Omg.. so you know, most microwave popcorn tastes like warmed over ass.. at least most of it that I’ve ever laid hands on. Well, one night I saw a commercial for Orville Redenbacher’s Natural microwave popcorn and thought “hey, that’s gotta be better for me.” So we were in Wegman’s the next day (shut up, I fell in love with the store) and figured that I would check the price. It was not overly pricey, in fact it was the cheapest popcorn on the shelf, since it was a box of 6 bags. So, I buy it.

I am now completely spoiled. I have eaten more popcorn in the last week than I have in the last year.

Natural Simply Salted - Simply Salted popcorn combines wholesome whole grain goodness with only oil and salt; no artificial preservatives, colors, or flavors. It’s naturally delicious!

It’s like really good theater popcorn. It doesn’t need any additional salt or butter. Nothing. It’s damned addictive and good. I’m considering trying some of the butter garlic for the hell of it.

For once, while everyone else is bitching and moaning about the weather.. I’m saying BRING IT ON.

Why? Cuz we don’t have to go anywhere. Rob’s off work today and tomorrow, we have no ‘must do’ errands. So, bring it on mother nature!

Tonight I set foot back in my old high school for the first time since about a year after I graduated. That trip was only to pick up a copy of my transcripts as proof of graduating. It was kind of weird to go back there, but it was something that I’d really been needing to do. High School sucked for me, a lot, so I avoided anything that even remotely involved going back there.

So anyway, back to my point.. In October, Rob and I went to a football game and it was fun. It wasn’t as horrifying of an experience as I expected. So, tonight was the Senior Holiday Concert. I haven’t been to one since I was *part* of them in school. Yeah, that long ago. It was really weird stepping into the building again and in a way it took me back to being in school.

When we got there, the auditorium was still closed, so everyone was milling around the lobby. I got to show Rob the library since the main hall was open still. He didn’t grasp the whole “glassed-in library” when I tried to explain it to him. He didn’t grasp just how damned much GLASS there is in that building. So anyway, We were waiting in the lobby and I was thinking to myself just how FEW people I knew. But anyway, the concert was fantastic, I was REALLY impressed with how well they sounded. It was odd being only the Senior High students instead of Junior and Senior High.

I think that we’re going to go to the Middle School concert as well next week. Hopefully they’ll be just as good as the Senior High was. The picture, btw, is the brass ensemble that did the final number, complete with the man who taught me how to play clarinet. Maybe I’ll post more about it tomorrow, I have a lot of stuff in my head that I want to process further though.

Anyway, bed is calling my name. Snow will be calling it tomorrow.

Winter is coming on strong in Upstate New York and it’s made me think about winter boots. But do I go out enough to spend the money they want for boots nowadays? I don’t think so, especially since I just bought my first pair of really expensive sneakers (Yes, $80 is really expensive for sneakers to me!).

The thing is, I saw this cool Emu Australia boots that are making me want to reconsider it. Will I give in and buy them? Not likely. I think I should save the money for a hard drive since I think this one might be failing.

Maybe next year I can get them.

I’ve noticed that in the last few years, most pick-up truck owners have a tonneau cover now. I remember growing up and seeing these guys with their trucks full of stuff and never covered. Is it that people feel like they need to lock things that they have in their truck beds?

Has society sunk so low that we steal from the back of a truck. Sadly, yes we have. It’s happened to us before. When we were living in Las Vegas, Rob accidentally left the fanny pack with all my ID and such in the back of our truck and when he went to look for it, it was gone.

He found some of the stuff that was in there in the dumpster, but my ID was gone. It’s really sad that everything needs to be locked up now, even in a pick-up truck that is meant to be open.

So I bought this fairly expensive furniture set a couple years ago. It was a couch and chair with an ottoman. The thing is, less than three years later, the chair leg decided to separate from the chair bottom. We’re not rough on furniture, so what the hell? Maybe I’m better off finding somewhere to buy discount furniture and see if that will last.

It pisses me off, especially since it’s hard to find a new set that will fit through our front door area. I think that after the first of the year, I need to go furniture shopping and see what we can come up with. It’s too much of a pain in the ass to keep lifting the chair to put the leg back where it belongs.

Who knows, maybe we’ll just replace the chair with a new recliner.

This is something that goes along with my last post. I’ve seen all kinds of sites lately that tell you how to get your own real estate franchise and it’s making me wonder if it’s supposed to be a sign of some sort. It’s nore really anything that I’d actually get into, since I’m not a big fan of selling real estate, but I can’t help but wonder why I keep seeing these links.

Maybe I’m meant to reconsider it and go into real estate? I rather doubt it. I’m not into that kind of thing and never have bee. Anyway, on to other things.

Sometimes when Rob and I go somewhere, like into the city shopping, I look at all these beautiful luxury homes and wonder what it would be like to live in one. I wonder what it would be like to have a home large enough to have an office that isn’t my bedroom. A home that is large enough to have space for everyone to do their own thing without being under each other’s feet.

A mobile home is great for two people, sometimes, but for three of us who have different interests, it’s difficult. My mother doesn’t watch the same thing that we do. My husband and I have different interests, like he likes to sit and read, which requires bright lights. I like to be on the computer without having a ton of lights reflecting off my screen, so we end up having conflicts over lights.

It’s hard sometimes not to wonder what it would be like if things were different and we were the ones with these big, beautiful homes.

Small business valuation is used to determine the worth of a business. Or at least that’s what I’ve found in my researching. Why is this important? There is no real importance, it’s just a term that I came across today.

I have this weird sense of wanting to know the answers, which is one of the reasons that I enjoy being a ChaCha Guide. Unfortunately, I come across things I don’t understand while doing it, so I end up researching it for future reference, and for my own idle curiosity.

I was doing some work one day for a freelance job. A job that I ended up telling the person to go suck an egg because they wanted more than they advertised for and were not willing to pay more for the extra work, but I digress. The job was to find the contact information from several different real estate web sites. One of them was for Wilmington NC real estate and it got me to thinking about moving out of New York.

Would I really ever move out of the state? Move from my home town finally? Move from one of the only places that I have lived. I have thought about it before, thought about moving back to Las Vegas, but could I? It’s something that I really should sit down and figure out at some point. I don’t know if, after my mother passes, I can stay here. I guess time will tell, hopefully I have a lot of time before I have to worry about it.

When I wrote my post earlier, it got me to thinking about other things that went along with the same vein of thought. I was thinking about how many celebrities and children of celebrities are now ending up in drug rehabilitation centers.

For instance, VH1 is working on a show called Celebrity Rehab and has stories about Jessica Sierra (American Idol contestant), Andy Dick (Comedian) and Chyna (WWE Wrestler). I wonder what has happened that all these celebrities are ending up in this kind of trouble.

There was a time when this was nearly unheard of, or wasn’t as publicized. I will never understand why this has become mainstream news and not really a shame-face secret any more. I think that when it was something to be ashamed of, the celebrities were learning something, now it’s like “Ooh publicity!”

It’s just more of a reminder that celebrities should not be put up on pedestals.

In this day and age, most people rely on credit to get through from paycheck to paycheck. With so many credit offers and credit cards, it’s easy to get behind and crew up your credit. It’s not hard to end up spending more in credit than you have in income, especially with student loans that you have to pay back.

What happens if your credit is shot and you need a new car? You can’t get financing with bad credit in a lot of cases, but if you know where to look, you can find several types of bad credit loans that will help you get back on your feet and rebuild your credit. You can even find bad credit mortgage lenders or credit card offers to help you get on your feet and turn your credit score around.

The thing about credit, however, is using it wisely and not getting in over your head. I’ve done it myself. At one point, I had 5 different cards, all of them were maxed out, barely able to make the minimum payments. We never had money from paycheck to paycheck because of all the credit cards. We’ve finally gotten rid of all but one card, our gas card, and we finally have money from check to check. It’s nice to not be buried in bills for once.

Author chosen to finish the WHEEL OF TIME series

Tor announces that the final novel in bestselling Robert Jordan’s legendary Wheel of Time® fantasy series will be completed by author Brandon Sanderson.

New York, NY: Friday, December 7, 2007

Tor Books announced today that novelist Brandon Sanderson has been chosen to finish the final novel in Robert Jordan’s bestselling Wheel of Time fantasy series. Robert Jordan, one of the greatest storytellers of the 20th and early 21st centuries, died September 16th after a courageous battle with the rare blood disease amyloidosis.
(more…)

I remember a time when I was in high school when I was considering careers. I had a lot of different ideas of what I wanted to do with my life and one of those things was a desire to work in the area of addiction treatment. I was a member of two different groups that the school had, both SADD (Students Against Drinking and Driving) and AD-SIP (Alcohol & Drug - Student Information Program) and really enjoyed the work that we did.

SADD would hold after prom parties like casino night or music to keep the dancing going. We also held a mock accident at the school, showing what can happen if you drive drunk. After it was over, we heard so many good things about how it turned out. I think that it had a real impact on the students who took part, as well as those who were just observing.

AD-SIP was my favorite, however, because we went into the schools and did presentations for the younger students. We did two day training on what we should be teaching and then proceeded to teach those students. It was one of the few things that we could do to influence the younger students and hopefully keep them from falling into the dangers of drugs.

Doing both of these things, it made me want to teach students about the problems of addiction or help those who were already addicted. But it was definitely something that I wanted to do. I don’t know what ever turned my interests away from that and why I ended up not even considering it when I applied for college.

It seems like 2007 was the year of movie remakes, again. This has been a common theme for a good number of years recently, but 2007 wasn’t just riddled with bad remakes it was riddled with all around bad movies. What movies will make my top 10 worse movies of 2007? Lets take a look and see how crappy the 2007 movies really were..

Really Bad Movies: 10 Worse Movies of 2007

Yes, this is my opinion, we’re all entitled to opinions. I know a lot of people will disagree with my choices and that’s alright. If you disagree, write your own!

Another thing that I would have if I had a bigger home to set up my own home gym is definitely a couple weight benches. That was one of the rare things that I liked in Gym class in school. I was always happy when we did the weight lifting and aerobics section.

I hated the aerobics because the videos were OLD AS TIME, but the lifting was always fun. I think I was one of the only girls in my class who enjoyed spending time in the weight room. I think that having a small home gym would be nice, especially with a weight bench or a weight machine of some sort.

A girl can dream, right?

So since I’ve been losing weight, I’ve been thinking about a membership to something like Curves or a local gym. Yeah, I want to keep the process going and not let the medication do everything for me. It’s a case of wanting to be proactive instead of reactive for a change.

The problem is, I’m restricted to his days off or going after he gets off work, which involves another trip into town. Something else that I’ve been considering is a treadmill here at home. But with that, we have no real space for one. It’s really unfortunate because I could work out on my schedule. It really makes me wish that we lived in a bigger house.

It’d be nice to be able to have a treadmill at home so that I could work out when my body allowed it and not waste money on a gym membership that wouldn’t get used often enough to justify the cost.

As the Aunt of a teenager, I’ve struggled with this question the last few years trying to find an appropriate gift for my nephew. I have spoken to my sister to see what he wants, the most common answer that I hear is money. Then he can spend it on things that he truly wants, be it clothes, electronics, music, etc.

If you don’t want to give cash, gift cards are a viable option, for the music store, electronics store, department store cards even. I know that this year, my nephew just turned 17, so he is all about bigger gifts. I know that he wants to get parts for his bike that was stolen and partial retrieved. But upon asking my sister what he wants, he informed her that he felt left out on Christmas because he got a card with money and no real gifts to open.

So this year, he will be getting money from us to put towards those endeavors. But along with it, he will be getting a few kitchy, but useful gifts from us as well. Money is not as personal as giving an actual, tangible item, but it does give the child what he truly wants because he will be able to pick and choose for himself.

Honestly, do adults have any idea what teenagers are into? No matter how in tune with them we may seem, it’s too hard to figure out what they really want, because they can tell us one thing and in the end, they prefer just the opposite.

When someone, including me, starts considering going to college the costs usually end up deterring them. Thousand’s of dollars per semester for tuition, hundreds of dollars each semester for associated fees. Then there’s hundreds or more for the books that are required or even thousands, depending on your major choice.

In today’s economy, who can afford to go to college? I know that I can’t. I don’t have that kind of money to put out for even one semester, much less 2-4 years. That’s why you need to be able to explore your financial aid options before getting frustrated and giving up.

Everyone is eligible for aid, but a lot of people don’t know that. It’s as easy as filling out a form and providing a bit of information. Don’t know what form you need to fill out? You need the FAFSA financial aid application. It’s often mistaken with the FASA. What’s the difference between the two? Not a thing. In fact, FASA isn’t anything at all, but now if you mistakenly search it, you can still find the proper form, along with great tips and tricks for properly filling out your FAFSA form.

College should be attainable for everyone, so why not fill out an FAFSA and see if you can take some of the financial burden off. This way you can go through school with fewer financial worries and make more of your educational opportunities.

Why can’t I find Holiday cards that don’t suck? Seriously, I looked for cards yesterday and found nothing I’d be willing to send out. Guess I’ll have to look again Monday. If I can’t find anything that I like, I’ll not be sending them out this year again.

I did get some of my shopping done, but not enough to make me happy. I need to get something for my brother and sister in law so that I can get their stuff packaged up and sent off to Las Vegas. I need to shop for my sister and pick up a couple more small things for eldest nephew. Then it’s just Mom and Rob to shop for. Ugh.

Can we skip the gift giving next year?

by goodgal996

Have you ever wanted a piece of fine art? Think it’s out of reach? Imagine being on a cruise and being able to get fine art while you’re there. Park West at Sea offers art from artists like Linda LeKinff and Jean-Claude Picot. You can bid on art from various artists while you’re enjoying a cruise to a tropical destination.

If a cruise isn’t your thing, Park West Gallery has other options for auctions, including on their web site. You will be on your way to owning your own great art from artists like Richard E. Williams, Itzchak Tarkay and even Thomas Kinkade. Just bid on what you want and your art needs will soon be fulfilled.

While I was reading my email, I noticed an article in my mini rss feed about IRC Data Mining and said to myself “Now what?” and clicked the link. I read through the article and said to myself “so what?” because this is old news.

I’ve been on IRC on and off for around 12 years and in all that time there have been sites that scrape and mine channels. There are bot programs that people *intentionally* put in their channels to do it. The eggdrop bot code itself keeps logs for the owners to do with whatever they want. IRC clients allow for channel logging. Hell, I have 3 years worth of logs on my computer and on backup CDs around my house. There are sites like bash.org that thrive on people sharing parts of logs.

Does this mean that sites like IRSeeK are great? Not really. But, should they have to shut down their site because it’s suddenly causing a freak out? Not at all. I think that anyone who knows anything about IRC and the Internet in general should know better than to say things that they don’t want out there in the world at large.

Growing up, were were taught that if you didn’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. This is the same basic principle. If you don’t have anything to say that isn’t fit for the whole world to read, don’t type anything at all. And don’t all of the sudden cry foul over things that have been around since the beginning of IRC. You should be able to censor yourself well enough by now and know what you should and shouldn’t be saying in public forums.

Check out my recently published content on AC:

Christmas Cookies: Grandma’s Sugar Cookies

I think I fought off most of the ickness, which makes me happy. I woke up feeling better. My eyes are still heavy and I’m a bit congested, but nowhere near as bad as I was yesterday. I’m going to take it easy today so that I don’t end up getting sick.

I plan on working on the blinkie requests from last night. There are a *ton* of them. I also need to work on the two articles too, since I would like, ya know, to get paid and all. In fact, those will be worked on first, then the blinkies. I should close the requests, but eh, I can work on them all week if I get a ton more. People can just deal with however long it takes.

I got a bunch of new icons uploaded today. This makes me happy. I get icons from some of the best makers, I swear. I am easy to make happy sometimes. So many talented makers. So many awesome icons. I even got my Christmas icon that I wanted and didn’t have to make it.

Winter has finally set in and I think it’s going to stay now. Bah! No, really, I don’t mind it. At least the temperature is staying remotely the same and the rain has solidified to snow form. I never thought I’d be happy to see snow, but honestly, I was sick of all the goddamn rain.

I need to go to the city sometime this week and go to A.C. Moore. I fear the idea of going to the city at Christmas time, I fear the idea of going to A.C. Moore at Christmas time. So many pretty decorations… I should boycott this holiday, it costs far too much money, stress and headaches. Especially buying for nephews aged 7 and 17.

God it’s hard to believe that my nephew is 17 now. He graduates from high school next year. Good lord. Christmas shopping for a 17 year old, however, is fairly easy. Give em money! But, money is so impersonal and boring. So, since he likes to draw, I need to venture to the city to find a store that sells decent charcoals and drawing supplies. I’m thinking that a set of nice charcoal pencils and a sketch pad will be a nice idea.

Anyway, enough babble out of me, time to do something useful.

made by goodgal996

I’m getting sick. This sucks. I shouldn’t complain too much, though, because it could be worse. I have a bit of a sinus headache, some congestion, but nothing worse. The only real reason this sucks is because I was going to go to Decemburr to Rememburr tonight. I guess I won’t be doing that, I’d rather not be sicker, especially since there’s 2 hours out in the cold between the parade and the tree lighting times. Oh well, there’s always next year. Plus there are other events coming up too.

I have a couple articles to write this weekend, so it won’t be so bad, but I did have to give up the one that I wanted to write because of not going tonight. It’s alright though, I can live without one article. At least I won’t be getting sicker and not being able to do anything.

I wrote some on my NaNo yesterday. One last hurrah at it and came up with a total of around 27k words. No winner icon for me this year, but that’s alright. I got a start on a story and I can finish it down the road. I’m happy with the fact that I managed to cross 25k since I didn’t write a word for 16 out of 30 days. There’s always next year to attempt it again. I just can’t over think it. I think that was my downfall, I knew what I wanted the story to do and it didn’t do it at all so I got frustrated.

Anyway, I should get to writing my articles. Or cook some grits. *ponder*