It started out with one pair. I was on vacation in Las Vegas and hadn’t brought any shoes that I could wear around the swimming pool. One of the stores in the mall there had a pair of Brazil thongs on sale so I made the purchase for the sake of convenience. And what happened was that I discovered that flip flops can go with almost any outfit.

You don’t really realize this living in San Francisco because no one wears surf thongs anywhere but the beach. But if you head to Vegas or Tucson or Southern California, you’ll see that there are people wearing thongs in every location from restaurants to hiking paths. And as you start to see how different flip flops can look good with different clothes, you realize that you need more than just one pair.

Or at least, that’s what I realized. Before I knew it, I had Havaianas thongs and cheap running-to-the-store thongs and dressy flip flops. And I also had several different colors of the original Brazil thongs that had gotten the whole thing started. Of course, I do still have some other types of shoes in my closet. It’s just not appropriate to wear flip flops to some of the places where I spend time in San Francisco. But when I can get away with thongs, there’s a whole closet full of them for me to choose from.

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If a U.S. soldier wants to receive calls from his wife as often as he wants, he can buy them an online calling card. Using prepaid international calling cards, any family member can call to Afghanistan for as low as $0.055/min rate. It means that to talk 20 minutes with his family every evening, he’ll only pay $33 per month (that’s 16 times less, than when using an US land line).

One can by lots of cheap calling cards – there are “heavy” callers who spend circa $800 a month buying online calling cards, which is 10,320 minutes calling to a land line which sounds convincing.

Other carriers in mind you’re used to? To call to a land line in Iraq would cost $9391.20 with Verizon. Savings up to $8591 per month, $103,092 savings a year - just recharge your calling card online via ComFi.com.

Or you can activate the autorefill service - each time you run low on a balance, the card is automatically refreshed and no need to have access to the Internet. Calling to a cell phone to the city of Basra via Skype telephony? Losing up to $1342 per month in comparison to the low rates of calling card Afghanistan, not to mention the quality, which is equal at the least.

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Christmas time is about giving, and being conscious of what you have while others may not be so lucky. While some people are prone to helping their fellow man at Christmas time, many people prefer the company of four-legged people, or pets, during the time of brotherly love. Making donations of fancy dog beds, collars and leashes, dog toys, and other types of dog furniture is a great way of making sure that you are doing your part for your pet community this Christmas.

What costs a few bucks to you could really help the local Humane Society or shelter in your area, (check out the ASPCA website to find locations) to make a comfortable, festive place for the community pets this Christmas and hopefully entice people to feel festive enough to take somebody home for the holidays.

Of course, you don’t have to donate any particularly fancy beds for dogs this Christmas, but any type of bed will do. Fancy dog beds are great for a while, especially during Christmas time when workers do their best to spruce everything up at the shelter but after a while they just become some regular dog bed as it is.

On the other hand, if you are taking a pet home this Christmas to become part of your family, the fancier dog beds may be a better idea. Not only are they going to look that much better in your home as part of your décor, but the Christmas holiday is a great time to get in the habit of buying your four-legged friend the best of everything there is from dog furniture to collars and leashes to toys and just about everything else.

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