My twelve year old son is a big fan of the UFC. He watches it every chance he can get and he pretty much lives and breathes for UFC. He saves all of his money so that he can buy the fights on pay per view and gets really excited whenever he sees any paraphernalia that has anything to do with it.

I was trying to figure out what to get him for Christmas this year when my husband suggested that we buy him some mma clothing. I thought that this was a great idea and I knew that Bryan would absolutely love it. It was something that he would never expect as it is something that he had never asked for before.

I could not wait for him to open his Christmas presents, so that I could forever capture the look on his face in my memory. I was not disappointed, as his reaction was more than I could have imagined or asked for. He told me that it was the greatest gift that he had ever gotten.

I was lunching with a friend the other day and we had one of those conversations that was all over the place. Call it joint ADD, if you will.

We started out talking about wholesale lingerie, but somehow we moved on to Victoria’s Secret®. From there we segued into our local mall and the Mom and Pop cookie store next to the lingerie chain. We’d heard the cookie shop was going to close soon. Where would we get those fabulous turtle cookies we were both hooked on? It would be like going to a carnival or street fair and not finding cotton candy and sugar waffles!

When that topic was exhausted — or nearly so, since a new subject almost always raised its head — we quickly moved to dates for the county fair, what “names” were performing on Friday and Saturday nights, and how it wasn’t nearly as much fun at the fair without children around to go along.

My friend got a call saying she’d just gotten a package at home — the lingerie she’d ordered wholesale. So there we were full circle,. Who says ADD people never finish anything?

When some friends of ours, who owned a portable amusements company, decided to move, they asked if we could help them sell off their stock. There was a lot of it, and they had tried to sell the company as a whole, but when that didn’t work, they decided to try and sell their equipment piece by piece.

I advertised on a local radio station that they had some bouncy castles for sale and when that was not productive, we decided to build a web page and list them on that. That was slightly more productive than the radio and they were eventually able to get rid of most of their inventory.

When all was said and done, they were left with a couple of inflatable slides and everything else had been sold. They gave one of the slides to us for all of our help and our kids thought it was the greatest thing in the world.

You won’t find basing bets on a name in the list of the best horse racing tips, but it can be a fun way to bet if you don’t know any better. Racing tips are actually a big business but you really need to watch yourself when picking a horse racing tipster to help you on race day.

With access to international information so easily available on the Internet, you can get caught up in something that looks like pretty good information when it is really just a load of rubbish. Before you sign up for paid tips services, check out feedback and compare as much as you can to other services so that you will be less likely to get “taken” at the track.

A good service will offer information about the horse, track conditions, and the jockey and trainers too. Not just old or basic information but up to the minute situations for each.

It seems to me that my son has done a complete Jekyll and Hyde change overnight. He was always my bright eyed morning person and I am not sure what happened to him. I guess the fact that his teenage years are approaching may be the answer to some of my questions.

He used to awaken on his own very early in the morning and was like al little ray of sunshine. Now, it is nearly impossible to get him out of bed and when I do manage to get him up, he is as grouchy as a bear being pulled out of hibernation.

Though I can’t help mourning the little boy of the past, I am relieved to know that I am not the first mother to experience the metamorphosis of a little boy into a teenager. It makes me savor the odd moment that he is still the happy go lucky little boy, all that much more.

With my niece graduating in just one short month, I thought that I would make her special day even better.  You see, she has been my favorite since she was born, so I thought that I could make her grad one of the best days of her life.

So, what I have done is contact a Philadelphia limo service and reserved her a limousine for her graduation.  Sure, it isn’t a gift that you can keep on a mantle for the rest of your life, but from my point of view, it is a priceless experience that she will have.

I think that I will break the news to her in a couple of weeks at her birthday party.  I can’t wait to see her eyes light up, and the big hug that I will receive.  My only worry is what I will have to do to top that gift when she graduates from college…

When I was going to college I always had dreams of getting the perfect job with the perfect large-company and that at this job I would be able to climb the corporate ladder very quickly.  I ended up getting this dream job right out of college and shortly after that, my dream turned into a nightmare.

I learned very quickly that it was a lot of effort on my part to climb the corporate ladder and even then it was up to the people at the top of the ladder whether they were going to even let me climb or not.  I knew that going into business for me was the only way that I was going to end up happy.

I started looking into a lot of different business opportunities and finally decided on what would be best for me in my knowledge.  I started my own business shortly after and it has been such a success that I am now the person on the top of the ladder.  But the difference compared to my job is that  those people at the bottom are going to be allowed to climb.

I know that most people would take the weekend off and enjoy their days off, but as a business owner, that sometimes is not an option.  Where most employees just show up for their eight hours and go home, a business owner has a little more responsibility when it comes to their business.

A great example of that would be me, at work today.  Sure, I am taking a break to write about my day here, but I am still getting ready for the meeting on Monday with a merchant services sales person.

They contacted me last week to offer an alternative to the services provided by my bank at a discount.  So, I thought that I would give them the time to make a presentation, and then I can make my decision.

So, I am getting a list of questions together for Monday, and I am looking forward to it – my bank already takes too much of my money anyway.

One thing that I like to do when we hire new staff is to train them in even the most mundane of tasks.  I realize that this can take up a lot of time and money, but I feel that we need all of our employees to be on similar skill levels so that we can offer our clients the best and most consistent service available.

So, today, when we had a training session for our new cashiers, we left no stone unturned.  We started everyone out with the basics such as how to count the cash and proper etiquette at the tills.

Later on in the afternoon we covered proper credit card processing procedures as well as how to troubleshoot the debit card machine.

Out of the group, it looks like we will have to let one of them go, but the rest seem like they will be competent employees.  I guess we will have to see their performance on the floor before we will know for sure.

The most important decision I have made in my life so far was to pack up and move to another country. When I was finished high school, I wanted to experience the world. All of my friends were going off to college, and I did not feel like I was ready for this quite yet. I wanted to do more and experience more before I committed to another four years of school.

Part of my reasoning behind this is that I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do or study. I wanted to learn about other cultures and I decided to move to South America and do a little bit of studying on my own. I was going to be going to school, but it was not going to be the conventional kind that all parents want their kids to do.

I enrolled myself in Spanish School Antigua Guatemala and I packed my bags and boarded a plane. I was on my way to what would become my home for the next five years. I found that I was much happier doing this than I would have been if I had gone straight to college. And, now that I am in college, studying Anthropology, I feel that my experience has really opened my mind to learning.