I am the oldest of four kids. We all have our unique qualities. My youngest brother is the artsy one. He is the person you can go to for any type of art and he is able to produce it quickly. One of my sisters is the smart one. I think she could win any kind of trivia game because she knows everything there is to know about anything. I have always been the technology one. I think it will forever be my place with my family. Everyone always comes to me with any and all technology questions. Sometimes it is questions about Microsoft Word, sometimes it is questions about direct tv vs cable and sometimes it is questions about operating a computer. I am always happy to help and I love my family, but the world is getting so advanced with technology that they might need to start learning some things. My mom can’t keep calling me every time she needs to turn on the computer or open a webpage. I keep hoping she will remember, but I keep getting calls about simple things.

Four years have passed since the car accident happened that ruined my life. I was on my way home from work when I was rear ended by a car whose driver was too busy talking on the phone to realize that the cars in front of her had stopped for a red traffic signal.

She rear-ended the vehicle in front of me, pushing that vehicle into the rear of my truck. At the time of impace I was in the process of changing the CD in the CD player, since I had already stopped for the traffic light. I was badly injured as a result of the accident, and we had to hire a lawyer to help us to recover the costs of the accident. I wish that we had been able to find a claim calculator on the Internet back then to help us figure out what type of award we might be able to expect from the accident. As it is we still have not yet settled from the accident, and I am thinking that we never will see any money from it.

I recently found the coolest game. It is called ladder golf or blongo ball, and it is a great tail-gating game or game on the beach. It is very simple to make, but I found mine online. I used our Texas Satellite Star Internet to buy my own ladder golf set. I was exposed to the game several years ago by a good friend of mine. He had a group of people to his house for a party, and he took out his ladder golf set. The game is simply three PVC pipes lined up in a ladder. You toss two golf balls connected to a foot-long string at the ladder. Each of the three ladder rungs is worth a certain number of points, and the goal is to earn as many points as possible each round. Each round you get three tosses with the ropes. The game may not seem that exciting, but it really is a lot of fun. Last year some friends and I had a ladder golf tournament, and my wife and I took second place. I’m excited about taking my set to the beach this summer.

One of my favorite things to do in my spare time is to write things for my movie blog. I’ve had it for a few years now and it’s really surprising how much of a following it’s picked up! I might just chalk it up to my good writing, but I think that a lot of it is the sarcastic approach that I take to it. It kind of makes it a little more funny to read than all of those straight laced and by the book type movie reviewers out there. Besides, it’s no fun taking yourself too seriously!

Well, I was thinking the other day that I’ve really just maxed out my potential for the blog on this blogging system I’ve been using from teh beginning, so I started looking for a place to buy up a domain name so I can just move it to my own website. While I was doing that I saw the site DomainNAMES.com and decided to use that after I read through it some.

i’m going to try and keep the look of my old blog, except add on some fun little things to it too. That way I won’t alienate any of my longtime readers or anything like that.

My husband and I thought we had covered all our bases when we opened the doors to our pet store earlier this year. Boy, were we wrong! When the first client got up to the register I realized I had never research credit card or bank card processing companies! I have to tell everyone those first few weeks that we only accepted cash which was not only really embarrassing, it lost us quite a few sales. Now that we have all our ducks in a row I feel much more professional than I did at the beginning but for a while there I think we were both running on fumes. It’s definitely not easy owning your own business and it’s hard being responsible for every little problem that arises that at the end of the day I love being my own boss. I don’t ever think I’ll go back to corporate life, especially since I get to play with adorable dogs all day and get paid for it! Who could ask for a better job?

Oh sure, he could keep using the Business Credit Cards he had under the old name, but not under the new name.  It just didn’t make a lot of sense to me.  I found it very frustrating.  If I were going to start a new business now and get involved in business credit, I think that I’d do a little bit of research online about it at the http://www.businesscredit.org website. Using that as a resource, I’m sure that would steer me in the right direction on deciding which kind of credit to apply for, so I don’t end up paying for services we don’t need.

So, mine are done but I know some of my family and friends put it off until the very last minute. Usually the deadline is April 15, but this year they have extended it to April 18. So you procrastinators have 3 more days to put it off – or get it done!

So, what is a woman to do?  Smart women get estimates, and this is where the Internet can help.  There are websites, such as repairpal.com that you can use to plug values into their search engine to determine fair rates for different types of repairs, and then find out where different local repair shops are located.  So you could, for example, find out how much you could expect to pay to replace the timing belt on a honda accord in the San Francisco auto repair market.  You can switch it out to match your own needs.  I think that this kind of help is a great advantage to all of us consumers – you can get a good idea of the value of the repair so that you are not treated like “fresh meat” at the repair shops!

My entire family was just about climbing the walls because we had no Internet access for so long!  I think I’ll be checking out the wildblue satellite internet services to see what their rates are.  I don’t want to be without Internet again!  I can’t believe how dependent my family has become on it for so many functions – entertainment, communications, paying bills, shopping…..  We depend on it so much!

Now that the Internet has come back up on line, the entire family has parked themselves in front of their respective computers.  Watching shows, checking their emails, playing games.  I have to make sure that the bills I needed to pay got paid!  I hope I didn’t miss any deadlines!

Using that website I was able to get Susan an estimate on what it should cost to get her car fixed, and where the repair shops are located near her.  I think that’s a great website to use – especially if you are not someone who is extremely savvy when it comes to car repairs.  It is good to know in advance how much something should cost so if you end up going someplace that tells you it is going to cost a lot more than that you can know that they are trying to rip you off and just take your business elsewhere.