Archive for the Note From Greg
It’s always fun, and a wee bit exciting I’ll admit, to do a TV spot and last Friday I had that opportunity. If you aren’t familiar with NY1 it’s a cable station that serves the five boroughs of NYC. They provide a mix of news, weather, sports and entertainment like most local TV networks and I was thrilled to spend a whole 2.5 mins on camera talking with Kristin Shaughnessy about how to boost your midlife metabolism.
I spent the day before with dear friend and nutrition expert Patti Milligan seeing the sights and shopping for what to wear on camera. She’s a trooper and loves to walk luckily. What’s up with fashion these days anyway? So many poofy bits on the tops of tops and ruffles where I don’t need or want them.
When one of the colors they suggest against is black and you are shopping in NY, well, it’s a narrow field of choices. They also suggest no white–one of my summer faves–and no bold patterns. No worries there. I was lucky enough to meet one of the only male sales people in Eileen Fisher who brought out tops and jackets galore that fit the bill. I wish we’d gone there first because he knew what would work, what looked good on me and I ended up with the perfect little top and sweater. They say that “clothes make the girl” and I agree. When we look good we feel good.
While I only covered two or three tips for boosting the metabolism you can read more in this article I published.
Part of looking good so we can feel good is feeling we are in a body we love. If you feel yours could use a little work why not head over to my other site, Easy Midlife Weight Loss and grab the 7 day e-course. It’s got all you need to start whipping that midlife metabolism into shape so you can be camera ready in no time.
Who knew there were such people? Not I until I was contacted by the PR company for Butterball. The contact 
person offered me a paid opportunity to blog for Butterball during the holiday season as well as man a FB fan page and answer questions for people on cooking turkeys and such.
I would have gotten to go to Turkey school for a whole day outside of Chicago–all expenses paid.
I would have gotten lots of traffic to my blog as they would be pointing people my way along with the four other bloggers chosen.
At first it sounded like fun. And money is a good thing–so many offers come in to blog for others for free.
Then my values kicked in. I’m against factory farming. “But you don’t know who owns Butterball” the little devil on one shoulder said. So I went online to find out. The owner of the brand is ConAgra. They contract with farms who raise turkeys to provide them with said birds. So far not so awful cause I couldn’t find any info on the individual farms. What I did find, which contradicts ConAgra’s policy statement, were numerous complaints against the company over workers heath and safety. Bird contamination was mentioned.
Then, last night, I watched the movie Food, Inc. I resisted seeing it because I know the horrors of factory farming having seen plenty of films while at culinary school on just this subject. (They were meant to educate not make a statement of any kind) A little horror goes a long way to raising consciousness and this movie keeps it in balance.
There were many scenes I could not watch. With one eye on the screen I did see images of the chicken houses. One woman chicken farmer who contracts to Perdue I think was in tears describing how the company treats her first of all. She uses open window coups vs the dark tunnel types but Perdue was pressuring her to change to the completely enclosed dark ones–at her expense. She wouldn’t do it, she was finished.
It was heart breaking on so many levels. If you haven’t seen it I’d rent it. There is hope in the movie. The owner/ founder of Chipotle restaurant chain buys almost all of his chicken, pork and beef from sustainable, humane farms all over the country and he has 800 some restaurants. Stoneyfield Farms owner talked about working with Walmart. Not just to gain more market share but to keep inferior products out of the food supply. To strengthen the small farmers who supply them with anti-biotic and growth hormone free milk and give them more business.
The movie reminded me of my one of my top values–treat all life with respect.
The little devil joined me just an hour or so ago when another email came through asking if I’d had time to read through the offer. “How bad can it be? It’s only for a few months and not everyone can afford free range turkeys, you’ll be helping people” he whispered.
One good swat sent him flying and I wrote a polite, grateful email back to the PR company telling them that as an opponent of factory farming, I wouldn’t be a good candidate. It felt so good to stand in my values and side with the animals.
This Thanksgiving like the past 10 or more I’ll be buying a farm raised, old fashioned, not huge breasted bird with no saline solution, no drugs, and no fear hormones trapped in its meat. And I’ll help people cook theirs regardless of what kind they’ve chosen.
I’m always grateful for an opportunity to share my expertise–paid or not–but only when I get to feel good about who I am in this lifetime.
During our recent yard sale an adorable salt and pepper haired guy jumped out of his car and headed towards me asking in a delightful French accent about half wine barrels we had for sale. As he got closer he slowed down, stopped speaking, and we both blinked and stared. “Gregory?” he asked. “Herve” I asked and at the same moment we pushed the table between us aside and just hugged each other.
Herve, who you can see below doing my sister’s makeup for my first wedding, was–is–one of my favorite people. One of the kind of people you hate to lose track of but life somehow leads you in different directions.
Herve with my sister Alexis in 1984
“I have chills” I said, “I have them too” he answered and so it went for probably 30 minutes. Lots of Oh My Gods, and I can’t believe its were exchanged and the girls he was with were introduced and it was like we’d never been away.
So I asked him what he was doing now–25 years later! “I”m still doing hair and makeup” he replied and let it go at that.
Well of course as soon as he drove off–with lots of treasures for his friend’s new home–I had to Google him.
He’s not just doing hair and makeup, he’s a rock star of hair and makeup. And the co-host of the TV show “Scandinavia’s Next Top Model” now in its 5th year. Not to mention, he seems to be helping us midlife types with some of our beauty issues.
The video below will show you the current Herve at work on a non-model midlife woman. Though he’s less Duran Duran in appearance he’s still a sexy, good looking man who knows how to make a woman look beautiful. Is there a collaboration in our future? Who knows. What I do know is that we are going to start with a long dinner, plenty of wine, pajamas in tow cause we’ve got catching up to do.
Finding a long lost friend in the way this happened is so delicious. He told me that his friends were tired of yard sales and wanted to go home and he insisted, “come on, just one more.” “I really don’t know why we chose yours” he told me. But now we do. Thanks universe for this treat.
Herve’s 3 Minute Makeup Makeover
Well I didn’t even know this kind of thing existed or if I did I’d put it out of my mind but welcome to my blog got hacked and oh how it s**ks. I’m telling you this for a number of reasons. First of all if this is your first visit to MWAV, welcome. If you scroll through different categories and find something you want to read, click that link and arrive at a post with only a title and no text–that’s the work of my hacker. Or say you are reading through a post and find a strange link offering you some drug or to download a movie, that also comes compliments of my hacker.
When I went searching to find out what to do I used this phrase: “WP blog hacked” and got back over 2 million pages to view. 2 Million! What the heck is it with WP blogs? Never mind, I’m done spinning about this, what I’m doing now is clearing the strange links and doing my best to recreate the posts that were partially deleted.
One of the blogs on blogging–Daily Blog Tips (Mostly they promote WP) that I follow has 3 security features they say we should install. Got my VA on that now.
Over and over I read that we WP users should always upgrade as soon as an upgrade becomes available. That’s something I didn’t do and tend to try to ignore for no apparent reason. Not anymore! I’ve also been told how important it is to change our passwords on a regular basis–did I? No, not unless forced by an application or program to do so or not be allowed to log in. Well of course this has changed too. And I’m going to invest a password management program so I can easily retrieve them all and update changes more easily than I’m currently doing.
So women, take heed, and if you are using a WP blog to share your wisdom or build your business, find out what it takes to protect yourself from this situation. It’s not just annoying it’s kind of creepy. Not to mention having posts deleted means I’ve got less great information here for readers when they visit. What would it mean to you if you found half your posts were gone or that porn links were embedded here and there throughout? Right, so go get some protection!
