Mary Anne has her own blog now
Monthly Archives: September 2011

Hard to find

by Mary Anne

For the past four years I have been searching the local communities for places that teach dance classes to adults. I know that I should get more exercise but I have no interest in exercise classes and exercise machines and memberships in gyms. I do enjoy physical activities like skiing and skating and dancing. When I was young and single I joined a local ski social club and had a lot of fun going on group ski trips and their monthly meetings always involved live music and dancing.

Once I settled down and got married those types of activities fell by the wayside as the family responsibilities took priority over my time and my wallet. I tried to get my kids interested in skiing and skating and dancing but my efforts proved fruitless. As life went on and my aging body started to object to the rigors of skiing and skating my life started to be much more sedentary.

A few years ago my husband was injured in an accident and is no longer able to be my dancing partner. So I decided try to take my desire to dance to a local classroom. Many years ago I took ballet and jazz dancing classes and to be honest they just weren’t very much fun anymore so I decided that I would like to learn how to belly dance.

I have spent many hours on the Internet doing a local search for belly dance classes but my efforts have been fruitless. From time to time I will hear of a local class but the local business marketing efforts of the class have not resulted in any hits on the Internet from my searches. If I Ever find a place that teaches belly dance locally I will be sure to recommend to them a local search optimization company to help other prospective students find them. It should not really be this hard to find a class!


Computer printer ink

by Mary Anne

I can’t even believe how often I have to buy printer ink for my Lexmark X6100 printer!  It seems like every two weeks I have to buy new ink cartridges.  I think that when I’m at work my hubby and kids must get on the internet and find a lot of things that interest them and run off prints.  Buying printer ink at local stores I found that the best price I could get on a black ink cartridge is about $235, the color about $48.  Buying that much ink gets expensive!

I used to take my empty ink cartridges to an office supply store that would give me $3.00 off of the price of a new ink cartridge, but they recently stopped doing that.  Their prices were so high on the ink anyway it really wasn’t even worth it! 

I see stores that offer “ink refills” for only $10 or $15 but I’ve heard that doing that voids the warranty on printers, and I’ve heard horror stories from friends about how they did that and it gummed up their printer and totally ruined it, so I don’t want to do that at all!


The decorator touch

by Mary Anne

One thing I enjoy doing whenever time allows is to go to home shows, open houses and home tours. Seeing the way other people decorate their house fascinates me. Sometimes I wish that I had taken courses in interior decorating because I feel a lack of skills in that part of my life. Specifically I find myself drawn to mosaic tile when I go places.

If I had the confidence and finances to put mosaic wall tile in my kitchen I would totally go for it. my husband and I have such totally different tastes when that comes to decorating that I’m concerned that he would not agree with me on which glass tile color and motif to buy. Because of that concern we end up just leaving things the way they are.

We are a prime candidate for one of those television decorating shows but we don’t live anywhere near the locations that they are produced.


Open and shut

by Mary Anne

My aunt sent me an email yesterday, filling me in on family news.  My cousins in Princeton have had to hire a lawyer to represent them in a lawsuit.  They were attacked by a couple of neighbor’s dogs who were running at large that came into their yard while they were working in their garden.  The attack was unprovoked, they didn’t even see or hear the dogs until the dogs were jumping on one of them!  The other tried to pull the dogs off, and the dogs ended up biting both of them several times.  They both had to go to the hospital for stitches, and are badly shaken up.

They are trying to get the dogs ordered to be put down, and the owner pay for damages and a penalty for letting the dogs run loose.  Apparently the neighbor has a history of letting the dogs run loose in the past.

This sounds like an open and shut case to me!


Business promotion

by Mary Anne

Starting up a new business can be very complicated if you have never done it before. Fortunately there is a plethora of resources available to assist the entrepreneur in virtually every step of the process. One of my favorite resources is an organization known as SCORE. That is a free service from retired business executives and they give really valuable advice.

The only concern that I at might have with that organization is regarding their level of experience with utilizing the Internet to its highest potential. If the retired executive has been retired a long time I am not completely confident that their advice about finding a cheap seo would be up to date and relevant. I think I would be inclined to attend a couple of business courses about Internet marketing to make certain that I am up to date on Internet information.


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