Suncoast Scribe

When I think of the phrase food porn, I think of the Food Network and some of the more sophisticated shows that have enthusiastic cooks preparing unique dishes with lots of freshly chopped herbs and fragrant sauces. Some of the shows that go through all of the steps of making a cake with fruit fillings and creamy butter frosting also come to mind.

That’s just me, though. I like my food well crafted and carefully balanced when it comes to flavor, freshness and fragrance. I am a foodie and I love to eat, but I don’t eat just for the sake of filling my belly. I want it to be worth it. I want full-on sensuality.

And then there are the massive menu items at places like Hardee’s. Today Hardee’s added the 920-calorie Country Breakfast Burrito (two egg omelets filled with bacon, sausage, diced ham, cheddar cheese, hash browns and sausage gravy, all inside a flour tortilla. It comes along with 60 grams of fat.

Yikes.

I suppose it fits right in with Hardee’s 1,420-calorie Monster Thickburger and their 1,100-calorie Chicken Salad (83 grams of fat).

The Center for Science in the Public Interest called the Hardee’s line of Thickburgers “food porn.” For me, it’s that special brand of porn that makes my stomach turn at just the though.

You’re not leaving yourself much to go on for the rest of the day if you are injecting 920 calories first thing in the morning. The Center for Nutritional Policy and Promotion recommends a daily intake ranging from 1,600 calories for sedentary women and older adults to 2,800 calories for teenage boys and active adults.

When I was little, my parents ordered me a book called The Friendly Alligator. It was one of those books you can have personalized. It had my name it in, as well as my address, my sister and my cousin, the name of my city and a couple of other personal facts. I loved that book. In fact, I still have that book and my daughter is fascinated by it. We read it together quite often.

So, it seemed only natural that I would get her a personalized book as well. There are a whole lot more options out there these days. In fact, Personalizedstories.com has so many titles on its websites that it took me days to narrow my decision down to what I thought Gigi would enjoy most. In the end, it came down to a personalized copy of The Little Mermaid.

It was a fantastic choice. The first time we sat together to read the book, Gigi was mesmerized. She was really imagining herself in the ocean, helping the little mermaid rescue her merman daddy. She giggled with glee when the names of her own cousin and best friend were mentioned. She could hardly believe it was all taking place in her very own city!

Here is a picture of Gigi as she first read the book and then a picture that shows the look on her face when she realized her name was in it:

 

Gigi had so many questions about the story in which she was the heroine. The book was our main topic of conversation for the next several days. And, once she had fully ruminated on the story, it was time to read it again.

personalized childrens books are one of the most precious gifts you can buy a child. Literacy is pivotal in a child’s life and when you place a child right into a story, you have created a kind of engagement that cannot be duplicated with a typical book. Studies show that kids need to be engaged, or sucked into a story, in order to be at a learning level that will help theme learn to read and subsequently read to learn. Fluency is built through frequent re-reading of books and by a child being able to make personal connections to a story. What better way than to show them a book where they are the star?

Back on October 5, Debbie Cole found a bag with $65,000 inside. She was at work when she found it and immediately contacted her supervisor. The police were called and the money was eventually returned to the right people. Turns out it had fallen off of an armored truck from the Loomis armored transport company. I’m sure Loomis is red-faced.

I remember watching the news in the days after this happened and wondering if Cole was going to be rewarded for her honestly. I’m willing to bet a lot of people may NOT have returned the cash. A reward, I remembering pondering, might show people that it is worth it to do the right thing, that people are indeed rewarded for being good citizens.

I am happy to report that Cole has been given both a trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando and $5,000. It does indeed go to show that no good deed goes unpaid.

Three cheers for integrity!

Search engine optimization might not be a new concept, but tailoring SEO to the hot trend of video search engines IS. Even big companies like Google are buying out entire video platforms. YouTube is a household name and it’s really not been around that long. There are more than 150 Video Search Sites online and the number is growing all of the time.

It’s a fact that uploading a video on video search engines and video sharing sites can garner you more traffic to your website than you ever imagined. I’ve heard of people driving sales of a single t-shirt design fully based on witty videos they have uploaded to YouTube. It’s a matter of striking while the iron is hot, so to speak and Viral Video Marketing is white hot.

So, how in the world do you make this phenomenon work for you? You’ve got the video, but how do you make sure it gets noticed on a video sharing site and how do you ensure that it will also drive traffic back to your site? There are definitely tried and true techniques when it comes to this medium.

I think this issue is of great importance to many of my regular blog readers. I know a lot of you are small business owners selling crafts. Many of you are using a “How To” tutorial video to entice your customers to spend more time on your site and to drive sales. It’s a great tool, but are people finding your video?

As for my fellow Bloggers, you already know how much buzz a unique video can drive to your blog. I’ve seen your work. Has anyone else? Getting the word out is key.

ReelSeo.com is the only video SEO and video search resource out on the net right now. Talk about striking while the iron is hot. The site fully addresses all of the tips and techniques you should be privy to in the arena of video SEO. It walks you through choosing just the right filename, title, and description. Do you know how to internally encode metadata into your videos? How about optimizing your URLs? It’s all on ReelSeo.com and the content makes the site a must read.

Staying ahead of the SEO game means a constant quest for new information. You can’t do it alone. Sites like this help you to remain ahead of the pack.

I hate to sound cryptic, but I wanted to mention that I am helping to test a new skincare product that is absolutely amazing! I cannot tell you who the company is of what the product does, but I can tell you that AS SOON as it is on the market I will be letting you all know.

I have only been using it about 5 days and I can already see a different in my skin. I’m in my mid-30s and this is absolutely the time in you’re life that your skin takes on a whole new way of “being”. I have to relearn how to clean my skin, moisturizing it, what chemicals irritate it and even what being out in the sun will do to it. I feel like I am learning to live inside of a whole new person.

The product I am using in this test is phenomenal for my age group and my skin type. I can only image that once it hits the market, we are going to be a generation of women with more beautiful skin than ever before.

I’ll put it right out there, I’ve never actually had a STD. I do, however, have a very close girlfriend who has lived with herpes as part of her daily life for over 25 years. She is a good deal older than me and her story started back in the days before our society was as open as we are now about sexual risks and such.

She is the anti-poster-child for things like STDs. Careful and monogamous, she was in a long-term relationship with a man who stepped out on her from time to time. Of course, this did not come out in the wash until she suddenly realized she had herpes and talked to him about whether or not he thought he could have given it to her. Turns out he had realized he contracted it and traced it back to a brief fling he had during his relationship with my friend.

Well, that boyfriend did not last forever, but the consequences of his actions will. I cannot tell you how many times I have watched my friend start a relationship with a man, only to finally have to come to the time when she needed to have “the talk” with him. The break-up rate after “the talk” was staggeringly high. Even with protection and specific information and education, the men were usually not willing to deal with the reality of the situation.

I suppose that is understandable. It’s a massive commitment level some people might never be able to reach.

I can happily say that she is now married and a mother and life is absolutely not one huge train wreck. It’s just that the obstacles have been more intense for her in the relationship realm. Love really does conquer all, it seems.

Of course, it is one of the goals of the medical community to one day find a herpes cure. In the meantime, there are ways to those who live with the virus to strengthen their immune systems and head off chances of an outbreak. The homeopathic approach is to look at overall health: physical, mental, diet, etc. I’m sure anyone who gets cold sores knows that outbreaks are more common in times of stress or illness. It is the same for all strains of the virus. Natropractica is a program that teaches total health, homeopathic approaches to living. In fact, their Immune Boosting Protocols work for cold sores as well. There is a differnce in the stigma associated with type 1 and type 2, but the health of your immune system is key to BOTH.

In all reality, strengthening the strengthening the immune system is the absolutely most important part of dealing with Herpes Simplex, Cold Sores, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Epstein Barr, Fibromyalgia, Shingles and HPV. You’d be surprised how related all of these conditions really are.

I tend to be more aware of innovations on this front since becoming friends with the individual I mentioned above. Heightened awareness is a good thing on many levels. It’s made me more aware of my own safety, more aware of the pasts of the people with whom I have relationships, and more open to the information I want to pass along to my daughter.

Who would have ever thought that the University of South Florida is what would keep our state in the top spots on the Associated Press Top 25 poll? UF, the University of Florida in Gainesville, has been a given on that list for a while now. Things are changing, though, as UF sits at a precarious #15, Tampa USF powers up to #2.

The rest of the nation might not see the fine distinction between UF and USF, but the Gators and the Bulls are more than just different animals. The schools have different places in the hearts of Floridians. And before this year, not that many really considered USF at all when it came to their football program.

Having lived in Gainesville, I very much enjoyed the feel of a swarming, vibrant college town. I can only hope that Tampa is able to appropriate some of that zeal and fervor

Unless you’re new to using the internet, then you can look around and see that things move faster online. A website that has been around for 10 years has been around a lifetime in internet terms. Marketing trends online are probably one of the aspects of the wired world that have changed the most over the years.

Gone are the days where flashing banner ads are actually attracting customers. In order to attract and HOLD the attention of today’s web savvy culture, you have to employ something that not everyone has in abundance – creativity. Interactive technology is sophisticated now. Most web developers need to continuously adapt, learn, and strive in order to stay ahead of the pack.

The same goes for anyone who hopes to establish a true presence on the net. You can no longer stand by the old adage that “if you build it, they will come.” You have to go out and tackle your audience. You must bundle your product and your concept with interactive “bang”. You develop a strategy and then use technology to your advantage. You don’t work for technology/. Technology works for you.

Take Terralever as an example. They have worked with such heavy hitters as Red Bull, NASA, Microsoft, hp, and the NBA. All of thee companies have a massively successful online presence and I’m willing to bet that you could sum each brand up in one sentence: what they stand for, what they do, and who they target. Why? Because they have all employed an interactive marketing company that knows how to navigate the internet.

The internet is a legitimate business territory. Treat it like one.

I’m all for fundraisers, especially for private schools. Why is it, though, that those in charge of fundraising rarely tend to exert even an ounce of originality when planning said fundraisers? My daughter goes to Pre-K at a private Christian school. My nephew is in Kindergarten at the same private Christian school where my daughter attended pre-pre-K (heh) last year. They are not affiliated, but both are using the same lame book of boring, engraved, Christmas cards as their fundraiser. And, there is a lot of pressure to make sales.

I hate my bad attitude, but I seriously don’t know people who will overpay for middling-quality cards. People are much more prone to either buy very inexpensive cards at Wal-Mart. Or, if they do want to spend the extra cash, they go for photo cards.

I can think of a lot of unique fundraising ideas off the top of my head – things that would actually make your friends and neighbors WANT to buy items, rather than just feeling obligated.

How about selling $1 or $5 scratch cards? Some could contain valuable gift certificates donated by local businesses. The others might not yield a prize, but for the $1 or $5 donation. Most people would not mind. (You could forego the expense of scratch cards and use notes inside of inflated balloons, instead.)

Take the time to compile a cookbook with recipes donated by the parents of children at the school. All the family favorites would be represented and people in the community might just be up to purchasing an item unique enough to change each year.

If you want to sell out of catalogs, plenty of candle companies offer fundraising programs. Some even feature the popular soy candles.

I could come up with more ideas, but this was supposed to be a rant, not a brainstorming session.

*Sigh*

Now I have to log off and fill out the forms to buy a bunch of Christmas cards I don’t actually want.

I had always wished my parents had kept more of my childhood toys. I have dome of them, but countless boxes were given away, thrown out and donated. For a long time I could not understand why they would not keep every single toy we had ever owned.

That is, until I had a child of my own and also a lifestyle that has had us moving two times since Gigi was born. Just before the move from the big marital house to our current place of residence, I finally cracked open all of the boxes of her baby toys and offered most of them on our local Freecycle group. I kept those that were either extremely special to me or that she had shown a particular preference for. There are the two little soft pink Gund baby dolls she had to have in bed with her every single night until the Christmas before her third birthday, when I gave her the Zapf Annabell doll. She was all about Annabell after that, and even more into the Baby Born and the Chou Chou I have bought her complete her Zapf collection. Of course, Annabell was off the market in most places last year and now it looks like a new version is coming out where the doll will turn her head toward the direction of your voice! Let’s hope I can use restraint and not buy this for Gigi. I am a sucker for these dolls. They are of the high quality as the dolls of my childhood made by Horsman and other American doll makers.

I have some of my favorite dolls from my childhood out in the garage: Breyer Horses, a big “walker” doll names Josephine (I named her afte the song “Come Josephine in my Flying Machine”) and several books and Barbie dolls.

What was your favorite toy growing up?