Thursday, September 13, 2007

Server Down

My web server thingie is down while I move to a different less expensive package with another company. Who knew I'd miss my stripes so much?

This time next week I'll be in Miami, worn out after a 900 mile road trip. BUT at the crack of dawn on Friday you can bet I'll be on Miami beach watching the sun come up.

My referral has a decent chance of coming in while I'm on the ship, Friday Sept 29 but its ok I will have internet. For the first time I am going to buy the package, I've always thought it too expensive in the past but now that I doing the stocks I need to be able to babysit it a little. (btw - bought my stocks too high and a lot of it is just sitting there. I've made just $88 in one week but tomorrow I have an excellent chance of making about $100 more. My first month goal was 1K, I hit that today :) )

Just a FYI sort of thing for other cruisers, there are several times where you can get freebie minutes from the internet cafe if you have a package. It is $55 for 100 minutes (I know, awful) but on day one and day 6 you get 20 bonus minutes each day. There are also times where you can stay online for 30 minutes but get charged for 15. So I guess it is really a small price to pay to monitor my referral and have piece of mind about my life savings.

I can't wait to go, for some reason it really hit me tonight that I'll be on a ship in 9 days wooohhooo

Saturday, September 08, 2007

Saturday Fun

First, pictures of the kids:

Jack Jack eating his cantaloupe (is that how you spell it? What a weird looking word). I scrape the inside out for him and he eats it out of the "bowl" :)



Moneky-moo asleep. She sleeps best when she's sleeping on me. When I work remotely at home she is on my lap 95% of the time.



Today was farmer's market day. My dad and I went and we ran across a couple who were packing up. We got two boxes of tomatoes for $12. When I sorted them at home, there were 102 tomatoes, all about the size of your fist. Based on how much juice I got out of 25 of them, it was probably closer to 60 pounds. $12, crazy huh? The guy said they had picked 14 boxes that morning. I guess next year he'll stagger his plants a little bit.

Pretty tomatoes -worthly of a picture



Ohhhhhh the carnage! That is my new juicer. It is a $30 juicer, hence the mess. I think that the $150 models probably don't leak or spit juice in your face (I have seeds in my hair) but hey, it's $30. I ran the pulp through the juicer several times and got a great very very thick sauce that will make killer spagetti sauce. Oh, and I am not drinking that rum as I'm juicing the tomatoes, I am taking it on my next cruise lol



I went to Home Depot today to price out my kitchen. To keep a similar layout but adding a pantry, is about $3,000. I knew it would be about that. Installation is under $1K. Countertops are $500, sink $300, fridge $600, dishwasher $300, stove $500, microwave with vent $200, floor $200 (I would install). So for a minimal effort on my part I can have a new shiny kitchen for $6600. That is about what I thought it would cost, I am going to look around some to see if I can cut the price any. Since my kitchen is pretty small, I am going to check out the salvage store and see if they have enough cabinets to do my kitchen. If it was $3-4K, I'd go ahead now. That extra $ is stopping me, $6600 is just too much in my head, I guess I'll think about it some more.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Babies :)

Our Journey to Alice
Journey to Parenthood
Our Whole World in His Hands
A Red Thread to China
Rocking Chairs and a Tricycle
Pension Cheques and Preschoolers
Our Sweet Melissa
Journey to Lily Ann

Some of the babies posted on RQ. So far only little Alice has her picture online. The rest are on the way :)

I reduced my sell price so it would go today, $122.40 for a total of $837.04 or $64.39 every biz day. Whew! My goal is to eventually make as much per day doing this as I do at my real job so I can reduce hours to spend more time with Natalie. We'll see how it works out :)

Monday, September 03, 2007

No Baby for ME!

Ya, I knew it wouldn't happen this week but there was a part of me that thought it *might*!

With the lower cut off day than anticipated...will I have an Oct referral with a 12-05-05 LID? Folks, if I'm not with Natalie by the end of the year I will flip. I've been decent and calm up to this point, but dragging this into 2008 - enough is enough!

Today I went shopping with my mom. I joined a frugal thread on DisBoards about a no spend Sept. You could add in exclusions. Even though Sept is going to be expensive because of the cruise, I through I could cool it in the beginning and it would all balance out. Nooooooooo

I bought a pair of cool clunky sketcher sandals and sequined flip flops for the trip. I have a pair of black heels coming from shoebuy. That is a lot more in the shoe department than I normally get (kim = big feet). They were 75% off

We also made it to Ross. Can I say once again how much I love that store? I returned a curtain rod I had for a year and finally found the receipt. They gave me a store credit whooopie! Then I thought I could return the black sequined dress and the brown embroidered ones and get the credit back on my card and use up my three store credits to rebuy the brown. The idea was to NOT buy anything extra..well that didn't work.

I ended up re-buying my brown dress. I also got a super cute white ski sweater with turquoise stitching and lilac sequins lol I look like a 7 year old in it, I love it. I also got a long red short sleeved sweater. And a super cool red dress, thicker straps, vertical pleats on the bustline, diamond stitching on the waist and the sheer part is longer than the under piece and its all drape-ish. I also got MY DRESS the one I didn't buy before because I didn't need it. I don't often have "why didn't I buy that?" times but this dress did it. It is exactly like my black cocktail dress except the under layer sky blue :) I love the contrast.

TADA!

See it's like a kid's sweater in my size! And it has pom poms! lol
So now for a cruise where I need two cocktail dresses, I have 4. And by golly I'm going to wear them all, afterall it's my vacation, if I want to be pretty, then I'll be pretty :)

Soooooo....I returned a curtain rod and the two dresses and put $48 back on my card. I bought all of this, applied all those random store credits to it and ended up paying $58 for it all. Can I say all this cost me $10? Yes I can if I say all this cost me $10 in the "month of Sept". See, no guilt at all. Girl logic at it's best :)

The market is open tomorrow. I have an order in to sell that will net $156.40. I would appreciate good thoughts for Carnival stock tomorrow :)

Saturday, September 01, 2007

The big question is...

will my referral be in this next batch? According to RQ, a European agency is saying maybe.

If everyone will remember back, my agency reps were the ones smoking something and told me to expect an August referral. Come on, even I know that wasn't going to happen (not to say I wasn't hoping for it, but I knew better in the back of my mind).

I still think Oct, especially if they get through the 28th this go around. We'll see I guess?

Three weeks from tonight I'll be dressed for dinner and lounging on one of the upper decks taking pictures of the sun on the water. Today I tried to teach my mom to snorkel in my aunt's pool and she about drown herself. She says she's just going to stand in the water and stick her face in the water lol We ended up trading flippers, she had standard length flippers and she about killed herself just getting into the pool. I gave her my compact ones because she can almost walk in the them. We'll have more practice in the calm waters of Half Moon Cay as our first stop before we snorkel again at Sapphire Beach in St Thomas. I am excited :)

My day trading is going really well. I had an extra bonus on Friday, Carnival stock jumped big time at opening and large batch sold for more than my limit price. That has actually happened twice now out of 6 trade cycles, I guess that means I am being too conservative? I'd rather be conservative and slowly build up my account than to loose it all. I am up to $714.64 profit in 11 biz days. I'm not complaining :)

I think that is it for the week. Life seems to be dragging by, I guess baby fever is at an all time high. I need my referral to get that last push to finish up little stuff. Here storky storky storky!