Well, the week is finally coming to a close. The week hasn’t been unbearable but the smoke that lingers here in the valley, blocking my view of the mountains is. The heat is pretty bad as well but that’s what air conditioned homes are for right?

Yes, if you haven’t heard, California is on fire, or at least the top part of the state is. I think last I heard, there were upwards of 800 fires burning. That’s just insane and all the smoke seems to have settled on the east side of the state and the Sierra Nevada mountains. Lucky me!

I am so glad it’s Friday and I can hardly wait for the weekend. After being away from home for nearly 2 weeks there is definitely plenty for me to do around the house to keep me busy. For one, I get to clean up the mess that the messy faeries have left behind, and then I think I might do some yard work and possibly venture out to some of the surrounding wilderness to see if I can capture some neat pictures. Perhaps the smoke laden sky will give a nice backdrop to some pics.

I think I might also take in some reading this weekend. With the economy going down the drains, I think I’ll enjoy this free download of Suze Orman’s Women & Money. It never hurts to be educated on money matters and now that I have some in the bank, it’d be nice to know what to do with it besides wasting it on Singstar games!

If any of you have kids and need something to do with them why not try this all time favorite of mine - Rock Candy. I loved making this as a kid and who doesn’t love to suck on pure sugar on a hot summer’s day? Thanks to Weary Parent I’m now able to enjoy it with my kids.

Have anything exciting planned for July 8th? If not, why not sign up for this handy little webinar from Google, dealing with Analytics, Website Optimizer and Webmaster Tools. That’s right up my alley, so I’ve already registered. Hopefully there will be some good tips.

I was glad to read this blog from The Lisa over at Bruce Clay, discussing how “the core stuff” still works in SEO. I’ve long believed the same thing and have often wondered why people let themselves get wrapped up in the “bright and shiny” new theories for SEO when they’d likely have more success if they just stuck with the tried and true. Lisa’s post was in response to one written by Andrew Goodman, over at Traffick, on the topic of SES Toronto. Those posts just made my week - to know that I’m not all that crazy after all. Or at least I’m not alone in my craziness!

Wednesday again. Boy how Hump Day comes around so quickly sometimes. I have to say that I’m glad the week is 1/2 over, even though I really haven’t put much effort towards work this week. Sssh - don’t tell the clients!

Proving to be quite a week, so far I’ve learn that Sea World is sued for stupid things like people stubbing their toes on the curbs, that Dora the Explorer dvds kill Dell MediaDirect on my computer, that my Dodge Ram Megacab will get 19 MPG and that my Ecological Footprint is so large that if everyone lived like me, we’d need 9 1/2 Earths!

Things that are awaiting me this week:
* conference calls that I had to put off for another day
* a very messy house seems how I’ve been gone for 2 weeks - the messy faeries moved in while I was away
* SEO Site Reviews galore
* and Friday!

New SEO Tools Discovered:
* Sitemap Pro - Generates a sitemap for your site. It’s a pretty cool little tool that you can downloand and it makes you answer a million questions before it’ll even spider the site. It seems pretty thorough.
* SEO Glossary - Complete, or mostly complete glossary of popular SEO terms. This came in handy when I had to put together my Beginners SEO Training the other day.
* .htaccess Domain Redirection Code Generator - for the lazy SEO. I hate having to figure out my own code for simple things like this, so luckily someone has solved that problem for me when it comes to doing the Canonicalization code for my clients. Love it!

That’s it for today. I think I’m off to buy me an Angry Little Girl bag or perhaps a tank that reminds me of my old boss, Bruce Clay and his philosophy on SEO:

“It is not the job of Search Engine Optimization to make a pig fly. It is the job of the SEO to genetically re-engineer the web site so that it becomes an eagle.”

So today was Saturday and I spent the day working. How fun is that right? Here I am in San Diego, on a simi-vacation and I have to work. But it was all for a good cause - yep that’s right, I was training my new employees. My sisters and family friend - they’re loyal, cheap, smart, out of work and 100% willing to do as I ask. They are the perfect employees!

Actually today wasn’t too bad. How can it be when you start off the morning with a little pumpkin french toast? Yep, a recipe that I got from Jessica Seinfeld’s Deceptivly Delicious cookbook. Kids love it and it tastes great.

However, the afternoon didn’t progress so well. I gave myself a caffeine headache and felt a little drunk for most of it. Not so good when the temperature was pushing about 105 outside. I could have gone to the pool to cool down, but I’m still a little traumatized after taking a swim with my cell phone yesterday. I’m thinking the poor thing was without air for too long - after blow drying and setting out to try and dry, it still isn’t able to be resuscitated but I’m still holding out hope, refusing to call time of death.

After catching up on the multiple neglected posts in my Google Reader account, I was able to discover that Yahoo! is falling apart at the seams, but not really, that Plurk is a little over my head, that I’m not the only one who has noticed that XML sitemaps seem to be a complete waste of time and that there is absolutely no reason that a 6 month old baby would need these - unless this is what she was planning as her future ambitions!

I finished off the evening with some yogurt from my favorite joint here in SD - Yogurt Express, where you can build your own perfect yogurt paradise. A little Cake Mix yogurt with a dab of Peanut Butter yogurt and then topped with coconut, chocolate and white chocolate chips and Fruity Pebbles. Doesn’t that sound like a dream? Ok maybe not to you but it was tasty.