The inspection on our potential new house is this afternoon. I have butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it. I hope everything goes well and the inspector doesn't find a million things wrong with it. Heck, I hope the inspector doesn't find one huge thing wrong with it. We really want this house. If everything goes well today we have a closing date around the end of August. I don't know how I will get through work thinking about this all day! I hope it doesn't make my day go by slowly. I'm going to try to focus on work and not on the house. Yeah, right.

As I'm sure you all know, I am a Mac girl. My Powerbook G4 is like my electronic baby. We also have two G4 desktops in my house. You also probably know that I am a gamer. My husband and I both love to play video and computer games. I recently found a site that provides weekly news about the latest mac games and software. As soon as the page loaded my husband insisted that I bookmark it. He loves to play new computer games and find out what the latest and greatest things are. Since he is home during the day with the kids, he plays games such as mac solitaire and Mahjong while the baby is taking her naps. Our son has also recently become addicted to playing computer games so I thought it was great when I noticed they have a kids section of mac games. This site is going to be fun for the whole family! They have card games, board games, action games, puzzle games and all the latest applications. I know what my husband will be doing while I'm at work today!

I really need to stop listening to the soundtrack for RENT while I'm in my car. I haven't changed the cd in weeks because I've only been in my car long enough to get to work and back. Well, every morning I wake up with one of the songs in my head. I didn't even work over the weekend, but I still woke up this morning singing The Tango Maureen.

I have been tagged by Reese to do a tattoo meme. So...

As I stated here once before I have seventeen tattoos. I won't even attempt to take photos of them to post here because that would take up far too much of my Sunday. What I will do is tell you that I got my first tattoo at the age of eighteen - two very small connecting hearts on my chest - and continued to get them every so often until about 4 years ago. That was my final inking. My last tattoo was a Celtic design that I chose to have placed on the back of my neck. I forget that I have it because no one can see it unless I pull my hair up. I honestly wish that I could start over. I don't necessarily wish that I didn't have any tattoos, I just wish that I would have either gotten one fantastic, large piece instead of all the individual "pictures" or that I just had one small design somewhere that no one knew about except my husband.

Vito tagged with me with this meme, so here it goes:

5 people who will be annoyed you tagged them.

* Yoshi
* Megan
* Reese
* Suzanne
* Danny

4 things that should go into room 101 and be removed from the face of the earth.

* George W Bush *must agree with you on that Vito*
* dog hair - it's never ending. I doubt I will have another dog any time soon
* germs - I have no more sick days at work until January (yikes)
* stress - I've had enough for a while, I think

3 things people do that make you want to shake them violently.

* When people say "on accident" instead of "by accident"
* When someone thinks they know everything
* Any random act of stupidity - I have a very low tolerance for it

2 things you find yourself moaning about.

* My propensity to eat too much junk food
* It's difficult for me to avoid spend money on things I don't really need

1 thing the above answers tell you about yourself.

* I have no willpower

RULES

* Link to the original meme at freelancecynic.com so people know what it’s all about!
* Be as honest as possible, This is about letting people get to know the real you!
* Try not to insult anyone - unless they really deserve it or are very, very ugly!
* Post these rules at the end of every meme!

Usually advertising agencies are amenable with a webmaster taking over after the marketing is done. Those who are not as complaisant, decide everything from the web hosting to issues like pay per click too.

Jeremy and I had so much fun "hanging" with Yoshi for the Blogathon yesterday and last night. We ended up winning two $5 gift cards to Think Geek throughout the day for winning his Movie Quote game. He had moblog entries while driving to McDonalds for breakfast and Panera for lunch with a detour to Cold Stone Creamery. There was also a period in there where we were all in a live chat. We hung out until about 2am and then just had to go to bed. The Blogathon ended a few minutes ago so we missed about 6.5 hours out of 24. Not too bad, I think. I will definitely be hanging out with Yoshi again next year! I would also like to say congratulations to Yoshi for raising $329 in pledges toward such a great cause!! All in all, I believe the Blogathon had in the neighborhood of $119,000.00 in total pledges. That is so awesome!

My good friend, Yoshi, is posting for the Blogathon today! He is blogging for Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Please stop by and support him when you have time. He will be posting every half an hour for the next 24 hours. It's for a good cause!! He's got all sorts of wonderful things going on today. He has a Movie Clip Quote game that is a lot of fun to play and you can win prizes when you participate. I'm sure you can still sponsor him too, which would be a great thing. No donation is too small or too big!

Jeremy and I are getting ready to watch Hot Fuzz. We have been waiting to see this movie for quite some time now. It stars our favorite pair of actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost from Shaun of the Dead - one of our all time favorite flicks. We're still trying to get our hands on Spaced which is a television series they did together from 1999 to 2001. So far, it's not been an easy thing to find. If anyone happens to spot a copy, please let me know. I'll let you all know how we like Hot Fuzz. I'm fairly certain we won't be disappointed.

After 3 long months of training after getting my state license, today was my first "real" day of work as a licensed insurance agent for AAA's corporate office. It was extremely exhausting and very exciting all at the same time. There is so much information that an agent needs to know, hence the three long months of training. I have at least ten binders completely full of job aids to help me through each phone call. I know from experience that when you're on the other end of the phone, you have no idea how difficult an insurance agents job really is.

It's also very fast-paced at the corporate office. I get call after call after call with no break in between. It's nothing like the freedom a field agent at a branch has. I'm "attached" to a system that holds me accountable for every minute I am scheduled to be working. I get rated on how much time I take to wrap things up after the caller hangs up - something they have titled "after call work" (ACW). I should have no more than 1 hour each day of ACW to meet my 80% "ready to serve" requirement. If you don't meet 80%, you don't get your commission for the month. Although, I have a good salary and don't work for commission only, but extra cash is always good. I barely had time to use the bathroom! I will definitely not be bored working for AAA.

I really need to improve my blog's ranking. I need to get my Google page rank up another notch or two. I am currently at four out of ten. That's better than some, but I need to get it higher. Now, as far as my Alexa ranking goes, I'm slowly but surely bringing it down. The lower my ranking is the better my site is. I started at over a million and now I'm down to seven hundred thousand and some change. I have no idea how I'm doing it, but whatever I'm doing it's working.

Why do I care about my site's ranking? It's simple: the better my ranking is, the more money I can make advertising. With us getting a house soon we need to make as much money as possible. Does anyone have any tricks on getting my ranking up without spending money to do it? I have submitted my site to a bunch of search engines and other sites that are supposed to help such as Open Project Directory and the likes. So far my Google ranking has not moved. I need all the help I can get. I need more people to link me. Important people. So, if you feel like you're important, or even if you don't, throw a link on your site and help out a fellow blogger pay her mortgage. *grin*

I am really beginning to love Pownce. I know, a lot of you have tried it and think that Twitter is better, but I've met a lot of cool people on Pownce and it's much more interactive (in my opinion) than Twitter. If anyone wants a Pownce invite, let me know. I also found a pretty cool site called Invite Share which allows you to give away any invitations you've come across and acquire some from other sites you might be interested in.

I just realized that today is pay day. Not that it really matters. From now on, every bit of money is going to be spent on bills. We are getting a three bedroom house on the other side of the city that we currently live in. It's all very exciting, but quite stressful too. As you may have noticed, I've been posting my butt off for PayPerPost simply trying to keep the continuous flow of extra money coming in. Every little bit helps, right?

I am far too addicted to my computer and the internet. My husband will attest to that. He tells me all the time that I spend too much time on my computer. I should have been in the shower twenty minutes ago, but I'm still sitting here on my laptop. It's amazing how quickly time goes by when you're having fun. I woke up an hour ago and it feels like only a few minutes. I suppose it would be a good idea to get my butt in the shower and get ready for work. Oh crap, I just remembered that I have to stop and get gas before I go to work too! Yeah, I really should get moving.

Happy hump day! I'm trying to be positive here. It's already been a long week and I've only been to work two days so far. Yesterday felt more like a Monday than the day before. I was so tired and desperate to get out of there all day. I hope today goes better (and faster). I'm really looking forward to Friday. One reason is because I will be out of training, for the most part, after nearly three long months. The other is quite obvious - the weekend begins!

Oh, I also wanted to wish my friend, David, a happy birthday. Hope your day is fabulous!

My 8 year old niece, Allison, spent the night last night. She and Evan have been very well-behaved the whole time. It's a joy to have sleepovers when everything goes well and the children act as they should. They've even helped me out quite a bit with the baby. We had every intention of going to church today at noon, but that didn't pan out so well because Gabrielle decided she wasn't going to cooperate at the most important times of the morning. Jeremy and my brother-in-law had an 8:52am tee time this morning, so it's just me and the kids. I hope God understands how difficult it is, at times, to have an 8 month old baby and a husband who loves to golf.

I have recently visited a very lovely site by the name of Scribble Scratch. The site is authored by "Reese" and it's an extremely attractive blog. She has a beautiful, very professional photography site as well. I'm glad I was "introduced" to these sites as they are quite impressive. I will definitely be visiting often in the future. I am even contemplating the possibility of purchasing some of her miscellaneous photographs for my own design purposes. I love meeting new people with creative talent!

So far I've had a pretty relaxing weekend. My daughter let me sleep until 9am today. She's back to sleeping in my bed instead of her crib, but that's OK. She only wakes up once in the middle of the night for a bottle and a diaper change instead of waking every hour when she's in her crib. We've all been getting a lot more sleep since she started sleeping with me again. Whatever it takes, right? The funny thing is that the past few nights, she ends up sleeping upside down with her feet on the pillow and her head toward the middle of the bed. I couldn't even move my covers last night because the top half of her body was lying on them. Oh, well. I still slept longer than usual so I shouldn't complain about little things.

Gabrielle is almost walking. I can't believe it. She's not even 9 months old yet. Jeremy's mom said he walked at 8 months old and I'm pretty sure my sister recently said that I walked pretty early too. I don't know if that really has anything to do with it, but she really seems to be contemplating it. She walks around the furniture and isn't afraid to pull herself up on anything - stable or not. She stands there, hanging onto whatever, lets go with one hand and looks at me as if she seriously thinking about letting go and taking off. Oh, I see trouble in our near future! It's so much fun to watch her learn and develop though.

Is it really Friday? I'm so happy. This has been the longest week. I'm still in corporate training at work. I know, I've been there for almost 3 months and I'm still in training. I've never worked for a company that had such a long training program before. I'm getting extremely bored with the whole thing. Luckily it is going to end soon. I should be at my desk by next Friday. Thank God.

It was wonderful meeting Rebecca. She is so beautiful. Here are the first pictures of her to be posted in a blog... and there will be many more to come.

Me, the proud aunt, and Becca

beautiful baby Becca...

Happy birthday, baby girl.

My great-niece is here! Both mom and baby are doing well. No c-section was needed. Rebecca Lynn weighs 7 pounds 8 ounces and is 20 inches long. According to my sister, she has just a little bit of hair and it's fairly light. My niece did a great job, I hear. I'm so proud of her!

I am going to the hospital after work to meet her. I'm sure my sister - who is now a proud grandma at 37 years old - will post a much more detailed entry along with a lot of pictures when she has the opportunity. Although I do plan to take my camera with me this evening. So perhaps I will have time to post some when I get home.

I got a call from my sister a little while ago. My niece is at the hospital to have the baby! Apparently they have to induce her. Her due date isn't until this Saturday, but when she went in for her weekly visit today they found that her blood pressure was high and they found protein in her urine - which means Toxemia. My sister said the doctor told her if the baby doesn't come by morning they are going to do a c-section. I hope she doesn't have to go through that. It's so much better to have a natural birth and much easier to recover from. Either way, the baby will be here soon. I can't wait to meet her!

This is the best line of hair care products I have found. I am always on the look out for something that actually does what it says it does and let me tell you - most do not, but Neutrogena has managed to come up with a product line that I actually enjoy using. I feel guilty for buying 8.5 ounces for the same price that I buy much larger quantities of "regular" product for, but in the end the sayings are true - you truly do "get what you pay for" and "it's the quality that matters, not the quantity." My hair feels so good and looks so shiny and healthy now. I doubt I will ever buy any other product. Now, I just have to hope and pray that they don't stop selling it for some reason.

September is such a fantastic month. There are many wonderful things happening in the month of September. First is my wedding anniversary, always a good thing making it to one of those. *grin* The 2nd great thing is my husbands birthday, although the older he gets, the older I get soon after that. And, I just found out that Ben Lee is releasing a new album this September. The 18th, in fact. Perhaps I will buy it for my husband for his birthday.

Nothing like having my site down all day. It's been so frustrating since switching to a new host. I really wish my old host didn't decide to quit. I am contemplating switching over to EE because apparently MT doesn't play nicely with the server I'm on.

I know that I just posted pictures of my little princess yesterday, but she gets cuter every day. Besides, I had to take pictures of her wearing the dress that her Nana Kathy bought her. We had a helluva time trying to get that handkerchief on her head properly. It looks a little funny, but cute nonetheless.

I have done absolutely nothing today. We were going to round up the kids and go to Elvisfest, but the weather hasn't been so great today and I would have spent far too much coin on memorabilia because I have no self control. So, here I sit. Most of the day has been spent at my computer, videotaping the kids, changing poopy diapers and napping with the baby. Sounds like good times, eh? Perhaps my evening will be a bit more eventful. I doubt it, but one can hope. Then again, staying in my pajamas sounds pretty good too. Maybe we'll try for a more exciting day tomorrow.

I can't sleep for anything the past few days! I don't know if it's due to the steroid I am taking for my bronchitis or what, but I can't force myself to climb into bed. My husband is probably totally pissed at me for being up at twenty-some minutes past one in the morning, but I can't help it. I've even tried taking a few swigs of B&B, but it's not working out so well. I'm actually good once I get into bed and actually fall asleep (I didn't want to get up this morning), but I can't seem to find my way to my bed for some reason. What's up with that? I need to get back on track before the weekend is over!

In the 1930's, a barman from the famous Club Twenty One in New York dreamt up a blend of Benedictine and Brandy. This new drink was instantly successful and was called B&B.

Drier than Benedictine, B&B, which is very popular with the Americans, is the result of the careful blend between the strength of an old cognac and the 27 plants and spices which go up to make Benedictine liqueur. The formula, of course, is a secret, and only the chief distiller knows the exact composition of the B&B made at the Benedictine Palace.

So... now you know what my favorite "poison" is... what's yours?

Look at my big girl. Isn't she just the cutest thing you've ever seen?

She's becoming so independent and she is just over eight months old.

I know I'm posting a lot of pictures in this one entry, but I can't help it.

She's going to be walking before you know it! She loves to stand and walk around hanging onto the furniture.

Bye bye! Thanks for looking at me :) My mommy loves me lots.

I don't know why I have Jeremy rent this game. Every time we get it, I get so involved that it takes over my entire day. I get so lost in the game. It's way too addictive and I really have no idea why. It's not much different from real life. You have to sleep, eat, go to work, clean your house, have a social life, reach certain goals. Why is it that I get so caught up in this game when I can do this stuff every day in my life? There's just something about it.

So... how do you like my new skin? Doesn't it totally rock? If for some reason you aren't seeing it, please choose "default skin" or "cafe girl" from the drop down menu. At this time you might get an error by choosing the default option so until the server issues are corrected, use the cafe girl option. There are some issues with the script for my entry titles and other errors due to server problems that my host still has to fix, but I am in love, once again, with Mel's work. If you are ever in the market for a new design for your website or blog... EmTwoWebStudios is the company you want to hire. She has done every skin for this site and I would never look anywhere else to get the job done.

Anyone want to BLINGO with me?

Come on... you know you want to!

I am home again today with my super red nose and hacking cough. I feel horrible that I'm not at work (sort of), but I can't concentrate at work when I feel this horrible. I got absolutely no sleep last night. I'm thinking my inability to sleep is due to the steroid my doctor put me on for my bronchitis. That's the only thing that I can think of because the other meds I am on are all supposed to make me drowsy, but that didn't happen. The funny thing is that after just going to sleep a couple of hours ago, I don't feel tired. I'm going to have to try and get some sleep tonight so I can go back to work tomorrow.

This is a test to see if my hosting support staff actually fixed the problem.

Apparently not. I'm getting highly irritated now.

I should NOT have to go to them to have the same issue fixed over and over again every single time I post a new freaking entry!!!!

Who knew it would be so difficult to switch to a new hosting company?

Not me.

They keep telling me that it's fixed, but it's really not. They only fix things on the entries that I've already written, but as soon as I write a new one - BAM... the problem arises again. That's totally not cool! They also keep telling me to make sure that I have some permissions set to some specific value, but I don't know what the heck they are talking about. I thought that's what I pay them for! I never had to worry about this shit before now.

This is where we will be on Saturday - sick or not. I love ElvisFest in Depot Town. It's a good thing I just paid off my credit card bill. They have the most awesome Elvis memorabilia stands and the Elvis impersonators are pretty good too. This will be Gabrielle's first year at ElvisFest. Evan has accompanied us before and he totally digs it.

Elvis Presley rocks!

I went to the doctor's office today and found out that I have a sinus infection and bronchitis. Isn't that just great? He wrote me off work for the rest of the week, but I am going to try to get as much rest as possible and head back to the office by Friday. I really hate being sick.

I just did something I swore I would never do. I used a saline sinus rinse. I filled up a bottle with warm water and put this packet of sodium chloride/sodium carbonate in it then leaned over the sink and squirted it up one side of my nose and it came out the other side. Then I blew my nose and did the other side. It felt SO WEIRD, but my nose feels so much better. It's amazing the things one will do to get some relief.

I hate being sick. My nose and sinus passages hurt so bad I can't even sleep. I've just taken my 2nd dose of NyQuil and now I am just praying that I will pass out soon. Between this illness and the problems I am having with my new host, I feel like I'm living in a nightmare. I don't understand why I keep having the same problems over and over with this site. It worked fine with my old host so what is the freaking problem now? They keep telling me that the permissions were set incorrectly and that they've been fixed, but every time I add a new entry it has to be fixed again! Arrgh!! Just fix it already!!! I've already made it up to the 3rd level of support with these people. How much higher do I have to go? And, could it get any hotter around here? It's nearly midnight and it's still 80 degrees outside. Am I living in hell? Ignore me if I seem to be rambling.. the NyQuil may have taken over at this point.

... update... of course, now that I've added this entry... every link that has to do with this entry is completely fucked and I get the 500 internal server error when I click on comments, the time - which is the direct link to this entry, and my July 2007 archives - which was already fixed yesterday. I'm SO FUCKING irritated now! Why can't they fix this problem? Why does this happen every time I post a new entry??

It's Monday, it's going to be a thousand degrees outside (ok, well.. near 100), I'm sick and I have to go to work. Blah. It's not going to be a good day. I'm also a little ticked off about the fact that my site is still not working properly. Apparently some people are still having trouble leaving comments. That does not make me a happy girl. I've put in a new complaint to my host. Hopefully things will get resolved before I get irritated enough to find another host. Yeah, I'm pretty chipper this morning.. can't you tell?

My daughter is learning things way too quickly! Over the past week she has learned to get into the sitting position by herself, crawl and now today she can pull herself up into the standing position! Nothing in this house is safe from her. Next thing you know she'll be running around the house chasing her big brother. She also either doesn't understand the meaning of NO or she really doesn't care. She just looks at me (or anyone else that says it) and smiles and then continues doing whatever it is that caused us to say no in the first place.

This isn't the greatest picture because it was taken with Jeremy's cell phone, but here she is in her pack-n-play standing like a big girl. Yes, she has to be put in "jail" now so we can keep her safe. I'll post more pictures when I get my camera back from my sister's house.

This has been the day from hell. Not only am I sick - thanks to my wonderful 8 month old daughter, but I switched to a new host because my old host decided to stop hosting us regular folks and move onto something better.

As you may have noticed my site has been down all day. First, none of my content was transferred from the old server to the new. Once that got straightened out, I was still getting an internal server error and found that the permissions weren't set right or some shit and the guy that was working on it dropped the ball so I had to get another support guy on it. Then I couldn't get into MT for pretty much the same reason so he had to fix that. I hope I never have to switch hosts again!! Luckily the 2nd support guy seemed to know exactly what he was doing and got me up and running in a matter of minutes. I wish I would have gotten him the first time.

Also.. thank you, Mel, for all of your help. I'd still be swearing at my computer and everyone else in my path if you hadn't been there to assist me.

So much is going on with Gabrielle I don't even know where to begin. As I posted a week ago, she's sick again. Jeremy took her back to see her pediatrician yesterday because she wasn't getting better since seeing her on Monday. It turns out she has pneumonia again. She is now on 4 different medications: Augmentin (antibiotic), Albuterol (breathing treatment through a nebulizer again), Zyrtec at bedtime (for allergies), and PediaCare Cough medicine. I hope she gets better quickly. She's responding well to the medication and she acts like she feels ok so that's a good sign.

We also made the decision to take her out of daycare. Not only because she keeps getting sick, but mainly because it's so expensive and there's really no need for it right now. Jeremy isn't working at the moment and there's no point in paying $213.00 a week for daycare when she can stay home with him. He is going to try to find a midnight position so we can continue to save the $1100 a month (between Gabby's daycare and Evan's latchkey) and put that toward a rent or mortgage payment. We won't see each other as much, but at least we'll have enough money to live comfortably. Evan will continue to go to summer latchkey because that was required to be paid for in advance, but once school starts again he will go back to riding the bus to and from school.

p.s. Gabby weighed 19 pounds even at the doctors office yesterday.

Me and my sister are taking our dad to see the latest Stephen King movie and then out to dinner this evening. I am really looking forward it. I can't even remember the last time the three of us went out together.

I have an Alexa ranking now! Sure it's a whopping 9,065, 048, but it's still there. I need to figure out how to get it below 9,999 so that I can have a crack at the big bucks on PayPerPost. Yes, with Alexa lower is better. Strange, I know.

Well, that didn't take long at all. Gabrielle already started crawling last night. She's no expert yet, but she's definitely on the move. I can't believe how quickly things change.

Jeremy put Gabrielle down for a nap three times today and when he went to check on her, he found her sitting up in her crib playing. So, as of today, she is able to get into the sitting position all by herself. She's been able to sit by herself since just after 6 months, but was unable to get into the position on her own. Ooh, we're in big trouble now! I just witnessed it for myself about ten seconds ago. She was sitting on the floor playing, then she was on her belly and then she got into the crawling position and sat back onto her behind. She's going to be crawling very soon and then we'll be chasing her all over the place. Let the games begin!

My poor baby girl is still sick. Her pediatrician is fairly certain she has allergies, but she isn't old enough to be tested yet. She switched her to Zyrtec (she was on Claritin, but it didn't do a darn thing for her), put her on an antibiotic because she believes that she may have something lingering from when she was sick a month ago and recommends we give her a decongestant twice a day.

She also hasn't gained much weight over the last month. At 7 months old she weighed 18 lbs 10 ozs (because she was sick and lost a pound during her 6th month and then had to gain it back) and now she is going on 8 months old and only weighs 18 lbs 15 ozs. I guess a 5 ounce gain is better than nothing, but it really surprised me because she has been eating really good. She eats solids (jar food) at least three times a day and still consumes the same amount of bottles throughout the day and night.

I'm keeping her home from daycare all week in hopes that she will get the rest she needs while on these medications and finally be done with whatever is going on - other than the allergies, but hopefully the Zyrtec will keep that under control.

I just downloaded the Alexa Toolbar and I have to admit it's pretty cool. It doesn't take up any space on my browser, which I was afraid of at first, and it gives you all sorts of stats on each page you go to on the web. I really like it and I'm glad I finally downloaded it. Check it out here. You'll be glad you did.

Well, the first item I put on eBay yesterday already sold last night. Someone in NC purchased it using the "buy it now" feature so I just made $35.00 on a game that I paid sixteen dollars for on eBay back in February. How cool is that? I'll be tearing my house apart today looking for other things to list. That is.. after my hang over disappears. We had my sister and brother-in-law over last night for drinks and to play the Wii. We had a good time although my sister and I spent most of the time on our laptops. My brother-in-law called us a pair of computer geeks. So, yeah.. now I'm waiting for the Advil to kick in and get rid of this headache. Then maybe I'll look for other things to list on eBay.