Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Time to start Christmas shopping … I think

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If I’m feeling well enough tomorrow Chris and I were thinking about officially starting our holiday shopping.

We still aren’t sure what kind of gifts we’re going to buy all the kids in the family! Perhaps tomorrow outing will just be a trip out to get some ideas. Most of the kids, nephews and nieces, are teens and I think those are the hardest people to buy for each year!

I had mentioned in another post that I was thinking of getting some of them newly released movies and or gift certificates to their favorite stores, but if you have any ideas for gifts for teens I’d love to hear them. Especially gifts that don’t break the budget! I haven’t been making much money lately so we don’t have much to spare to buy gifts this year.

My only brother that lives in the area has invited us over to his house for an early Christmas get together next weekend. His wife, my sister, her twins and their girlfriend and boyfriend, and my brothers daughter, her husband and their new baby will be there. It’s just a small gathering, but one that we try to do each year.

My brothers and sister and I usually don’t exchange gifts anymore. As I said in an earlier post we decided a while back just to buy gifts for the kids. This year I might get my brother a gift though. I found some fantastic silk ties and I know how much he loves his ties. So I might surprise him with a small gift. The gift would be a thank you for the Tom Cochrane and Red Rider concert passes that he got us in the summer.

Have you started shopping for the holidays yet? I’ll bet that some of you started today consider that it’s Black Friday! Did you put yourself on a budget this year? Cut down on the number of gifts that you’re going to buy?

I always find Christmas the most expensive time of the year. I’m still trying to figure out how we are going to manage to buy all the gifts we need to purchase this year on almost no money.





Our mortgage keeps getting lower!

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When Chris and I first bought our house in 2001 we decided to take out a variable interest rate mortgage. I have to say that it’s worked out well for us!

When we first got our house interest rates were at the lowest that they’d been in years, perhaps decades and we locked in for 6 months at something like 2% below prime and then after that it was guaranteed to be half a percent below prime.

Our luck held, probably due to poor economic times throughout this decade and the prime interest rate has stayed relatively low.

Now with the possible economic recession in the US and our own Canadian economy starting to go down the Bank of Canada has lowered the prime interest rate at least three times in the last few weeks. That of course has resulted in our mortgage company lowering our interest rate as well. We’ve received three letters from our Mortgage company in the last two weeks and with each letter our bi-weekly mortgage payments have dropped.

In all our mortgage payments have dropped about $50 a month. That’s not a huge decrease, but it will help.

Have you been experiencing the same thing? Has your mortgage company notified you that your mortgage payments will decrease slightly in the near future? Our rate drop doesn’t take effect until December and unless I’m way off I think the prime rate might drop again!

Strangers at the door – do you let them in?

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A few minutes ago a man knocked on our door. We have a number of solicitors around here so I often ignore knocks at the door, but this man knocked so hard that the dog started barking and I decided to go to the door to find out who it was.

Well it was this man working for a company that I think was called Living Green. I stood in the enclosed front porch to talk with him as Midnight mostly watched from the screen door inside the house.

He asked me how old our water heater was. Honestly I don’t know. It’s a rented heater and it was here when we moved into the house. At the very least it’s more than 7 years old. Apparently our government is giving a rebate on water heaters that are older than 5 years. We can apparently have it replaced free of charge.

My first thought was ok well we’re renting our hot water tank in the first place so I could probably just call the company and have them replace it free of charge anyway …

He made it sound like if I didn’t let him in so that he could check the serial number and age of our hot water heater we’d lose out on the rebate.

I know our government is giving all kinds of rebates to those who upgrade their furnaces to more energy efficient models as well as those who work on their home to reduce energy usage such as improving insulation, replacing windows and yes replacing water heaters. So I wasn’t buying his pitch.

I’d had a gas company rep at the door a few days ago trying to get me to buy into a lower rate gas program too. Our house is oil heated (the tank was just filled up a few days ago at a cost of almost $800) so I wasn’t interested in his gas company pitch either.

I figure if these people that come to the door with sales or rebate offers are legit I should be able to get a pamphlet from them so that I can read the details of the offer on my own and also talk with my husband about whatever being offered.

Chris and I rarely let anyone that comes to our door with a sales pitch in the house. Particularly if we are alone in the home. You just never know if they are legitimate or not.

I’m not paranoid or anything. I’m just being safe. Plus … once you let a salesperson into your home, how the heck do you get them out? Also once you let a sales person into your home it’s a lot harder to turn down the offer – not impossible, but harder.

When I came back in the house I noticed that the TV was now set to closed captioning. Midnight must have hit the remote and turned it on somehow. I have no idea, but it took me a few minutes to try and figure out how to turn the closed captioning off again! I think she chewed on the remote as she would have had to press a few buttons to turn it on!

Puppies. You can turn your back on them for a second!

Best Google Adsense day so far!

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In an earlier post I mentioned that I’d been working on my main website for the last couple of days. Well … it’s a pure HTML based website and it’s huge so any time I want to make a change to the site I have to go through each and every page (if it’s a site wide change, that is). It takes forever, but I think the work that I just spent a couple of days doing is going to pay off big time.

Along with adding a new Privacy policy page as per the new Google Adsense TOS, I decided to implement some of the things I learned through the Adsense Secrets e-book that I purchased in late April.

I wrote a post about getting the Adsense Secrets 4.0 ebook on April 25th – I guess you can consider this an update almost exactly a month later.

I can now tell you that the e-book that I purchased for the low price of $9.95 has paid for itself several times over in the last two weeks or so.

If you are a regular reader of this site or any of my other blogs you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been playing with my Adsense placements as well as trying out a few other affiliate programs like Chitika.

Well my tinkering has paid off!

In the last two weeks I’ve doubled the income I was earning on my blogs through Adsense and by adding Chitika to some of my sites I’ve added a new great source of income.

Now for the big news.

Yesterday evening I started uploaded the pages of my HTML website that I’d been working on. I’d updated the Google Adsense code, changed the colors of the ads slightly and added two more Adsense blocks to each page of that site. I guess you could say that the new ad code and the updated Adsense placements have been up and running on that site for about 24 hours now.

Just those few little changes to the site – things I learned by reading the Adsense Secrets e-book – have more than tripled my income on that one website. In one day!

I can’t wait to see how much I earn on that site next week. I mean, it’s a long weekend in the US so I’m sure site visits and ad impressions are down a little bit …

I’m so excited. Doubled my income on my blogs and at least tripled my income on my very large website. What’s next? I can’t wait to find out.

If you use Adsense on your website or if you’ve been thinking of using it I strongly recommend that you get the Adsense Secrets E-book. Look what I was able to do in just a month (would have been earlier if I’d started tinkering right away).

I would also look into Chitika as well. They’ve just implemented a new premium ad system that higher eCPM than any of their other products. Actually I believe they are implementing some of the premium features into their other products as well so it’s possible that all of their products will have an increase in eCPM now.

I’ve been with Chitika for a couple of years but I never really earned much so I took it off my blogs about a year ago. At the beginning of the month I decided to give it another try and I can tell you that it’s already my third highest affiliate earner. Kontera and Glam are pretty much tied for second place.

Unless your totally opposed to ads on your blogs or websites it’s worth trying some of these programs. Tinker with ad placement and the colors of the ads themselves and see what works best. Oh and check out that ebook that made all the difference for me!

Too many expenses lately

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On Sunday our car broke down when we were on our way to Brantford. Well, the car was repaired in Brantford and Chris drove it back home earlier today after attending his cousins funeral.

You know how much the bill was? Almost $400! Geez … we can’t afford that right now.

We’ve got another $200 bill coming up sometime this month too as we’ve got to take Midnight in for a heartworm test and to get heartworm pills for her.

I also think I’ve got a cavity in one of my teeth so I’ll probably have to visit the dentist soon.

More bills. Arghhh!

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