Asha Anujeeva

I love to keep a flower garden.  I don’t bother with a vegetable garden, it is so much hard work and so time consuming.  For the amount of veggies we eat around here, it is just more cost effective to buy them at the farmer’s market or grocery store.  Besides I don’t want to deal with trying to protect my food harvest from all of the garden pests that think that my garden is an all-you-can-eat buffet!

In our area, a lot of people have problems with pests coming into their gardens and eating up all of their hard work.  Deer and rabbits seem to be the worst offenders around here, although an occasional raccoon has been known to help himself to the corn crop!  I like the Havahart products that help to deal with unwanted animals in a humane way.  They sell a defence animal repellent spray online at their website havahart.com that repels rabbits and deer.  What repels them is the smell, so they are not harmed in any way.  These sprays are organic and will not damage the environment in any way.  If I were to decide to try to grow veggies I would definitely use this product to try to protect my garden from being eaten up by the deer and rabbits!

My brother is renting a studio apartment and has decided that he needs a washer and dryer.  Well, you can imagine how limited his space is – so I told him that I’ve seen washer/dryer combinations that are specifically for small spaces.  These machines are a combination machine that first washes, and then dries the clothes without having to move the clothes from one machine to another – you put the dirty clothes in, and when the clothes come out they are clean and dry.  I think that is really cool!  If you are the type of person that wants to only do one load of laundry a day, that would be a major convenience to have!

I have become more interested in learning more about the Internet.  Not just how to make money, or buy things from the Internet, but general information like the history of the Internet, the technology behind it, different platforms, programming languages, the whole “kit and kaboodle” as it were.  I find it a very interesting subject.  In my pursuit of knowledge, I have been delighted to find so much information is available for free over the Internet itself!

There are a lot of articles and websites out there on the Internet about how to make money using the technology of the Internet.  One article I read about making money using the Internet suggests that buying multiple domains is a smart business strategy.  I think that makes a lot of sense – it helps to reduce the chances of a competitor getting a similar website and getting accidental hits from consumers that are trying to find you! 

I found a website called webhostingrating.com that goes above and beyond the traditional webhosting rating service of listing what they think are the top ten best webhosts (which is a good thing because their top ten list only has four companies listed!) They have a section of informational articles about things that are related to webhosting, the internet, programming, websites, etc.  This is a good place to check if you are thinking about changing your webhosting service in the near future, to check their suggestions before making up your mind.

I was very interested last week in the news story about “proof” that Bigfoot existed – through the discovery of a Bigfoot body in Georgia.  I was skeptical, however, because Bigfoot is not supposed to travel that far south.  Nonetheless I wondered what was going to happen with the story.  It turns out it was a hoax – it was tested and found out to be just a rubber gorilla suit.  Very disappointing – I’d love for “real” scientific evidence to be brought forward!

My parents have been talking to me a lot about their financial security and their “final plans” for when they pass away.  They have been urging me to look into ways to save more of my own money to ensure my own financial security.  They are terrified that with this bad economy that someone in the family might end up in Bankruptcy.

They told me that they had found a website called bills.com that they wanted me to go to and use the wizard on the website to review my own financial security.  Well, I happen to feel about as financially secure as anyone else could feel in today’s economy.  I have about six months of my pay saved up for a “rainy day.”  I have a 401K plan, and I own my own home.  I always pay my credit cards off in full within a week of getting the bill, I have insurance up the wazoo, and I invest in the stock market.  But just to make my parents happy I went onto their website to see what the website had to offer me.  I saw that it was supposed to have a wizard about saving money, so I thought that I would use it to see if it might give me any tips on saving money.  What it did was direct me to a site that was intended to help people who are in debt to get out of debt, which is not what I needed for my purposes.  I’m sure it is a perfectly wonderful site for people who need that kind of help.

I got up this morning and heard the news that Obama chose Biden as his running mate!  I was really disappointed, I was hoping that he would pick Hillary Clinton.  It is going to be really difficult for Hillary Clinton to campaign for him now!  I think this was a big mistake – now I think that he will lose the election!  I really don’t want another four years of the Republican administration, and that is what we will get if McCain wins.  And now I think that McCain WILL win!

My cousin sent me an email with a link to a website that provides comprehensive information about Sex Offenders nationwide and a Sex Offender List based on zip code.  This was done in part in response to Megan’s Law (The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1995) which states that people have the right to know if sex offenders live in their area. 

I couldn’t stay awake long enough to watch all of the “Revealed” shows on CNN last night, so I taped the last two hours, but I did watch the first 90 minutes where they were featuring the life of John McCain.  I found it very interesting and informative.  I’m looking forward to watching the tape to see the end of that story and the show on Obama.  I learned a lot about John McCain that I didn’t know before!

Ever since one of my uncles died, my parents have been quite concerned about making sure that all of their “affairs” are in order.  They have gone through their house and put little pieces of masking tape under or behind most of their possessions with the names of the person that they want to have that item when they have passed on, to make sure that the right person gets the right thing.  They have made video tapes of themselves saying final words and goodbyes that they want played at their funeral.  They have gone over their will and made a few changes, and are in the process of reviewing their mortgage insurance.

They have decided that they need to buy burial insurance to help pay for funeral expenses and more mortgage protection insurance to help pay off their credit cards, mortgage, and other debts when they pass on.  They don’t want to leave behind any kind of financial burden to their family, they want the peace of mind knowing that when they pass on no one will be burdened with any of their debt.  So they have asked me to help them do some comparisons of different kinds of life insurance to make sure that they get the best value for their money.  I’ve started out by checking out NAA Life’s mortgage insurance over the Internet.  I’ve heard that they are a good company for all of those kinds of insurances, so this is a “one stop shopping” situation for me at the moment.

I was surprised to hear from my cousin by email last night. He was excited to share with me his news that he got his concealed weapon permit. He has been wanting to get that for a long time now, and he finally got it. I never realized how much work was involved in getting the permit; he had to take lessons in gun safety and go to the shooting range to practice his shooting accuracy. After passing the lessons he had to apply to the state for his permit and it took a couple of weeks before he got it in the mail. I’m not quite sure WHY he felt it was so important to have this permit, I’m not a big fan of guns, but it has made him quite happy!

My brother and sister-in-law have started the process of starting a new small business.  They have taken extensive college courses in business, and think that they have found the perfect market niche, and the perfect location to open their business.  They say that they are lining up their “ducks in a row” and are starting to look around for ways to increase their working capital.

One of the business courses that they took explained to them how to create a business plan to take to the bank when they apply for their business loans. The class explained to them the different types of small business loans, including the sba loans and the line of credit loans. They think that they want to just get a regular business loan, the line of credit loans sound too expensive for their tastes!

They found a company called the Merchant Advisors Company that has a website that helps them to line up their loans, and set up inexpensive merchant accounts for processing credit cards, too! They even have a link to a company that will help them incorporate if that is what they decide to do! I think that they should become a “S” Corporation, or an LLC, but they haven’t decided which is best for them yet. They told me that they are going to seek some advice from the Merchant Advisors Company people on which type of corporation will be best for them.

I’ve taken a lot of college classes in Business, too, and I told them that I think that “C” Corporations are a rip-off because they get hit with double-taxation, and that a smaller structure would benefit them financially the most.  But you know how brothers are; they can’t ever take the advice of their sisters!  So they will contact that Merchant Advisors Company associate and see what they have to say about it.  I’ll be interested to hear for myself what they say – it would be a feather in my cap if they agree with me!

I was quite annoyed to receive a bill in the mail last week for a doctor’s appointment that I was told was going to be “no charge.”  I have called the doctor’s office THREE TIMES during normal business hours and keep getting put through to someone’s answering machine, where I leave a message asking them to call me back to clear this up.  Of course, they have NOT returned my call, and my frustration is mounting.  Good customer service has apparently become a victim of the “Information age!”

Later on today my folks are planning to come over to talk to me about their estate planning.  They are getting on in years and have become quite concerned about protecting their assets from disappearing, not only while they are alive, but also when they pass on.  They have been talking to other relatives about finding some kind of tax haven to minimize the taxes they have to pay, and about wealth preservation techniques.  They are even going to be looking into offshore asset protection.

I’ve been doing a little bit of research on the subject over the Internet on the subject and plan to suggest to them that they look at the assetlawyer.com website.  This website was created by the law firm of Rubinstein & Rubinstein which specializes in legal preservation and protection of wealth and assets.

The law firm is located in New York, but their practice is an international practice – they have clients from around the world.  A lot of their clients are well-known athletes, business leaders, doctors, real estate owners, and entertainment personalities.  So it seems that this business is highly qualified to help my family with their estate planning and wealth management needs too! 

Today I learned to water ski! It was a lot of work, but it was so much fun! A couple of friends invited me to come to their cottage on the lake and we went out on the boat for a couple of hours. They went water skiing and offered to teach me how to do it. It took a couple of attempts for me to get up out of the water and stay up on the skis, but I did it! I was a little bit scared at first; I was surprised how much stress it put on my shoulders, getting pulled up out of the water; but once I got up on my feet it wasn’t too bad. It was a little bit scary going up over the waves of the wake – once I got out of the wake I was afraid to go back in for a while. I’m looking forward to doing it again soon!

With the price of gasoline continuing to skyrocket, we will be spending more time at home and less time on the road.  That means we will be spending more of our money on fixing up our place to enjoy it on our vacations instead of traveling.  I’ve heard the phrase “Staycations” tossed around a lot lately – it means people who are staying home on their vacations instead of going someplace “special.”  So, we are going to be investing some money making our home someplace “special.” 

We have a large room in our basement that we are going to convert into a home theater system.  We’ve been looking at the Precision Electronics Systems website to do some pricing and planning of the system that we want to get.  My honey wants to get some JBL cinema speakers for the system, and I’ve told him that I’ll leave that kind of planning up to him.  I’d like to get more involved in picking out the cool seating arrangements to make sure that everyone that is in the room has a great view and a comfortable seat.  And I want to make sure that we have a mini-kitchen area nearby so we can pop some popcorn and serve cold refreshments without having to go upstairs to get food or drinks.  I’m really looking forward to having this done – it is going to be so cool!

There is a neighborhood cat that we see walking around our yard everyday.  We’ve never tried to get close to it, we always figured it would just run off.  Besides, we didn’t want to start feeding it and never get rid of it.  We hoped it belonged to someone and wasn’t a wild cat, but we weren’t sure if it did have a home or not.  Tonight we saw the cat walking across our back yard, dragging one of it’s rear legs, obviously badly hurt.  By the time I could get to the door to try to coax the cat to me, to try to take care of it, it had disappeared into the woods.  I’m very upset that it is hurt, and now I’m afraid that it doesn’t have an owner to take it to the vet.  I’m afraid that gangrene will set in and it will suffer a painful death.

I spent the night last night at a friend’s house.  Her house appeared very clean, so I was surprised when I woke up this morning with my legs covered with flea bites!  I suggested to her that she might want to put her pets on some kind of medication like Frontline or Advantage that sterilizes the fleas that bite her pets so that any eggs the fleas lay won’t hatch.

I was reading a BBC.com website news story today about how 48% of the world’s primate species are facing extinction.  The article explains that a large reason for that was the deforestation of the world; people are cutting down and/or burning the forests that the primates live in.  That was depressing news.  But what really surprised me was to read in the article that the extinction is being exacerbated by hunters who are hunting the primates for food!  I did not realize that people considered monkeys as edible!  I don’t know why, I just never really thought people would eat monkeys.  That makes me especially sad, since I consider primates to be so closely related to humans that it almost seems cannibalistic to eat them!

I prefer toaster ovens over just plain toasters.  I think they are a lot more versatile.  I have to multitask throughout my life, so if I can get an appliance to do that too, I’m really happy!  Check out the toasterovensguide.com site if you are in the market for a toaster oven in the near future it is a website dedicated to reviewing toaster ovens.

I’ve been busy cleaning house all day long, and I’m too tired to cook.  So I sent my honey out to pick up some Chinese take-out.  I’ve ordered a large order of beef lo-mein noodles and a quart of sweet and sour chicken.  The chicken comes with a side of white rice, so that will actually last us through two meals for under $15.00.  Not a bad expense for two meals for two people!  I’m waiting for the food to arrive now – the table is all set and I’m ready to eat!