Anyone who knows me in person, or even through regular conversation, know that I’m anal retentive about dishes being in the sink. Even if I’m in someone else’s home I have to sit on my hands to stop myself from doing the dishes. I knew this was a pretty bad trait (well…not totally) but I also didn’t know that there’s a huge chance of it getting WORSE with time.

Today I found myself getting really excited when I opened up a package of new sponges. I looked for an excuse to do some dishes, even though there weren’t any in the sink. While unloading the dishwasher, I noticed a few plates with streaks and I went out of my way to hand-wash them until they sparkled.

I really need a hobby. This one is even starting to sound stupid as hell to me!

I did a lot of cleaning today. I’m waiting (almost too patiently) on responses from a few clients so since I had nothing else to do I decided that while I was taking a break from searching for scholarships, I was going to just clean house. I vacuumed, I dusted, I did the laundry and I even gave Bella a bath, even though she didn’t need one. I was just ITCHING to find something to do.

I could always work on ‘personal site’ based shit, but it’s really not worth it. I’m going to be reopening AGn Listings in a few weeks, I’m considering bringing the cam portals back but I honestly don’t think those are ‘the thing’ anymore, who knows. I’m also considering bringing back the review site but I don’t think that one is actually going to happen, too much time involved and there weren’t ever really any sites worth reviewing. Sure there were a few good ones but the rest were over-the-top teeny bopper ones that got annoying. The Mobile Meme has been dead since July but I think I’m going to redo it and make it a little more ‘interactive’. Maybe instead of topic ideas for posts I’ll just come up with a question a week or something like that…I don’t know.

It’s a little after midnight. The boyfriend is asleep because he has work in the morning, Bella’s knocked out and as usual there’s nothing on TV. I think I’m going to float around through my bookmarks and do a quick clean out of the links that aren’t of any use to me anymore. I have like 300+ bookmarks and I don’t think I’ve visited ANY of them since they were originally bookmarked.

I guess the cleaning just never ends for me, huh?

There are quite a few ways to make money online. The two big ones that do actually pay you for what you do are AdSense and PayPerPost.com. As some of you know, I had Adsense on my blog for a while. Someone decided to be a bitch and continuously click the links knowing damn well that my account was going to be booted. I was in the $400-$500 range with Adsense when Google banned my account telling me that too many clicks came from the same IP address, and then a whole crap load of other shit that I didn’t care to read. I removed these banners and then switched over to Adbrite, which I’ve only made like $8 from, so they’re basically useless to me as well.

PayPerPost.com has actually given me everything they said they would. So far I’ve been paid over $40 and still have another chunk coming to me in upcoming weeks. I think it’d be a safer bet to go with PayPerPost.com to be honest. There are more than enough topics to choose from and there are members whom have made around $900 with PayPerPost.com. It’s my goal to get up into that range so that I can pay for a semester at Penn Foster, I’ve been saving every bit of money that PayPerPost.com has sent me.

I’m to a point now where I’m going to recommend that you not use Google ads on personal websites. Google is a bastard when it comes to banning accounts. You have to stay under certain percentages and then there’s a whole series of writes and re-writes in their rules that just make no damn sense. They’ll easily ban accounts for not ‘following rules’ which is understandable but they still make a percentage for every click that someone makes through the advertisers links. They’re honestly just like Freepay, I’m waiting for Google to buy them out too…they already desecrated all over blogger.com when they made that purchase. Any blogger.com/blogspot.com users know that the site has drastically gone downhill since Google got their paws on them. They get paid for every click, every referral sign up, the works. There are alot of sites right now that list Adsense as a complete scam, it’s true!

Stick with PayPerPost.com they’ll pay you when they say they’re going to pay you. There are plenty of opportunities and a mass list of sites for you to poke through when you’re looking for something to blog about. Highly recommended, and probably the ONLY pay-to-blog program that will ever be recommended by me.

I’ve gotten a few emails over the last few weeks asking where I’ve been and why I haven’t been around. My only real answer to these questions is the fact that I’ve just been too busy to care about signing onto AIM and listening to people bitch and moan about every little thing. Yes, not all of you do this, nor am I singling anyone out with this.

The past 6 months have been extremely hard on me and very few people understand this. My main focus in life right now is work. I have valid reasoning behind this though. The only way to get out of a shitty situation is to tough it out for as long as you can and scrape and save everywhere you can. By the time I’m done saving up all the money I need I’ll be moving out of here. Right now, however, my plans have seriously been delayed.

After talking to a rep from Penn Foster College I’m now going full speed ahead with four associates degrees. They are:

- Graphics Design
- Internet Technology w/ an Option in E-Commerce Administration
- Internet Technology w/ an Option in Multimedia and Design
- Internet Technology w/ an Option in Web Programming

There are a few job offers that have been kicked my way over the course of the last two years that I’ve had to turn down because I do not have a degree in anything that I currently do. Each semester for these courses is around $900, there are four semesters for each course as well. In total for each semester and each course factored in, I need about $16,000. Oddly enough this is still cheaper than ONE year at Briarcliff and I can get everything that I’ve wanted in the process.

I’m balancing clients, I’m tutoring and I’m also working on a part time job at a local store. With this I’ll also be looking into Financial Aid and Student Loans. By the time everything has worked itself out I hope to have about $20,000. This will cover school and some ‘fixing’ around my room. I’m going to purchase a new desktop which will only run me about $750 and then upgrade my desk so that I have a lot more surface area to work on. So yea, that’s why I’ve been busy…sue me.

The block party on Saturday turned out fairly well. The family met the boyfriend and things went well. I had a little bit more to drink than I thought I was going to but I was completely coherent so I guess that doesn’t matter very much. I spent the weekend with the boyfriend because I missed him and he stayed here over night on Saturday. I didn’t get much sleep because we went out to breakfast and then I met his family. His aunt is really awesome though so I had a good time. That basically covered my weekend.

By Monday it was ‘back to work’ for me though. I’ve been busy ever since. On Tuesday, I brought Bella to the groomer, she’s no longer a big fur ball, she’s down to a skinny little shit that takes up a lot less room than she did before. I think I got about 3 hours of sleep on Monday night so bringing her to the groomer EARLY Tuesday morning wasn’t fun. For some reason, however, last night I completely crashed at 3 and didn’t wake up until 2 this afternoon which is screwing me up because I’ve lost a good half of days work that I had to very quickly make up.

I logged into my Digital Camera account with Freepay yesterday to find that they’ve FINALLY updated my status. My order has been placed with the Vendor and I’ll soon receive shipping information when everything has gone through. Considering how long it took them to send me the camera I’m damn sure that when it does actually show up, something will be broken on it. To refresh memories, I’m getting the Olympus SP-350, so I’m sure I’ll have pictures when it shows up. I know that Freepay is a legit company but I’m still not going to recommend that anyone looking for free stuff goes through them. The only ‘freebie’ company that I’ll ever recommend to anyone is Offer Centric.

October is going to be a busy birthday month for me. I’m going to be taking a week’s vacation with the boyfriend and then the following week I’m going up to the Casino with my father for my birthday. Maybe I’ll get lucky on a couple slot machines and won’t need to get a student loan so I don’t have to worry about paying back the interest heh.

In any event, there was my long drawn out ‘personal post’. Don’t expect to see another one for quite some time out of me.

There are a lot of people whom have blogged about Steve Irwin’s death last week. My only comment on it is that he died doing exactly what he loved and he has every right in the world to rest in peace because even though I never met the guy, he gave everything he had to wild life conservation and I don’t believe in any way shape or form that he would have wished to pass on any other way.

Recently, however, I came across an article that has me completely disgusted and has also fully supported my theory about people being useless assholes.

Backlash Against Stingrays Since Irwin’s Death

SYDNEY, Australia (Sept. 12) – At least 10 stingrays have been killed since “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin was fatally injured by one of the fish, an official said Tuesday, prompting a spokesman for the late TV star’s animal charity to urge people not take revenge on the animals.

From what I’ve read about stingrays over the years, they are mellow animals whom keep to themselves most of the time. They are dangerous, I will not deny this but it’s danger that’s always caused by an outside source. You can swim with these animals, you can full on pet these animals. The dangerous part of them is their tail, and only their tail. They only react if they’re stepped on or frightened in any way shape or form.

So why is it that one (or more) people has the bright idea that mutilating and/or killing these animals is right? Am I wrong for thinking that if I ever saw someone doing this I would go out of my way to chop their ‘tails’ off?

Steve Irwin lived a life of ‘danger’ with the animals that he’s come in contact with over the years. He’d never once harm an animal even if he were harmed by it. So why is it all of a sudden okay to completely overlook all of the work he’s done just because you’re ‘shaken’ into thinking that you’ll at some point in time fill the ‘quota of revenge’ because of this.

I’ve lost all faith in humanity, not that I had much to begin with but I think this is exactly what just put it over the edge.

Lately business has been going very well but there’s always something going on in the back of my mind where I wonder just how I could pick up a bit more business. Sure, the money that’s coming in now is nice, don’t get me wrong, but once bills are taken care of that takes about 90% of the money I make during the month. I’d really like to get to a point where it’s more like 40%-50%.

I’ve posted up flyers at a few places in the area but it hasn’t really done much. I know that a few months back Christie posted some up around her school for me, but that didn’t bring anything in at all. I’ve been considering other means and I came across a site that offered free business cards. I checked them out and I think they’re a very good resource for free business cards.

In the process of surfing the site for free business cards, I noticed that it was basically a ‘how-to’ site to creating your own. The cool thing is they also help you in regards to how to get your business OUT THERE. Giving you quirky tips and tricks to get the job done. I think I’d recommend this site to anyone looking for creative uses for cards or just free business cards in general. Too bad they don’t actually give you free business cards but that’s ok because their site really helps you out in general, so I guess that’s all that matters.