Birthday, Brookings, Bikes, and the River Run Website

On July 13 I had my 51st birthday. I don't really feel that old, but I'm sure by the end of the year I'll get used to it. I've been dieting since June 2 and have lost 14 lbs. plus have been walking almost every evening lately, up to three miles at a time.

On July 4 I went to the coast (Brookings, Oregon) with my children. They have a wonderful pyrotechnics display and the kids enjoyed playing in the ocean. My daughter wanted to find a boy to flirt with and was very pleased that instead a boy from Grants Pass found her while she was standing out there in the ocean. She's 14.

I'm concerned about bike theft in this small town we live in. This last winter my son rebuilt a number of bikes. He got old bikes and parts from the dump and had quite a few ready to sell this year but a thief took most of them! Others in town have been stolen from as well. Its very frustrating and I can only say I'm so proud of my son that he's not the one doing the stealing. He's a great kid. He still has the Mongoose mountain bike I bought him last year and we've found a place to buy him a new derailleur. He broke his during a bike crash a while back.

I offered to create a website for the River Run (motorcycle run) our community sponsors every July fourth weekend. I'll probably have to wait a few weeks to see what they decide about that.

Fiction, Websites, and Trying to Stay Cool

I've been writing on a fiction project every night.

Also I've made progress on a few webdesign projects.

I'm nearly done with the Chamber of Commerce website... or I should say I'm nearly done with the second phase of the project... there's a lot more I can do for it. Eventually I will turn that front page into ... a flash or javascript slideshow. I'm also building an interactive street map for that site that will be lots of fun to play with... hehehe in case you don't have anything better to do with your time.

For the Fight CPS And Win site I made a mock up for a redesign. The links at the top don't work yet.

This week I started another new project associated with that, for a national class action lawsuit.

This website will be for the purpose of collecting evidence from people who want to support the class action. We don't have a lawyer to handle it yet but... a well-known family rights lawyer in Massachusetts offered to give us some pointers next week on what we can and can't do with class actions. A secondary mission for the website is to locate a lawyer to handle the case. The website isn't quite ready to go public yet - which is why I don't link to it.

I finally figured out how to keep my house cool for the summer by letting the swamp-cooler air flow out a window in the back of the house only. I used to do that when I lived in the San Joaquin Valley - but forgot the process until today. It is so much cooler in here now!

Oh - one more thing I'm kind of happy about this week - I have been appointed to be a board member for our local Chamber of Commerce this coming year. Since I like attending the meetings, at least I'll be one more person there who can help make a quorum.

Classes: Weather Spotting and It's Your Business

Wednesday night I went to a Weather Spotting Class and now I'm a trained weather spotter for the National Weather Service office in Medford, Oregon! About eight of us were trained and signed up for the job. It was fun and I learned a lot about summer thunder storms.

On Thurday night we had the last "It's Your Business" class ... it was a lot of fun listening to and giving presentations about what we learned and what our next steps are in forming our businesses. I've decided to start a webdesign business believe it or not. It will be Klamath Design and the website won't be up for another month but I'm already busy making websites for the Chamber of Commerce here. In exchange they gave me the software I've been needing to start this business. I'm also doing other things besides webdesign but that is what I like doing best.

Of course I'm still writing my novels and I'm also putting up an author website that will hopefully help me sell my stuff.

In other news - my daughter's birthday is tomorrow! We got her a karaoke machine and are paying for her to have a pizza party downtown with a few friends.

St. Patrick's Day in Happy Camp, 2002

Tonight we're having a St.Patrick's Day dinner and dance here in town. The Chamber of Commerce does this every year. I'm so excited.. I'm taking my daughter and a couple of her friends. Meanwhile I'm making a new website for the Chamber of Commerce. I'm excited about that too because I just finished phase one of that project and now am ready to get feedback on the designs from the Chamber members.

Thursday night I got to meet Chris, who teaches the business class I've been taking through College of the Siskiyous. The class has been via video-conferencing... so this is the first time I've actually met her. It was fun. I'll be meeting with her later (probably online) for an individual consultation on the business plan I'm writing. After meeting her, I got more enthusiastic about searching the web for business support, and I found a lot out there! Now this has revolutionized my life. I'm planning to start a virtual assistant business and to keep writing children's novels. After the class ends, I'll be writing a business plan for a pet store business - for the rest of the family to work in. We'll see how that goes!

Okay, on to other things. I'm going to run down to the Family Resource Center to see how the St. Patrick's Day festivities are progressing.

LATER...

The dance tonight was wonderful. My daughter and her friends had a great time. There were about 30 people there. I had to get tough with some of the kids who walked through the doors without paying. It is so hard for me to be tough on anyone... but I bounced them anyway. There were a lot of little kids there, and towards the end there were lots of teenagers. My daughter got a nice pair of sunglasses for a door prize. I got a nice wooden recipe box to hang on my kitchen wall - from the silent auction.

*we should do this more often*

411 Rally Website, and Other Websites Planned

Website projects update - the 411 Rally website is as done as it is going to get for a while. It is very plain. All I plan to add to it is printable press releases, posters and flyers, yet to be written and designed. Since then I was given the graphics software I needed to do better sites, and will be using the new software to design the Happy Camp Chamber of Commerce site so it will look better than the ones I've done before, hopefully! I made two design samples for them and will be working on one or two more designs during the coming week. I just accepted another design project for the California Family Rights Association.

People here are pestering me for chocolate bars and pastries so I need to quit writing and go to the store.

Later... I'm back. I remembered one more website I'm supposed to do - for the new Klamath River Writers Club. I also offered to do free websites for each of the members that don't have one yet so we can all start offering our writing skills for sale online. After that I should put up a website for website design... maybe I can start doing this for money soon, especially now that I have the software I needed.