Offerings of Good Drums

My sister and my niece have been staying with me for a few months now since it is more logical due to the financial crisis we both are experiencing. I only have a 2 bedroom home so my sister and I ended up making the garage into a play area or hangout area for my niece, since she has been asking about having her own space.

When we finished it up, we talked about purchasing some good dynasty drums for her to play around with since her old drum set was ruined by their dog at their previous home. I searched around on the net to see what I could find and that was suitable for her and our pockets. I came across a really cool site that offered good dynasty drums for an unbelievable prices, and was excited for my sister to see. When I finally got her to sit down and take a look, she was amazed at the prices and immediately ordered one we both thought she would enjoy.

In no time it had arrived at the house and was ready for us to set up in my nieces new hang out room. When my niece had come home from school she walked into the garage and was shocked and ran over to the drum set and immediately took to it. She is enjoying her new drum set and hang out room to the fullest. I couldn’t be any happier or more thrilled and I know my sister and niece are too without question.

Modes of Transportation Up For Sale

The amount of various modes of transportation sitting by the side of the road with For Sale signs placed upon them, are growing as the economy is still in such turmoil. At first is was mainly cars, then the boats and motorcycles started showing up here and there. Living out in the country as I do we are seeing more and more pieces of equipment used for transportation up for sale.

On my way home from work the other day I saw a boom lift sale, it didn’t have a price on it so I have no idea what kind of money they are asking. It has become the norm to see tractors and other used material lifts up for sale around here. But I swear there are more and more of them each and every day. I hate to see our local farmers struggling and having to sell their important pieces of farm equipment. This has been a miserable winter, let’s hope that the spring will be better for all of us.

A Karaoke Birthday

My birthday is right around the corner and everyone in my family is asking me what I want this year, so I have been thinking about it and I have decided my top pick would have to be a home karaoke machine. Ever since I was a young kid I’ve always find myself turning up some of my favorite music and singing along (quite loudly, mind you) with it, dancing around the room with a spiral hair brush in my hand pretending it is my microphone. Most of my girlfriends did the same thing and when we would all get together we would spend most of it listening, singing and talking about music. Man didn’t we have some great times, all based around the magic of music.

And the sleep-overs, I swear I don’t think I ever spent a weekend along. I was either at one of my friends house or one or more was sleeping over at my place. Most of the time we were at my house, it was always so kid friendly and a safe place for all the kids of the neighborhood and all the other kids that wanted or needed a place to hang and have fun. My parents made a huge effort to make and keep it that way for as long as possible. They still have people come to the door that used to come over  and play that just wanted to stop by and say hello and see if our family was still calling the house our home. My mother really gets a kick out of seeing how much they have grown and changed and hear all of there stories.

shure sm58
The Shure SM58 Mic

Well back to the subject of a karaoke machine I searched around on the Internet for some idea of the prices that they are asking for today’s home karaoke machines, and where to buy a microphone that I would like with it and had found a particular website that offers so many awesome karaoke machines for outrageously low prices. I sent out an email shared this sites URL with my close family members that have asked me for any ideas that I might have for a birthday gift this year.

Beauty Salon Equipment Supplies By Elegans

Next week will be a great week if the weather could only cooperate a bit more. The kids will be out of school for their spring break and we are all piling into the car and heading down to North Carolina to spend some time with Judy and her kids. Judy and I have been very close friends since the fourth grade. Even though she moved down south, an eight hour drive from here, we have managed to keep in close contact with each other using our cell phones and of course there is always email and Facebook that we can rely on to communicate with each other.

Judy is in the process of opening up her own beauty salon. It will be good to be right there with her to get a good look at all of the things that she has been telling me about. Finding the right beauty equipment for sale has been a challenge for her. She is lucky that her mother lives less than 5 miles away and used to work as a beautician before they moved down there. I have always been envious of their close mother/daughter relationship. My mother and I rarely talk. I can’t imagine my mother just randomly coming over to the house and just hang out for the day. With her it still requires an invitation and it takes hours to get the place cleaned up before she is scheduled to arrive.

Anyway it looks like she has decided on the salon equipment sydney that she found online with the link that I found and sent her a few weeks ago. That makes me feel good to have been able to contribute to her new goal, even living so far away from each other. Watch out North Carolina, here we come!

Doomed From The Beginning

As far as any one of us were concerned, our musician friend Eric had flown the coop to San Francisco and had no plans of seeing him again any time soon. He and his buddy, Josh, left right after Christmas, they loaded up their cargo van with all of their musical instruments and equipment and a few things that they would need once they got there and got settled in and left town with the biggest grins on their faces. A Kodak moment to be sure, too bad no one had a camera and didn’t think to use any of the cell phones that we all had that could have captured the moment, sigh.

So imagine my surprise to answer the door last night to find Eric and Josh both standing on my front porch looking pretty ragged and tired. I got them in, fixed them some grub and brought in the six-pack that I had just purchased on my way home and settled in to hear their tales of woe.

They were doomed from the beginning with getting two flat tires even before leaving the state and of course they only had one spare. That held them up an extra day and put a hurting in their budge right off. Then one night when they were in a restaurant/bar some body broke into their vehicle and stole a bunch of their equipment, including Eric’s brand new apogee quartet that he had just gotten for Christmas, which broke Eric’s heart and his spirit enough to were they never made it out to California at all. How depressing this whole adventure turned out to be.

Online Schools The New Educational Concept

I keep hearing how the economy is getting better, but I have to tell you that I don’t know anyone who would know it. People are still losing their jobs, their houses, their retirement money and having to sell off anything that they can live without. The number of cars, trucks, motorcycles, jet skis, campers, trailers, heavy equipment that are up for sale at the end of every other drive way and parked in plenty of fields and parking lots is still on the increase. Things are not getting any better, I can tell you that.

I do understand that more people are flocking to colleges and universities to further their education in an attempt to get into a better field that are promising a better future for many people. The amount of online schools are on the increase and I’m thinking that it may be a good idea for me to check out some of the offers that I’m seeing and hearing about. I’ve really never been a fan of education, I hated school, but if I want to get ahead in life it just makes sense to do something about it and the time is right for that right now.

I’ve been looking at the classesandcareers.com website that I’ve located and it looks like it might be something that I can sink my teeth into. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Aunt Shirley, Our Golden Oldie

Aunt Shirley has mastered her smart phone in a very short time. No one expected her to catch on so darned quickly. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is great, considering a lot of people her age wouldn’t even attempt to do some of the things that this “golden oldie” has learned to do. Last year she celebrated her 78th birthday party. Her 80th birthday party is going to be crazy fun. As a matter of fact it is already in the planning stages.

After Uncle Bernie passed away, she was back on her feet in no time. She went and got her real estate license and has done pretty well considering we are still in an economic crises and houses are still moving at a snail’s pace. She has been using a lot of tools that having a smart phone can offer. Even a pretty cool real estate closing checklist app that has proved to be one of the best toolss to come to the real estate business in a long time.

Heck I don’t even have a smart phone. Don’t want one. Don’t need one. As a matter of fact, my two year contract just ended with AT&T and I am due for an upgrade. I don’t want anything fancy. Don’t need the Internet, GPS, the weather, none of the stuff, just let me make a call, send a text and take a picture and I’m good to go. I know that they still make flip phones, but they don’t come with a slide out keyboard that is required for texting.

Dollars and Sense

My brother-in-law is currently dabbling here and there with Stock Trading.  At dinner last night at my parent’s house the conversation was mainly concerning Online Trading, Mobile Trading and IRA Accounts. I have to tell you that most of it was way over my head. I’m surprised to find that I really don’t know all that much about the Stock Market and all of this economic business, so I’m happy to be learning about all this Online Broker business through him, he is a good guy with a good head on his shoulders.

My sister and he have been married since high school, over 20 years now and they have managed to do quite well for themselves even with the economy in such turmoil as it has been the past few years. So I’m inclined to trust him to a certain extent and am thinking about entrusting him with some of my savings to see if he can make me some much needed money. My parents are contemplating the same thing, so I hope it all goes well. If things go sour there would be much hell to pay and I’d hate to see anything come between family members and their money.

Searching for Chocolate

My sister belongs to the local Red Hatter’s club, so I’ve been helping her to find a cool restaurant to hold their March gathering. They are a great group of ladies, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting most of them at various functions that I’ve attended with my sister. One day I’ll be joining the club, but you have to be 50 years old and I have a ways to go yet, but it will come soon enough, I’m sure.

Anyways, it is cool that we no longer have to rely on the old fashioned paper version of the local yellowpages to find local restaurants and such and that we can turn to the Internet to find just about anything you need at any time. Whether it is a local search or trying to find something half way across the world, it’s all there for the taking for anyone looking.

We did come up with a place called The Frenchman’s Corner, that sounds interesting, you can drink your coffee or tea and  taste their Belgian chocolates on a what is promised to be a journey of gastronomic sweet delights. Going with a group of friends to a place like that is perfect. If and when they decide to go there I’ll tag along, sounds like fun and I love chocolate!

Generations

Weird how some things get passed down through the generations and some things don’t. I come from a family that is over flowing with musical talent of some type. There are singers and dancers galore, as well as many types of musical instrument being playing played all year through, while I can’t do any of the above. If I start to sing, people start leaving as soon as possible. I had piano lessons while I was a kid. The lady next door was my teacher, she was a great piano playing and a a good friend to my mother. But no mater how hard and long as I practiced I just never got the hang up if and I insisted that I don’t want any more lessons, ever.

One major trait that I did inherit is hair and lots of it. Hair everywhere in the usual places and more. I remember riding the bus in elementary school and the kids started calling me gorilla arms. I can’t tell you how embarrassing that was. I took it as long as I could but then I just plain had enough of it and came home, found my mothers razor and shaved both of my arms and have continued doing that for the rest of my life. Up until now that is.

There are so many products out there to help with people that have extreme hair issues and I’m ready to start looking at them. I’m tired of shaving my arms every day. It’s bad enough to have to shave my legs and arm pits almost every day. So I have been looking into purchasing an epilator to do the job. For the past week or so I have been looking online and have found a great site that gives us epilator reviews and guides that has been very helpful. If I am going to dive in and give one of these epilators a try I want to make sure that I am buying the right one and paying the right price for it as well.

interesting epilator
Emjoi AP-18 Emagine 72 Tweezer Head Epilator

This particular one is listed as an Emjoi AP-18 Emagine 72 Tweezer Head Epilator. It isn’t cheap but I think it just might be the right one for me. I think I will go ahead and order one. I’ll keep you posted on how it works out for me.