The ice cream man is coming down our street once again, a sign of warm weather. His ice cream cart plays children's tunes like "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and, occasionally, "Jingle Bells." I have never figured out whether Jingle Bells is his idea of humor, or if it's simply the way the cart is set up.

     As other signs of spring here in northern Virginia, the trees have leafed out, and the dandelions are in round yellow bloom. I love dandelion blooms, even though I have to dig dandelions out of flower beds. When I was about three, my mother told me that, while I couldn't pick the flowers in her flower beds, I could pick all the dandelions I wanted. I immediately ran outside and brought her back a tightly packed golden yellow bouquet. She oh-ed and ah-ed and put it in a glass of water. She did the same with the second bouquet I brought her five minutes later. Then, as I headed out for a third, she said gently, "I think I have enough pretty bouquets for awhile."

     Did you pick dandelion bouquets when you were little? And did you rub one under your chin to see if you liked butter?

     Today's newsletter starts with a tribute to your mother, followed by two items Mom would approve: (a) emergency medical information you carry with you, and (b) 300 things to do with prunes.

     Happy spring from Janette

----Table of Contents----

1. A Tribute To Your Mother And Grandmother
2. In Case Of Medical Emergency
3. Food Down Under
4. Avoid A Computer Crash The Easy Way
5. Free Safety For Your Computer
6. Gardening With Kids
7. Keeping All Your Marbles
8. Vacationing On The Barbecue Circuit
9. Barbecue In Your Back Yard
10. Travel Bargains
11. Travel Safety
12. Test Drive Your Dream Job!

1. A TRIBUTE TO YOUR MOTHER AND GRANDMOTHER

     Last year I offered to post tributes to mothers on my website for Mother's Day. This year I'm making the same offer and extending it to MOTHERS AND GRANDMOTHERS, and in June to FATHERS AND GRANDFATHERS. Your tribute to your parents or grandparents can be humorous or serious, prose or poetry, but please keep the length to 1,200 words or less. It can be sent to me as an attachment to an e-mail, or you can simply make it part of an e-mail. I may give it some light editing.

     I should have given you more time to work on this, as Mother's Day is May 13. But if you get your tribute to me by May 9, I will have it posted on my website before Mother's Day. A person who contributed one last year said that her mother cried when she read it, so it could be the most meaningful gift you give. If your mother or grandmother is no longer here on earth, perhaps other relatives would especially enjoy the tribute. You do not have to be a subscriber to this newsletter to have it posted.

     You can send the tribute to your father or grandfather at any time before June 12. I will post these on my site just before Father's Day on June 17.

     Look at last year's tributes by clicking below. They are in the section titled Tributes To Our Mothers:

http://foodandfiction.com/Nostalgia/index.html

2. IN CASE OF MEDICAL EMERGENCY

     My husband's doctor suggested that we carry in our billfolds our basic medical information, such as medications we take, allergies, and telephone numbers that emergency personnel should contact. It's also a good idea to identify emergency contact numbers on your cell phone. If you put ICE, which stands for "in case of emergency," before these numbers, emergency workers will know these are your emergency contacts.

     In addition, you may want to join the ICE organization, which calls itself, "The world's leading emergency contact service." It operates in the U.S. and Canada. This would be especially important if you have a drug allergy or other condition that might lead emergency room personnel to do the wrong thing if you were brought in unconscious. ICE says, "In an emergency situation, emergency personnel are faced with on the spot decisions. When every second counts, emergency personnel need answers fast so they can quickly and effectively give you or your loved ones the medical attention they so desperately need."

     ICE can also help in situations where you have no cell phone or it is lost. They are on duty 24/7 to give emergency medical information to rescue staff. Membership costs $29.99 for the first year, $19.95 per year after that.

http://icecontactusa.com/

     Or, as my husband's doctor suggests, simply put a card in your billfold with your basic medical informaton and emergency phone numbers.

3. FOOD DOWN UNDER

     I inherited a container of prunes from friends who moved, but I have no interest in a little bowl of prunes with my breakfast. So I'm looking for low-calorie main dish recipes with prunes. Well, as you can imagine, even Google has trouble with that one. One site proudly announced it had 38 prune recipes, but almost all turned out to be high-calorie desserts.

     And then I hit FOOD DOWN UNDER, which had over 300 prune recipes! Of course many were for high-calorie desserts, but I found quite a few that weren't. Furthermore, the recipes don't require a food scale to use, as so many non-U.S. recipes do. So, if you want hundreds and hundreds of recipes for almost anything you can imagine, try Food Down Under. I put "low calorie recipes" in their search box, that being heavily on my mind these days. They have 13,434! It's a find.

http://fooddownunder.com/

4. AVOID A COMPUTER CRASH THE EASY WAY

     If your computer disobeys you - meaning it won't obey a simple command it ordinarily obeys - or if the things on your screen start to look distorted, it may be getting ready to crash. You've got a similar problem if one of those nasty little Internet signs appears, "You have just performed an illegal act," even though you are perfectly law abiding.

     In all these cases, the cure is to turn off the computer immediately. If you're lucky, the computer will let you save your work first, and if you're very lucky, it will allow you to log off in an orderly way. If it won't, just cut off the power and wait about ten seconds. Start it up again, and it should be all better. In fact, it's good for your computer's health to turn it off and restart it frequently - on a nightly basis if you use it a lot.

     Mike Hodapp gave me the above crash avoidance tip several years ago, and it saved my bacon over and over, back when I had an infected computer. (Which is how I got so interested in computer safety, in case you wonder.)

     An almost-crash is a danger sign, even if the computer recovers. Do run your anti-spyware and anti-virus afterward, and make sure your firewall is in place. If you lack one of these items, see in the next item how you can get it for free!

5. FREE SAFETY FOR YOUR COMPUTER

     DOWNLOAD.COM has a new section called "Best Free Security & Spyware." It's wonderful! Go to:

http://www.download.com/

     Click on "Security & Spyware." Then click on "Best Free Security & Spyware." When you get there, you'll see a smorgasbord of free goodies. The knowledgeable Download.com staff have picked out the best ones, so you don't need to fear getting a lemon. As you probably know, the kinds of anti-spyware advertised in Internet popups are usually lemons - maybe even spyware themselves - but you can trust the ones picked out by the Download.com staff.

     I have the free Zone Alarm firewall they list. It's excellent. For anti-spyware, you can now get free Microsoft Windows Defender, which has done a good job in field trials. You will see others in this smorgasbord of goodies. To be really safe, the experts recommend you run two kinds of anti-spyware, as one catches what the other doesn't. No anti-spyware catches every kind of spyware, as the criminal hackers come up with new weapons daily.

     I also have the free AVG anti-virus, which is good but keeps pestering me to get its anti-spyware too. This is fine if you want to have theirs as your second anti-spyware, but I already have another kind. My computer user's group says Avast free anti-virus is excellent, and they apparently don't pester you.

     My computer user's group also recommends SpywareBlaster, which is not exactly anti-spyware but is in a category all its own. It "innoculates" your computer against many forms of spyware. Just download it into your computer and forget about it. It's one of the best freebies on this list.

6. GARDENING WITH KIDS

     Would you like to teach your children, or grandchildren, the joy of watching seeds sprout and the pleasure of eating something they grew themselves - maybe even a vegetable they thought they didn't like?

     The British are the world's best gardeners, and it should be no surprise that the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) has probably the world's best site about gardening with kids:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/gardening_with_children/

     You'll notice on the entrance page of the BBC site a section, "Science for Kids," which teaches them how vegetables sprout. In fact, as you explore the BBC site, it opens up into many delightful ways you and your child can enjoy gardening together.

     And, at a different site, you'll find another science program called "Out, Out, Damp Sprout":

http://www.education-world.com/a_lesson/showbiz_science/showbiz_science007.shtml

7. KEEPING ALL YOUR MARBLES

     I take a big interest in online games, now that I know they may keep me from losing my marbles. Talk about an incentive! Word games are all over the Internet, but many cost - a perfectly natural thing for them to do, of course - and many are not family safe. Which unfortunately also seems to be a natural thing for them to do. But here are a couple of clean, free ones, LETTERBOX and SCRABULOUS, that will make you so smart you'll have knowledge running out your ears.

     I haven't played Letterbox, but I have started playing Scrabble on Scrabulous. You can play against yourself, as I am doing right now, or you can play against other people. And I must say it's got my marbles rolling around in there.

http://letterbox.lexigame.com/letterbox.html

http://www.scrabulous.com/

8. VACATIONING ON THE BARBECUE CIRCUIT

     Are you a barbecue fan? I think it's America's greatest contribution to world cuisine. (Let's not count Coca-Cola, okay? And PLEASE don't count the McDonald's hamburgers we've sent around the world. Many years ago, when McDonald's first advertised how many millions they'd sold, I bought one for 19 cents, which tells you about when I bought it. I thought that an ambrosial experience had sent millions their way, but I merely got a pathetic patty: 19 cents worth of food. If that. As a result that was my last McDonald's hamburger, though they don't seem to have missed me any. My grandmother, oddly enough, made the best hamburgers I've ever eaten. But that's another story.)

     If you like good barbecue, perhaps your family would enjoy hitting a barbecue contest on your vacation this year. Here's a site that lists several, along with good recipes:

http://www.bbq-porch.org/qlinks2.htm

     I'm told that "the Jack Daniels" is the top contest, though it's not until October. Read all about it, and get prize-winning recipes, at:

http://www.fiery-foods.com/dave/jackd_bbq.asp

     And then there's food writer Calvin Trillin's belief that "the best restaurants in the world are, of course, in Kansas City. Not all of them. Only the top four or five." He was referring to barbecue, of course. To visit the site of the Kansas City Barbeque Society, which agrees with Trillin and gives leads to more barbecue competitions, go to:

http://www.kcbs.us/default.php

9. BARBECUE IN YOUR BACK YARD

     Would you rather eat good barbecue in your own back yard? The Smoke Ring is a barbecue web ring with hundreds of websites on it. The address below is for its barbecue forum, which should give you all the information and inspiration you could possibly want, but, if you feel you need more, just tootle around the ring itself.

http://www.thesmokering.com/forum/index.php

10. TRAVEL BARGAINS

     Most people have a favorite website where they get a good deal on plane tickets, car rentals, and hotel rooms. If you don't - or if you'd like to do a comparison to see if the site you use is the best - following are some good ones. You'll want to lock in any bargains fast, as the airlines are getting ready to raise their rates for the summer rush.

     The SIDESTEP.COM search engine claims that "We search over 150 travel websites to bring you the very best travel values on the web." As I understand it, Sidestep does not purchase your tickets. You need to do that in a separate transaction.

http://www.sidestep.com/

     CHEAP TICKETS also offers deals. They seem to specialize in student discounts, such as cheap volunteer vacations in the Caribbean, though they have other bargains too. And they have a new feature: cheap tickets to sports events, concerts, etc.

http://www.cheaptickets.com/

     The WHICH BUDGET website tells you about discount airlines to and from places all over the world, starting with Albania, Algeria, and Afghanistan, but also covering more popular countries such as France and Germany. Here again we have a site for the adventurous, people who don't care whether the pilot and crew speak English, so long as the pilot knows how to fly:

http://whichbudget.com/

     Which leads us hastily to:

11. TRAVEL SAFETY

     Our SAFE TRAVEL TIPS come from Detective Kevin Coffee. My first question: Who he? He's a fellow who conducts seminars on travel safety, that's who, and his website has a wealth of free information, for both U.S. and international travel. Tips range from questions you can ask your pilot to the best places to hide your valuables while you're out of town:

http://www.kevincoffee.com/safety_tips_index.htm

     SEAT GURU tells you which airplane seats are safest, have more legroom, are nearest the rest room, and more. The site has seating information for dozens of airlines.

http://www.seatguru.com/

     And here's a goodie: Which airline got fewest complaints? The good old U.S. government comes through for us again, with its Aviation Consumer Protection Division. I had no idea it existed, and probably you didn't either, but here's its information-packed website:

http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/reports/

     Note that it too has travel tips, such as "Travel With Animals" and "Passengers With Disabilities."

12. TEST-DRIVE YOUR DREAM JOB

     Here's an extra-good item I first used last year. For the soon-to-be graduate, or for the thousands who are in a line of work they don't enjoy, these people will let you "Test-Drive Your Dream Job!"

     Vocation Vacations says, "Whether your inner voice is telling you to go find your true calling or you're simply curious about a career change, VocationVacations can help. Our one-of-a-kind holiday adventures are empowering people everywhere to realize their dreams not only in work, but in life.

     "While on your VocationVacations holiday, you'll work alongside an expert mentor who shares your passion and will offer invaluable insights into your dream career. You'll also receive two free sessions with a VocationVacations-approved Life/Career Coach." And if you're already in the job of your dreams? Perhaps you'd like to be a mentor for Vocation Vacations.

http://vocationvacations.com/

MISSED SOME ISSUES?

     Have I got a solution for you! Now that we are using a frame for each issue, you can just look over to your left and find all the back issues nicely set out. Simply click on the ones you missed. That means too that if your e-mail service provider gets sticky and decides that Tour the Sites is spam (it is NOT spam), you can foil it and find the newsletter at this address.

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WARNING!

     If your e-mail box sometimes gets full, you are in danger of falling off the subscription list of Tour the Sites. Not because I want to lose you, but because, if your box is full when I send out a newsletter, you are automatically kicked off the list. I don't like that policy, but I don't have any say. If you change your e-mail address or get a new kind of spam filter, you may also fall off. So do keep an eye on your newsletters, which should arrive around the first and fifteenth of each month. If you haven't gotten one for a month, let me know and I'll be happy to put you back on the mailing list. Because I'd really hate to lose you.

Janette
Newsletter@tourthesites.com

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© Copyright 2007 Janette G. Blackwell. All rights reserved. You may copy and use portions of this newsletter for noncommercial, personal use only. You may forward a copy to someone else as long as the copyright notice is included. Any other use of the materials in this newsletter without prior written permission is prohibited.