Telling It Like It Is

Are parents obligated to pay college tuition for their kids to attend college? Should parents pay for college or should college students be responsible for paying college related expenses including tuition, with or without their parents help? The question of who pays for college continues to be a controversial (sometimes heated) debate between kids planning to attend college, and their parents.

Parents, are you responsible for paying your kids college education or not? If parents are supposed to pay for college, how much should parents pay towards tuition, books, housing costs, transportation, gas, insurance, food, clothing, entertainment and miscellaneous expenses for college? Where do parents draw the line between helping kids attend college and not jeopardizing their savings and retirement accounts? To say that your retirement plans are more important than your children’s college funds is putting it mildly.
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When planning a modern wedding, who pays for what? In decades past, because of the old tradition of dowry, the bride’s family traditionally paid for most or all the wedding costs. “Traditionally”, around the 17th or 18th century, the brides mother and/or father would pay for everything needed for the wedding and reception, including the venue (location of wedding/reception), bridal gown, music, flowers, venue, food, bar costs, gratuities and anything else. Then they also give a generous wedding gift to the happy newly married couple. However, times have changed.

Nowadays, it is very common for the bride and groom to pay for all or most wedding expenses themselves, or to more evenly split the wedding related expenses among both sets of parents. Why have the traditional rules of who pays for what in weddings changed, and how should engaged couples, parents and families deal with the more modern view of wedding etiquette in relation to the wedding budget and the question of who will be paying for the cost of the wedding?
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For people that drink as much coffee as we do, our recent experience with a single serve coffee maker in our hotel room during our Chicago vacation created temporary disappointment. I can only guess as to why hotels choose to provide hotel guests with one-cup coffee machines versus one that brews more than one cup of coffee at a time, but we weren’t impressed.

The moment we checked into our hotel room and saw the tiny coffee making appliance sitting on the counter at the hotel we stayed at, we knew we weren’t going to make it through our entire vacation trip with that silly looking coffee maker. We made a beeline to the nearest store and bought a cheap, black 12-cup automatic coffee maker that was sitting all by itself on a discount clearance shelf for just ten dollars.
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I have been a Skype user for a long time now, keeping in contact with friends and family living in the U.S and abroad. One of my family members lives in Spain, and having Skype to at least instant message or chat while on different time zones has been great. Email only does so much, but Skype is better. While instant messaging with Skype helps keep me closely connected with family and friends who don’t live nearby, instant messaging on Skype isn’t enough for me anymore.

I’ve known about webcams for Skype but hadn’t taken the time to learn how to use Skype with a webcam, and I needed to find out more about choosing a good webcam to use with Skype. I’ve heard there is a way to use a digital camera with Skype too, but using Skype on my home computer with a webcam is all that matters to me at this point.
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Are you stuck in a rut in your relationship with your husband or wife? Are you ready to get out of the rut you’re in and put some fire back into your marriage? Is your marriage lacking emotional intimacy, where you feel like your marriage to your spouse has become routine and boring? Are you in a sex starved marriage? Do you ever ask yourself “how do I get out of a rut in my relationship with my partner or spouse?”

If you’ve been feeling sad or depressed that your marriage seems to have become a boring, monotonous routine lifestyle that never changes, it probably means you are stuck in a rut. A relationship rut. It’s time you get out of the rut you’re in, spice things up a bit and reestablish intimacy, friendship, fun and sex in your marriage.
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Every year, as our wedding anniversary approaches, we always check to find what the anniversary gift timetables show as being the traditional and modern anniversary gifts for each year. We celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary on January 25, 2010 and according to the tables and charts, the traditional gift idea is wool or copper.

The modern anniversary gift for a seventh anniversary is desk sets. Hmm, seems as though the traditional anniversary gifts would be somewhat more romantic. The idea of giving or getting a desk set as an alternative anniversary gift didn’t appeal to either one of us.
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Although 72 percent of Americans have fillings, caps or crowns and one in six had a dental emergency during the past 12 months, most are not prepared to deal with dental care emergencies, according to a recent survey conducted by Majestic Drug Company, a leading provider of oral care products.

Interestingly, in the national survey of 1,000 Americans, those with a lower income (less then $35,000) were more likely to have had a dental emergency in the past 12 months (vs. 14 percent of those who make $100,000 or more).

Of those who had a dental emergency, 23 percent involved a loose crown or cap, 10 percent involved a lost filling, while 72 percent said their dental emergency involved something else.
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Having continuous cell phone problems with our previous cell phones lead us to look into the difference between the Blackberry smartphone and the iPhone. We were both desperate to find the best cell phone and cell phone plan to fit our needs. Choosing a smart phone like the iPhone or Blackberry Bold or Curve, deciding which was the best, was a difficult decision to make.

After carefully reviewing many of the cheaper cell phones on the market and knowing what our needs are for business and personal use, we ultimately decided that we both needed a good quality smart phone. But which one? The iPhone or the Blackberry? If we decided on a Blackberry vs. an Apple iPhone, what is the best Blackberry cell phone? Is it the Blackberry Curve, the Palm, the Storm, the Pearl, the Tour, or the Blackberry Bold?

We both spent a lot of time reading iPhone reviews from current users, and it was interesting to learn that there has been numerous complaints from female iPhone users who have long fingernails. Apparently a lot of women aren’t very happy about how the iPhone design makes it difficult to type on the iPhone touch screen keypad, and that women with long fingernails or “chunky fingers” are hankering for a stylus to use with their iPhones.

I thought it was kind of funny that some women were accusing Steve Jobs and Apple, the maker of the brand spanking new Apple iPad device, of being “misogynistic” due to the fingernail problem. It’s pretty ridiculous to expect every geeky gadget or electronic device to match every possible user, long fingernails or not, and I have no problem trimming or cutting back my nails in order to not have the problem with my smartphone.
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What are some cheap and fun things to do during family vacations to Chicago? Anyone who has been to Chicago during the winter months knows that taking a Chicago vacation requires bundling up with warm winter clothes to offset the cold, blustery, freezing temperatures and winds from the Windy City. There are a lot of fun and cheap things to do in and outside of Chicago, indoors and outdoors, including things to do in the suburbs for families, kids and adults of all ages.

Looking for fun things to do in Chicago during the summer or winter? Chicago has a lot to offer tourists and vacationers throughout the year with favorite places including museums, parks, indoor and outdoor swimming, golf courses and mini-golf courses, family entertainment centers, live theater, ice skating, comedy clubs, festivals, art galleries, restaurants, working farms and orchards, amongst thousands of other Chicago attractions.

Whether you take a vacation to Chicago in the spring, summer, fall or winter months, make sure you plan your itinerary to include the popular places in downtown Chicago and in the suburbs north, west, east and south of the city. Coupons, discount tickets and pass cards like the Go Card help a lot to reduce the overall costs of a vacation trip and tours around Chicago, or anywhere else you want to go.
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Ever since I published the 30 Day Sex Challenge, I’ve heard from quite a few women who say they don’t want to have sex with their husbands, while offering a large number of reasons why they don’t want to have sex. I’ve also heard from a number of men who want more sex with their wife but can’t seem to figure out why the sex isn’t happening as frequently as these guys would like. “Is having sex once every 3-9 months normal?”, one husband asked.

“I don’t want to have sex” and “she doesn’t want to have sex” were the common subject titles from women and men who are reporting sexual dysfunction and low libido in their marriages. Most, if not all, were asking “is it normal” to not want to have sex very often (or at all), and what possible reasons there might be for their wives to not be interested in having sex. They also wanted to know how often married couples are “supposed to have sex” to keep the fire alive in their marriage, and some wives reported their husbands “weren’t doing it right”. Ouch.

It came as somewhat of a surprise to me that some women said their husbands don’t know how to please a woman in bed and can’t bring her to orgasm, but these same women admit to never (ever) telling or showing their husbands what they want or need in bed to be completely satisfied sexually. Really? Come on, ladies, it works both ways. Men aren’t mind readers and most men DO want to please their wives in bed, but if you have never talked with your husband about your personal desires or sexual needs, communication in your marriage is a problem to work on. Today.
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