NFL Football History. A Brief Overview

Who knew back then in the 1920s that the national football league would take the path to become what it has? In the 1920s, a group of businessman and sports enthusiasts from the middle of America gathered in canton, ohio in a car showroom to discuss and strategize how they would take pro-football from a disorderly, ruthless game of disgrace to that of an organized league.

It is during this meeting in canton in the showroom where the men defined rules, traded ideas, elected a board. The new league would be called the american professional Football association.

From the wooden, dusty arenas of the midwest including Hammond, indiana, Akron, ohio, and Rock island, illinois to the Duluth Eskimos in 1926 to super Bowl 111 where joe namath and the AFLs New york Jets displaced the nfl old guard.

In 1932, the first nfl championship game was played indoors on 80-yard field. While a lot about the game has evolved since the 1920s, the emotion and pain of the football game remains the same.

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Ten Convenience Built-Ins That'll Save Your Busy Household Hundreds Of Hours Each Year

Planning to remodel, repair or build a new home? Looking for some terrific features to include that can save you tons of time in shortcuts, efficiencies and saved steps? We can help! We started collecting over 1,000 uncommon, affordable convenience built-ins in 1998, when we first began writing books and consulting to help people have truly extraordinary but affordable homes. Here are some of our favorite ideas thatll change your life via the time they save you. Add any of these to your next project, and youll be on your way toward creating a home thats truly beyond the ordinary!

A shallow closet or weatherproof cabinet at every outdoor hose faucet, for storing a hose at an easy-to-reach height where it will stay relatively clean, out of sight and out of the way. No more risk of tripping over a hose left in a heap on the ground! (And even recoiling and flat hoses can be awkward and dirty to move from faucet to faucet, especially if theyre stored outdoors.) This makes gardening a snap, as well as hosing down the deck, patio or outdoor furniture, or washing windows. Youll also want flooring inside that prevents the unavoidable drips from encouraging mold.

A non-porous, nonskid, self-leveling garage floor coating, so that soil and oil can easily be hosed away. (If you have a drain in the floor and flooring that slopes toward it, use a similar coating thats not self- leveling.)

A sewing machine permanently plugged in and set up on a desk or inside a well-lit closet or alcove. Be sure theres space behind the machine for the fabric from large projects to accumulate.

Remote-controlled window shades, especially on hard-to-reach windows or skylights. Choose among remote controls that can be operated manually; via a timer or photocell; or through any on-site or off- site computer, personal digital assistant or cell phone. Besides being safer than attempting to reach out-of-the-way shades by hand, easy-to- maneuver shades help control light and heat in a room, minimize fading of a rooms or closets contents, and the automatic or off-site controls can make an empty house appear occupied.

Dedicated space for wrapping gifts thats near where you store your wrapping supplies and tools. No more hauling stuff around!

A doorbell intercom outside the door that can be answered from every telephone in the house (also via your cell phone while youre out). No more dropping everything to run to answer the door!

Shallow shelves with only one row deep of canned or dry goods, medicines, supplies, tools or equipment, for instant identification of and access to whatevers stored. These can often be tucked into a space thats otherwise unused.

At least one full bathroom on every level of the house.

A laundry chute from closets, cabinets or bathrooms to a laundry room on a lower level. No more hauling dirty laundry down stairs when gravity will do the job! And no more dropping items on the way to the laundry room that you might trip over!

A pot-filler faucet attached to a wall near your cooking burners, that swivels into various positions as well as out of the way. No more moving heavy pots of water from the sink to the stove!

Like this article? Then youll love our books chock-full of uncommon, affordable convenience built-ins that increase your quality of life and your homes resale value! We also offer a free e-book at www.extraordinaryhomes.com: The 34 ExtraOrdinary Home Principles: Over 70 Fabulous, Affordable, Innovative Ideas Thatll Improve Your Life and WOW You!

Copyright 2005 by Carol Abrahamson/ExtraOrdinary Homes. All rights reserved.

Carol Abrahamson consults, writes and makes presentations about more than 1,000 of these fabulous features that can improve your life, add value to your home and make you the talk of the town. She spent years researching them via thousands of sources just so you can quickly and easily use them to create your affordable, extraordinary Home of Your Dreams. Learn more about her work via http:// http://www.extraordinaryhomes.com or carol@extraordinaryhomes.com.

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The Stack and Tilt Golf Swing - Some Comments

In a recent issue of Golf Digest (June 2007) a "new" golf swing being promoted by golf coaches Andy Plummer and Mike Bennett is featured. This new approach to the golf swing is called the "Stack and Tilt" swing.

In describing the Stack and Tilt swing, Peter Morrice, the author of the article, indulges in a bit of overstatement when he says "Their secret...contradicts almost everything being taught in the game today." But is this swing really that unique?

The Key Difference

The biggest difference with the "Stack and Tilt" swing is that it completely downplays the idea of shifting your weight to your back foot when making the backswing. In fact this "new" swing encourages the golfer to keep his or her weight on the front foot, and, if anything, move it more directly over the front foot during the takeaway.

Some older golfers will think this looks like a "reverse pivot" where the golfer seems to be leaning towards the target at the top of the swing. Teachers of the typical modern swing have their golf students draw the club back and stack their weight over their back leg when the club hits the top of the swing. But Stack and Tilt encourages the golfer to lean towards the target while the club is taken up.

Some Subtle Differences

For many golfers it may be hard to spot the differences at first, but there are some significant ones. For one thing with the typical modern swing the back leg remains bent with a slight flex at the knee. With the Stack and Tilt the back leg straightens out. The photos featured in the Golf Digest article (p.122) demonstrate how the back leg straightens out as it pushes back towards the target.

As a result the front side of the body is "stacked" over the front foot, and the trailing side of the body is "tilted" towards the target.

For a comparison with the typical modern swing look at photos of Tiger's swing of the last few years, or see the photo of V.J. Singh's swing on page 43 of the same issue of Golf Digest. Singh's upper body is "stacked" over his back leg at the top of the swing, and the trailing side of his torso is perpendicular to the ground as he pushes his weight back over his back leg. This is quite different from the way the torso is angled towards the target with the Stack and Tilt swing.

It's All Been Done Before

If you are familiar with the teachings of most modern golf coaches this may sound like a radical departure from golf orthodoxy. But the fact is, there have always been alternative schools of thought which questioned the simplistic "weight shift" idea. In particular, look at old photos of Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan or Sam Snead. None of these golfers make the major shift over the back leg like you see with tiger Woods, for instance.

Or have a close look at the famous 1930s videos produced by Bobby Jones. There is no obvious shift towards the back leg. Jones remains centered over the ball throughout the swing and is more concerned with rotation around the center point than he is with the lateral weight shift characteristic of the typical modern swing.

Points of Interest

There are clearly some aspects of the Stack and Tilt swing that may help the average golfer hit the golf ball more squarely and more precisely.

The first is the lack of emphasis placed on the weight shift. For many golfers this idea is misleading and results in a lateral shift that basically turns the golf ball into a moving target. Shifting one's weight to the back also results in a "shallower" swing which increases the chances of bottoming out too early. Depending on a variety of factors this can either result in fat shots or thin ones. As an alternative, pressing into the front foot as you take the club back very definitely forces a steeper approach to the ball and should result in fewer topped shots. It also results in a lower trajectory since it de-lofts the club, and this may give you greater run on certain kinds of fairways.

The second point is that Stack and Tilt promotes a flatter swing. A flatter swing is less vertical and more rotational, and is the way Stack and Tilt compensates for being more on top of the ball when the downswing is begun.

The third point is the fairly advanced idea of the "pelvic thrust" which the Stack and Tilt teachers claim helps get the club approaching the ball correctly. This is probably where Stack and Tilt becomes too difficult for many average golfers. With Stack and Tilt, since one's weight and shoulder position are forward, the approach to the ball will be significantly steeper than normal. The pelvic thrust, along with the more rotational swing, helps to "shallow out" the swing. You achieve this by rapidly rotating your hips around and pushing your front hip up and towards the target. This creates the sensation of almost jumping up and striking the ball while on your toes. If you've ever seen Natalie Golbus swing a golf club you've got a fairly good idea what this looks like.

If these seem like technical points that are beyond your level of expertise, just give the "weight forward" idea a try. All you have to do is start with noticeably more weight on your front foot, and then press into that foot as you take the club up. You will probably find that it feels quite different from what you are used to. This move should result in fewer thin hits. But it may also result in more pushes, especially with the longer clubs, so you may have to adjust the positioning of the ball. You may also find it more physically taxing - requiring more body contortions - and for most of us that is not a good thing.

Rick Hendershot is an avid golfer who writes about the golf swing, golf travel and other golf stuff. Catch his blogs called The Weekend Golfer and Golf Around the World

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Seven Ways to Inject Suspense into Your Novel

Certain genres are renowned for being more suspenseful than others: horror, crime fiction and romantic suspense, but each and every book, no matter whether it's an Historical Romance or a Paranormal Fantasy, HAS to have a level of suspense interwoven between the pages!

All stories need to have this element, otherwise the reader isn't going to want to turn the page, it's as simple as that. So if you're interested in what makes a suspenseful page turner, then please read on...

Creating conflict in your novel is a given, otherwise there would be no story. If all went smoothly it would be as dull-as-dishwater, wouldn't it? They all lived happily throughout the story and ever after, yawn...

I've listed seven ways you can inject suspense into your novel:

1. Introduce your characters to their worst nightmare!

Find out about your characters beforehand. If possible, write up their likes and dislikes etc, and most importantly of all, find out what it is they fear most? What is it that causes their hearts to thump loudly, beads of perspiration to form on their upper lips, and the hairs on the back of their necks to stand on end? Find out what that thing or things are, and then give it to them, both barrels. For example, if your heroine is petrified of flying because her parents died in a plane crash, create a story where she HAS to take a journey on an airplane. If your hero fears water because he almost drowned as a young child, put him in a position where he HAS to get back in the water to rescue someone.

Introduce them to their worst nightmare and watch how they react!

2. Lull them into a false sense of security

When your character is really frightened of something, throw in a red herring. For example, if your heroine thinks she hears a noise outside, allow the plot to let her fears grow and grow. Let it be something quite innocuous, like the dustbin blowing over in the wind. Then, when she has reassured herself, breathing a sigh of relief, petrify her to death by placing a prowler outside her back door!

3. Throw the spotlight on at least two people

This might sound a little obvious, but for goodness sake, don't make the villain of the piece stand out a mile. Instead, have suspicion fall on at least two, possibly three characters. This will have the effect of your reader not really being sure until the end, when the other shoe falls! But, by all means, leave some clues and some red herrings along the way!

4. Pacing

Pacing is important to create suspense. In general, short, snappy sentences will enable the reader to race ahead so they feel their heart is beating in time with the frightened protagonist. Longer sentences tend to slow things down. You might want to speed things up for a car chase or slow it down for a love making scene. Imagine your novel as if you were watching it on the big screen. How would it be filmed? What would that particular scene look like to the audience?

5. The calm before the storm

Make use of the weather to good effect. Thunderclouds brewing overhead, often give the reader the feeling that something is about to happen [prophetic fallacy]. A bolt of lightening hitting the night sky, power lines down, a stranger at the door, etc. Think of the last time you watched a horror film; didn't the weather come into somewhere?

6. When all goes well, throw in a dead body!

When you hit a sagging middle of a novel, and you find there's no where to go, try throwing in a dead body. This doesn't necessarily mean that a character has to be killed off, although you might want to do just that, it can mean that something unexpected happens, such as the birth of a baby, etc. Something that injects a little more oomph into the plot!

7. Setting

Setting is very important as a tool to create suspense. What about that dark stone staircase covered in cobwebs? Or the elevator that suddenly stops in between floors? Choosing the right sort of setting can make or break a novel. And sometimes, placing the object or person the protagonist fears in an innocuous setting can make the story all the more horrifying.

Be cruel to your characters and watch them run for their lives!

Lynette Rees has written many short stories and articles. Her first romantic suspense novel, IT HAPPENED ONE SUMMER, will published at Wings Press Inc from May 1st, 2006.

Her second romantic suspense, RETURN TO WINTER, is due for publication at the same site in December 2006.

http://www.wings-press.com/

Visit Lynette's website here:

http://silverlady00.tripod.com/

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After Pregnancy Weight Loss Tips

I still remember when I had my first baby like it was yesterday. There was nothing that could compare to the feeling that I had when I held that baby in my arms and knew that they were counting on me to take care of them in every way. Another thing that I remembered was how hard it was to realize any after pregnancy weight loss. It seemed like no matter what I did that extra weight that I had put on since I became pregnant just did not want to leave.

The human body is really an amazing thing. It helps us to take care of the unborn baby that is growing inside us by letting us know, naturally, that we will need to eat more, and more of the right things. Of course there are times as well that some mothers will not eat all the right things, and that will lead to even more weight gain during pregnancy. But whether you gained a little or a lot during your pregnancy, here are some tips that will help you with that after pregnancy weight loss.

If you are breastfeeding then you will need to be concerned with the types of foods that you are eating. This will make it a bit more difficult to eat the right things that will help you with your weight loss, but the fact that you are breastfeeding will help you a lot to lose the post pregnancy fat so combining breastfeeding with a proper, healthy diet will help you to shed some of the extra weight that you have been carrying. And, of course, it is always helpful to get some exercise and to drink plenty of water. By doing these things, while staying healthy, you will see some after pregnancy weight loss beginning quickly.

You can lose weight and get in the best shape of your life within weeks after delivering a baby. Download our special report at http://www.healthy-after-baby.info/

Before and After Pregnancy Pictures can be viewed on our website.

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