I have always wondered if phone cards were better than getting your long distance through the phone company.  I see the really low rates that are promised on the displays in stores and on websites, but it was my understanding that they always charged a connection fee.

But when I was reading a blog about the cheapest calling cards, I realized that I might have been wrong.  You see, the cards that they mentioned in their article didn’t have connection fees and in some instances were as much as ten times cheaper than what my phone company charged by the minute.

So, I have ordered a couple of them and I will be trying them out.  Sure, I don’t make a lot of long distance calls, but the cost does add up each month.  I figure that if the amount that I spend on calling cards is less than what the phone company charges me each month, I will finally know the answer.

As I have aged, I have found that my mind isn’t quite what it used to be.  Where I used to have no difficulty remembering events in my life, I found myself forgetting what I did on a regular basis.  I was to the point where I was getting concerned, so I decided to talk to my doctor about it.

The doctor ran a series of tests to see if I had the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, but thankfully the results were negative.  After doing a bit of blood work, it turned out that the levels of toxins in my blood stream were rather high and I asked what I could do about it.

He didn’t have any prescription that he wanted to give me, but he did offer some advice from his own experience.  About five years ago, he was having the same problems and it turned out that he found a way to get rid of the toxins in his body, and improve his memory.

I was referred to a website that sold Zeolite, a detoxifying solution that was simple to use.  I ordered some and tried it out – after just four weeks, I can tell that my memory is much better than it used to be.  In fact, I would have to say it is almost better.

I thought that I had a good grasp on Spanish until I took a trip to Mexico.  What I guess I hadn’t counted on was the fact that I sounded so much like a tourist that most people just ended up laughing at me.  I guess I sounded funny, and sometimes I mixed up my sentences, but hey, it was not my native language.

It was especially frustrating when I wanted something a little more detailed.  When I asked for where the clinicas dentales de tijuana mexico was, I was pretty sure that I was looking for a dentist.  Most people that I asked understood what I was saying when I asked, and pointed me in the right direction.

But when it came to asking the dentist to perform a specific procedure, I was in trouble.  He was trying to say stuff to me, but I just didn’t understand.  In fact, I got so frustrated that I just left the office.

I guess next time I go to Mexico, I should take the time to learn the language – obviously, I didn’t know enough to get by.

We have been trying different tactics to get more business and customers for my parents book store.  Quite frankly, since the dawn of the Internet, their business has been dwindling because people just don’t read as much as they used to.  If they need to find something, they can just look online now.

But, we have had some success with different promotions that have allowed their business to stay afloat.  Such things as book signings, a discount card, and a "refer a friend" program have all boosted business.

The promotions haven’t stopped there though.  Recently, we decided to offer our customers a free book if their purchase was over fifty dollars.  The book that we are offering is Stock Split Secrets, by Darlene Nelson, an informative guide on how to get rich by successfully trading on the stock markets.

So far, the response has been overwhelming, and they are on track to having the best month that they have had in the past decade.  I suppose it helps that it is a limited time offer – it really gives them incentive to buy right now.

One of my best friends, Bruce, has had many successes in his life.  He got his degree, has a great career, and makes lots of money.  You would think that this would make him happy, but he is missing one thing in his life: someone to share it with.

Sure, he was married once, but that only lasted just six months.  He married a real "winner", and she took him to the cleaners to get his money.  Having been burnt, he kept looking for women in the wrong places, and he was getting nowhere in his life.

I suggested to him that he should try to find local singles online.  He has not tried this route yet, so he is going to give it a shot – worst case, nothing comes of it.  We have also set him up with some profiles on free online dating sites to see if there are any bites on there.

Hopefully something good will come of this and he will spend someone who will genuinely want to spend the rest of their life with him – he is too good of a person to spend his life on his own.

When it comes to drawing, I’ll have to admit, I just plain suck.  I don’t think that I ever progressed beyond a grade two level, and I am almost embarrassed about it.  So, you don’t usually find me drawing anything, because I know it is my weakness.

But, we have been trying to come up with a few sketches of our new business logo design.  I have a rough idea in my head what I am looking for, but I know that I will not be able to do it.  But to convey the idea to a professional, these sketches will be needed.

Friday is the day that we are meeting with the graphics design firm that has been contracted to do the work, and I will be showing them the sketches so that they know what I am looking for.

I just hope they don’t laugh at what I have done – it is really bad…

I started scrapbooking more than ten years ago. For awhile, it was all I ever did in my spare time and it was the one thing that I enjoyed more than anything else. I figured, at the time, that I would never be behind in my albums. That all changed on the day I first became a mother.

I thought that I would have so much time to scrapbook when the baby arrived because I would not have to go to work anymore. I was so naive. That little baby took up so much of my time that I do not think I even had time to think about scrapbooking for the first few months.

When my dad had a heart attack, I made him a get well card and it was then that I realized that, even if I did not have time to scrapbook anymore that I could spend an hour or two every so often making homemade cards. I am sad to say that with three kids, I am so far behind in my scrapbooking that I doubt I will ever catch up. I do, however, have several cards on hand should I ever need one.

My husband and I had been renting a nice little townhouse since we got married. We recently found out that the area in which we lived has been rezoned and will be turned into industrial office space. We decided that this was the time to look into buying a house, though it made me sad to leave the first home we had together.

We found a house fairly quickly. It was a bit of a fixer-upper, but my husband and I have always been up to a good challenge.

We started with the flooring, removing all of the carpet and laying down hardwoods throughout the house. We had all of the old windows replaced with sash windows and then we gave everything a fresh coat of paint.

It came together very nicely and we are looking forward to making new memories in our new home. We still miss the old one, but this is where our future is at.

One of the biggest things that has been bothering me about potentially becoming an owner of investment property, is the whole concept of becoming a landlord.  I have never been very handy and I don’t really have the time or desire to learn how to do maintenance.  But, most of the property investors that I know do it all themselves – something that I never want to do.

It wasn’t until I spoke to Bill at a conference that I found my solution.  You see, he is in the same boat as me, and he didn’t want to become a landlord when he bought his first house.  Instead, he looked for solutions at the time and found a property management company that would take care of all the "messy" stuff when it comes to owning an investment property, and he would just collect the checks.

I am going to take his advice, and I have arranged a meeting with a residential property management firm for next week to see what the price is and what is involved.  I may own my first rental property yet!

I am not a big fan of keeping secrets and I would rather share my success with others so that they can benefit from my knowledge.  You see, I believe that everyone should have the right to succeed, but if they get a little help along the way, that should be allowed.

For me, I owe my MLM success to the MLM lead generation skills that I have developed.  Sure, they didn’t just come to me overnight, but it took many years for me to get to the level that I needed to succeed in my business.  It has involved a lot of trial and error, but I have honed my skills to an art.

Another thing that I did early on was engage in blogging for profit and not just for fun.  With the goal of making money in mind, I was catering to a different audience, one that had money to spend.  So, I found a lot of referrals and sales by following this practice, and it has helped my bottom line out immensely.

I would have to say that the biggest contributor to my success has been the support of my family – without them, I would have never taken the journey.