We hear it every day. We know that at least walking thirty minutes 3 – 5 times a week will do amazing things for one’s health. I, as many others, find the least little excuse to not do something and I know as much as anyone that we all have times in our lives when we seem to be able to stay more on task than others. The fact is that I recently had my yearly physical and all of my blood work tested excellently! I was pleasantly surprised as I have been unemployed for over a year now and I try to be healthy but I have not been going gung-ho on everything I should be doing. I have however, been fully thoughtful about the fact that because I am not going to work every day, I really need to exercise or really watch my health decline, so I have been making myself get on the treadmill for thirty minutes for at least 3 times – 5 times per week. On days when I do some lawn mowing or other work around the house, I usually don’t get on the treadmill. The yearly physical verified that by doing this, it especially made my blood pressure measurement much better than it has been for long time, even when I did go to work every day, I didn’t have great blood pressure levels.

This proved to me that even when you think you are not doing very much exercising, as long as you are doing something, you will see benefits.

Here is a great article about the benefits of exercise to ward off Alzheimer’s Disease.

Worried About Alzheimer’s? The Holy Grail of Exercise

Photo from Flickr Creative Commons

This article link below, points out that Baby Boomers are not the only group of the population not spending like they did before the Great Recession. Many point to their retirement 401k funds reduced by half. While this is very likely, the recession has most likely become a wake up to everyone, at least for a while, of looking at spending very differently. The Great Depression caused a lifetime of the very young of that era to be very wary of spending and certainly, not to use credit unless one was forced to for some emergency. The Greatest Generation of the 1930′s and 40′s would do without something until they saved enough to pay for it. The Great Depression, a time of no unemployment insurance or welfare made those who lived through it follow the pay as you go method. It was only the post World War II generation of Baby Boomers who started wanting to enjoy things before they grew to old to enjoy them, so they lived a life of buy now, pay later.

The recent financial crisis, although not as devastating as the Great Depression, served to wake the Boomers and most all ages of our country to think of any ways they could think of to save on monthly spending. There is a good portion of the younger generations who were not so affected by the economic crash, so they will not be slowing down much. Some learned a valuable lesson of saving and some have not yet. It takes a crisis to hit one square in the face, where you wonder if you can keep your house to make one serious and wise.

Check this article out for some great detail.

Spending Collapses In All Generation Groups

Graphic from eMarketer.com

It takes a while for Boomers in mass to climb onboard to change, at least now that they are older. When they were 20, they made change happen, because they were rebelling against their parents generation culture. So that is that way it is. This is nothing new and it will occur to the Boomers by their children. Part of growing up is standing up to your heritage and saying, “I know what I’m doing and I can make my own decisions.” In fact, children become adults by do just this…changing things to improve on what was before. They all learn, in time, to appreciate the wisdom of the previous generation, but that takes time and confidence, confidence that only comes by standing on your own two feet and making mistakes.

Here is some great data on Boomers and the booming newest social technology, Twitter.

Do You Know Who’s on Twitter?

For some reason, 1969 was a year of monumental events and a coming of age for the then young Baby Boomer generation. It was the year of my high school graduation and a beginning of entering the world as a musician. Music, politics and world events were shaping the Boomers and how they would want to change their world. It was the year of Woodstock and men  walking on the moon.

Here is a list if events of the year from CNN:

1969: An eventful summer

One thing I have always said to people when they complain about their kids or they wonder if they should have kids or they wish they would have had children and they couldn’t. I tell them….”It isn’t all Christmas morning”! It is an incredibly hard job! You never know what to do  or perhaps everything you do seems wrong. You can only try to do your best, but it IS extremely difficult!

One thing I say is that although I really love that I had girls, I did miss out on having that boy to help me do something hard or heavy around the house. I was my Dad’s gopher…mostly to the extent that I had to sneek out of the house on a Saturday morning before I would hear….”OK…today we are going to pull weeds….ALL DAY!!!” I think it burned me out, because rather than learn from everything I did with him, I would rather hire someone to do things around my house. I just hated that hard work…like laying cement, digging, putting up fences, weeding, building, remodeling………ehhhh! Oh well…I digress…

Here is an article that caught my eye…I think I’ll cash in on this one. I’ll start racking up the bills and start traveling all over the world…they’ll just have to pay for it later… LOL ( Of course I am kidding, but check this article out)

From SeniorJournal.com

States May Take New Look at Requiring Adult Children to Pay for Aging Parents

This article makes complete sense to me. Data supporting that workers over 50 years of age who lost their jobs are now working harder for less money, but loving it more, because we are doing something that we have wanted to do most of our lives. We took job loss at the age of 50+ as a gift and a blessing to have a second chance to do something more rewarding to our inner selves. In many cases, severance packages is making this possible. I wanted to find some new business to start for the last 5 or more years that I worked in my corporate job just because I could not stand what I was doing every day. If I had found a business venture, I would have taken  small business loan against my house to pursue my dreams. As fate turned out, the decision was made for me, only, I was more prepared and confident in myself. So, as I have always believed, everything happens for a reason.

Here is some good data in this article.

Baby Boomers Earning Less But Enjoying Work More

Here’s a good article about it.

Kindle-ing interest for electronic ink: Expensive, but worth the premium

(Click on the above link to watch a video trailer of the HBO documentary.)

HBO is presenting the ground breaking documentary on May 10-14 to raise public awareness of this dreaded disease. There are many ways that HBO is making this film available to everyone, even if you don’t have access to HBO. There are local libraries and senior citizen centers showing it and even the major cable and Verizon’s FiOS is making HBO available for free during those days. The idea is to make as many people be able to watch this film as possible.

Currently, as the world is going through the H1N1 (swine flu) epidemic, the public is very aware of how diseases like the flu become very much on the mind of the public. The fact is that Alzheimer’s Disease is affecting so many more people but as it is usually thought of as an elderly disease and takes a long period of time to become apparent, the public does not have the same type of heightened awareness. That is why it is important to get as many people to see this film as possible, so that everyone realizes how huge the affect of Alzheimer’s Disease is on our country and the world.

People need to ask their congressional representatives to do all they can to provide funding for support, care and research to find a cure for this terrible disease.

Here is an article from Baby Boomer Davy’s Locker with more detail about the HBO film and other inportant information as well.

http://www.davidwlindberg.com/2009/04/watch-hbos-alzheimers-project.html