Those little guineas got out again yesterday.  One was killed by another dog of mine.  We managed to catch three of the guineas and another guinea we can’t catch but she’s still hanging around and alive.  We’ve tried catching her four times today with out any luck.  I finally figured out that they were getting out under a corner of the hen house, I have that fixed now and so far they are all staying in.

We’re all going on a little business trip with my husband to Nevada.  This should be a blast for the kids, they’ll get to go swimming in the hotel’s indoor pool.  The hotel has free breakfast, I’ll have to feed the kids lunch and then my husband’s company will pick up the tab for dinner.  This will be a nice little vacation for the kids and I and it’ll be really cheap!  I like cheap!

I’m so excited!  Now at mint.com you can track LOANS and investments!  I’m going to have to set up my loans ASAP.

Here’s a snap shot of what’s going on with my credit cards right now.  For some reason Chase isn’t letting mint logon to my account.  My Chase balance is really $14,847.63.  I got it down to under 15K and I fell like I’m making progress. 

Last night around 9:30 pm, my momma rat terrier started acting strange.  She was trembling and wanted to sit on my lap and kept looking outside.  My husband went outside to see if anything was out there and heard the Guinea Hens going crazy.  He was thinking the neighbors dog was in there killing my guinea’s, the dog has a history of killing my chickens.  Well it turns out my momma dog’s 12 pound daughter was in the guinea pen killing my little keets.  :-(   I think she ended up killing 5 of them!  The daughter is on lock down in a kennel for the next week.

I found that some staples that held down the chicken wire to a board had come undone at the bottom of the guinea yard.  My dog just went under the fence.  I plan on fixing the fence today.  This is such a shame.  I should have done an inspection of the fencing.  The poor little guineas.

Here’s the little killer.  Doesn’t she look innocent?

ETA:  Three are dead and two are injured but look like they are going to be okay.  The fencing is fixed!

One of my husband’s friends/co-worker came by yesterday after work with a bottle of cheap Black Velvet whiskey.  The people that my husband works with had given this man orders to get my husband drunk so he’d relax for a little while, they are all afraid he’s going to just walk out the door or explode from having to work with “worms” all day long that don’t know what they are doing.

This man that came to my house was telling me that my man has promised them all that he’ll stick around until September but that after that he’s done!  That was news to me.

The company is for sale, potential buyers are coming in next week from Texas and the Middle East.  Hopefully the company will sell, management will be replaced, and he’ll have a change of heart and stay with his job.  That’s a whole lot of hoping.

He’s has a two week vacation coming up as soon as he gets some problems resolved at work.  Maybe he just needs some time off?  He hasn’t had more than three or four days off in a row in two years and even then he was still oncall.  We’ve decided we’re going to take the trailer over to the coast and camp for a few days, we haven’t done that in years so it should be nice and relaxing for him.

My oldest took a two day orientation class at the JC she’ll be attending.  Thanks to the class, she’ll be able to register for classes a full day before everyone else.  She’s getting excited and scared at the same time.  She’s decided that she’ll take 15 units this fall semester.  She’s also decided that she’ll need to only work a part time job on the weekends and dedicate the entire week to her studies.

Okay…. This is exactly what I’ve been telling her to do for an entire year!  I honestly can count how many times we’ve fought over this very subject.  I want her to live at home, work part time (for gas money, car insurance, and incidentals - she has a scholarship to pay for school) while attending school full time.  She’s always argued that she didn’t want to live with me and wanted to get her own place which would require her to work full time and go to school part time.  Thank GOD she finally woke up and is putting her schooling first.  I’m sure she’ll flip flop on this subject a dozen or so more times.  I’ll be ready…

My husband is planning on taking a two week vacation very soon.  He also laid it on me last night that he plans on quitting his job.  He said the stress of working with idiots is going to kill him.  He told me to make up my mind, do I want his paycheck for how ever long it lasts and a dead husband?  That really wasn’t a cool thing to say to me but I’m glad he said it, now I understand where he stands.  He has people calling him all the time to go to work for them, he’s know world wide in his field.  Changes are he’ll go back to working overseas for the bigger pay which means we’ll be apart 30 days at a time.  Or if he chooses to work in the states he’d be gone 2 weeks at a time.  He’d be making WAY more money but for me it’s not worth him being gone all the freaking time.  The first 10 years of our marriage I only saw him every other month, it’s amazing we managed to have the kids we have.   I’m not happy at all.  I want him to keep the job he has but obviously if he feels it’ll kill him then it’s time to move on.

I’ve been trying to get some more sites up and running.  I installed BayRss but I’m having a hard time getting it to work.  BayRss an eBay affiliate Wordpress plugin that allows you to insert current ebay auctions and Amazon.com products through a RSS feed with just one line of code.  It’s a really cool plugin and great for niche sites.  I have a couple of niche sites I’d like to get up and running.  Ebay currently pays 55%+ of their profit to affiliates that make a sale and $25 for signups that bid and win an auction within 30 days of signup.  There’s some real money to be made and I’d like to get in on it.

Another way I could go is to use BANS (Build a Niche Site).  The BANS site claims I could have a site up and running in about 10 minutes.  This sounds perfect for several domains that I have parked doing nothing except possibly earning GoDaddy money.  I have heard some negative stuff about BANS though, BANS shouldn’t be used on .info sites because Google doesn’t like the combo.  In order to get good search engine status you need to add original content to your BANS site.

BANS sounds like the easy way to go but the themes are very limited.  Where as using BayRss I have a choice of using numberous free wordpress themes.  I’m torn between the two.

Here’s a few BANS stores.  Obviously the themes have been customized.

Family Guy Shelby Cars

UPDATE:  LOL - My BayRSS does work!  Nothing was wrong, I just was using the code incorrectly! :oops:  Here’s a sample of what you could get with BayRss using this code in brackets:

nms:trailer,3,1,1000,yourcustomtag

US $1,826.00 (12 Bids) End Date: Wednesday Aug-20-2008 14:09:02 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $2,650.00 (16 Bids) End Date: Wednesday Aug-20-2008 14:10:56 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $9,100.00 (4 Bids) End Date: Wednesday Aug-20-2008 14:20:25 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

How cool is that?  I think I’m in love!  OMG, this is so freaking cool!  Now I’m going to be super busy creating my new niche sites.  Woo hoo!!!!

That’s just too stinking hot! It’s the perfect day to line dry my clothes, I’m thinking they’ll dry in about 20 minutes.

I got my new electric bill and it’s a shocker!  My man ran the A/C 4 days in a row because my evaporative cooler wasn’t working.  Part of this is also from my low electric bill last month.  This is still shocking, it’s like another house payment.

We’ve been busy loading and unloading hay.  It’s not a fun job but it sure beats paying feed store prices.  We’ve been lucky enough to get some good quality grass hay for $8 a bale, the same stuff goes for $14-$15 a bale at the feed store.  We also found some cattle hay for $5 a bale and our steer loves it!

I hope everyone has a safe 4th of July weekend!

In two years from now, we should be doing much better financially.  I’ll be done with my huge car payment, done with my small car payment, done with my travel trailer payment, and (I know this sounds mean but I can’t help it) we’ll be done paying child support/boarding school for my husbands daughter from his 1st marriage.  Yeah, my step-daughter goes to boarding school, her mother claims she’s “too fat” to go to regular high school, the poor girl isn’t even fat just big boned.  Besides, just how can a kid be “too fat” to go to public school?  We are stuck paying more than half the tuition for boarding school but we only have two more years to go!

In two years my credit card debt will be much lower, I’m guessing it’ll be around $25,000.  Once I get done paying all my vehicle payments and the child support I should be able to pay off the balance in less than a year.  Then I’m going to save money for an all CASH vacation!  After struggling for years with all this debt I think it’s about time we have a little fun.

In three years when we’re debt free I plan on saving money for a kitchen remodel and new flooring.   I can’t wait to get rid of that 70’s Formica counter top of mine and my carpet has been shot for years.  I plan on ripping out all carpet, except for what’s in the bedrooms and laying down either laminate or tile.  With living out in the country with lots of farm animals, lots of animal poop, dirty feet, and muddy boots, carpet does not really work for us, I need something that’s easy to clean.

I can’t imagine what it’s going to feel like to actually have some money instead of seeing it all go out every month.

Oh and I almost forgot - I’ll finally be able to get a few miniature horses!  I think they’ll come before the kitchen remodel. 

My daughter brought these home for me.  Nice ripe bananas!  I’ve been busy baking up a storm.  So far I’ve made four loaves of Hawaiian Banana Bread and two banana coconut cream pies.  Later today I plan on baking at least four batches of Banana Crumb Muffins and four loaves of regular banana bread for the freezer.  The kids are after me to make them Strawberry Banana Smoothies, so I’ll probably make them too.  Any leftover banana’s I plan on feeding to the chickens and the pigs.

I got all my credit card payments scheduled for payment online yesterday!  I just LOVE not having to stress over what the date is and what payment is due when.  I’ve eliminated about at least half of my bill paying stress by paying my credit cards online.