In the News

A 10-year old girl from Puebla, Mexico, gave birth to a baby boy last week. (Bad news: Mom's only 10. The good news -- at least she'll have someone to ride the bus with!)

A California mother is in trouble this morning after locking her daughter in the closet for six hours after bringing home bad grades (that's something I used to beg my mom to do before dad got home!)

A new study found that marriages in which both spouses were on the same page financially were 10 to 15% happier than those who had no plan. In other words, materialistic husband and wives don't last. (translation: Hollywood)

Doctors are now suggesting that every child be tested for high cholesterol as early as age 9. (No bike helmets; drank straight from the garden hose; sat on our dad's lap at age 2 while he was driving; and no cholesterol test -- it's amazing we all made it this far!)

Life

The 10 Things We Hate About the Holidays

Yes, this is a study out of the UK, but there's a good chance we can agree on them all, except #8, of course...

#10 Christmas TV
#9 Carols
#8 The Queens Speech
#7 The Cost
#6 Everything
#5 True meaning of Christmas is lost
#4 Commercialization
#3 None of them -- I LOVE Christmas!
#2 Early Christmas hype
#1 Crowded shops and malls

source

You Can't Live Here: Where Would You Go?

A Harris Interactive poll asked Americans if they had to choose, what state would be their 2nd choice to call home... This is the first year in 8 that California did not take the top spot. Here are the top 5:

#5 Colorado
#4 Texas
#3 Florida
#2 California
#1 Hawaii

Source

Relationships

8 Texting Mistakes Guys Make

This list is from a blogger's personal experience dating a guy that started out promising, but then quickly went south by the text messages he started sending. Here's a list of "Sam's" infractions:

#1) General Psycho Behavior - Sam immediately texted her this - "Good morning beautiful" as soon as he woke up. She thought it was a bit over the top

#2) Seizing Poetic License on Pet Names - The nickname "beautiful" should not be used after only one date

#3) Text Novels - Extremely long text messages, maybe 3 to 5 in a row.

#4) over-Aggressive Texting - Giving too little time to answer the text before another was sent

#5) Forcing a Date - Demanding another date before the weekend

#6) Making a Woman Feel Wrong For How She Feels - When she said he was coming on strong, he argued that he wasn't a game player

#7) Inadvertent Insults - He said he was a "grown man" interested in a relationship, making her feel like she was only out playing the field.

#8) Hubris and Glibness - When he got the idea that he wasn't going to see her again, he texted that he "never had this happen before." What a stud.

Question: Have we lost the fine art of making a phone call? So much can be read into a text or email that there's a good chance whatever you meant to say will be lost in translation. What should NEVER be texted?

Joke of the Day

A husband and wife were driving down a country lane on their way to visit some friends. They came to a muddy patch in the road and their car got stuck.
After a few minutes of trying to get the car out by themselves, they saw a young farmer coming down the lane driving some oxen in front of him. He stopped when he saw the couple in trouble and offered to pull the car out of the mud for $50. The husband accepted and minutes later the car was free.
The farmer turned to the husband and said, "You know, you're the tenth car I've helped out of the mud today."
The husband took a look around at the fields incredulously and asked the farmer, "When do you have time to plow your land? At night?"
"No," the young farmer replied seriously, "Night is when I flood the road."

Surf This

Need incentive to lay off the sweets this holiday season? Throw FatBooth on your iPhone or Android. FatBooth shows you a picture of you with a 'few' extra pounds. It's 99 cents for iTunes; free for Android.