At first I thought it was as simple as my power cord failing. But then, a brand new power cord couldn’t bring my laptop to life. I then discovered the short in the power cord, shorted my laptop. I’m still hopeful I can retrieve my hard drive contents. (And for you geeks out there, no I didn’t back up. I stopped doing that when I stopped actually working a ‘real’ job. Lesson learned. At least there was nothing critical on my laptop.)

Now, I have a juicy, beautiful, sleek new Toshiba laptop. Beautiful. I want to shine it daily. I want to demand rules of myself. (No eating, drinking near the laptop. No allowing the laptop to stay in standby for hours and hours at a time. No more leaving laptop exposed to the destructive forces of three small boys.)

My husband bought me this laptop and now I have the happy of job of configuring everything, loading my software and basically joining the virtual world I have come to love. If I am more silent than usual, it is only because I am absorped in getting my laptop exactly the way I want it. I will be back soon.

Oh, and thank you dear husband. You did well.

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Several days ago, I posted my list of 7 meals I could feed my family of 5 for $7 or less per meal and started a breakdown, by meal, of cost with recipes. Now to finish this list….. (more…)

Several days ago, I posted my list of 7 meals I could feed my family of 5 for $7 or less per meal. And by meal, I don’t mean each individual serving. I mean the entire MEAL. For all of us. I promised you the breakdown showing the cost of each meal with recipes and in the meantime got caught up in blogging about presidential debates and foreclosures and all that other stuff that really makes learning how to make meals for under $7 important.

So – on to the stuff that WE can do to help save our families and our country; being frugal. (more…)

The past several months have been rough on my family. My step-brother and grandpa died within weeks of each other. My mom had a 62 day in the hospital and two surgeries. I spent time with her last week and really enjoyed being able to help where I could.

But, I’ve gotten out of the habit of writing. There was so much to catch up on when I got back home and promises made that I had to fulfill. And, I’m writing my first novel, which hasn’t gotten the attention from me lately it deserves.

I have so much to blog about, so many things on my heart that I’ll just have to take a deep breath, and in the days ahead, lay it all out.

In the meantime, enjoy this article on CNN about how Palin is proposing something, ‘a change’, that her opponent, Obama, has already proposed and is working towards expanding said transparencies in government.  What’s even funnier, is that McCain was co-sponsor of the original bill. It appears she needs to study federal government’s recent history a little harder to catch up.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/18/palins-transparency-proposal-already-exists-in-dc/

I get updates about recalls from the CPSC. The following items are serious due to strangulation and laceration. (more…)

I wonder why we don’t do more to regulate what comes to us from China? It seems like the last year of recalls has been primarily from that one country. Am I the only one that things something smells in Denmark? (Or, should I say China?)

Anyhow, here’s the latest:

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