Mishmash Musings

The end of the month means a lot of paperwork for me. As a freelance writer, I’m responsible for tracking all of my writing-related earnings and expenses for the entire year, and I do it on a monthly basis. Of course, I never keep up with daily entries, so when the end of the month rolls around, I’ve got to spend several hours combing through my PayPal records and receipts so I can get my totals.

Fortunately, I do keep everything, so this is really just a matter of organizing and recording. All the data is there; I just have to put it in order. Still, it will take at least 2-3 hours to do everything, so I’m glad that the end of this month falls on a weekend.

I went in this morning for my monthly appointment to get my braces tightened. I don’t know what was up with my orthodontist today, but he was suffering from a serious case of “butter fingers”. First he kept having trouble trying to pick his tools up out of the tray (kept dropping them back in). Then, when he was trying to attach one of my rubber bands, the tool totally slipped out of his grip and smacked a tooth. It didn’t hurt or anything, but it was just weird.

I mean, I wonder if he was drunk or something. Maybe it was just the fact that he had a brand-new hygienist/assistant working with him. Young and curvy = major distraction, I guess ;).

So today turned out to be another hectic day even though I thought I didn’t have that much on my plate. Since I stayed up past midnight last night, I wanted to sleep in, which for me means at least 6:00am. That didn’t happen because my dog started barking at 5:05am to be let out. Sigh.

Then in the morning I wanted to get some blogging done, but my all of my sites were extremely slow and sluggish. I don’t know if the holdup was caused by Dreamhost or by some code from other sites that I have on my blog, but either way I didn’t have the patience to sit here and wait 5+ minutes for each page to load, so I gave up on that (after about 1 hour of wasted time).

After that, I tried to do some administrative-type stuff, like paperwork and phone calls pertaining to my bills or other household things. I sat on hold with customer service with one particular company for more than 10 minutes before speaking with a snotty rep that didn’t help me at all and REFUSED to connect me to anyone else (a supervisor or a different department). Needless to say, I’m never buying anything from them again.

And to top it all off, my nap was interrupted several times to day by the doorbell and my cell phone. So, I’m tired, cranky, and didn’t get a single thing done today :(.

Today’s project is just a basic one: I want to get caught up on all my writing assignments. I have been having great luck finding a ton of paid writing gigs lately, which is great because I could really use the money. But at the same time, this has been stressing me out because I just can’t get all of it done. No matter what I do, no matter how I go about organizing my day, other things inevitably come up that force me to put my writing aside. As a result, it’s just piling up and it’s really getting to the point where I’m so overwhelmed by the mountain of tasks that I’d rather do nothing.

So today, I’ve listed/prioritized my tasks based on due dates, and I’m going to work through the list one by one to get as much done as possible. I’ve got a total of 12 items on my list for today, and hope to get through at least 75% before going to bed at a reasonable hour tonight.

Ok, now let’s see if this works!

My husband is one of those people who are absolutely mesmerized by magic tricks. From simple coin and card tricks to the highly complex stuff that professional illusionists like David Copperfield and David Blaine do, my husband just can’t get enough.

Actually, I think the biggest attraction for him is trying to find out how the tricks are performed. Of course he can’t figure these things out on his own, so I’m going to tell him about a site called MagicSecretsExposed.info that reveals the secrets behind tricks such as Blaine levitating off a sidewalk or Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear. There are many other magic tricks explained on the site, and all it takes is a small PayPal donation to find out how these tricks work.

In addition to the finding out how professionals perform major illusions, you’ll also be able to discover the secrets of numerous tricks that you can use on your friends, including Plato’s Cursed Triangle and The Missing Dollar.

I’m glad I found MagicSecretsExposed.info today and I can’t wait to tell my husband about the site as soon as he gets home from work!

I wake up before 5am every day and immediately start blogging before my husband and son wake up. I usually get in about 2-2.5 hours worth of work before I have to stop and make breakfast for everyone.

By that time, I’m so wide awake that I’m no longer in the mood for breakfast foods. I want a bunch of carbs to help keep me going, so I end up eating lunch fare instead. For example, I had a hot dog, pretzels, and a diet Coke for breakfast today. Yesterday it was pizza. I do try to balance things out by eating cereal and toast at lunchtime, so it’s not impacting my weight as much as you might think.

I’m one of those people who can eat any kind of food at any time of day, so this is working out for me. I’m just glad I’ve found a way to make it through the mornings and into nap time!

I’ve spent most of the day cleaning out my desk and I noticed that almost every single pen I have has a logo of some sort splashed across it. These are basically promo pens from local and national businesses that have found their way into my hands. I have pens from auto repair shops, take-out restaurants, bookstores, accountants, and many more. I don’t even need the Yellow Pages anymore — all I have to do when I need a certain product or service is flip through the pens in my desk! What a fantastic (and cheap) marketing tool.

I watch a lot of medical dramas on television, so I’m frequently assailed by morbid thoughts and wonder how my family would get along if I suddenly met with an untimely end. Actually, thinking this way can be practical in some respects. For example, I’ve been checking into death insurance recently, which is definitely something I wouldn’t ordinarily do. I’m surprised at how affordable this type of insurance has become, and am comforted by the knowledge that my family will be taken care of should anything happen to me. I’m going to make it a priority to get burial insurance sometime soon.

I swear, I get sooo frustrated dealing with my husband sometimes!! I stay at home all day M-F taking care of our son and dog, doing the cooking, cleaning, etc. So we have a deal that on weekends, my husband has to take over some of the chores. Specificially, he has to take care of the dog and cook at least one dinner (either Saturday or Sunday, his choice).

Anyway, my husband was playing Xbox 360 and I was working on the computer when I noticed that our dog was standing by the patio door, which is her way of indicating that she has to go outside. I told my husband that, but he said he just let her out a couple hours ago and that she didn’t really have to go out again, she was just waiting for her dinner. I said, “Are you sure? It looks like she wants to go out.” I mean, I stay home with the dog all day, so I know her habits and mannerisms. But my husband said he was sure, so I didn’t press the issue.

Well, wouldn’t you know it: 10 minutes later the dog peed all over one of our area rugs!! I had left the room to put laundry away and came back to find the mess. Obviously, I was livid because I had JUST TOLD my husband that the dog needed to go outside. All he had to do was open the patio door to let the dog into the yard, wait one minute while she did her business, and then let her back in. Argh!!!

So anyway, he had to clean up the mess (I wasn’t about to help) and it was all I could do to say “I told you so” only once. I get so frustrated when my husband doesn’t listen to me about things like this!!!

When I bought my computer three years ago, I just wanted something that I could use to surf the ‘net. I wasn’t working from home at that time, so I figured I didn’t need much of a machine. In other words, I went the cheap route and ended up paying less than $400 for everything. As you can imagine, I’m not getting much performance in return.

Now that I depend on my computer for a substantial portion of my income, I think it’s time to make some upgrades. The first thing I’m going to start with is the processor, and then move on to computer memory. By upgrading those two components, I should see enough of a performance increase to suit my needs. If not, I’ll have to keep on trying!

I just read an article that says the only known painting of author Jane Austen will be sold at a Christie’s auction next month. The owner is a six-generation descendant of Austen, and he hopes to get between $400,000 and $800,000 for the painting.

However, the article goes on to say that the authenticity of the subject in the painting is disputed by scholars. Some experts are convinced that the clothing worn by the young woman in the painting is not consistent with what someone of Jane Austen’s time period would have worn. Austen’s descendant, of course, says that’s a weak argument at best and has no doubt that it’s Jane in the picture.

Frankly, even if it is the real thing, I can’t understand why anyone would want to pay that much money for it. Then again, I can’t understand why anyone would pay millions for a Jackson Pollack painting that looks like it was done by a 5-year-old, so I guess I’m just out of touch with the art world.

I’ve got carpeting in the three bedrooms of my home, but I use area rugs everywhere else. I figured this would be a smart move — at least for now — because I have a dog and a young child in the house, which of course means there will inevitably be spills and accidents. I would rather have those spills occur on my hardwood floors or on rugs that can easily be replaced than on carpeting that I would have to live with for many years.

Even though I’m not particularly attached to my area rugs, I’m still interested in keeping them clean and in reasonably good condition. That’s why I was very happy to find the RugsDoneRight.com blog today. This blog is full of helpful tips and insights on how to clean, maintain, and repair area rugs. I can’t believe how much I’ve learned already! For example, there are different strategies to cleaning rugs made from different materials. I didn’t know that, of course, and basically just approached each one the same way. No wonder some of my rugs stain while others don’t! At least now I know where to go to get this kind of information, so I’ll be able to keep my rugs in pretty good shape from here on out.

There are plenty of other topics covered on the RugsDoneRight blog, so it’s definitely a good resource if you own area rugs or are thinking about buying them. Take a look and let me know what you think!