14 Quotes About Love and Marriage

In a day and age during which couples often hear a million reasons why they shouldn’t stay together, it’s nice to hear some reasons from time to time as to why they should. Sure, marriage isn’t always easy, but to find someone who you can travel on your journey through life with is a gift. To have someone who will stand by your side as you weather life’s storms is a blessing. And to experience true love is a reason to feel joyful (and eat chocolate). This month, as we celebrate love, why not pay tribute to a union that, when entered into, is often done so with so much of it. As an ode to February 14th here are 14 quotes about marriage. Happy Valentine’s Day to those who still say “I do” every single day.

Source : http://www.babble.com/mom/14-quotes-about-love-and-marriage/#a-true-friend

2013, The Year of the Snake!: Should Expecting Parents Be Worried?

The Year of the Snake.

This Sunday marks the end of the Year of the Dragon on the Chinese calendar, which can only mean one thing: ladies and gentlemen, say hello to the Year of the Snake!

Now, that might not mean a whole lot to some of us here in the western part of the planet. But make no mistake about it, for billions of other Earthlings, especially for folks planning to be parents, there is quite a bit of thinking going on in regards to the serpent year.

See, in the tradition of the Chinese New Year, it is believed that people born under each of the twelve different individual animal signs (with subspecies chosen each year — this year it’s Water Snake) will ultimately carry certain traits that define the animal.

And so naturally, when you’re dealing with this kind of natural variety: Rat, Cow, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Chicken, Dog, Pig … you’re going to have some that are perennial favorites and some that are not so much.

An article in the New Strait Times explains that last year, being born under the sign of the Dragon was extremely coveted by legions of planning parents-to-be. In fact, it was so important to be born under that sign which is said to bring more luck and success other signs, that “the rush for a Dragon baby was so real that hospitals and maternity wards were reportedly full, even in Malaysia.”

But what about the poor old Snake?

Isn’t he as good, or even almost as good as the Dragon is?

Will babies born in this new Chinese year have a tougher time of things? After all, as an ABC.com story points out, the last two Year of the Snakes brought about some pretty bad events; 1989′s Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing and 2001′s 9/11 tragedy in New York.

But does that really mean much?

Not according to New Strait Times, which claims that  “the Snake’s inherent element is fire, thus Snake children tend to be polite, active, energetic, humble, respectful, intuitive, smart and patient. They can also be demanding and cunning.”

A  USA Today article out today claims, “People born in the year of the snake are believed to be good at business.”

And when ABC.com talked to Taiwanese astrologer Tsai Shang-chi, he told them he believes that even though “snakes were often associated with monsters…(and) some political turbulence can be expected,” he also thinks babies born under the sign of the Snake will  be “self-motivated and agile.”

Only time will tell.

Image: flickr.com/photos/ballena

Info sources: New Strait Times, ABC.com, USA Today

Disney World Vacations on a Budget

A Walt Disney World (WDW) family vacation is a big deal, and like many families we planned it for years. Okay, months. We had books. Lots of books. We visited websites. Daily. We had countdown apps on our phones and desktops. We set aside a family vacation fund to pay for the trip. We thought we had it all figured out. Top of the world, Mickey!
Here’s what we learned — we didn’t allow for everything. Shortly after we made all of the major purchases required for a trip of this magnitude I lost my biggest account at work, roughly 65% of our household income. It was, obviously, unexpected. Did I mention that the major purchases we made were non-refundable?
We had airline tickets, park tickets, and a hotel room bought and paid for, all without a paycheck in sight. The money that we had saved toward the trip now had to go toward bills. Suddenly, our air of anticipation was replaced with the foreboding of fear.  For the record, the anticipation was a lot more fun.
Luckily, we had already taken some steps to ensure that our trip was relatively sound, financially speaking. Relative being that we were planning a cross-country family vacation for four to the Walt Disney World Resort, quite possibly a once in a lifetime trip, and some corners couldn’t be cut.
Here’s how we did it:
The Flight
We were flying from Seattle, which, if you don’t have access to a map, is far from Florida. The average price for most airlines was, generally speaking, very expensive. We saved money on the flight by choosing an overnight (aka “red eye”) option for our trip to Orlando. It actually worked out quite well.
The night of the flight we boarded our plane at 10 p.m. our time, the boys were asleep within the hour and when they woke it was 7 a.m. in Orlando. They never knew what hit them.
Total cost for our family of four to fly round-trip across the country: $1,575 (including taxes, fees, and a travel insurance add-on of $16 per ticket). Could we have flown cheaper? Probably, but not by much, and doing so would undoubtedly have involved stops along the way, which are nice to avoid when traveling with children. Or ever, really.
We also saved money by packing light. We knew that our hotel room had a washer and dryer in it, so we only took a carry-on bag for each of us, and that was it—toothbrushes and swimsuits for all the family! Not having to check bags saved us at least fifty dollars per flight, and that is money better spent elsewhere.
As an added bonus, Disney offers free transportation to and from the airport for guests that are staying at one of the Walt Disney World Resorts (just one of the perks to staying on property). Anyone that has taken a 45 minute shuttle ride from an airport knows how expensive ground transportation can be, both ways, and using Disney’s Magical Express literally saved hundreds of dollars for our family of four.

The Park Tickets
Here’s the thing about buying park tickets at Walt Disney World: The more days you buy the cheaper they are. Yes, the price seems staggering at first glance. Also, at second glance. However, when you factor in what you’re getting for the buck — admission, shows, parades, rides and attractions, not to mention the characters and magic of Disney, well, I’ve paid more for less.
There are many options to consider when purchasing tickets. How many days will you be visiting the parks? Do you want to add on a Disney Dining Plan? Do you want to visit more than one park per day? What about the water parks?
We didn’t care to visit the water parks (the pool in our resort was sufficient for our young children) and we didn’t opt for a meal plan for reasons that I’ll outline later, so we chose the 9-day tickets with the Park Hopper for two adults and two children (that’s ages 3 – 9 by Disney standards, under 3 are free). The hopper part meant that we could go in and out of all four parks (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios, respectively) on any given day, which we never did. However, we did hit at least two parks every day and the hopper was a good decision for us.
The total cost for four 9-day tickets with Park Hopper (which we bought online): $1,173 (this was in 2010, so prices will vary). We had planned on spending our tenth day at a non-Disney park, but a last minute change in our itinerary kept us at Disney World, and it actually saved us money. We added a tenth day to our ticket plan for an additional $12 and some change. That’s $12 total for the four of us. Yes, as I said earlier, the more days you buy the cheaper it is, and adding another day meant that we each received a one day hopper pass for about $3 per person (retail value of an adult one day hopper pass at WDW at that time was $136).
Some of you might think 10 days at WDW sounds crazy, but we were never at a loss for things to do and we left with a huge list of things that we never had time to experience. Also, when you do the math, one big Disney vacation (including travel) is cheaper than two smaller trips. See, reasonable!

The Hotel
We are members of the Disney Vacation Club (DVC). Basically, it’s a timeshare (but Disney doesn’t use that term), and it is brilliant. My wife and I first purchased our DVC membership about 10 years ago (the day after I proposed to her). We added on to our membership just a few years later. Even before we took our trip to WDW the membership(s) had more than paid for themselves (more on that in a future post).
We  stayed at the Boardwalk Inn and Villas, which is within walking (or boating) distance from Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios (also, if you have the hopper pass you can take a nice stroll through Epcot to catch the monorail). A one-bedroom suite (sleeps four comfortably) with a full kitchen would have cost over $5,000 at that time (according to my own research), but thanks to to DVC we booked the room for no money out of pocket.

The Dining
I mentioned earlier that we did not choose to utilize a meal plan on our Disney vacation. Since we had a full kitchen (refrigerator, oven, stove, microwave) in our room we decided to use it. The first thing I did upon arrival at our hotel was take a cab to a nearby grocery store where I bought $200 worth of staple food items. I didn’t get anything fancy, but I got food that the kids would eat like sandwich supplies, macaroni and cheese, cereal, juice, and so forth and so on. I also bought some beer and wine, because hey, vacation!
I didn’t buy any treats because those were something we would get in the parks, and everyone knows that churros only taste good straight from the cart. Also, we made a point of eating one meal per day (usually breakfast or lunch as they are generally cheaper, relatively speaking) in the parks so as not to miss any of great dining options that Disney provides (and there are many).
The math on this is a bit blurry, but we have concluded that spending $200 on food and drinks to enjoy in our room saved us about $1,000 had we dined exclusively in the parks. Saving $1,000 makes macaroni and cheese taste fantastic.

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And that is how we did Walt Disney World on a budget while loving every minute of it. If you have any tips on making a Disney vacation easier on the wallet please share them in the comment section below.
The entire cost of this trip, and everything outlined above, was paid by us (the Honeas). We did not receive any compensation from Disney. Please note that all prices mentioned are from 2010 and will vary at the time of your trip. Check linked sites for current prices and information.

Source : http://www.babble.com/dad/disney-world-vacations-on-a-budget/

Duck! Close Shave with an Asteroid Coming

If you’re the type to worry, don’t click here — especially if the type of worrying you do is about things that sound really, really scary and that you have absolutely no control over. Clicking on that site you really shouldn’t click on will take you to a page on NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program website, which lists every comet or asteroid of any size at all that will be passing through Earth’s orbital neighborhood in the upcoming days, months and years. The fact is, there are a whole lot more of them than you likely know: from Feb. 5 to May 5 of this year, no fewer than 77 space rocks that could, in theory have Earth’s name on them, will be whizzing by. On March 20 alone, when you may have been planning to celebrate the first day of spring, there will be seven.

Errant space rocks, of course, can do a lot of damage. Our moon is believed to have been created when a Mars-size planetesimal sideswiped the Earth 4.5 billion years ago. The dinosaurs were all but certainly wiped out by a direct hit by a far smaller projectile 65 million years ago. As recently as June 30, 1908, an asteroid measuring up to 330 ft. (100 m) across famously exploded in the skies over the Tunguska region in Siberia, unleashing a blast with the equivalent of 30 megatons of TNT and destroying 770 sq. mi. (2,000 sq km) of forest.

(MORE: Alert Bruce Willis! Two Asteroids Pass Close to Earth)

What has a lot of cosmic worriers glancing skyward this month is the announcement that on Feb. 15, a 148-ft.-long (45 m) asteroid known as 2012 DA 14 will pass just 17,200 miles (27,7000 km) above the Earth. And if 17,200 miles sounds like a lot, consider that it’s only one-thirteenth of the distance to the moon and actually below the 22,000 miles (35,800 km) altitude at which some of our satellites orbit. That leaves awfully little margin for error in NASA’s cosmic calculations. So there’s plenty of reason to worry, yes? Well, no, actually. But making that call for any one object — knowing which space bullets are likely to hit us and which ones we’re likely to dodge — can be a complicated business.

Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are very particular things. They’re bodies that at some point in their orbit through the solar system dip within 1.3 AUs (astronomical units) from the sun. A single AU is the sun-Earth distance, or 93 million miles (150 million km), so 1.3 AU would be 121 million miles. There are untold thousands of NEOs at large — 9,668 of which have so far been counted and cataloged by NASA and other space agencies and observatories around the world. Most are comparatively small, but 861 have a diameter of at least 1 km (.62 miles), which could pack quite a wallop.

Still, just being within 1.3 AUs is only part of the danger equation. Some NEOs circle the sun either entirely within Earth’s orbit or entirely outside it, and while they may pass close by, they pose little hazard, since a collision is likely only when the orbits of two bodies cross. Others do cross Earth’s orbit with varying degrees of proximity. Of all the known objects, 1,376 are classified Potentially Hazardous Asteroids, based both on their size and on an approach distance that brings them within .05 AU, or 4.65 million miles (7.5 million km), of us.

(MORE: How to Save Earth from Killer Asteroids with a Paintball Gun)

The amount of damage an asteroid could do if it clobbered us is determined largely by its mass. Anything that’s up to 40 m (131 ft.) across or, as NASA puts it on its website, “smaller than a modest office building,” would be incinerated by the atmosphere before it hit the ground. At most, its remains would produce a blast equivalent to three megatons — very bad news for anyone in the vicinity but not the kind of Earth-cracking disaster they make bad action movies out of. Asteroids from 40 m to 1 km could do “tremendous damage on a local scale,” NASA says. A hit by a 2-km or larger asteroid would cause a million-megaton blast and “produce severe environmental damage on a global scale. The probable consequence would be an ‘impact winter’ with loss of crops worldwide and subsequent starvation and disease.”

The overall risk any one asteroid poses is calculated on what’s known as the Torino Scale, a grid with the probability of impact — from effectively zero to effectively 100% — on its x axis and the size of the object on the y. After objects are given a Torino score, they are ranked on a five-color chart — think of the department of Homeland Security’s now defunct terrorism-threat level — going from white (no hazard) through yellow (“meeting attention of astronomers”) to red (certain collision, capable of causing at least regional devastation of a kind seen only once every 10,000 to 100,000 years). And what is the Torino rating for 2012 DA 14, which will whiz by on Feb. 15? A reassuring white — or no hazard at all.

(MORE: The Great, Wet Cosmic Rock)

None of this means that the bright red rocks aren’t out there, and the world’s space agencies have a lot of smart minds working on ways to deflect or destroy them. Advanced tracking and trajectory-modeling computers allow us to know sometimes centuries in advance just where any object will be at any time. And NASA has already proved itself adept at rendezvousing with asteroids: the Dawn probe is in the midst of a multiyear asteroid pas de deux, having orbited Vesta — the second largest object in our solar system’s asteroid belt — from 2011 to 2012, then peeled off to visit Ceres, the largest, with an arrival date set for 2015. In 2001, the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft actually touched down on the asteroid Eros.

There will be no such attention paid to 2012 DA 14 when it passes, though stargazers with telescopes in Australia, Eastern Europe, Asia and especially Indonesia will be able to see it, moving south to north at an apparent speed of 1 degree per minute. The little sky show belies the dangers 2012 DA 14’s bigger, deadlier cousins pose, something that keeps NASA scientists lying awake at night — partly so that you don’t have to.

VIDEO: NASA Never Blinks: Rogue Asteroid Caught on Film

Read more: http://science.time.com/2013/02/05/duck-close-shave-with-an-asteroid-coming/#ixzz2KShy902w