The New Golden Rule

Have you seen those ads where they pay you for your unused or unwanted gold jewelry? One of our neighbors, a nice elderly lady on fixed income, saw one of those ads on late night TV so she was telling us how she is considering taking some of her old jewelries (apparently she's got quite a few collected over the years) and selling them to make some extra money.

What she doesn't realize is you can actually get a better deal at your local pawn shop. Why? because those mail in things will end up paying you only about 30% of what your gold is actually worth. Why? Because even though they keep talking about how high the price of gold is right now, most of those places that offer to buy your jewelry actually only pays the 'scrap rate' which could be as low as 10% of the present rate for gold.

Not that I frequent pawn shops, anything, but I heard that in Dallas, TX, Dallas Pawn Shops are willing to haggle with you over the price of your gold. So in the long run, if you have good quality jewelry and good bargaining skills, you can come out with as much as 60% of the going rate. I suppose if you're in Houston, Houston Pawn Shops would be the same way. You think?

In the Spirit of Giving

Christmas has dulled a bit for me partly because it has become so commercialized and people have made it more a matter of materialism than spirit. There are actually a few people I have stopped giving gifts to, not because of anything they had done to me directly, but because I have seen them belittle someone else's gift to them. Of course whenever I've given them anything they had been appropriately appreciative. But who knows what they say behind my back?

So now, I only give when I truly feel like it not because I feel an obligation to. I try to impart this same philosophy to my girls. If someone gives you a gift, you treat it like a gift and in the spirit that it was given. Do not expect gifts now should you feel entitled to receive one. When you give a gift, you give because you want to and you give what you can afford. Do not give expecting a present in return.

Whether you're given a dollar store candy cane, food you're allergic to or something as bizarre as Toto toilets, you don't complain, you receive graciously and gratefully. It is not the gift that matters, it is the spirit that it is given.

Procrastination Season

So it's been gray, it's been dreary and cold. All I want to do is lay in bed and read a book, my feet nicely tucked into my warm blankie. Just thinking about it is making me sleepy! I want me a warm bowl of soup or hot cocoa with soft fluffy marshmallows on top.

Instead, I get to make myself get up, get dressed and go to work. I miss the bright sunny days when the lightening of my room from the rising sun wakes me up feeling refreshed and energized. I don't like this soggy and dragged out feeling with the cold and grayness.

I guess that's why I've been procrastinating. I procrastinate at home, I procrastinate at work and I procrastinate online. I have several blogging obligations to fulfill and I haven't yet. Instead of writing up my reviews on the review blog, here I am talking to myself instead.

OH, I've also been wasting some major chunks of time on facebook! Yep, been on the farms (two of them) and playing poker all night with my Padron smokin' buddies. Yeah, some folks I hang out with, eh?

I keep saying I'll do better tomorrow, but the next day is just as the day before and all I want to do is curl up in bed. Oh and think up of things to cook. Like this awesome homemade apple pie from scratch I baked up last week. Check it out!

Giveaway Weekend

I'm always glad to see Fridays come around. TGIF! right? I love having the weekend to relax. Even though I don't always relax but end up doing errands, I just like the idea of being able to relax and do nothing if I chose to.

Weekends have also gotten to be time to check out all the giveaways going on in the blogosphere. I've already won several items and it's always exciting to get a treat in the mail. My girls have gotten to look forward to mail deliveries just to see what new treat they'll get to try out. Of course their favorite are the food products.

This weekend we have some chores to do first. Chores that have to do with the weather like weather proofing the house for the colder months, changing the air filters with a summer's worth of accumulated dust and who knows what else, and changing curtains and table cloths to a fall theme.

In the meantime, if you're ready to get started, check out the list of giveaways on our blogs on the Friday Giveaway Hop.

Give me some love

It was my 46th birthday yesterday. I didn't really do anything big. No parties and what not. My girls and I went to the movies. We were going to go see Julie and Julia but it was sold out and we didn't feel like waiting about a couple of hours until the next showing. Instead, we went to see The Proposal, a romantic comedy with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. If you're into light romantic comedies, this would be a good movie choice for the weekend. We all had a great time.

My sisters gave me some great presents; one of which was a new digital camera since my old one broke and I've been without a camera since April. Now you know that just won't do when you're a blogger! So I was excited to get the camera and we've been playing with it all weekend, taking photos of ourselves. My other sister gave me cash which is just as welcome; although maybe I should have asked for new halo headlights because when I went out last night to pick up my daughter from a concert, I found out my headlights were dead! Definitely not a good time to find out that your headlights aren't working. Luckily, she wasn't that far and I went to pick her up with the fog lamps on and me praying like heck that I wouldn't get stopped by a cop. Aside from that little glitch, all went well on my birthday.

Now all you gotta do is leave me some love :)

The Pressure Cooker Factor

Life has a way of interrupting blogging schedules and everything else. That's just what it did for the past week. Work schedule again got in the way of blogging. It was such a hectic week that I didn't even have time check emails! and I'm talking about work email, mind you. Never mind the hundreds that piled up in GMail and Yahoo!

I'm not complaining though. Well, not too much anyway. I actually enjoy having a hectic week once in a while. Pressure and sheer magnitude of the task actually made me more organized and efficient! What I would dawdle to do over a couple of days normally was accomplished in half a day! Yeah, I got it in me to accomplish large tasks, I knew that... I just wouldn't want to do it on a daily basis :)

Let's see, besides being my busiest week at work, my daughter also went to a two day seminar one town over last memorial day weekend. She also ended up having to get new eyeglasses which put a big ole $300 hole in my pocket. Not to mention that it's end of the year and it's finals time for the girls and my baby is graduating elementary school.

I seems like I just dropped her off at kindergarten!

All through that, wouldn't you know it, I was about a hundred bucks under budget because my insurance decided to take last pay period as a payment make up for a calculation mistake on their part! I was almost ready to take on some health insurance leads that were volunteered to me when I was griping about the cost of my health insurance. And oh yeah, that $300 hole? That's also because my health insurance does not include vision care so eye glasses are out of pocket! Now if that doesn't make you want to blow off some steam, eh?

Teens Who Talk are a Gift

We had an old friend in town for business the last couple of weeks so he's been coming over to our house for dinner on his free nights. The girls love having him over for dinner. I think it's cause we eat better than our normal weekday fare. LOL! No, I think they seriously enjoy talking to him and he to them. He commented how it's so nice that our girls would stay on at the dining table even after eating, to talk. They talk about everything under the sun it seems like. And some days it's like a blessing but other days it seems like a curse. haha! I'm joking.

Even as much as my girls talk and as much as they seem comfortable talking to us, I know they don't tell us everything. As they should. I don't expect them to tell all, we are all entitled to our secrets after all. So sometimes, well ok a lot of times, I worry about how they are doing. I worry if they are getting everything they need. It makes me sad when I hear of other teens who seem to have gone so far off track. Click on the link and read about a sad story.

Last night was our friend's last night in town so he came by the house for dinner and brought the girls some presents. You know they were happy. He'll be in Florida next week and he says he'll miss having friends in a city where he's doing business. There will be no one to visit in Florida, he says. But then, there's always Orlando golf courses to maybe take his mind away from missing his family.

It's another TGIF day

Here's another Friday! I wish I could have accomplished more this week, but it seems to have just flown. The girls arrived on Monday evening instead of Sunday. Long story there. I had already taken Monday off in anticipation of their arrival but since they arrived a day late and had some things to take care of the very next day, I also tood Tuesday off. So yeah, I guess I had a short week at work. It sure doesn't feel like it though. I still feel as glad it's Friday as if I worked all week. I think I'm reaching some kind of burn out state at work or just getting old.

I turned 45 last week, did you know? So now I'm in the next age bracket in surveys. You know, I used to be in the 35-44 bracket? now I'm in the 45-54 bracket. I guess that puts me officially into middle age? Well that's assuming I will live to ninety, which I doubt very much.

To celebrate my birthday month and to earn some extra money, I'm posting on my food blog 5-7 times a week. That's almost everyday! I started last Sunday and so far here are the recipes I've posted:
Salmon with Pinenuts & Capers
Pork & Vegetables Curry
Donna Hay Lemon Tart
La.Pi.S - Crunchy
Pata Tim
Spicy Braised Pork

Don't forget, this will go on all month, so visit our kitchen for new recipes! I'll try to cook up something good this weekend, so stay tuned. Have a great weekend!

What to do, what to do!

It's summertime, alright. This is the last week of school for the girls and by Monday, they will be off for the summer. Yegads!

So far, I've only arranged a summer activity for one of them. The other two, I don't know what to do with them yet. I'm sure they wouldn't mind staying home watching TV and playing on the computer all summer long, but you know that will never do :) So we're looking for a place to put them to give them something to do.

We're planning on a few weekend trips, but nothing else beyond that. One of the short trips we're considering is either up to New York or down to Atlanta. Don't know yet which would be more cost efficient, what with the cost of gas and all.

By the way, if you're looking for shleppers (love that word! :) ), a mover NYC, check out the link.

Fat Wrists

I'm still thinking...

I'm wondering if anyone else is like me. Here's a weird fact about me: I gain weight on my wrist. More so than normal, I think.

I love watches. I have a collection of them in different colors, brands and styles. Cheap watches, luxury watches, I love them all! However, ever since I've gained weight from having all these darn kids (just kidding :D) I meant sweet little angels of mine, I haven't been able to wear any kind of watch because my wrist has gotten so fat!

I look at my arms in the mirror and the thing that bothers me the most is how my wrists have gotten fat. No the under arm jiggles don't bother me like others, it's the fat wrists that get to me. Weird, huh?

BuZZy Week

Why is it that on the busiest week of the year for me at work is also when I am coming back from vacation, that I really need another vacation to recover from, ergo my energy level is lower than low? That's kind of how this week has been so far, and yegads it's only Wednesday!

I haven't been blogging much because I have barely sat at my desk for more than a few minutes at a time since Monday. I've been getting in earlier than my usual amble in time of 9 a.m. and staying way later than my slink away time :).

It's all good though, it keeps the adrenalin and blood flowing on this sedentary old body.

Just Wondering

Have you ever wondered what it costs to raise children or how much it costs to buy disposable versus cloth diapers? I just noticed that I have been fascinated with these types of issues lately, based on my previous posts. As much as I hate thinking about money all the time, I can't seem to help it! It just creeps into my though bubbles and it just keeps multiplying.

I'm thinking that I'm obsessing because I am thinking too much about the school expenses the girls are starting to have? I don't know. But yeah, $$$ are in my thoughts lately.

Merry Christmas

I hope that you and your family had a Merry Christmas! We had a relatively quiet one, just our little family of five plus one or two friends who just dropped in to say hello.

We went to see the movie The Great Debaters on Christmas day. That was a truly powerful movie. Denzel Washington did a great job directing and acting. I'll post a review on Found Not Lost soon. Where, you'll find, we also won a tomagotchi for Christmas!

I'm hosting Lasang Pinoy 22 - Rice to the Challenge on Cooked from the Heart, so if you have a Filipino Rice Dish you'd like to share, just let me know.

Get Paid To Blog

Many of us got into blogging for personal reasons. Not many of us originally set out just to make money from writing bits and pieces about ourselves online. It just so happened that lately, non-professional bloggers like myself have been given a chance to make a little money while we do our usual blogging and bloghopping on the web. That's not a sin, is it? I for one have been enjoying the benefits of making a little extra cash from doing my usual ramblings on the blog. What could be sweeter?

Well, apparently, some people on the world wide web don't think we have the right to do what we want on our blogs and would dictate what we can and cannot make money on. At first, like many other bloggers, I was angry. But now, I just don't give a rats behind anymore. I am not removing any tags or links on my blogs just because someone said so. AND YES, I GET PAID FOR REVIEWS AND YES I DO SELL LINKS ON THIS BLOG! If you want to buy some, just let me know ;)

Blech!! I never cared about ranks and stats before anyway, so there!

PMSing or just plain irritated?

It's been a rather irritating couple of days. Read my whining about being irritable and the unnecessary expenses imposed by some teachers.

Then today, I requested tomorrow off to go with the Clone on her class field trip; only to find out that they had postponed the trip to next week and she forgot to tell me! GRRRRR!!!

Oh, and for the cherry on top, we are getting our first freezing temps tonight and I haven't had a chance to get the greens off my bittermelon, because it's bloody dark by the time I get home at 6!

But at least there is some good news today. It's election day where we are and our incumbent mayor has been reelected. Yeay!! At least that young upstart that was running against him didn't win. That would have been terrible.

Just Say NO

TGIF! Thank god it's Friday! I'm going home in an hour so I'm happy. It has been a long day. It's been a long week! Heck, it's going to be this way for the next few months so I really should just get used to it. It seems like one initiative after another keep landing on my desk and I'm running out of hands to juggle them with.

But you know what? I don't get stressed out. We have a small company and there is plenty of work to go around so we are all busy. We are all on the same boat. But some of us seems to take the stress in better stride than others. Sometimes I get tired of hearing people grumble about how much they have to do and who is riding on their back and so on and on. Whine, whine, whine. That's why I don't even stick my head out of my office most days.

Truth is, when I'm listening to them whine, I'm thinking to myself, now why didn't this fool just say no and save himself a whole lot of trouble? I too am still learning to say NO, but I'm working on it and am getting better with it everyday. I make no promises I know I can't keep. I just say NO.

TMI!

TMI. Too much information, my kids would say. But really, I hadn't gone for three days, I was telling my sister. So what does she come back with? She said one of our friends is frequent user of colon cleanse products to detoxify and purify her body. Do you know they even now have this available at some spas? It is such a foreign concept to me and frankly is even a little hard to stomach just visualizing the process. OK, so I do have a weak stomach, but still... So I guess I'll just be eating more roughage or something instead. I don't think I'm ready for it. I'll deal with nature naturally so to speak :)

where forth art thou punctuations capitals & paragraphs

what is this world coming to first with the proliferation of cell phones came text messaging then with the popularity of pcs came blogging so what has the world of words come to you tell me it seems that first people stopped spelling things correctly even when they werent in the texting world anymore then they did away with capitalizations as you see more and more blogs written in lower case now ive started noticing less and less usage of punctuations whats even worse and more irritating is rather than putting capital letters in their proper positions in front of sentences and at the beginning of proper names someone DeCiDeD iT WoUlD bE cUtE tO aLtErNaTe ThEm InStEaD im wondering if a grammar and writing blackhole opened up somewhere and swallowed up the punctuations the capitals the paragraphs and the commonsense im no expert at grammar nor writing but i do enjoy a good cadence now and then a well written story takes me places and i do like for things to be simple and make sense i dont like guessing what someone meant to imply thats what punctuations do you know they help your reader hear and visualize your message

A world that has only periods is a world without inflections. It is a world without shade. It has a music without sharps and flats. It is a martial music. It has a jackboot rhythm. Words cannot bend and curve. A comma, by comparison, catches the gentle drift of the mind in thought, turning in on itself and back on itself, reversing, redoubling and returning along the course of its own sweet river music; while the semicolon brings clauses and thoughts together with all the silent discretion of a hostess arranging guests around her dinner table.

quoted from a Time Magazine Article by Pico Iyer, In Praise of the Humble Comma

What were you doing on this day?

I just realized today is 9/11, the latest day to join the list of dates of infamy. I also realized this is the birthdate of the late Philippine dictator, Ferdinand Marcos. And if you live in the U.S., 911 is the emergency number. Texters use 911 as code for when something is an emergency, urgent, or dire. This poor day, just hadn't had much luck, had it?

I remember 9/11/2001 because of the tragedy that happened at the World Trade Center in NY, but also because I had gotten up early that morning, gotten dressed and had planned on hitting a few temp agencies and start looking for a job. This was going to be the first day for me to step into the job market again after playing stay at home mom for six years. So how about you? What were you doing on that infamous day in 2001?

Not at this address

SisterO recently ordered a piece of jewelry for her daughter who is four years old. I guess she is already getting her holiday shopping started. Funny thing is, well maybe not so funny for her, they delivered the package to my house! Haha! I thought I had hit the jackpot getting a package from a jewelry store. It turned out, she merely forgot to clear the auto complete form from the last time she ordered, so it still had my address as the Ship To address. She had a heck of a time getting it re-directed. No, not cause I held on to it! It wouldn't have fit me anyway. lol! I returned it to the shipper and told them this is the wrong address and they need to return it to the sender so that they can send it to the correct address. About two weeks later, the same package is at our doorstep again!! SisterO is ready to pull her hair out. Now she is threatening to just cancel the whole thing.