Book Review - "Don't Worry About a Thing, Dear" Why Women Need Financial Intimacy

"Don't Worry About A Thing, Dear" is a 195 page softcover book by Helga Hayse geared towards women contemplating marriage or those who are already married. The cover image is an appropriate illustration by Edward Sorel, courtesy of The New Yorker Magazine, that shows Pan reading The Wall Street Journal while his wife sits at his side completely oblivious.

It's a fact that many married women allow their husbands to handle the family finances while they sit idly by and sign anything that their husband places in front of them. The consequences of this behavior is made clear by the author Helga Hayse. Hayse says in the book "Our willingness to let our husband handle the finances in the marriage impacts our own financial safety and our ability to cope in the event of widowhood or divorce." No statement has been more true.

This fascinating and immensely helpful book is a wakeup call to women everywhere. After meeting a financially strapped widow the author began to wonder how she would cope if her husband died. She interviewed hundreds of people on the topic of marital finances and each story was more heartbreaking than the last.

Hayse had her wakeup call and began the slow process of learning everything she needed to know about her marital finances. She and her husband began financial planning and shortly after all the documents were signed her husband died in freak accident at home. Hayse takes her experience from both sides of the fence to empower women to take control of their finances.

I found this book to be empowering and filled with information that most women never consider. Topics covered include premarital and postmarital agreements, death of a spouse, divorce and even remarriage. In addition to the generous advice shared there are questionnaires, checklists, worksheets, recommended reading and additional resources.

The author even includes a separate chapter for "For Husbands Only" that gently guides men to realize that they can show their love for their wife by beginning and completing the process of financial planning.

"Don't Worry About A Thing, Dear" Why Women Need Financial Intimacy should be required reading for young women in high school or college. No one wants to think about the possibility of divorce or the certainty of death but preparing women for either circumstance is critical and this book is an important tool for all women.

(c) 2009. Davis Virtual Assistance. All rights reserved. Reprints welcomed so long as full reveiw and by-line are reprinted intact with all links made live.

Book Review for Valley of the Raven by Ken Ramirez

Valley of the Raven is a captivating novel set in the beautiful foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range. When teenagers Ty Dettin, his younger brother Seth, and their pal Tanner White set out for a typical dirt bike ride in the California Sierra Gold Country, they are unaware of the life-altering adventure lurking around the next bend. Tooling along in the spring sunshine, Ty and Tanner follow Seth onto an overgrown trail that leads to decrepit buildings, vestiges of the California gold rush days, when the land was ravaged for the sake of monetary riches. While poking around one of the shacks, the trio discovers a map buried beneath floorboards in a tin box.

The yellowed map appears authentic, providing a detailed sketch of a gold-filled cavern, signed by "Coop." Fueled with a desire to discover the gold, they set out to investigate.

In a strange and magical twist, the trio happens upon an elderly Native American woman, Nevar, who lives along the banks of a river in a remote and magnificent valley. She connects with them spiritually, most particularly with Ty, accompanied by her totem, the raven. Said raven, Kaji Taka, appears at all crucial points of the adventure, assisting and protecting the boys as they move closer to the awful truth of a pending scheme that threatens Six Hills and its pristine reservoir. Ty is touched by this encounter, haunted and somewhat frightened, but he cannot stop thinking about the old women and the strong urge to visit her again.

In a parallel effort to claim the gold of their ancestor, "Coop," recently released jailbird Curtis "Junior" Cooper and his brother Carl begin an expedition to mine the gold. Assisted by fellow ex-cons, Skinny, a chain-smoking expert underwater diver who watched his abusive father drown in the pond by his home when he was a child, and Steve "Eight-Pack" Hunt, a body-builder mechanic who resembles a big Swede, Junior and Carl plan to drain a pond that hides the gold-filled cavern.

Mr. Ramirez expertly weaves yet another theme through the novel, bringing us back in history to the life of Buffalo soldier, Clay "Coop" Cooper, a strong and upstanding black man who fought bravely for the American army, and with his meager savings purchased the land that includes the valley in which Nevar appears to them. He and his wife, a lovely Lakota woman named Maka, begin a life in the rich Sierra valley, and implement a plan to purchase as much of the land as possible, donating it to the people and forbidding it to be sold privately in the future. The diverse history of the Native American tribes, the Buffalo soldiers, and their plights are beautifully told by Mr. Ramirez, a teacher himself, through scenes in a classroom where his own teaching abilities become apparent.

When the boys and their friends discover the Coopers are planning something so dastardly the entire region is threatened, they push forward with great integrity and courage, in spite of the mind-numbing roadblocks that constantly impede them. Ty is drawn to a destiny ingrained in his part-Comanche genes, and moves forward on a path of sheer lunacy and utter heroism as he endangers his own life to save the land and people of Six Hills.

Mr. Ramirez has created a lyrical world that breathes with life. The boys' dialogue is natural and real. Their actions, fears, discussions, and reactions ring true, a testimony to the author's acute understanding of youth.

Aside from the engaging storyline, Mr. Ramirez's has painted enchanting descriptions of the countryside, as in this excerpt:

"As the sun crested over the surrounding granite peaks in the glorious morning scene reflected on the lake, its surface completely smooth, not a wave, not a ripple, a true mirror - Maka's Mirror. The sky and lake together burst into a flaming golden-orange, accented with large white clouds whose fiery bellies seemed almost metallic. A small flock of Canada geese circled the lake and then, with extended webbed feet and outstretched wings, skidded across the surface of the placid mountain water, their honking amplified by the stillness of the dawn. When they finally settled on the water, the wakes of disturbance rolled through the liquid canvas, sending splinters of color and sparkling reflections in every direction."

As the completely satisfying adventure escalates toward a pulse-pounding finish, Mr. Ramirez incorporates surprising, yet believable twists in his characters, all the while subtly sharing life lessons about responsibility, stewardship of the land, respect for people of all nationalities, and following one's destiny. The most important lesson deals with the insight that our natural world - with its sparkling streams, wildflowers, tall pines, and unspoiled wilderness - provides the true "riches" which transcend monetary wealth.

I highly recommend Valley of the Raven to readers of all ages. It will quench a deep universal thirst for adventure and heroism. My only question is this: will Mr. Ramirez grace us with a sequel?

How to Use Squidoo to Drive Traffic to Your Articles

Squidoo is one of the things that you cannot simply ignore when you're doing internet marketing. It's classified as content based marketing solution so you can be assured that it's very effective. As the site have amazing page ranking, it can boost your online visibility in no time and you know what that means! That would mean increased traffic for your blog and website.

Here's what you need to do to benefit from Squidoo:

First step is to optimize your Squidoo page. The good thing about creating Squidoo lenses is that you can easily change the name of your lenses and use the keywords that you're targeting to make them easier to find online. Target keywords that are extremely popular to your potential clients. Just ensure that these keywords are closely related to the content of your lenses. Use amazing titles. Be very creative when writing the titles for your lenses. The goal here is to capture the attention of your potential clients right away. Your titles must be gripping and extremely unique. What I suggest is that you make them benefit-driven or thought provoking. It's important that you give your target audience valid reason to check your lenses out. Offer great information. Your success in this endeavor will largely depend on the quality of your lenses. The key here is knowing what your target audience are looking for and writing your content based on their needs, demands, and preferences. As you're trying to position yourself as an expert in your niche, ensure that your lenses are extremely informative. Spill out trade secrets, insider tips, and offer expert advice as much as possible. Offer great reading experience. It's also important to ensure that your audience will enjoy reading your lenses. So, write simply and get straight to the point. Make them easy on the eyes by breaking down your content using short paragraphs, bullets and numbers. As much as possible, use conversational tone to engage your audience. Optimize your lenses. Do not forget to use relevant keywords on your titles and all throughout your content so your lenses will fare well on relevant search page results. It's best if you target one primary keyword and at least two secondary keywords per lens that are constantly being searched for by your target audience. Keep the acceptable keyword density in mind so you can make your lenses not just search engine-friendly but reader-friendly as well. Create lots of lenses. You'll be able to benefit really well from this endeavor if you write lots of lenses related to your niche. This will help you strengthen your expert status and will help you become more visible in the online arena. However, ensure that you maintain the quality as this is still the most important element in this endeavor. Link to your articles. Ensure that you insert links on your lenses that will take your readers to those articles that you've published in the online arena. You can send them to your blog, website, or on your author's page on various article marketing sites.

Scrapbooking Your Goals: How Scrapbooking Helps You Achieve Your Dreams

When I first started scrapbooking, I used the hobby as a way to document my family's memories, such as birthdays, Christmases, and more. But over time, I realized how powerful scrapbooking could be as a way to track my goals and dreams, more as a journal of progress towards the future than as a record of the past. I've always been a list-maker and goal-maker, so combining scrapbooking with my type-A personality was a natural next step.

Tons of research on the field of goal-setting has shown that writing down your goals is one of the most important steps you can make towards making your dreams come true. In fact, some estimates say that you more than double your chances of achieving your goals if you write them down. So think how much more likely you are to make your dreams happen if you create a vivid scrapbook around the topic! Not only could you add photos of what you want to achieve, you could also track your progress along the way. Here are just a few of the types of goals scrapbooking could help you achieve:

1. Weight loss/fitness. Popular scrapbooker Cathy Zielske has created a monthly layout, charting her progress towards a healthier lifestyle, since January 2010. She shares these layouts on her blog and has inspired many others to do the same. Each layout includes a before and after photo, and stats tracking her measurements and weight. It's amazing to watch her transformation!

2. House remodel. Remodeling a house is slow business. But if you can record the step-by-step movements towards completion, you can keep your spirits up along the way. Plus it's fun to go back after the whole project is complete and see how things used to be! You could include sketches, paint samples, photos, and more.

3. "10 Dreams" album. This is my latest project. I put together a small album including 10 goals, each on its own page. I look at it often to remind myself of some of the fun things I want to complete in the near future, including planting a vegetable garden and taking a hula-hooping class.

4. Race album. My daughter and I run road races together, so I started an album of photos from each race. Our goal is to complete 25 races by the time she graduates from high school. Since she's in fifth grade now, that's about three a year, which is completely do-able! But having the album waiting to remind us of our commitment makes us more likely to find opportunities to run together.

Crane Rental Is Far Superior Than Buying the Crane Itself

Projects concerning building of apartments, sky high structures and elite homes are gaining global popularity thanks to the advanced epochs of rapid developments. Not only are these building projects pricey, but also they re very daunting and require huge capital investments. This is the exact reason why the vocation of a contractor is often miscomprehended.

Apart from mere supervising, he/ she have to take on multiple roles and coming across cost effective means to construct buildings without finding the middle ground in security and structural integrity. In such milieus, opting for crane rental services is a wise decision as compared to buying the crane itself. Hydraulic cranes are very straight forward and unproblematic in their design and styling. They are capable of effortlessly hurling large masses which would seem infeasible at first sight.

The very first conception which harbors many a minds is that owning a crane is far more cost effective than choosing a service which proffers crane on rent. But this is not completely true as there are small construction companies out there which can use crane rental services and not only will this be a cheap state of affairs, it will be deemed as a wise verdict too.

Let us discuss some of the imperative connotation of crane rental services. When you choose a crane on rent, you will most probably avoid hassles that come with insurance cover for misfortunes, damages and mishaps at construction site as the firm which owns the crane, already are pre equipped with insurance cover.

On the other hand, if you choose to buy a hydraulic crane and something happens, you solely will be liable for all the damages. Once you buy a crane, you got to find a place to keep it (if you don't have one, you have to buy or rent a property); not to forget you have to recruit skilled operator and may be security personnel to keep a watch when it is idle. All these things will surely drain resources.

Of course with crane rental services maintenance of this Herculean contrivance is not your headache any more. In case the unit breaks down, you can always demand a replacement, but this is surely not the caser when you yourself indulge in buying a hydraulic crane. The copious number of risks associated with buying a crane makes the decision to choose crane for rent a well versed and balanced decision.

The Terrorist Legacy Written by Mr Pat

This is a very large book that tells a story of the world today with all the battles of terrorism, religion, brutality, rape, control of humans, and food scarcity. I was afraid the book would lose the reader just by the immense scope of the story that spreads over many nations, seas and oceans, many people and organizations, and how precious life really is and how that life can be threatened by terrorists who obtain a nuclear device. It also tells of the attempt to save children in parts of Africa where life is not valuable to most, not even a child's life.

In many of the African nations kidnapping and slavery of children is rampant. An organization attempts to get some of these children and save them by setting up camps to school them, however the Muslim's in charge were reluctant to allow such camps as they wanted control of everyone in the entire area so they could kill anyone they felt like eliminating. After all, there were so many that the ones they killed would never be missed! The ones that are strong enough were kept as workers in the military camps or used for the men in that military. No one was too young to be used or raped. Several camps were formed and did well but it was too expensive and difficult to keep and protect these children with the cost of "obtaining" them through those in command. The next hope was to bring some of these children to Israel by establishing a camp there. This was against all Muslim ways to allow the Jewish people to have any of the African children there so they fought it all they could.

The story above is only a tip of the books contents. From Africa we jump to two super boats that were each built to travel speeds upward of 70 knots per hour, carry nuclear weapons as well as regular weaponry of all types, hulls made of super strong materials to keep them safe, and each one run by opposite thinking people; Muslim extremists against free world groups. The "New Day" vs. the "Diversion", both capable of mass destruction. The mission of the New Day was to wipe out the American super carrier "Lincoln" and its accompanying ships. The Diversion was meant to keep a rich family safe while on their honeymoon but the missions all changed with terrorists involved.

There is no way I can write a short review on The Terrorist Legacy. I can only point you in the direction of all of the above and tell you the story is great. There area a few places of repetition but not many. I think the author used some this repetition to connect the reader's mind as they read the book. It has much excitement and gives you history as it goes on. Unless you have no interest in the world around you and how nasty it can be, this is a must read.