Hunterdon stores with games and toys to take you back

Childhood memories stay with us throughout our lives. Everyone recalls those carefree days when the world was just beginning to take shape inside our heads.

As we grow up, things that interested us as children are cast aside. Puzzles and games and toys end up in attics, basements and garages.

Youngsters have no inhibitions when it comes to play. Fooling around with whatever’s at hand is as natural as eating and sleeping. It is also a vital part of getting young brains acquainted with the world.

Mara Tippett opened her Sunbeam Toys last Halloween. The place is 650 square feet at 24 Bridge Street in Frenchtown, and it is full of toys.

“There’s something for everyone,” Tippett said. She concentrates on “toys that cultivate the imagination.”

There are science toys, toys for pre-schoolers, some classic tin toys, gags and magic, puppets, kites, balloons, weaving looms, jump ropes and microscopes. And so much more.

“We have a lot of retro toys as well as some modern takes on old favorites,” she said.

Tippet brings together quality and unusual things. She was a biologist before she launched this career, and her former interests peep out from the shelves here.

Customers tell her “this brings me back to my childhood…it’s magical.”

“I tossed the idea around for years,” she told me. “And I’m still learning.”

When children grow up, they leave behind the kids’ games that intrigued them when they were young. But the attraction of games remains. In adults, games mature into the strategies of chess, the pleasures of trivia, the challenges of puzzles.

“I’ve just completed the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle,” Heather Caroline told me. “It’s 32,000 pieces and it took me about eight months to complete.”

She plans to hang it soon. “It goes on the wall in my home. It’s called Double Retrospect.”

Caroline operates Lambertville’s The Missing Peace, an emporium of quality board games, puzzles, and related pursuits. She will be celebrating her fifth anniversary in May of this year.

“I always had it in the back of my head to own my own business,” Caroline told me. “I was a microbiologist originally, and I did lots of research before opening.”

This shop is stocked with a multitude of jigsaw puzzles, varying in size and shape. In addition to the familiar two-dimensional puzzles, there are three-dimensional puzzles as well. Try your hand at the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the Empire State Building and other world attractions.

But puzzles are only the beginning. The Missing Peace has chess sets, dominoes, dice games, cards and card games, and Rubik’s cube in many of its iterations. Plus party games, trivia, scrabble and others for both indoor and outdoor pursuits.

Attics, basements and garages get cluttered with all sorts of discarded stuff. When we no longer use things, they tend to accumulate around the house. Sooner or later, furniture, toys and games, decorations and other things can overwhelm the best of intentions.

It might be time to call Jennifer’s Found It!

“We are not a consignment store, but we do removal services when people are downsizing or moving,” Jennifer told me. Realtors regularly call her to remove items from homes, and she maintains wish lists for items when people are looking for special things, including decorators.

Found It! is more than removal services, however. It is a store in Flemington’s Turntable Junction. It opened in October 2011.

Here, shoppers find all sorts of wood furniture, dating from antiques to present day. Appliances are on the floor—from refrigerators to stereos from the 1960s.

But it’s a lot more than furniture and appliances. Jewelry, china, kitchen collectibles, decorations, signs, tools, toys and games round out the selections. There are GI Joes and Barbies here.

Diet and exercise are important

It seems like no matter what I do, my dog continues to gain weight. I have tried cutting down on the amount of food I feed her, and she still looks heavy. She acts like we are starving her to death. I want us both to lose some weight as a New Year's resolution. Do you have any suggestions on how to get some pounds off my dog without me feeling like I'm mistreating her?

The majority of dogs that enter my practice have at least a little bit of extra weight on them. According to a very popular food company's study, 80 percent of American pets are overweight.

There is no magic potion or pill that will fix your pet. Just like in humans, diet and exercise are going to be your best bet.

The first step is to really evaluate what your dog is eating every day. A good way to get honest with yourself is to write down everything you feed your pet. Also, have all the other people living around or interacting with your pet write down what they are feeding her, too. You might think she is only getting two treats a day, but that is just from you. What about your spouse or children? Are they all giving treats, too?

Picking a diet or low calorie food is your next step. Look at the back of your dog food bag. Feed for the weight you want your dog to be, not the weight your dog currently is. If you feed treats throughout the day, take away some of the regular food you feed to make up for the calories she is getting in her treats.

Eliminating fatty human foods is a must. A cube of cheese might not seem like a lot of extra calories to you, but for your pet it will really add up quickly. A couple of potato chips or the last bite of your hamburger makes a big difference in your pet's diet. You have to remember that 100 extra calories for your 2,000 calorie diet isn't much, but 100 extra calories in a dog that has a 600 calorie diet is a lot. If you must feed human foods, unsalted green beans make great treats. Canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix) makes a great additive to the food that increases fiber and makes your pet feel fuller.

Finally, remember that your pet needs to burn off the calories it is consuming. Regular exercise is very important.

If you are just starting an exercise program, start slowly. A couple of trips around the block or up and down the stairs might be all your pet can handle when you start out. You can increase the amount or time spent exercising as you go along. The same food company has found that regular exercise can extend your pet's life span by a couple of years, not to mention the benefits they get for bone and joint health.

Cubitek Magic Cube im Gehusetest

Bei dem Cubitek Magic Cube handelt es sich um ein modulares Alu-Gehuse, das Festplattenkfig und den Schacht fr optische Laufwerke in separate Cubes auslagert. Garniert mit einer hochwertigen Aluminium-Konstruktion bei makelloser Verarbeitung, macht Cubitek dem Aluminium-Pionier Lian Li Konkurrenz. Ob Cubitek dem Konkurrenten mit dem PC-Gehuse aus Alu Paroli bieten kann, analysiert unser heutiger Test.

Nachdem wir uns bereits vor einigen Monaten einen taiwanischen Edelwrfel aus dem Hause Lian Li genauer angesehen haben, folgt mit dem heutigen Test die Fortsetzung in Form des Tests zum Alu-Gehuse Cubitek Magic Cube. Dabei teilen sich die edlen PC-Gehuse einige Gemeinsamkeiten – beide bestehen aus Aluminium, beide kommen aus Taiwan und beide sind fr das hochpreisige Gehuse-Segment angedacht. Whrend Lian Li mit dem PC-V353 die HTPC-Herzen zu gewinnen versucht, handelt es sich beim Cubitek Magic Cube um ein modulares Aluminium-Gehuse, bestehend aus zwei kleineren "Cubes" (Module) und einem Hauptgehuse.

Cubitek verspricht dadurch mehr Flexibilitt, eine bessere Khlung und eine angenehme Geruschkulisse. Der Hersteller ist dabei mit der Zeit gegangen und verpasst dem Magic Cube moderne Schnittstellen und hochwertige Lfter. Mit gengend Platz fr High-End-Hardware, einem edlen Finish und dem Einsatz von hochpreisigen Materialien sollen vor allem die besser gestellte Interessenten endgltig neugierig gemacht werden. Aber auch Hauptkonkurrent Lian Li soll mit Cubiteks Gehuseoffensive unter Druck geraten. Das Know-How hierzu ist zumindest vorhanden, hat doch Cubiteks CEO lange beim genannten Konkurrenten Erfahrungen sammeln knnen. Ob dies im Falle des Magic Cubes gelingt und ob das ungewhnliche Konzept aufgeht, werden wir auf den nachfolgenden Seiten untersuchen.

The science of the tandem draft

Sir Isaac Newton died 220 years before Bill France sat down with a group of race car owners at the Streamline Hotel and founded NASCAR in 1948. But Newton's laws of motion -- three physical laws that describe the relationship between the forces acting on an object and its motion due to those forces -- are behind almost every decision made when engineers look for mechanical competitive advantages in today's NASCAR.

To explain what's happening to a Cup car at high rates of speed, particularly with the recent phenomenon of two-car bump drafting, I turned to three NASCAR engineers to help explain the physics behind the performance.

-- Steve Hallam is executive vice president of competition for Michael Waltrip Racing. A graduate of Loughborough University in England, Hallam previously worked in Formula 1, first as the track engineer for Team Lotus and then heading up McLaren's F1 efforts. After three decades and six world championships in open-wheel racing, Hallam moved to NASCAR in 2009 as director of race engineering for MWR.

-- Travis Geisler is competition director for Penske Racing. A former go kart racer who earned his degree in mechanical engineering from Vanderbilt University, Geisler drove in both the ARCA Series and the Nationwide Series. He joined Robert Yates Racing as a race engineer, and has worked as team engineer and crew chief at Penske.

-- Steve Hoegler is team engineer for Clint Bowyer's No. 33 Chevrolet as part of Richard Childress Racing, A native of Cleveland, Hoegler earned his mechanical engineering degree from Ohio University. After working for Petty Enterprises and Hall of Fame Racing, Hoegler joined RCR three seasons ago and works hand-in-hand with crew chief Shane Wilson.

"Everything can be traced back to Newton's three laws of motion, which basically define how we operate today," Hallam said. "You can reduce pretty well everything back to force equals mass times acceleration."

And it's especially true when engineers try to determine the physics behind the push drafting now prevalent at superspeedways such as Daytona and Talladega. It's all about fluid dynamics: moving air out of the way in an effort to get through it as cleanly as possible, while keeping enough air around to provide sufficient thrust while cooling the engine.