It’s so easy to take your health for granted. For the last three months, my husband has had several blood tests and seen a variety of specialists to find out what may be wrong with him. He is having a lot of issues with pain and swelling, and some of the results of his blood tests point towards lupus, or something like it. Yet now one of the doctors is saying it isn’t lupus, but perhaps some other as yet to be determined auto-immune disease. In the meantime, she told Dan to try and stick to a more consistent work schedule, get more exercise, and eat better (like my son, my husband hates fruits and vegetables!). So, Dan has a doctor’s note to take to his boss for his schedule, and we’re looking for ways to incorporate more exercise into our routine. I have an exercise bike already, so we don’t need to shop around for ellipticals or any other type of exercise equipment. And as the weather warms up, I want to start taking more daily walks with the kids, and just the two of us at night.

Have I told you about our pets? No, the loveable looking mutt to the left of this entry isn’t mine. But I do have three beautiful cats — one Siamese mix, and two purebred Persians. All three are boys, and all three are spoiled rotten. Anyway, if you are a cat or dog lover, then I’m sure you may be interested in hearing about pet related websites. thoughtsfurpaws.com is a new blog site that is all about pets! They have several different categories of articles, including Pet Poems and information on pet health. The site is clean and well put together, so I highly recommend checking it out when you get the chance.

My husband’s brother went to New York last weekend. It was his first time there. I have been to New York several times, though the last time was close to thirteen years ago. Anyway, one thing New York is good/bad for is tons of street vendors. Many street vendors have hot or fake merchandise. My brother-in-law got approved with an offer for his choice of several luxury watches for $80 per watch. He kept turning the guy down, then finally told him that he only had $20 on him. Lo and behold, the guy agreed to sell him a supposed “luxury” watch for a measly $20!

I tell ya, only in New York!

There are many types of investments that people look into and make nowadays. Investments are a great way to get a return on whatever financial contribution you made to a particular investment. There are property investments, investments into stocks, bonds, companies, and investments into gold, silver and other precious metals. I know of a relative who has a pretty large land investment, and has made a nice return off of it in the last few years.

So far we’ve only made investments via my husband’s 401k plan, but considering how busy and stretched we are keeping up with day to day bills and responsibilities, you can’t blame us for not looking beyond a basic 401k!

I admit it. I love ringtones. When I got my first cell phone in July of 2004 (thanks to my dad, who was nice enough to sign up for a cell phone plan in his name since I had crappy credit and would have been stuck with crappy, expensive and pain in the butt prepaid cards), the first thing I did when I charged up the cell phone was plan on getting some ringtones. Color me disappointed when I found out that my very basic model cell phone — a Nokia something or other — didn’t support the ability to download ringtones from websites or transfer from computers. But it did allow me to purchased very overpriced ringtones from my cell phone provider’s (T-Mobile) website.

I was much happier with my second, third, fourth and especially fifth cell phones (Samsung E315, Motorola Razr, T-Mobile SideKick II and T-Mobile Dash), as I was able to have ringtones sent directly to my phone from websites. Further, with my current cell phone, the T-Mobile Dash, I can connect to any computer and transfer ringtones directly to it.

All this talk of ringtones comes about from a site I’m looking at right now, ringfactory.net. As the name suggests, ringfactory.net is all about ring tones. ringfactory.net boasts about reasonably priced software $19.99) that enables you to make as many ringtones as you’d like using any mp3, CD, or the software itself to come up with your custom ringtone. Hey, sounds good to me! I spent considerable time to find the right programs and settings to make ringtones from existing MP3 files, but I admit, if I had come across this program in my extensive search, I probably would have at least considered it!

You are your children’s first and best teachers. This is the motto of parentalertvideos.com. Right off the bat, parentalertvideos.com strikes me as a very informative site that could definitely be a go-to place for parents. The purpose of parentalertvideos.com is to help educate parents on the serious and crucial topics that they in turn need to talk to and educate their children about.

parentalertvideos.com isn’t free to use, but at the same time can you really put a price on educating your child and preparing him on such topics as alcohol, drugs and sex?

For $149 per year (that’s less than $20 per month), registered members are able to access over one hundred health educational videos that are appropriate for parents of children who are ages five to eighteen (or grades K-13). The videos tackle a variety of topics, including sex, drugs, alcohol, inhalants, peer pressure and bad behavior, and much more.

I admit, the thought of talking about a lot of these subjects with my daughter, and especially my son, scares the crap out of me. I know I’m educated on many of these topics, but am I educated enough? Will I speak to my children in the right manner? Will they listen to me? I know I’m not the only parent who questions themselves on these matters, which is why a site like parentalertvideos.com exists.

Business executives and corporate managers are constantly on the lookout for ways to make their business or company bigger, better, faster, stronger, more committed, and more successful in its particular industry. One idea to look at is Implementing Six Sigma.

The Six Sigma is a carefully thought out and planned business strategy which changes to various aspects of the business - its process, how it’s organized and how it’s run and more - are made in order to increase the good (customer satisfaction, operational efficiencies and money) and decrease the bad.

For more information, check out smartersolutions.com.

Whoever invented travel health insurance is a genius! At one point I got sick when I was out of state, and had to be treated at a local hospital. My mother got socked with a horrendous hospital bill that our insurance company wouldn’t pay, because the treatment was done at an “out of network” hospital. Rather sucktacular, if you ask me. Many people travel, and health insurance should be able to go wherever they go! After all, we’re insuring the person, not the city or state that they live in!

I had to look up a tonneau cover just to find out what one is! Apparently it’s a rather thin, plastic cover that covers up the bed on a truck. What I don’t get is why assign a fancy French sounding word to it? Just call it what it is - a truck bed cover! Besides, most truck drivers I know, especially here in Redneck land, would go in and ask for “one of them there fancy named covers for mah pick up!” before attempting to form the word tonneau.

Dan and I are on the hunt for a new computer desk for him. The one he has now is a beast of a desk, and really isn’t our style. At the time we bought it we thought it was cool, but now contemporary office furniture isn’t so much our thing. The only exception is corner desks — like mine — but that’s because it’s nearly impossible to find a corner desk that isn’t contemporary!

Once Dan has a new desk, we can finally do something better with this living room. Between windows, the front door and the way things lead into the dining area and kitchen, it’s hard to arrange the furniture nicely. What makes it worse is the monstrous desk taking up such a huge chunk of space! Ugh.