Written Right: a writer's guide to more than writing

I love my local library. I’ve loved all the libraries I’ve frequented over the years. I can remember going with my mother when I was small to choose Babar books. As I got older I remember the thrill of moving first to the young adult racks and finally to the regular fiction aisles. I cannot imagine my world without a free library system.

To celebrate National Library Week you Thomson Gale is providing free access to all of their online resources from April 15th to April 21st. By using AccessMyLibrary along with your library card you can access over 27 million full-text articles from magazines, journals, and newspapers like as the New Yorker, Consumer Reports, Newsweek, and more.

I’m particularly excited about their Shakespeare Collection, 19th Century U.S. Newspapers (for my genealogy research), and the Book Review Index.


This is a sponsored review.

A close friend of mine here in the city was telling me that the Virginia Tech shooter not only comes from her home town, but went to her High School and lived in her old neighborhood. Yikes. That's hitting quite close to home, I'd say. She feels a certain responsibility toward her paretns, since they still live there. They are having to trip over reporters left and right.

The guys in my old office used to the coolest fantasy football thing every year. I was totally into it, but my current work situation is comprised of mostly women. These are not the type of women who know much of anything about football and to fit in I mostly keep my mouth shut about my football passion. I save my enthusiasm for when I’m around friends outside the office.

Anyway, I miss the fantasy football pools and I’m really digging the American Fantasy Football League. The AFFL has real-time fantasy scoring and player stats. Plus, the prizes are way cooler than anything I ever had access to at the office. It’s time for me to get ready for high stakes fantasy football and the 2007 season. Just don't mention this to the girls at the office. ;) This is a sponsored post.

Do you ever wish you had a system help you build your relationships and connections? Or, someone to help you and your family to recall, write about, and illustrate life’s important memories? Wouldn't it be cool to have it all in one place?

I found a website called OurStory. It’s free to join and it gives you access to one place where you can upload pictures, videos, stories and events into a timeline format using an easy drag-and-drop format. You can share your story with family and friends and have them collaborate by adding pictures, comments and stories of their own.

Then, you can download your entire timeline onto your hard drive or a CD or DVD. You can make one timeline, or several for each important event in your life: weddings, babies, family reunions, class reunions, birthdays.

I've been using it for a while now for family events like birthdays, holidays and that last-minute wedding my cousin had last summer. I'm loving this thing.

A web cam can't lie. Well, I suppose it someone really wants to misrepresent themself, they're going to find a way to do it. But, if someone is talking to you live from their web cam, chances are you're seeing the real them.

Person.com is a place to go for meeting new people. They have all the usual features like chat and profile browsing, but they ramp it up a bit by adding the ability for members to broadcast their web cams. I am absolutely riveted. I'm watching this hot guy named Colin from Australia right now. I feel a little naughty, even though it's a G-rated broadcast. It's just too cool to be seeing him live. The site is free to join and I’m pretty sure that I’m going to be up all night now, because I’m just so completely sucked in. Person.com - webcams, chat, personals

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I know I am late to the punch on this topic, but the whole shooting incident at Virginia Tech has had me too rattled to post anything at all on my blog. What a powerfully evil event. All of the news outlets are devoting hours and hours of broadcast time to the thing and I think that is mostly because nobody can fully wrap their head around what really went down.

Who gets that angry? OK, obviously he did. But I just guess I can't put myself in his shoes even a tiny bit. Not even a little.

My life is wildly busy. This much is true. I struggle to have a personal life due to my hectic, all consuming job. I cannot even describe in accurate words how far behind I am in my laundry and personal errands. I somehow manage to get my bills paid, but that might just be because I do it online during my lunch breaks at work. It doesn't have to get done in the 30 minutes or so between me coming home from work and dropping like a log into my bed. Let's not even talk about the poor little plants on my window sill herb garden. Poor little brown things.

In light of the above, you can see how exciting I find this website I just heard about. DoMyStuff.com was launched just about 3 weeks ago and lets you outsource your chores. That so completely rocks my little world!

Click here to visit DoMyStuff.com!



I'm just going to paste in their press release:

Beverly Hills, CA (PRWeb) April 4, 2007 -- Time is the most valuable resource we have, but it often gets filled with chores we don't want to do.

A groundbreaking website launched last week - DoMyStuff.com - aims to give us back our time by making it easy for users to outsource daily errands. Businesses and individuals located near

DoMyStuff.com users bid to do these errands, saving users time and money in the process. DoMyStuff came more out of necessity than anything else - we are all so short on time and have way too much to do DoMyStuff.com is already a thriving community, boasting over 5,000 users and averaging 600 new signups per day.

"DoMyStuff came more out of necessity than anything else - we are all so short on time and have way too much to do," said Omri Cohen, one of DoMyStuff.com's chief designers.

DoMyStuff.com is simple to use. Users can post tasks ranging from the mundane, such as mowing the lawn or picking up dry cleaning, to the extraordinary, such as arranging dinner with a celebrity or chartering a private jet. Right now people are outsourcing tasks like: babysit my kids, clean my bathroom, paint my house, plan a charity poker tournament, and translate Russian for me.

For people looking to increase their income, DoMyStuff.com offers an easy and secure way to earn money. Anyone who has free time can find stuff to do on DoMyStuff.com: students, part-time workers, and professionals looking for more business make up the majority of the site's bidders. DoMyStuff.com employs a robust feedback and escrow system, ensuring that transactions take place flawlessly.

Although the website was created in Beverly Hills and its marketing efforts are currently focused on Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, DoMyStuff.com plans to eventually go global.

Contact: Darren Berkovitz
DoMyStuff Corporation
9454 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 525
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
Tel:(877) 711-9883
Fax:(310) 276-5903
http://www.DoMyStuff.com

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I admit it. I have a MySpace profile, but I'm not going to be linking it here. I don't need the grief. I mostly use it to find old classmates and check up on my sister's step children ;)

I don;t have so much to say in this post. I am more interested in asking questions. Please contact me if you have even the most remotely plausible answer for me.

Why do women use such slutty photos in their profiles?
Why do even married men fill their friends space up with profiles of girls and their slutty pics?
What's the point of sending messages that just entail a massive glittery graphic?
If you're not promoting a business, what good is MySpace?
Do the men who contact me asking for dates really think I will reply?

So I just mentioned my friend Bette getting married, right? Of course I cam back with my digital camera absolutely crammed with awesome shots from our weekend in Vegas. And what better way to share these pictures with everyone than making a slideshow at Fliptrack.

I can make a slideshow by choosing from a catalog of popular music and uploading my photos. The software synchronizes everything to the music, so it looks just like a music video. The system lets me add all kids of photo effects, rotate images and put text into the mix. Fliptrack Music Slideshows use a music library that is all legal, so anything I choose can be sent to all my friends or even posted on YouTube without an issue.

This is going to be the best. Shoot me an e-mail if you want me to send you a link when I finish.

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All this talk about his break up with Kate Middleton has made me wish I had the credentials to gain an introduction to the blonde princeling. Despite the fact that with each passing year he looks less like the leggy, striking Diana and more like his horse-faced, toothy, balding dad -- I still find him obscenely attractive.

What's not to like? He is apparently intellegent, well mannered and witty. I could care less if he has money or power, as long as he has a backbone and it looks like this one does. Of course, there are all the break up rumors out there saying that he caved in to the pressure his grandmother and father heaped on him. If that's the case, I suppose I take back the compliment about him having a backbone.

But, he's still a looker. And a sharpt dresser. And oh so perfectly unwilling to marry a "commoner" from the US. *sigh*

I bet most of you didn't even know I was going. Well, I didn't know either. I was the maid of honor for my friend Bette. She and her man Tomas eloped this past weekend. They flew me and Tom's best bud out for the fun. And it WAS fun. I'm pretty sure I've never been party to something so spontaneous in my entire life.

We left Friday morning. Thanks goodness for a liberal personal day policy at my job. The four of us played all over town Friday night and most of Saturday, then Bette and I took off to find a little something for her to wear at the chapel for Saturday night.

Needless to say, after the wedding Bette and Tomas headed off for a little alone time and that left me with Tom's friend Dale. Nice enough guy, but we don't really know each other that well and it was awkward. So, I took off to do what I love to do best when I'm visiting a city! I checked out the Las Vegas real estate. I am obsessed with how the cost of living anywhere else compares to New York.

I browsed the local MLS listings from my laptop in my room's wireless connection. Then I took Bette's rental car and checked out some of the neighborhoods I found on the Las Vegas Homes website. This is a town I could afford to buy a house in. That's pretty attractive.

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My friend, Xtine, does this party called Shadowlands. It's been a raging success and it's going to be happening again May 12 from 11 pm to 4 am at 13 Doyers Street, 2nd Floor in Manhattan. There is a $10 cover and it is BYOB.

The theme this time is Beltaine Bacchanalia. You can check out the Shadowlands parties at NYCDarkEvents.com. It's a completely unique experience and although there may be pretenders and imitations, this is the original.

Dress is basic black in the least. Satyrs, Nymphs, Dryads, Lords and Ladies of the Wood are welcome. Make sure to RSVP, because the party is invite only at the door.

Can I even tell you how sad I am over the death of Kurt Vonnegut? The man is an icon. A deserving icon, not some witless pop culture symbol. I read Slaughterhouse-Five for teh first time in 8th grade. I was a fan from there on out.

It seems somehow ill timed on my part that Timequake is in my stack of books to be read, but I have yet to get to it. Perhaps my heart would have felt more at ease reading it while he was still on this earth. As it is, I will associate undue sadness with the the book now.

I'm looking at Shrimp Recipes for a party I'm going to this weekend. Iwant to bring a couple of really stunning dishes so I can impress one of the guys I know is going to be there.

I’m not a shellfish lover in general, but oh, how I love shrimp. At parties I have to really hold back so I don’t embarrass myself by taking too many little beauties off the shrimp platter.

Succulent fruit of the sea, tender, pink and
Heartily satisfying
Rhea, mother of Zeus, feasted on their glorious bounty
In the entire world, there is not other delicacy so
Movingly, wholly deserving of
Perfection

Yep, just the idea of shrimp brings out the poet in me.

That was a misleading title. Obviously, you can;t retire on $25,000. But a current survey shows that more than half of all workers have less than even $25,000 saved for retirement. Yikes.

You may think it's just the younger workers (24-34) who have so little saved. Surprisingly, half of workers age 35 to 44 and a third of workers age 45 to 55 and over also say they have less than 25k. Double yikes.

Here is the biggest yikes. I am one of them. Experts say women should have 14 times their income just before retirement. I can hardly force myself to ponder that number.

I always have said that the adult inductry was the singlemost strong-arm force behind what drives technology on the internet. And now Woody Maxim is here to help show us why. His self described tagline reads: Reformed Adult Webmaster Reveals Cutting-Edge Marketing Secrets. And, now he's blogging to share his marketing secrets with the world.

I have to admit I have faith in the marketing tips of a man who has already navigated the ultra competitve world of adult websites. He challenges his readers to think about "How far are you willing to go to make money?". You'll be surprised by his commentary on this issue.

I know a lot of people had their money on Larry Birkhead all along, but I guess I rather hoped Howard K. Stern was the dad of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter. I have my own reasons. It's just what I had hoped.

What a tangled mess. So, Birkhead has been declared the bio dad and now the custody issue has to be ironed out. Stern is supposedly very much in favor of Birkhead receiving full custody, now that the DNA issues are firmly in place.

Who knows what ahppened way back in the beginning of Smith's pregnancy to cause her to sut out Birkhead? I guess on Birkhead knows now. The rest of us can just speculate.

I just mentioned that I’m going to Florida for a long overdue vacation. I know I can stay with friends while I’m in Tampa and I think the night I spend in Gainesville will be with a friend of a friend (that should be interesting – just call me adventurous). When I go over to Orlando, though, I want to stay several days and I don’t actually know anyone right there in the area. So, it looks like I need to find a room that’s both inexpensive and close to the parks. I want to go to the parks with a friend and her daughter and I’ll treat for the room, but I still need to make sure I find a kid-friendly place to stay. I’m super interested in one of the hotels right there in the Disney complex.

I like booking hotels online, because instead of calling one chain at a time and using up hours of my precious office time, I can look at hundreds of options all on one website. Plus, the cooler hotel websites usually have pictures of the rooms and user reviews. The reviews are my favorite thing; because that’s the only real way to find out if you're making Hotel Reservations at a facility that is clean or has good service.

HotelReservations.com gave me tons of detailed results and I found a 4-star hotel with a special $88 rate that the website had as a promotional exclusive. $88! That’s about as good as you’re going to find for anything in the area, not to mention four stars. It’s a major luxury chain, so I’m a happy camper and making my reservations now. It’s a little closer to Universal Studios than Disney, but I want to hit that park while I’m in town also. I checked out their activities section of the site, too, and I can get discounted tickets for several of the parks and other attractions. I’m seriously looking at the Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament thing. Anyone ever been there? It looks like a lot of fun.




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I'm making a little jaunt down to Florida to see some friends. I like Sprintime in NYC, but I am craving a real beach and some unfiltered sunshine. I've got several friends in the Tampa area and I'll stop to see them, but I also want to hit Disney. I am willing to go it alone, but I'm hoping that the one friend I have down there who has a young daughter can tear herself away from studying (she is back in school) long enough to play host. Her daughter is into all the Disney princesses and I think it will be a whole lot more fun to go to the parks with a child who still has that whole sense of wonder going on.

I just came across about the most useful thing I have seen all day. It's an article entitled 7 Steps to Prevent Spam. Heck yeah! Who doesn't need to dig in and read this puppy right now? The e-mail addresses that are attached to my personal domains are generating close to 1000 freaky spam messages a day. It's getting very old.

At least the article is honest. Once you're on the spammer's lists, there is pretty much no way to get off. You're done. The author suggests a change of address and then details how to keep that new address spam safe from the get go. It's not ever going to be 100% effetive, but the tips will sure save me hundreds of mini headaches daily.

Have you guys seen the website LibraryThing? Hello. This is like a dream come true for me. You catalog all your books using their online software. Nothing for me to download. I can catalog up to 200 books for free. Then, I can run around and browse other members' bookshelves. Oh, sweet bliss.

I have morte than 200 books. Who doesn't? Paid personal accounts cost $10 for a year or $25 for a lifetime. Not a bad deal, huh?