Well, it is official - my oldest turns six today.  Not only does that make me a little sad (since he is no longer a baby anymore), but it also means that he is old enough to have a birthday party.  Yes, that is right, we are having a birthday party at our house (don’t know if that is a good idea or not).

Anyway, since it is nice out, we decided to have the party outdoors.  We have rented some obstacle courses and inflatable slides and are getting them setup in the backyard right now.  We will be also having a barbeque with hot dogs and birthday cake in the backyard.

It will be interesting to see how many people show up for the party - he invited fifteen kids, but we have only heard back from ten of them.

I am sure that it will be a fun party, though I think that I will probably be happy when it is over.  Wish us luck!

I remember the first time I ever saw a horse race. I was so excited because my dad was taking me and he had not taken me anywhere for three years, since he split up with my mom. It was also the last place he ever took me, as he was in a fatal accident a few months later. It was such a grand adventure for me, and I clung to every piece of advice he gave me on horse racing tips.

I decided that I would go back to the track and try out my chances the day I was old enough and I did. In the days leading up to my birthday, I asked nearly everybody I knew for racing tips, as I wanted it to be a successful day. I wanted to savor every little memory that I had of that day at the races I had with my dad.

I called a friend and asked him for the name of a good horse racing tipster and I got advice from the guy on who I should be betting on. He did not let me down and I won a lot of money that day. I still wonder if my dad was there in spirit, giving my horses an extra little push so that they would make it over the finish line first.

One of the hardest challenges I have had with getting websites online is the web design.  I am no programming guru, so I have tried to stumble through creating a website, only for it to look like a three year old made it - yes, it was that primitive.

But, I know that if I am to succeed online, I need to make a site that both looks good and takes advantages of such things as a DHTML menu for navigation.  Now, I don’t know the first thing about stuff like that, so I need something that will make it easier for me.

So, I purchased some quick and easy web design software that takes care of all the coding for me.  Now, I can just lay things out how I see fit, and the software takes care of all the coding mumbo jumbo for me.  Creating websites has never been easier.

I remember reading a while back in one of my business magazines about a young woman with no real experience in some aspect - not sure now if it was design or manufacturing. But, the point was that she had managed to develop a product that was selling like hotcakes and was running into problems keeping up with sales in terms of production.

She made the coolest gadgets that in some ways were actually pretty funny. Clocky is in most ways a normal everyday type of alarm clock. You tell it when to buzz or beep you in the morning and it will do just that. However, when you reach out to hit the snooze button because you just want five more minutes, Clocky won’t be there.

This alarm clock, depending on what model you pick, will tumble across the floor or roll on wheels under the bed or behind other furniture to avoid being shut off and to make sure you are fully awake.

Funny, if it’s not you chasing the darn thing. Useful if you over use the snooze button. 

I think that our home might have suffered the worst disaster that it has ever had to in the five short years of its existence.  Now, it wasn’t any natural disaster by any means, but rather something that happened by accident.

You see, I had my son carry a case of wine from the basement up to the main floor.  Now, I knew that it was going to be sort of heavy, but he is a big boy, so I didn’t think that it was going to be any problem.

Boy, was I wrong.

He made it successfully up the stairs and into the living room, when the box broke.  The wine bottles all smashed and I found my white carpet stained with wine - pretty much all over the living room.

Thankfully, the carpet cleaning Exeter company that we usually use has an emergency line, and they are over right now.  I hope that it can be fixed.

These days engaged couples are going all out to create a wedding that is an Event with a capital “E.” Perhaps one reason is the increasing number of brides who chose to hire a wedding planner. And once these entrepreneurs show prospective clients all the luxury accoutrements available, is it any surprise that they go for the “deluxe” package?

An advantage to hiring a wedding planner is that she (or he or an entire team) will handle every detail. If you’re wanting Hummer limos, your planner will take care of the limo hire. If you’re getting married abroad - and many couples are opting to do that - your planner will either do online research on, say, “limo hire Surrey” if that’s where the event will be held, or they will subcontract part of the overseas operation.

I “get” the allure of all this first class attention, but it saddens me. An entire village could be fed for months on the cost of a luxury wedding.

We went through a tornado about six or seven years ago that was devastating to our town and did quite a bit of damage to our own property including our trucks.

We weren’t hurt and our house was still standing after the 150 mile per hour winds whipped through town, but we were shook up and had lost our garage.

One of our trucks was inside the garage and now had a two by four piece of lumber through the back window and our other truck was parked beside the house with a caved in side from debris.

Luckily our auto insurance company came out quickly and helped figure out what to do for us. They also got our checks cut quickly so that we could get back on the road in a few days. Other residents had much more trouble getting their car insurance companies to help out. Some took weeks, and others even took months.

We eventually moved out of town and ended up with a new insurance company after searching through many other auto insurance quotes online.

Whether it’s grain or cattle, FOREX or domestic stock Indices, cocoa, coffee and sugar, currencies or petroleum products, trading commodities can be an exhilarating and intoxicating activity. Day traders in particular get a rush from staying on the bleeding edge of futures transactions.

Since I was trained to be a technical trader, the emotional high of day trading has no place in my strategy. My charts are my manuals and they tell me everything I want and need to know. That’s not to say I don’t need to study up on options techniques or particular strategies that people have successfully utilized in the futures marketplace.

The beauty of technical trading is that we don’t initiate transactions based panic, fear, optimism or hope. Emotions don’t come into it at all. Decisions are based on conclusions we draw from analyzing chart trends. And by utilizing smart options-buying strategies to hedge “our bets.”

Having grown up with a mild case of sleep apnea, I thought that it would be fitting to help others that have suffered from the same obstructive sleep apnea that I have suffered from all of my life.  There is not a store in my home town that carries these products, so I knew that I should have a good choice for a product.

Finding a location was pretty easy as we didn’t need much space to have our office.  But the real challenge for me was to determine the necessary stock that was going to be required in the office to make sure that we could cater to our clients.

At the start, I have ordered some CPAP machines, Bipap machines and an assortment of sleep apnea masks which should cover the needs of most of my customers.

It will be interesting to see how the public will respond to having such a resource in town - I just hope it is a positive one.

I starred in a semi-professional theatrical production early this year and it had an interesting format. We talked directly to the audience instead of out to the cosmos through the invisible “fourth wall” between actor and audience.

One of the neat things about this format was that we could ad lib during the times we interacted with the audience. One character called BINGO numbers. Another made wise cracks. My opportunity came at the beginning of the show. I was supposed to be a former circus performer as a young girl. Since we all hawked tickets for our production to generate a respectable audience, I knew when friends of mine were going to be there.

So this one night I said, “Billy Young, is that you? I haven’t seen you in almost 30 years. You know the Mass is in English now.”

Finally I asked, “Are you still trying to convince people to invest in your stock trading system? The one that nearly got you suspended from parochial school in the twelfth grade?”

He hasn’t spoken to me since. I tell you, what I do for my art!