A Neighbor . . .
. . . thanked me
for defining “myriad” for them.
They said it meant a lot.
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From poker to pinochle,
it’s just another day
at Verena of Gilbert.
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Sleep Right, Sleep Tight
Your mother’s nagging to make your bed turns out to be healthy advice.
A National Sleep Foundation survey reveals that folks who make their bed daily are more likely to get a good night’s sleep than people who don’t make their beds. And change your sheets weekly.
Allergens that disrupt sleep can build up in your sheets. They also can build in your pillow so you should change it every couple of years. Or use two pillows and alternate them every month or so.
St. Valentine Died . . .
. . .around 270 A.D.
His true identity was questioned as early as A.D. 496 and one account from the 1400s describes Valentine as a temple priest who was beheaded near Rome by the emperor Claudius II for helping Christian couples wed. A different account claims Valentine was the Bishop of Terni, also martyred by Claudius II on the outskirts of Rome. Because of the similarities of these accounts, it’s thought they may refer to the same person.
In all, there are about a dozen St. Valentines, plus a pope.
The saint we celebrate on Feb. 14 is known officially as St. Valentine of Rome to differentiate him from the others Because “Valentinus”—from the Latin word for worthy, strong or powerful—was a popular name between the second and eighth centuries A.D., several martyrs have carried this name. The official Roman Catholic roster of saints shows about a dozen who were named Valentine or some variation thereof.
The most recently beatified is St. Valentine Berrio-Ochoa, a Spaniard of the Dominican order who traveled to Vietnam, where he served as bishop until his beheading in 1861.
St. Valentine is the patron saint of beekeepers and epilepsy, among many other things.
People call on him to watch over the lives of lovers, of course, but also for interventions regarding beekeeping and epilepsy, as well as the plague, fainting and traveling. He is also the patron saint of engaged couples and happy marriages.
You can find the flower-adorned skull of St. Valentine in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome. In the early 1800s, the excavation of a catacomb near Rome yielded skeletal remains and other relics now associated with St. Valentine. As is customary, these bits and pieces of the late saint’s body have been distributed to reliquaries around the world. You’ll find other bits of St. Valentine’s skeleton on display in the Czech Republic, Ireland, Scotland, England and France.
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Take A Free Look At . . .
It’ll be an educational view
= = = =
Learning sign language . . .
. . . could come in handy.
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Open Sesame is Too Simple a Password
As hackers break through firewalls protecting our nation’s facilities, the rest of us are wondering how to protect our assets from internet thieves. Cyberspace crooks pounce on bank and credit card accounts to fatten their finances.
It’s vital that you make your passwords as complex as possible to shield your information. they can be sheltered in the cloud, software programs, password manager and a protection service. These usually involve a fee. Or you can store them in a simple-to-keep thumb drive.
A prime rule to call to mind is that having a password that’s easy for you to remember – an old address or your father’s birthdate – makes it easier for password-hacker hounds to sniff out and attack your data. And using the same password for everything you work at in cyberspace makes it simpler for these same hackers to scramble through all your secured sites.
What happens if you lose your thumb drive? First of all you should store your passwords on two or three such drives. Keep them in safe and secure places. One should be in a safety deposit box.
Your passwords should be complex and different for every site The doorway to your email should be different than that of your bank account that should be different than that of your medical data, which should be different than … you get the idea.
Internet security experts suggest you begin with a Shakespeare quote or a song lyric or a phrase you make up yourself.
Let’s use “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.” Write down the first letter of each word. Keep the punctuation and use capital letters for stressed words and you get W,WeaNaDtD.
You might add the date you first visited the ocean (which might have caused you think of this quote). You can split it up with half in front and half at the end. If it was July 4, 1954 – 7,4,1954 — you can wind up with 741W,WeaNaDtD954.
Looks complicated doesn’t it, but you know what it means. It also meets the rule offered by password pros – use a combination of upper-case and lower-case letters, numbers and symbols. And the longer the phrase you pick, the longer the password and the more difficult it is for hackers to crack.
Password security experts also recommend padding the password to make it longer but warn against using the shift key for padding or adding symbols. They suggest adding a short string of letters — such as jkjkjk – in front of and at the end to strengthen your password against assaults by hackers.
If you make the process fun, you’re more likely to remember the formidable password you’ve developed to protect yourself out in the cyberspace.
Have You Ever Wondered . . .
. . .where Noah
kept the termites
on the Ark?
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Worried About Warts?
It’s always best to get medical treatment for anything that attacks your body, including warts that seem to be appear and disappear willy-nilly on various parts of your body. A common remedy is to have them frozen so they fall off or they can be cut out by a doctor.
There are several around-the-house remedies that have been successful in some cases.
For one, you can cut a small potato in half and rub the cut side of the potato on the wart twice a day until it disappears. Or you can rub the wart daily with a piece of pineapple or the inside of a banana peel.
Some folks report daily application of the gel from the aloe vera plant works. A garlic clove crushed and mixed with water, applied to the wart daily, and covered with a bandage reportedly works in three to four weeks. Another solution to try is two parts apple cider vinegar to one part water. Soak a cotton ball in the mixture and wrap it over the wart for three or four hours every day.
Be A Good Scout …
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People have quit asking me
to drive them someplace
since I’ve told them I will
if they let me know when I’m snoring.
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Friends Help When Friends Pass Away
Having a coffee or chat with a friend will help assuage your grief when another friend dies. Reviewing old times with someone will help soften the blow after a pal has passed away.
Grief counselors suggest you concentrate on the good times you had with the deceased to lighten the load of grieving. It also helps to write down some of those memories and send them to members of the dead person’s family along with your expressions of sympathy.
There are a couple of don’ts. Don’t try to forget them and don’t feel guilty. Thinking of how you might have visited more often or made a few more phone calls or sent a couple more emails only fuels your grief. So does trying to shut out the times you spent together
Taxing Time
Bocce aficionados meet at 11 a.m. poolside
Talk At Our Table . . .
. . . was interrupted
when the notorious gossip nearby
increased their decibel level to proclaim,
“I don’t want to say anything bad about (deleted)
but boy is this good.”
Get Doctor’s Opinion on Medical Fees
Whether or not you have health insurance, always ask your doctor if there is a fee involved when discussing any appointment, surgery, test, procedure, or any other arrangement being made to continue your treatment.
Follow-up appointments for such purposes as checking on proper healing of minor surgery or monitoring blood pressure can be chargeable but any fee might be avoided if the patient asks the doctor about any charge when the follow-up is discussed.
For example, follow-up visits after surgery normally is included in the surgeon’s original fee. But not all, so ask to avoid surprises.
The process has been complicated by the recent rise in telemedicine: internet contact with doctors by telephone and computer. In some cases, they’re covered by Medicare, Medicaid or supplemental insurance. In some cases, they are not, so you have to check with the doctor.
Meet Verena Salon Operators
hair-stylist Irene and manicurist Dawn
to get your questions answered about
services, operating times and other matters.
10 a.m. 2nd floor theater
And then . . .
It’s taken a long time
for us old farts
to realize that there’s no sense
to eating right and exercising regularly to stay fit
because we’re still going to die anyway.
Whatever Happened . . .
. . . to Albert Einstein’s brother
Frank?
Get your free blood-pressure check
in the lobby
every Wednesday at 10 a.m.
provided by BAYADA
then
Check your hearing & hearing-aids
at 3 p.m.
in the 2nd floor multipurpose room
with Preferred Hearing Care
Stay Informed . . .
. . .don’t miss today’s monthly Town Hall meeting
4 p.m. in the 2nd floor theater.
Draw Up End of Life Plans Anytime
A dear friend who passed away recently after a lengthy illness took time to discuss with her spouse details to be attended to after her death. They both agreed on the disposition of their remains and where they should be ensconced. Both felt at ease talking quietly and patiently about their plans as her death approached. After taking care of her wishes, the widower discussed and passed on these plans to their children to be followed when he dies.
Making after-death lists can become critical when they deal with your final weeks, days and hours, especially if you lapse into a coma or any condition that makes it difficult to make on-the-spot decisions. Doctors and medical staff are committed to keeping their charges functioning as long as there is any chance they will survive, when they feel the patient is not terminally ill.
More than 30 percent of adults have formalized their end-of-life preferences in what is known as an advance directive – a legal document with instructions on how they feel they wish to end their lives. In most cases, the person wishes to avoid a lengthy pain-riddled existence leading to their death. Problems arise if there is no health-care proxy on hand to ensure that the patient’s directions are followed and/or when the patient is unconscious and medics have to determine whether or not the patient is terminally ill.
To increase your chances of a peaceful death, you should discuss your plans and wishes with your family physician. If you feel he or she is unwilling to go along with your directive, you might seek another doctor. In some cases, you might want to talk things over with a clergyman.
Review your plans over and over with members of your family – all of them so there are no battles when your end-of-life treatment and timing becomes critical. You might have one of them use their mobile phone camera to take a video of you explaining your plans.
Today’s The Last Day . . .
. . . to sign up for a
free 15-minute chair massage
provided by LifeQuest starting at —
10 a.m. tomorrow (Tuesday) in the 2nd floor theater.
It Takes Effort to Collect on Insurance
Most of us have several types of insurance covering, among others, auto-accident damage and liability, mortgage, renters, long-term care, home damage and liability, and death (called life insurance for some strange reason). And when we take a trip, many of us pick up a travel-insurance coverage.
But there’s work to be done to collect any benefits after the trauma of a crippling auto accident or fire that destroyed your home. And it has to be done quickly, usually while you’re still emotionally addled and physically drained by the happenstance.
Your first step is to find the policies that apply to your loss with all the pertinent information about where to file your claim. In some cases, you can call to the agent who sold you the policy to get some advice. That means you should keep our insurance policies handy. Someone else in the family or your attorney should also know where they are because you might be hospitalized and someone will have to launch your claim for you.
Make sure all instructions are followed to the letter. Unanswered questions or an overlooked step will delay the process and require redundant correspondence and contact with the insurance company.
Keep every police and medical report and all other bits of information connected to the incident prompting the claim. And every receipt. If you’re in doubt about whether a document is relevant, keep it and let the company toss it out.
If our claim involves lost or damaged property, it helps if you have a prepared inventory – photographs are better – of all your property along with a list of what’s been missing or destroyed.
File all correspondence and conversations with the insurers and don’t take no for an answer. Their job is to avoid paying out for non-qualifying and fraudulent claims. Your job is to prove to them that your claim qualifies.
Be persistent. If you hit a wall in your initial stages, ask to speak to your contact’s supervisor and present your case. If this doesn’t work discuss the matter with your attorney.
When you file claims for long-term-care reimbursement, make copies of your receipts before sending the originals to the insurance company.
Mature Life Features 