Eat Less By Slowing Down and Enjoying Your Food.  Do you find yourself rushing through life? Are you always busy? If so, this could be contributing to many health problems, including weight gain. What can you do? Try slowing down a bit, especially when it comes to meal time. If you're in the habit of eating while standing or eating very quickly...You need to sit down, and slow down. Take the time to enjoy and savor your food.

It happens. An story idea I thought was important and I did the work on is blocked by a Force Divine that is yelping at me at a high rate of speed, “You gotta do this, not that.” And I say “I can’t, looky I really worked on this…” and the Force Divine says, “Save it for next week, kid. We got business here.” And I say “Yeah, but…” and I am lost before I pronounced the “t” in but.  So this is free form and we’ll see where it takes us.

Diet and exercise are important for good health, but did you know laughter is too? If you want to be as healthy as you can be, than laughter needs to be part of your healthy living regimen. Is it? Here are some of the Health Benefits of Laughter: Laughter decreases stress hormones and increases infection fighting antibodies. It increases our attentiveness, heart rate, and pulse.

I spent my first 18 years in the northern suburbs of Chicago. My family was your average mild class Jewish clan clinging to the American dream; my grandparents worked in factories, as secretaries, and skilled construction. My parents were the first generation to obtain college degrees. Vacations as I knew them involved stuffing my parents, grandparents, sister, and me into our rusted blue sedan, then driving four hours to a resort in Michigan filled with elderly Jews and mold. World travel was not something I ever expected to do.

The thing about being a Mother of the Bride who lives a couple of thousand miles away from the Bride to Be and the location of the upcoming wedding is that it causes you to spend a lot of time on the telephone. I hate the telephone (but love my iPhone.) Being a couple of thousand miles away also means that you spend a lot of time on the internet. I love the internet. Being a couple of thousand miles away also means you have to be willing to interupt your mother's surprise 65th birthday party weekend for a trip to David's Bridal.

Like it or not, we tend to be defined by our jobs. It happens with certain occupations more than others, but what we do is a big part of how others see us (and also how we see ourselves). Because of this, if you’re meeting someone for the first time, there’s a good likelihood the question of “What do you do?” will come up — especially in a dating situation.

Two weekends ago, the hills of Missouri were awash with the orange of peak autumn foilage. Today, the opening day of deer season, the state is again awash with orange, this time blaze orange, the color of safe hunting.

When you hear the word tenement it might conjure up images of dark, run down and overcrowded late 19th century apartment living. And although there were many negatives to tenement life, one aspect that always seems kind of cool to me is the notion of multiple generations of families living in the same building.

I learned something really important this week about blogging and I'm going to share this knowledge with you. Ready... Just because you have a lot to say about something doesn't mean the blog post will be easy to write. Having a lot to say about something can make it pretty darn difficult to blog. My difficult topic of the day: Christmas stockings. That's right. I'm having one heck of a time writing a post about the Christmas stockings I've known and loved. I have too much to say and not enough time or space. Forgive me if I muddle it all up and let me just start at the beginning.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the US, and in my post about it, I cited some alarming statistics. While it is horrifying that an average of one in six American women will be abused in her lifetime, it is even more outrageous that this rate doubles for women around the globe: 33% of women and girls are beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused, according to the United Nations Development Programme for Women (UNIFEM).

In the shadows of the shock and outrage over the passage of California's Proposition 8, lies the passage of a much less talked about, but equally deserving of outrage, Initiative; Arkansas Initiative Act No. 1. Initiative Act No. 1, also called the Unmarried Couple Adoption Ban, prohibits the placement of minors for adoption or foster care in homes of unmarried cohabiting couples. The initiative passed with 57% of voters voting in favor of the ban.

Meet Maria Webster, aka ubergeeke, an engineering student, geek, and chronicler of what women in tech are doing at .51. She answered some questions for me to give the BlogHer readers an opportunity to learn more about this interesting woman. Q: I noticed your blog, .51, or dotFiveOne, when you first registered at BlogHer and have been following you ever since. Your blog's tagline is "Geekspace for Women." Tell us a little about your reasons for starting the blog.