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My Amazing Race comments probably don’t make sense without seeing the episode I am sure. But over at CBS, they will have a summary of the show, and after reading that, what I said should be a bit more clear. Summary? Team Guido (TGS!) is in 4th place. Frank & Margarita, Rob & Brennan, Drew & Kevin are all pretty much neck in neck. I think Drew & Kevin are in first place, but it may be Frank & Margarita. Nancy & Emily are still in the race, 5th place, but just minutes behind Team Guido (TGS!). Hope that helps! I must say though, the experience of reading about it on the website will NOT do justice to the look on Margarita’s face when she was going through the Temple of Rats. Eeeek. Man… she was one brave woman. When Emily & Joe did it the next day, there didn’t seem to be as many rats – which makes sense since they are more nocturnal. It was still gross.

Yes, I know that this is what everyone has been waiting for. (Yeah, well, that’s what I like to tell myself…) I just finished watching the Amazing Race. After seeing the “coming up next week” clip last week, I had a feeling that this wouldn’t be an elimination round. They made it sound like it was going to be hell. Gee, that was putting it lightly. I LOVED the fact that Team Guido didn’t make the 3pm train. They were a bit put out by that to say the least. Hopefully it knocked them down bit, but I doubt it. Anyways, that part where Drew & Kevin couldn’t find their envelope at the Taj Mahal? I was speechless. Oh my goodness. But then when they passed the bus that Team Guido (Team Guido sucks!) was on, I was hooting and yelling. I loved it. Man. But let’s get to that Roadblock. Ok, I thought it was uhhhmmm… odd when I learned as a child that Indians worship cows. Now I am – well, to be honest – grossed out that they worship RATS. EWWWWW… and how about that temple at night? The flashing lights and all, it looked like something at a cheap carnival! Emily & Team Guido had it sooooo much easier going through there during the day – but then again they are now what? Six hours behind? Well, at least Emily and her mom are not alone – Team Guido (TGS! – figured I should just abbreviate it…) is six hours behind too.

My personal favorites? Margarita & her husband. The separated parents. They generally have such a great attitude about it all. I *loved* that they got that huge lead at the beginning of this episode. Too bad they had to wait for the Taj Mahal to open 10 hours later, that sort of sucked, but at least they still had a 48 minute lead over Team Guido (TGS!) so that was a good thing.

By the way, PromoGuy has some interesting stuff over there about hearing Karyn & Lenny (oh, sorry … Leeennnnnyyyyy!) on the radio. The show was taped last spring. And, surprisingly, Lenny & Karyn are no longer dating. I am amazed, who would have ever guessed? YEAH. Right. I would have *itch slapped her right after that whole “it’s all his fault we lost” speech when they were eliminated.

I am WIRELESS right now. No cords. Laptop is free to roam. I am sooooo happy. I am also still watching the Amazing Race. I am past the point where Kevin and Drew are in the cab and they pass Team Guido (everyone say it with me, Team Guido SUCKS!) on the bus. Yes, I was cheering out loud!!!

I thought I had it all set up before, but since I am using a set DNS on the pc and not an automatic one, but had accidentally set it to find DNS automatically on the laptop, I couldn’t get to websites or my e-mail. I could however exchange ICQ messages with Jennifer, so I knew it was something minor I had to fix. Commercial break hit on the show and I couldn’t take it any more – I went to look at the DNS settings on the pc, set them on the laptop, rebooted the laptop and we are IN BUSINESS BABY!!! I am so happy. Oh, what fun!

Back to The Amazing Race. I’ll share the rest of the evening’s events later.

Looks like RoadRunner is still down, so I will be offline again tonight. May be a new skin for this site for November in the next day or too, all of this offline time.

Know what would be a great treat? If someone could e-mail me those Frank Lloyd Wright fonts. Oh, how happy I would be to open my e-mail in the morning and have those waiting for me!

Hey Tracy, did you get my e-mails? Hey, Hilary, did you get my e-mail last week asking you which treat you would like? Is my e-mail still acting insane? If anyone has written to me & I haven’t written you back, let me know.

Awhile back a friend of mine contacted me. His mom wanted to have a site set up so she could take orders for some products that she sells. The person who did the site for her … well, let’s just say it looked like HELL and screamed Front Page. With bad navigation. So he came to me and asked me what I would charge to do it. At first I thought he meant the company I work for – which we would charge about $20,000 – $30,000 for the number of products she has, a cart with the functions that she needed, etc – but her site would freakin’ rock. Oooooh, no, he meant how much would *I* charge. I was VERY hesitant about taking on the work. I do not have a lot of free time, and I knew school was about to start, etc. I reluctantly agreed that I would do it for $200 – as a favor to HIM – but the condition was that I would NOT work under pressure. I spent hours upon hours one weekend setting up a paypal cart system for her. He had said she wanted to keep costs low, and even though I recommended a different cart that would require her to process payments offline through her merchant account (which she already has, along with a phone system) he told me to go with Paypal. Why? Because when he first told me about the project he said she didn’t have a merchant account and I said that was one way to go for dirt cheap if she wanted to go that route – but that a merchant account would be MUCH better. Anyways, so we did the paypal thing. It took me HOURS to set it up. I can’t emphasize that enough. Rearranging things and adding content or fixing typos (in text copied and pasted from her catalog) took me another 2-3 hours. (Have to remember, I charge clients $100 – $160 an hour for this same work at my day job.) When she sent me my payment she only sent $125. [more]