I can remember when I was young, about ten years old, my aunt lived in London with her husband who was a record producer. They later divorced because she found him running around in her underwear but that isn’t why I’m writing today……….

I remember them telling us that they wanted to buy a house or build their own but that land for sale was pretty hard to come by even in surrounding areas. They had two kids, a boy and girl, and wanted some place to live with a back yard even if it meant a land investment that they couldn’t build on right away. At the time, I didn’t understand why they couldn’t find land considering I grew up in the Midwest where all we have is land!

They never found any UK land to do this with so they lived in a London apartment instead. I’m guessing it is a good thing since she kicked him out as I mentioned above.

I’ve seen my fair share of engagement rings in the last year and with this month being June, the wedding month, those engagement rings are turning to diamond rings in platinum, gold and other finishes.

One of the main differences between an engagement ring and a wedding ring is the styling and/or amount of stones used in the setting. Traditionally an engagement ring is a diamond solitaire while the wedding bands are a set of rings or a ring guard for the solitaire given for the engagement. The ring guard will often times have additional stones whether diamond or colored stones such as ruby, sapphire or emerald.

Sometimes, you will see the bride get a larger solitaire as her wedding ring but not so often as the other options mentioned before. Every bride imagines having her own style of ring and so it does truly depend on the bride’s particular choice more than tradition.

When we lived at our old house my ex husband was hit by a drunk driver who hit him and then fled the scene. It was a Sunday morning and he was on his way to the gas station where we always bought the Sunday paper and chocolate milk and donuts. For some reason he was driving my mom’s car, probably because ours wasn’t working.

Thank goodness she had great car insurance! He had the right of way and as he was crossing the intersection, the drunk ran her red light and smashed into the side of mom’s car. It was a good thing that mom had full coverage auto insurance on that car since the other driver left the scene.

Mom was able to get another car pretty quickly after the accident and the agent gave her several new auto insurance quotes in order to find one that fit her needs.

We took a vacation and noticed that the shower seemed extra slippery compared to home. At first we thought it was just the difference in atmosphere or something but when I mentioned it to my friend she said it was probably because the hotel didn’t have hard water and we do.

I wasn’t aware that there could be that big of a difference. The water at the hotel felt silky and slippery compared to our water at home feels like. I know we have build up on our shower heads and faucet rims but I hadn’t realized how big of a difference it made.

Hard water is caused by minerals in the water that aren’t fully removed by the purifying plants that clean our water supply. This makes the water heavy and cloudy and even causes friction which would be why the hotel’s water felt slippery in comparison.

Guess we’ll be looking into a water filtration system soon.

In one of my four semi-professional productions, I was on stage with a talented young woman during Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.” I played Mrs. Potts. She played Belle. That was in 2005.

Fast forward to about a month ago. I was talking to our “Beauty and the Beast” director who had come back to town to guest star in “How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.” After the performance we were talking about mutual friends in the theatre when he mentioned the girl who’d played Belle. He said she was now in the Broadway production of “The 25th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee.” I know a Broadway star!

I headed online right away to see what kind of ticket prices I could get for it with a presale password. But I found out the show had closed. I’m not without hope, however. They may be taking a Broadway touring company around the country, and maybe I can see her in that. Regardless, I can say, “I knew her when…”

If you don’t know me personally, you may not know about my fascination with music.  Ever since I was a little kid, I have loved music and it has been a very big part of my life.  Not only is it a part of each day, but I have started to compose my own music.

Instead of spending a lot of time creating large masterpieces, I have decided that my time would better be spent creating ringtones for my cell phone.  These short and sweet pieces have had my friends get really excited about my creations and they want more.

What I have been doing is taking advantage of a mobile file sharing site to share my creations with my friends.  This mobile site has allowed me to share my love of music with others.  Speaking of that… I think I will go write a new tune…

Back when we were in college, my friend Cindy and I used to like to get dressed up and go down to the horse race track on a Friday night to find ourselves some distinguished man to hang out with for the evening.  On one such occasion, I was hanging out with a really great looking guy and he started giving me horse racing tips.

I hung on his every word, pretending that I was totally interested in his racing tips even though I had never bet on a single race in my life.  It is kind of funny, because I still have never bet on a single race, as this is not what we were there for.  We didn’t care about the races, but rather the men who were there that can show us a good time.

Every man I ever met at the tracks thought that he was the best horse racing tipster on the face of the planet, having no concern at all whether I was interested in hearing his tips or not.  I guess I should have paid more attention as maybe I would be rich today, but I have moved on and no longer feel the need to find companionship at the tracks.

Over the years, I have only had my websites hosted with one company.  The service was great, the price was perfect, and the uptime was almost 100%.  But, earlier this year, things changed and I was in a position where I needed to change web hosts because there was a slew of problems.

It made me a little sad that I needed to move my website, but if there was going to be persistent problems, there would be a lot of interruptions in my income.  Since I depend on my sites to feed our family, this was not going to be something that I could live with.

So, I decided that I could find another asp.net web hosting provider that would be more reliable, and that it was time to put my business first, instead of keeping my loyalty to just one hosting company.

Needless to say, I found a better company, and my business has never done better.  Maybe it was a good thing that I had hosting problems.

When my husband planned our honeymoon, he wanted every single detail to be absolutely perfect. He wouldn’t tell me where we were going, but when I accidentally saw the pamphlet for hummer limos, I knew that it was going to be the best experience that I ever had in my life.

I figured that if he had every detail planned right down to the limo hire, that it would be an incredible adventure for us to start out our married life with. He was incredibly romantic and I knew that would play a big part into the activities that took place over the course of the two weeks in which we were planning on being away.

I did not find out that we were going to Paris until we were at the airport, waiting to board our flight. When we arrived in France, the limousine hire drove us to the most fabulous hotel I had ever seen, with a complete view of the Eiffel Tower. The trip was amazing and I often wonder if Mr. Romantic will ever be able to top that.

When we had our first child, my husband and I were quite overwhelmed. We thought that we had it all together, but it was a lot harder than either one of us imagined that it was going to be.

Our family and friends were extremely helpful and got us so many nice gifts for baby. The problem was that we didn’t know what half of it was used for.

I had always babysat when I was younger and I did not think that being a mom would be much harder than that. I was completely wrong. The great thing about babysitting was that, at the end of the day, I got to go home and leave the kids behind.

I think the thing that hit me the hardest as a mother was the overwhelming responsibility that I had to meet every single need of this little person. I just hoped that I was going to be able to do right by her.

In the end, I think everything turned out alright. We even had a second baby and the responsibility of that one did not seem quite so daunting.