Good with Coffee... 
January 16, 2010 ~ Next update February 

Sacramento – California has had a "Move Over, Slow Down" law for several years.  The law that took effect January 1, 2010 made it permanent and added Caltrans trucks to the list of vehicles you must make way for, which includes police cars, fire engines, ambulances and tow trucks.  If you see an emergency vehicle on the side of a highway with lights flashing, you must slow down and move into an adjacent lane if it is safe to do so.  The fine for violating this law is around $146, with one point on your driving record.

View video clip: Move Over America

Coffee plants are fussy! : ) They grow only near the equator - between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer. They need fertile soil, no frost and most of the best coffees are grown in mountainous regions between 4,000 and 6,000 feet above sea level. The gourmet coffee growing regions of the world are the Americas, Africa, Arabia and Indonesia.

Zicam ~ Thanks to Mr. Richard DeBiaso

If you missed this warning this past June, please read it today.

FDA Advises Consumers Not To Use Certain Zicam Cold Remedies
Intranasal Zinc Product Linked to Loss of Sense of Smell

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today advised consumers to stop using three products marketed over-the-counter as cold remedies because they are associated with the loss of sense of smell (anosmia). Anosmia may be long-lasting or permanent.

The products are:
    --Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Gel
    --Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Swabs
    --Zicam Cold Remedy Swabs, Kids Size (a discontinued product)

Details on FDA warning about Zicam

Friendship Among Women ~ Thanks to Ms. Uzma Fatima Husaini

UCLA STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG WOMEN
By Gale Berkowitz

A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are.

Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research~most of it on men~upside down.

"Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible. It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers."

Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just "fight or flight." "In fact it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the "fight or flight" response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and produces a calming effect.

"This calming response does not occur in men," says Dr. Klein, "because testosterone~which men produce in high levels when they're under stress ~seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen", she adds,"seems to enhance it."

 "There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded," says Dr. Klein." When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own.

 Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research,scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for our health.

The "tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. "There's no doubt," says Dr. Klein, "that friends are helping us live." In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends increased their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death by more than 60%.

Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or confidantes was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight!

And that's not all! When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends  were not always so fortunate.

Yet if friends counter the stress, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them? (Three Rivers Press, 1998). "Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women," explains Dr. Josselson.

"We push them right to the back burner. That's really a mistake because women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they're with other women. It's a very healing experience."

 http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=jEjUAnPc2VA 

Birth of the Blues ~ Thanks to Ms. Esther Snyder

For people over age 50...

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=VPH0-g25Vl8

Only in Texas ~ Thanks to Mr. John Lopez

New York Lawyer VS Texas Deputy...

A lawyer runs a stop sign and gets pulled over by a sheriff's deputy. He thinks that he is smarter than the deputy because he is a lawyer from New York and is certain that he has a better education then any cop from Texas . He decides to prove this to himself and have some fun at the Texas deputy's expense.

The deputy says, "License and registration, please."

"What for?" says the lawyer.

The deputy says, "You didn't come to a complete stop at the stop sign."

Then the lawyer says, "I slowed down, and no one was coming."

"You still didn't come to a complete stop, Says the deputy. License and registration, please."

The lawyer says, "What's the difference?"

"The difference is you have to come to complete stop, that's the law. License and registration, please!" the Deputy repeats.

Lawyer says, "If you can show me the legal difference between slow down and stop, I'll give you my license and registration; and you give me the ticket. If not, you let me go and don't give me the ticket."

"That sounds fair. Please exit your vehicle, sir," the deputy says.