If you're a golf lover, there's no off-season when it comes to getting out on the course. But to play your best year-round, it's important to stay physically and mentally prepared for whatever the weather brings. From hot summer days to cooler winter mornings, adjusting your approach each season can help keep your game strong.

While some people shy away from playing golf in the heat of the summer, others take advantage and go out as usual. This is because they prepare for the season. Here are tips on playing golf in hot weather.

Drink Enough Fluids

Staying hydrated is essential for playing your best, especially in warm weather. Start drinking water a few hours before tee time, and keep a bottle with you to sip throughout your round. Staying ahead of dehydration helps you stay energized and focused. And while a drink might be tempting, remember—alcohol can dehydrate you, so water is always the better choice on the course.

Wear Light, Breathable Clothing

Wearing loose, lightweight clothing is key to staying cool and comfortable on the course. Opt for breathable fabrics like cotton or moisture-wicking materials designed for sun protection. Long-sleeve shirts and pants can shield your skin from harmful rays, and many brands now offer golf apparel with built-in SPF for added coverage without sacrificing comfort.

Wear Sunscreen

Wearing sunscreen is essential for protecting your skin during long hours on the course. Choose a broad-spectrum sunscreen with at least SPF 30 and apply it generously to all exposed areas—don’t forget your ears, neck, and the back of your hands. Look for sweat-resistant formulas designed for sports to ensure lasting coverage, and reapply every couple of hours to stay protected without compromising your game.

Eat Lighter, Healthy Meals

Eating light and healthy meals will help you retain adequate energy for golfing. However, be sure to avoid overeating because you will feel heavy and sluggish. It is also best to eat earlier, probably a few hours before golfing. Opt for foods that are high in water content, such as fruits and vegetables, and avoid sugary or caffeinated beverages, which can dehydrate you. You can also pack some snacks, such as granola bars or trail mix, to keep your energy levels up throughout the game.

Condos, or condominiums, are residential units in larger complexes where you own your living space and share common areas. There are many advantages to condo living, and depending on the market and your circumstances, they can be great investments. Let’s explore what a condo is, how ownership works, and the benefits of condo living.

Condos and Their Investment Potential at a Glance

• A condominium, or condo, is a property arrangement that combines individual unit ownership with shared ownership of common areas, distinct from rental apartments.
• Condo ownership includes exclusive rights to the unit’s interior while sharing responsibilities for maintaining common areas, typically managed by a homeowners’ association (HOA).
• Condo living offers reduced maintenance, access to community amenities, and enhanced security, making them appealing for personal residence.
• Renting out a condo can provide positive cash flow and cover mortgage payments for the property, allowing the owner to build equity.

Defining a Condo

At its core, a condo is a property arrangement where a building or a group of buildings is divided into several individually owned units that share common areas, including the potential for future condominium development. Picture a large property complex where different individuals own each unit, but the hallways, recreational facilities, and other amenities are shared among all residents.

A key feature distinguishing condos from other housing types is the blend of individual and collective ownership. Each condo owner has exclusive rights to their own unit, much like owning a single-family home. However, they also share ownership and responsibility for the common areas and amenities with other condo owners.

Condos and apartments differ significantly. While both may look similar, condos are individually owned units, whereas a property management company typically rents apartments. This distinction affects maintenance responsibilities and the sense of community.

Source: portlandrealestate.com

Ensure every member of your family learns to swim so they at least achieve skills of water competency: able to enter the water, get a breath, stay afloat, change position, swim a distance then get out of the water safely.

Employ layers of protection including barriers to prevent access to water, life jackets, and close supervision of children to prevent drowning.

Know what to do in a water emergency – including how to help someone in trouble in the water safely, call for emergency help and CPR.

What Does It Mean to Be Water Competent?

Water competency is a way of improving water safety for yourself and those around you through avoiding common dangers, developing fundamental water safety skills to make you safer in and around the water, and knowing how to prevent and respond to drowning emergencies. Water competency has 3 main components: water smarts, swimming skills and helping others.

Water Smarts

Take these sensible precautions when you’re around water (even if you’re not planning to swim):

• Know your limitations, including physical fitness, medical conditions.
• Never swim alone; swim with lifeguards and/or water watchers present.
• Wear a U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket appropriate for your weight and size and the water activity. Always wear a life jacket while boating, regardless of swimming skill.
• Swim sober.
• Understand the dangers of hyperventilation and hypoxic blackout.
• Know how to call for help.
• Understand and adjust for the unique risks of the water environment you are in, such as:
  • River currents.
  • Ocean rip currents.
  • Water temperature.
  • Shallow or unclear water.
  • Underwater hazards, such as vegetation and animals.

Swimming Skills

Learn how to perform these 5 skills in every type of water environment that you may encounter (such as in home pools, oceans, lakes, rivers and streams):

1. Enter water that’s over your head, then return to the surface.
2. Float or tread water for at least 1 minute.
3. Turn over and turn around in the water.
4. Swim at least 25 yards.
5. Exit the water.

Helping Others

These actions will help your family avoid emergencies – and help you respond if an emergency occurs:

• Paying close attention to children or weak swimmers you are supervising in or near water.
• Knowing the signs that someone is drowning.
• Knowing ways to safely assist a drowning person, such as “reach or throw, don’t go”.
• Knowing CPR and first aid.

Saying thank you is nothing new. But practicing gratitude — regularly focusing on the positive parts of your life — is about more than having good manners. It can be a powerful health habit.

Research shows that practicing gratitude — 15 minutes a day, five days a week — for at least six weeks can enhance mental wellness and possibly promote a lasting change in perspective. Gratitude and its mental health benefits can also positively affect your physical health.

Health benefits of being thankful

You’ll get the biggest health benefits of gratitude when it becomes habitual and part of your thought process. But even allotting some time each day or week to prioritize gratitude can be beneficial.

Reduce depression

A review of 70 studies that include responses from more than 26,000 people found an association between higher levels of gratitude and lower levels of depression. But more research needs to be done to understand the association.

Gratitude seems to reduce depression symptoms — people with a grateful mindset report higher satisfaction with life, strong social relationships and more self-esteem than those who don’t practice gratitude. But it’s also possible that depressed people are less likely to practice gratitude. Most likely, there’s a continuous relationship where gratitude lessens symptoms of depression, allowing people to recognize what they have.

Lessen anxiety

Anxiety often involves worrying and negative thinking — typically about things that happened in the past or may occur in the future.

Gratitude can be a coping tool for anxiety. Regularly practicing gratitude combats negative thinking patterns by keeping thoughts focused on the present. If you find yourself focusing on negative thoughts about the past or future, challenge yourself to find something you are grateful for now. It will break the negative thought process and return you to the present.

Support heart health

Many benefits of gratitude also support heart health. Improving depression symptoms, sleep, diet and exercise reduces the risk of heart disease. Several studies show that a grateful mindset positively affects biomarkers associated with the risk for heart disease.

A 2021 review of research also finds that keeping a gratitude journal can cause a significant drop in diastolic blood pressure — the force your heart exerts between beats. Having grateful thoughts, even if you don’t write them down, also helps your heart by slowing and regulating your breathing to synchronize with your heartbeat.

Relieve stress

Stress triggers a fight-or-flight response in your nervous system — your heart beats faster, muscles contract and adrenaline pumps. But gratitude can help calm the nervous system.

Taking a moment to be thankful causes physiological changes in your body that initiate the parasympathetic nervous system — the part of your nervous system that helps you rest and digest. Gratitude and the response it causes help bring down your blood pressure, heart rate and breathing to help with overall relaxation.

Improve sleep

People with an attitude of gratitude tend to pursue goals that keep them feeling good — a positive attitude promotes positive action. They engage in activities that support healthy sleep, such as eating well and exercising regularly. Practicing gratitude also makes you less likely to be stressed, anxious or depressed — three factors that affect sleep quality and duration.

But what you do during the day isn’t the only factor in sleeping well. Thinking positive thoughts before falling asleep promotes better sleep — and there’s evidence that gratitude causes people to have positive thoughts about their life, social support and social situations.

Source: uclahealth.org

May is national pet month, below is a list of the most popular pets in 2025. The list may surprise you!

Pets can come in all different shapes and sizes. According to Forbes, here are the most popular ones in the United States in 2025...

Saltwater fish - Number of U.S. households (millions): 2.2M
Horse - Number of U.S. households (millions): 2.2M
Reptile - Number of U.S. households (millions): 6M
Bird - Number of U.S. households (millions): 6.1M
Small animal (like Hamsters, gerbils, rabbits, guinea pigs, ferrets, etc.) - Number of U.S. households (millions): 6.7M
Freshwater fish - Number of U.S. households (millions): 11.1M
Cat - Number of U.S. households (millions): 46.5M
Dog - Number of U.S. households (millions): 65.1M

Need pet insurance? Call Lallis & Higgins Insurance.

Source: yahoo.com

You didn’t think we were going to help you set up your house and leave you, did you? Don’t worry, we’re experts in the art of staycations. Here are a few ideas that will help you kick your week off in vacation style:

Have a spa day.

It might not be as glamorous as a real day at the spa, but you can still make your own home feel like a peaceful retreat. Try a face mask with cucumber slices or an Epsom salt bath.

Take a day trip.

Looking for a little adventure? Try a road trip! Hit up that little town you’ve always heard about, try a new restaurant, or visit a new park.

Read a good book.

A staycation is the perfect opportunity to dive into a good read—or several! Set up a hammock in your backyard or lay out a blanket under a tree and let yourself unwind with a good book.

Explore your city.

Use your staycation to take in the sights and sounds of your city like a tourist! Get out there and visit free museums, bookstores and that coffee shop you’ve always meant to check out.

Camp out in the backyard.

Pitch a tent, light the fire, and make some s’mores. When it’s time to call it a night, crawl into the tent and sleep under the stars. (Or you can bring the gang back inside to sleep in your comfortable beds too—we won’t judge.)

Bring the water park to you.

Who needs a water park when you can make your own? For $15, you can find a kiddie pool or splash pad for the kids. And don’t forget the water balloons. Creating your own DIY backyard water park can save you about $50 per person!

Have a movie night.

You don’t have to leave your house to catch a good flick. Rent a movie—or even better, stream one for free. This is the perfect time to tackle a marathon of trilogies or introduce your kids to iconic classics for the first time (Star Wars, anyone?). But don’t forget the snacks! Grab some popcorn and candy from the dollar store and you’ll be set. Skipping the traditional ticket and concessions at the theater like this can easily save you $15–20 a person.

Stay somewhere new.

Let’s be clear: It’s okay to stay at your house during your staycation (and it saves major money not having to pay for a hotel or bed-and-breakfast). But if you do want to switch it up, check in to a local hotel or Airbnb for a night or two. It’s amazing how getting away to a new spot in your hometown can feel so refreshing.

Take up a DIY project.

Do you have a DIY project that you haven’t been able to get to? Use this free time on your hands to tackle it! Check your local museum or art studio to see if they’re offering pottery, painting or woodworking classes.

Plan a game night.

Dust off the board games and invite your family and friends over for some fun. Need to add a new game to the rotation? Check out Act Your Wage!—the first player to become debt-free wins the game. And if that sounds a little too much like real life (like if you’re laser focused on becoming debt-free right now), just play Monopoly instead!

Watch a theater production.

We know what you’re thinking—how can I see a show if I don’t leave my house? The magic of the internet, that’s how. BroadwayHD streams a ton of Broadway shows (everything from Oklahoma! to Romeo and Juliet). And with a seven-day free trial, that’s plenty of time to watch a few things while on staycation.

Go bowling.

Heading to a bowling alley during the middle of the week or at off-peak times can be surprisingly cheap. A lot of bowling alleys even let kids bowl for free. Check out the deals your local alley has and strike up a little friendly competition.

Go out for a special meal or have it delivered.

Some people find cooking relaxing, but it’s important to give yourself a break and take some time for a special meal that you don’t have to cook. Swing by that restaurant downtown that you’ve always wanted to try, or have food delivered from your favorite burger joint.

Go canoeing.

If you live within close driving distance of a river or another body of water, get out there on a canoe or a paddleboard—maybe even a surfboard if you’re near the beach (lucky!).

Have a date night.

Even if you’re in the middle of a family staycation with two toddlers, you can still carve out time for you and your spouse to sneak in an inexpensive date. The real tricky part is going to be finding a sitter to watch the kids, but it’s doable! Ask family or friends if they wouldn’t mind babysitting for an evening so you and your spouse can have a nice dinner. You can even sweeten the deal by offering to watch their kids sometime too.

Source: ramseysolutions.com

Phase 3: Respond to cloud security issues

As your cloud services are being accessed and used, there will be incidents requiring either automated or guided response on a regular basis, just like any other IT environment. Follow these best practices to begin your cloud security incident response practice:

Step 1: Require additional verification for high-risk access scenarios.

If a user is accessing sensitive data in a cloud service from a new device, for example, automatically require two-factor authentication to prove their identity.

Step 2: Adjust cloud access policies as new services come up.

You can’t predict every cloud service that will be accessed, but you can automatically update web access policies, such as those enforced by a secure web gateway, with information about the risk profile of a cloud service to block access or present a warning message. Accomplish this through integration of a cloud risk database with your secure web gateway or firewall.

Step 3: Remove malware from a cloud service.

It is possible for malware to compromise a shared folder that syncs automatically with a cloud storage service, replicating the malware in the cloud without user action. Scan your files in cloud storage with anti-malware to avoid ransomware or data theft attacks.

As cloud services evolve, so do the challenges and threats you face by using them. Always stay on top of cloud provider feature updates that involve security, so you can adjust your policies accordingly. Security providers will adjust their threat intelligence and machine learning models to keep up as well. In the phases and best practices above, several key technologies can be used to accomplish each step, often working in conjunction with the native security features from cloud providers.

Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB): Protects data in the cloud through data loss prevention, access control, and user behavior analytics. CASB is additionally used to monitor IaaS configurations and discover shadow IT.

Cloud Workload Protection: Discovers workloads and containers, applies malware protection, and simplifies security management across IaaS environments.

Virtual Network Security: Scans network traffic moving in between the virtual instances held in IaaS environments, along with their entry and exit points.

Source: skyhighsecurity

Phase 2: Protect your cloud

Once you understand your cloud security risk posture, you can strategically apply protection to your cloud services according to their level of risk. There are several cloud security technologies that can help you accomplish the following best practices:

Step 1: Apply data protection policies.

Step 2: Encrypt sensitive data with your own keys.

Encryption available within a cloud service will protect your data from outside parties, but the cloud service provider will still have access to your encryption keys. Instead, encrypt your data using your own keys, so you fully control access. Users can still work with the data without interruption.

Step 3: Set limitations on how data is shared.

From the moment data enters the cloud, enforce your access control policies across one or multiple services. Start with actions like setting users or groups to viewer or editor and controlling what information can be shared externally through shared links.

Step 4: Stop data from moving to unmanaged devices you don’t know about.

Cloud services provide access from anywhere with an internet connection, but access from unmanaged devices like a personal phone creates a blind spot for your security posture. Block downloads to unmanaged devices by requiring device security verification before downloading.

Step 5: Apply advanced malware protection to infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) such as AWS or Azure.

In IaaS environments, you’re responsible for the security of your operating systems, applications, and network traffic. Antimalware technology can be applied to the OS and virtual network to protect your infrastructure. Deploy application whitelisting and memory exploit prevention for single-purpose workloads and machine-learning based protection for general purpose workloads and file stores.

Next week we'll talk about phase 3.

Source: skyhighsecurity

Cloud services are used for multiple purposes in corporate environments, from storing data in services like Box, to accessing productivity tools through Microsoft 365, and deploying IT infrastructure in Amazon Web Services (AWS). In all these uses, cloud services allow organizations to move faster, accelerating their business with more agile technology, often at a lower cost. However, the use of any cloud service comes with the challenges and risk of data security in the cloud. Security for the data created in the cloud, sent to the cloud, and downloaded from the cloud is always the responsibility of the cloud customer. Protecting cloud data requires visibility and control. In the steps below, we’ve outlined a core set of best practices for cloud security that can guide enterprises toward a secure cloud and address cloud security issues.

Phase 1: Understand cloud usage and risk

The first phase of cloud computing security is focused on understanding your current state and assessing risk. Using cloud security solutions that allow for cloud monitoring, you can accomplish the following steps:

Step 1: Identify sensitive or regulated data. Your largest area of risk is loss or theft of data that will result in regulatory penalties, or loss of intellectual property. Data classification engines can categorize your data so you can fully assess this risk.

Step 2: Understand how sensitive data is being accessed and shared. Sensitive data can be held securely in the cloud, but you have to monitor who accesses it and where it goes. Assess the permissions on files and folders in your cloud environment, along with access context like user roles, user location, and device type.

Step 3: Discover shadow IT (unknown cloud use).

Most people do not ask their IT team before signing up for a cloud storage account or converting a PDF online. Use your web proxy, firewall, or SIEM logs to discover what cloud services are being used that you don’t know about, then run an assessment of their risk profile.

Step 4: Audit configurations for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) such as AWS or Azure.

Your IaaS environments contain dozens of critical settings, many of which can create an exploitable weakness if misconfigured. Start by auditing your configurations for identity and access management, network configuration, and encryption.

Step 5: Uncover malicious user behavior.

Both careless employees and third-party attackers can exhibit behavior that indicates malicious use of cloud data. User behavior analytics (UBA) can monitor for anomalies and mitigate both internal and external data loss

Next week, we'lll go to Phase 2!

Source: skyhighsecurity

Falls from windows are more common than people might think. According to a report by SafeKids Worldwide, an average of eight children age 5 and younger die and more than 3,300 are injured each year from falling out of windows.

The Window Safety Task Force offers these tips to help protect children from accidental window falls:

• When young children are around, keep windows closed and locked
• When opening a window for ventilation, use those located out of a child’s reach
• Supervise children to keep child’s play away from windows, balconies or patio doors
• Don't place furniture near windows that young children can climb on to gain access
• Don’t allow children to jump on beds or other furniture to help reduce potential falls
• Don’t rely on insect screens; they are designed to keep bugs out, not to keep children in
• Install ASTM F2090-compliant devices that limit how far a window will open, or window guards with quick-release mechanisms in case of fire or other emergency
• Teach your child how to safely use a window to escape during an emergency, such as a fire

Take 5 Minutes to Install Window Guards