Happy holiday!

It's that time of year again, April 20. 4:20. 420. Four twenty. No matter how you say it, you know what it is. It's a time of celebration for some, while being an annoyance to others. For me... it's the day I pull up the carpet in my laundry room.

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy holiday.

Eat, Fast and live longer

Eat, Fast & Live Longer HD by limoslight

 I saw this on PBS the other day and was blown away by the concepts in it, especially by the 5:2 diet results. Makes me think about trying such a thing it does. Anyway, after seeing it on PBS I decided to look it up on the internet, that way I could watch it as many times as I wanted. Now I'm sharing it with any and all of you who may or may not actually view my blog.

Tasty smoothie

This is yet another tasty smoothie

1Tbsp flax seed
1 cup crushed ice
1 can fruit cocktail
1 tangelo, peeled and sectioned
2 cups cherry pomegranate crystal light

Pulse a couple times before setting to liquify for about 2 minutes. Tasty as heck.

Home Body Weight Circuit

Home Body Weight Circuit

The previous three workouts used cardio machines, weights, or some combination of both. But what if you’re holed up at home with nothing but your own body weight, or you don’t feel like going to the gym because you’re worried about the hidden dangers lurking there? Try this workout:

• Do 10 push-ups or knee push-ups

• Then stand and do 15-20 jumping jacks

• Next to 10 squats or lunges

• Then do 15-20 more jumping jacks

• Next, move on to 10 crunches, again followed by 15-20 jumping jacks

• Finally, pick a set of dumbbells off the floor and lift them overhead up and down a total of ten times

• Then finish with a final series of 15-20 jumping jacks

To maximize fat loss, you should keep your body “guessing,” so try to switch workouts up as often as possible. You can, for example, cycle between 3 of the workouts I mentioned each week, with easy cardio or sports on the non-circuit days.

 -taken from http://getfitguy.quickanddirtytips.com

Least visited countries in the world

For some travelers, getting off the beaten path is a point of pride, a way to see the parts of the world that don’t make it into glossy guidebooks.
But how many of those same adventurous travelers would be willing to visit, say, Somalia?
About 500, it turns out. At least, that’s how many tourists found their way to the war-torn east African nation last year.

That makes Somalia the second-least visited country in the world, after the tiny pacific island nation Nauru, according to a recent list compiled by travel writer Gunnar Garfors from UN statistics.

Little Nauru – 8.1 square miles in size, population 9,378 – got just 200 visitors last year, and it’s pretty clear why.

“There is almost nothing to see there,” writes Garfors, “as most of the island … is a large open phosphate mine.”

Indeed, most of the world’s least visited countries seem to fall in one of two categories. There are the Naurus, where you’ll puzzle over what to do, and the Somalias, where it’s simply too dangerous to do much of anything at all. (As Somalia’s Wikitravel page aptly notes, “the easiest method for staying safe in Somalia is not to go in the first place.”)

Most of the “nothing to do” countries are the crumbs that dust a map of the Pacific Ocean: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and Tuvalu. The latter shares with the Maldives the dubious distinction of having "highest elevation points" that are the lowest on earth – 15 feet above sea level. Visit while you can, as rising sea levels could make the island uninhabitable within a century.

As for the “too dangerous” countries, the list reads like a global primer in political conflict. For instance, despite its pristine national parks full of wild gorillas and elephants, the perpetually ungovernable Central African Republic (#23) is an unpopular destination for tourists. And its stock will likely continue to plummet – last week a rebel alliance seized the capital, Bangui, and the president fled to neighboring Cameroon.

Afghanistan (#10) also suffers from tourism-deflating instability, which keeps visitors away from its rugged peaks, ancient Buddhist monuments, and Islamic holy sites, including the 12th-century Minaret of Jam, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

“The Taliban have a message for foreign tourists who come to Afghanistan, especially if they are from any of the 50 countries that are part of the NATO-led coalition supporting the government: Big mistake,” writes The New York Times.

Other countries on the list, like Guinea Bissau (#14), Libya (#15), and East Timor (#18), have seen their reputations – and infrastructure – hobbled by recent wars or uprisings.

But not every country on the list is too dangerous or boring to visit. A few are simply effectively sealed off to the outside world.

All foreign visitors to North Korea (#16) are limited to a state-curated itinerary and must have an official government “minder” by their side at all times. But for the few Western tourists who venture into the country, that’s part of the appeal. “You will rarely get to see propaganda done more explicitly,” Garfors writes.

Except, perhaps, in Turkmenistan (#7), where visitors who brave the onerous Soviet-esque visa application process are rewarded with sites like a 50-foot golden statue of former dictator Saparmurat Niyazov in the capital Ashgabat, which rotates throughout the day to face the sun. But the country’s most indisputably impressive site is a massive flaming crater deep in the Karakum Desert. Measuring 230 feet across and almost 70 feet deep, the so-called “Door to Hell” has been burning continuously since Soviet scientists lit it on fire in 1971.

Obscure? Yes. But that's part of the charm.

By Ryan Lenora Brown | Christian Science Monitor

http://travel.yahoo.com/ideas/least-visited-countries-in-the-world-201146242.html

 I in no way wrote the above article, all I did was copy and paste it here. I did it for the express purpose of saving this list for future reference.