Justin Germino Ramblings

Now I know why I hadn’t attended the State fair the last few years, it is extremely costly and we went through about $200 in ride tickets in 3 hours.  Though it was 3 hours of pure family fun and the memories are priceless, the Arizona State Fair has dozens of rides, game booths, activities, animal exhibits and a petting zoo for the kids.  Plus all the junk food you can eat, this year feature were some pretty grotesque items including:

Deep fried Scorpions
Deep Fried alligator
Deep fried Moonpies
& Deep fried snickers

I am proud of myself for not eating any horribly unhealthy fair food, but we just enjoyed the rides and games.

Here are some pics:

-Justin Germino

I actually have had this conversation several times before in the past few weeks about whether or not I have enough life insurance. I do have one policy which covers about 4x my annual Salary, but they say you should have 10x your annual salary in policies optimally to protect your family in case of an accident.

What I probably will do is fish around and collect some term life quotes early next year to pick up a 2nd policy. According to the Total Money Makeover which I am trying to follow, Term Life Insurance is by far better than Whole life since if you put the difference in monthly payment between whole life and term life into even a modest Mutual Fund or Money Market, you will yield far more savings and more money from the invested funds than you would from your Whole life policy.

Either way, I need to purchase another policy next year just to keep my family covered in case something should happen to me.

-Justin Germino

I recently started a new lunch routine to eat healthier and have to give a plug to Green Giant for their Healthy Weight frozen vegetable medleys. These individual frozen veggies come in several variety packs that have only 90 calories per serving or 180 for the whole box (trust me you want to eat the whole box) in one sitting.

So what I do is just fix myself some frozen vegetable medley, and three slices of a lean turkey or chicken breast and I have a lunch that is delicious and has less than 300 calories with two entire servings of vegetables that taste great and some lean protein. You can vary the vegetable selection and meat selection and you intake far less sodium than most frozen microwave lunches, and more vegetables than any sandwiches or most other types of prepacked lunches.

Just one of my lunch recommendations.

-Justin Germino

I know a many coworkers and friends crazy about Choppers, Hogs and the like. They ride around in groups and attend events en masse bragging about the freedom and adventure you get while riding a motorcycle. This just never has appealed to me so much, I don’t enjoy “riding” and speeds combined with the fact that you are likely to suffer far worse injury on a motorcycle vs being in a car really reduces a motorcycle rides appeal to me.

I also know several people who were in motorcycle crashes, some that took months to recover from and left permanent physical and psychological scars. But at least they have their lives, as some people are not so fortunate. It makes me wonder if you got into a motorcycle accident would it be worth calling a Pleasanton motorcycle accident attorney? If you were in an accident and were not at fault, you would need to make sure your expenses, repairs and medical bills were covered.

I don’t know anybody who has actually used an accident attorney, but I can imagine they can help if the other driver does not have insurance, or the insurance is giving you a hard time. Either way, I won’t take chances with a motorcycle anytime soon, just too risky for my blood.

-Justin Germino

So my wife is the owner of Rock Along Productions which is a company that promotes and helps put together music events in Arizona and last month her company launched a new service called AZ Music Connect, this is a classifieds AD site based on a wordpress theme that allows anyone in the Arizona Music Community to promote their bands, music, shows, gigs, sell equipment, look for band members and more.  She started the service after realizing there was a ton of frustration in the music community over Craigslist not serving the community well, too many bands and people in the community were just leveraging Craigslist to just bash other band members and spam over the place.  With a dedicated market this site has a lot of potential in the AZ Music community and she continues to have great ideas to further and promote the arts and music in Arizona.

So if you live in AZ check out AZ Music Connect and see what its all about.

-Justin Germino

Tomorrow Windows 7 is released and I will be picking it up from Best Buy on my lunch break.  I will spend the evening re-imaging my home computer and testing out the brand new Operating System from Microsoft in the hopes that I will achieve greater overall system performance, especially with Internet speeds.  Vista is known for having bottlenecks in the registry that prevent your computer from multitasking on the Internet, Windows 7 removes those limitations.

-Justin Germino

The xenophobia ironed a pancake

Last weekend I was out at a birthday party for a friend over at AZCulture with my wife and it was at a Wine Bar in Scottsdale Arizona. While attending said event I was noting how much I find being in public crowds uncomfortable, I actually have a slight aversion to networking publicly and in person. Most of this comes from just simple phobia, I enjoy talking with people and socializing, I am just uncomfortable in public settings with crowds and lots of people around.

Online networking is so much easier, you can act naturally and you don’t have to be aware of your body language, how you dress, style of fashion…etc. You can just be recognized for your words and what you say instead of your overall appearance. This makes borderline recluse hermits like myself much more apt to talk to people on Twitter, Facebook or other social networks than meeting for drinks in a bar or club in the valley.

It isn’t that I don’t socialize fairly well, in my industry and when associating with people I am friendly, approachable, easy to talk to and often can add some value to just about any conversation without looking to steal focus or attention. It is just I am uncomfortable in my own skin in public, maybe its the nagging fear of always being judged or the self conscious way I analyze everything I say.

-Justin Germino

According to the American Journal of Clinical nutrition the following foods are ounce for ounce the most beneficial in warding off free radical damage. These foods can help protect your body from environmental pollutions, heart disease, premature aging and even help decrease chances of getting certain types of cancer.

The number one food is Blackberries, delicious and healthy to snack on for any meal of the day, the following nine in order are Walnuts, Strawberries, Artichokes (prepared), Cranberries, Coffee, Raspberries, Pecans, Blueberries, Cloves (ground).

Yes one was beverage and the other was a spice, but still these are the foods you need to increase more in your diet to enhance your health.

-Justin Germino

I have had a few dogs over the years and always thought that living in a home with hard tiled floor is better when living with dogs. Dogs have accidents occasionally, especially puppies. It is far easier to cleanup such messes on a hard surface than a carpet. My newest dog Porky has the occasional accident and my Senior dog Gouda who is nearly 9 years old is prone to having the occasional accident too now.

I spend at least a few days a week using various carpet cleaners, deodorizes, stain removers and scrubbing carpets with rags and towels. At what point do I need to start looking at steam cleaners to keep the carpets from being utterly ruined. The padding is most concerning because even though you clean the carpet, the padding underneath is often left in bad condition and mold and germs can fester.

We keep a clean house, but only because we are diligent about cleaning the floors and carpets constantly. Fairly soon I will have to either replace the carpets and stick tile the house, or put in real tile. Throw rugs are better since if they are soiled they are easier to clean and replace compared to entire floored carpeting.

-Justin Germino

My oldest son who is six enjoyed the last week off from school, but he was bored most of the day around the house. His mother and I both work from home and although we are around we are busy and our son still has trouble entertaining himself without asking for attention or always needing something. It is funny because our youngest son is able to play by himself and keep himself entertained without as much need for attention.

My favorite time is when I can take the boys to the playground after work and we play swords or knights and monsters, chasing each other around with foam blades pretending to defend castles. We do this every day or other day and it is a great way to just burn off energy and slip into a role playing fantasy world with the kids and just laugh and run around.

Though he may have been bored and I didn’t have as much time to play with him during his fall break as I would have liked, his school is doing so well for him now that we switched him to a new school and I am looking forward to him getting back to his academic studies. We have been having him do a few hours of school work each day on fall break. My wife is much better at keeping him focused and on this structured routine.

-Justin Germino