1. Plan at least three social activities each month 2. Expose yourself to as much bright light as possible 3. Stay or become physically active through exercise 4. Have good support systems in place 5. Buy an indoor light box which gives 10,000 Lux natural full spectrum lighting 6. Start a natural or prescribed antidepressant four weeks prior to beginning of mid-fall and terminate use four weeks following end of winter. Talk to your family doctor about this.

For those of you who already have a depression diagnosis of one kind or another, and you know you dip deeper into depression in fall and winter, this proactive approach is absolutely vital for you. And, I have some additional ideas for you.

1. Adjust dosages of your antidepressants at beginning and end of fall/winter seasons 2. Add 3 new stress management skills to your skill base 3. Exercise! 4. You should own and use a light box, even in summer months. 5. Monitor depression using a simple daily mood chart scale of 1-10, with 10 being severe depression. Commit to a "planned ahead" action you will definitely take (like seeing your family doctor) if your rating is over 6, three or more days in one week. 6. Make a list of past symptoms - a trigger list if you will. And share it with one other person.

A light box should be used very specifically, and there are a few concerns about using light boxes for seasonal affective disorder.

Light boxes work similar to description above. If more light goes through retinas, on to biological clock, and through nervous system to Pineal Gland, production of Melatonin will slow. The result will be elevated mood.

If you have any type of eye problems involving retina you must consult your eye specialist first, before using a light box. These types of eye problems include macular degeneration, retinitis, pigmentosa and diabetic retinopathy.

The minimum amount of time to use a light box for a positive effect is 30-60 minutes. Generally first positive response reported from sufferers of seasonal affective disorder is increased energy levels.

If you oversleep and struggle with getting up in morning best time to use your light box is in morning. And, I know you don't want to hear this, but best way to use light box is to get up 30 minutes early and use it immediately for 30 minutes.

If you tend to nod off early in evening, only take wake up too early in morning and cannot get back to sleep best time to use light box would be in evening.

Be careful if your diagnosis is Bipolar Disorder. You can still use a light box, and probably should, but there is some risk that you could go into a hypomanic or manic phase. The best time for Bipolar folks to use light box is in mid-afternoon. It is also strongly suggested that you stay on, or use a mood stabilizer medication in combination with light box.

Seasonal affective disorder is a very real and debilitating disorder. I suspect it will show up in a future edition of diagnostic guide for psychotherapy profession. You can make a remarkable difference in quality of your fall and winter seasons by taking action now. Please help yourself out, you deserve to feel good year 'round!

To your best autumn and winter season ever!

A hard one will simply divide into 2 or 3 asteroids instead of 1, and a soft asteroid will simply absorb impact like a sponge.

So latest plans by boffins is to create a massive nuclear explosion *next* to asteroid, and this will create enough force to push it off course, making it miss us.

So an asteroid impact doesn't really affect any of us, we'll be long gone.

That's point I want to make.

An asteroid will on average, hit Earth every 100 million years, at least. After being around for millions of years, dinosaurs met their end when an asteroid hit us 65 million years ago.

The Earth is around 5 billion years old, and will last around another 5 billion until our sun explodes.

I'm always fascinated by these galactic (is that word? galactic? astrological?) facts and figures, scale of numbers is awesome, and for me it drives home that although we may think world revolves around us, it doesn't.

Our presence here is fleeting, if life of our universe is put into a 24-hour day, mankind only appears in last 30 seconds of last minute.

So next time you break a fingernail, next time you are carved up in traffic, next time you say you 'have' to do a job you hate, stop for a second, think about our place as humans, get some perspective, and then take action to enjoy yourself in life!!!