I think in large part due to the phenomenal success of “Mamma Mia! The Movie” last summer which was released shortly after last year’s San Diego County Fair concluded, the organizers of the San Diego County Fair thought it fitting to bring in an ABBA tribute band as a headlining act for the 2009 San Diego County Fair at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. Fortunately the organizers picked what I consider to be the world’s best ABBA tribute band out there. That tribute band is Arrival, who like ABBA, also originate from Sweden and the show Arrival is touring under is called “The Music Of ABBA”.

Headed by Vicky Zetterberg (who portrays Anni-Frid “Frida” Lyngstad) and joined by Jenny Gustafsson (who portrays Agnetha Fältskog), Arrival brought a wonderful touch of Sweden to San Diego, not once, but twice with two shows on July 2, 2009. The afternoon show began at 2pm and while the program states the afternoon concerts are hour long shows, Arrival played for a full two hours bringing a complete ABBA show to those down at the fair early enough to catch the afternoon show. I was personally fighting with traffic and the whole mess with parking so I didn’t make it to the Heineken Grandstand Stage until 2:30pm but I did get there. Arrival were performing “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” as I arrived.

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To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Sony’s introduction of the Walkman which forever changed how personal music was defined, the BBC thought it would be an interesting experiment to have a 13 year old child trade in their iPod for one week for a classic Sony Walkman without any instructions other than to say the Walkman was the iPod of it’s day.

It was interesting to read the child’s insight into the whole thing, my personal favorite comment was it took three days before he realized there was a second side to the cassette. He also missed the shuffle feature of his iPod but decided he could simulate it by randomly holding down the rewind and stopping at random spots. It was also a great laugh to read how big and clunky he thought the device was because it’s huge compared to the iPod, but back in the day it was cutting edge small technology.

I still remember my first Walkman, I don’t remember the brand of it but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a Sony one. I used to listen to it all the time, even took it to bed so I could listen to my music to fall asleep, a habit I still have. I have a hard time falling asleep without music playing. Yes, the buttons were big and clunky, and for that matter so were the players. I always wanted one of the Walkmans with a built in speaker but never did ever get one of those. Cassettes weren’t a perfect medium, but they are what got me through the 1980’s. I didn’t get my first CD player until 1989.

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Who knew the Bee Gees song “Stayin’ Alive” really can help people stay alive? Well apparently it can, in a procedure known as “Hands Only CPR” which instead of using a more traditional mouth to mouth recussitation requires pressing hard and fast on the chest of the victim of cardiac arrest (or heart attack). This has been proven to be equally as effective as traditional CPR according to the American Heart Association and can double the vitim’s chances of survival.

The reason “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees song is effective is because it has over 100 beats per minute and Hands Only CPR is most effective at 100 beats per minute. The American Heart Association still encourages traditional CPR if you’re knowledgeable in how to do it, but the Hands Only CPR method is better than not doing anything at all, which is unfortunately, what happens in a lot of cases because people panic and fearing doing anything might make the situation worse for the victim. Sadly it’s the inaction that ultimately causes more death because people fear you need formal CPR training to help someone having a heart attack.

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Robert Kiyosaki, best known as the Author of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” would like you to read his new book, “Conspiracy Of The Rich: The 8 New Rules Of Money.” And he would like to allow you the chance to read it for free at ConspiracyOfTheRich.com. The only stipulation is that you have to read it online, and it’s only available to be read online within the next two weeks before it’s pulled off the internet and sent to the publisher to be printed into a book you can purchase this fall.

Why is Robert doing this? Well he wants feedback on ways to make the book better. You have the opportunity to discuss the book in an online forum as well as suggest ways to improve it so that the book will offer the best way to communicate the information in it. Those contributions that get used will even received a thank you credit in the final book. More importantly its an opportunity to build your financial education so that you can feel empowered in the current economy. It’s a wake up call for those who are blindly expecting President Obama to fix their lives, you need to educate yourself and fix your own economy.

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While recently looking through YouTube I found a few more videos from Jorge Cruise which I think are very helpful to those interested in losing weight with the Belly Fat Cure. These videos answer a lot of questions about the program.

To get the most benefit from the videos, it’s really a good idea to go visit JorgeCruise.com and download the free report. There’s no need to enter any email address, you just download the report for free. It’s loaded with valuable information. Once you’ve read the report the following two videos will be very helpful to you.

In this first video, Jorge Cruise answers seven key questions in the form of a frequently asked questions in regards to the program. He reveals more information about why it’s sugar that’s the key to the program. He also covers fiber, and why you want to avoid artificial sugars. Check it out.

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Earlier today I attended a company picnic that was being held at the Bates Nut Farm in Valley Center, California. The locally infamous venue often due to the name “Bates” and seemingly endless jokes in reference to the movie Psycho or local DJs referring to it as “Nate’s Butt Farm” is actually a really nice place. They have a lot of land that they often rent out for company parties and the sort, but what they’re most known for is being a purveyor of nuts from around the world. Their “General Store” that’s located on the farm is like an old time candy shop where they make their own chocolates and fudge as well as offer the opportunity to purchase nuts from around the world often in several varieties such as roasted, raw, salted, unsalted, and more. The store also has a section that’s like a craft store with a variety of items for home decor that would fit into a country theme.

For my visit, I enjoyed browsing through the shop. They had several interesting variety of nuts from around the world, but ultimately all I bought from the nuts section was a 7 ounce bag of raw Macadamia nuts as I love to chop those up and add them to my sugar free cookies. I also decided to purchase a small box of their deluxe sugar free candies. They had a variety of them from truffles, to cream filled ones, to some very good peanut butter cup ones as well. The best part is they had some in milk chocolate kind as well. It seems a lot of places if they have sugar free its all dark chocolate and I just don’t like as much. Definitely will have to be stopping back here on occasion for some really delicious sugar free candies.

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Sometimes all it takes to convert a meal that would have too much sugar and too many carbs into one that would meet the recommendations for Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure are some minor tweaks. Take for example of a lunch consisting of a hot dog. A lot of Americans will grab a hot dog at their local Costco Membership Warehouse, and why not? It’s a great deal as the hot dog includes a soda in addition to the hot dog all for the amazingly low price of $1.50

Between the bun and the dog, it would have a Belly Fat Cure Sugar/Carb Value (S/C Value) of 11/3, based on the nutritional information found at TheDailyPlate.com. The information doesn’t specify if any of the condiments Costco makes available are on the hot dog or not. The condiments available are ketchup, mustard, relish, and onions. Whether or not these condiments are included in the nutritional information, the Belly Fat Cure program recommends a meal consist of no more than 5 grams of sugar and two carb servings or an S/C value of 5/2. (To learn how to figure out an S/C value, download the free Belly Fat Cure Report from JorgeCruise.com). This means the Costco hot dog has more than double the allowed sugar grams and slightly too many carb servings.

The most likely cause of the overage in the Costco hot dog is the bun. A lot of bread products are loaded with sugar as a lot of bread is made with High Fructose Corn Syrup. And the bun is also the cause of the carbs as the wiener in the hot dog is an all beef meat product. And of the condiments, if those are included in the nutritional information, the ketchup, relish, and onions would be the cause of additional sugar. If the ketchup is made by Heinz, then the ketchup has 4 grams of sugar per serving and since a single serving of ketchup (about 1 tablespoon) isn’t going to cover much of a Costco hot dog, most people would pour on considerably more than one serving. So how do we turn this into a Belly Fat Cure acceptable meal?

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I went into seeing “Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen” with fairly low expectations as it’s not been reviewed very positively by critics and a few of the people I follow on Twitter didn’t have the best of things to say about it. But I wanted to see it anyway and so I went with a couple of people from work today and I thought it was just okay.

The movie itself had a reasonably decent plot line, and the stuff involving the parents of the main character, Sam, were fantastic comedy bits. As with most Michael Bay movies, it was loaded with lots of explosions and as one friend on Twitter put it, a great recruiting video for the Armed Forces. The explosions were definitely bigger and better than the first movie. One of the nice touches I liked was the return of the same voice from the animated Transformers cartoon for the character of Soundwave. Fortunately, they didn’t make Soundwave a tape deck, but rather a satellite in space who taps into a US Military satellite and relays information to the Decepticons below. I think from the animated show the voices of Optimus Prime and Soundwave definitely are key to those of use nostalgic enough to remember the original cartoons back when they were at their peak of popularity.

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I often get a lot of questions about my recent weight loss, mostly from people who see me in person. Obviously they can see the changes, and I don’t exactly pose for a lot of photographs let alone post them here online to show the changes either. But in any case, since I get asked, I wanted to have a great resource to point people to in order to get additional information.

Since Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure program doesn’t officially get released until the end of the year, what is available is a free downloadable special report (JorgeCruise.com) that highlights the key aspects of the program. There report is available freely on the main page, there is no need to give an e-mail address, and you can read it and if you want additional information, you can sign up to received updates from Jorge Cruise. The report comes in a PDF file so it’s easy to download and read as well as print out if you wish. The Belly Fat Cure is a very simple program, and I’ve had remarkable success with it. In two months, I’ve lost 37 pounds and 7 inches from around my waist. It’s been amazing.

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Last night at the San Diego County Fair, I went to go see the B-52’s perform with some of San Diego’s bear community. Roughly twenty or so of us went and we squatted out a section of free seats in the grandstand with a great view of the stage even though we weren’t that close. The tickets were amazingly cheap. Entrance to the fair was $13, but if you hit an Albertsons grocery store, you could get $11 tickets. The concert was included in the fair admission price, and there was an opportunity to upgrade the tickets for reserved seating, but where we saw the group was just fine.

I wouldn’t consider myself to be a giant fan of the B-52’s but I do like them a lot. I’ve never been obsessive about getting all their albums. I would say my B-52’s collection consists of a greatest hits album, the “Cosmic Thing” album, a single for “Good Stuff”, and the “Funplex” album from last year. Oh, and the “Flintstones” movie soundtrack where the B-52’s became the BC-52’s to perform “The Flintstones Theme” and “The Bedrock Twitch.” Not quite the obsessive fan I tend to be about other groups. However, I think I may be adding a few more of their albums following the show.

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