With fall approaching and the flu season on its way, I always like to keep some good home remedies for preventing a cold and for getting well quickly in case you've already got one.
Emergen-c - an effervescent powder you drop in a half cup of water. Keeps the germs at bay. Take at the first sign of a cold such as a tickle in your throat.
Water, water, water, water - plenty of fluids to keep your system flushed. When it gets colder I tend to take tea more often.
Exercise - as soon as I feel a cold coming on, I go for a run. It sounds counter-intuitive because your body just wants to curl up and rest. But somehow, some way, an exhilarating jog, game of soccer or touch football does a body good. Weather conditions can certainly make this worse. So heed the normal warnings about rain, sleet, snow, cold temperatures. Bundle up.
Tabasco, wasabi, and horseradish - garnish for clear sinuses. If you're not a fan of spicy foods, try tea tree oil shampoo in the shower or vicks vap-o rubs under your nose and on your chest.
NyQuil - buy it in bulk. It’s amazing how well NyQuil works. I sweat it even works on contact. Take at the first sign of a cold so you can get a good night's rest. If you already have a cold, same deal. Sleep is essential and this stuff really does help you make it through the night.
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My home-made chicken soup recipe - aka "Grandma's Penicillin" (once you already have a cold):
Take a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store. Use your bare hands and peel all of the meat of the bones. Separate the skins from the breasts and thighs as much as you can. Put the skins and the carcass in a pot of simmering water. Maybe 6 cups. Maybe 4. It don't matter.
Let that bad boy simmer for anywhere between half and hour and an hour. That's going to boil out all of the chickeny goodness from the bone marrow and fat in the skin and all that good stuff that makes up the broth. Yum.
When you feel like you've boiled it enough, strain the broth from the carcass. Put the broth back in the pot. Keep simmering. Only this time, put in a bunch of chopped vegetables. I like to think of my chicken soup as one part pot roast. I put carrots, potatoes, celery, and onion. Now for seasoning. Salt and pepper are a good start. From there, you need to create your own spicy signature. I use Tabasco. It helps clear the sinuses (see above). I also use a few dashes of garlic powder which all knowing Italians will tell you keeps the evil spirits away. Once you have the broth and vegetables the way you like them, add some of the chicken meat you pulled off of the carcass into the pot. Since it's already cooked, all you need to do is leave it in long enough to heat up nicely. Then you're done. Serve with a hearty bread for sopping up the last bits. Yum!
Though you may be tempted to crack open a beer or a glass of sauvignon blanc, resist. You must not -- not least while you are ill -- partake in any pleasures but the pleasures of eating. Not even a pint of Guinness is acceptable in cold conditions. Ginger ale, is fine. Seven-up is always a welcome sick person's bedfellow. And water. Never forget your hourly doses of water.
Working from home on Dandelife.com. I've started small. Being lean has kept me hungry and focused. And I had to quit my day job to take the work to where it needed to go. It's been the best summer for me since my euro-trip at the end of my year in Sweden.
To whom it may concern:
I recently returned from a trip to Colorado with my wife to visit her 93-year-old grandmother and extended family there. It's a trip we regularly make this time of year because of their family reunion. This is the third such trip we have made together. The first time we drove out and stayed with my mother-in-law. The second time, we flew out and stayed in a hotel. This time, we flew out using our expedia.com vouchers we received as a part of a tax-reimbursement plan we entered into when we received our tax return from turbotax.com at the beginning of the year. We have three more gift cards to spend with you, so I'm hoping this does not fall on deaf ears . . .
Of the three aspects of our trip that we reserved through Expedia - car, hotel and flight - only one of them did not meet my expectations of quality, price and level of service. The car rental was fine and so was the flight. The hotel we stayed in was terrible. Correction, the hotel we stayed in was criminal.
America's Best Value Inn. I shudder to think of the way were treated and I still find it hard to believe that I was able to contain my rage during our stint in Colorado. The conditions of the hotel, our room and the overall lack of customer service were simply abysmal. We should have found better accommodations immediately but having had a delayed flight and checked in at 2:30 AM, our will was to get as much rest as possible before heading out the next day. After all, when you're asleep who cares what condition your room is in?
Well I soon discovered that that was not entirely valid logic to endure our circumstances. The floors we so dirty and grimy that we had to wear our shoes whilst walking from the bed to the bath in the middle of the night. The sheets were damp - from humidity, we prayed - and the air was smokey even though this was a non-smoking room. The surrounding neighborhood was quite enjoyable as we had a nice breakfast and did some shopping in the nearby mall the next morning. But the evening before we had difficulty finding the hotel because their signs were not illuminated. In fact, one sign which marked the entryway from the street had been whitewashed entirely and any attempt to re-surface it with a welcome message had been abandoned its seems.
Furthermore, the entry to the building we stayed in was perpetually kept open so that any stranger could walk into the hotel. And the noise from adjoining rooms was audible such that one can perceive distinct conversations from its occupants. We kept the TV on for white noise and discovered that all 40 channels of TV were riddle with static and barely visible. That worked great for white noise, but defeats the true purpose of in-room entertainment.
It doesn't stop there. The bathroom was mildewy from ceiling to floor with tilework coming loose and the baseboard linoleum peeling away from the wall. The pool had been closed temporarily with quaint printed notices here and there asking us to forgive this inconvenience. It would have been forgiven were it not the general modus operendi of the institution to fail on so many levels all at once. The staff was ungrateful - chastising us upon arrival because we arrived so late (again, through no fault of our own) that she had to "re-do" our paperwork. When we returned from our day out with the family the next night, the key to our room did not work so we had to get it activated. The clerk joked with us and said that "the key didn't work because you owe us money." I was fully expecting to be bribed when she burst into laughter and said she was "only kidding." Still though, my expectations were that low. Not so low as to not notice that she did not ask us for our identification when re-activating the key. With an open building and a liberal front desk security policy, one can only wonder how I was able to get any sleep at all that night.
Last, we left out the "please clean our room" notice hanging on our door only to discover that our room had never been cleaned. Thankfully this was our last night at the America's Best Value Inn in Northglenn, Colorado.
I'm not one to make false claims. Nor am I the type to exaggerate. It is my heartfelt hope that this message works it way through the system at Expedia.com such that this particular institution does not receive any support from your clientele. It appears to me that they have more to be gained from your commitment to them than vice versa. It would also please me to no end that you would recognize our trial and see to it that we somehow receive credit for that portion of our trip. My claim on remuneration stems from misinformation on your site claiming that the hotel was a 2-star establishment. If I had spent the last ten years in maximum security prison then, perhaps, it was a 2-star experience. Quality does depend on one's perspective. From our vantage point - as customers with a certain amount of loyalty to and investment in expedia.com - we feel we were over-sold.
Again, thanks for meeting our expectations on all other aspects of our trip. We did so enjoy visiting with our family on Colorado. The value and convenience expedia.com offers us in making that annual trip only makes it that much more enjoyable an experience as a whole.
Peace, K
P.S. I've posted some photographs as evidence of our stay. http://flickr.com/photos/kga245/tags/americasbestvalueinn/ I'm hoping you can use those in relating our story to the powers that be. Should you need to contact me for further information or feedback on our request, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me via either of the following means
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Update: Expedia's response took about 1 hour. Not bad.
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Dear Kelly,
Thank you for contacting Expedia.com regarding your hotel reservation at the Americas Best Value Inn.Please accept our apologies in regards to what had transpired during your vacation. We regret any inconvenience that may have occurred during your stay and would like to assure you that every reservation is important to us. We would also like you to know that we do not intend to mislead our customers as we rely solely on the information that the hotels post on our website. Thank you for bringing this incident to our attention.
As you may know, Expedia.com acts as an independent agent for reservations for airlines, car rental companies, and hotels. All information found on our site is maintained by the individual property. Still, if an Expedia member has an unsatisfactory experience with travel booked through Expedia.com, we want to take appropriate action to ensure another member does not have a similar experience. Thank you for taking the time to write us. We rely on customers like you to provide us with the information we need to continue improving our services. Rest assured, your complaints have been duly noted and forwarded to the appropriate department.
Unfortunately, we cannot authorize a refund for your reservation at this point. However, I would like to extend to you a $50 Universal Goodwill Coupon as a courtesy which you may use towards a future Expedia Special Rate hotel reservation or purchase of a Vacation Package.
To view and redeem your coupon:
[edited for privacy]
Thank you for choosing Expedia.com
Reema
Expedia.com Customer Support Team
I heard a piece on NPR yesterday as I was running some errands. What first struck me about the piece was the fact that it was about southern storytellers. I love the south. I love its accent, its lifestyle, its particular way of being. One of the things I love most about the south is its knack for storytelling. You can't grow up in the south without having a distinct voice and a knack for telling it like it is. People in the south listen. And they relate.
This piece by Michele Norris about the porch in southern literature piqued my interest. There are some good voices on the audio portion as well. Readings from works by Eudora Welty (who was also a prominent photographer), William Faulkner and Toni Morisson (who gets my vote for the the best living American writer).
The web portion of this feature also asks listeners/readers to contribute their own stories on, about and around the porch. The porch is a metaphor, of course, but here I think they mean it literaly. I'm going to dandelife some porch stories soon.
A few weeks ago Stephanie and I went to the Bay Area to hang out with Jess and see the city together. We'd both been there as individuals before - for both work and pleasure. This time it was intentionally done to get away from work. Here's a link to my dandelife entry about that trip. It has pictures, some video, and a full description of the weekends goings on. What that story also relates is how I came across an essay by Joan Didion called "The White Album" originally published in the 70's as a part of the larger book of essays by the same name.
Essays to me are the easiest form of literature. Poetry is dessert. Non-fiction - in a longer format - a healthy meal. Fiction, a full, rich meal with friends. Essays, a weekend wine. Memoirs are for me the pinot noir of essays. I love the intimacy, their lasting fullness, and their tenor that only comes from having a particular voice whispering in your head.
Of course, it's more than the voice that matters. The feeling that the story happened somehow matters as well. So does the notion that the events being portrayed happened to the person telling the story. There's a directness in the format that rewards the listener in a way that fiction almost never does. In memoir, all of the layers of the proverbial onion are peeled back. What's left but a naked author and her thoughts? It's a brave medium when done especially well. Even when done poorly, by amateurs, for example, the format itself can be especially sharp.
If my feet were to the flames, and someone asked me what my loftiest goal for Dandelife is, I would say this: to create a space for wine-makers to perfect their delicate craft; to bring the wines of the worlds newest vintners to the lips of true connoisseurs.
