I’ve had this blog for quite some time now, but never really knew what direction I wanted to take with it. Actually, I still don’t know. But I do know that some changes need to be made.

I’m going to try my best to get things on a more consistent schedule and we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, enjoy the new design

Ok, so I missed last week’s mid-week write-up but things were rather hectic. It was just before the holiday, and we (the family) were getting ready to go out of town for the 4th, so I was working like a crazy woman to get ahead so I wouldn’t regret the 2 days off of work. Did it work? Yea, kinda.

But don’t worry, I’ve made it for this Wednesday’s post. Now that I’m home I’m finally getting back into the swing of things and life is running a little smoother.

After a weekend of bank account emptying traveling, I’m laying low this weekend. I’m using every excuse to not have to drive. Not only because of the $4.68/gallon gas, but because the mercury is insisting on hanging out around 104! I’d much rather stay inside with the air conditioner, thank you very much.

The 4th of July proved to be fun. The family and I went to the bay in San Diego and spent the day. There were a ton of activities to keep us busy including a palm reader, giant slides, free massages and boat watching.

Funny story - I was busy with the kids most of the day with all the activities while my husband just enjoyed the boat watching with my brother in-laws. Later that evening I was scanning through the pics on my camera and found this mysterious image on the camera…

Of course all the guys played dumb and no one knew how the pic got on the camera. Very mysterious! Whatever!

But here is one of my favorite pics taken that day of my son…

So, enough about my 4th of July…onto more important things.

New SEO Tools Discovered:
* Treillian’s SEO Toolkit v2.0 - I’ve known about it forever, and heard about it lots but never tried it. I downloaded it yesterday (the free trial) and so far I can see where it could be pretty useful.
* Backlink Watch - I’ve only tried this once or twice but this tool does a decent job finding some backlinks and giving you some valuable data about them.

I read a couple of great articles by Rishil. They are basic common sense, but if you’re like me, sometimes you get so wrapped up with the big picture that you forget to break it down into bite-size pieces. Read his great articles on small business link building Part A and Part B

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.

In March I made a trip back to Missouri with my oldest sister. It was a trip to accomplish a couple of things, 1) to visit with Great Aunts and Uncles that are getting older and might not be with us much longer, and 2) to do some genealogy research. Having planned the trip in a day, and deciding to go without even consulting my husband first, I was a little afraid I was doomed for a bad trip. It wasn’t until a couple of nights before we were to fly out when my sister called to tell me that our hotel reservations fell through that I really started to worry. It would be ok though, thankfully.

We actually ended up having a wonderful time. We visited the Oklahoma City Bombing memorial. We played tourists on Route 66, stopping in Chandler, OK to take pictures next to the route 66 sign. We detoured into Kansas, just to take pictures next to the state sign and say we’d been there. I think we also managed to stop at nearly all the Sonic’s between Oklahoma City and Richland, MO. We even visited a Steak & Shake in Springfield, Mo. Tasty!

As for the hotel situation…well, that was interesting, in more than one instance. We have a Great Aunt that volunteered to make reservations for us at a hotel in Lebanon, MO. She’s rather persistant, so we went ahead and let her since our reservations at Ft. Leonard Wood fell through. Getting into Lebanon late Saturday evening, we went to the hotel we believed our reservations were at. Into the lobby, talked to the clerk - nope, no reservations. hmm… ok. We thought we’d try the next hotel. Into the lobby, talked to the clerk - nope, no reservations. Fine, we’ll just get a room there. It’s cheap and we’re tired. We made sure they had internet access and we were good to go. We get to the room, unload all 10 bags and neither of us are very impressed by the place. After fooling with the wireless internet for about 10 minutes, even calling down to the front desk asking about the connection and being told that I need to plug into the Cat5 in order for the wireless to work, I was getting to the end of my rope. Even though I knew how ridiculous the statement about the cat 5 was, I looked around for someplace to plug in for internet. Nothing. That’s it. I called the front desk, demanded a refund and told my sister we were going to the Super 8. Thankfully that was a clean hotel, with wonderful pillow-top beds and internet that worked…and even better, it didn’t smell funny.

Because I had nothing better to do New Year’s Eve, I spent the night creating a new web site for myself and my older sister. It’s a web site for a little side business that is created from a hobby of ours. ResearchMyTree.com is a site that offers our Genealogy and Family Tree services, to anyone who’d be interested.

I was bitten by the genealogy bug about 2 years ago while staying at my sister’s house, attending school. She had been in the process of researching our family tree and had hit a few brick walls. I offered up my help, and soon found myself consumed with the thrill of a massive puzzle. Who knew you could get such satisfaction out of being able to uncover Census records or death records for ancestors long since gone?

So, if any of you are looking for a unique gift, or just want to know your family history, visit my new site and see if anything interests you.