Bad Couple Days

Even though I’m (somewhat) happy to be getting back to classes… I just don’t know… I’ve been in somewhat of a funk lately and it’s really starting to get to me. I think I may be sick or something since for the most part it is just me not having any energy to do the things I need to. It took me three whole days to wash my car and clean out the inside because I couldn’t work on it for more than about an hour at a time before I was too exhausted to go on.

It may also have something to do with the hot weather, but that’s just speculation. But it really is terrible down here. I had to put my tin of chocolate covered pretzels in the fridge because they were melting into one giant blob. But now I have a nice cool treat to snack on every once in a while and they are extremely good.

Now that I have all my work done I think I’m just going to take a few days and r-e-l-a-x as much as possible. I still need to finish my DU application, but I’m not too worried about it since I’m 90% finished with it now.

SocialSpark

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine.

So after having such good luck with other Izea companies, I decided to Sign up for SocialSpark. It’s another one of the companies many ingenious ways to connect bloggers and advertisers to the benefit of all involved. At first I wasn’t planning on joining anymore pay to blog companies, but after looking around their site I decided to give it a shot. Signing up was incredibly easy and my account was active immediately. It took a few days for this blog to get reviewed, but it was still much quicker than many of the other “pay to blog” companies that you see out there.

SocialSpark immediately had my interest because it was much more than just a site to find paid blogging opportunities. It’s also a community where I’ve already made a few friends. The site is clean, easy to navigate and it seems like there is always something to look at or read. But the thing that probably impressed me the most is that they’re really dedicated to keeping everything open, honest and disclosed when advertising. They’ve even got a Code of Ethics that members need to follow in order to participate in the site.

The only downside to SocialSpark is that since my blog has a relatively low page rank I don’t qualify for a lot of opportunities. But I’m sure that will change when I start building this place up and getting some back links. I can’t wait for that day. But for now I’m happy checking back every once in a while so that I can see if there are any new opps for me. I’ve even gotten some on-site messages letting me know that I qualify for things!

I do believe this is the beginning of a beautiful partnership!

Back to the Grind Stone

So classes start up again tomorrow.. What am I doing up so late then you ask? Well, I actually lucked out this quarter. I don’t have any classes on Monday or Tuesday, so they’re my relaxation days. Of course I pay for it by having an 8-12 and 1-5 on Friday… But I can live with that. Hopefully this new schedule will increase my chances of getting a job down here so that I can save up some money before I head off to Pittsburgh. I’m running low on the funds and that’s never a good thing. Thankfully I still have tons of the money that my gran gave me for Christmas left, but I don’t want to spend that if I don’t absolutely have to.

I’m also dreading going back to school because I know it’s going to be hotter than Hell in my condo. We’re attempting to live without turning on the Central Air for as long as possible to save money, but that results in us having a cool downstairs and a beastly hot upstairs. You just sit there and the sweat rolls off your body. We can’t even open the windows half the time because our complex is next to a farmers field and let me tell you… The smell of cow manure baking in the son is NOT a pleasant thing to experience.

I may have to just spend all my time driving around in my car with the windows down. It’ll be cool, and fun since I love driving!

Plain and Simple: I’m a Gamer

I love video games. It really doesn’t matter what kind of games they are either. From pinball to xbox to pool… I love them all. So of course I take every single chance that I can get to play games, whether they’re online, in an arcade or in my living room. I’m also always looking for the next cool thing to play.

I never pass up an opportunity to play something online, whether it is with friends or by myself. Most of my free time is spent distracting myself with games (since if I wasn’t playing some sort of free game I’d probably be paying to play some MMORPG and I’m a poor college student who cant afford to do that!). I scour the Internet for gaming sites so that I can get my fix and every once in a while I come across someplace that I’ll spend days browsing around and playing online arcade games.

Poptropica just happens to be one of those places. They’ve got everything from board games to shooting to racing. They’ve even got some dress up games for the younger generation. Most of their games are themed and every one that I’ve played is fun in its own way. I especially like their puzzle games where you get to drag around puzzle pieces to finish a picture. Some of them are even somewhat hard and that’s a good thing because I spend more time playing and every moment I spend playing games is a good one.

Wedding Planning is Scary

My cousin is getting married in November, and as Maid of Honor, I got the pleasure of going with her during a couple of her trips to pick out save the date cards / invitation paper, etc.. And to me, it just seemed like everything that was nice was just so expensive. The ones we found in stores that seemed cheaper always looked poor quality wise. So we continued to look at expensive ones since it is her big day and everything needs to be perfect.

Had I been thinking, I would have suggested that she look for discount wedding invitations online. But, my cousin isn’t exactly the most Internet-savvy person on the planet. She can make her way around, but I don’t know how much online shopping she has done. However, I was there and I could have helped her and I really think we probably could have found something amazing that was in her budget had we turned to the World Wide Web instead of just looking in specialty wedding stores / anywhere that sold party/event supplies.

But now the invitations have been purchased and things are rolling along smoothly. She may have paid more for pretty invites than she needed to, but the entire experience has taught me a good lesson and I’m sure that it’s something I will keep in mind when my own wedding comes rolling around.

I Need Some Business Cards

I’ve been a freelance web designer for nearly 6 years now. I’ve always relied on word-of-mouth and my online portfolio to get my name out there, but I know that in today’s rapidly evolving business world I’m going to need much more than that. Especially if I get hired by a web design firm but still want to do freelancing for my circle of online friends on the side. So I’ve been thinking more and more about designing some business cards for myself and getting them printed up.

If I did that, then I would have something that I could hand out to people that I meet at the many events I go to. I would kill to have had some when I got to participate in my college’s External IT Review Board. I met so many people from top-notch companies that day and it would have been great to have a flashy card to hand to them so that they’d remember me for more than the big presentation I did about one of my current projects.

Though, knowing me it’ll take me months to design a card. I can design things for other people no problem, but when it comes to designing something for use by myself… Not so much. I’m a bit too much of a perfectionist I guess.

Eyes are getting bad

Poor vision tends to run in my family. My grandmother has Macular Degeneration, my mother and aunt both have poor eyesight, etc. I’m the only person in our family who doesn’t currently wear glasses. But, despite my best efforts, it seems that my eyes are starting to get worse. I’ve been noticing more and more that its harder to read small text, or things that are far away seem blurry to me. Even though I’ve always tried to be careful about my eyes (not watching TV in a dark room for the most part, etc) it seems like soon I’m going to be hearing that I’m following in everyone else’s footsteps.

Not that I think needing glasses would be a bad thing. I already wear sunglasses all the time, and I’ve worn theatrical contacts. And there are a million different styles of glasses to choose from. So I’m pretty sure that I would be able to find something that I like and that would look good on me. I even kind of think that it would be neat to have glasses because I could get really cute ones.

But, as cute as I think they might be, I’m still hoping that my eyes don’t get any worse and I won’t have to contemplate which frames I want any time in the near future.

Sick

I just cannot believe how sick I’ve been over the past few days. It’s been absolutely terrible! I don’t feel horrible, but I just have absolutely no energy or desire to do anything but lay in bed. I hate feeling like this because then I don’t get anything done that I want to finish and things start piling up for me to deal with. It gets horrible and then I end up all stressed out.

For right now though I’m just going to try and feel better. I’ve been watching America’s Funniest Home Videos for the past few hours and am planning on putting in Post Grad here soon.

BLAH