Monday, October 20, 2008 1 Comments
Category: algonac, racing, chris craft, makers

Who built the best wooden motor boats in the whole universe? Well, at least according to me, Christopher Columbus Smith did. His boat works were on the shore of the St. Clair River, in Algonac, Michigan, 40 miles from Detroit.

In 1911, one of his first motorboats hit a top speed of 7 miles per hour. But by 1919, Smith's Miss America set a world record speed of 76.65 mph. Chris Smith boats frequently won the American Power Boat Association Gold Cup, once for six years in a row.

You'll recognize a Chris Craft boat as soon as you see one. Varnished mahogany, riding low in the water, fat but sleek in the way designs were, before "streamlining" became the sought-after look in product design.

Friday, September 12, 2008 2 Comments
Category: chelsea, civil war, jeff daniels

Here's a fun fact. The actor, Jeff Daniels, (Dumb and Dumber, Terms of Endearment) lives in Chelsea, Michigan with his family. And when he's not making movies, he goes on the road with his guitar and plays small, sold-out venues.

Like the one in Rockford back in January 08. He introduced many of the songs he wrote, along with the story of their origin – usually some impossible situation in which he was the fall guy to the absurd pranks of life. Hardy to Life's Laurel. Curly to Life's Moe. Matt Foley, Motivational Speaker, to life's indignities.

And then on a more serious note, he finished with his version of the traditional Civil War-era song, “Michigan, My Michigan” – it raised goosebumps!

Monday, September 08, 2008 0 Comments
Category: school, summer, Lissie, fall, vegetarian

It's feeling like fall at night now. That cool, not-quite-cold feeling after the heat of the day, that leaves heavy dew on the long grasses in the foggy dawn. Suddenly, you can smell skunks at night, and geese are restless, banding into small family groups, groaning, flying at the hieght of the trees. (Correction: height!)

The sycamores lost some leaves as they do every August, and the air is heavy with their dry, dusty smell. Ashes are dropping their compound stems, green walnuts hit -- thock -- on the garage roof and roll with a soft thump to the ground.

Maybelline is on high alert, pacing the porch and barking at the merest rustle. I lean out of the sunroom windows, urgently, to shush her. Upstairs, Lissie is thinking about school; she dreams of it, twisting in her bed, frowning, puzzled in sleep.

She is not ready for this summer's end, not ready for the banging locker doors and the greeting cries of her tribe, to which she reluctantly returns, half-looking backward, wondering how it could be over, be starting over.

Steam rises from the hot lunch, clouding the sneeze guard. Vegetarian lunches cost less.

Monday, August 25, 2008 6 Comments
Category: Health, michigan, new blog, name change

Hello, faithful readers. I am going to change the direction of my blog to something that I’m more qualified to speak about than Health. After all, while I deal with health copy and talk to the health experts, my innate knowledge is not deep enough to serve anyone well.

I like to serve well. So, I’m going where my talent and interests lie – in writing about Michigan. Hope you enjoy reading these entries as much as I’ll enjoy writing them!

Look for these changes in about 2 weeks. And the new blogname? My Michigan.

Monday, April 21, 2008 11 Comments
Category: sucralose, trim advantage, twist tubes, simply nutrilite, protein snack bars, xs energy drinks, dragonfruit, orange

Ted J. from Product Information reminded me that there's a tradeoff for everything. If we don't use sucralose, we'll have a product with higher caloric, carbohydrate, and sugar values and not all consumers want that. He also wanted me to mention that the following products are the only ones with sucralose.

• Trim Advantage Protein Snack Bars
• Simply Nutrilite Twist Tubes
• Nutrilite Sports Drink -- Sugar-Free Orange and Sugar-Free Dragonfruit
• XS Energy Drinks

Questions? Comments? Opinions? Let me know!

Monday, April 21, 2008 2 Comments
Category: EU, carcinogen, sweeteners, sucralose, FDA, WHO, scientific committee on food for the european commission, trim advantage, sugar, sugar-free, neurological, reproductive, stevia

Friday, April 11, 2008 3 Comments
Category: 7 habits, masala, kingslake & crane, rajma, nutrient, granola, pillar, covey, macro, 8 pillars

Has anyone out there been as plagued as I am by perfectionism? I could have written 65 posts by now if I hadn't been so focused on downloading pix from my camera to my 'puter to flickr to this site...then failing to get the results I wanted and giving up...ACK!

So, perfectionism. Not one of the 7 habits or the 8 pillars, believe me!

All this week, I've been working on the first habit (Covey) and one of the 8 pillars (Dr Duke).

Habit 1: Be proactive. That is, notice how much you do that you position as a "have to" instead of a "want to, choose to, like to, will..." Well, noticing is the first step.

I noticed that I really frame most things as a "have to," and judge myself a failure accordingly. Not using the power of the positive there! Room for lots and lots of great improvements. So, as of today, I choose to be more intentional, more proactive, and more positive.

The pillar I've been working on is my macronutrients. And I'm in pretty good shape there. I am lucky to love fruits and vegetables, I mean LOVE them. And though I've lapsed from it recently, my daughter's vegetarianism has significantly reduced the quantity of meat products (AGH meat "products"???) in our house.

Cuts the grocery bill significantly, reduces the aerosolized fats from frying that can make cleaning kitchen surfaces such drudgery, and makes doing the dishes a simpler affair.

Let's walk around the USDA's pyramid:

Whole grains? Stoned wheat thins (Thanks, Canada!); great Michigan-made granola that includes almonds, pecans, and dried cherries; and Brownberry sprouted wheat bread. You hadn't guessed I grew up in the 50s and 60s? Well, at least it improved my dietary habits!

Veggies and fruits covered above, except I didn't mention smoothies. Just frozen fruit blended at hi speed with a splash of juice. Yum.

Calcium. That's the tough one. I'm lactose intolerant. Oh, look! Ice-cream counts as calcium. Saved in the nick of time, again.

Protein....somewhat lacking. The occasional burger (when DD isn't home to be repelled), and beans -- either Rajma Masala (thanks, Kanti and Lata!) or pinto, kidney, or black, boiled til soft, then mashed. It sounds gross, but it's just refried beans w/o the frying. Excellent on tortillas, with muenster cheese and a spoonful of scrambled egg. 

<breaking for lunch, stomach growling...>

Actually, that's where I hit the big snafu. I don't eat a big breakfast, a smaller lunch, a minuscule dinner. I don't eat six or more small meals a day, unless Hershey's Hugs and billy-can coffee count. I start with carbs and end the day with one big meal (no lectures, please. We're fighting perfectionism here!) and that's really not good. So, I'll add that to my 'big rocks" for next week's repeat of habit 1.

Habit 1 again? Well, yea. I'm not going to # 2 til I'm perfect on # 1!

Friday, April 04, 2008 15 Comments

Would you be interested in a simple way to get your newest IBOs selling Nutrilite and XS products?

What if it cost just $79, qualified them for Quixtar Business Incentives, and offered free shipping?

What if it included 58 product samples, all attractive to retail customers?

What if there were a profitability calculator they could use to figure out how to make back the cost of the kit, set monthly sales goals, or decide how many customers they'd need for profitability?

Do you think your IBOs would be interested in it? I hope so!

It's the new Health Sales Kit, on advance order right now, and shipping in April.

Take a look at the product page and let me know what you think.

Friday, March 28, 2008 3 Comments
Category: Spring, gene, sandhill, crane, ornithology, walkerville, cornell

OK, just have to slip in one more blog. The Sandhill Cranes are flying north already...calling from what seems like miles up. Until you've heard their cries, you haven't heard what wild can truly be.

I've been to Walkerville and watched as family groups of 3--10 birds with 6' wingspans (2m) fly, bugling, just feet above my car, parked on the soft dirt shoulder, not even a whistle through their wings, to land over the treeline in an old corn field the area farmers leave littered with fallen stalks all winter.

How old is that hill? How old is this route? How old is the DNA of those birds? What a lovely world we are given to live in and share!

Friday, March 28, 2008 17 Comments
Category: gensona, personalized health, interleukin, health questionnaire, gene

rdknyvr has brought up an excellent point. Gensona Genetic tests vanish from view shortly after purchase, at a rate of 25 to 40% each month. Where do they all go?

They don't get redeemed at Interleukin Labs, that's for sure! Is it possible that people are buying them...and then just forgetting they did?

If you have ever sold even a single Gensona Genetic Test Kit, drop me a line and let me know: What's the story? Have you taken your test? Have you sent it in? Did you get the results? Did you enter them into the online Health Questionnaire? Let us know what's broken, let us know if you have ideas for fixing things. Send an email to nutrilite.products@quixtar.com I promise I'll read every one of them.

Thank you all so much for this dialogue!

Friday, March 28, 2008 0 Comments
Category: Optimal Health, 7 habits, M.D., Duke Johnson

Hey Carole, thanks for asking. Sorry for the shorthand...I assume (we know what that results in) that everyone is inside my head, thinking along with me.

My previous post was an on-the-fly reference to the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, a three-day workshop that I just finished up yesterday (Thursday). I was mocking myself for devaluing the course indirectly, last year when I was practicing blogging in the "sandbox." And I was acknowledging that I'd been wa-a-a-ay off base to criticize it.

And since my previous blogs had been indirectly referring to Dr. Duke's eight pillars of Optimal Health, I probably confused everyone. So thanks for pointing that out!

Since the Seven Habits are all about personal and interpersonal improvement -- including taking care of our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health, it's an eminently reasonable topic for a blog called "Best of You."

Hope the majority of readers agree with that approach, since this is not the last time I'll push and test what the "Best of You" may include.

Carole, hope that answer helped and I apologize again for the confusion!

Wednesday, March 26, 2008 10 Comments

Last year, when I practiced blogging in our "sandbox," I made some snarky remarks about the 7 habits, exposing my ignorance by assuming they were targeted at people who wanted to manage their time better and implying I was a lost cause in that skill area. Wow! Was I wrong, and boy, do I love it when that happens.

Seriously, what better way to really learn than to come face to face with the depth of your own ignorance? A little ignorance is easy to gloss over or fix on the fly. Something you can take in stride is just a minor course correction. Turn the steering wheel a little, and keep on driving. But to be flat-out wrong -- and come face-to-face with it? That's a full stop sign at a busy intersection. My turn signal's on and the engine is ticking over. Clutch pedal's in, I'm in first gear, and my foot's on the gas. Looking both ways...

Thursday, March 20, 2008 3 Comments
Category: Health, sales, training, ILT

Alison, funny you should post on this topic today...I wanted to, as well.

I attended the "Healthy Business" Instructor-led Training (ILT) session yesterday, and it blew my doors off!

Sure, part of that was the presenter, Chip Wall, who has 11 years' experience training IBOs in the field for Quixtar and a phenomenal on-stage presence. He's funny, engaging, smart, attentive to learners' concerns, and able to illustrate his points with anecdotes.

It doesn't hurt that he's usually the butt of his own stories, which quickly reduces any perceived distance from his audience, making them sympathetic and open to remembering what he says.

But what about the content? It's great, no matter who's presenting, as Alison's blog will tell you. And on her blog, you’ll find what probably matters most to you: what other IBOs think and feel after taking the Healthy Business course.

Me, I’m just sending a shout-out to Alison's awesome team for setting the stage and upping the ante for the rest of us!

Sunday, March 16, 2008 5 Comments
Category: Optimal Health, grand valley state university, exercise, youth, age, teen

It's that time of year when I shake off the icy doldrums and get amped for spring. I don't need no XS, honey, I'm revved enough.

And when I'm in the mood to move, I move! Just joined the fitness center at my alma mater. It has who-knows-how-many square feet of fieldhouse and pool, with approx. 2.4 billion machines that you can do anything on. And enough basketball courts so I don't have to hang at the edges waiting for the horde of men to tromple down to the other end b4 I can sneak in a shot.

My DD is 14 and finally interested in exercise, so we go together and boy, is that fun! Secret agenda: Get her interested in all the opps. available to the college-bound, shake her loose from the grip of this materialistic cohort she hangs with who think ain't is in the dict., and had went is, too, and that high-school graduation and MySpace are just about the pinnacle of any smart person's career. <: - O

Like most kids, DD will try anything and that makes me reach beyond my comfort zone. The classic youth/age dichotomy. And I hear it from myself that nanosecond after it escapes my lips: Wise old person speaks from the summit of experience>yawn<.

For the last year she's been trying to tell me, sometimes not so subtly, it's time to make way for this young duckling. She's gonna cross that road -- bcs it's there. I can chase her up and down the sidewalk all I want to, but eventually she's going over, no matter how many cars are coming.

I guess it always comes too soon, long before you can imagine you're done inculcating your values.

Good thing exercise helps with stress management!

Tuesday, March 11, 2008 2 Comments
Category: air, michigan

I live just 40 minutes from Lake Michigan, my inland sea, and I get out there whenever possible, in air so fresh and cold you think it'll shear your throat if you breathe it in too quickly.

There's no season I don't love that lake, no time of day or night it doesn't tug at me to get as close to it as I can, to walk in it, swim in it, to lie down in it and be rocked by the waves.

I'm lucky to have two great friends who live on the shore, whose houses are open to me with no reservation required. So I can camp out, sit on their decks, walk the wild edges in winter, when the shore ice forms. I can watch the windsurfers, the bald eagles, the hummingbirds in summer. The coppery sunsets in the fall. And the migrators that hug the shore as they travel northward to Canada, starting in about...two weeks.

In the winter, on a good long cold one like this one's been, shore ice forms, great massive layers of sand and spume and solid green, massing on mass, a seasonal sedimentary history of storm and sun and calm and wind. It piles up and makes a solid surface on which you can walk hundreds of yards out from shore. And when you come near the edge, the torn and ragged water slaps upward at you, sucking from under, spraying, lifting toward your bare perch like the oily breach of a whale, dropping, to roll the ice balls under, building, dripping, tearing down. You can't help wondering how long you'd last if the edge gave way, if you fell twenty feet down into that opaque slush, how anyone would pull you out; how cold it would be, for how long.

The lake is greedy, taking swimmers and divers and boaters and fishers, all year long, the innocent and experienced alike. One moment of inattention, standing too close to the edge, swimming near the breakwaters, discovering there is an undertow, staying out on the lake in a sudden storm. But she's gentle, too, shallow water over deep sugar sand, warmed in the sun, a place of family frolic and teenage trysts. A full moon setting, Venus on her shoulder, a freighter on the horizon, a storm blowing in from the west...the air as fresh as it comes.

Any day you're bored, just look through the Grand Haven Beach cam,  to see what the shoreline looks like now.

Kudos to josh and Tom, who guessed right: 33 is the number of homes I've lived in. Going to have to make it harder. Which of these is the correct statement?

1. I have visited or lived in all but 4 U.S. states.
2. I have attended 4 colleges.
3. I have studied 4 languages.
4. I have visited 4 foreign countries.