I am not the most conventional person you could ever hope to meet. My husband found this out shortly after we started dating, when he sent me a dozen red roses. They were beautiful and I loved the thought, but I knew I had to tell him that I would much rather receive a potted plant.

I do not really like flowers, as they always die. I prefer something that I can keep alive and have the reminder of his love for me every day, not just for a week. He was not offended and has given me many beautiful plants since then.

I have many little quirks like this one, but I think that they all have good reasons behind them. For instance, rather than getting a gift certificate for me to go to the spa, he took a massage class. He knew I would appreciate this more as the gift was truly lasting. I am so glad that I have found someone that understands me and loves me for the way that I am.

I like the word “blogosphere.” It reminds me of the term logosphere, which is the world of words. In a sense, that’s what the blogosphere is, a world of words, but with a difference. These words appear exclusively on blogs throughout the world.

What I like best about the term blogosphere is that it implies an inter-connectivity, much like brain cells are connected by synapses. Begin with a neuron in an obscure part of the brain and you’ll eventually reach pathways to all parts of the brain. Whether your blog is a means of personal expression or if you are blogging for profit, the inter-connectivity is what separates them from traditional websites.

You might use a website for, say, MLM lead generation. But if you want real MLM success, you need a way for your downline to interact with you and with each other. In my opinion, a blog is the best venue for that. Combine it with a forum and you’ve got a winning combination.

Since I’m considering setting up what is considered to be a high risk business on line, I’m researching my options for payment processors. Many US merchant account providers for credit card processing won’t work with high risk businesses such as entertainment and some travel businesses.

So, this leads me to look at offshore merchant accounts which often will work with high risk businesses without any hassles. However, the problem I’m finding is being able to determine which provider is legitimate. I’ve read about account providers who hold your money, don’t pay out or close business without sending the funds that are due.

Many of the high risk off shore merchant accounts are probably very reliable and professional, but I’d rather  not lose any money to a crooked account processor if I don’t have to. It is one thing to lose money to customers who aren’t honest, but not to be able to trust your business partners is a really worrisome thing.

As I am just about to leave home for work, I thought that I should talk about the big walk that the head honchos of our company are doing today.  They come about four times per year, and today will be one of those times (provided that they show up).

I find it so funny that our management at the store gets into a panic whenever one of these days come.  You see, we have been cleaning everything from top to bottom, so that the store is in pristine condition.  Forget that normally you might find some dust on the shelf – no, we need to show complete perfection.

Even worse, we need to know the sales figures for the best selling products in our department.  So I have made sure to know what the best selling GPS is that we sell as well as how many we have sold this period.

So, as I head off to work, I know today will be an off day – thankfully, we don’t have to be perfect every day of the year.

I’m a dreamer by nature. My book collection is heavily on the fantasy side, although I also love science fiction as well as mysteries. I suppose I must also confess to being a children’s literature buff — especially young adult fiction.

It probably won’t come as much of a surprise that I appreciate a good love story. See, I told you I’m not only a dreamer, I’m also into fantasy. Sorry. My disillusionment with the possibility of falling in love again goes through cycles. Right now it’s in the “It will never happen in a million years” phase.

So anyway, back to being a dreamer. One of my dreams is to go to New York to see a Broadway show. Barring that, I’d like to be able to afford a Broadway touring company production locally. I’ve been hoping to use my new-found knowledge of presale passwords to get discounted tickets before they go on sale to the general public. Right now my hopes are pinned on seeing “Wicked.”  Please, don’t tell me it’s “so last year.” I don’t care. I’m a dreamer.

I am a big fan of free things.  Everything from free samples, to a free month of Internet gets me pretty excited and makes me want to find even more free things.  Call it a disease, but I just can’t get the notion of free things out of my head.

Imagine my surprise when I was setting up my first website that there was such a thing as free hosting!  My jaw just about dropped to the floor and I found myself signing up to the free service that I found.

But it didn’t stop there.  Site after site that I created, I found new free hosting accounts for them.  Before I knew it, I had a little website empire that was completely hosted for free.  Not only did this mean that every dollar coming in was pretty much mine, but with the low expenses I had, I could create more and more of these sites.

Free is my favorite word!

Since we have been looking into a water softener system for our home, I wanted to share some of my research on what it is and how it can help.

Basically what a water softener does is filter out the hard stuff from you household water. The hard stuff in water is mineral deposits like calcium and magnesium. A water softener system looks much like a hot water tank does but is a little bit smaller. On the inside is a filter made of beads covered with sodium ions. Sounds a little bit sci-fi, huh?

Well those ions attract the mineral deposits from the water as the water flows over the beads so that the hard part of the water is left behind but the soft and clean water flows on through and gets to your pipes and through your faucets.

This prevents build up in your pipes, the tubes in your appliances and the faucets and shower heads in your home which means less repairs over time and better water flow.

Now, I don’t think that a death in the family is something to celebrate, but I found myself in that situation.  You see, my great aunt passed away one week ago, and it turns out that she left me a bit of money in the will.  We had always been very close, so I will miss her, but I also think that it is even more important to do something productive with the money that she left me.

On one hand, if I were to reduce debt for myself, it would be a blessing.  Not only would it ease my financial burden, but it should leave me with some extra money each month to either spend or reduce my debts further.

But the other option available to me would be to use the money to start property investing.  In fact, there would be enough money that I could own multiple properties at the beginning and benefit from the extra monthly income.

I guess I will just have to weigh the pros and cons, and make my decision from there.

My daughter and I are frequent visitors to various thrift stores throughout the city. We love looking through the racks to see the different varieties and we often get some great deals on some very expensive clothing.

One day, while browsing through the racks, my daughter found some mma clothing. As she is an avid fan of martial arts, you would have thought that Christmas came early this year. I have never seen her quite this excited about clothes before and I knew that we were not leaving the store without every single article that she had found, whether it fit or not.

When we got home, she could not wait to show her dad what she had found. Some of the clothes ended up fitting and she used the ones that did not fit to decorate her mixed martial arts room with. It looks incredible and I told her that I was proud of her creativity. She definitely has the most unique room of any girl that I know.

Here is a question for you. If you had enough money to do whatever you wanted, would you be driven in a limo or would you drive yourself? It doesn’t matter what kind of car you would pick or what your limo might be, the question is, would you or wouldn’t you drive?

Myself? I’d do both. I love to drive a good car that handles well and is fun to drive. Old muscle cars are awesome and high end cars like Mercedes are very relaxing and comfortable to take on the road too.

However, there are days that I could certainly make more of my day by working in the car rather than driving to and from work or on trips. I also have days where I don’t feel so great thanks to some bodily injuries and those days would be great to have a driver and limousine at my service to take me where ever I needed to go.