daily. Most of these are commissioned work and as you can see on her website, some of the portraits are painted outside of her studio.
Studies suggest that seventy percent of longevity is up to us; whether we workout regularly, what we eat, how happy we are, what our stress levels are etc. So what can we learn about healthy aging from a Greek man who recently passed away at age 114, and who spent his life on a small, Mediterranean island?
Exercise
Until age 102, he rode a bicycle every day and worked in his family’s orchards.
We all have a list of things that we want to do before we kick the bucket. The people who have pursued the things on their list have accomplished things that they did not think possible.
Having Cancer at 26 has taught me that life is a gift and also very fragile. We need to maximize our time on this earth.
The most meaningful way to experience things in life is to do it with other like minded people.
In subsequent postings, I will be posting the items on my bucket list.
I would love to hear from you if you have a similar interest or you have already done it.
Between Oprah’s show on how women are leaving their husbands and turning to other women and the changing role of men in the home and society, modern man has lost his sense of purpose and role.
Do not get me wrong. I do not condone the discriminatory practices againest women of the past. I do believe that the change in expectations and roles have caused men to lose their sense of masculinity.
At the same time that women in the 40’s and 50’s have learned to exist wthout us, females in the 27 to 37 age group have reverted to rely on men for more of the traditional functions.
The number one comment I hear when speaking to single older women is they cannot get a guy their age because the guys their age are going going out and marrying younger women.
It is not natural for a 52 year old man to marry a 30 year old woman. Why has this trend developed?
Older men have lost their place in relationships with women their own age. On the other hand, many younger women have reverted back to a form of the traditional values. They are looking for guys who know how to treat them well. They realize that if they meet a well to do older man, they will get their emotional and financial needs met.
Women in the baby boomer and X generation need to understand that the war is over. The men of today realize the wrongs of the past. Society has given women the professional and personal equality they so richly deserve.
Women need to put down their weapons and welcome men back into their lives. Women need to realize that there are men out there who are great fathers, partners, lovers and friends. Stop putting men who were raised to to have manners as a chauvanist and see the behavior for what it is. That is to show the women they love that he wants to take care of her and treat her like the gift she is.
A man needs to have an answer to the question “What is my place in this relationship?” If a man does not know how to answer this question, they will run as far and as fast as he can
The woman of today needs to realize that the man of today needs to feel like a man. That does not mean that women are to be diminished. It means that a man needs to see that he is relied upon by the women in his life.
Baby boomer and Gen X guys want to be with women who are their own age and share the same priorities. Baby boomer and Gen X guys also want to be relied on for the things that males have been hardwired to provide since the beginning of time.
How can both sexes get better so that we can live more balanced lives?
