My daughter, going on twenty years old, loves to shock her friends by bragging that her mother got her started playing video games. And it’s true. Back in the late seventies, we bought the precursor to today’s video game consoles, the game of Pong, which hooked up to our television. From that time onward, I was hooked.

Then I discovered arcades, and blew many a quarter on Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man and Galaga. Those were my favorites. I’d sometimes try my hand at Donkey Kong or Centipede, but never had the success with them that I had with the others.

When my daughter was fairly young I bought a game system and three games I thought she (and I) would like. Talk about being hooked.

Since that time my daughter has bought or been given just about every gaming system out there. Now that everything is pretty much 3-D, I can’t play them anymore because they make me dizzy. It’s like watching a roller coaster ride. My brain can’t process it correctly and I get sick.

I saw an ad the other day in the newspaper that said free PSP stuff. I guess the next big thing has already hit that household and they’ve moved on. But free? So of course I picked up the phone. Free is good.

About one time per week, I take some time to look online to find deals on online auction sites.  Sometimes I have a particular product in mind, while other times, I just look to see if there are any deals available.

Today, I was able to find some good deals on bouncy castles for sale.  A buddy of mine has a party rental business, and he would find a good deal on them very desirable.  I didn’t even realize that these sorts of things were sold on auctions until today.

I guess that isn’t the only thing that is sold on them either.  I found some inflatable slides, and I even placed a bid on one - my kids would love it.  Okay, maybe I would like it too, provided it can hold my weight (I have gained a bit since being a kid).

Well, I am going to keep look for the next hour before I go to work.  I’ll have to see what other treasures that I can find that are on sale.

A couple of years ago, I purchased a couple of very cute baby boy outfits at a very good price. I put them away so that I would have them the next time I needed to buy baby gifts for a shower.

I have had several friends have babies in the past few years, but it seems like all anyone has anymore is baby girls. Out of the past eight baby showers I have been to, seven of them have been for baby girls. It is crazy. I don’t know how all of these little girls are going to find husbands one day.

It is kind of ironic that it is the boy outfits that I bought to stock up on, when I could have really used the girl ones. I have learned my lesson now and when there are good sales on, I buy some for both boys and girls. I will be prepared next time.

I found myself on a trip this past weekend, and sadly my laptop didn’t come with me.  It isn’t the newest machine on the block, and the battery just holds a small half hour charge - not enough to get anything done on the road.  So, I left it at home, and I was left with only my mobile phone.

But I found out that it isn’t the worst thing in the world.  You see, I was sure to join a mobile social networking site before I left, and I was able to get some networking done on the little downtime that I had on the trip.

In fact, had I known how well the wap site I joined worked months ago, I would have made more of an effort to use it in the past.

Needless to say, I think that social networking on my phone will be one of my priorities in the next few months - I am surprised how effective it can be.

I can admit that I don’t know everything and that I am always ready to learn something new.  In fact, that is why I searched for a mentor for so long - now I have someone that knows more than I do to help me out.

Specifically, I am trying to achieve some level of MLM success - up to this point, the results have been pretty mediocre.  Sure, I have made a little bit of money, but beyond that, I haven’t made much at all.

But that is where my mentor steps in - he has good experience with MLM lead generation as well as the ins and outs of running a successful business.  Even his suggestion that I should be blogging for profit - no fun - has made a difference in my bottom line.

I have a ways to go before I am an expert, but I know that with direction from my mentor, that will definitely be a possibility.

As I was growing up, I never lacked for anything. I always had more than what I needed and I was quite young when I realized that my parents were both very successful people. I was healthy and happy and I had everything a girl my age could ever want. I had the best Barbie dolls and the trendiest clothes and I had parents who loved me and gave me everything I ever wanted.

That all ended on day when the plane that they were on was hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center. I was numb as my life came crashing in around me. For days, I stayed locked in my room, not wanting to deal with the reality that life would never be the same again.

I was told that all of their money had been put in a child trust fund for me and I was sent to live with my grandmother, who did not believe in spoiling a child. I could not wait until I was old enough to take care of myself, and the day I was able to claim my money, I bought a house and moved out. I started spoiling myself with everything that I had been missing for the past six years and I started living again.

I know that this is what they would have wanted and I still think about them all the time.

I have never been so angry at my husband in my life as the day he came home and told me that he had bought a motor home and quit his job and that we were one travel across the country selling rugs can make a living.  I told him in no uncertain terms, that I would not be going with him and that he may as well send me half of his earnings as part of our divorce settlement.

Needless to say, the next day he went looking for RV storage Philadelphia, to store the motor home he bought until one day he could talk me into living in this dream with him.  I told him that he better keep dreaming as that was about as close as he was going to get to traveling across the country to sell rugs with me.

Luckily for him, he was able to get his job back and say both of his dignity and his marriage.  We can finally now look back on and laugh and he will admit how foolish he was to think that we could make a living this way and enjoy our life.

We were approached in the mall the other day about attending a seminar on building web pages and learning about web hosting and that kind of thing. As the seminar was free, we decided to check it out. We thought that we might just learn a thing or two.

As it turned out, my husband knew a lot more than the people that were teaching the seminar. It ended up being a big ploy to get us to purchase the phenomenally expensive web hosting package with the promise that our sites would instantly become successful.

When they talked to us one on one, we told them that we were perfectly happy with the dotnetnuke web hosting that we were currently using for a fraction of the price. They rambled on about how they were so much better for the next twenty minutes and we finally just got up and walked out. We do not consider it good practice to put down another company and I had heard enough.

My mother is getting quite old and is no longer able to completely care for herself anymore. My brother and I decided tat we should move her to an assisted living facility, as she does not want to live with either one of us. It is important to her to still be able to exude a little bit of independence and we want to respect her wishes.

She is still able to make many decisions for herself and we want her to have the dignity to be able to make any major choices for herself. She agreed to go to assisted living and she thanked us for treating her like an adult, unlike a lot of her friends’ children do.

We decided that she was still able bodied enough to live on her own, as long as she had some help. She took the steps to find hip and knee replacements in Orange County a month ago when she needed them and that alone told me that she knew when there was a problem and would admit it when she needed something.

Of all the subjects I would expect to hear being discussed over breakfast in our sleepy little Central Ohio village, futures trading wouldn’t be my first guess. And yet this subject is just as likely to be overheard among local farmers these days as how many acres they already have planted and when, which new equipment they’re planning to buy, and the price hogs are bringing at auction.

The faces of these farmers aren’t the old, grizzled salt-of-the-earth types I remember from my childhood. The men — yes, all of them are men — may prefer jeans, flannel shirts and boots like their fathers before them, and getting dressed up may mean switching from work boots to cowboy boots.  But there the resemblance to previous generations of farmers ends.

Many are savvy agri-businessmen who have learned to use futures options to minimize losses in a market when grain prices plunge. This is not your father’s agri-business anymore.