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I've had many calls over the years from people that started a project around their home and before they knew it the project had gone out of control.

I never understood how that could happen until now, because I almost fell into that same home improvement trap.

When I first built my house twenty years ago I was working as a full time contractor and I would do my paid jobs all day, but nights and weekends were spent building my own house.

The work was done every day and I had complete control of the job. Before I knew it I had my house built and because I was able to devote my full attention to the job, everything just fell into place.

Cut to twenty years later. With a book to promote, syndicated newspaper columns to write, TV show, and my work with the Kohler company, I'm on the road most of the time and get to visit my house only for a few days at a time. When I do get to spend time at home, I tell my wife that I like her hotel and look forward to coming back for another stay!

Earlier this year we decided to build an addition for a new laundry room, then we needed a little more space for a home office. Now, with the limited time I had, I could not work on these two projects every day and they did not get my full attention.

Weeks went by before I could start up again where I left off and by then I was floating back and forth between the two large projects with nothing getting done. Things started to get out of control!

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I have been very proud to promote Ed Del Grande's House Call at every opportunity we can. What I really enjoy about promoting the book is the opportunity to teach people as well as spread the news about my book being released.

We have been promoting the book to newspapers, radio and television with some great results. Recently, we have had two high profile appearances on NBC's iVillage in Orlando and CNN's House Call [transcript] in New York City. The new topic that I love to educate viewers on is the "EPA Water Sense" program now available for select toilets.

To qualify for the EPA water sense label a toilet must test at the top of the testing charts for flushing power, but must also flush with at least 20% less water than the present 1.6 gallon per flush code. This is a tall order to fill but there are some select toilets out there that meet these requirements.

Hi,

This is Ed Del Grande signing on for my first blog ever so please be patient with me if it takes me a little while to get up to speed with this whole blogging world. So for now I'm just going to try this out and get back to you.

Thanks, Ed.

View more information about Ed Del Grande's House Call

books

Penguin Books

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Ed Del Grande is our guest blogger during the week of June 25^th. Get some inside tips on home improvement and learn more about his book Ed Del Grande's House Call. If you have any questions for Ed, add a comment to any of his posts. Here is some brief information about Ed Del Grande's House Call:

The new bible of home improvement from America's go-to expert and DIY Network television star

On his popular television show on the DIY network, master contractor Ed Del Grande rolls up his sleeves with millions of viewers to teach them how to tackle home improvement projects with skill, confidence, and, most important, a good sense of humor. Now, he brings his expertise to the page in Ed Del Grande's House Call. Ed starts with the basics for all projects, big or small, and explains his essential rule: a house is a living machine. It can "tell" you when something is wrong, but only if you know how to listen. Then Ed arms you with the skills and knowledge you need to hear what your house has to say so you can make the "house call" yourself.

Simply put, some DO, and those are the women that guys go for most, commit to, and consider themselves lucky to be committed to.

If I have to explain, it will cheapen the usefulness of the tests men use to tell if a woman is "cool."

Sorry!

Surprisingly efficient length, no?

View more information about Paul Dobransky's The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love

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I understand that a fair amount of the story that led to our modern western custom of giving an engagement ring prior to marriage is the result of a concerted effort on the part of the diamond industry. (Said with a wink and a nod, as I only learned so from all the media coverage of the issues in last years film, Blood Diamond.)

I don't think it is quite as interesting why we give them today as in fact, why we feel compelled to give (and get) them, according to gender.

Let's say that the culture around us, for whatever reason, has decided over time that it is the custom for men to give women a gold-colored bow around her right wrist to signify the bethrothed to be.

It is hard-wired in the masculine instinct that being of lower status than other men is BAD, and one is less masculine (and feels less fully alive or "passionate" about life) as a result. NOT giving a bow then may not matter much to the man, because they are cheap to come by - a piece of cloth. Not giving one doesn't lower his status. So why not forget about it?

To the woman's hard-wired instincts, it is not rank, but BELONGING and "being normal" that is passionately held dear at the reflex level. To not receive a gold cloth bow to her has nothing to do with the financial cost, but the embarrassment of being "excluded" from the cultural norm of women who DO have one. The woman would then feel less feminine, less attractive and less attracted by the oversight by the man.

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Besides the obvious - that both the man and the woman have cultural reasons or personal experience that made marriage distasteful - I have seen many people enter cohabitation for the wrong reasons.

One most common is out of economic necessity and a desire to wait, or "save money" for a proper wedding. This is a surface reason though. When you think about it, men and women who desperately want something (such as a new car or job), tend to stop at nothing to budget to make it happen.

The more common reason (and reason that a much larger sample of couples fail to stay together when cohabitation happens before marriage), is that neither one is fully ready to commit to the other (or not ready in general for marriage.) This is a temporary stop-gap with pluses and minuses.

On the plus side, the couple may truly learn and cultivate some of the habits of mature collaboration, coordination and compromise that will be needed in a solid marriage.

On the negative, many who cohabitate have doubts about each other from the beginning -ones that are unlikely to resolve on their own, and in some cases my NEVER allow a solid marriage to occur. I cover these fully in The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love.

The reason men may make light of the situation is basically that it is instinctually, biologically hard-wired in men NOT to commit, unless there is overwhelming evidence to them that the woman will make a great teammate in life. If this is not intuitively there from the get go, it is not likely to spontaneously arise.

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This question is perhaps one of the most sensitive ones asked by men (to each other) in modern dating. They almost never raise the subject to women in so many words, and there is a reason. It completely goes against feminine gender instinct to do so. You shouldn't even think of asking.

I have a male friend who has a saying something like this: "Her money is her money, and my money is her money." He says this looking to the heavens as if in agony. Perhaps it is an occurrence that is unique to some areas of the western world, maybe in urban centers? - but not likely asked as much in rural areas of the US, nor much at all in large areas of Asia.

In the West, we are caught in the competing twin forces of cultural change and biological instinct among the genders. Today women excel at careers formerly dominated by men, as growing numbers of men wish that "a fish needs a bicycle."

There have, after all, been millenia of patriarchal directives about how economies will operate, who will work at what vocation, and who will most profit from that work. Throughout that history, one might be hard-pressed though to find a specific man with a specific evil plan to engineer the undermining the rights and prosperity of half the world's population. It happened as a biological, instinctive effect, and as a process of group psychology rather than any one individual's master plan.

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I have had a ton of my guy friends (and clients) write or call me recently to ask why in the world I don't write more pointed advice in this blog JUST FOR MEN.

I didn't have an easy answer.

The book, The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love, is just as useful to men as it is to women. After all, it is the precise psychological steps of courtship that have existed since the beginning of time. They have been hidden, a secret of sorts I think simply because psychology is invisible. We all need visible shapes and symbols to put ideas into practical use. It's the whole reason we first developed written language!

Yet, the guys sometimes get scared away by the word "love," or the phrase "falling in love." It sounds so... final. And as you know by now - reading the book, and/or the blog - men are hard-wired biologically to AVOID commitment unless some very precise conditions happen in a relationship.

So what may sound on the surface to be very feminine subjects, are in fact absolute necessities for all people to know about - men included.

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Here is a quick and handy guide for you, whether you are a man or a woman who wants to be more savvy about people when you first start to date.

Many men and women come to my Chicago seminars with one question on their minds. They have been through a rough relationship. It made them wary of starting over. And by and large the reason for that is that infidelity happened. They were cheated on.

If you read my book, The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love, then you know the exact causes of cheating, how to screen for it, and how to stop it. I also give you nine free lessons on the steps of courtship that make it all but impossible to be with someone who cheats some day, delivered to you over nine days (when you sign up at www.drpauldobransky.com).

The live seminars in Chicago for women are announced in the newsletter at www.womenshappiness.com and for men at www.doctorpaul.net for men.

Ultimately, those men and women who definitely will cheat on you have poor personal boundaries. The ones who stay loyal, have great boundaries. Commitment is IMPOSSIBLE - no matter what is said, promised, insisted, signed, contracted, or pleaded over in heart-felt emotion - when you discover that their boundary skill is poor.

Here's the quick guide to find out that very thing:

HOW TO SPOT A CHEATER WITHIN FIFTEEN MINUTES OF MEETING THEM: