Footprints on the Moon

It’s now officially fall, have you started planning your caribbean cruises yet? In just a couple of months, you are going to really wish you had… or you will if you don’t already live in a part of the country that stays warm. Around here, it probably won’t get cold, cold for a little while yet, but we’ll probably spend the next month or so switching back and forth between A/C and heat. I keep waiting for the days where I can shut the air off and open the window, and there have been a couple so far. But mostly it just gets too hot, and I have to turn the air back on. It won’t be too much longer and I’ll wish it were warm enough for air conditioning.

I feel like I’m back in high school again. My senior year, I had to take Economics. Like many other high schools, we had the tradition of playing a mock stock market. Our teacher was the stock broker, and he processed all of our trades. We were given a certain amount of “money” to invest, and using the real turns of the stock market, the person with the most money at the end of the trial “won.” I don’t remember what the prize was… I think it may have been bonus points, or being exempt from the final. All I know is that the stock market did not perform well that semester, and I did not win.
The whole point of the exercise was to learn about the stock market, and how it worked, what it’s like to invest, and what can happen with your money. If you didn’t play a mock stock in your high school days, you still have the opportunity. All you have to do is register for MyWallSt.net, and sign up for their rookie challenge. You’ll get $100,000 to invest any way that you want to. You can follow the progress of your portfolio, and the portfolios of other participants. Even better, at the end of the week, the rookie member with the highest percent gain in portfolio equity for the week will be the winner of $1,000.
Sounds good to me! I’m off to start investing my fake money… who should I buy stock in? The company I work for would be an obvious choice if they hadn’t recently de-listed from the stock exchange. I worked at McDonalds in high school so I “bought” stock in them, as well as a few other well known companies. If you decide to participate, be sure to let me know how you’re doing!

I woke up this morning absolutely freezing. I’m ready for my Florida vacation now. Remember when I said it was only a matter of time before I started threatening to move somewhere warm? Give me a little time, and I’ll be okay with being here, but for right now, I want my warm weather back!! I was SO cold this morning that I had to go dig out a sweatshirt. The whole apartment has been closed up too, so it’s not like I’m letting cold air in… I’m not ready for winter, and this chilly weekend is just a cruel reminder that it’s right around the corner.

While I managed to post every day last week, it was still rather quiet over here. And why was that? Well, that would be because I bought two new domains last week. The idea had been rumbling around in my head for awhile, and I finally decided to go ahead and do it. They are brand new, so there’s not much there, but I’d appreciate any feedback you might have!

Footprints on Film is my new photo blog. Since it is a photo blog, I’ll hopefully be taking more pictures to share with you! I’ll also be doing a Photo A Day.

Jenn Cooks is my adventures from the kitchen. I don’t know how to cook much right now, but I’m trying to learn. As soon as I get it ready, I plan on having a recipe challenge where readers can submit recipes for me to make.

Also, I’m still building my related blogs blogroll, so if you have a blog of a similar theme and you’d like to trade links, let me know!

If you’re reading my blog through a feed reader, you won’t have noticed, but Footprints on the Moon now has a new theme! I’m really liking it so far, but I’m still tweaking some of the code on it. My blogrolls are fighting me, as well as a few other things. I forgot how frustrating changing themes could be! It doesn’t help that I just don’t “get” CSS either. I’ll either figure it out, or find someone who can help me.

Don’t forget to drop me a comment and let me know what you think of the changes.

Okay, I’m not really moving to Florida. But the overly warm weather has been cooling down here, and I know it’s only a matter of time before the really cold weather hits and I start complaining about that instead. When December hits, I’ll start threatening to look into some Miami real estate, but I won’t really do it. I’m not a big fan of extreme temperatures. My favorite time of the year is fall, when the skies are clear and blue, and the temperature is just perfectly comfortable, no insane humidity. We only got one or two really good Indian Summer days last year, and it was sooo disappointing. It seemed like we went from Summer straight to Winter, and then right back into Summer again. I want my four seasons!

I have fallen behind in all things internet, which is probably obvious given that I haven’t blogged here in the last two days. I have excuses, really I do!! One of the things that I’ve neglected to write about is Marcus’s 101 Steps.

I’ve been reading Marcus’s blog and attempting to do the steps as I came across them, but I didn’t realize how remiss I’d been in blogging it over here until I realized that I last blogged about steps one and two, and Marcus is on step 13!! Oops!! To catch you up on what you’ve missed… steps 3-13.

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I’m currently in the middle of a cell phone search. Dad and I have successfully split our shared phone plan into two plans, so now the next step for me is to find a new phone. This includes figuring out which kind of cell phone I would like, and then whether it would be more cost effective to purchase it through my provider, or elsewhere on the web. I found a site called mpire.com, and they provide reviews and prices for all sorts of products. Of course, the first thing I did was plop the words cell phone in the search bar.
Lo and behold, I landed a page full of price comparisons for cell phones. I see a couple of the phones I’ve been looking at, so I’ll have to spend a little more time looking in depth at that. Many of the models list prices from 8 different stores! My mama taught me to be a bargain shopped, so you can bet I’ll be looking for a good deal.
And it’s not just for electronic products… you can find price comparisons for everything from health care products to furniture. As a consumer, and one who is willing to buy pretty much everything over the internet, I think I’ll be bookmarking this one.
In the mean time, I still need to decide what kind of phone to get. Since I had to drive all the way back across town last night to exchange phones with my dad (he had mine, I had his), I think one of my requirements is going to be distinctive…. sigh!

As I believe I may have mentioned once or twice ( ) I’m planning on going to Vegas in November. A couple of weeks ago, I was looking to purchase the tickets for my airfare, and other transportation. At the time I was really wishing I had the use of a trip planner to help me out. It would have been much easier to call them up, and say hey, I want to fly to Vegas on this date, and return on this date, find me something cheap.
Heck, even using a price comparison tool would have been helpful… much easier than going to each site separately and seeing what I could find. I’ve spent a good bit of time looking, and I’m confident that I paid a good price, but I would have been upset to find I’d missed some good travel deals. We haven’t yet picked out our hotel, though, so there may still be some need for help yet!

Did you know that you have the opportunity to Win an 80GB Portable Harddrive? You actually only have a limited time left– the contest only runs until tomorrow, August 21st. Sorry guys, I’m a slacker. But there’s still a chance to get in on it, so head over to GeekySpeaky to see what you need to do to enter for yourself.

Though, you know, if you don’t get around to entering, no skin off my back. That will just be one less person to compete with, as I really want that Portable Hard Drive for myself. I currently don’t have any system at all for backing up the files on my laptop, and as well all know, friends, that is what is known as a bad idea. I’ve also downloaded a bunch of digital scrapbooking things to play with, and I’d like to move them off the laptop before they seriously bog things down. So either enter for yourself, or cross your fingers for me to win it. Whichever.