Optimist Under Siege

So all optimism aside, I did finally get the new online dating site up and running. Phew! Two more sites to go and I’m actually pretty far along on the Maid of Honor site. It’ll be nice when I’m done with the layouts (temporarily at least!) and I can move on to other aspects (like ways to actually make a profit…that’d be good!).

On the home front, my husband’s in Las Vegas for a business trip. Not bad, huh? And here’s the kicker. He actually has TWO more business trips to Las Vegas before October. But hey, who wants to go to Vegas anyway? Not me! (Anyone believe that?)

So now I’m slogging through the process of transferring my other websites over to the new site layout. There are definitely some tricky parts (where I’m trying to recreate complicated layouts), but for the most part it’s just a matter of “manual labor” (of the computer kind). Hopefully I’ll have the online dating site done and online by the end of the day. That’s sure being optimistic!

It’s 8:30 am. I didn’t get nearly enough sleep. I haven’t had any coffee yet. And it’s all Harry Potter’s fault! Damn that mystical, scar-studded, heartthrob of Hogwarts School.

And I’m not even reading Harry Potter (yet)! My husband is reading it. He stayed up late reading it. And now I’m exhausted. This is so not right!

On the upside, I got my new website layout up and running. It still needs some tweaking, and I will probably decide to redo it AGAIN in another month or two, but for now it’s at least online and functional! Check it out at: http://www.boggle-game.com. Everything and anything you always wanted to know about Boggle (along with a cool new website layout I made myself!).

My husband and I went to see the new Harry Potter movie with some friends from where I grew up in New Hampshire. It was a send off party for my friends Holly and Jen who are both moving to California to pursue a career in film (no, not as an actor!) and to attend acupuncture school respectively. Everyone’s leaving me for the west coast! Come on guys…where’s your New England spirit?!

I thought it was actually a decent movie. I enjoy reading and watching Harry Potter as a rule, but some of the movies haven’t been all that good. I did quite enjoy this one (Order of the Phoenix). It was suspenseful and had a quickly moving plot. I won’t ruin it for anyone that hasn’t seen it yet, but I would recommend it to Harry Potter fans and non-fans alike! And that Hermione Granger has grown into quite a cute young women. Good for her!

Expecto Patronum!

I have a very smart husband. Who knew?

Case in point came earlier this week on my birthday. My actual birthday was Monday, but we celebrated early on Saturday night by going out dancing with some friends. So when my technical birthday came by on Monday, which is usually the night my husband goes off to a friend’s house to play World of Warcraft with a group of friends, he asked me if I wanted to do something else (even though we’d already officially celebrated my birthday). It seemed silly to ask him to miss his weekly WOW fun since we’d already celebrated my birthday anyway. I told him to go play with his friends.

Since I was using the laptop during the day (which he would need in order to play), I agreed to meet my husband halfway between our apartment and his workplace to give it to him. On the walk I was beginning to feel a little bit sad that I wasn’t going to do anything on my birthday. I knew it was stupid, and certainly unwarranted since I had definitely already celebrated it, but it was true.

So how did I know my husband was so smart? He greeted me with flowers and said he realized that he can’t go play with his friends on my birthday. No matter what I said. I was secretly happy about it and we went out to dinner. Good husband!

On the working at home front, things are going well but I had a pretty frustrating week. I have been working on reformatting my websites with CSS-Cascading Style Sheets- (and redesigning the layouts to be more professional) so that they would look better and appear in a more predictable manner across different browsers. I of course, as I mentioned in my last entry, use Safari, that great bastion of Appleness, but I know that the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily do the same!

I’ve been learning and using CSS as I go along and it’s been a wonderful, ever better learning curve, but I’m still new at it and so it’s a bit on the slow and arduous side. I do look forward to wowing (can I used that as a word, wowing?) you all with my fabulous new design. Eventually.

I’m free! I am finally free of my job after eight weeks of notice (instead of two weeks). I feel like I’ve been quitting forever! But the ties have finally been severed. And I feel good!

Now I just have to build up an affiliate marketing internet business, learn how to improve the layout of my existing websites (so that they don’t look like such a mess on certain- popular- browsers…can’t we all just use Safari?!), redesign my websites’ navigation structures, write more content, tighten up my keyword density, think up and design new sites, figure out better monetization strategies, possibly learn php…oh, and clean the house, cook meals, go grocery shopping, plan vacations and social gatherings…all while being totally self-disciplined and not getting bored, frustrated, or overwhelmed. Simple! Yeah sure.

I do not in any way mean to imply that I’m not excited or that I regret the decision to leap off the cliff and take a chance on this work at home plan (destined to make billions…or tens!). I’m quite happy, ecstatic, free! It’s basically letting me live the student lifestyle which I love (side note: I’m writing this from my local Starbucks…nice!), but I don’t have to pay tuition or take out student loans! And, in fact, I hope to actually make money instead of spending it (purchasing coffee not included). To show how impressive my success already is, let me tell you that I’ve already made an astonishing amount of money somewhere in the range of ten dollars. Yippee skippee! But hey, every bit helps and every cent moves me closer to making a self-sustaining income. My first monthly goal is $50 in a month. It’s not a glamorous amount, but that should make it more attainable. We shall see. I’ll keep you posted. Wish me luck!