Hanna Lost Her Umph

I'm glad Hanna didn't pack a punch when it passed through our area last night. There were a lot of boat owners anxiously waiting by the harbor to see if their boats are in danger. I'm sure they and all homeowners are relieved. We got lucky unlike some people down south. There's another one coming towards Florida, hurricane Ike. I hope the people down south don't get pummeled by these storms, especially those in New Orleans. They've suffered enough. There aren't a lot of leaves on the lawn, just a few scattered here and there. I remember there was a storm which broke some tree branches around the property. I hope my soon-to-be-ripe tomatoes made it through.

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Getting Ready For Hanna

Hanna is expected to hit the southcoast overnight. I hope it's not as strong as they expected it to be so there wouldn't be any damage to people's properties and loss of life. It's good that it is the weekend, I don't have to deal with driving through heavy rains to get the kids to school. Some drivers are crazy, speeding and tail-gating even if the roadways are wet. Obviously they're morons.

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What's Your Guilty Pleasure?

C'mon, spill it here. What do you crave most? Is it a special cake, fatty ribs, Lechon, a bar of chocolate? My guilty pleasure is Haagen-Dazs. Dulce de Leche. Yummy. If you are going to have ice cream only once in a couple of months, why not have real ice cream? No low-fat or non-fat wanna-be ice cream for me. I want one of the best ice cream out there. How about you? What's your guilty pleasure?

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Oh Well...

I wasn't able to do any blogging yesterday. I only dropped ECs, I returned the drops made at my blogs. Other than that, I didn't have time to do anything else. I had a lot of chores around the house and it would be unfair to my family to put that aside and work on my blog. There were times when I just let my pending jobs expire because something needs my attention in the house. I also have bouts of blog laziness as well. I wonder if other bloggers feel this way sometimes or is it just me?

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I'm Still on the Fence

Ok, both Obama and McCain have chosen their running mates. Obama who ran his campaign with the premise of change, chose an old Washington insider, Joe Biden. McCain on the other hand, chose Sarah Palin, a first-term governor from Alaska, a pro-life advocate and definitely a Washington outsider.

Who am I voting for? I still don't know. I'm neither a Democrat or a Republican, I'm an Independent. I don't get swayed by speeches full of rhetoric nor do I get swayed by my family. I like to watch the candidates in a debate situation, not in a convention where they obviously read their 'prepared' speech from a teleprompter. You should at least watch each candidate in a 'town hall meeting' situation and see how they react to the questions.

How about you? How do you vote? Do you vote along party lines? Do you vote for someone who supports things that you personally don't believe in?

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Mishmash

There were two days this past week where I did not go after campaigns. There a number of offers that are available for picking but I had other things to do that I felt needed more attention. I don't stress out if I missed out on big campaigns.(@%# to whoever snagged that $65 campaign LOL joke!) The only thing that I did that is related to blogging is to drop ECs. I feel that it's important to reciprocate the drops I received. Dropping ECs can be tiring and dare I say stressful. I still have to get up to dropping 300/day. I did it twice but boy, it wasn't fun. I usually get sidetracked, I see blogs that have interesting posts and stop to read the content and before I know it, mommy duty beckons. :)

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Goodbye Comcast Cable Internet?

I've been satisfied with our Comcast internet service until these past few days. I'm a regular surfer although I rarely download music or videos. I use the internet for web surfing (mostly news bits) and blogging. Lately, I've noticed that our internet connection which used to be 'fast' has slowed down to a crawl. It takes a while for the page to load. I stare at a blank white screen for what seems like a minute before I get to see the page. For example, when I go to check my Yahoo mail. I see the Yahoo logo, then the borders then after a while I see the messages. Sometimes it takes a minute or so for the whole page to load. When I tried to view a photo a friend has sent me, it downloaded at a snail's paced. I read online that Comcast has been limiting the internet speed of some customers, those that they consider 'heavy users'. Am I a heavy user?
I'm seriously considering getting that FIOS thing from Verizon. I heard from my friend Lanie that they're satisfied with it. Does anyone else have any experience with FIOS?

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A Mountain of Laundry

With the amount of laundry that I do each week, you would think that I have a football team in my household. I have 6 piles sorted out if it's a regular week: denims, darks, reds/pink, brown/beige, whites and towels plus two loads for the bed sheets. Once in a while there'll be an extra load on top of that. The washing and drying part is not the hard part. The bulk of the work is in the folding part, takes a long time to do all of it. I try to fold the clothes as soon as it's finished in the dryer, or else it'll just pile up in the laundry basket. The kids meanwhile helps me in sorting and folding the socks and towels. I'm starting to have my daughter wash her own towels, bed sheets and pillowcases. I cannot wait for the two of them to do all the laundry in our household. That'll be the day!

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Be Safe, Don't Beat the Red Light

I just received an email from my dad in California. My sister and her four kids were in a car accident. She was turning left and was already in the middle of the intersection when another car hit them. She has a cut on her lower lip and left wrist bandaged. She complains also of slight headache, obviously because her head was violently jerked forward and then back as result of the collision which resulted in her airbag activating. My nephew Ian (8) has a slightly bruised right pelvis while Kyle (9), Samantha (3) and Collin (2) are all okay. Yes, they were wearing their seatbelts and on their car seats.
Why are people in such a hurry that they put everyone else's lives in danger? Countless lives are lost everyday because of reckless drivers. So next time you get in that car, please drive safely. Yellow means get ready to stop, it does not mean 'step on the gas and speed up.' BE SAFE!

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Pre-K Meet and Greet

Last night, we went to St. Mary's school to meet my son's pre-school teacher and classmates. Even though he's been to this school so many times (my daughter goes to this school), he got nervous when we were about to enter the gym. He asked his dad to carry him and wouldn't let go. He closed his eyes and buried his face onto his dad's shoulder. What happened to the little boy who was excited to go to school? He's been wanting to go to school for as long as I can remember.
When it was time for Monsignor Oliveiras to read a book to the kids, he loosened up a bit. He sat up front with the kids and listened. Being a typical mom, I was so proud of him of course. He didn't cry like some kids in the room. I can't believe that my baby is entering pre-school. I'll be all alone during the day since he will have the same schedule as his sister. There will be no one to ask me to help him or do things for him. It will feel lonely just as I felt when my daughter started pre-school many years ago. So I have more time on my hands now and you know what that means. I'll have more time to drop ECs! LOL

Graphic Credit: sweetasmel.blogspot.com

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NBC is Pathetic

Was I the only one who was waiting for the LIVE BROADCAST of the 2008 Summer Olympics this morning? I'm sure a lot of people were on the same boat as I was this morning, watching NBC in the hopes of seeing the Opening Ceremony LIVE. But, there was NOTHING, NADA, ZILCH, ZERO. What happened NBC? Americans were probably the only ones around the world who weren't able to see the ceremony as it happened. I'm sure even those who live in remote locations like Bhutan and Ghana were able to see it. So why not us?

NBC clearly values $$$ over anything else. The Today Show hosts did not even mention it in their broadcast. Were they pretending that it wasn't happening that time? NBC blacked out everything this morning, they wanted to show the opening ceremony during Prime Time. So pathetic.

Oh yeah, they also changed the meaning of NBC to "Not airing Before Cash."

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Blogger or Wordpress?

When I first started blogging a couple of years ago, I started with Bravejournal then I moved on to Blogger and have been with it eversince. I stayed with Blogger when I bought this domain since they make it so easy (and you can't beat the $10/year fee.) I didn't need to worry about transferring files and all those stuff. Now that I'm starting another blog, I'm curious about Wordpress. I see a lot of blogs using this platform and the templates are varied compared to the ones that use Blogger.

BUT I have a lot of questions to all of you Wordpress users out there:
1) How much does it actually cost per year? (Is it more than $10?)
2) How easy is it to maintain? (Is it like 'Plug and Play?)
3) Do I need to know FTP and all that it entails? (I know a little bit about it)

Right now I am comfortable with using Blogger but I'm not giving up. I'll learn how to use Wordpress, just you wait and see.

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Fun in Summer Day Camp

Today's the last day of Amber's summer camp at Camp Metacomet. She's been going to day camp for the last two weeks. This is her third year attending this camp here in the YMCA in our town but this was the first time where she's in a group that's all girls. Camp Metacomet is a fun camp, that's why she wants to go back every year. The facility is beside a vast nature conservation land so kids have a lot of outdoor activities. Amber's favorites are the ropes course, nature walk, swimming, archery, cooking and the rock wall. Wait, that's almost everything! :) She won an award for being the best rock wall climber of all the girls in camp. That's quite an achievement, I'm so proud of her. She also hit the bullseye in archery (she took after dh, who used to play archery). Don't mind me, I'm just being a typical mom who's proud of her offspring. I wonder how she'll do in a traditional camp, one where kids don't go home for a week or so. I don't think she's ready for that though and I don't think I'll be ready for that any time soon.

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Give Me Back the Touchtone!

Have you ever called a company's customer service line and encountered those voice prompts? Those are annoying! No matter what I say, the 'machine' can't seem to understand what I'm saying. It's not as if I don't know how to speak English and I tried speaking slowly, fast, normal tone, it doesn't matter which way. Sometimes, it just doesn't understand what I was saying. How I wish they'd give me a choice of using voice prompts or touchtone. I prefer pushing a button than getting frustrated and saying words over and over again.

I have a website in my favorites called GetHuman database where they have secret phone numbers and codes that immediately get an actual, live person on the line for customer service at nearly 1000 major companies. This website is definitely a life-saver for someone like me who does not have a lot of patience. LOL

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Blogger or Google Problems?

It seems some blogs, including this one is having problems when it is viewed using Internet Explorer. An error message saying the website cannot be opened and operation is aborted. It works fine when viewed using Mozilla Firefox. At first, I thought it's just my blog but I went to visit my friends' blogs and I encountered the same problem. Check your blogs in IE and see if it's viewable.

What to do now?

UPDATE: I found the culprit, SITEMETER is having problems which in turn is affecting all blogs that uses it. Remove the widget temporarily until it gets sorted out.

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What Is Happening with Blogger?

Even though I have my own domain, it is still hosted by Blogger. I noticed that my blog and some blogs out there are acting weird this afternoon. When I load the page, only the header and the left sidebar loads. The main and right sidebar takes a while to load, about 20 secs after the first two. I didn't change my layout or edited anything. I hope it will get back to normal soon since it is driving me crazy.

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Picky Pickle

That's me! There are a couple of available jobs that's been staring back at me for a couple of days now but I have no intention of taking it. Gone are the days when I grab everything I can lay my hands on. I'm back to my good ol' self, 'picky pickle'.

I also don't have that much time for blogging. There are a lot of things lined up for me to do this summer. I don't stay up late at night just to blog. I just don't want to do it. I guess that's why I'm still on the fence if I'm going to make another blog. I still have not updated my food blog ever since we came back for vacation. I want to change the layout for that blog. I have so many ideas but no time to implement it. Maybe I should just pay for a new layout but that costs money. So I guess I need to pursue more tasks and not be a picky pickle.

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Alexa

Finally, my Alexa rating is below 1 million. Yipee! What does that mean exactly? I really don't know. LOL What did I do different? Uh, nothing. Unlike the Google ranking, Alexa rating is supposedly based on concrete data. If most of your visitors have an Alexa toolbar installed on their browser, your rating will improve. If that's the case, then maybe we should all install this toolbar and help each other improve our Alexa rating.

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Home Sweet Home...

There's no place like home. How true! After being gone for a month, I really appreciate being back home. I miss everything in my house starting with our comfortable bed. I also miss my old washer and dryer. I think these were the things I missed the most. Staying in hotels that does not have laundry facilities and only offer laundry service, one has to find self-service laundrymat unless you want to spend a fortune paying for laundry.

After eating in restaurants for most of our trip, I miss cooking our own food. Did we gain a lot of weight while on vacation? The good news is that we didn't. Why? Because we walked a lot. There were two days where we walked a total of 16 miles (I had a pedometer with me). Those were in Rome, Italy and Berlin, Germany. The other days, our average was about 10 miles/day. If it weren't for the walking, we could've easily gained weight.

There were a lot of mails that accumulated in the Post Office while we were gone. The usual bills and some catalogs. There was also an ad from a computer store offering deals on system memory.

So, yes, I am back. I wish I can take a break from blogging a little longer but I miss getting that email from PayPal informing me that $ was deposited in my account. :)

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VACATION TIME!

It's finally HERE! I will be leaving for a month-long vacation tomorrow, Saturday. We will be flying into Rome,Italy and take the train across Europe. We will be visiting seven countries, total. From Rome, we will be going to Florence and Venice. Then we'll go to Switzerland and visit Luzern and Wengen and go to Jungfraojoch also known as 'Top of Europe'. After that, we'll head on to Strasbourg in France. We will not go to Paris since it's out of the way, we'll save that for another trip. Next is Trier in Germany from where we will also visit Luxembourg and Belgium. Then we'll go to The Netherlands to visit Amsterdam and The Hague. Tired yet? LOL After that we'll head off to Berlin and then the last stop is Munich.

Along the way, we will be meeting friends. Some for the first time, like Vicky and Prescy. The others, like Doris and Aleth, I've already met in the Philippines. I will also see my college barkada, Evelyn and my cousin, Edwin. I am already getting excited and am praying that we will have a safe trip all the way.

I will surely miss my friends here in MA and of course here in blogging. I hope you don't abandon my blog, mahirap maglinis ng cobwebs. LOL I will be posting updates and photos from our vacation so stay tuned!

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