Author: Christine

Christine is an Avenger of Sexiness. Her Superpower is helping Hot Mamas grow their Confidence by rediscovering their Beauty. She lives in the Heights in Houston, Texas, works as a boudoir photographer, and writes about running a Business of Awesome. In her spare time, she loves to knit, especially when she travels. She & her husband Mike have a food blog at Spoon & Knife.

Media Consumption

Brain Food…

Notice all the silence around here lately? That’s because I’ve been quite engrossed in the latest book that I’ve been reading, Urban Tribes, for The Virtual Book Tour. So far I’ve found it absolutely fascinating, but I have to finish the book before Tuesday, my tour date. So now you know what I’ve been doing lately.

Keep an eye on the Virtual Book Tour which starts today at Meg Hourihan’s site, stops here on Tuesday, and continues on through ~~Sunday~~ Monday. It is always fascinating to me to see what everyone else thinks of a book, and I will continue to post links and information throughout the week.

Media Consumption

The Matrix…

Tonight we will be watching the final movie in The Matrix trilogy at the IMAX with Kathy and Tom – big, big screen and loud noise, what more can you ask for? With so many people heading out to see Matrix Revolutions, I thought you might need a refresher about what happened in the last one. This should help you out! (click the image for the full size pop-up.)

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The 9th of November…

As I went to the Weight Watcher’s site to enter my points for today, I realized that it is November 9th. For some reason, out of nowhere, I remembered that today is Amy Legris’ birthday. She was my best friend when I was growing up, and she lived just down the street from us in Kankakee, Illinois. When we were in junior high she moved to Phoenix, Arizona and we lost touch with each other.

Appropriate that I should think of her today because I rode my new bike today, and if I remember right, my first bike was hers originally. We used to ride bikes together all the time once I learned how to ride. It was a lovely blue bike with a cool white banana seat and groovy monkey handle bars. It was quite a sweet ride.

My new bike is the first bike I’ve owned since Jason was born. (My old bike was stolen because my ex-husband didn’t think they needed to be locked up in the apartment basement in Germany. Duh.) I haven’t gone for a ride since I was in college – probably 1989. Considering I’ll be riding about 185 miles in two days in late April for the MS 150, the time to start training is now. I want to start off easy this week – 30 minute to 1 hour rides first, and then I’ll start building my endurance up.

I forgot how great it feels to ride a bike, just you and the world. The wind on your face, the breeze in your hair. The sights and the sounds as you go rolling by them. I’m really looking forward to this.

So Amy, if you should ever read this – thank you for the good times we had when we were kids. Thank you for being there when I learned to ride a bike. Thank you for all of the memories. And Happy Birthday!

Media Consumption

Forced Music…

I understand that it has been a problem for a long time with college students downloading mp3s – heck, that’s where Napster got it’s start, and we all know who the real Napster is, right? (Watch The Italian Job – it’s a great movie!) I don’t think it’s right though that Penn State students are forced to sign up for Napster.

Napster made a deal with the college, “touted by university officials and the company as a way to provide students with a legal alternative to downloading music illegally from Kazaa or other file-swapping networks.” Students get access to Napster and the charges are included as part of the school’s pre-existing information technology fees.

I think it’s wrong for a few different reasons. What if you don’t want to download mp3s at all? What if that’s just not your thing? What if you are a student already on a tight budget, and that just makes it harder to afford college? (They haven’t said what the new fees will be with the service added in.) What if you live off campus, so you can’t take advantage of the school’s network to download files? What if you just have an issue with your school giving money to a corporation like that? I wouldn’t appreciate it if my school forced me to sign up for a subscription based program with any corporation – it’s like telling me that I must pay for cable and all of the movie channels, even if I don’t want to watch TV.

We were talking about this at lunch yesterday – isn’t it funny that in the ’80s we used to make cassettes for each other, and no one really said that it was wrong. If I had a cassette and you liked it, I would use my dual-cassette player and make you a copy. Now the RIAA would hunt me down for the same thing. Somedays it seems like the world has gone just a little bit crazy…

Amuse Me

Modern Day Garage Sales…

This morning we had a garage sale at my parent’s house, and in addition to the usual things, I sold Jason’s crib and changing table. The crib was Child Craft crib that retails in the $800 price range, under the category of best pos. We had a sticker on it for $200 for the whole set. It’s a great crib – it even converts in to a junior bed with an extender for when the child outgrows a crib.

A few people came by and were interested in it, but eventually the “right” people came by. A soon-to-be grandfather that lives around the corner from my parents came over to check it out. Then the mom-to-be came over to check it out too. I jokingly told her I could even take a credit card for payment. When they decided to buy it, we did just that! I logged in to PayPal and sent them a payment request for $200 (we were holding the crib until tonight so they could pick it up) and they went home and sent me the money through PayPal!

I also have an account through ProPay that allows you to process credit cards on the spot as if they were regular merchant payments – no different then when a cashier swipes your credit card at the store. I would have used them, but it’s a 3.5% transaction fee, and PayPal is under 2%. PayPal seemed to be the better choice for this transaction.

Garage sales have even come in to the Internet age!