I know a lot of people who are looking for new and better jobs at the moment. The economy is rough and it’s hard to find work, especially work in your own area, or that’s in an area you’re familiar with. I remember our friend Jer who did our water treatment system was saying that they had people from all walks of life showing up at their office willing to do reception work even if that wasn’t something that they normally did.
I’ve been giving several friends some pointers on their resume lately, mostly just spell checking, and I was reminded that it’s important also do cover letters, and to write thank you letters for people who have interviewed you and things like that, which help keep you fresh in their mind and remind them about you so that you’re more likely to be selected.

Best of luck to anyone out there who is job hunting.

It’s funny the new things you can discover online. I was shown a link to Audemars Piguet offshore and I clicked on it expecting to be looking at some exotic travel destination and it turns out that it’s a company that makes watches!

It’s just like all the people who call my business figuring that I cut glass or make mirrors or am some kind of DIY store, but I’m a tarot reader and a hypnotherapist. That’s what I get for having a business called “Look Beyond Mirrors” I suppose.

I’ve been trying out Project Wonderful which is an ad placing service that I’ve seen on Akashik: Battle of Angels a nifty comic site that I check out daily. I’ve had it on my tarot reading site for almost a week now and thought I would try adding a few spots on this site to see what happens.

It seems to work well for placing ads, although I haven’t quite worked out a decent average for bids yet. I know the tarot site is a bit…narrow in it’s appeal, but perhaps the blog will be a bit more interesting to people. I like the way that the site is set up it’s easy to sign up and it’s very easy to customize. I haven’t tried out advertising yet. I’ll wait until I accrue a bit more funds in my account and then redistribute them.

Every once in a while I wish we could have afforded to get commercial real estate so that I had a place to do my readings that was out on the highway, but then I remember that it’s working pretty well for us in our location right now. I can meet people when it’s convenient and I can run to my own schedule still pretty well, which is the best bet with a nearly two year old.

Right now I have a Valentine’s Day Tarot Reading Special going on at the other site. I still need to re-do my price list now that my licenses are active again, but I’m waiting for the munchkin to nap so that I can take pictures of the cards laid out appropriately and everything.

In the mean time I got the exciting news that Tarot World Magazine which I write for has released their first issue. I need to decide what topic I’m going to write on for my third column! I always have a brain freeze on that for a while and then something comes to me when I’m not thinking about it. Hopefully soon. I’m pretty sure my deadline is April 2nd, and that’ll be here before you know it.

It’s been a fairly long day again today, mostly because of taxes. I’ve been working on our taxes since last night, and I think I’ve managed pretty well. Even with all the business and paid blogging we’re still getting all of the deduction that we were initially entitled to from hubbie’s paycheck. Unfortunately for us we don’t qualify from EIC, but we’re doing okay even with that. We’re getting a bit more back than we got last year.

Other than that I’ve been tidying up and decorating again. I haven’t eaten yet. I’ve got a roast cooking and some potatoes on the go, but if I work on that it’s probably going to be ten p.m. before anything’s ready. I think I’ll just make myself some chicken nuggets, still it’s going to be a while before I get to test out our foam mattress for the night, because I’m half way through sorting out the curtains. I realize I missed picking up a valance for the kitchen window but that can wait until my next pay check. I need to sort out the new price list for the tarot site too. It’s on my “to do” list. In the mean time I’m watching NCIS Season One, and it’s keeping me entertained. I’m not focussed enough to re-watch the first episode of LOST and try and make sense of that. Maybe once I get the taxes finished. I still need to sort out the mortgage portion, and see if I have to get the records of us buying hubbie’s car, but given it wasn’t anything posh like a hybrid I don’t know if we have to declare it.

Remember me talking about Akashic: Battle of Angels the comic? Well, they’re holding a contest at the moment to see if someone can add great dialogue to some of their comic panels.

Have a go!

I’ve been doing a lot of work building things on and off line this week. I can proudly say that my Look Beyond Mirrors site where I do my tarot reading has a fresh face for the new year, and I’m hoping to reorganize the way the pages work a bit more so that it can be more interactive and more of a reference for people than just a site they stop by and then leave. If they stay around more perhaps they’ll get a reading from me.

We still haven’t sorted out with the cars yet, but speaking of cars I heard of an interesting site where you can donate cars to charity. I’ve heard my husband mention places like this before. We were going to do that with his old car except it died before we could do so, and I’m not going to give someone something that’s useless, you know? Hopefully if my car doesn’t get too far gone we can pass it along through a program like Car Angel (carangel.com) that uses the donated cars (or boats, RVs and trucks) to help needy families.

A tax right off for the donater can help another family to exist.

My picture a day blog is back! Eryssa.net will be updated at least once per day with pictures of various things, and randomly also with notes of interest about media and gaming.

Two friends of mine are starting up a home business selling pandas! No, not that sort. I doubt they’d get away with that! What are you thinking crazy people? BuyAPanda.com is a fun site where you can find panda collectibles of all kinds from plushes to mugs to aprons to pictures for your home. If you are a panda fan or know someone who is check them out! I wish them the best in this endeavor. I know how hard it is to sort things out with an at home business. If you’re willing to link exchange with them let them know and spread the word and panda love!

You remember me talking about Akashik: Battle of Angels? Well, they’re now updating twice a week! Wednesdays and Fridays instead of Sundays so check them out! New comics abound!. The action is heating up. What will happen next?

As for us it looks like we will soon have a new washer and dryer! For the price of a heating coil. Fingers crossed this works out because then the money that we were putting aside can go towards fixing our cars.

Alright, I’m off to try and finish what unpacking I can that doesn’t depend on the carpet being laid down. Then I’m going to work on new layouts for various blogs and websites that I want to get running more efficiently for the new year!

I’ve had the recent privilege of being sent a Stun Master to review by AAA Safety First. They specialize in distributing a wide range of self defense products and DVDs to help you stay safe.

As the wife of a police officer I’m well aware of how important personal safety is. As soon as the munchkin is old enough we plan on having our friend who was a martial arts competitor teach him some things, and hubbie is also going to learn a bit more from him as well. We’re intending that once we get moved I will learn how to shoot. I already know the technicalities of how to operate the gun and hubbie’s tazer but if he’s on duty I have nothing except swords at the house, right now, well, that was until I was sent this product.

It looks intimidating, right? It SOUNDS really scary too, when you put the battery in and turn it on it has a switch on the side to actually activate the tazing portion, and it’s really, really loud. I turned it on when I was on the phone with my Mum and she was going, “Wow–that’s noisy!”

I did have a bit of an issue getting the battery compartment to close back up when I was first trying to load it. Silly me had it upside down. Eesh.

Our martial arts friend had initially volunteered to get tazed, as long as it was with the Stunmaster and not my husband’s duty tazer, but when I turned it on he backed out. He goes, “I didn’t know you actually HAD batteries. Get that thing away from me!” We had a house full of big tough guys and two of them basically tried to hide under the table.

Hubbie had previously volunteered to get tazed given he’s been tazed before while getting his certification through the police department. So, he took the tazer from me and after spending a short time threatening people he jabbed it into himself while it was turned on. He said that compared to his duty tazer it wasn’t as bad, but it did hurt. His duty tazer had disabled him, but this one he could still move his arm, but there was a lot of pain.

Given the reaction our friends had to the tazer though I figure it’s still going to be a pretty effective deterrent should anyone try anything with me, and especially if it was pointed at those very sensitive genital areas I’d figure it would disable someone, or send them running if it hadn’t already when it was turned on.

Besides this is the weakest tazer that AAA sells. They have others with twice the power, and also the kinds that are disguised as cell phones. There are a lot of states and cities which don’t allow tazers, luckily for me we don’t live in one.

There’s yet more drama with Livejournal. I’m not sure entirely what’s going on, and I don’t have the mental capacity to wade through page after page of hate comments and bickering to try and get the full story.

I know that LJ has been bought, or transferred to SUP a Russian company. There’s more paranoia and malingering with regards this because there’s been tons of issues in the past year because of random bannings on the part of SixApart (the parent company) and all the rest of it. I have primarily been using InsaneJournal and GreatestJournal for certain things, and was finally starting to transfer entries from LJ for archive purposes in earnest to IJ over the past couple of months, except that things stalled with all the moving that I’ve been doing.

I’m torn. I think it’s unfair that people are automatically assuming doom and gloom just because the new parent company is Russian, but I know what’s happened with other services I’ve used when they’ve switched servers and journals have disappeared and things like that. I imagine that I will move some of the archives to this blog as I have in the past, also. I’ve been disliking LJ for quite some time, partially due to java issues and partially due to the way things have been going on. I’m not going to pay them for their services any more that’s for sure. Whether I completely discard them remains to be seen. It’s entirely possible SUP will fix everything, but I’m not holding my breath. I continue to have many good friends who will continue to use LJ, no matter what, I imagine. At least I know that I can point them to my RSS feed here if they want to keep up with me.