Tag: money

Why I Stopped Writing My Book

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I stopped writing my book for several reasons and here they are.

I started writing and I think I got 3 chapters written and edited and typed storylines for 3 or 4 other chapters then I quit. I stopped writing because I had to start working on finishing the Christmas stockings but I didn’t work on those all day long, only a few hours so really that is no excuse for why I stopped.

One other reason I stopped writing my book is because I started hearing these horror stories of other people’s childhoods (that’s what my book is based on) and I started thinking that my childhood was mild compared to these people. So I started to think that people may read my book and think that I had it good. Even though I had a rough childhood, other people had worse than I did so my story pales in comparison and it just made me feel really tiny in the scheme of things.

I saw the movie “Riding In Cars With Boys” with Drew Barrymore and she wrote a book about her life and she had to have her ex-husband sign a paper so she could publish the book. Well, there is no way I’m gonna get any of the people I am writing about to sign their name on a piece of paper agreeing to let me publish them because I say some horrible things about almost every family member who did something rotten to me. I just know that they would ask me what I wrote before signing and I know they would never give me permission when they hear what I wrote. Plus I don’t speak to my stepdad or sister anymore and I know those greedy bastards would do what Drews ex-husbands wife would do, they would make me give them money first.

So before I continue writing I’m thinking of changing it from an autobiography to fiction and just change a few things. Obviously I’m gonna have to change names, that way I won’t get sued and I’m probably going to have to change the way things happened so it doesn’t seem too familiar to people.

I am not a writer and I only have 5 years experience as a reader (of fiction) to sit down and start writing a book so that’s why I stopped. I think that I need to keep reading other books to give me more of an understanding about how books work before I start writing again. And who knows, maybe I might take an online course in writing to help.

We will see how it goes. I’m not giving up on it, just putting it on the back burner for now.

Anytime Scarves

On By Michel McDonaldIn AdLeave a comment

A Scarf is a timeless treasure that doesn’t need an occasion. It can be below 0°F or it can be 100°F outside and a scarf still looks good. Then again, that all depends on the type of scarf you are wearing whether it’s silk or knit.

AnytimeScarf.com literally has hundreds of scarves to choose from. They’ve got designer scarves for those of you who have money to spend, affordable scarves for those of you who can appreciate a good bargain and then they have the cheap scarf for those of you who are on a strict budget like me.

Everybody needs a scarf to keep them warm or make them look cool. You just have to know where to look to find the perfect one and who knows, you might find the perfect one at AnytimeScarf.com. Happy hunting.

The Price of Tea

On By Michel McDonaldIn Products I LikeLeave a comment

In my blog I talk about things that I find interesting or disturbing. My blog is more like a bad episode of Seinfeld. So… now I’m going to talk to you about the price of tea lol.

I went to the grocery store to buy some tea bags. I grew up on it and I like to make it as an alternative to soda. In my opinion it’s cheaper than anything else out there, all you need is a coffee maker, a tea jar and some sugar or sweetener. My mom used to brew it in the sun but I find it much faster to brew a pot of water in the coffee maker with the tea bags clamped on the coffee pot lid. I had an aunt who used to boil the water on the stove in a large saucepan then steep the teabags in the water then pour it into the jar. I like my way better.

I was a little confused about how much they charge for their teabags though because it didn’t make any sense. I was looking at the 100 count box which was $3.99. Ok that is a bit high but it’s not that bad I guess. But, I don’t need a big box, I just need enough to get by until Next week when I get some money. I looked at the box with 50 bags and it’s $3.49. What? It’s only .50¢ less? Well that’s not right. It’s half the bags, it should be half price right? $2! Then I looked over at the one that only had 25 tea bags and that one was $5.49 WHAT?!? How can it be possible? It has 1 quarter of the bigger box. How can it possibly be more? The box with 25 tea bags should cost $1 not $5.49.

Then I look and see all these boxes that only have like 10 tea bags and they cost more than the box of 100 bags. What is wrong with this picture? Why is tea so expensive when it’s in a smaller package? Why is this big box of 100 tea bags so cheap compared to the other ones? I don’t understand. And the box of 50 and 25 was the same exact brand and same exact flavor as the box of 100 bags.

Lipton, Lipton, Lipton, can we have a chat please? Is there something we can do to fix this? It just doesn’t make any sense what you are doing here. I just don’t see your logic in charging so much money for smaller packaging. It should be less but you charge more. Why? Is it because you are going broke? Is it because the packaging cost more than the tea itself? Maybe we can think of a cheaper way of packaging the tea bags then. I just can’t understand why you would charge so little for 100 bags but then jack up the price for the smaller boxes.

I’ve been a Lipton fan since I was a kid and I remember in my 20’s buying the smaller boxes of 25 bags and they were only $1.50 per box. I’m sure there was a mistake in pricing at the grocery store but it looked like it had the correct label so I don’t know. I just think that it’s a big waste of tea bags and packaging if nobody is going to buy the smaller boxes when they can get the bigger box so cheap. You know what I mean?

Ok, my tea bag rant is over lol. I’m stepping off my soap box now. Carry on.

Yes… that just happened.

My Bike Wheel

On By Michel McDonaldIn Cycling, ExerciseLeave a comment

It has been over a month since my back wheel decided it didn’t want me to ride my bike anymore. I was riding the store and all of a sudden it started getting wobbly but I dismissed it. By the time I left the store I had noticed that it was getting really bad so I got off the bike and saw the problem. The long screw holding the wheel onto the frame had unscrewed to the left. I don’t know why but it did and everything on the right side fell out. All the nuts are gone and the ball bearings, everything is missing.

Chips cousins girlfriend told me that her tenant fixes bikes but I didn’t know him and I would rather just go to the bike shop. Well, we never made time to go and my bike has been sitting in the patio all this time while I’ve had to walk to the store every day.

So yesterday I was walking by her house and went to the door and was talking to her and we decided to ask him about fixing the wheel and I brought the wheel to him and told him I would bring him the money to fix it. He said without looking at it that it might only cost $2-4 to fix it and I told him if it’s that cheap I will give you $20.

I brought him $20 this morning and he said whoa wait, don’t pay me until after I fixed it. Well, I didn’t want him to have to pay for the parts then I end up running out of money and not be able to pay him until November and I wanted my bike back sooner than later.

He took me to where my wheel was sitting and showed me something. I didn’t have my camera with me so I couldn’t take a picture but there is an internal problem. When I was riding the bike, or maybe when I had to walk it home, that long screw had started scraping on the inside of the wheel. So now there is a huge dent from that which will probably prevent him from being able to fix it at all.

He told me that if he can fix all that then he will but he doesn’t even know if he can so he gave me the $20 back and said if I can’t fix it you’re gonna have to go buy a new wheel.

If he can’t fix the wheel then that’s fine, I’ll just get it back from him because I don’t want to have to buy a new tire again, Darrin bought me the tire that is on that wheel and it matches my front tire lol.

I’m not in that much of a hurry to get it back BUT I would like to ride my bike to the store again you know? It’s faster when I’m in a hurry, especially late at night when they are closing in 15-20 minutes. Also, I’d like to get back on the bike to get my exercise again.

Nook Study

On By Michel McDonaldIn eBook, NookLeave a comment

A friend called me asking about how my Nook works because her son is doing an online college course and is required to buy textbooks but wanted to find out if there were a cheaper alternative. He only gets so much with his grant that he can only afford to pay so much for a textbook.

He had hoped that if he bought a Barnes & Noble Nook that his eTextbooks would be cheaper but I did some research for him while on the phone and found that they do sell textbooks new or used or you can rent them but in actual book format. Not e-book format for the Nook.

Although, they do have a new thing called Nook Study that is a program for your PC or Mac that you download/install and you can buy eTextbooks for 50% less than the actual textbook.

I was looking at the features that they offer such as being able to highlight in many different colors, leaving an asterisk and typing notes as well as bookmarking. Very similar to the actual Nook (although the Nook doesn’t have a color highlight choice or asterisk’s). Many other features like highlighting a word to look it up on Wikipedia, Google, dictionary etc. Printing pages, copying text to your homework, importing notes and many others.

I told him that if he wanted to buy a Nook for reading books that’s fine but don’t waste your money if your purpose is for textbooks because it doesn’t work. With his grant he was able to buy a laptop for taking tests on their website and whatever else they require of him to do there so he can just use that laptop to install Nook Study.

I wish that they had all this technology when I was a kid. It would’ve been a heck of a lot easier for me, who am I kidding, I probably still would’ve ended up the same because of my dyslexia, A.D.D. and learning disability. But who knows, maybe it might have been different. I guess I will never know. Maybe in the next life…

It’s Hard to Convince People

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, Gadgets, News, NookLeave a comment

Ever try to convince someone that some “thing” is better than the other? It’s very difficult especially when that person is adamant that they do not want this new thing. They give you an excuse and you have an answer but they give you another excuse and you have an answer for that too. They can’t win this argument lol.

I’m trying to convince Darrin that when I buy my Nook he might get some use out of it too. Not just books but newspapers and magazines as well.

He said that he likes to read a regular newspaper and magazine because he can find things easily but my response was that you can find things much quicker with a Nook. All you have to do is type in a keyword and it will find every instance of that word. Or you can highlight articles that you want to go back to and then go into your highlights to find them.

He said that he likes the feeling of a newspaper or magazine, yet he has trouble letting them go. When he buys a magazine he doesn’t like to toss them afterwards because he paid a lot of money for them. Have you seen the cost of magazines? My god, those things are expensive.

A LA Times newspaper is $1 a day and I think it’s $2+/- on Sundays. Well, if he got a subscription to the LA Times on the Nook, it’s only $10 per month. I don’t know if that includes Sundays though. I checked to see how much home delivery of the LA Times is and it’s about $11.96 per month. You are only saving $1.96 per month but that’s $23.52 per year and you are saving trees at the same time. If you were to recycle all those newspapers you probably wouldn’t get that $1.96 back for a month worth of newspapers since they are thinning out so much these days. Then again I don’t know that for sure, they pay you by weight, not by how many you have.

I was looking at the eMagazines they have and they really aren’t anything that I would be interested in and Darrin never reads what they have available. The only one that would interest me is PC Magazine but I wouldn’t read it that much. He likes magazines like Time, People and Architectural Digest. Those aren’t available for Nook. So since nothing really good is available I won’t even try to convince him on that aspect.

But the key points that I was trying to convince him on is that you can look up articles by keywords, highlighting and making notes. When you write a note in an article you can refer back to your notes and it will bring that particular article up.  He said he could look something up fast in a magazine or newspaper but I bet him anything that I could find it faster on a nook.

He goes to Church, not every Sunday but most Sundays and he loves to bring his own bible that he had his name engraved on. There is no way I can convince him with a Bible for Nook. He saw how one guys bible was weathered and falling apart and all this stuff was highlighted and he made a remark about how he couldn’t wait for his bible to be as used as his was. So that I won’t even try to convince him of. Besides, when he is at Church is the perfect time for me to read and I wouldn’t like it if he had my Nook during those times lol.

There are so many things that make me giddy about electronic toys that he could care less about. Although when I actually get it he might feel differently but until then he couldn’t care less despite how much I try to convince him.

He was impressed when I told him that you could make the text a lot bigger to make it easier to read and the fact that you could visit websites and write emails and I could even blog from the Nook.  Although I don’t know if I would want to because of the touchscreen keyboard but if we were visiting family it would be a lot easier than using the mobile dashboard with my PSP.  I could also type more than I can on the mobile version.

There are some things that you have to see for yourself and when we get to the Barnes & Noble next week he can see how cool they are with the display that they have.  He’ll realize they are a lot better than he wants to give them credit for.  He’ll see.

End of Plateau?

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Exercise, FoodLeave a comment

I’m finally losing weight again. I wonder if this is the end of my plateau or not. In order to give you a glimpse of why I plateaued I have to tell you this.

A few weeks ago I was doing great. I was losing 3-5lbs a week and I was happy. Every morning I would wake up and would be giddy after weighing myself. Ok giddy is a strong term, I was happy.

Unfortunately, both Darrin and I were sick of my menu. It was the same thing every day for lunch and dinner. 4oz of chicken (boneless/skinless) 1/2 cup brown rice and 1 cup of vegetables. After a few months anyone would get sick of that twice a day.

I said ok we can cool it with that for lunch. I started buying bread again which was my big no-no but the bread I was buying was only 50 calories and it was 100% whole wheat. I was also buying very low-calorie lunch meat but I don’t think I can blame that as the cause.

I was also starting to eat more junk food again. Darrin was tired of eating healthy all freaking day and so he started sneaking cookies into the house, Chips Ahoy to be exact. It has his name in the brand, what’d you expect?

So I caught wind of the cookies because he left the boxes all over the coffee table and I was bound to see them. Then he started going to Taco Bell and buying other things and I was eating them too because I am so sick of this diet.

Let me clarify that, I’m sick of this “new lifestyle change” lol. I’m not allowed to call it a diet because diets don’t work but a lifestyle change will if you stick with it.

In the last week or so we haven’t been eating so much bad stuff because we’re both broke so we have to save what money we have left on actual food instead of junk and now that I’m not eating as much crap anymore I’ve started losing weight again.

I think I was stuck at 222-224 but yesterday I weighed in at 219 and this morning it was 218 so I’m very happy to see those numbers dropping.  Also a pair of shorts that I haven’t been able to wear in years finally fit me but now they are getting so loose, too loose in fact.  I’m going to have to stop wearing them again which sucks because they are good shorts.

I’m hoping that those cravings will start to go away now that I’ve finally tasted the bad foods again. Unfortunately when you eat bad foods they taste too good to stop eating but we will see how it works out for me. I really want to get into the 2 teens and out of the 2 twenties you know?

Maybe when I’m 215 I will start to feel like I’m getting somewhere.  In reality I should be 215 by now if it hadn’t been for that plateau.  I should be 200 by October 12th so if I’m going to be there by then I have a lot of work to do and I need to start eating better again.

And by the way, the Nook was supposed to be my reward for going down to 200lbs and I’mplanning on buying it sooner for some reason so my reward system isn’t working for me at all.  I think if it were a sponsor who were rewarding me I would take it more seriously and maybe that’s why I’m plateauing because I’m offering myself rewards.  A reward for losing weightshouldn’t be a thing but more a feeling.  Nah screw that, I want devices.

Necklace for Beth

On By Michel McDonaldIn crafts, Friends and FamilyLeave a comment

Well I finally made the jewelry for Beth. I made the bracelet last night and I tried making the necklace last night but I didn’t plan it out right so I had to take it apart. I was in an ambien haze so I had to stop and go to bed because I was messing it up more than it was. I finished it this morning.

I don’t know if it is gift worthy. It looks like something a pre-schooler would make lol. I mean the bracelet is fine but the beads in the necklace didn’t come out as I had planned. They are supposed to be psychedelic but instead they look ridiculous.  They have fingerprints all over them too lol.  I’ve never bought beads with fingerprints on them.  And the holes that I stuck through them for the hemp cord wasn’t straight so some of the beads stick out further.

I need to NOT make any more beads with Polymer clay until I know what I’m doing lol.

I don’t know if I’m too embarrassed by this necklace to even give it to her at all.  Since we didn’t have any money for Toys ‘R’ Us I thought that homemade jewelry would be nice but it’s not as nice after all.  Darrin has a Sears card which works at Kmart so we’re gonna go there to get her a toy or something.

Notice how I’m not so embarrassed that I’m blogging about it with a picture?

Polymer Clay

On By Michel McDonaldIn craftsLeave a comment

We went to Michael’s today so I could buy some beads with letters on them for making my hemp bracelets for the kiddies for tomorrow. While we were there I wanted to get some polymer clay. I wanted to mix the colors to make them look psychedelic but I mixed them too much so they don’t look very good but when I mixed the yellow/green ones they came out a little better because I didn’t mix them before rolling them. I just put the pieces together and started rolling.

I bought some mini metal cutters for different shape beads but only used the heart  cutter and only made what you see in the picture above. I didn’t want to go crazy and make enough beads for a lifetime. Also they are too thin so I’m not even sure I can use them for beads at all. I may have to find another use for those.

I was told to mix them, let them sit out for 10 minutes then poke large holes with a stick before baking but when 10 minutes was up they were still as soft as they were when I first made them so I’m just letting them sit in the kitchen for a while. I’m going to use toothpicks to poke the holes through them when they are hard. If I poke holes in them now they will lose their shape and I’ll have to start over.

The clay is Smart Craft which I read is a Michael’s specific brand and I wish that I knew more about clay brands before I bought this because I just read a bad review of the clay and now I feel stupid. I hope they come out ok after baking. I don’t have time now to go back to Michael’s and buy the right clay and I didn’t buy the colored beads like I wanted to. I spent way more money than I can afford on all the stuff we did buy so this is it, I’m done for rest of the month (as far as buying craft supplies).

I hope these are cool enough beads for the kids necklaces, if not TOUGH lol. No but seriously if they don’t come out right I’m just not going to bring any of the stuff for making the necklaces at all. I’m just going to make Beth her bracelet (which I made with the letters) and necklace and that’s it.

Wish me luck. Hopefully they will be finished by tomorrow and they will make cool beads.

Update: The Craft Smart (Michael’s brand) is crap. I set the oven to 275°F for 15 minutes (for 1/4″ thickness) and it didn’t even cook the beads. 1/4″ thickness, I don’t even know what that means. Does it mean if I have 1 bead that is 1/4″ thick then it bakes for 15 minutes or 15 minutes for each bead? I guess I need a better translation. At any rate, I put it back in the oven for another 15 minutes and it’s still rubbery. I put it in for another 30 minutes and even though it was hard, it’s still rubbery.

I thought that when you bake this polymer clay it comes out like glass. Shiny and hard. These beads are neither shiny or hard. I let them cool and you can still squeeze them and you can see how rubbery they are.

I suppose rubbery is as good for a necklace. Unfortunately when I put the holes in the beads the clay was still very soft so the pressure from putting the holes in them made them lose their shape so in order for me to keep their shape I had to use a toothpick but that means the holes aren’t big enough.

I can’t win, I will have to get more next month and try again but with a different brand.