"Please put a penny in the old man's hat, if you haven't a penny then half a penny will do, if you haven't got half a penny then god bless you..."

Cristal A. Pinnix
Exchange Staff

I know you are all looking forward to unwrapping the gifts from your various holiday celebrations. If you happen to be like me you rather give gifts than recieve. So this year I'd like you to try something different and new. Go out and help spread holiday cheer around the community.



There are plenty of charities out there that need help wrapping and delivering gifts for underprivilaged children. Also you can volunteer at a soup kitchen serving a holiday dinner to the homeless. There are so many things you can do to help out this holiday season besides donating money to charity. Just look in the newspaper or call around for places that need help preparing for the holiday season.

Every year I help wrap gifts for children whose families can't afford to buy gifts. It's a good experience because I know that these kids have something to look forward to when the holidays come around. I was one of those kids once, so I guess thats what influenced me to help out with projects like this.

Below is a list of things you could do to help out that I found on the Quaker Oats website http://www.quakeroatmeal.com/qo_familyFocus/healthyFamilies/seasonaltopics

• Clean Out Your Closets
  Why not make room for those new clothes you’ll be getting as gifts during the holidays by emptying your closets of old coats, sweaters, and shirts? Have your children sort through the clothing in their closets to see if they have any items that they have outgrown. If they have toys that they no longer play with, ask them if they would like to donate some of them as well. Box up the clothes and toys and take them to a local homeless shelter. Let your children help drop off the items so that they can see where their donations are going.
  
  
• Participate in a Food or Toy Drive
  Many community churches, malls, workplaces, shelters, and schools will hold food or toy drives during the holiday season. The next time you are shopping, why not pick up a few non-perishable food items or toys to donate? If there are no drives planned in your community, consider organizing one yourself.
  
  
• Shop for a Needy Child
  Stores and malls will often display a tree with paper ornaments containing the names and the requests of less fortunate children in the community. Let your children help you select one or more names from the tree and purchase an item or two from the wish lists. Once you have purchased the items, all you typically have to do is wrap the items and return them to the store.
  
  
• Volunteer Your Time
  Why not volunteer some of your time, either before or after your own holiday festivities? Consider helping out at a local homeless shelter or volunteer your time at a local nursing home. Many residents have no family in the area and may be spending the holidays alone. You might be able to help serve food, or even arrange for a caroling session. This would also be an excellent opportunity to get your children involved in helping others.
  
  
• Donate Money to a Charitable Cause
  Consider making a cash donation to a local shelter or other charitable cause this holiday season. If your workplace permits, you might also want to consider starting an office fundraising event.
  
  
• Help Your Local Animal Shelter
  Animal shelters rely upon donations in order to care for the homeless cats and dogs. Donations of food, money, toys, and cleaning supplies are always welcome at these facilities. Shelters are almost always in need of caring people to help tend to the animals, as well.

"A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves."
-Lawrence G. Lovasik

Included are some pictures I painted just in time for the holidays...Stay safe and have a wonderful Holiday Season!

Sleepless Nights

Cristal A. Pinnix
Exchange Staff Writer

This past week I've noticed that I haven't been getting enough sleep lately. Aside from being an insomniac myself, it turns out that lack of sleep is a common occurrence among college students. According to my research on the subject the some of the reasons behind this include: stress, staying up late to finish schoolwork and drinking.
So once again I come bearing gifts in the form of tips on having a better sleep experience and song lyrics about how I feel from lack of sleep.

The University of Michigan website has a page dedicated to sleeping habits here are a few tips I picked up from their sites:

• Maintain regular rise and bed times every night, including weekends.
• Take a very hot bath (for about 15 minutes) 1.5 hours before bedtime.
• Turn down the thermostat and avoid electric blankets at bedtime.
• Dim the lights at night. Bright lights suppresses the secretion of melatonin, a hormone produced by the brain's pineal gland that helps regulate the circadian rhythm. Get bright light in eary morning and avoid bright light in the late afternoon and evening so you can get to sleep at night. Use low-wattage incandescent light. Also, use very dark curtains or wear a mask for sleep.
• Restrict caffeine (not just coffee - see Caffeine for other sources) to 1-2 cups before 10 AM and avoid nicotine (smoking tobacco) in the evening. These stimulants make it more difficult to relax into sleep.
• Drink warm milk a half-hour before bedtime.
• Don't eat food within 2 hours of bedtime. Large meals take time to digest and make sleep difficult; likewise, liquids may interrupt sleep by causing a trip to the bathroom.
• Exercise regularly to tire your body, but be aware that exercising within 2 hours of bedtime may actually leave your body too energized to relax!
• Avoid napping. Approximately 30-50% of college students nap, but the effect is that nappers sleep less than non-nappers. If you do nap, nap early in the day and keep it short.
  Limit use of alcohol (or don't drink) because it disrupts sleep. Also be aware that alcohol can magnify the effects of sleep-deprivation.
• Avoid routine use of sleeping pills or other sleep aids, which reduce sleep quality. Also, be aware that products classified as dietary supplements (e.g. melatonin) are not regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration, so the strength and quality of such products is not guaranteed.
• Avoid jet lag. For prevention suggestions, see Travel Health Information.
• Create your own sleep rituals - listen to calming music, brush your teeth, read a book, write in a journal - to signal your body and mind that it is time to sleep.
  If you can't sleep, get up - don't lay in bed and worry. Do something relaxing until you feel sleepy, then go back to bed.

For more information about the effects sleep has on your health and schoolwork visit http://www.uhs.umich.edu/wellness/other/sleep.html.

Get Set Go (Ordinary World) 2006

Sleep

I'm so tired that I could sleep for a year
The sound of snoring is the only thing you would hear
I'm so tired that I could sleep my life away
I'm so tired I'm way too tired to play

Chorus: I need my sleep
I need it right now
I need my sleep
Or I'm going down
I need my sleep I need it today
I need my sleep Without delay

I'm so tired that I could sleep til I'm old And if I awoke, it would only be to use the toilet bowl I'm so tired that I could sleep my life away
I'm so tired I'm way too tired to say

Chorus

I can't sleep for all the clamor and the clang of all the people as I'm singing all these same old love songs
I can't sleep for all the clamor and the clang of all the people as I'm singing all these same old love songs

I'm going crazy
I'm going crazy
I'm going crazy
I'm going crazy
I'm going crazy
I'm going crazy

I'm so tired but I can't fall asleep
I'm so tired but I can't fall asleep
I pray the lord my soul, my soul to keep
I'm so tired but I can't fall asleep

So kiddos get yourselves to bed at a decent time, get some much needed rest so you can do really well on those final exams starting next week. Until next time goodnight.

The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit
it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make
up our bodies every morning to keep it late. ~Charles Caleb Colton

Emotions

Cristal A. Pinnix
Exchange Staff Writer

This week has seen a swirl of emotions. Everywhere I turn there has been someone whose extremely happy about an event in their life, a person who is having relationship problems, confusion, anger towards others, and mixture of other emotions. I myself have experienced these feelings at one time or another, but mostly this week I experienced fatigue and anger. Ok not really anger more like frustration.
Let's just say I didn't exactly have the best Thanksgiving break. During this frustration and fatigue I started thinking about the events that have happened in my life and reflected on the ways I handled those situations. In every situation I handled it differently, but it seems in every instance I cried. I never only cry because I'm sad, I cry for everything. It's just the way I express my emotions, along with laughing.
Life is just a sea of emotions... This week I started to use this art software that I purchased for my computer and began to express my emotions thorough art. It was actually fairly relaxing.

"When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of
logic, but creatures of emotion." ~Dale
Carnegie

A few special thanks...

So this week in the Exchange for Thanksgiving we've decided to write blogs about what we're thankful for this year.

The first thing I'm thankful for is my mother and my three sisters for supporting me in my education and my numerous endeavors to increase my potential for success.

The second thing I'm most thankful for is my boyfriend Rick and my friends but especially Andy, Molly, Patricia, and Juliana for keeping me sane and making my life so much more fun.

Many things have happend this year but I know that the most important thing that I'm thankful for this year is life and living everyday to it's fullest. And so I leave you with this:

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough,
and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.
It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision
for tomorrow."~ Melody Beattie ~

Exploring new land....

Pumice raft...


I was visiting one of my favorite sites the other day www.coasttocoastam.com and I happened to look in the news section and I found something that caught my eye.
A couple of vessels sailing in the South Pacific near Tonga claim to have found a new volcanic island that has risen from the sea.
The crew of the Maiken, a yacht that left the Tongan Islands in August reported in their blog on August 12th that they had seen streaks of light and pumice stone floating in the water. They posted photo of the "pumice rafts" that they
encountered after passing Late Island on their
way to Fuji.
The crew reports to have spotted an active volcanic island the next day. It was reported to be "One mile in diameter and with four peaks and a central crater smoking with steam and once in a while an outburst high in the sky with lava and ashes."

A fisherman claims to have also seen the same island.


This is an amazing discovery, it's intriguing to learn and witness the way nature works.
A photo of the new island

A photo of a pumice field

The Strangest Town Names

This week has been fairly busy and quite hectic, but I've still found the time to discover some strange but interesting information for you folks. I was looking around on the web and I happened to find a list of "Wacky Town Names." www.infoplease.com has the list broken up into subcategories such as, "towns that boast..." and "towns that make you hungry."
There are some very funny town names out there like Rabbit Shuffle, NC and Lick Fork, VA. It makes you wonder who comes up with names for these towns and whether or not the townsfolk have ever tried to change the name to something else.

Towns that boast . . .

Beauty, KY
Best, TX
Bountiful, UT

smile in Smileyberg, KS

Carefree, AZ
Celebration, FL
Friendly, WV
Happy Camp, CA
Happyland, CT
Ideal, GA
Lovely, KY
Luck Stop, KY
Magic City, ID
Paradise, MI
Smileyberg, KS
Success, MO
What Cheer, IA

. . . and towns that don't.

Boring, OR
Dinkytown, MN
Eek, AK
Embarrass, WI

modest Sod, WV

Flat, TX
Greasy, OK
Gripe, AZ
Hardscrabble, DE
Hazard, KY
Oddville, KY
Okay, OK
Ordinary, KY
Peculiar, MO
Sod, WV
Why, AZ

Towns that make you hungry

Bacon, IN
Big Rock Candy Mountain, VT
Buttermilk, KS
Cheesequake, NJ
Chocolate Bayou, TX

yum to Spuds, FL

Goodfood, MS
Ham Lake, MN
Hot Coffee, MS
Lick Fork, VA
Lickskillet, OH
Mexican Water, AZ
Oatmeal, TX
Oniontown, PA
Picnic, FL
Pie Town, NM
Sandwich, MA
Spuds, FL
Sugar City, ID
Tea, SD
Tortilla Flat, AZ
Two Egg, FL

Towns that remind you of bugs and birds . . .

Beebeetown, IA

shufflin' to Bugscuffle, TN

Bee Lick, KY
Bird-in-Hand, PA
Birds Eye, IN
Black Gnat, KY
Bugscuffle, TN
Bumble Bee, AZ
Chicken, AK
Fleatown, OH
Goose Pimple Junction, VA
Parrot, KY
Shoofly, NC
Turkey, TX
Turkey Scratch, AR

. . . and other creatures . . .

Bear, DE
Beaverdale, PA
Dinosaur, CO
Dog Walk, KY
Fish Haven, ID
Hippo, KY
Horseheads, NY
Hungry Horse, MT
Mammoth, WV
Monkey's Eyebrow, KY
Possum Trot, KY
Rabbit Shuffle, NC
Squirrel Hill, PA
Toad Suck, AR
Trout, LA
Viper, KY

. . . not to mention humankind.

Bigfoot, TX
Bowlegs, OK
Brainy Boro, NJ
Humansville, MO
Left Hand, WV
Shoulderblade, KY
Stiffknee Knob, NC
Sweet Lips, TN
West Thumb, WY

For those of you not interested in wacky town names, I thought I'd mention that this month is American Indian Heritage Month infoplease has a plethora of articles about this topic including American Indian Heritage Month Origins,
American Indian versus Native American , American Indian Quotes, and Notable American Indians.

Just to name a few. Go out and learn something new, it could be fun.

The answer is in the paint

by Cristal A. Pinnix
Exchange Staff

Today was a fairly interesting sort of day. We changed the design of The Exchange and I ended up painting a banner for the annual RLAGS conference.
Coming up with the new design for The Exchange was a hard task to do. There were so many good ideas that everyone had about what we could do to spruce up the page a little. So we went with the basics.
Added a little more color, changed the font, try a new hit counter, and link the blogs to new pages. We present to you a new look for our little online newspaper. Change is good. It's nice to shake things up a bit and try something new cause if you didn't then life would be really boring. You may miss the old layout a teensy bit or maybe even a lot.
But don't fret it all isn't over yet. It was time for our baby bird to spread it's wings and fly. We're open to any feedback about the new look or anything else you find on The Exchange.
So keep up the spirit and "straighten up and fly right."