My Heart Hurts...

I have a very heavy heart. I saw something very disturbing and I just have to talk about it. I was out feeding my deer and saw something. I had to look twice because I couldn't believe it the first time I saw it.


There is a fawn that hangs around our house. In fact it was born in the woods down the hill. I've been watching this little thing grow pretty much from the day it was born.


Someone or something cut off it's tail! My heart broke when I saw this because I have a feeling it may have been done by some high angst teens we have living in the neighborhood. They've gone through and torn up the tennis courts, drove donuts in the neighborhood park, and even burned down the port-a-potty near the boat ramp.


The neighborhood has taken measures to reinstate our neighborhood watch. This is a good thing but the damage they may have done here is unrepairable.


My husband told me not to be too quick to judge, that it may have been a dog. Well, my thought is, wouldn't the fawn have other battle marks on it if it was a dog?


I took a picture to post here. I'm thinking about going to the next quarterly meeting to bring the subject up. The parents of these horrible kids really need to tighten the reigns or else we'll all be in trouble.

There is another deer I blogged about a few months ago, Notch. I caught her kissing on camera, so I wrote a little about it. Notch has notches cut out of her ears and scars down her back. I thought she had gotten hit by a car or got in a tangle with a barb-wire fence. Now I'm thinking otherwise about her too. Looking at her, the notches are too perfect, almost V like.

I know I shouldn't be accusative. But I can't help myself. If I ever catch these kids hurting any of these poor animals like that, they will be sorry.

The Democratic National Convention: My Thoughts

I've been watching the Democratic National Convention. There's been full coverage on PBS--the Public Broadcast Station--and I liked seeing more than just the main speakers.

I don't usually pay close attention to politics. My brain just doesn't think that way. In fact, I try to avoid discussions of political, religious, or otherwise. However, my analytical side has reared it's ugly head.

Listening to the speakers was enlightening. Watching the reaction of the crowd was even more interesting. The cameras did a pretty good job capturing just the right image at just the right moment.

There were many pictorial moments, but I only want to mention two. The speech was enveloped in talk about education, child welfare, and family. The camera found the perfect subject. A little boy with a huge smile on his face. Now I don't know for sure but I felt the little one was being prompted off camera. His smile would get bigger when his eyes shifted to the side.

Another shot captured was a young man, different speech about the military, the war, and country. The young man had earrings in both his ears and he seemed distracted by something off to his right. But the camera kept going back to him.

The audience was full of a mix of races, age groups, and families. I thought that was awesome. It was a great idea to have the finale in the stadium and allow the public in. But as the commentators mentioned, it was not the first time it's been done. I couldn't imagine what the traffic was like afterward.

About the commentators, there was quite the mix there. I watched the convention on PBS, like I said, and I don't know if all the channels had their own commentators or not. However, the guys I saw in the studio were seemingly all Republican except for one poor guy. The Republicans would get in a discussion, then turn to the Democrat for his opinion and either brush him off or cut him off because a new speaker came to the podium.

I felt a lot of the general public, workers like you and me there to tell their story, speakers were fed their speeches. If they weren't, they were given a list of keyword phrases to use.

Is the Democratic slogan "More of the same with John McCain"? Boy that phrase came up umpteen times. Then there was placing all blame for everything bad on President Bush...Since when is all the power in the President's hands?

One big observation I made last night was the Clintons were not present. I knew Bill wasn't going to be there. Unless I missed seeing Hillary, I don't think she was there either. I tried to do some surfing to confirm my suspicions about her absence but all I found was she would be "on hand." What exactly does that mean? Was she there and I blinked when the cameras spied her?

Overall, I think the Democratic National Convention went well for the Democratic party. They had a lot of speakers I would have never thought of to include. The atmosphere was lively and the use of multimedia was extrodinary.

Why is Woman's Suffrage Disregarded in History Textbooks?

Aside from my normal routine, today I must help my daughter with some research. She needs to write an essay about a significant historical event. She chose Woman's Suffrage.

I thought to myself, that is really a great topic. How timely, considering this is an election year. Plus, with Hillary Clinton making such a showing in the preliminaries, my daughter is pretty astute.

I helped her a bit last night gathering specific dates and Congressional information from some books we own. Interestingly, we were reading through her school history textbook and found it was pretty much useless as a reference. For a US history book, one would think there would be at least a chapter of discussion on such a poignant event in history. Woman's Suffrage was only mentioned in one paragraph, pretty much disregarded entirely.

In our own library we found some pretty good information to get her going. I suppose she will have to depend on the Internet for a lot of it. She is going to the school library today to check out some books on the subject. Considering what we saw in her textbook yesterday, my fear is she won't find much.

Moving up the Associated Content Ladder!

I got a raise at Associated Content! My clout has been sitting on 6 all summer long and today I logged in to check on an article I submitted and I'm a 7 now! Finally.

The raise in clout means I get .05 more PPM/1000 pay! In the long run, long tail, it works for me. Actually, it almost makes me want to do more promotion to move to clout 8.

I wanted to thank everyone for clicking my Associated Content articles when I post them here and through my widget. Without those clicks I would have never made the move up.

It's funny, I've been doing AC and this blog for one year now. I built the blog right after I joined AC. I make money writing articles for AC but I post more on the blog. I guess I like expressing myself more than conforming to the SEO faction.

Now that school has started up again I'll be back to writing articles again. As you know I put a few things on the back burner during the summer. I submitted one the other day and I'm planning on doing at least one a week.

So, I'll lay out my new goals:

• 1 AC article per week
• 2-3 blog posts per blog per week
• 2 lenses per week (after I meet my 50 goal)

I know I can accomplish this if I spread myself out evenly.

Join Associated Content!

Pepperjam Network: The Best Affiliate Program!

Did you know Pepperjam Network made Inc 5000? PJN is in the top 100 of the fastest growing businesses in the United States! I recieved a newsletter telling me all about it.

PJN is also:

• The 2nd fastest growing company in Pennsylvania
• The fastest growing affiliate marketing network
• The fastest growing full-service Internet marketing agency
• The fastest growing interactive marketing agency
• The fastest growing search-engine marketing firm
• The fastest growing advertising/marketing in Pennsylvania
• PJN ranks #5 in the United States in advertising/marketing

I'm really happy I signed up with Pepperjam Network. Doing the affiliate ad work has given me a whole new perspective on what to do with my Squidoo lenses. I've gained a lot of new ideas using the banners and links Pepperjam provides.

You know what else? PJN is very helpful. They have a great support system. Plus, all of your banners link back to your PJN account, they track everything for you, and all of your information is laid out so you know exactly what's what!

The more affiliate work I do using Pepperjam, the better I get at building the ad content. I'm almost thinking I'm better at writing ads than any of the other writing I've been doing. Which is baffling to me. I'm building the Squidoo lenses faster and better than I ever had before.

I think everyone should sign up with PJN! If you haven't done it yet, do it now!

I'm Building another Blog...And Yippee for Back to School!

Insanity has taken over. Actually, I want to bring more focus to Inspired Day by Day. I also want to highlight my Squidoo lenses and provide them backlinks without taking away from either site. I figured the best way to do this is to build a blog that focuses exclusively on my Squidoo efforts: Squidoo to Do for Me and You

This is not to say I won't try to slip in a lens here and there on Inspired. You know what they say, the more links the better. I'm just trying to get a little more organized web wise...

Speaking of organization, my oldest daughter went back to school today! Yippee for me and the little one! Now I'll be able to use the computer at will, and hopefully, get back to better posting, reading, writing, and working. All without sleep deprivation!

We did last minute school shopping yesterday. You know when I was in school we never needed all the stuff they need today. I swear manufacturers and schools have joined together and created a monopoly on school supplies (or would that be a conspiracy?).

Gotta have this, gotta have that...Just wait, I'll probably be harping about the special teacher's list she'll bring home tonight--all stuff she must have by tomorrow.

The 2008 Olympics: My Favorite Game and Some General Observations

We've been tuning into the Olympic games almost every evening. My favorite game used to be Gymnastics but I've evolved to Beach Volley Ball. I can't exactly pin down why except that I used to play some myself.

It seems some of the rules have changed. Maybe it's just my memory is failing me. But some of the plays I saw seemed borderline fouls. Oh well, I'm sure they know what they're doing as they are the experts. I'm glad about the end results.

Last night I was anxiously awaiting the Men's Beach Volley Ball finals. I watched the Track events sporadically as I cleaned up after dinner. First, I could not believe the US Men dropped the baton during the relays. Then, I couldn't believe the gals followed suit.

As I picked my jaw up off the floor, I thought, that's a shame and they really should have practiced more.

Then there's the Men's 400. Why was Jeremy Wariner so upset? Of all the competitors, trials, and eliminations, he took the Silver Medal! To me, it was an awesome showing.

I think he showed poor sportsmanship in the interview after the race. The Olympics are supposed to exhibit Unity, Fellowship, and Honor. I understand he was upset about the result. However, sometimes you just have to suck it up and put on a happy face.

Finally, about China's Gymnasts...I was really suspicious about the ages of some of their girls. They just look so young. Then the investigations and reports started. It will be interesting to see what happens with this.

Do it Right, Or Don't Do it at All

It's just about lunch time so I'm going to make this quick, or so I say.

Last weekend I helped my husband change the rear brake shoes and drums on the Ranger. It was not the cleanest job in the world. The guy at Auto Zone said, "You're going to need some brake cleaner to do the job." My husband looked a the cost of the stuff and bypassed it--he's cheap like me--he figured we could use the compressor to spray the brake dust off. Plus, we already spent a small fortune on the parts and the spring tools to do them right.

After we got into the job he realized we needed the $8 spray. We live about 40 miles from Auto Zone so we did without...

The job took just about all afternoon to accomplish. The mess on the garage floor was extensive. The spring puzzle those Rangers have connecting everything together gave me a headache and a broken nail. I think part of the headache might have come from inhaling brake dust too. However, in the end (and two aspirin later), the brakes work great.

I learned a lesson doing the brakes. You must have the proper tools to get the job done right.

Speaking of proper tools, I've been building a lot of lenses. I decided to build a lens about the tools, information, and references I use to build my lenses. I actually have a lot of other tools bookmarked here and there but this is what I have gathered so far:

• My Squidoo Cheat-Sheet

I'm learning so much building these lenses. All of the marketing and promotion stuff I talked about here months ago applies to the lenses too...I have to go back and change some things on the lenses after revisiting some of my old posts. I'll get it right in the end.

Stuck Nowhere

Yesterday my little one said, "Mommy, where's nowhere?" I was driving at the time and abruptly answered, "Nowhere is nowhere. It's no place anywhere." Of course she persisted, "But Mommy, nowhere is somewhere, so where is it"? This went on for the entire trip...

I was beginning to feel as if I were stuck in some Abbot and Costello flick.