Did I give them up for Lent? Quite the contrary. While the rest of my grocery supply has dwindled, I have spent the last several weeks stuffing lentils down my gullet like they were going out of style. (Though I suspect they never really were in style, at least in the United States.)

Anyway, I have an almost reasonable explanation for the recent influx of legumes in my diet.

I hate wasting food. I also hate learning to cook, as I seem to have no natural aptitude for it. My poor mother’s attempts to teach me all fell on deaf ears. “I’ll just marry a man who can cook,” I assured her as I hit my teenage years with nary a clue as to how to boil water.

It turns out this is not a good insurance plan, at least if one plans to marry anywhere below Jamie Oliver and/or eat food, so I have been slowly teaching myself to cook. Working my way up from exclusively pasta dishes, I decided last month to make lentil soup, which turned out to be surprisingly tasty.

The small bag of lentils I purchased for the task turned out to be surprisingly long-lasting.

I told myself that before I purchased any more groceries of the entrée variety, I would finish my deceptively large supply of lentils. That way, I reasoned, they wouldn’t go to waste in my cupboard while I dined on more savory fare (frozen pizza, in my case).

So I have been eating lentils for lunch, and sometimes dinner, every single day. The last time I did this I was 19, living in Mexico and subsisting on my host family’s usual cuisine, which was lentil soup, chicken and the occasional tortilla. Sometimes we got crazy and had a bit of leftover chicken with our lentil soup.

Anyway, I finally finished the last of my lentil soup Tuesday – almost. I did have to throw away about half a cup because they were turning an alarming shade of gray and I didn’t think they could survive another re-heating.

Yesterday, I passed the legume section of the supermarket with a victorious chuckle and headed for the frozen pizza. It will probably be a very long time before I touch lentils again. Forty days and 40 nights? More like: “Sayonara suckers, we will only meet again if I have $1 to spend on food and the store is out of Ramen.”

This shall always be remembered, however, as the lentil-laden Lenten season. I didn’t give up anything this year, though I’ve at least avoided meat on Fridays. I always struggle with finding something to sacrifice for Lent, not because I’m a perfect person, but because I come up short in the list of traditional vices. I don’t smoke, I drink about once a month, and casinos bother me. I do play BINGO, but that’s free. According to co-worker Justine I have a “nasty Mountain Dew habit,” but that’s bunk. I have a nasty caffeine habit. Most reporters do.

So what am I supposed to give up for Lent? Napping? Spelling words incorrectly? Flossing? (OK, that one would actually be really hard. I like to floss.)

I gave up chocolate once. It was horrible. Another year I gave up Zebra Cakes, which only resulted in my cycling through all the other snack cake options the cafeteria had to offer. I expect sweet tooth to be declared a legitimate medical disease any day now.

So I guess that brings me back to lentils.

Now there’s a sacrifice I could live with.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - El terremoto que sacudió al territorio de Chile el mes pasado desplazó más de tres metros (casi 10 pies) hacia el oeste a la ciudad de Concepción y alteró la posición geográfica de otras ciudades de ese país y de su vecino Argentina, reveló un estudio científico...

Una década llevará la reconstrucción de las miles de viviendas destrozadas por el sismo.

Lota, Llico, Tubul, son nombres que dicen poco o casi nada a cualquiera fuera de esta región del sur chileno....

Fuente: univision.com

Si usted podría estar pasando por un divorcio o una separación legal querrá pensar en las
Consecuencias de las deudas que usted pueda tener.

Las compañías de tarjetas de crédito pueden aprobar tanto cuentas individuales
Como conjuntas. En cualquier caso, es posible autorizar a otro usuario a la cuenta.
Hay ventajas y desventajas en cada una de estas opciones.
Si el solicitante no tiene mucho ingreso, o tiene un historial de crédito limitado,
podría ser más fácil conseguir crédito si él o ella llena una solicitud
conjuntamente con el cónyuge. Por otra parte la historia de crédito del solicitante corre
con más riesgos si otra persona, que podría hacer cargos y no pagar, está en la
cuenta. Si una cuenta está a nombre de solo una persona, esa persona tiene
más control sobre los gastos y pagos.

Cuando un matrimonio se termina es probablemente buena idea cerrar las cuentas de
Crédito conjuntas, o tratar de convertirlas en cuentas individuales. El acreedor no
Hará esto automáticamente sólo por el cambio de estado civil. El acreedor debe
cerrar una cuenta si el titular de la cuenta así lo solicita, pero no está
obligado a cambiar una cuenta conjunta existente a una individual. El titular de la
cuenta podría tener que presentar una nueva solicitud para abrir una cuenta
individual, la cual puede aprobar o negar el acreedor, en base al historial
crediticio del solicitante.

José Lamas, Extensión de la Universidad de Minnesota
Fuente: www.FTC.gov

If you might be going through a divorce or a legal separation, you will want to think about the implications of the debts you might have.

Credit card companies can approve both individual and joint accounts. In either case, it is possible to authorize another user on the account. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these choices.

If the applicant does not have much income, or has a limited credit history, it might be easier to get credit if he or she applies jointly with a spouse. On the other hand, there are more hazards to the applicant's credit history if another person, who might run up charges and not pay, is on the account. If an account is in one person's name alone, that person has more control over charges and payments.

When a marriage ends, it is probably a good idea to close joint credit accounts, or try to convert them into individual accounts. The creditor will not do this automatically, just because of the change in marital status. The creditor must close an account if the account holder requests it, but is not required to change an existing joint account to an individual one. The account holder might have to submit a new application for the individual account, which the creditor can either approve or deny, based on the applicant's credit history.

Jose Lamas, University of Minnesota Extension
Source: www.FTC.gov

SANTIAGO - La teletón "Chile ayuda a Chile", jornada solidaria liderada por el animador de TV Don Francisco (Mario Kreutzberger), arrancó este viernes alrededor de las 22: horas (tiempo local) para captar durante 27 horas el máximo de ayudas para los damnificados y vencer el desánimo de los chilenos tras el terremoto que el sábado arrasó el centro y sur del país.

Fuente: Univision.com

Foro: Ayuda a encontrar los familiares y amigos que viven en Chile

Fuente: Univision.com

In the first few months of 2010, we’ve already seen two devastating earthquakes and the death of a Georgian athlete at the Olympics. Last year, there were dozens of earthquakes, many near the West Coast or Southeast Asia — many of which the world’s news sources never even picked up on. Let’s not forget the crappy economy, H1N1 flu and never-ending partisan bickering in our domestic government. Flooding in Central America, yet more school shootings, derailed trains and forest fires. It even seems as though our various conflicts in the Middle East have taken a backseat to everything going awry elsewhere.

In short, it’s a whole lot of bad news. And lately, it seems to be even worse than usual. In the media, we get a bad rap for reporting bad news. But unfortunately, it is oftentimes the bad, the unusual, even the sadistic and morbid that people are drawn to. Not because we are all bad people, but because — at least according to some communication theories — people are inherently drawn to news and images that make their own lives seem better by comparison.

Does this mean we like reporting bad news? Not really. Yes, reporters may appreciate the fires and murders and drugs for their news value — it doesn’t mean we relish the fact that someone has died, people have lost property or another life has been sacrificed to a drug addiction. It doesn’t mean we jump up with glee at the notice of car accidents. But it does mean we go the scene of the crash. Maybe we go reluctantly and always we go solemnly, but we go. Because it is news.

For every story of hope that we have felt inspired and privileged just to write about, most reporters also have sad memories of covering tragedies, getting caught in the despair of others and wishing they were anywhere but there.

But I hope you won’t be discouraged. Because for all the bad news, for all the suffering people in Chile and Haiti, there are people who send money. And people who send food. And people who will help and will lift the nations out of their crisis. For every crime story, there is another story, maybe hidden, of a volunteer, a community leader, or a person who has overcome seemingly insurmountable adversity and made the world a better place.

And for reporters as for the average citizen, those people, those moments, will carry us on.

http://www.univision.com/content/content.jhtml?cid=2301231

Funte: Univision.com.

Fuente: Univision.com