My cousin took her store that she had on ebay and made it into an online store and an actual store you walk into as well. And she's having a blast with it! Her and her partner sell antiques and have both been in this sort of business for over 20 years now. This is her dream and she's living it. I'm so happy for her.

To run the actual store though was hard at first. They needed all the essentials when owning a store: security camera systems, bar code label printers, barcode scanners and touchscreens for POS. From what it sounds like, she got it all online at ITPlanet.com. They helped to get her and her partner and their store up and running and ready to open. She said the months before the grand opening were the most stressful but once they were done and they saw the finished product they were pleased and now are running a very successful business in Minnesota as well as online. Good for her!

I was at CafePress.com looking at Ishmael shirts (from the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn) when I noticed you can sell your own designs on there. It got me to thinking of how I've been wanting to make up my own magnet for my car for this website to promote it, why not also use the same design (like the one I've got for the name of this blog) and also sell it on shirts, mugs, etc.? And use the proceeds towards my fundraising for the Avon Walk? It's worth a try right?

I have mentioned in the past that our house up in New Jersey had a huge full basement. Had we stayed there we were going to finish it so it would be livable down there. One thing we wanted to do was divide it into at least 3 rooms. One for storage, one as a playroom for the kids and then another as a game room for adults. When you've got 1000 square feet to play with, you've got the room. Had we been able to go through with it all we wanted to get some arcade games in the game room. Maybe also a pinball machine or one of those JVL Touchscreens as well. I've been looking online at arcade games just for the fun of it and I see that Monkeys Arcades now carries the game Golden Tee 2008 which was only released a month ago. That would be something Sean would love! Maybe it would help to improve his real golf game. ;)

Yesterday we went to BG and had a great time. We got there about 2 and stayed until 5 or so. And in those 3 hours the temperature dropped 10 degrees! When we got there it was 70 and when we left it was 60. And the temp kept dropping over night as well. I had wanted to cover our croton plants we have out front last night so the frost wouldn't get on them but I had nothing to cover them with. I didn't want to use any good blankets I had, plus it was so windy we really had nothing to keep them down so they wouldn't blow away. I went out this morning to take Knoxie out and some of our Christmas lights blew off and are now hanging. Guess it's time to be taking them down eh?

One thing I've noticed that is a huge thing down here in Florida are access control barrier to direct traffic. You don't see these up in New Jersey like you do down here. They're everywhere down here! When we first moved down here I even almost hit a few because they were white and you could barely see them. Up in New Jersey you'd see them at stadiums and places like that but not on major roads. Down here you see them all over major roads. I can see how they're good in directing traffic and not allowing drivers to pass on the shoulder. Too many accidents happen from passing on the shoulder and more pedestrians get hit by cars that way as well. I have noticed that some of the barriers actually move when they're hit. As in they go down if a car runs into them. While some of them don't move at all and if you hit one, your car is wrecked. At first, I wasn't too sure of them. But now, after living here for two years and seeing how people down here are horrible drivers, I like them and see how they're in need.