I don’t think that hand sanitizer is as healthy as it seems. In fact, I know it’s not. Sanitizing yourself after touching anything isn’t a good way to avoid getting sick. If anything, over doing it on Germ-X just increases your odds of catching something. The main ingredient in hand sanitizer is alcohol which totally dries out your hands. If your skin gets too dry it can crack and tear, giving access to loads of nasty germs. The skin’s surface itself is pretty effective at preventing infections by bacteria and viruses.
There are millions of bacteria hanging out on your hands that are healthy to have. These little guys seek and destroy lots of unwanted germs before they have a chance to enter your body. By over using hand sanitizer, you are actually killing off your first line of defense potentially opening up your skin for an invasion. No one wants that. No one also wants to smell antiseptic either. The best thing you can do is to wash your hands often with hot water and mild soap that does not contain antibacterial properties, moisturize, and sanitize only when needed. Like after touching small children, or using public restrooms. I have always used these tips and I have never contracted a flu of any sort and I rarely get sick. If your worried about Swine Flu, just remember that you can get it whether you sanitize or not. While it’s not airborn, the virus is capable of remaining in tiny moisture particles that can linger in the air for quite a while after someone sneezes or coughs. Breathing in these invisible particles is a great way to get swine flu and never even have to touch anything!

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This summer, my boyfriend went on vacation with his family. While he was there, he vaguely remembered getting into his moms car and shutting the door, and something hurting his finger. Two weeks passed and we were sitting in Lubbock and he was complaining that it still hurt. Every day he said that he would pop small blister like skin covering where it hurt, and then squeeze what ever was in it out and then put alcohol on it. This went on for a few weeks. Any time he had to use it he would say it just felt funny, and the blister wouldn’t go away. We went bowling one night and he said it was really bothering him that time, but every time I looked at it and felt it I couldn’t feel anything. He just kept popping it, cleaning it, and waiting for it to go away. One day we were in the car, driving to meet up at my brother’s apartment in Amarillo. He said it was bothering him, so I got out my tweezers and just started picking at it. I just kept trying to open up the hole and see if I could find anything inside that would make it stay like that. I stopped, but when we got to my brother’s apartment I went ahead and started again. He was watching TV, and I was just picking at it trying to get the hole opened up. As I was picking, I felt something and started to pull it out. It was skin colored and a lot bigger than I expected, so I told him to keep looking at the TV. I thought I had accidently grabbed some kind of vein and did something wrong, but just pulled and finally got to the end. And what was it? It ended in a point, and I realized it was almost half a toothpick. That had been stuck in his finger. For WEEKS. It was so gross, but I can only imagine how good it felt to have something like that out of your body after it had been in there for so long!

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This weekend, Texas Tech and Baylor played at the Cowboys stadium. I had seen the stadium before because my sister lives only a few miles from it, but only from the outside. I really didn’t think I was going to get the opportunity to go inside, especially the first year it was opened, but when I heard about the game I just had to find a way in. From the outside, I had always thought that the stadium looked like a big boat. Once you get up closer to it, it looks a lot bigger than what you would expect. We just had to buy party passes to get into the stadium, and we were free to wander around and look at it. It was HUGE. The jumbotron on the ceiling was so big I couldn’t even understand it. They had four hanging up in the middle, and the ones that were facing the end zone were bigger than any I had ever seen, but the ones that were facing out the other way were just unimaginable. Everything just smelled and felt so new, and everything was just SO BIG. We wandered around and took tons of pictures, there were areas that were weren’t aloud to go into but we got the main idea of how the stadium was. Since they didn’t serve alcohol at our game, we found a bar inside and went in. Everything just seemed really high class and was pretty, and every where you went there were TVs so you could see what was going on when you were away from the field. I really hope I get the chance to go to a Cowboy’s game soon and get to explore more!

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This weekend Texas Tech and Baylor were scheduled to play. They decided last year, that since the Dallas Cowboys Stadium would be finished that we would get to play them there every year. This was the first year they had the game there, and I really had no idea how I was going to get in. There were no tickets online, but I just knew that I had to go. My cousin and I decided to car pool it to Arlington since my sister lives there, and a few hours before the game we went out to try and find some tickets. We saw no one. We walked around for a few hours, needing to get at least three for me and both of my cousins, but no one. We finally decided that the best bet would be to get the Party Passes, which were tickets that just let you into the stadium but you didn’t have a seat. We knew that we needed to get in fast, and then at least we would get good standing room. We ended up watching most of the game from the standing rooms, but spend a big chunk of the night, including half time, in a bar that we found. We were supposed to be able to drink in the game, but Baylor decided that they wanted to be jerks and no let them serve alcohol in the stadium, so you had to go into a bar to drink and couldn’t leave with your glasses. So, next year, I hope they change their mind and quit being stupid about that. College kids drink, I don’t care of you go to Baylor or Tech, and with this rare opportunity they should have let us go all out!

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I don’t go the Jake’s very often, but when I do go I always have a good time. They have the “back room”, which is a huge room with a stage where they have concerts. It’s never very expensive to get in, and it’s a really good room for concerts. When they don’t have concerts, you can go back into the room and they have extra seating and another bar than the main one. When Texas Tech plays on TV, it’s a good place to go because there are a lot of TVs and projections. They have pretty good drink specials, depending on what night you go. Every night they have a happy hour from 7 to 8 pm where you get $1.75 drafts, $2 bottles and $2 well drinks. Some of my favorite nightly specials are Monday nights are 2 dollar margaritas, Tuesdays are two dollars drafts and bottles and cherry vodka sours, and Fridays are ten dollars buckets. They also have poker tournaments on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesday at 7 and 9 pm. They have lots of seating room in the front room, a back room that has several pool tables, and then the “Back Room”, where they have stages and more seating. It’s a good place to have a large group of friends because they have a lot more seating, but it’s also fun to just go with a date and sit at the bar or at a table alone and have some drinks.

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I had always wanted to go to Africa. I’m not sure why. I didn’t know where in Africa I wanted to go. I really didn’t even care where. I just wanted to have my feet on Africa soil. I’ve always just been drawn to the continent. You know what you do when you really want to be somewhere? You go. At least thats what I decided when I was sitting at my desk while I was working part time at a small town newspaper. I just remember sitting there and looking around at all of my coworkers. One in particular. She was a middle aged woman who always looked like she had six or seven big, blue, sticky eyelashes and hangover eyeliner. I remember sitting at my desk and her coming up and telling me how she used to drink vodka in milk so her kid wouldn’t notice her drinking in front of him and she could still set a good example by drinking milk. Mmmk… Everyone else just looked so stressed out and softened. They say life hardens us, but I don’t buy that. Maybe in the old days we were hardened by life, but nowadays it looks to me like life turns us into unhappy little marshmallows. We get pale and pliable from sitting inside and being stressed all day. Anyways, I was at my desk learning how pouring alcohol in otherwise healthy beverages sets good examples for kids when I decided I was going to go to Africa.
I had made enough money for the trip that weekend working as a waitress at the horse races. I went onto Travelocity, found a flight to Cape Town, South Africa and booked it before I could talk myself out of it. Why Cape Town? I saw it on an animal rescue show in Animal Planet. I researched it after I made the purchase and it turns out that South Africa, Cape Town in particular, is considered the playground of Africa. One of the 10 best cities in the world as well. I got lucky. If Animal Planet would have been rescuing animals in the Congo, I might have ended up in a sticky situation. Point is, that if you really really want to go somewhere, don’t let anything hold you back. No one wants to be filled with regret.

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I’ve always been one to switch around on my drink of preference. When I first started to drink alcohol, I was usually drinking liquor mixers because they tasted the best to me. I had beer quite often, but I preferred to drink liquor mixed with something sweet, like a cherry vodka sour or an amaretto sour, and White Russians were a favorite of mine for a long time. Then, I switched it up and really started to get into drinking beer. And I acquired a taste and love for dark beers. My favorite alcoholic drink of all time is a Priest’s Collar, which is a flavored cider, usually Wood Chuck, with a Guinness floated top. Guinness is one of my favorite beers, but since it fills me up so fast I like to mix it with a cider so I can still drink it with out feeling like I ate a buffet. For a bit I had a wine fetish, and that always comes back around the holidays because that’s what we drink when the entire family gets together. Now, I think I’ve got it all mixed up. Depending on what I’m doing or who I’m with, I’ll want one drink as opposed to the other. When I’m at home and want to chill out and calm down, I usually have a glass of wine. When I go out to the bars, it’s always beer, but when I go to the clubs, it’s always cocktails. I can’t drink the sweet cocktails anymore though, so my preferred mixed drink of choice is a Vodka Tonic with lime. So now I have the best of all of them, I have what ever I feel like having when ever I want.

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The first bar that I ever went to in Lubbock was Bashes. There are two of them here now, but when iw wen there was only the one that is on Main street. I was only 19, and I went there for a poker tournament. They used to have them pretty often, and I assume they got into trouble for letting underage kids come in there and play for a cash prize. I did really well in the tournament, and that being so many years ago I don’t even remember what I thought of the bar at the time. But now, it’s a pretty cool place. It’s using that whole “old and shitty” motif to it’s advantage. There are a few different rooms in it, the front room is always the most crowded and has the main bar, then a little middle dark room, a game room, and the back room that has another bar. They have some decent sized screens and always show the UFC fights. They have 2 cent pint night on Mondays with a small cover from 9 to 11, which is probably the cheapest you can drink in Lubbock. They also have an “Around the world” beer club, with a pretty good selection of hard to find beers. I was in it, but you have to finish it in three months or they make you start over, so when I went in there and found out I had to start over I gave up. A few downfalls to the bar for me are that it’s incredibly smokey and sometimes it’s hard to sit where you can see a TV clearly. I am usually fine with smoke, but for some reason this place just holds it in like there’s a lit cigarette in your face at all times. And, the TV thing is bad when there’s something intersting going on, so you have to get there early to get a seat, and even if you do someone might just stand right in front of you. Fun, cheap, with a few downfalls, I enjoying going to the Original Bashes.

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Favorite spot in Lubbock for me personally: Blue Light. Not only because it’s Blue Light, but because it’s connected to another bar that I love, Tom’s Daiquiri, that I’ll write about later. Blue light has it all. You sit inside and watch awesome bands play, you sit outside in the front and can drink on the sidewalk or walk right into Tom’s with your drink, or you go outside in the back and they have a seating area and sometimes a band out there too. Their drinks are never expensive, and if you go early they have really good specials. They have a staff that never changes, so you actually get to know the door people and the bartenders because they are always the same. That just says that these people have a really sweet job and never want to leave it. The crowd is always good, it never seems shady, and everyone just wants to have fun. There’s a small dance floor right in front of the stage so you can dance to the live music. It’s just one of those bars I feel comfortable in, like I feel at home when I go there. And, being able to enjoy two completely different bars legally with the same drink is a lot of fun too. So, this one definitely gets my approval, because it is one of my very favorite places to go to. So, good job Blue Light, you win.

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Here in Lubbock, I frequent the bars… quite often, to put it nicely. I love going out. I love bars, I love clubs, I love anywhere with live music, I just love being out on the night scene. I’ve worked out on the night scene here in Lubbock at a few places, and I’d say that I’ve been to around 90 percent of the bars that Lubbock has to offer. So, I’d also say that that gives me a little bit of an expertise in what is decent here, what nights are the best, how the drinks are, what the specials are, all that crap that people care about. So… I’m going to give the low down on each of the bars here that I have attended, what it was like for me and what I think about going back there. I’ll start with writing about all the ones that I frequent, to the ones that I go to sometimes, the ones I’ve been to once, all the way down to the ones I’ve never been to if there’s a legitimate reason. Just check out the category “Bars of Lubbock”, and see if they get my approval or not. This is going to be fun for me and hopefully informative for some of you, if you’re not familiar with Lubbock. So, onto the first bars we go!

Check out the category by going Here. Hope you enjoy reading about them as much as I enjoyed attending them.

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