Photography

So as my sister and I both take a ton of pictures, I was thinking that maybe we might post some up somewhere and sell them. I've been looking for a website to utilize for this and all I seem to run into are sites for stock photography. Our photos don't often end up as stock photography, so it seems like I will have to continue digging.

Just so you know, 'stock photography' is comprised of images that can be used for many different advertising routes. When you pass that billboard with a chair and umbrella situated on a beach, that image is a stock image. They have no discernible brands identified and can be used for multiple purposes.

I definitely don't ever intend to become a millionaire by selling photos, but I would like to share them and getting paid for my time and work is always a good thing. I'm just apprehensive at this point. I don't want my images to get stolen, but I do want them to be seen by the world.

I'll have to do more research and talk this all over with my sister, but I'm pretty excited about this prospect! She's looking for a way to make more money and as a new job would be the best route, she is looking into all possible avenues. She has been going to school for journalism, but likes to write short stories rather than articles. Wish her luck finding a big-kid job!

Leader Dogs...

The other day in my wanderings I happened to drive by a place called "Leader Dogs" and noticed that their sign advertised a need for volunteers. That piqued my interest and I went to their website.

After looking through the open volunteer opportunities, I concluded that my best match would be a Puppy Care Assistant.
"Puppy Care Assistants volunteer one 3 hour shift each week to provide care, socialization, and exercise to both adult dogs and puppies. This includes walking, grooming, set-up of puppy pens, general clean-up, laundry, and feeding as directed. This is a physical, dirty job."
I think this would be a lot of fun and a great way to help a great cause. I miss having a dog of my own and this would give me the chance to be around dogs every week. It would also let me feel like I'm making an impact in the great, wide world.

And I have a bit of experience socializing pups as my aunt breeds, raises, and shows poodles. It is quite fun to approach a pen full of dogs that are excited to see you and just want to play and hang out with you.

I will have to work out the scheduling to work with both of my jobs, but I think it would be so much fun and rewarding.

So many RSVPs!

So this summer is already shaping up to be a busy one! Too bad my main events are in Ohio.

This past weekend included a family reunion, a Birthday / Housewarming party for my friend Alex, going to see Harry Potter with some of my cousins, and kidnapping Miss Jessey and Bella to go see Brigid's Cross in the park. It was a totally rockin' weekend! Bella even got close to attacking Paulie of Brigid's Cross. Peggy thought that it would have been hilarious. (Peggy and Paulie make up the band, Brigid's Cross.)

Next weekend will be Alex's surprise bridal shower (SHH! Don't tell!) The I'll have Alex's wedding to go to and then in October I have Erika's wedding to attend... I have to be at that one because I am a bridesmaid! I'm totally looking forward to the weddings as I often have a blast and my dress for Erika's wedding is adorable!

I have finally sent in my RSVPs for the wedding events and now it's just waiting...

One bill out of the way!

... At least for a while, anyway. As mentioned in this post I have sold the two beater cars. A happy side effect of this that I didn't see right away was a drop in insurance. Mind you, I lost my multi-car discount, but in the grand scheme of things it wasn't bad.

So... Since I only have one vehicle insured and I had a TON of overtime this paycheck, I paid off the insurance. So that means that I don't owe a thing unless I change something, which isn't really likely. And the best part is that I'm done until JANUARY! I'm totally excited about this. It will help pay off other bills and save up a bit.

I'm totally psyched. This feels awesome!

Now for planning ahead...

So I'm trying something new... Menus!
Meal planning is going to take a little bit of work, but I think that they will really help out a lot in the long run. I won't have to worry about what to make for dinner at the last minute. It will also help out in shopping excursions, too.

A friend at work's wife is very good at utilizing coupons along with sales. I hope to be able to work on getting better at this myself. I don't want to become obsessive with it, I just want to save some money. I finally feel like I'm making some headway in my bills and I want to keep going in that direction.


I think that this is a good track for me to get onto. Wish me luck!

Okay, so it's the little things...

So my truck has a new windshield... that I have to clean inside and out. But no cracks!!

Dale's had a couple days off, and he's actually had a chance to hang around the house. He cleaned up the living room and got a chance to chill and watch TV and play video games. It's been a long time since he's been able to due to car maintenance schedules... All of the cars...

We went to see Cars 2 yesterday. It was very fun! It kept you guessing who the bad guy was. And we saw it in IMAX 3D so it was really cool!

We had dinner the past couple evenings at Dale's parents' house. It was cool to hang out and it also helped my food budget. Oh, yeah, I am starting to work harder at an at-home menu / budget. Last week I was so proud of myself. I took the Meijer ad from the mailbox area. I used the sale items to make a list. I used the list in order to find coupons. Then feeling all prepared, I went to the store, only to find that the ad that I based all of this planning on was LAST week's ad! Oops! I was a bit aggravated, but I persevered and ended up getting food for the next two weeks and got a couple good deals.

So it's all about the little victories that keep me going.

Happy Independence Day!

So today is the anniversary of our forefathers biting their thumbs at their old homeland. We worked hard and fought hard for what we finally achieved. From this we have grown immensely.

We are now a world power. My concern is that as a world power, we should be setting a good example by our behavior. I know that, personally, I am proud to be who I am. I help others when I can, I try not to be rude and to appreciate others for who they are and what they do.

Lately, I am realizing more often that I feel as if I am in the minority of people who have good manners and do some simple things such as saying "hello," "please," and "thank you." I find that these things are becoming less common. Ha, common courtesy isn't so common, huh?

For example, today Dale and I decided to have a nice lunch a Pizza Hut since we had a gift card. Near the end of our meal, a large family group comes in. They are loud and immediately start moving the tables around in the dining room. They don't seem to understand when an employee explains that they can't block aisle-ways due to fire hazards. The lady had to explain this at least five times! Then when they gave up with the tables, the adults and children sat at different tables and the adults immediately stopped trying to keep the children in line at all.

Thankfully we were almost done with our meal because I couldn't even reasonably carry on a conversation with the person across the table from me. And I could go on and on about so many similar situations, many of them happening at our own apartment complex.

I'm just so fed up with it. What would the men and women who worked so hard to make this country a great place, think of such ignorant and downright rude behavior? Be sure if their children started yelling inside a building and they weren't injured, that child would at LEAST have more chores to do when they got home.

I guess I just needed to vent.

Happy Birthday USA!

SO busy lately...

There's been so much going on lately, that I've barely had any time to do anything leisurely.


My truck is getting a new windshield. It started as a little chip (the third one) and started to crack. By the time the repair guy got to me, it was too big for him to fix it. So I scheduled a replacement. It was $50 cheaper to go without my insurance, so that was an easy decision.

Of course, I had just scrubbed all of my windows, including that one, inside and out. After they replace the glass, they clean all the windows for ya!


Next up, Dale and I have sold BOTH of our beater cars. As of last night, we are back to basics. Both cars were sold to co-workers of Dale. So he'll get to see them and keep up with how they're doing without having to do any of the work.

This will keep our maintenance costs down so we should be able to save a little bit of money. Since we are looking to buy a new car in the next couple years, it will be good to save up some cash. One of the cars we are looking at purchasing has free dealer maintenance for 3 years or 36,000 miles!


Other than that, Dale and I have both been working hard and have gotten to spend some time together. We spent some time dog-sitting this past weekend and hung out at the house to keep the doggie company. We ended up playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 for a while as the dog was passed out. It's the little things that I love.

There's one other thing, but I'm waiting for Dale to make it public before I tell the world. I'm SO excited, but it's his news, not mine, so I'll wait... impatiently. :)

Mailbox Project

So my sister, Bridget, and I were talking about how nobody ever sends letters in the mail any more. Well, my thought process is that I'm too lazy to write out a whole letter. I can never think if anything to say. Besides that, I would have to remember not to mention the same topic in one of our phone conversations.

So to make this adventure more probable, my mind wandered to postcards. You don't HAVE to write anything except the address you are mailing it to. So this idea has now started rolling...

I talked about it with one of the guys on my forum and he mentioned that it would a cool thing to post in the forums and see if we could get anyone else involved. So I posted the basic info and I actually have a number of people interested!

We now have about 10 people involved. We can all just randomly mail a postcard to anyone on the list as we want to. I hope to make this a bigger thing, but I'm really excited to be off to a good start as it is.

So yesterday morning I mailed off a stack of postcards to all of the people on the list as well as a couple of my ladies. I'm really excited to get this started. I'm even more excited to see what cool postcards these goofs come up with to send. Heck, I even have a little photo album all ready to store the postcards I get.

I swear I feel like a little kid. I'm actually excited to go to my mailbox again! I used to LOVE it, but lately, it's gotten bland...

I went flying!

So I had an opportunity to jump seat on one of our trips yesterday. Since I don't have a passport, I can't go on most of our trips, since we do a lot of international flights. This one was Laredo, Texas to Lansing, MI. With the freight dropping off so close to home base, I was sure to get home.

Laredo was HOT! It was 41*C, about 105*F. And the weight of the freight, in addition to the heat, there was a concern that we wouldn't be able to leave. As with most engines, aircraft engines like the cold more than heat. Therefore they perform better in the cold, and don't do as well in the heat. The hotter it is, the less weight the engines can handle. Thankfully, we didn't have as much freight weight as possible and we could work within tolerances. If we turned off "packs" it takes a little more stress from the engines, so we could take off. (I was worried for a minute.)

There was so much that I knew, but didn't really apply to an actual flight. Like, I knew it was REALLY cold way up there, but didn't realize that the aircraft regularly goes from -50 degrees Celsius to 50 degrees Celsius. That is a solid 100 degree difference that happens pretty regularly. That explains a lot of wear and tear on the aircraft and therefore one of the many reasons that they have such strict maintenance requirements.

I now understand turbulence. I've not really flown much, so this phenomenon was all theory to me. In reality it's like a bumpy car ride. It didn't really get horrible, but there was an obvious difference between the smooth section and the rough winds.

Taking off and landing was the most interesting part of the flight (of course) because there was so much going on. They ran checklists while they were descending and kept in contact with the tower all while lining up and preparing to land. Taking off was similar, except we had to position so that we were going the right way.

Overall, I had a blast and I would love to do this again!
By the way, all photos are copyrighted by me, so please abide by copyright laws, thank you!