I always thought it would be great to have a daughter.  You see, I am a boy (obviously), and I thought it would be neat to see the perspective of a woman growing up.  I would be able to compare my daughter’s life to my childhood experiences and see the differences.

Lucky for me, I have been blessed with that opportunity - twice.  You see, I have two young girls, and I have been able to observe how the grow and interact with myself and the world.  It has definitely been a learning experience for sure, but it has been fun to say the least.

What I found to be an eye opener was the young girls activities that they enjoyed.  They would rather play with dolls and dress up than go fight, or roll around in the mud.  

It is funny now that when I see young girls in art at a gallery, I think of my two little ones.  Speaking of that, I am going to go play with them now.

Some of the fondest memories I have of childhood are the ones from summer camp. I went to the same camp every summer, from the time I was seven until I was in my later teens. It was fun to go back and see the same friends every year and we always had a blast. It was like a whole other life for me.

One of the games we had going amongst our group of friends was to see who could get away with the most and see who would be the first person to make a counselor in training cry. It was never me, but I did try my best. I remember one of the guys in the group emptying a cheap bottle of cologne under the floorboard of the counselors’ cabin and then watching them try and figure out where the smell was coming from.

We had such a blast. It sounds like we were bad, but really we were just kids having a good time. Those were the good old days and in the end, when we grew too old for camp, even the counselors were sad to see us go. But, we handed our annual traditions onto the younger campers and maybe they are still growing strong today.

I was hired a few months ago to do some registry cleaner reviews for our local paper. Part of my job is to take different products and write comparison reviews. We have slowly been moving to the technical side and I find myself having to do a lot more research, as I do not know the products well.

The nice thing about doing a Registry Mechanic review is that I get to purchase and try the software. I am sure that my computer has never been as clean as it is now. I would not have believed the amount of complete garbage that was on my machine if I had not seen it for myself.

What is even worse is that was just on my machine at work. I am sure that it would be even worse to run it on my home machine that has several different people using it. In the end, I decided that I liked what I had read most on RegCure reviews and that is the software that I, myself, decided to purchase and try. I was not disappointed and I would strongly recommend this product.

My father is a huge advocate for stop smoking hypnosis. He was a smoker for thirty-five years and we all hassled and begged him to stop. His brother died from lung cancer and we were very afraid that he was going to follow the same path. I am sure he was sick of us nagging him, so he agreed to go and see a hypnotist.

He went the very next day and I am happy to report that he smoked his last cigarette in the car on the way to the session. I was so amazed that it would work the very first time. I had always thought that it was something that you would have to go back for many sessions before you would see the result.

Ironically, my dad cannot stand the smell of smoke now. He likes to hand his hypnotist’s business card to all of his smoking buddies, telling them that it will certainly work for them. He says that it is the best money he ever spent and all the money that he is saving by not buying cigarettes, he is putting away to take himself up north on a fishing trip this coming summer.

Some people might think I’m a little weird, but I’ve always been fascinated with architecture.  What makes me unique is that I’m interested in sports arenas in particular.  I made a point of traveling the world to look at the many Arena and stadium designs and breathe in the magnificence of their design.

Last year, while traveling through Europe, I had a chance to go see the Coliseum in Rome.  It was a marvel to behold and it made me feel like I was in a place where the whole concept of arenas began.  It was at that point I decided that instead of checking out traditional tourist attractions, that I would check out the designs of the arenas in Europe.

Of all the stadiums and arenas that I had the pleasure to look at, I would have to say that the London sport complexes were my favorites of the whole trip.  I have a number of pictures that I took while there that I will print out and put on my wall as a remembrance and tribute to the great architecture of Europe.

The last couple of times that I have gone to Philadelphia, I have been very disappointed with my cab drivers.  It seems as though they must be experiencing a staff shortage, or something as each time that I was there, none of the cab drivers were able to get me to my destination in a timely manner.  Talk about frustration.

So, when I learned that I would be in Philadelphia for a business meeting last Wednesday, I knew that I would have to make alternate arrangements for this trip – or be angry at the cab services again.

A colleague of mine suggested that I use the Philadelphia Airport Transportation Limousine Service that he had used last time he was there.  According to him, the prices were reasonable, but the service was excellent.  I decided that I would try them out.

All I can say, is that renting a limousine was the smartest thing I could have done.  Not only were they prompt and courteous, I was able to get work done in the limo on the way to the business meeting.  I will definitely be using their services again in the future whenever I am in Philadelphia.

Most of the time when I leave my computer on and running, I lock it just before I walk away.  We have little children and a pet cat, so I don’t want anyone to push the wrong set of buttons and ruin my computer.

I hope you noticed I said most of the time.

You see, yesterday I made the mistake of not locking my computer.  The result of that is my cat decided to walk on the keyboard, and I lost pretty much everything.  Now, don’t ask me how a cat can delete data, but somehow she did it.

I tried the Photo Recovery Software I had on hand, and it didn’t work.  Same goes with the Recovery My Files Software that didn’t work either.

In desperation, I have taken it down to the local computer repair store where they will use their hard drive data recovery software, and hopefully they will be able to recover my data.  If I end up losing everything, I just don’t know what I will do.

My brother hasn’t been the most reliable person over the years when it comes to birthday presents.  In most cases, he says that he is going to buy you something, but he doesn’t.  I can count on one hand the number of times I have got a gift from him in the last ten years – and I could still do it if I was missing three fingers.  Get the idea?

But I was hoping that this year would be different.  You see, he had a new job, and he was making more money than he ever had, so I was hoping that he would buy NBA tickets like he promised.

When it came to opening my gifts, there was actually one from him there.  I opened it up to find NBA tickets inside!  I couldn’t believe my eyes – he had actually bought me something.

It wasn’t until later when I went to the game that he had bought cheap NBA tickets.  Sure, the game was great, but it was hard to see which player was which.  Still, I won’t complain – he actually bought me a gift this year.

When I was planning my wedding, I went on the Internet to look up a lot of different things. I even ended up buying a lot of wedding supplies online and I would definitely advise anyone planning a wedding to take a look and see what is available. You can get great deals and I saved a ton of money by ordering some things on the Internet, rather than buying them locally.

I got all of my table favors from Weddingstar favors and ended up saving over two hundred dollars on favors alone. My husband loves the fact that I am frugal without looking cheap, and I accredit a lot of that to the fact that I tend to shop around a lot and am certainly not an impulse buyer.

The best deal was on my wedding dress. I actually purchased this on eBay. The great thing about it is that it is the exact same dress that I fell in love with at the bridal boutique when I went in to try on dresses. I saved over seven hundred dollars by purchasing a used one. I don’t see why this is a big deal, as it is only ever used for one day and was cleaned and in perfect shape.

The weirdest thing happened to me the other day. I decided to apply for a job and they wanted an application essay. Any job I have ever applied for has kind of been a fill in the blanks application and I was taken aback that this one wanted an essay. I felt like I was back in school and wondered if I should study for it. Then I wondered if I really wanted the job that badly.

I decided to take the application home anyhow and think about it a little bit more. I told my mom all about it and she suggested that they were maybe doing it to find out who really was serious about wanting to work there. She said that the purpose for college admission essays is so that they can tell which students really want to be there and thought that this was maybe along the same lines as that.

I decided that I would do it, after all. I sent in an online essay with an online application and it was not very long when I got the phone call asking me to come in for an interview. I was excited that I was this close to working this job that I really wanted to have. I have my interview tomorrow afternoon and I am just hoping that it goes as well as writing the essay had.