At that time you can reassess how realistic it will be for you to attain your 30-pound weight-loss goal by the end of May. At this point you may want to adjust your deadline depending upon how you did the first month. For instance, suppose your weight loss during January was only two pounds.

How realistic is it that you can lose seven pounds in each of the next four months? If your weight loss at the end of January is eight pounds, how realistic is it that you can lose five and one-half pounds in each of the next four months?

Once short-term goals have been set, realizing that you will need to devote time each week (and each day) toward achieving your goals is crucial. With today’s hectic lifestyles, finding extra time to plan healthy meals and be more physically active is often difficult.

Make things like regular exercise and healthy eating a priority by scheduling them directly in your weekly planner. It is important to make your goals a priority and block off time as you would any important appointment. Remember, the appointment is with the most important person in your life—yourself!

(Did you notice that? I just used one of those trendy phrases. I am so hip.)

So, the Survivor 3 Babe Factor is just as strong as ever. The difference being that these people have serious SKILLS and as a result, their babeness is being overlooked. There are a few cast members who concern me when it comes to survival skills; the super-achieving way-rich cheerleader, the guy who lists “smoking” as a favorite hobby, and the surfer dude with lots of tattoos. But hey, I already told you the cheerleader’s a genius. The smoker is a gay guy that was raised in a military family – if he can survive that he can survive anything. And the surfer dude plays drums. It’s an accepted fact that anyone who plays drums can do no wrong.

In this group, we have marathoners (more than one), tri-athletes, mountain bikers, college and pro athletes, champion boxers, and even an avid hunter that makes Ted Nugent look like Barney. (Ted Nugent is going to kick my ass for saying that, but you know… that’s OK, because getting my ass kicked by Ted Nugent would be really cool. And that’s a picture of Ted, by the way.)

Unfortunately, this avid hunter won’t have a chance to show his skills. On this protected wildlife reserve, harming, much less eating, any wild animal is punishable by imprisonment. And since there are no fish in the nearby waters larger than a minnow, I’m not quite sure how and what these survivors will eat.

And remember Kimmi from Survivor 2 and how she didn’t want to get in the dirty water and was starting to annoy everyone because she had major body odor? Well, this season they are expecting EVERYONE to stink in a bad way since the two water sources aren’t human friendly – one being infested with crocodiles and the other containing numerous parasites.

So there won’t be any food to eat and people are going to have major B.O. I’m sure things could be worse. They could be there without 300 CBS production crew people just a short walk away and cameramen hording over their every move and sharp-shooter rangers positioned around the encampments just in case the wild animals DO attack. Plus, it’s only a little more than a month. I’m sure people won’t die, unless, of course, the ranger misses and a lion teaches the world a lesson about survival of the fittest. But just to be safe, the Kenyan Fish and Wildlife Ministry issued strict guidelines: they were required to wear bells at all times and “carry a canister of pepper spray, should they accidentally stumble across a lion.”

Baseball was big when I was a kid. I played at Antonia Khoury League, which was a very large cornfield in Missouri converted into many ball diamonds. I remember all-day tournaments in the heat of the sun, no trees to provide shade – nothing but the sound of bats hitting balls, people cheering, and plumes of dust as the base runner slid into second. For those on the field, a welcome cool gust of air also meant breathing in the dirt and digging the dust out of their eyes.

From all the pictures I’ve seen, this is what Survivor Africa is going to be like – except it’ll be hotter and the players’ goal is not to get as dirty as possible. Other than that, it’s pretty much the same. I even remember kids not wanting to play left field in the far corner diamond because every year 2-3 outfielders would get ambushed by lions and dragged off into the forest.

So I can really relate to what the Survivor Africa cast will be dealing with.

(You know, sometimes I write stuff just to see if you’re paying attention. Everyone knows that lions don’t like baseball.)

The first thing I noticed about this season’s cast is that these people are HARD CORE. I mean, the only girl that probably couldn’t kick my ass is the former cheerleader and she’s a frickin’ near-perfect-SAT-scores genius. There have been many comparisons made between this and the other Survivor casts. Here’s a typical one I found at Washington Post Online.

Hot bodies are out and carbohydrates are in on the next edition of CBS’s smash reality series “Survivor.” Unlike the second edition, which featured a younger, fitter cast, the new cast members cover a wider range of ages and body types. Of the 16 contestants on “Survivor: Africa,” which was filmed this past summer, two are “tubby guys,” said Joe Rhodes, a TV Guide reporter who spent a few days in July on the set with the crew.

One, Tom Buchanan, is a 46-year-old goat farmer from Virginia. The other, Carl Bilancione, is a 46-year-old dentist from Florida. “The first cast was interesting, and the second was more eye candy – many people thought they were boring,” said Rhodes, whose stories on the new show will appear in next week’s issue of TV Guide. “The third cast is a combination.”

I’ve seen this restated in several other articles. I think these people are being underestimated. The two tubby guys just mentioned: One entered strong man competitions and was a walk-on football player in college who later was given a scholarship. The other “tubby guy” runs marathons. Marathons!

And I especially think that this Survivor cast is not being given fair treatment when it comes to the Babe Factor. In Survivor 2, the babes were quite excellent – truly “inspirational.” But in Survivor 3, the babes are what I call “Super-Babes” and not necessarily because they are more babe ‘o licious, but because every one of them has a resume that reads like someone on the President’s Cabinet. I think one of their profiles says this:

A typical day is 1-3 marathons or triathlons while also balancing the budget for seven third-world countries, discovering cures for both AIDS and cancer, feeding the homeless, teaching boy scouts how to start a fire from just a piece of tree bark, building a new Amish barn, setting a good example, swimming across the Mississippi, and cooking a nice dinner consisting of home-grown certified organic marinated vegetables and fresh seafood she caught herself with her bare hands.

Not all the stars’ fashion choices shone quite that brightly. Two crooners picked particularly cruel shoes: Madonna’s red platforms defied gravity and somehow locked the star high on her tiptoes like a Barbie. And Twain demonstrated that thigh-high dominatrix boots don’t flatter even the thinnest figures.

While Hill looked smashing in the outfit she wore to sing, she collected her first award in what looked like an old undershirt and wrap skirt. (Hill at one point thanked her two small children for “not spilling anything on Mommy’s dress,” but maybe they didn’t do her any favors.)

Still, the women sounded great, and Twain summed up the mood of the night: “Women have been rising to the top. Music is no exception.”

First of all, if the kids are in the car, I use the time to talk to them. I ask them about school, friends, new musical groups, movies, books, you name it. They can’t just walk away or mumble, they’re trapped for the space of the ride, and are usually more than willing to share their thoughts. We have some great exchanges this way. Once the conversation is exhausted, I listen to their music. Sometimes it’s tough, but most times I learn something and even begin to sing along. It builds bridges between me and my teen-agers and keeps me tuned in to popular culture.

If I’m alone in the car, I enjoy that time. On a mundane level, I will turn on all-news radio and get the top headlines of the day. It keeps me informed and feeds me story ideas for the writing and editing work that I do. If I’m full-up on news, I turn on the oldies radio station and sing along, revving my mood with the beat of the ’60s. Or I turn on the classical music station and stay tuned if there’s a favorite symphony or piano concerto.

But the best time for me in the car is spent in prayer and meditation. The car is a perfect vehicle for this, especially my minivan, with its panoramic windows where I can see the sky, the trees, the lovely lakes and winding hills of the town I live in. I am truly at one with nature and with my spiritual self. I have conversations with God, with Jesus and often with Mary, and then I say Hail Marys and Our Fathers for a host of people and painful situations close to home and around the world. Last week, I prayed for my family, for several friends going through cancer treatment or other major illness, and for the poor people of Armenia, whose Prime Minister and several other elected officials were gunned down last week by terrorists. The Armenians have suffered for most of this century — through World War I, through the brutality of the Turks in its aftermath, through Soviet oppression, through earthquakes. And now, as they reach for freedom, there was one more setback. I know I am only one voice, but even one voice raised in prayer can help.

This is not an unselfish deed. The mere act of praying brings me peace and a sense of grace. I can actually feel my spirits lift. One morning, in the midst of such prayer, I caught a blur of graceful movement spiraling upward out of the corner of my eye. I glanced over and saw a majestic gray heron lifting off the lake, through the mist, soaring toward the sun. I caught my breath at the sight, at the beauty of it and the wonder. I hadn’t realized there were such birds practically in my back yard. In all the years I had lived in my town, I had never seen the creature, and haven’t seen it since, more than a year later, even though I drive past that lake on more mornings than I can count. It was a glimpse of nature’s splendor that I was privileged to witness.

We live in an increasingly hectic world with so little time to reflect. But car time can be your time, just as it has become mine.

We provide safe call cards used for calling many worldwide lines. This low-cost international telephone cards offer the lowest and the most profitable prices for phone to a lot of countries.

Say that the car is undrivable, and so beat up that you can’t even sell it. You call the charities, and they won’t touch it with a ten foot pole. The choices left:

1. You call the local high schools and vocational schools, to see if they want it for training students in auto mechanics. No luck?

2. You call junkyards and see if they’ll just haul it away for free. No luck?

3. Will the junkyard take it if you deliver it to the nearest garage to them? Then whip out your AAA card and have it towed to that garage. Or if AAA won’t play, then you may be stuck with the cost of having it towed to the junkyard.

4. You clean it out completely, have a friend tow you somewhere with a towstrap, park it, take off the license plates, and sneak away in the dark, abandoning it. (The editors deny ever doing such a thing, even as teenagers.) We’re not recommending it. For all we know, nowadays the cops check the serial number with DMV and come knocking on your door.

Conclusion

Selling a used car is not all that bad, as long as you put yourself in the right frame of mind. Be polite. Say, “No, thank you” a lot. And if it isn’t gone by Sunday evening, shrug your shoulders, say, “Well, at least I got some work done around the house,” and put in the ad for the next weekend.

Last notes on the word “firm”: frankly, if someone offered us $100 below our asking price on Sunday at 5 p.m, we’d take it. Who wants to spend another weekend selling cars?

On the other hand, “firm” prices can bring you several phone calls on Monday from the hagglers who hassled you over the weekend – probably offering even less than their first lowball offer. And then they’ll hammer you some more when they come again. We’d tell them, “No thank you, I’ll be advertising it next weekend.”

Likewise with safety inspections. The final decision on safety inspections is generally made by a department of the state police. If you find an auto shop hitting you with a huge estimate, call the state police and ask what to do. In many states a patrolman will stop by the garage and look for himself.

Cops in the safety division are not automotive newbies. Many have been mechanics, and all of them have been inspecting semi trucks for a long time. If the trooper thinks the shop is gouging you, it’s quite possible they’ll tell the shop: “Forget it. Do front and rear brakes, replace the power steering hose, and she’s good to go.” Remember, cops don’t like crooks much. In states where it’s the new owner who’s responsible for the inspection, we’ve even seen a trooper take the new owner aside and ask “Where are you going to be driving this? No freeway at all? OK … but take it easy, and get those front tires replaced as soon as you can.”

When To Toss It In the Trash Instead of Selling It

A few years ago, California passed a law saying that all used cars had to be sold with a warranty from the seller. (They may have repealed the law since.)

Crazy. If your state has a law like that, and your car is only worth $2,000, we’d say: FORGET IT! Don’t even think of selling it. Give it to a charity, and take the tax writeoff. Who needs that kind of grief?

Yes, the tax writeoff might only save you $500 bucks on your taxes. But if your car is only worth $2,000, any mechanic can find at least $1,000 worth of work that needs to be done, for safety, emissions, or whatever. A complete automatic transmission overhaul alone can run $800. If it needs an engine rebuild, you’re sunk. You could actually lose money.

Note: if you give your car to a charity, make sure you get a signed receipt from the charity, not some little blank form that you can “fill out yourself.” And if for some reason you’re giving a more expensive car to charity, you might want to read this web page, Donate a Car? The guy’s a bit of an IRS worry-wart, in our opinion, but if your giveaway is worth real money, it’s worth a read.

Note that DMVs are really putting the screws to used car buyers these days, often taxing them on more than the Blue Book value – even if they actually paid you less than the Blue Book value. (You see why we’re ambiguous about ethical/unethical?) Some states will tax the buyer the actual below-Blue Book price only if they have a notarized bill of sale. Generally, if we sell a car for substantially under Blue Book, we’ll take the time to go to a notary and have it done right. It can save the buyer several hundred dollars.

Filling Out the Title Properly. Twenty years ago “open title” sales were common. Kids would buy beaters, fix them up, and sell them for a profit. The title would never even transfer, until the kid resold it to the final buyer. Motor vehicle departments are getting meaner about this. We haven’t done it for years, but it wouldn’t surprise us if it’s a misdemeanor in some states by now. The one thing you absolutely should fill out is the odometer reading. If someone buys a car from you, rolls back the odometer, and resells it, this could come back to bite you.

Fraud. Selling cars doesn’t have all the rules that selling houses does; at least you don’t need a termite inspection. But even when the bill of sale says “as is, no warranty”, that doesn’t mean you can lie your head off without worry. If your car was in a major wreck, or was flood damaged, or used as a police car or taxi, or imported without passing emission standards, you’re obliged to tell the buyer. Assuming you knew about it, of course. A lot of people buy a car that had been wrecked and resell it without ever knowing, just as lots of house sellers didn’t know the house had termites. “Not knowing” doesn’t mean you’re 100% free and clear if some bozo decides to sue you in small claims court … but judges are pretty good at spotting liars (and bozos), and a small claims judge would be likely to just sigh and assign you to repay them the difference in value.

Safety and Smog Emissions Tests

Like tag return procedures, smog and safety inspection rules vary from state to state, and even county to county. In some places there are no tests at all.

When they are the buyer’s responsibility, you’re probably covered by the “as is, no warranty” in the bill of sale. When they are the seller’s responsibility, they can add up to a pretty penny. In fact they can add up so fast that your $2,000 car is better off going to the junkyard.

However, you don’t necessarily have to take a repair shop’s estimate lying down. A lot of unscrupulous repair shops treat mandatory safety or smog tests as a “we gotcha!” situation: “either you pay up, or we’ll prevent you from selling your car!”

You probably get to skip the test drive. We don’t think a woman should be going alone on a test drive with a strange man or men. If the customer is a woman, it’s your call.

If you don’t want to go with them, then ask to see their driver’s license, and copy down the name and license number. Assuming they came in a car, then say “Let’s trade – my car keys for yours.” This is pretty reasonable. They may be surprised, but no one ever argues about it. In fact, there is no plausible argument. It’s just plain common sense.

After the test drive, it’s time for them to kick the tires, discuss it, and maybe try to haggle. After about five minutes of that, say: “Well, I’ve got to get back to my chores. But if you’re interested just knock on the door.” You go indoors, or back to your gardening. (You’ve been talking outdoors. Never invite them in unless they’re showing a cash deposit. It’s too hard to get rid of them.)

Or maybe they get pushy. Say: “Well, thanks for coming by.” You go indoors.

With reasonable luck, some regular human who needs a beat-up second car will come and buy it.

If you are worried about the car breaking down on them, get their phone number. You can call them in a couple of weeks and ask if everything is OK, or how it’s running. (If something breaks down 2 days after they bought it, it seems fair to at least split the cost of the repair with them. But maybe that’s just us….)

But you have to call them. They’ll assume you knew the car was going to break down, and ripped them off. We’ve never had someone call us back on a used car sale. In fact if someone did call, we’d be suspicious!

Legal Checklist For Selling a Car

Selling a car is a whole lot less stress than buying one, but there are a few legal points you should cover to protect yourself.

Do the Tags Go With the Car? This varies from state to state. In some states the license plates are permanently “assigned” to that car, and stay on it all the way from the dealer’s lot to the auto graveyard. In other states it’s the seller’s obligation to return the tags to the DMV.

It’s worth checking with your state’s DMV if you’re uncertain. If you were supposed to return the tags and didn’t, they may say “Don’t sweat it,” or they may get unpleasant. If you let the tags go with the car, with the seller promising to return them, it’s about a 50-50 bet on whether you’ll ever see them again. Twenty years ago DMVs were more laid-back, and it wasn’t a big deal. Nowadays, if DMV wants the tags back, and the buyer doesn’t live too far away, we’d be inclined to follow them home and take the tags back then.

Without that piece of luck, you’ll find that a lot the buyers have a common problem: they have the time to haggle, hassle, hold meetings, crawl under cars, and then haggle some more.

Friday comes. Say you priced it at $2,000. The phone rings. It’s for the car. Their first question is “Will you take $1,500?” You think no, because then you’ll come over and try to hammer me down to $1,200. You say: “No, thank you. The price is firm.” They say “I’ve got the cash!” You think, you’ll have a personal check and call it cash. You say “No, thank you.” Eventually they say they’ll come and look. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. You tell them when you’ll be in. It doesn’t make sense to make special appointments to sell a $2,000 car. Just try to be around home most of Saturday and Sunday.

The phone rings. A foreign voice: “What is your best price?” You say: “$2000.” “I will give you $1,200,” they say. You say: “No, thank you.” Eventually they say they’ll come and take a look.

The phone rings. It’s a kid. “Hey, I wanna buy your car, but I don’t have any way to get there. Can you bring it over here to show me?” You think: No, because if I’m dumb enough to take orders from a kid, then you’ll really start jerking me around. You say: “Sorry, but I’m too tied up here. But you’re welcome to take a look at it if you can get over here.” He says he’ll come and take a look.

The phone rings. “I definitely want it, but I can’t make it over today, so hold it for me until tomorrow.” HAH! Eighty percent of these types never show up at all. Buyer’s remorse? Found another car on the way over? We have no idea. You tell them, “I’d be delighted to, but if someone turns up with the cash first, I’m obliged to sell it to them.”

[In fact, legally, if someone plunks down the full price in greenbacks on your kitchen table, with no conditions, you probably are obliged to sell it to them. You made an offer; they accepted it unconditionally; so a "contract has been formed", in legalese. Likewise, if you accept a deposit and write out a bill of sale, you've formed a contract. You can't accept a higher offer an hour later, and call the first buyer to say the deal is off.]

The phone rings. It’s a teenage girl. She says she wants to come and look. Can she come over tomorrow morning, when her father is free? You tell her, “Sure, I’ll be here. If I’m gone just wait, I’ll be out on a test-drive.” She’ll probably show. Maybe she’ll buy, maybe she won’t. Teenage girls are good customers.

They usually come with their parents, and everybody is pretty polite. It’s not a good idea to sell them junkers, though, if they don’t have the money to fix them. (Boys buying cheap cars will usually get them fixed somehow, even if it’s not a very good job.)

And we don’t like to sell anyone a car with bad brakes or steering, unless we’re sure they’ll do the repairs right away. If they get hurt, it’s kind of hard on your conscience. Plus, they might sue you.

Saturday morning comes. A few of them actually turn up. They poke. They prod. Maybe they discuss it in foreign languages. If the buyer is a woman, you have a big advantage over a man selling his car – they won’t be as worried when they’re buying from another woman.