Starving For Fashion - Would We Be Better Off Fashion Starved?

Most people will be unable to comprehend the idea that a £300 PPQ cape or a Prada handbag could be worth living on beans on toast for weeks on end. Unfortunately all too many fashion conscious women will be able to identify with the 'buy now starve later' train of thought.

Most of us have experienced serious clothing temptation. Soft leather boots or a smart winter coat can tempt many a consumer, whispering at them to ignore the price tag and take it to the counter. It is hard not to get sucked in with all the beautiful clothes around. Women often start competing with friends and colleagues over how they look, pushing temptation to blow that weekly budget even further than if they were just dressing for themselves.

Skipping meals in order to buy clothes you don't need is a horrible hallmark of today's fashion victim culture. Gone are the days when our clothes are mended and darned or hand knitted or sewn. Now we have clothes bursting out of the tops, bottom and sides of our strained closets...supporting poles bending in the middle with the weight. Sound familiar? Surely there are other ways of saving money without starving? What about ditching the car in favour of a bicycle? Fashionable, eco friendly and just think of the expenses you will save with no car insurance or road tax to pay!

I am a great advocator of buying what you can afford. If you have lots of money then you should buy expensive clothes, not shop in Primark. If you don't have lots of money then who am I to tell you not to buy your children shoes at Primark if you can't afford anywhere else? Buying expensive items is usually more ecologically friendly as you can bypass sweatshop factories and piles of unwanted waste clothing languishing on rubbish heaps. Something tells me that being eco-friendly is not what these fashion die-hards have in mind.

With weekly glossies printing the latest 'must have' items we are going through new items at the same pace we are going through magazines. No one seems to remember that these magazines must include pricier items in order to attract high-end advertisers. Not to tempt people who can't afford it into an addiction that could threaten their health. Addiction, that's what it is. Just like you can be addicted to drugs or sex, you can be addicted to shopping. Just because you get a visible item at the end of a binge doesn't mean that you are adding quality to your life. Instead, look at the real reasons why you feel that you need to spend such an amount on looking good.

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Motorcycle Storage: Is Your Motorcycle Going To Be Ready For Spring? Part I

Many of us live in areas not conducive to riding a motorcycle rear round. I know there are die-hards out there who will ride in anything, all year, I used to be one of them, rain, snow, negative temperatures, you name it. Today, however, I prefer to ride my motorcycle when the conditions are more favorable. I enjoy riding more when there are less hazards and warmer temperatures. This means that every year, just like thousands of others, I roll my motorcycle into its winter nesting place, the back of my garage.

Storing a motorcycle is not as simple as rolling it into the back of a garage though, at least if you want a effortless start to the new riding season. It doesn't have to be hard either. Just a few steps and you can insure that your motorcycle will be ready when you are.

The first and most important step would be care of your motorcycle battery. Over time motorcycle batteries slowly discharge. You might have experienced the effects on your battery after your motorcycle sat for just a week or two. Imagine if you left it alone for an entire winter. Your battery would surely be dead and depending on its age and condition before storage, it might not ever take a charge again. Buying and installing a new battery in your motorcycle on the first day of good riding weather is an easily avoidable situation. Keep your motorcycle battery charged.

In the past one would have to charge the battery periodically during the storage period. Today we have battery chargers that offer a low rate of charge only as needed by the battery. These battery chargers shut off when a full charge is reached as to avoid overcharging and damaging the battery. Most of these battery chargers supply a 'pigtail' that can be permanently attached to your motorcycle battery, thus making it easier to connect the battery charger. So convenient that you easily could, and should use the battery charger year round.

The second sign of a long stored motorcycle is the deterioration of the fuel. Like batteries discharging, over time fuel will become 'stale' and creating a gum and varnish buildup. Not just the fuel in the tank, but in the entire fuel system. To avoid hard or impossible starting of your motorcycle (and poor running if you do get it started) due to stale fuel, removing or treating the fuel in your motorcycle is a must. Draining a fuel tank is a real drag, and getting all of the gas out of carburetors is not much better. Fortunately there are fuel additives available today that will halt the negative effects of aging gas, perfect for your stored motorcycle.

Congratulations! You've tackled the two most important steps in storing your motorcycle. Check back for Part II where I discuss commonly overlooked storage details and talk about bringing your motorcycle out of storage.

You can get more essential motorcycle info and tips including what you need to know about motorcycle shipping, motorcycle parts and accessories, motorcycle tours and rentals, motorcycle insurance, motorcycle repair, motorcycle buying and selling, and motorcycle racing all at http://www.mototechtips.com/

Also check in at http://moto-tech-tips.blogspot.com for current information on everything about motorcycles.

How to Keep Your Penis Hard Longer for Absolute Sexual Pleasure

If your concern is how to keep your penis hard longer during your sexual activities, you do not have to worry anymore because several breakthrough products can help you address this concern. There are several products in the form of oral pills, topical oils and transdermal patches that are proven to be safe and effective in helping men sustain a rock-solid erection and achieve better performance in bed.

It is every man's desire to make his partner happy in bed. Optimum sexual performance is sometimes hard to achieve for some men due to several factors. Stress, anxiety, lack of confidence and premature ejaculation are just some of the factors that hinder them from getting the most out of their sexual experience. Situations that keep men from keeping a hard penis for a long time can be humiliating and, in a way, it can also be degrading.

Using male enhancement products does not make you less of a man. In fact, they can take your sex life to new heights, beyond your imagination. Imagine making your partner happy in bed and sexually satisfied. It does not only give you immense pleasure, it also boosts your confidence in bed making you a man of self-esteem. Sustained erection, better stamina and intense orgasms can be achieved by using the right products. You can even be discrete about how to keep your penis hard longer.

Male enhancement pills such as VigRx Plus, ProSolution Pills and Magna Rx provide a solution. These pills are taken orally as directed just like other oral supplements. They promise the amazing benefits of better sexual performance. These pills are made from all-natural ingredients with high safety profiles. Prescription is not necessary to be able to purchase them. So if you want to keep your penis hard longer during sex, consider the benefits you can get out of male enhancement pills.

Another safe, effective and fast acting option comes in the form of topical erection oils like Maxoderm, VigRx and Vivaxa. Erection oils are applied directly to the area of the penis to maximize and sustain erection. The potent ingredients are absorbed by the skin of the penis and reach the bloodstream to increase circulation around the penile area which results to rock-hard erection and a pleasurable sensation. You will absolutely experience optimum sexual pleasure and satisfaction instantly.

Maximize your sexual potential and boost your confidence in bed. Provide an effective solution to your personal concerns on how to keep your penis hard longer by using products that are safe, effective and clinically tested.

How to Get Super Glue Off a Car

Many cars now come with the option to have super protective coatings applied, often called clear coats and "bras". These are a great help in keeping such things as acidic bird droppings and rock chips from damaging your car's exterior paint job. But when someone spills Super Glue on it, that's a much stickier situation.

First Time Camping With A Tent - Some Of The Basics

If you have never gone tent camping, try to take someone with you who has at least some experience, it is not that difficult but there are some things you should be aware of before you go. For example, it is essential that you know how to build your tent, if you want your camping trip to be an enjoyable experience you should make yourself knowledgeable about all kind of camping techniques. In this article we will give you some tips to start tent camping.

Before you even leave your home, you should build your tent at least one time in your yard or a park in the neighbourhood. This way you can be sure that you have everything you need to set up your tent and you know how to do it.

Choose a safe location

As a novice, for your first camping trip choose a location close to home. So you can drive home if you are having some problems on your camping trip. Also choose a location that is safe to stay, you are away from the safety and comfort of your home and you should try to make your camping trip as safe and comfortable as possible, this way you can enjoy your camping trip to the full extent.

Building your tent on a slope is not a save place, but that is just common sense. Most novice campers would pick a nice spot in a valley near a little creek when they would have the opportunity to choose. However that is not always the safest place to build your tent. You should always try to build your tent on high land, especially when you are camping in the rainy season. The land where you built your tent, should also be even, and you should remove all rocks, sticks and other hard stuff, it should be comfortable to sleep on, you are going to need all the rest you can get.

Protect your tent

When you have cleared the ground from all hard matters and other stuff that could damage the tent, you should use a ground cloth. A ground cloth is an essential peace of camping gear you can't do without. During all kind of weather and especially in the rainy season this cloth will protect the ground floor of your tent from any kind of damage. little sticks and rocks can't penetrate the floor and because of that water can't come in. A ground cloth is a cheap way to protect your expensive tent. You can buy it in different sizes in any local camping store and most gas stations. When it is extremely rainy you can dig some ditches around your tent with a ditch leading down and away from your tent.

Hammer those stacks

Most tents come with stacks, some are wood, other aluminum or steel but they are the stuff that keeps your tent in place and you can't do without them, so check and double check if you have packed your stacks. The stacks fix your tent to the ground and you should use a hammer to secure them in the right way. By placing first the back stacks, then the front and after that the stacks in between you can tighten the tent in to shape, there will be no dents in the canvas and water will just run down the tent. The stacks also will keep your tent from being blown away in case of heavy wind.

Do Less Exercise For Explosive Results

Every gym has them: die-hards who seem to live, eat, and drink in the free weight room. After a while you recognize their faces. Just how many hours do they spend pumping iron? Such fitness zealots might cause you to second-guess your own routine. If these die-hards workout for, say, four hours a day, seven days a week, how often should you workout? The answer to this question might surprise you; relatively infrequent but intense strength training workouts are all that is required.

Novices do many things incorrectly during workouts; improper lifting form, dangerous, explosive lifting, and over-stretching before strength-training workouts are a few infractions. One of the most frequent violations is overtraining. You hear it all the time from strength-training gurus: don't overtrain, it's dangerous. But how can you know if you are overtraining? How often should you visit the gym? How many days of rest should you take between workouts?

The answer might involve a paradigm shift for you. Before you can determine if you are overtraining, you must have accurate records of your workouts. You must know if your body is getting stronger with each workout, or if your performance has stagnated. Unfortunately, it's difficult to determine your performance when using traditional reps and sets to measure your exercise. With a standard routine of three sets of eight reps per exercise, you can only gauge your performance by evaluating how much weight you can lift; are you lifting more now than you lifted last time? If so, in theory, your muscles are becoming stronger. But what if you could zone in on a precise way to measure each muscle group's progress from workout to workout? Would that excite you? It should.

Measuring precise strength gains lies in a concept called time under load. Logging your time under load for each set of exercise allows you to determine, within seconds, if your muscles are growing stronger, or if your strength gains have stagnated. Determine your time under load by starting a stopwatch at the beginning of a set, performing exercise until you reach muscle failure--the point at which you cannot move the weight another inch--then stopping the clock. The end time on the stopwatch is your time under load. It doesn't matter if you hit muscle failure at the beginning, at the end, or in the middle of a repetition. You don't have to count your repetitions. The number of reps is not important if you lift using a slow, controlled cadence and clock your time under load.

With the habit of logging load times for each set of exercise, you can know if your muscles have grown stronger or if your performance has plateaued. For example, during workout one, you perform the bench press with 180 lbs. and hit muscle failure at 120 seconds. On workout two, after 48 hours of rest and recovery, you lift the same 180 lbs. and hit muscle failure at 124 seconds. It took 4 seconds longer to hit muscle failure during workout two. Therefore, your chest has become stronger; your muscles can handle the same weight, 180 lbs., for a longer period of time-4 seconds to be exact.

If you choose to perform more than one set of exercise per muscle group, it is especially important to record load times for the first set of exercise for each muscle group. With these records, you can accurately determine if you are overtraining. Now for the rule of over training: if load times for any two muscle groups decrease two workouts in a row, add a permanent rest day between workouts. For example, if, during workout one, you see a decrease in the load times for both the biceps and the calves; and, after 48 hours of rest and recovery time, during workout two, you see a decrease in the load times for both the triceps and abdominals, it's time to add a permanent rest day between workouts. Your rest and recovery time should increase from 48 to 72 hours.

As your body strengthens, you will gain lean muscle mass. This means there will be more muscle to damage during exercise and, hence, more time between workouts will be required for muscles to fully heal and become ready to lift at optimum performance. Additional rest days between workouts should be permanent. By allowing your muscles to fully heal between workouts, you will see consistent strength gains from workout to workout with limited stagnation.
To sum it all up, when you see those hard-core gym rats lifting for hours and hours in the free weight room, you can rest assured that you are experiencing the same strength gains they so diligently seek with half the time in the gym. The secret lies in tracking your time under load and calculating your body's precise rest and recovery time requirement. This begs the question: what should you do with all that extra time? Try reading a book or going to a movie. Do anything but hamper your strength gains by overtraining your body.

This is only the beginning. Much more information about this and other strength-training subjects can be found in my book, Total Human: The Complete Strength Training System, available at http://www.totalhuman.com, or wherever good books are sold.

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Hard Loft Plus Soft Loft Equals Medium Loft?

We get a lot of people contacting us about lofts these days, more specifically about loft conversions. We can take them to a lot of buildings, but we hear many people saying the same thing, that they are not true "hard" lofts.

I have to say, I am starting to agree with more and more of them. Many developers these days simply buy up an old building, gut it and then divide it up into tidy drywalled units. This is not what authentic lofts are all about.

Where is the brick? Where are the wooden beams? What about the high ceilings?

There is a large segment of the building industry today devoted to building new lofts, "soft" lofts. There is nothing wrong with this at all, as people know what they are getting into from the beginning. When you go to a nouveau loft building, you are expecting to see living space on the lower level with sleeping space above, open to the lower. Usually with a large wall of windows.

Some soft loft developers are now building units that are single level, with high-ish ceilings and exposed ductwork. Again, as long as you know the building you are going to is new construction and not converted, then there should be no surprises.

This might be the time to have a small discussion about the word "loft" itself. I know a lot of die-hards don't even want the word loft used in connection with the soft variety, which is their own perogative. But, if we look at the two most common uses of the word, we can see that both are right, in their own way.

The purist says that loft only means a raw and open space in a converted industrial type building. This is what it has come to mean more and more, thanks mostly to movies and television. But a loft can also be an upper level, one that is open to below. In my father's house, the master bedroom overlooks the living room - and is thus a loft. My uncle's cottage has a bedroom in the upper level that overlooks the main room, again a loft.

So either way we use the word, we are correct in it's usage. We just need the qualifier in front, be it hard or soft. In this way can we differentiate what sort of dwelling we are speaking about.

But I am unimpressed with the way the hard loft term is bandied about these days. We have the standard hard and soft lofts, but I am proposing a third category, the "medium" loft. This is the loft that is in a converted building, but has none of the character of a true loft. You can call it a conversion all you like, but no one in the know is ever going to truly think of it as an authenic hard loft.

The Merchandise Building on Dalhousie is a great example of this type of medium loft. Yes, the units are in a converted warehouse, but where is the industrial character? The units are mainly drywalled condos with marginally high ceilings, some with concrete floors. If you are lucky, there is half of a column in your hallway.

This is not what loft conversions are all about. It seems that while Toronto may have a serious thing for lofts these days, we are too wimpy to go for the real thing. We want our industrial exterior, but have to have our standard cozy creature comforts inside.

So many people ask us about "raw" spaces, simple empty shells that they can do with as they please. If you are lucky, you can find one that someone thought to have the developer leave alone, a loft that is a single room with some plumbing and cooking facilities. But these are few and far between - and generally staggering expensive when you find them.

I am a huge fan of history, being an avid photographer of old buildings. I love the idea of preserving our heritage in this city as much as we can. Taking old industrial or commercial buildings and converting them into funky living spaces is a fantastic idea, one I wish we had jumped on many years ago before we lost a lot of the buildings.

But my one request of the developers vying for this segment of the market is to leave as much character in these buildings as you can. For those who want the nouveau soft loft with two levels open to each other, let one group of builders cater to them. But if you are going to buy an old building with the thought of converting into authentic loft spaces, then do so in the truest manner.

Let the brick and wood come through, let the pipes show, let the pillars get in the way. For that is the way the hard loft is meant to be and this is the way they should stay.