I give up. Between the humidity armpit that is summer in Atlanta and my old lawnmower that's on its last leg, I'm looking to hire landscapers instead of buying a new mower. What's a fair market price for a quarter-acre lot for just mowing and trimming? Is there a rule of thumb on how much extra weeding, laying pine straw, picking up dog crap would cost? Thanks in advance.
I've got a little over a quarter acre and I pay $40 for mowing. He also edges and cleans up the mulch every month or so, which is included in the price. My yard is on an extremely steep hill, which adds a level of difficulty (you literally cannot use a regular mower), so I might be paying a little more than normal (for Louisville). On the flip-side, the same guy mows almost all of the lawns on my street, so he has some economies of scale that allow him to keep the costs down. I think $30-$40 is probably fair, depending on how often you get your yard mowed, and how difficult the job is. FYI, my guy is a professional landscaper who owns his own company, so he probably charges a bit more than "Jose" down the street. If you're looking to get it done on the cheap, you can probably find somebody to do it for around $25 who doesn't report earnings to the IRS if you know what I mean.
I have recently started working out again, I am overweight and out of shape but need some assistance on just one item as the gym and instructors will help with others. How do I get past the soreness in my body the day after or two from working out? I know that pain relievers help but can I help prevent it? It almost makes me not want to get get back in the gym. Almost Thanks
It's inevitable that you'll be sore when you've done a good workout, especially in the beginning. Soon, after a week or so, you won't feel as sore anymore . . . and after a while, you'll need to change your routine to make it effective again (at which point you'll experience soreness again; most people learn to love it). If your diet allows it, having something fatty but not too unhealthy (like chocolate milk) along with your protein after a workout/sometime before bed can help a lot to alleviate soreness the next day.
As well as the above, don't do "nothing" the next day. Do some light/low impact movement of the areas that you've worked on. Swimming is good for that if you have pool access. Massages are awesome if you're that way inclined. Definitely some range of motion stretching. You're probably already aware of this, but learn the difference between tired and sore muscles and when you've hurt yourself. If you push too hard too soon, you'll end up with small muscle tears. If you don't rest these, you'll end up doing some damage.
Your fat, out of shape body, is flushing itself of all the crap you put in it too. DRINK LOTS OF WATER. It has no idea how to react to you getting your ass in the gym and you have a build up of lactic acid. The water will flush that out too. Go buy a Big Gulp cup, fill it with water and just carry it around with you. You should be drinking something like one hundred of ounces of water a day. This is the easiest and one of the most important things you can do. Keep up the good work though, no pain no gain while cliche, is true. You're gonna feel mentally and physically.
Pain is just the weakness leaving your body. Have a big glass of "harden the fuck up princess" and throw the pain relievers out, real men only use them for hangovers or to give to their women when she has the menstrual cramps.
Anyone have some good del.icio.us accounts to follow? I'm subscribed to Ryan Holiday's, Tucker's and Charlie Hoehn's, but a lot of the stuff they tag sucks.
Anyone ever attempted to rent an apartment in London, short-term? What should I use, Craigslist? A few of my family members are going with me at the end of Oct. and we think it would work out better than hotel/hostel option. Also, what areas of london would be the easiest/most conducive to getting around. I know a few(myself included) will wanna see some theater, so any areas that are close to that sort of thing would be cool too. We're only gonna be in london 7-10 days, and it looks like it'd be 5 of us. We're hoping for something that simply has a kitchen and enough sleeping space for all of us(if it's close, I'll probably end up sleeping on the floor). Thanks
I posted about this in the R&R thread, but I just got a credit score check and it came back pretty average because even though I have a perfect payment history, I don't have any good debts. My question is what are the best ways to increase your credit score? Do all loans you make timely payments on help? For example I bought a $2,000+ dollar TV recently but paid it all up front, if I had opted for the 1 year payment plan and made timely payments would that have increased my score? Also, how does the time frame you pay a fixed term loan help? Example: If I buy a car with a 5 year loan, but pay it off in 3 is that better, worse or equivalent to making the minimum payments for 5 years? Lastly, does the amount you have to put down on a loan affect your score at all? Sorry if these are stupid questions and thanks in advance
The credit bureaus are extremely protective of the actual formulas they use to calculate your score, and they all do it differently, so specific things like the ones you mentioned are hard to truly figure. This is just my opinion, based on my life experiences and how it affected my credit score, along with advice and knowledge from my dad and grandpa (a certified financial planner). Loans like you describe are mostly a good way to establish a credit history, because it proves you will pay back the money you borrow. They're the easiest credit to get, because they're secured with the item(s) that you financed, so they can always repossess the stuff, and not lose all their money. Once you have an established credit history, these types of loans are only really considered based on whether you pay on time, and how much total debt you have compared to your income. It sounds like you just don't have any credit history, so this is a good way to start. The biggest general measure of how "good" your credit score will be is your debt to available credit ratio. Unfortunately, that means that loans like auto loans, financing on televisions/furniture, and other non-revolving accounts don't help raise your credit score a lot, because you owe exactly the amount of credit remaining on the loan, so your debt/credit ratio is 1. Taking out a loan like this probably won't raise your credit score, but if you have any late/missing payments, it will quickly cause it to fall. Paying it off sooner than required might actually be looked down on by the credit bureaus, because it means the creditor didn't get as much interest as they could have from you, but I've never seen it really affect the credit score directly. As long as you're making the minimum payments on time, that's all they care about. In order to really improve your credit score once you have an established history, you need to try for the following goals: 1) A moderate number of revolving accounts (credit card, line of credit, anything with a credit limit that you can borrow against) that have all been kept in good standing for as long a period of time as possible. If you have 2 accounts that are several years old, sometimes just opening a new one can cause your score to drop, since the average age of the accounts is now lower. 2) As high a total credit limit as possible, while keeping your actual amount owed as low as possible. A general rule of thumb is that letting the balance on a credit card exceed 1/2 of the credit limit, even with perfect payment history, will start to reduce your score. Every few months, call up customer service for each of your credit cards, and request a credit limit increase and an interest rate decrease. Build the credit limit as high as you can, but resist the urge to spend more. 3) Maintain activity on the accounts. A lot of people recommend rotating cards, for example if you have 3 credit cards, A B and C, use A for all your day-to-day transactions you would normally use cash/checking to pay for a month, then pay it off at the end of the month, and start using B. Repeat with C. This way you never go more than two months without account activity, but by paying it off at the end of each month, you never have to pay interest. 4) Be aware that late payments on certain account types will hurt your credit score much more than others, regardless of payment amount. Late/missing mortgage payments will hammer your credit score much more than a late medical payment or utility bill. If you're constantly having trouble paying all your bills every month, you can try to limit the damage to your credit score by limiting late/missing payments to one of your accounts. 3 late payments on one account usually won't hurt you as much as 1 late payment on each of 3 different accounts. A lot of that may be true, but it all might be bullshit and coincidence. The credit bureaus can change their criteria at basically any time, to whatever they feel like. You should also remember that a lot of the hype about credit scores is being fed by advertisements and marketing campaigns that are put out by the credit bureaus themselves. In today's economy, when it comes to certain types of loans and credit, it doesn't matter what your score is. My grandpa has an 850 credit score, and was turned down for financing on a new air conditioner. The one financing company that would give him a loan would only finance 60% of the unit, and wanted the first and last months payments up front. Interest rates on mortgages and auto loans are low enough now that even if you're approved for a rate higher than their best advertised rate, it's still pretty damn low. Using a good credit score to "rate shop" on loans is really only necessary when interest rates are much higher (12-15% on a mortgage in the early '80s, compared to 4% today). The difference between 10% and 12% is huge on a 30 year loan, the difference between 4% and 4.5% isn't.
This has been covered pretty much, but I just want to reiterate this piece of advice: Harden the fuck up. The reason you are a fat piece of shit is that you are lazy and looking for excuses not to exercise- don't let soreness be another one. Wear your soreness with pride, it is a badge of merit that shows you did something more energetic than reach for the remote and curl the 50oz big gulp to your gaping maw. Also, if your instructors don't show you how to Deadlift and Squat you can ignore everything they tell you because they are pieces of shit too. And I am talking ass to grass squats too not pussy squats that don't even break parallel. Things that will help with soreness: stay hydrated and do some light stretching/movement of sore muscles. Rest and time are the only things that will cure the pain, but be aware and rejoice in the fact that once you get in some kind of shape the soreness is a lot less of an issue.
Seriously dude, if you aren't doing these you aren't working out. And like everyone said, harden the fuck up and stop avoiding pain. Soreness is completely natural for someone who is out of shape, don't try to offset it chemically, work through it and get to a point that a good workout will feel normal. This will probably take a while, but will be totally worth it.
Unless, of course, you're that out of shape that doing those will put you at an increased risk of injury. Any instructor that doesn't do a profile for you, determine your current fitness level and limitations and find out what your goal is, isn't an instructor. They're just some dude showing you assorted lifts and exercises.
Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I understand you can do squats and deadlifts no matter how old, out of shape, fat or whatever you are. If need be you can always do them with just the bar or start with body-weight squats. Now limitations due to serious back and knee injuries are a different animal that I can't really talk about. Agreed, but pretty much any beginner program, regardless of goals, that doesn't include squats and deadlifts is bullshit and should be a red flag that the instructor doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. Also, squats are a lift that often requires some coaching to get comfortable with, so it should be a lift you do with the instructor rather than on your own if you have a choice. Oh, and don't squat or DL in a smith machine
Exactly. I'm not advocating loading hundreds of lbs and just getting under the bar. Just get comfortable with the movements involved, get comfortable with getting balls deep under a bar, and get used to keeping your back straight. Anyone can do a squat and a deadlift, just not everyone will be able to lift a lot. Practice doing the '3rd world squat', that is, just using your own bodyweight, sink down into a squat stance as low as you can go. Your ass should be more or less on your ankes. Rinse and repeat a dozen times, making sure that your first movement is hips back, not knees forward.
If you're really weak AND fat (like, rarely even walk around under your own bodyweight) this can cause a nightmare on your knees, but otherwise bodyweight squats are a great start
Is it better to to a 'half-squat' and not drop as low as the ankles but with more weight or to put on less weight and get to the ankles?
Trying to find a way to get LLWS live scores on my iPhone. ESPN ScoreCenter App doesn't have it, nor do many of the sports pages online. Any ideas? Nothing fancy, just R/H/E updated on the fly... **EDIT** Nevermind, found it on LittleLeague.org