DUH! Yep...that's exactly how I'm feeling right now because of this crazt weather we've been having. Why? Becase my allergies' been acting up because of it. I can't even breathe without the sniffling! It's January and we're having temps as high as mid-80s in the last couple of days. I guess my body is as confused as everybody else around here.

Anyhooo...work has started coming in in the last couple of days. I'm slowly getting 'in' there. There has been some changes and it's not making it easy for us to get in there and just start working. We have to learn the new stuff. As a result we're slower than ever. The transition would have been a lot easier if everything has been ready...but it's not. We're working through the bugs and all and it's a pain sometimes. We'll get through it eventually I'm sure. We just have to be more patient.

In the meantime I am hoping my allergy will ease up soon. It's not fun typing and working with a very stuffy nose....

When I started looking for a job that I can do at home, I didn't exactly know what to look for. I was a teacher before I decided to stay home to take care of my daughter so I started with something related to teaching. Luckily I found online tutoring. That job got 'old' fast and I got bored with it. So I started looking for something new and that's when I stumbled upon document translation. By far, that first job I did with document translation was probably the best one I've had so far. I never thought I'd be able to use my being bilingual to make a living but I found out that I could because document translators are actually in demand especially in the business sector as well as the education sector where I did the document translation service for a few years.

I was sad when my document translation job ended. There are other several document translation companies out there. I have not applied for a job with these other companies because I am looking for something similar to what I did before. Unfortunately I haven't come across one yet. Hopefully one will come my way one of these days. And if that happens, I'll probably grab it with both hands because I truly enjoyed working with my materials written in my native language. I guess being bilingual really has its advantages, eh?

 Constant Change! Oxymoron, isn't it?

I'm just a bit frustrated because of some changes happening at work. It's for the better...so we're told but with all the bugs still in the horizon, I just don't see it that way...yet.

The change is nothing major. What frustrates me is NOT the change itself but the lack of preps for this change. I've bee sitting in front of my computer trying to 'adapt' to this so called change but when the people in-charge can't even figure out what the problem is...then it gets frustrating!

Anyway, I'm just venting here while waiting for some clarifications. Hopefully I'll be able to do actually do some work before the day is over. If not...oh well...I'll just go to bed early I guess...

Sweet!

A lot of my friends have a Twitter account. I don't have one...yet. But I read and hear about it a lot I know enough about it anyway. I know that you can only type so many characters per message so messages need to be kept really short. That's kind of one of the downsides of Twitter. It doesn't have to that way because there is now an alternative to mobile twitter called Writelonger. Get it? Ha! Through Writelonger, you can now send a tweet longer than 140 characters. Nice, huh?

I'm online a lot so I get to read a lot of twitter messages...especially those that make it in the news because they're written by popular individuals like movie stars or athletes. Since I'm not fluent with the twitter lingo, half of what I read I don't understand since the messages look like they're cryptic or something. I guess that's what they have to do to make sure they can convey the whole message with very limited characters. Well, hopefully with writelonger, mobile twitter don't have to be that short. Maybe I won't have to decipher every tweet I read in order to understand it, eh? Sweet!

...to the doctor. That's what we're doing tomorrow. It's my routine check up for my thyroid condition while the hubs is going to see if his cholesterol is back to normal. With normal I mean if it's not high anymore. During his last check up about six months ago, it was a little bit elevated. It served as a wake up call even if it's not sky high. He's always been conscious with what he eats. He does not exercise though so his weight has been slowly but steadily been going up.

After that visit to the doctor and the high cholesterol diagnosis, we decided to make some changes with the food we eat. Aside from that, he also started getting on the elliptical regularly. In a matter of weeks, he started losing some weight. He hasn't lost the weight he wants to lose primarily because he had to stop using the elliptical. The machine is a bit small for him since he bought it as a Christmas gift for me. The strides are too small they cannot be adjusted unlike the other elliptical machines. He started getting back and knee pains so we decided to get another fitness machine late last year. Because he stopped exercising for a few weeks, he gained some of the pounds back. I'm just hoping his cholesterol hasn't climbed back up because of it. He thinks his cholesterol is good...and I'm hoping he's right.

What do you do when you have a lot of free time on your hands and you can’t go anywhere because you don’t drive [yet]? What else but window shop…online. That’s basically how I came across Ash shoes. I was window shopping by visiting sites I get in my inbox every morning and there it was, a pair of sneakers that every girl out there should check out. I’m not shopping for anything in particular so I just surf online looking at things that catch my attention and these shoes are definitely eye-catching. I have all the shoes I need but just like a lot of girls out there, I like checking out shoes both online or in the store.

Now, whenever I’m looking at shoes I usually gravitate towards strappy sandals but I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the Ash virgin sneaker I saw in one of my emails. They’re sneakers alright but they are very lady like. The Ash gin wedge in particular is my personal favorite because they look very sexy which is probably one of the last things I would say about regular sneakers. Even our little one who is very girly-girly with her choice of shoes likes the wedges, especially the fuchsia suede. She asked if she can wear wedges already and if we can get her a pair. LOL. Of course I said not yet since she’s not even 10 yet…but Mommy may just get a pair and she can probably try them on? Ha!

Yep, it's that time of the year again. Auditions started airing last night and there was another one tonight. Surprisingly, they're showing more of the good ones this time around. They're still showing some bad ones but not as much as they used to in the previous seasons. I'm guessing they'll have an entire show [or two] solely dedicated to the bad auditions. Actually I'm quite sure there will be a show for those over the top auditions.

Anyway, in last night's audition something unusual happened during one of the auditions. One girl went in to do her thing. She was in last year's audition with her brother I think and the brother made it through but she didn't. When the judges saw her they asked about her brother. She ended up fetching him because the judges wanted to see and hear him sing as well. They both sang and unlike last year, they both made it through this time around. Don't get me wrong. I think they're both good singers and both deserve to make it through. What I didn't quite get was why the judges had to ask the poor girl to go call her brother. Why couldn't they just let her do her thing? I just didn't think it was fair for her. Oh well...I guess they thought it made good TV? I don't know...maybe it's just me.

Will I continue watching the show? Probably not and that's not because of what I mentioned above. I just never really sit down anymore to watch the show completely. I would watch bits and pieces of and that's about it. I just don't like watching all the drama that comes with it during the elimination period.

A friend of mine in the UK is about to experience what I experienced about 4 years ago. She and her husband are about to buy their first home together. They just got married in December of last year and they thing that buying a house is the next rational step to take. I agree of course but before they close in the house, they want to find first an insurance company to cover both the building and contents of the house at the same time. They both know that this house will be a big investment on their part so they want to make sure that it's properly insured. We did the same thing before we moved into our current home.

I still remember when we first moved into this house. It was a very exciting time for us because we waited for it for almost 5 years. When we moved in here we only had the basic things we needed...appliances and our beds. Little by little, piece by piece, we started getting furniture as well as some other fixtures for the house. We only buy what we can afford. We don't use credit cards to buy because we believe that if we can't pay for it in cash, then we don't need it..yet. Even if we don't have a lot of valuable stuff in the house, we still make sure that we are insured because it gives us that sense of security. A lot of things can happen that are beyond our control. I'm glad my friend and her husband are taking this step of insuring everything first before anything else.

 Because of current slow down at work, I have some free time on my hands during the day. I got tired of FBing [you know what I mean] sometimes looking at pictures of people I don't even know so I started working on the home videos I have on files that have been waiting to be burned in discs since who knows when. I'm still working on those and I'm happy to share I already made 3 DVDs out of them. I still have about 300 more to go....ugh!

When I get bored doing the things I mentioned above, I start to 'backtrack'....blogging backtrack that is. I've been going through the archive of both my blogs reading my old entries. It's kinda' interesting to see what I wrote/posted before. A lot of my older entries were mostly Tags/Memes that other bloggers passed to me and they were a lot of fun to do. I don't do a lot of 'tags' anymore probably because I don't bloghop as much as I used to so I don't get tagged anymore. Oh well...it was fun nevertheless.

A lot of the bloggers I met when I was just starting to blog have been inactive from blogging already. I guess they found some more interesting things to do outside the blogging world, eh?

About a month ago, we decided to get a new fitness machine that is quite expensive [to my standards anyway]. I was very hesitant to say yes but hubby found a coupon for the store that will slash the price to almost half so I agreed to buy it. Isn't it amazing how these coupons make it a lot of difference especially when we're buying big ticket items? Before we buy anything, we always look for coupons first. Seriously. I am an overstock coupons hunter because I shop there all the time. Hubby on the other likes finding either best buy coupons or newegg coupons since he's into the tech stuff.

Lately though, I've been looking for any Apple Store coupon codes that I can find. The little one's iPod is starting to fail and she likes her iPod so much so we're thinking of getting a new one before her current one stops working completely. My nephew is also asking if we can get him an iPad2 here. He's going to pay for it once we send it to him and I really want to get him one so I'm glad that I found some Apple store coupons. Hopefully I can use them before they expire so I won't have to hunt for them again.