Nearly Half Want to Move

In new survey by a Pew Research Center found that nearly half of Americans want to live elsewhere. The survey was survey conducted over the telephone in October with 2,260 adults and reveals some really interesting tidbits. For example, more Americans would rather live in a place with more McDonald's than Starbucks. Furthermore, affluent adults are twice as likely as poorer individuals to want to live in Boston. The survey also helped identify where some of these people would prefer living and not live. The survey found that men in rural areas are far happier living there than women. But the city isn't for everyone either. Fewer than half of all city residents say there is no better place to live than in a city, and adults 50 to 64 who live in cities are the least likely to say they live in the ideal place.

So where does everyone want to go? The survey says...Denver, followed by San Diego and Seattle. Are you happy where you live?

50 Best Romantic Getaways

Depending if you were one of the 50,000+ who recently got a pink slip this week, you may or may not want to get away. If you got a nice severance package and want to go someplace romantic, Travel + Leisure magazine offers their 50 best romantic getaways. Some of the locations include, Whidbey Island, Washington; Chassignolles, France; Granada, Spain; and Vico Equense, Italy. So how did these places make their list? Vico Equense, for example, they offer the following description: A crenellated castle, pink-washed clifftop church, and pebbled beach make Vico Equense perhaps the most dramatic—though surprisingly undiscovered—village on the Sorrento Coast.

Sounds like a great romantic getaway. Can you remember the most romantic place you and your spouse have ever been? Please share.

Do You Spank Your Kids?

The debate rages on. Columnist, Jenny Sokol of the OC Register brings up this issue after a Swedish friend nearly called the police after witnessing a neighbor smack their child's behind--apparently, hitting children is not permitted in Sweden (perhaps this is worthy of further research and an in-depth article on child discipline throughout the world). Anyway, Sokol explained how it's very much still in debate in this country. Then she offers the many tactics she's used over the years to discipline and encourage including spanking, chores, sticker charts and so on. My favorite part of her column is the story of how an acquaintance got her four boys in line. She ordered a truck full of dirt to be dumped in her front yard and gave them each a shovel and wheelbarrow. "I need this moved to the backyard by tonight. Work together," she told them. By the time they finished, the boys were buddies again. The dirt was then ready to be moved back to the front yard for their next argument.

Where do you stand on this issue?

Love Story in Just Six Words

Can you tell your love story in just six words? A new book called Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak has famous and non-famous authors do just that. Here are some pulled from the book:

- Much married, fourth time is charmed. -Erica Jong
- Wonder-filled, and never a dull torment. -Diane Ackerman
- It's just a matter of luck. -Ayelet Waldman
- He still needs me at sixty-four. -Armistead Maupin

It's a clever and fun read. It's also a fun little practice for yourself. Perhaps the best part of this article in USA Today are the comments attached below the article. Here are some of my favorites:

- We met, we played, we've stayed!
- You smiled, my whole world changed.
- He makes me laugh, I make him wonder.

I'd love to hear yours. Start a thread on the message board and see how many we can come up with.

Beat the Winter Blues

The winter days keep coming and coming and some of you might need a little pick me up. Forbes.com offers a few tips to help get you out of the doldrums. Their first tip is to eat a balanced diet. The also recommend regular exercise, a regular sleeping pattern, being social, and antidepressants! We're not saying antidepressants are bad or that their isn't a purpose for them, but to beat the winter blues? Their final tip seems more appropriate and a better initial step: therapy.

Here are some of our tips: go on a date this weekend, find new recipes to cook together, take a class together, begin planning your summer vacation, go see a movie, go snowboarding, do a craft project together, or start a blog. Essentially, break the monotony of your days. Be sure to read our recent article, "Super Wife Sunday" which offers a terrific idea that may turn into a yearly tradition.

Couple Gets Cash and Jail Time for Bank Error

Pennsylvania couple Randy Pratt, 50, and Melissa Pratt, 36, are now in jail because they cashed out over $175,000 when the bank messed up on where to put the decimal point. Randy is a roofing installer and deposited a check for $1,772.50, but when they read their statement, it showed a deposit of $177,250. They Pratts didn't call the bank and report the error when it occurred last summer. Instead, the couple withdrew the money, quit their jobs and moved to Florida. They were tracked down when they were attempting to buy a house in the Orlando. When questioned by police, Melissa said her husband often got large checks and that she wasn't aware of any error. No wonder the banks need a bailout!

What's the most amount of money you've "stumbled upon?"

Babysitter and Mommy Mixers

Finding a good, reliable babysitter that you trust can sometimes be difficult. If you have young kids, having a babysitter every once in a while so you and your spouse can go out and spend time with another is essential. Fortunately, the internet has made finding a babysitter a little bit easer, and even fun. There are several companies out there offering "mommy mixers," where moms can meet with each other and with prospecting babysitters. Some of these, like MommyMixer (www.mommymixer.com), require a registration fee ranging anywhere from $100 to $500 for a VIP membership, which gives you access to babysitters in different cities (for jet-setting parents), unlimited "immediate help" searches and more. MommyMixer is currently in over 50 cities throughout the country. If you're looking for something in the Tampa Bay area, there's Sitter Soirees (www.sittersoirees.com). Event registration at this site starts at $60.

Have you tried one of these services before? How was your experience? Would you recommend it to others?

More Tickets During Recession

It's not just businesses and household income that hurts during a recession, local government also feels the pinch. So it's no surprise that when economist Thomas A. Garrett conducted a study to find out if traffic tickets were purely dished out for public safety that he found the number of tickets cited go up significantly when local government revenue falls. In short, when there's a 1 percentage point drop in local government revenue there's roughly a .32 percentage point increase in the number of traffic tickets in the following year. What's interesting is that according to Garrett, the number of tickets does not go back down when good times return. Garrett says the increase makes sense as it's an appealing way to generate revenue, particularly during a time when raising taxes is not an option.

Furthermore, Garrett does say that the tickets being handed out are at their heart for public safety reasons, but doesn't believe many cities go out of their way to make a point to write more tickets. However, this article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch references a 2004 investigative piece where top police officials in the town of Bel-Ridge, MO threatened officers if they didn't write more tickets.

Have you received a traffic ticket lately? Did you deserve it? Noticed more police patrolling the streets? Let us know.

Racial Medicine

Do drugs respond differently to people of different races? There was a case of a drug called BiDil, which the FDA approved in 2005 to treat heart failure in blacks. The drug worked for African Americans but not other ethnic groups. This has raised the question of developing drugs for racial groups, which becomes a genetic difference not just a social category--and beyond skin color. This article from Newsweek suggests that maybe the touchy subject is the reason that only 3 percent of the patients who might benefit from BiDil were actually getting it. It seems clear, however, that humans can expect more drugs in the future to be designed not just for their race, but their own individual genetics. Because as it's pointed out in the article, identifying yourself as an African American, while may be accurate, doesn't mean you have the same ancestry (one could be from Kenya or South Africa or a mix of many nations and heritages).

What do you think?

Socioemotional Meanings In Sweat

A new study from Rice University says socioemotional meanings, including sexual ones, are conveyed in human sweat and that women are able to smell and recognize them. That essentially means that humans can communicate through smell, much like animals do.

The press release says, "Denise Chen, assistant professor of psychology at Rice, looked at how the brains of female volunteers processed and encoded the smell of sexual sweat from men. The results of the experiment indicated the brain recognizes chemosensory communication, including human sexual sweat." The release goes on to say, "Nineteen healthy female subjects inhaled olfactory stimuli from four sources, one of which was sweat gathered from sexually aroused males. The research showed that several parts of the brain are involved in processing the emotional value of the olfactory information."

This kind of report doesn't seem all that surprising, but since this is weight loss season it makes you want to keep your spouse at home instead of watching them head off to the gym.

Financial Marriages

It's not uncommon for couples to stay married for the sake of their kids, but it seems there's a growing trend of couples who are staying hitched because of finances. An article in the Phoenix Examiner discusses how couples who don't have kids remain in the same home because of their shared mortgage, car payments and other cost-of-living expenses. One woman said: “We were married thirty years before we decided to live separate lives. I was all for a divorce and so was he but our accountant gave us two financial scenarios. Divorced, we would lose money. By staying together, we got to keep more of our funds and our health insurance coverage as a married couple.”

One marriage therapist in the article says that separated couples living together is more common than people realize. This is why statistical data is so tricky because you can also make the argument that there are couples out there who have been living together for many years who share assets, etc. who aren't married. So are hollow marriages still "marriages"? What are your thoughts?

Miracle Babies

It's rare to have two sets of natural twins. It's even more rare for the babies to be born of different color (one black and one white). Well, a mixed-race British couple Dean Durrant (black) and Alison Spooner (white) had that happen--twice! Dr. Sarah Jarvis of Britain's Royal College of General Practitioners is quoted in an MSNBC article as saying, "Non-identical twins from mixed parents, of different races, less common still. To have two eggs fertilized and come out different colors, less common still. So, to have it happen twice must be one in millions." It's so rare that the article says there is no statistical data for this phenomenon. However, scientists believe that this might become slightly more common as more mixed-race couples continue to marry.