We use a Sharpie on a paper calendar, but a lot of families have large whiteboard that they reuse every month. The calendar needs to be where everyone sees it regularly, and if something changes, they immediately change it. If you have an updated calendar, you will be able to plan family dinners and events much easier. If you want to see your family more, know when they are home by using the calendar. It is an easy, inexpensive way to keep your family together.

Find something you enjoy this spring, and use it to exercise. I personally love to play basketball, and there are some great outdoor courts around my house. Every weekend I get a few friends together and we play all day. It is a lot of fun, and it is essentially free. Some people really enjoy camping during the summer. Turn that into exercise by camping somewhere really remote that forces you to hike all day. No matter what the spring and summer months are great times to improve your health.

The key is, like many other things, to have moderation in all things. Having a cup of coffee every morning is not unhealthy; in fact, some studies suggest that a little coffee every morning has many of the same effects of red wine. It may lower the risk of heart disease. The problem is when people have too many orange mocha frappuccinos. The sugar and fat can cause serious health problems. Also, many people claim that caffeine dehydrates your body. A general rule of thumb to prevent this is to have twice as many non-caffeinated drinks as caffeinated drinks. This will keep you hydrated, and caffeine is more effective when you have had a lot of water.

My goal is to never give someone a trinket, or in other words something that will sit in a drawer for a few years then be thrown away. Souvenirs can be fun if they are used as a decoration, but if I own a really modern house, I won’t be hanging up a cactus sculpture from the Grand Canyon. Giving a great gift isn’t easy, but if you give out enough gifts, eventually you’ll get a winner.

How is that different from a community college, and in fact, a community college is probably better. A community college usually has smaller class sizes, and is taught by full time professors. One of the best strategies to save money and get a great education is to complete your generals at a community college and then transfer to a university. This way you will be able to save money, figure out what you want to major in, and still get a diploma that says you graduated from a well-known university. Community colleges are excellent for people who want to save a little money before graduating from a large, expensive college.

It may seem like a dire situation for higher education, but the bright side is that when we come out of this economic mess, our schools will run more efficiently, saving taxpayers and students money. Hopefully we will come out of this tailspin soon, but until then a lot of pressure is going to be put on development and philanthropy employees of universities and colleges to keep donations coming, or else we will see a major spike in tuition.

Learning a second language can be a huge resource, but at the same time consider what you want to do with your life. For instance, a minor in French is a lot less useful in today’s world than something like a minor in Computer Programming. Although it may be enjoyable to learn a language, it may not be in the best interest of your future if your time could be spent elsewhere. Learning a second language is a huge benefit, but just make sure it is really going to be something you will use in the future.

For those of us who are slightly less creative than the normal population, we need Ikea to give us home design ideas. If you gave me one cool desk or couch, I really wouldn’t know what to do with it, but if you give a desk and a vision of how it could look in my room, then I get excited. Ikea is fun to visit even if you do not need to purchase anything. It gives us important design ideas for our future.

When you are creating the blueprints for your website, include multiple places for your visitors to create community. You want to always have new users on your website, rather new users and users who have visited the site a thousand times and have it bookmarked on their web browser. That is one of the ways you can create a killer website.

I wouldn’t mind if I could block sites like Facebook for two or three hours at a time. When I start working, I am usually pretty good about not wasting time, but two or three hours into my assignment, I begin to wander. It is simply a matter of self-discipline that I have not mastered yet. One day I will, or I will just block sites that I waste time on and lose the password on purpose. We’ll see.