OUT WEST: THE HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND
The Cairngorms (Blue Mountains) are lovely, but for more breath-taking natural beauty, the wild and lonely Hebrides, (HEB-red-dees) off the west coast, are centers of Scottish whisky production. They offer wonderful views as you explore their coastal walks – windswept cliffs, mountains and bays will take your breath away. There is a lively association with Bonnie Prince Charlie on many of the islands as he tried to restore the Stuart line to the throne in defiance of the English in about 1745.
The Hebrides are divided into the Inner and Outer Hebrides. Whisky, bagpipes, tartan and kilts are all inextricably linked with Scotland. You can visit the bagpipe museum on the Isle of Skye, part of the inner hebrides. The Celtic language college Sabhal Mor Ostan (The Big Barn) is also on the Isle of Skye. Whisky can be found on all the islands, and some of them are well worth tasting, especially the turf-y tasting ones like Laphraoig and Lagavullen. If you’ve ever smelled a turf, or peat fire, you will get that warm rich flavor from may of the whiskys made out west.
In the outer islands, Lewis, Harris, the Uists (YOU-ists) and Barra, you can still hear Scots Gaelic being spoken. You will need to take a ferry out to either Barra or Lewis, and can drive between most of the islands in a straight line, and then get little ferries in between and back to the mainland. I recommend starting at Lewis in the north, and heading south.
The Uists are a dream come true for anyone who paints watercolors. The constant quality of the changing light is breathtaking. In the summer, they also get a great deal of daylight, almost like the land of the midnight sun, because Scotland is so far north. Just beware of midges in the highlands, they come out only in the summer and will eat you alive.
If you are planning to go out to the Outer Hebrides, make sure you book the ferry portion of your trip well in advance, and allow plenty of time to get from point A to point B. The distances are further than they look, over not very good road, and even one-track roads, with few passing places. Fort William is a lovely town, and the gateway to the ferries that will take you on and off the islands. There is a wonderful sense of spaciousness in that part of the world–not surprising, since Scotland only has about 10 million people, and most of them live in the cities.
The holy island of Iona is part of the Inner Hebrides, and well worth a visit. You might also consider Bamburgh castle in the south east, or the county of Dunfries in the south west. There you can walk Hadrian’s wall in certain segments, and visit fascinating museums and a Roman villa.
In the far, far north, is spectacular Dunrobin Castle, and from there on to John O Groats, the northernost tip of the mainland. It is also the ferry terminal for the Shetlands and Orkneys, which were actually part of Norway for many centuries.
On the Orkneys, the buildings and places to visit are very distinctive and it is a delightful place in the summer due to the midnight sun-just make sure you close your black curtains if you want to get any sleep!
The ancient castles, churches, and architecture of every style imaginable make Scotland an ideal honeymoon destination for anyone who enjoys romance, wildness, touring by car, the big city, history, gorgeous seascapes, and ancient castles. If you enjoy whisky, music, dancing, and ghosts, quaint bed and breakfasts and great food, then a Scottish honeymoon will be perfect for you and your partner.
3 parts,
1165 words
Author: admin
An Introduction to Probate
Probate is the legal process of processing and transferring property and assets upon one’s death. Although the customs and laws of probate have changed somewhat over the years, the purpose of probate has remained the same.
People itemize their intentions about the transfer of their property at the time of their death, usually in the form of a will. The property concerned is then inventoried, outstanding debts are paid from the estate, taxes are paid and the remaining property, and assets are distributed among the heirs and beneficiaries.
Today’s probate courts are endowed with the task of sorting out the legalities of the transfer of property when someone dies. The property we are talking about is any property owned by the deceased or “decedent” at the time of death, which does not directly pass to another person by ownership or designation, for example a bank account set up as “payable on death,” or a life insurance policy.
One common expression that is heard is “probating a will.” The process of probate is concerned with proving to the court that the decedent had a legal will when he died.
What is normally taught about probate nowadays is how to avoid it. The reason so many people are concerned with avoiding probate is to avoid the sometimes expensive probate fees.
In fact, it is quite possible to avoid the probate process completely, with a little advanced planning.
There are three common ways that people avoid probate: joint ownership of property with the right of survivorship, gifts, and revocable living trusts.
However, the probate system exists for a reason and can protect all parties involved.
What exactly happens in probate? The probate process can be contested or uncontested. Many probate cases are contested because a disgruntled heir is seeking more that his or her share of the decedent’s property and thus has to prove why he or she deserves more. The complainant will often argue that the decedent was not in his or her right mind when making the will (insufficient mental capacity), or that he or she was unduly influenced by someone else while deciding who gets what.
The complainant will often challenge the validity of the will by finding ways to prove that the decedent did not follow proper legal procedures when writing the will.
The majority of probate cases, however, are uncontested and follow the same basic procedure.
First, the probate court will appoint an executor or personal representative to oversee the court proceedings. The properties are collected and inventoried. Then, all debts, claims, and taxes against the estate are paid.
After that step, anything owed to the estate such as income, interest or dividends are collected. Next, any disputes are settled and the remaining assets and properties are distributed to the heirs and beneficiaries.
In this country, people may leave their property to whomever they wish and may make such provisions in their wills. There are occasions where the wishes of the decedent have been overridden by the courts.
The larger and more complex a case is, the longer and more expensive the probate process can be.
These are the basics of probate. To learn more, do your research online or the library-there are plenty of good estate planning and estate management resources available.
Selecting Your Wedding Favors: The Gift that Keeps on Giving Part 4
Appropriate Wedding Favors
A couple should carefully consider the appropriateness of a wedding favor when making their final decision. Candles, photo frames, potpourri, post-its, you name it, just about anything is appropriate for the wedding as long as it reflects the theme of the wedding and in some cases, the color scheme of the wedding.
Above all, the whole goal of the wedding favor is to reflect the underlying theme of love and sharing. It is even better if it can do that and also be something your guests can use and appreciate. For example you can certainly give out dictionaries as wedding favors, but they are not particularly romantic or appropriate unless the two of you are literary lions, or met over the New York Times crossword at the local Starbuck’s.
A copy of a book of love poems will be less unusual, but it might not be useful for everyone.
The best way to determine whether or not a wedding favor is appropriate is to think about what you would feel if you were given that same item as a favor at another wedding. And indeed, what you are going to do with any leftover favors you might have. Certainly send one to any person who is not able to attend the reception whom you are close to, or whom you think deserves more than just a thank you note. But if the favor is nice enough, and useful enough, certainly do keep a few for yourself and your spouse!
Selecting Wedding Favors
Following the three rules for selecting wedding favors, price, usefulness of the wedding favor, and appropriateness of the wedding favor, will help you make the right choice for your perfect day.
Selecting Your Wedding Favors: The Gift that Keeps on Giving
4 parts, 1033 words
Shop now at the #1 Wedding Favors website for all your wedding and shower favor needs.
Great prices, personalization, fast shipping:
MyWeddingFavors.com
A Scottish Honeymoon: romance, mystery, castles and ghosts Part 2
OTHER IMPORTANT SCOTTISH SITES TO VISIT ON YOUR HONEYMOON
St. Andrews is a beautiful town and home to the most famous golf course in the world! Plus there are some fascinating medieval ruins. I was amazed to see the sheep all grazing on the golf course, plus the fact that it is right off the main street of the town, situated between it and the sea. St Andrews is easy travelling distance from Edinburgh, heading east.
You can also make a stop on the way at Glamis Castle, the famed castle of MacBeth, and reputed to be the most haunted castle in Scotland. They have a wonderful herd of Highland cows (the ones with the long shaggy hair and huge horns). I saw a baby one once, it was like an auburn teddy bear.
The Cairngorm Mountains are in the middle of the country, and though not very high, they are spectacular. They are surrounded by rivers, lochs, forests and are home to rare wildlife. Of course everyone had heard of Loch Ness, but that is just one of the many outstanding lakes you can visit. The Loch Ness Museum is terrific though, and is set in a small town amid some of the most incredible scenery you will ever see in your life.
This beautiful region is popular for skiing, hiking and water sports,and best of all, it is an easy drive from Edinburgh or Glasgow.
Stirling is in the center of the country, a lovely town with a spectacular castle and a wonderful focus on William Wallace, who won a great victory against the English at Stirling Bridge over seven centuries ago.
For more suggestions, see A Scottish Honeymoon: romance, mystery, castles and ghosts Part 3
Obama’s End–Just In Time, Too
It is ludicrous that any presidential candidate in the age of media could be given so much adulation, only to fall so very far down the slippery slope as to not get any traction even when he is trying his hardest not to get wrong-footed again.
Obama and Oprah would make a hell of a winning ticket. But the media darlings are not made of the same stuff, and boy, is it starting to show.
Just listen to what everyone has said about Obama who has had to work closely with him in Illinois. NONE of them have anything 100% positive to say about him. They interview loads of them on ABC and CBS. NONE of them.
In fact, he was so arrogant, that he told the head of the democratic party in that state, that “he was the most powerful man in the world,” because he was about to make Barack Obama the first black president of the US.
The fact that this congressman was also African American, and 20 years his senior, didn’t faze him–don’t you think THAT Rep wanted to be the first AA president himself? Audicity of Hope? Jumped up little toad, more like.
Do you seriously think, if Oprah had kept her mouth shut, that Obama would have won Iowa? Or any other state? No.
And now, less than 3 months into an electoral campaign that Hillary Clinton has been basically running for 3 years, since Bush got his second term (God knows how), Obama can’t stand up to media scrutiny.
He has no policies, he has stolen his speeches from other people, he screams racism every time anyone DARES criticize him, or things don’t go his way and he want to blow smoke.
What Ferraro said is NOT wrong or racist, and to claim it is, is just another example of his lack of trustworthiness and willingness to do or say anything to get where he wants to be (note all the sarcastic barbs about Bill’s sex life he’s spewed out, THEN talk to me about him running a ‘positive campaign’ and her a negative one!)
Edwards, Richardson, have paid their political dues for MANY years and are damned fine men, but they are not in the race any more, now are they?
Kucinich and the others, ALL experienced politicians, all out of the race.
So how is it Obama is where his is now, and Edwards, of all people, is out?
THAT is what Ferraro meant, and that is why Clinton did not call for her resignation. Because once again, what she said was FACTUAL, not pointlessly negative, as, for example, when she was called a monster.
Yes, Obama was compared to Starr. Starr hounded the Clintons for YEARS, and came up with NOTHING to pin on them.
Just because they said it, does not mean it is true, but crap does have an unfortunate tendency to stick.
The Clintons are not, and never have been racist, yet every time they open their mouth, he shouts foul, without even bothering to address his sexism-‘claws out,’ for example. She’s a ‘personable woman’ but “prone to tears.”
Clinton used the phrase fairy tale to describe Obama’s nonsense, a re-writing of history that never happened. What did Obama say-that B Clinton was REALLY saying that a black president in this country was a fairy tale. NOT true, and he knows it.
H Clinton tried to explain that politicians worked together to bring about real change–she is historically correct, but who listened. They only heard Obama’s lies and half-truths and the word racism. IF any one is DIVISIVE in the party or the country, it has been him.
They were all complaining she HAD no emotions, so she shows them, and is accused of using them for political capital!
Obama couldn’t be more of a Republican patsy if he tried. He is serving to split Clinton’s solid historic base, when everyone in that party has umpteen polls showing that if he were to run against McCain tomorrow, he would LOSE.
Above all, I am stunned at his hypocrisy, and even more stunned H. Clinton does not slap him right back on his audicious ass. He DARES to say that HE would have protested the war back in 2002.
Speaking as a pacificist who spoke my mind back then, that we were ALL getting SNOWED by Bush, I was viciously attacked by everyone as ‘unpatriotic’ even liberally minded people, such was the convincing job that Bush pulled on the American people.
Wouldn’t have voted in favor, my butt. Far more talented and intelligent people than Obama were hounded out of politics 6 years ago for daring to say anything even remotely anti-war. Yes, H. Clinton DID vote in favor of the war, nearly ALL of them did. Why? She was lied to! We ALL were.
Telling us that she should have seen through the extent of the lies is like saying we should have all known how Bush stole the White House from Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004 thanks to Florida and Ohio.
They have repeated again in the news this week the fact that there was NO connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, which the 9/11 commission published in 2004. And as early as 2003. Google it if you don’t believe me. NO connection. NONE.
The Bush admininstration has demonstrably been proven to have lied about all of this time and time again, and yet anyone who mentions a troop withdrawal timetable is seen as naïve. Since there was no need for the troops to be in there in the first place, why keep them there??
Why the hell aren’t we all baying for Bush’s blood?
No one died when Bill Clinton lied. It was a sexual peccadillo, not a war that is costing us $12 billion a month!!
Do the math! There are only about 370 million Americans in the USA. How much would we all be better off without a war. What could that money be used for?
The only people profitting from the war are the arms manufacturers and dealers.
Why are we not impeaching Bush/why didn’t we in 2004?
Hindsight is always 20/20 of course, but it is just one more reason to make sure that we have a strong president in the White House, and Obama is NOT it.
He should take his marbles to some other playground because he is so outclassed he might as well try to play his game somewhere else.
Anyone with half a brain not carried away by the buzzword ‘change’ will see he is not only more of the same, he is an inferior version of it.
Really, Obama, scaring people with ‘monsters’ under the bed thanks to your foreign policy advisor? Off the record, pal, you are still living in your ‘heir to Kennedy’s Camelot’ fairy tale, but the rest of us have to live in the real world.
And there be dragons all right, but the worst one sure isn’t Hillary!
Maybe he can try to grow up and fight head to head on REAL issues, not make up what was or wasn’t said, done, or meant by his colleague in the Democratic party, which he claims to be a member of.
But we are running out of time to fight the McCain dragon, and Obama is running out of momentum, especially now that we can all see just what he is really made of. One puff had blown his house down.
Look at the sleazy revelations about his campaign funding today he is finally getting around to disclosing. The guy is gong to jail, he disavows any knowledge. Then he has the gall to say no one ever asks him for personal favors, or vice versa?
He gets into the senate, his wife gets a huge salary increase at her hospital job and he tried to earmark money for it.
He may be only a junior senator but he sure does have the wheeling and dealing down pat.
His pastor rants about 9/11, he knows nothing, or he was not in Church that day. Plausible deniability when he isn’t even near the White House yet? It’s despicable.
Please, for the sake of this country, let’s all stop wasting time on this guy and let Hillary Clinton start running hell for leather for the White House.
Because once she gets there, she will keep on pushing forward to make this country a better place for us all, not just with words and audacity and mere hope, but real action.
And in case you are wondering, NO, I am NOT a long time Clinton supporter, and I never have been. I would have wanted Edwards for president. But we need someone who is going to hit the ground running on day one, not spend all their time fending off attacks as we get to dig deeper once the dazzling is gone, and discover we’ve been sold a pack of lies that naive first time young voters are swallowing hook, line and sinker.
Selecting Your Wedding Favors: The Gift that Keeps on Giving Part 3
Useful Wedding Favors
Another factor to consider when selecting wedding favors is whether or not the favor will be useful to your guests. This is very important because favors which are useful leave a much better impression than useless trinkets.
For example, picture frames and candles are very useful and always welcome, but a little figurine of a bride and groom, probably not. Many people do not display items such as these, especially if they are breakable, and they have probably gotten something similar in the past at another wedding. As a result your wedding favors you spent your hard earned money on may wind up in a box in the attic or may be thrown out shortly after the wedding, hundreds of them decorating nothing but the local landfill.
Men and women do of course have different notions of usefulness, so try to select something which is not too ‘girly’.
Selecting Your Wedding Favors: The Gift that Keeps on Giving Part 4 will talk about appropriate wedding favors you might want to consider for your special day.
Shop now at the #1 Wedding Favors website for all your wedding and shower favor needs.
Great prices, personalization, fast shipping:
MyWeddingFavors.com
Tax Time Tips
Tax Time Tips
So why is it that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet pay single-digit taxes? Because they know about all the deductions they are eligible for.
To help get you started on your taxes, here is a useful article from Yahoo Finance: 10 Must-Know Tax Terms
http://finance.yahoo.com/taxes/article/101896/must_know_tax_terms
Here is a helpful article on getting organized so taxes do not have to be so painful,
http://finance.yahoo.com/taxes/article/104173/Working-on-Your-Taxes-Get-Organized
http://www.bankrate.com/yho/news/financial_literacy/dec07_tax_mistakes_a1.asp
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