Mishmash Musings

It’s been years since I’ve printed out any family photos to put in albums. I have gotten so lazy about keeping up with things like this that it’s not even funny anymore. I mean, I have about four years worth of pictures on my husband’s computer that I have to sort through, and I want to get this done soon.

My son loves looking through photo albums, but we haven’t put one together since he was a baby. I need to go through our pictures year by year, pick out about 30-40 good ones from birthday parties, Christmas, family get-togethers, vacations, or whatever from each year, and then slap them into four separate photo albums.

I’m designating this task as my project of the week. I hope to at least sort through the computer files and earmark a bunch of pictures for printing by Friday. After that, I’ll give myself a couple of days to take the files to Wal-Mart or something to get printed, buy photo albums, etc.

I should be able to get this done within the next week if I start right now!

One of my goals for this year was to start investing my money instead of just letting it sit around in a savings account earning a minuscule interest rate. I partially followed through on this idea by buying into a money market fund, but I didn’t get nearly the kind of return I was expecting. So for next year, I’m going to ramp up my efforts and really make investing money (rather than just saving it) a priority.

Since we have just about 5 weeks left in the year, I figured this would be a good time to start researching potential investment vehicles. I’ve heard that gold investing is a relatively safe way to go, since gold appreciates in value more often than not. This makes investing in gold coins, bars, or ingots a smart move that can pay off big in the future.

I admit that I’ve suffered from “over-analysis paralysis” in the past, meaning that I put so much research and thought into a decision that I never actually take any action. I’m not going to let that happen anymore, though. It’s time to get moving on this plan!

I sometimes have a book queue planned out, where I have a list of the next 3-5 books that I want to read. But more often than not, I finish a novel without having a clue as to what to pick up next. It usually takes me forever to come up with a decent selection, so I’m glad I stumbled upon a site called whatshouldireadnext.com.

At this site, you enter the title and author of a book that you liked, and your query will return a list of suggested reading from titles in their database. The database is more or less user-generated, so you’re basically just getting targeted selections from other readers, but I still think it’s a nifty idea.

I tested it out with a few titles just to see what the suggestions would be like. I thought most of the recommended titles were somewhat related, but a few were totally out there, so this obviously isn’t the most scientific approach around.

Anyway, it’s a site worth checking out if you have a minute!

We’re planning to take a family vacation in late January or early February of ’08, so we’re kicking around some destination ideas right now. I’d love to travel overseas, but I don’t think my husband will be able to take enough time off from work. That means we’ll likely head to Orlando, SoCal, or one of our other favorite vacation spots right here in the States.

No matter where we end up going, one of our goals is to travel smarter. We’ve been slacking in the pre-trip research department lately, so our last two trips haven’t gone as smoothly as they could have. On one of our adventures, we ended up paying $250 per night for our hotel room (in St. Louis, of all places) because we didn’t book early enough. On another one, we ended up staying in a total dump of a hotel (because we didn’t check the place out beforehand), and that ruined the trip for everyone.

In addition to research, we’re thinking about maybe getting some travel insurance before we go. You never can tell what’s going to happen when you’re away from home, so it’s far better to be safe than sorry.

Anyway, we’ve still got a couple of months to get everything worked out. Hopefully we’ll be completely prepared for this next vacation!

So how was your Thanksgiving? I didn’t have a chance to post here yesterday because I was busy enjoying the day with my family. We watched football, went to my mom’s house for dinner with all my uncles, aunts, and cousins, and then my husband and I left our son with my mom while we went to take in a movie.  It was an awesome day, totally relaxing and fun!

Today was pretty much the opposite, as my husband and I tried to hit some stores for a few Black Friday sales. That didn’t go very well as the crowds were insane!! And let’s not forget the traffic around the malls and the freakin’ lack of parking in general. Long story short, we walked around the mall for an hour but didn’t actually go into any stores because there were just too many people in them!

Oh, well… looks like I’ll have to do my Christmas shopping online!

If you work in sales, then you’re going to want to check out a company called Martin Worldwide as soon as possible. That’s because Martin Worldwide has been the industry leader in providing specialized, targeted Mailing Lists that have been proven to increase response rates and profitability for sales professionals across the country.

A quick look through the Martin Worldwide website is all it takes to understand why they’ve been able to sustain such a high level of success for more than a decade. Their database is multidimensional, and can be segmented according to more than 100 demographic and psychographic criteria, thereby yielding a list of prospects that are truly interested in what you have to sell.

If you’re not using lists from Martin Worldwide, then you’re probably not closing nearly enough deals as you should be. Give them a try, and start selling to your potential!

I am so sick of seeing posts from all of my blogs end up on scraper sites within minutes after I hit the “publish” button. It’s absolutely infuriating to know that some lazy, thieving webmaster out there is making money from AdSense and other PPC revenue sources from content that they’re simply stealing from bloggers.

I tried reporting a few of these sites as AdSense TOS violators, but got the same standard form letter response from Google each time. So now I’ve decided to try adding a copyright notice to the bottom of every post that goes out via this site’s feed. I don’t know how much of a deterrent that will be, but I’ve seen a lot of other bloggers doing this, so it’s at least worth a shot.

I’m using a WordPress plugin that was really easy to install and activate. This will be my very first post using the copyright notice, so I can’t wait to see if it actually shows up  in the feed!

I know it’s just a matter of time before this year’s holiday greeting cards start arriving, so I took a few minutes today to clear off the mantelpiece in anticipation of the first batch that usually appears soon after Thanksgiving. I’ve learned that most of the early arrivals are actually from businesses that I patronize, such as insurance companies, law firms, dentists, car dealers, and the like.

I love it when businesses take the time to send along a token of their appreciation, so I go ahead and display these cards along with the ones I receive from friends and family. The only problem is that Christmas cards from businesses tend to be bland and boring, and actually repeat from year to year. Surely these businesses should be able to find beautiful, yet appropriate cards to use, don’t you think?

I guess I’ve never really paid attention to the kinds of Christmas Cards corporate entities have to choose from, so maybe the selection really is limited. Out of curiosity, I browsed around online to see what I could come up with.

During my search, I discovered a website called GalleryCollection.com, and was impressed by the stunning array of personalized corporate greeting cards they offer. There are tons of different designs that would be appropriate for any situation, from festive to formal and everything in between.

Moreover, I learned that Gallery Collection has recently performed a public service by donating greeting cards to be sent out (via the Soldiers’ Angels organization) to the brave men and women currently serving in all branches of the Armed Forces. In addition, Gallery Collection donated blank greeting cards and envelopes so soldiers could write back to their loved ones at home. Wow, how thoughtful is that?!

Anyway, if you’re looking for quality greeting cards for business or personal use this season, I recommend checking out all the fine designs over at GalleryCollection.com. I’m sure you’ll like what you see!