I have a friend who is just a knock out. There is no other way to explain it. She’s beautiful and intelligent, and quite often is the voice of reason when I feel like I’m in crisis. She has great taste in clothes and always looks great when she dresses up. Though she looks perfect she is over 40 and says that there is no way she can go without her bra. When she wears something that does not allow for a regular bra, she has to find one with clear bra straps. Though she says that is not a perfect solution, it is what works for her.

I personally don’t own anything that would necessitate the need for clear bra straps, but I think it is high time that someone invented them. I don’t know what the social code is for wearing a bra like that, but I know I would much rather see clear bra straps when someone is wearing something low cut than to see just too much. Often women wear low cut tops and they don’t wear a bra with it because the top is cut strangely. If they don’t wear a bra they hang out all over the place.

They are great for women who might need something a little better than a strapless bra can handle. If someone has a large chest, there just aren’t strapless bras strong enough to handle the problem. That is where clear bra straps are a Godsend. There is nothing worse that being a large chest women and being confronted with a strapless dress. Though there are some women who love to let it all hang out, most of us aren’t willing to share that much with the world. The next time I am in a wedding, I know I am going out to find something with clear bra straps or I’m just not going to be involved at all.

There are some times when you might not want to wear clear bra straps and it will depend on who you are and how comfortable you are. I know that even though they are clear, they are still part of a bra. I might wear one if only a small portion of it might be showing, but you won’t catch me wearing clear bra straps on a strapless dress. Of all the things that have come and gone in fashion, at least these have a good purpose.

It can be so hard to figure out what to get your girlfriend on Valentines Day. Even though I had been dating mine for almost 12 years, it was still hard to shop for her. I felt like I hardly know her at all. All I knew was that she did not want to spend Valentines Day watching football and that she expected me to get her something. It didn’t help that last Valentines Day, I was across the country. She was in Washington D.C. And I was in California. I had forgotten to pick something out for her and it was getting down to the line as they say in football. I decided to order from 1-800-Flowers. Every girl loves flowers, even a special girl like mine.

It is important to call ahead of time. Whether or not your ordering her 1-800-Flowers, the company needs time to ship them out to their destination. Anyway, if you are like me, you do not know much about flowers. They are not exactly the most exciting topic, especially if you would rather watch sports. So I was naturally worried and like a big dope, I waited until almost the last minute to call 1-800-Flowers. The ordering company was swamped with business, and I had to wait on hold for almost an hour before they picked up and took my order. Fortunately, they were playing some of my favorite music. I got to hear both Phil Collins and Enya, and the soft lulling tones reminded me of how much I loved my girl, my very own sweetest.

I ordered her a bouquet of roses. Some guys would try to get something creative. Pansies or tulips of something, but I knew roses were the best. I contemplated just getting her a single rose, surrounded by babies breath, but I didn’t want her to think I was proposing to her or something. And anyway, nothing that looked too serious or too cheesy. A bouquet of roses – dark red one – is always the perfect gift.

When she got the 1-800-Flowers order, she immediately called me. She was practically overjoyed, she couldn’t believe her good luck. It even came with a little card she described for me in detail. It had a shiny heart wrapped in lace and pine boughs and said “To Shelly, from Stan”, exactly the one I would have picked out. I guess I was not thinking of marriage at the time, but when I saw how happy my flowers from 1-800-Flowers had made her, I broke down and surprised both of us and proposed. Well, that made things awkward for a while, but we are still dating, and she loved the flowers. Anyway, we both had a good laugh over it later that week.

You will always hear new ideas on how to live a better life. Some of the things you are going to hear are just not going to work, and there are some that work with amazing efficiency. It can be very confusing because there are so many ideas out there, and so many different people who think that they have the answer. The problem is that what works for one person will not work for everyone, and quite often you won’t know what you should choose. One idea is to live by the power of positive thinking.

Though I can not vouch for everyone, I can say that the power of positive thinking is something that I try to use in my life. I had no idea there were books and specials on television about it. It was just something I decided to do about ten years ago. I was depressed and felt like I was stuck in a horrible place in life. I felt like I could not escape. I was sitting in my doctor’s office crying my eyes out, and my doctor calmly told me that there is always a way out, but I would have to believe it. This was the first I had heard about the power of positive thinking and I wish it was something I had known long ago.

Though he didn’t put it into those exact words, he did say that you have to remain positive that things will work out, and you will find that they do. He said the power of positive thinking would force me to change how I viewed problems, and would help me see what I wanted for my life. Up until that point, I thought life was a series of accidents, and I did feel sorry for myself. In that moment, I realized how pitiful that was, and how I was defeating myself with all of my negative thoughts.

Within a matter of months, the power of positive thinking had changed my life. I was back in college and working towards a new career. Many of the other problems I had cleared up, though they did not magically go away. I did have to work on them. When I began to use the power of positive thinking, the answers seemed to come to me much more clearly, and I felt energized. For the first time in my life, I thought that I was finally in control of my own destiny. If you really believe, you can do this for yourself as well.

Munching on this chocolate seashell, I can’t help but think of last summer. It was the summer when I discovered two things -  my love of the sea and my love of chocolate. I was just 15 then, and somewhat naive. I had never had a gourmet chocolate seashell before. I had never been kissed. I was a mid-western boy who had never seen the ocean.

But that summer, my parents took the whole family to Maine for a summer vacation to die for. Can you imagine, growing up in Wisconsin, what it is like to see the sea for the first time? That endless stretch of water with its lovely salty spray blowing on your face. It was as sweet as a chocolate seashell, which incidentally, I got to try the first day I went to the sea.

It was this little confectioner in the tourist town of Bar Harbor. The woman behind the register was just the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I could tell by her name tag her name was Sara, and I could tell by looking at her that she was about my age. When she handed me the chocolate seashell, I started a conversation with her. It turns out that she was 17. Just two years difference between us, and yet somehow, it meant that she was almost a woman while I was still a boy.

Nonetheless, she said she’d show me around that evening and gave me the most promising, adult smile I’d ever received from a woman until that day. My parents had waited outside the shop – they weren’t the type of parents who delight in humiliating their kids, which is all too rare in my opinion. She met me that evening after I had had dinner, down by the harbor and we walked around and looked at the boats.

It turns out that she was just beginning her senior year in high school, but already filled with dreams of the future. She wanted to be a marine biologist when she grew up. Her dad had been a fisherman before the fishing trade dried up and the family started the confection business. She loved the sea and wanted to do all she could to protect it. I felt naive. I was only a sophomore and had no idea what I was going to do with my life. But when she kissed me under the moon that night, it filled me with the feeling of the future and the taste of a chocolate seashell.

I honestly don’t know what to think about tarot cards and the whole world of psychics and other worldly type things. There is something to be said for things that we don’t understand and just because we don’t understand something does not mean that it isn’t real. I think the key to learning and growth is knowing that we don’t know everything, and it’s quite possible that there are things out there that we all can’t understand. Just because we don’t have proof in the palms of our hands doesn’t mean something is a figment of someone else’s imagination.

This is how I feel about tarot cards. I don’t know what is real and what is not real but I do know that people I trust very much believe. I have a friend who has nothing to gain from me and yet offers to give me guidance if I need it. Though she is a good friend, she doesn’t know a lot about my past yet. However, when she reads tarot cards for me, she says things that are too true to be something she pulled out of the air.

When she reads my tarot cards, I know I can trust what she says. There are people out there who pretend to read tarot cards to make some money, but they don’t really have any business doing so. There are many ways to make statements that can cover almost anyone’s life. They take these statements and make them sound like they are meant just for you. There are universal experiences that most of us share, and they take these things and make them personal. It sounds real, but it is not. It’s a trick that is used by many people asking for your money, but remember that this does not mean that there are not real people out there who have real gifts.

My friend however, has brought up exact moments, names and details that a person could not possibly guess and she has done this over the phone from the other side of the world. When she reads my tarot cards, it’s almost as if she can see right into my head. When she can see what age I was, the names of the people involved, and the direct outcome. I cannot deny that the tarot cards are telling her something. If you can find someone like this to read tarot cards for you, make sure you hang on to them.

There are many things that people look for in romance. In a survey recently, most males who responded that said they wanted a pretty woman and one who was smart, funny and caring as well. There are many ways to meet people. If you are in college you can meet them in classes or campus social activities, but once you graduate it becomes harder. People frequently use social clubs as a way to meet people but those require a common interest such as a sport, or a bookclub, which means a large time commitment pursuing your hobby.

For all these reasons, many men prefer to use an online dating service to meet a pretty woman. An online dating service gives it all to you -  convenience, a variety of choices and the opportunity to meet the woman of your dreams. One of the best reasons to use an online service to find a mate is because they are almost always either free or extremely cheap and use personality traits to match you to an ideal partner. Imagine all the people you have to run into in a club to meet the right one, not knowing ahead of time what their interests are. But with internet dating services you can meet a pretty woman who is compatible with you on the very first try.

There are many different options for these services. Speed dating is a popular one. In speed dating a large group of men and a large group of women all gather in a room. They each man sits down in front of a woman, and the “couple” has eight minutes to talk to each other to determine if they are a good match. They then rotate partners, repeatedly, until everyone has had a chance to talk to everyone else. When the whole process is completed, everyone gives a list of people they would like to meet with in the future to the organizers running the even. If there is a match, then each party recieves the others phone number. There is guaranteed to be a pretty woman there

A more basic and even more popular approach is where everyone makes a profile of themselves. Anyone who wants to can peruse the profiles, looking for people who they think would be a good match for them. They then can message that person and both have an opportunity to communicate electronically and decide if they are interested in meeting in person. Of course, many services take much of the work out of this approach and simply automatically match you to people you would be compatible with according to what you put down in your personality profile. There’s really no easier way to meet a pretty woman.