One Year Goals, September/October Update

I had not reassessed my goals for the year since early August, so I may as well do that now. It’s after a long trip, it’s now officially Fall, and it feels like a good time to look at things once more.

Reassessing my one year goals:

1. “Have begun art portfolio” - I am starting to itch to paint. This is a good sign. I won’t push it. I have a long to-do list and want the painting to happen organically.

2. “Both our credit scores are good” - No change from July. I haven’t even looked at them or tried to get Dan’s again. My SIL recommended trying freecreditreport.com; says it works well for her. I like their commercials. Does that count for something?

3. “All my stuff from Arizona is here” - We decided it would be a bad idea to run to AZ in the middle of the Mojave in the summertime. DH and I plan to get our behinds out there in October, no excuses. Should we just clear out the storage and come back? Or bring back the RV as well and save another trip? With the RV, there will be far more stress. It needs a smog check, renewed registration, some insurance, probably new tires and who knows what else. Save it for anther time? Suck up the stress and do it now? Thoughts?

4. “I have one or two ebooks up in Cosmetics” - This is being backburnered while I get lots of articles preloaded for the year.

5. “JillFlorio.com is up to date with all old articles and current ones and back online” - The site is back online, is looking good and has much of my old work live. YAY! I still need to move my fish and hiking articles up, and then find my old sci-fi reviews (not sure where I stored them). That will be enough for this year. Next year I will scour my old floppies, zip drives and old hard drives for copies of previously published print articles. Since that will be a huge project, I am not going to worry about that just now.

6. “Cosmetics site is preloaded through end of the year” - I am on a roll! I need only 13 more articles to finish out 08. Then I can reassess a new goal for 09.

7. “Crestline Living is up to date and number one Google result for Crestline” - Getting closer to the prize position of number one! The site was not up-to-date for several weeks while I traveled, but now my paid Crestline Living writer Michelle Snow has set daily articles to drop for a good long while. I am pleased as punch. Things are moving along.

8. “Break 500,000 in Amazon reviewer rank” - More good news! I am now at 47,226 and look forward to achieving my new goal of breaking the teens by May 09.
9. “Earning $1000 a month from my various projects” - No love here. Still earning about 225-250 a month.  This is a time of building and I hope it pays off. I try not to get discouraged: it’s a Long Tail game, after all. I am using my Blog Mastermind program and it’s, quite frankly, thrilling.

10. “Go camping with Dan or alone at least every three weeks” - I am happy with how this is going. We’ve had some great camping trips and then some long travels in Orlando. Our next trip will probably be to Flagstaff to grab our things from storage. It would be nice to do some camping in Sedona or the Grand Canyon during that time.

11. “Have an accountant/tax person and all business/taxes will be well in hand and no longer a source of confusion and stress” - We decided to hire an expert in town, as the friend we wanted to hire already really has a full plate on her hands. New issues with the IRS came up, so we re-hired our old Seattle lawyer a few days ago. I have no idea what the lawyer will cost us, but the new amount the IRS dug up is an additional $2500 owed. While this is discouraging, we are plowing ahead with integrity in the hopes of clearing everything up shortly. On Monday, I will call our new local tax accountant and make a date to finish handling our 2007 taxes.

12. “Revised Yoga goal is to be comfortably solid in the Intermediate camp in a year and playing around with Advanced poses” - I have fallen behind in doing yoga  - it was too hot all summer to feel inspired. Now that it’s cooling off, I will re-energize my practice again. I even have a new, eco-friendly yoga mat to test drive.

13. “Office will be organized” - I did it! The space is reorganized. I still have to work on the paperwork, shelves and drawers and will hopefully do this in October or November.

14. “Kitchen/utility room will be organized” - I seriously want to pull everything out of my cabinets and shelves and redo these areas. I want to do my bedroom closet as well. These will be GREAT Fall/Winter projects.

15. “Will have new flooring, ceiling fan and wall paint done” - Nothing has been done. The neighborhood kid flaked on us. The paint and ceiling fan we bought are just sitting around. I might paint the wall myself this Fall (another good autumn project) but we still need a contractor for the other jobs.

16. “Will have tried all local yoga classes and reviewed them for CrestlineLiving.com” - Once I get back into my practice, this will happen again as well.

17. “Will no longer find getting packages to me as a nightmare” - Once again we are having trouble with our packages. I think we will need to make a bin, add a lock, put it on the street and notify Fed Ex/UPS. We will make sure, once we buy a house somewhere, NEVER to live on an access road again.

18. “Will have several control journals created and in use, including emergency plan journal” - Still need to write out an Action Plan and update our emergency kits.Another Fall/Winter project.

19. “Weight down to 120 to stay there, with under 20% fat levels” - I have not been eating a daily salad, due to travel, and also, my fitness routines have been hit or miss. Long trips of several weeks really screws up schedules! Once again I have 12 pounds to lose. I did manage to stay on the low carb plan at least.

Crestline Living Now Showing on Page One of Google ~ yes!

More good news - reader and friend Michelle Snow just wrote and told me I am at - ahem - 3rd from the top on PAGE ONE of Google for search phrase Crestline California! YES! WOOHOO!

So I took a look and there it is, all shiny on page one. Above the Wikipedia entry for Crestline, even:

1. Crestline Chamber of Commerce - VACATIONS

   The Crestline Chamber. … Crestline - Home of Lake Gregory! HOSTED BY Mountain Digital 909.939.4145.
   www.crestlinechamber.net/ - 4k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

2. Crestline, California (CA) Detailed Profile - relocation, real …

   Crestline, California detailed profile. … View more photos (we have 40 pictures of Crestline, CA available). Submit your own pictures of this place and …
   www.city-data.com/city/Crestline-California.html - 90k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

3. Crestline Living — Crestline California - Life in the San …

   Slideshow of our Home in Crestline CA. August 10th, 2008 · No Comments. Here is a Smilebox Slideshow my mother in law made for me on a recent visit to our …
   crestlineliving.com/ - 50k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

4. Crestline, California - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

   Federally, Crestline is located in California’s 41st congressional district, which has a Cook PVI of R +9 [3] and is represented by Republican Jerry Lewis. …
   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crestline,_California - 47k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

See? Number THREE! I don’t mind being behind the Chamber of Commerce for Crestline, but maybe I can creep up past the City Data website in the next few months.

Finally Got Some Google Love

Somewhere between late Friday night or Saturday afternoon, Google made an update. I now have rank on my blogs! While I know PageRank is not the end all and be all of the Internet that it pretends to be (ie - the saga of John Chow), I am ecstatic. I am doing the happy dance. There’s just something about being recognized by Google that makes me want to wag my little tail.

As of Friday afternoon, I had no PageRank on my blogs. I accepted that; they are under six months old and unproven to Big Brother Google. To my delight, yesterday I noticed a change - HippyGeek.net (this blog) went from a zero PageRank to a TWO! Two! Happy news for a young personal blog. CrestlineLiving.com got a three and JillFlorio.com has a three. Threes are almost respectable! John Chow has a three! I will take it.

A result: I feel newly inspired to write more content. I was starting to feel discouraged, even though intellectually I knew I had to be patient. After all, I had just come back from a fantastic Izea Blog Conference and met great people who make actual money from their blogs. And here I was with zero pagerank. So this was just the boot to the butt I needed.

My Amazon Reviewer Rank Process - September Goals Update

Good news! My Amazon rank made another leap…I went from 108,327 in late August, to 47,226 today! My next milestone had been to make it under the 99,000 rank, and there it went, very quickly.

That inspired me to post more Amazon reviews yesterday. I now have almost 90 reviews and they are all real, full-length critiques.

My goal by May 09 is to make it to the teens. So my next realistic shorter-term goal is to break 20k. I imagine it gets harder to drill through the ranks as you go along.

Another short term goal is to have more than 100 reviews up in the next two months.

In other news, in my quest to get my Crestline Living site highly ranked, I am now 3rd from the top on page two of Google for the search term ‘Crestline CA’. For just the term ‘Crestline’ I am on page 3. These are really great advances for me, as I was previously really buried for those terms before.

I don’t have anything positive to add in my other goals, but those did make me happy. It was nice to come home from traveling and see that I am getting somewhere.

To IzeaFest and Blog Orlando this month! Plus Mickey.

Hey, I am going to my first blogger’s conference! All the way out in Orlando, FL. I will attend two conferences, in fact, IzeaFest and BlogOrlando.

Dan will join me for the IzeaFest, and we will wear our Runpee.com tee shirts with pride. We’ve ordered business cards to hand out. I will also promote CrestlineLiving.com, but not HippyGeek, which is only my personal blog, after all.

What is slightly ironic is that I will miss the huge BlogWorld event in Vegas (which is a short three hour drive from Crestline, where I live) to fly across the country to attend these smaller events.

I do prefer a more intimate venue, and these will provide just that. Plus I will get to go to Disneyworld a few times. Epcot’s massive Food & Wine Festival (yeah!), the Animal Kingdom and the Magic Kingdom are on my list. Dan has never even been to the Magic Kingdom, so this is my chance to introduce him to Pirates of the Caribbean, yo ho ho!

I’ll probably get to BlogWorld next year. Anyone attending any of these three blogging events, or some other blog conference elsewhere?

We Have to Fly, But Now We Hates It

I unfortunately have to fly next month. We officially now hate flying, so we tried hard to come up with an alternate plan:

• Driving from CA to FL was out - too much time, too much hassle, too much gas.
• We figured we’d try a sleeper car on the train. Well, there we inexplicably would have to go from FL via CHICAGO to CA, adding a lot of time to the trip. Plus the sleeper compartments cost about the same as a vacation on a cruise ship. So, no go.
• Then we saw the first class flight tickets also cost more than a cruise.
• We even considered renting an RV to drive back so we would only have to fly one way…then got wrapped back up in the ungodly expensive gas situation. One can’t win.

So, yeah, we gave up and bought plane tickets on Expedia, which sneakily tacks on booking fees and massive taxes. We’re forced to change planes in Atlanta and can’t even sit together on the last leg to FL. We have a three hour stop-over in Atlanta too. I hope it’s got WIFI, or decent shops.

I am afraid to check and see which airlines we are stuck with. Some are stingier than others: I wonder if we will be charged now for water and coffee. If so, all the more reason to just get drunk on tiny bottles of wine in-flight. I am by now trained to bring my own darned pillow, so they can’t nickel and dime me there.

Am NOT looking forward to this. I always catch a flu bug when I fly. I’m going to try really hard not to this time, even if it means wearing gloves and a mask. Sheesh. Flying. Bah.

THIS is why I do the Low Carb

Last night I was at my local farmers’ market, talking with a candles vendor about how I was on low carb. She looked at me and said, “You look great - why do YOU need to be on low carb?”

….well, it’s because if I am not low carbing, I am about 15-20 pounds heavier, even though I am very physically active. But I didn’t say that - just told her thank you and said it’s about eating healthier overall.

I just thought that was nice for my ego and helps validate why I am making this effort. I guess low carbing is working, then. Which is nice, as it’s not the easiest plan to follow in our comfort-food oriented, starchy world.

Has anyone else had this happen?

Cleaning Out The Office

Often on Sundays I feel inspired to clean and/or organize something. Cleaning makes me feel happy - it’s like I can impose my will on reality, and create order out of chaos. Perhaps it’s my Dark Side of the Force in action, wanting to create ORDER in the GALAXY.

I originally had my office on the main floor but then decided I wanted to move it downstairs where the bedrooms and Dan’s office is. That way we could reserve the main floor as our “off-duty” relaxing zone.

1:30 pm: Here is a picture of the random clutter I had “before.” I had stuff everywhere that was just shoved together the day I set up, in this odd bonus room right off our master bedroom. I am not sure the purpose of this room - nursery? Unfinished bathroom? Possibly a craft area?

To illustrate how much my husband loves me, he even made me a wooden floor for this bizarre little room. I hate carpet and wanted a floor so I could zip around on my chair between work stations. He literally made me a floor out of plywood, complete with foundations. What a guy! <3 ( <– a heart shaped emoticon)

2pm: Right now I am at the point where everything is dragged out of the room. I just vacuumed the floor and polished my wood shelves. I took down the white board and am currently thinking where things should be re-established for the best use of traffic and work flow. I don’t have much room to spare.

2:35pm: Spent 35 minutes moving around my six bookcases, credenzas and wall units. I think I *finally* have a configuration that will be useful for me.

My office needs a lot of space for books (for reference and titles to-be-reviewed), papers (we journalists have notes and brochures everywhere), products (also to be reviewed) and various wonderful doodads gifted to me by beloved friends and family members. These are useless things that take up space, but still I refuse to give them up: looking at them makes me happy.

2:45PM: Slightly frustrated about the furniture. This is a 7X7 space. I need places to put things. Lots of things. My husband has a paper-less office so his decorating is easy. My trick is to get everything I need in here without making it look cruddy.

2:55pm: Am getting serious about this: poured myself some Chardonnay, put on loud tunes to get the creative juices flowing. Still messing with the bookshelf placement.

3:16pm: Enjoying being in the “organizing zone.” Things are just leaping onto my shelves! Singing and grooving to retro tunes. Jungle Boogie!

4:02: DONE! Everything I want in the office is in the office. I feel great and it looks so much more usable in here now. Everything smells like my lemon oil wood polish and I am no longer ashamed of this space.

I decided to not sort my books yet. I put them wherever on the shelves: will place them by category another day. I also didn’t bother with the inside of drawers, for similar sanity reasons.

It’s never good to bite off more than you can chew in one afternoon.

So I have my Liz Phair playing - woot! I am slightly buzzed from the wine and ready to press my Staples Easy Button…get ready, here we go: “…that was easy…”

Bought a Silk Hand Made Bag for my iTouch

I recently bought this cool silk mini-purse from Eclectic Lady on Etsy. It’s hand crotcheted (is that a word?) and looks great when you wear a jacket and sling it over your chest. I needed something to carry my iTouch in when I am out and about, and I wanted something unique.

Which brings me to thinking, as usual, about how to buy things in a way that helps the world somehow. I like to buy things locally, things handmade by artists, or something that is eco-friendly. Shopping on Etsy is a great way to help support artists, craftspersons and anyone with a skill they care to share.

Anyway, that’s my two cents, plus I love my new bag. It fits my iTouch like a glove and has room for the earbuds, a lipstick, credit card and ID, plus some keys. Everything I need when I take a walk and don’t care to lug my regular purse around.

Eclectic Lady’s Stuff on Etsy

Where I Waste Time Online

I might have a huge list of bookmarked sites, but can really count on my toes the places I frequently waste time for fun. Here they are, in no particular order of useful wastefulness:

1. I Can Has Cheesburger? Yes, I heart LOLcats. This is my sure-fire default time waster when I need an emotional funny. Look at the subtitle on HippyGeek for pete’s sake.
2. CuteOverload.com - the site creators own a little piece of my soul, I swear it. Not usually one for the sappy, I can’t say enough about arms up, eye capsules and nosicles. Who knew there was a science behind the making of cute?
3. Critical Reviews of my Favorite TV shows. It’s not enough to recap Buffy, Battlestar Galactica or Xena - I want a full psychological analysis. So give me Billy Doux, MikeJer, Sarah Stegall or Whoosh over the IMDB any day. And then there’s Ain’t It Cool News, which I sometimes love (and often wonder why I bother). Also, Whedonesque never gets old.
4. Web Pages that Suck. This falls only slightly under the category of work. It’s so much fun to see this guy professionally rip apart other websites that I can’t help checking in for pure entertainment value. Here’s to Mystery Meat and Ozzy Osbourne!
5. The forums at BellaOnline. It’s truly unbelievable how many hours I usefully waste here. As of today, I have 5538 forum posts, some of which are quite long and involved. Granted, yes, I work for them, but STILL. No one asks me to post there. And yet I do. About everything. It’s almost embarrassing what I cheerfully disclose to the world on those forums. I better never run for office.

Where else do I roam? I surf the Inland Empire on Craigslist. I read reviews at Amazon and subscribe to a bunch of yoga blogs. I also read blogs about blogs, poke around Facebook and shop for houses on Realtor.com. That last is a true guilty pleasure.

Where are YOUR big time wasters? Do you prefer to read articles, blog posts, reviews, or mess with large timesucking apps like Facebook and MySpace?