Posted under
General by Catherine on July 3rd, 2008 5:09 pm
It seems like the more and more I stay away from the news and media reports online the happier I am. Then again I can’t seem to stay away from them because I don’t like feeling as if I’m out of the loop on things. It is the perfect catch-22 in my opinion. Lately, the news has been a bit depressing to me. Houston has had an increase in crime lately and just last week a local mini-storage owner found two burglars breaking into his units and confronted them. Luckily for him he had his shotgun on him and well not so lucky for the burglars. Last I heard was that both were in the hospital and expected to make it and the owner didn’t have a scratch on him. I just can’t imagine what it must be like to be either a small business owner who is frequently targeted by criminals nor the police offer who has to deal with these crimes day in and day out. I’m not sure I’d be able to handle it especially after hearing about budget cuts across the country for police departments. The good news is though that you can help protect the ones you love if budget cuts have affected you or you just want to help protect your business owner during working hours. How? Well LA Police Gear sells items such as Blackhawk tactical vests, mace, and tasers to help protect and defend yourself. All items are police grade and are available to purchase online and ship right to your door. If you want to help your loved ones, look into purchasing gear from LA Police Gear, it could save their lives.
Posted under
General by Catherine on July 3rd, 2008 12:09 am
One thing I try really hard at doing is keeping my online life separate from my personal life. I’m not sure to complete reason that I try to do this but I think it could be so that I can feel free to express myself online under an alias and not worry about someone finding my writing and questioning me about it. But as I continue to work on this blog I find myself posting the link in more places like my facebook and myspace accounts. As a result, I’ve had a few people ask me about starting a blog.
One of the first things I suggest is hosting your own blog/website over using a free site like blogger or blogspot. My main reason is that I am a former techie geek who likes coding and prefers to have free rein over my creations online. With a free site you can’t really change it up too much like you can with a self-hosted site.
Another reason I prefer this method is that I can use Word Press as my blogging software so to speak. Word Press is completely free and there are so many different page themes and plugins that you can install to really make your blog your own and customize it to do exactly what you want.
The good thing is that self-hosting really will not break the bank. Many sites are less than $100 a year for your own personal domain as well as storage space to hold the files that make up your blog. If you aren’t quite sure who to go with for a host the geeks at WebHostingGeeks.com have set up a site to rank the top hosts in various categories such as: best budget hosts, best blog hosts, and best forum hosts to name a few. You can easily compare ratings between hosts as well as features and prices before you decide who to go with to get your site going strong. I would definitely use this as a good starting point. Happy Blogging! 
Posted under
General by Catherine on July 2nd, 2008 11:52 pm
For about a month now I have been reading reviews online about Scrapbook Factory Deluxe and have been thinking about getting back into scrapbooking. I have to admit though that once I drug out all of my supplies and started looking at my pages, I started to double think this whole scrapbook decision. But after more and more reading online I bit the bullet and took the plunge towards digital scrapbooking. I’m not too sure how it’s all going to work out since I just picked the software up from my apartment’s office yesterday after work but I’m excited to spend the weekend playing with it and seeing what I can do with it and what I can’t.
I have a feeling I’ll be moving towards a hybrid method of scrapping - digital with traditional embellishments which will be fine. I just am hoping to cut my page creation time down from 1 hour per page to maybe 30 minutes per page and this is just for getting the color scheme going and layouts. So I will give a full report tomorrow after I run through installing the program (hope I can do that on 2 computers!) and making my first page. The next task will be finding a service to print my 12×12 pages. I hope that won’t be too hard or break the budget.
Posted under
General by Catherine on July 2nd, 2008 3:06 pm
Have you ever had a fantasy or two that you have wanted to live out but felt too old for it? I know I have every now and then. I usually found that they were not anything in a sexual sense but just you know like a time period or famous character that I would like to be for a day. Growing up, I always wanted to be a waitress at a Frost Top Diner. Not sure why but maybe there was something special in that root beer float that made everyone want to work there. Or maybe it was the idea of a poodle skirt everyday for work with a cute 50s ponytail with a scarf tied around it since I love to wear my hair up. But alas, I never did get to be a cute little 50s diner worker with my ponytail, poodle skirt, or saddle oxford shoes.
Well, today in my quest to continue to gather some info to use on the message board where the mods have gone wild I came across some cute halloween costumes from Halloweenadventures.com. The website has everything categorized into easy to use/understand so that you can find the costume you are looking for quickly and can have it in time for Halloween or your event that requires a costume. I found my adorable 50s diner girl costume under the sexy costumes category but luckily it looks appropriate for any occasion which requires a costume. No worries about looking too inappropriate! I also found some cute pet costumes so that I can get Murphf dressed up for the holidays this year to match the rest of us. Just way too cute! 
Posted under
General by Catherine on July 2nd, 2008 2:27 pm
I am officially on 4th of July vacation and am ecstatic! See 10 years ago on July 1, my company merged with a competitor and we are celebrating those past 10 years with how far along we have all come as a firm and what lies ahead in the future. The ten days leading up have been really exciting let me tell you lol. But none the less I am happy about the extra day off of work and the couple of hours we had today to “jump start” our holiday weekend.
So my plans include hanging around the apartment cleaning out, going to the gym, and vegging out while Mike studies. Oh there is also that tiny, unimportant UFC fight on Saturday night 
We already have our crew in motion and a table reserved with our favorite waiter so we are good to go. I just need to figure out what I’m going to wear now since our TapouT shirts won’t be getting here in time. Kinda makes me mad because I so would have paid for 2nd/priority shipping had they even offered it. That’s another rant for another day I guess.
So hopefully I’ll get to try out some new recipes or recipe ideas during these next few days off and I can share with yall next week. If nothing else maybe I can review the fridge keg we pick up at Specs tomorrow.
Have a great 4th!
