Duck Season

My little duck friends have finally hatched!

In my pool!

Yay!

They are so frackin' smooooshable, it's all I can do to resist scooping them up and snorggling them. At first they were all huddled together with their mama in a brick nook which, you'll have to take my word for it - was ADORABLE. But alas, they scampered off into the pool before I could grab my camera.







These 8 little duckies have until Memorial weekend to learn to fly and sca-daddle. Mean, perhaps... but I HAS A POOL PARTEH and quackers are not invited. *cheese*

345 to go.

22 customer emails answered, 345 to go... *_* I do believe it's time to find some more minions.


It's definitely time for my little company to expand. It's experiencing more growth and opportunities for expansion than I have resources to handle. How do small business owners get investors and loans to grow anyway? I know it's been covered six bizillion times in as many business books, websites, and guides. I guess I'm just looking for someone to do it all for me. Making sales pitches and glad-handing makes my intestines writhe.
*sigh*

There must be a pill I can take for this so that I can avoid doing the obvious:



Alright, the whine is out of my system. The pity party has been shut down.
Back to work! These Fuzzies don't make themselves!

Sunny day, sweeping the clouds away!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s National Child Abuse Prevention Month and I made this set of Sesame Street Felt Fuzzies to sell as a charity auction in my eBay store. 100% of the sale will benefit Prevent Child Abuse of Texas - a non-profit organization dedicated to creating “families and communities where children are free from abuse and neglect and nurtured by a loving family.” I can put either snap clips, alligator clips, or pins on the backs of these… mix and match - it’s all up to the winning bidder! Pssst, it’s hard to tell in the picture but the Count even has a little plastic monocle sewn in! Ha. Ha. Ha! ^_~

Please support this amazing charity by either bidding on or watching this item on eBay (380022290359)! Thank you so much!

Blessings,
Ann

More simple things we can do today...

* Pick up a can or bag of pet food or treats while grocery shopping to drop off at your local shelter.

* Pick up a can of beans or other pantry item to donate to a food pantry. Leave it at your mailbox on Sat. May 10th for your mailman to pick up. Or drop it off at your local church / fire or police station / the box at the front of your grocery store… it’s a food drive month so drop-off places abound.

* Clip useful coupons for your elderly neighbor to use. Better yet, offer to run errands for her/him.

* Click here once a day and a sponsor will donate food on your behalf.

* Click here to play the ‘Free Kibble Game’ and the site will donate kibble to various Humane Societies (Currently the Humane Society of Oregon).

* Send a pencil (or a box of pencils…) to The Pencil Project.

* Got a bunch of other office / school supplies laying around collecting dust? Teachers could sure use them in their classrooms at your local school. Contact your local school or a school in a deprived neighborhood to see if they can use what you have. Or check this place out… http://www.iloveschools.com/

Blessings,
Ann

Beautiful

Beautiful faces are they that wear

The light of a pleasant spirit there;

Beautiful hands are they that do

Deeds that are noble, good and true;

Beautiful feet are they that go

Swiftly to lighten another's woe.

-McGuffey's Second Reader

Make good by doing good! All it takes is one random act of kindness...

- a genuine smile and thank you to the store clerk,
- restraining your temper towards the guy who cuts you off on the road,
- give a larger than normal tip to a server,
- picking up that piece of litter you see on the sidewalk and throwing it away,
- hugging your kids / spouse and telling them you love them,
- checking up on an elderly neighbor,
- bringing a small gift to a co-worker who is down,
- acknowledging the existence and appreciation of that stranger on the elevator with you,
- encouraging others with a heartfelt word or two,
- seeing and appreciating the beauty that is in those not traditionally beautiful,
- feeling love for someone seemingly unlovable...

You can't possibly know what kind of day or life the other person is having. You can only know how your life has been so far and remember how you could have used a stranger's random act of kindness on your not-so-good days. So why not be the changer and not the victim of circumstances?

Have you ever noticed that cranky or victim-oriented people tend to attract other cranky and dastardly folks? Have you ever met someone who seems to always meet nice people and get free stuff / great service everywhere he/she goes? However, it's not a matter of getting things or respect from people, it's a matter of giving love and respect to others. People are inherently good, and once you start to realize that... it's easier to see and expect good people and actions all around you.

Here are just a handful of links you can do today:

http://www.doonenicething.com/
http://grapevine.fellowshipchurch.com/changeyourcity
hthttp://www.uniteforsight.org
http://www.autism-society.org
http://www.missionfish.org/

Love,
Ann

Free Life Tomorrow! Brand New & Improved!

If you keep hoping for a better tomorrow, that's what you get. And like the sign at Joe's Crab Shack says, "Free Crab Tomorrow."

Tomorrow never really gets here does it?

I hope for a better today. Things will get better today. Better yet, things ARE better today. I am a better person today. I am living my dreams today. I am stronger today. I am wiser today. How do I know? My many yesterdays tell me so. And next week, next year, and twenty years from now - all my yesterdays will tell me even more about what I did with my todays. I'm sure it will be an impressive tome. ;)

You don't have to see it for it to become a reality. You don't need to know how to get to where you want to go, only that you will get there.

Hogwash or not, tired rhetoric or not - this is how humans have gotten through the centuries and managed to accomplish so much.

As my favorite author Terry Pratchett says, "Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest. of his life."

Today is awesome. Go light a fire under someone (or yourself!).


Love,
+ann

**Dammit, don't take this so literally. A homicide is still a homicide and arson will always be frowned upon in polite society. *_*

Poll!

Clocks

For the past few months, the regular clocks in my home (e.g. watches, clocks w/ faces, alarm clocks, coffee maker clock, microwave clock, etc.) have consistently run several minutes behind what all my computerized clocks say despite my resetting them to match. Our computers & cell phones constantly update themselves to match the time given by the internet-atomic-clock-thing... my other devices are older and obviously can’t.

None of this would have caught my attention if all my other clocks weren’t EXACTLY the same number of minutes behind, EVERY time. I’ll reset them to match my computers... then a few days to a week later... they are all behind again by exactly the same number of minutes. It’s really annoying when the DJ on the radio says one thing and the clock on the radio says another. It’s been too much for my slowly waking brain to handle in the wee hours of the morn’.

WTF?? Is there a "Time Gnome" resetting all my old-school clocks? Or is the atomic time running faster than normal? Are we spinning closer to / farther from the sun? Is someone taking the old adage, "Not enough hours in the day," literally? Perhaps it’s a ploy to make interest accumulate faster on our debts/savings. Maybe my old clocks have expired somehow and aren’t 2008 compliant. Ugh, this annoyance probably only involves my clocks. I’d like to think that aliens are involved though. Aliens are cool.

I just thought that by sharing this oddity with the Internet, it will cut it out and leave time well enough alone. I want my missing minutes, buddy. I want them back now.

+ann

I heart meebo.

I heart meebo! For years, I sought high and low for an IM program that would actually work on my mac. Alas, I could only use the built in Apple iChat… which of course, none of my PC-slave friends had.

Then along comes meebo.com… a web based IM with it’s shiny uncluttered desktop-like interface, FireFox add-on, mac-friendliness, universal capabilities (links all major IM programs) and awesome widgets. It, dare I say, kicks major patootie and is compatible with Windows, Macs, and Linux. I’ve recently added the “meebo me” widgets to my websites as a customer service chat tool and of course as a way to keep up with friends and family without having to pick up the gads-awful telephone. I find it impossible to multi-task and carry on a vocal conversation at the same time. And judging by some of you drivers out there… neither can you. Get off the damn phone! *ahem*

The FireFox add-on feature is impressive in its simplicity. As I mentioned, I use a mac… and an old one at that. So having too many programs running at the same time tends to make my mac angry. Newer macs don’t have this anger-management problem because they are built to handle all the heavy doo-dads the new apps like to dish out. By building meebo into FireFox, I have one less program to suck up my already stretched resources unlike the Java rich applets like the AOL and Yahoo IMs. Meebo just sits there as a sidebar, quietly keeping you connected to your different IM accounts and disappears whenever you tell it to.

On to Widgets… a web worker can never have enough widgets (or coffee). The internet has opened up unlimited new possibilities in business and communication thereby forcing us to work smarter and invent new boxes to work outside of. Widgets are a simple way to utilize the different internet tools available and filter vast amounts of information to meet your specific needs. By adding different customizable ’meebo me’ widgets to my websites and blogs, I can now interact with my customers and readers in real time, for free. The key being the ’free’ in case you didn’t catch it. There are numerous other CSM and chat programs out there, yet they usually either cost money, are laden with advertisements, or worse yet - are so heavy that they slow your site to a crawl. The meebo widget is cost-free, ad-free, and oh so very light.

I should mention though that it lacks the ability to export or print your IM transcripts (so business owners, take notes or copy/paste your customer convos). You can save the chat history with the transcripts in the meebo app itself, but from my experience, it disappears whenever I log out. According to the meebo blog, they have a future feature they are developing to remedy this. Another sorely missed feature is IP address tracking. It would be nice to be able to differentiate all the different anonymous ’meeboguests’ that use your widgets. Each meeboguest is automatically assigned a random number tag during every session, however it gets confusing when the same person visits your site repeatedly and has to re-introduce themselves over and over again. Of course, meebo would prefer that the guest signs up and creates their own account to eliminate any confusion, but obviously not everyone wants to go through the trouble of signing up with yet another site.

Now onto their customer service and help features. Nothing is more disappointing than finding that a website with enormous potential has gone flat because the owners don’t bother to keep it alive. Meebo actually keeps their site updated and relevant! *applause* As with any website and app, it takes some experimental clicking to figure out where everything is and what they do, leading to many trips to the Help, Blog, Forum, and Wiki sections. I haven’t had a need to email their tech support, *knocks on wood*, so I can’t tell you if they use robots or people. So far, meebo has proven to be on the ball when it comes to “squashing bugs”, listening to their users, and implementing new features. It’s no wonder they have a slew of sponsors and loyal users.

I also like the different design layouts (skins) and app features (games, video, etc.) although I have yet to try them all out. Eh, I could have put in some screen shots… but again, I’m on an older mac and it does not have a ’print screen’ feature. Most of the chat rooms are sponsored by bands which feature streaming music videos that you can watch while you chat. Every member of meebo also gets their own chat room to use and invite friends into. Integrating business promotional videos into my chat room is something I’m going to have to look into. Do I ever stop thinking of ways to build my brand, you ask? No. That’s why I’m still in business. *knocks on felt*

On a side note, I must admit that the brief time I spent in two of the band sponsored chat rooms made me realize just how much I hate chat rooms. If I ever go back into one of them, I will first need to aquaint myself with the ’bastard child language of the 3rd grade drop-outs’ - a language course I might add, that was not offered in my high school. The acronyms are one thing, those can be queried and deciphered with minimal effort. It’s the criminal abuse of basic grammar and spelling rules that I’m writhing over. In other words, the chatters weren’t stumbling over typos, taking creative literary risks, making attempts at humor, or being cute - they just didn’t know any better.

Now that I have wandered off into another trademarked ’Ann-rant’, feel free to join me in meebo-land by signing up and adding me (karmabox) as a friend (or enemy). You can direct your hate-IM’s there.

Cheers!
+ann