I’ve been watching a lot of TV lately, mainly because I’ve been in the bedroom on the laptop thanks to my back acting up, and company in the house. While flipping through channels last night I came across Reba and figured “Okay, why not?” By the next commercial break I was climbing out of bed to get myself a drink and I saw the preview for a new series called Gossip Girl on The CW. I heard something about a blog, so being a blogger I was interested from the get go. I did some searching around the Internet to find out what the show was really about though, I came across the IMDB listing for it.

Welcome to New York’s Upper East side where the wealthy and connected mingle at benefits and try to deal with their always dramatic love lives, not to mention picking colleges. Blair Waldorf is the so-called toast of adolescence in her world; she and her friends, Kati Farkas and Isabel Coates, go to a prep school and fancy parties with their rich parents. Blair is envied by her adversaries because she is thought to have the perfect life, not just because of her gorgeous boyfriend, Nate Archibald, but because she’s also planning on getting into her dream college,Yale. With everyone worried about college(or procrastinating on worrying, which everyone seems to be doing), and senior year dragging along, her seemingly perfect life is interrupted by her ex-best friend, the beautiful Serena van der Woodsen, coming back into town after getting kicked out of boarding school. Serena comes back into her life, and into the eyes of Blair’s boy friend. When everything Blair knows starts to fall apart, everyone will realize that her life is far from perfect. Will life in the the Upper East Side redeem itself of what it’s really supposed to be? Or will the false facade reveal that the rich have the same problems as the not so rich (Jenny and Dan Humphrey), if not more. And just maybe Jenny and Dan are all the more happy with their simple, not so expectant lives.That was a plot summary submitted by an IMDB user, but it got the point across either way.

The series is narrated by “Gossip Girl” which is the voice of Kristen Bell, she runs a website where she blogs about her fellow Upper East Siders, stirring the pot and feeding potential rivalries in this supposed exclusive and vicious circle of “friends”. It premiers on Wednesday, September 19, 2007 on the CW if you’re interested.

I was going to paste in the special widget that the site offers, but it’s messing up the entire site. So just head to the site I linked above, you can see the previews there.

I’m starting to get low on business cards, I’ve been handing them out like they were candy and unfortunately the company I used to go through decided to update their pricing, so I’ve been surfing the ‘net looking for a few new places. I came across GreatFX Business Cards, and they look rather promising. I already have a template created, and luckily they give me the option of uploading the template to their server and they print them from there. I think I’m going to go with a glossy card this time, the basic flat design that I was using before isn’t really saying much to me anymore. Yes, I know “Krissy, it’s just a card with info” but based on how I like to control every aspect of things, of course I’m going to make sure it’s an interesting looking card to hand out.

It’s kind of like the card my step-father gave me in regards to his tattoo place. One of the artists drew a design, they sent it in for their two-sided business cards and they glossed it over. Based on that alone (instead of the very dull boring one I got from my tattoo place) I found this other place a little more appealing. It sounds dumb, I’m sure, but a card is a card and unless there’s something unique about it, I don’t pay much attention to it.

This GreatFX place also does magnets too, I don’t know if I’d ever get into the magnets business. However, I’ve seen fridges that are LOADED with them because it’s easy access from the kitchen phone to search for your favorite eatery and find the number. I can get about $1,000 cards for $69, which really isn’t a bad price at all. I was paying about $80 through the previous company and if I wanted a glossed image that would probably cost me about $100, so saving $30 is always a good deal to me.

In order to bring in some business I keep them pinned up on pin-boards in almost every supermarket and store I visit that offers that kind of advertising to their customers. I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve had in the past that only found me because they walked past my card when they were on their way home from the store. So it’s an inexpensive way to bring in some decent business. I think one of the largest accounts I landed through business card advertising was in the $15k range. Most people don’t make that in a year, I did it in a month. Thank goodness for cheap advertising that’s visually appealing – right?

With decorating on my mind, I’ve been moving full speed ahead at building a bookmarks folder with house hold items that I know will be purchased after we get our house. When it comes to me, the only important rooms are kitchen and bedroom, but that’s typically where all of my time is being spent. I’ve been looking into dining room furniture because I do spend a lot of time cooking and based on the few places we’re interested in, counter space is limited. So extending the kitchen via dining room table is naturally the route that I want to take.

I’ve spent most of my time searching around GreatPricedFurniture.com, I like their site. I’ve come across them on a Google search more times than I can remember. Part of me wonders if they have an actual show-room anywhere because some of their products are GORGEOUS. If I had the kind of money to fill a big house with quality furniture for dramatic effects, the way most of their images are on the site, I’d be a happy, happy girl.

What do you feel about Online Lab Tests?

I’m looking around PrivateMDLabs.com and you can use the site for basically EVERYTHING. There’s the ability to get the proper supplies for STD testing, direct-to-consumer lab tests, HIV testing, Liver Testing, Drug Testing, Herpes Testing and even Anti-aging testing. I don’t know why but I found this to be a wee-bit strange. Mainly because I’ve never heard of anything like this before.

The benefit to all of this, naturally, is the ability to privately get yourself, a loved one or even a potential employee tested for something rather important but at the same time – is there ANYTHING that can’t be done from home anymore? Based on what I’ve read, it’s also a financial benefit as well. Approximately 35% of the US population is uninsured and going to an actual doctors office to get these tests can be rather expensive. Going through this particular company, or any private company I would imagine, is more than likely going to save you a bit of money in the end.

Test results no longer come in the mail, or via phone service. You’re now given your results over email. This is why one would consider going through a Private MD. I’ll be the first to tell you that doctors are over paid for their services, especially considering the nurses (in many cases) are the ones doing the real work (hospital wise). A doctor walking around randomly checking charts and giving recommendations for $250,000 a year is absolutely absurd in comparison to the $50,000 a nurse is making when they’re the ones helping to change the sheets, constantly check the machines and make sure the patients themselves are comfortable. I’d take a nurses position over an actual doctor any day, but this is a completely different post that could easily exceed 5,000 words if I ever went to write it up.

Moving right along…

I do respect anonymity and those interested in saving a dollar but seriously, the only real way (that I know of) to test your Liver is a stool sample, and that alone just grosses me out. The HIV/STD tests, I can understand those, especially the drug testing. But I would assume that it would be easier to see an actual doctor when it comes to things like cholesterol testing and blood-testing in general. I’m the kind of person who would leave that kind of thing up to the professionals (and yes, I mean the nurses) even though I’d be spending a bit more.

I’ve been looking into other shared hosting plans. I know this may sound strange considering I run my own servers. But I’m looking for outside resources so I can get sites off the server that I don’t personally want taking up anymore room than they do. When I combine my four domains, I’m going through about 100gb of bandwidth a month and since most of them are on the same server, it’s just taking away from those who actually pay for the service. I’m very easy to please as far as requirements are concerned.

Unfortunately with my resources I’m limited to either large reseller accounts or standard hosting plans that offer up quite a bit of bandwidth. I refuse to go to anyone that offers a few terebytes to their customers because I think it’s wrong to offer more bandwidth than is actually set to the server, but I also understand that no one paying $10 a month for webhosting is going to use over 2tb of bandwidth on a monthly basis, either.

So I’ve been poking around concentric.com and their plans are a little pricey for my budget, but I can understand why they’re charging what they are. I would expect that 10GB of diskspace, and 100GB of bandwidth would be in the $67.95mo. range but at the same time. I know there’s got to be a resource out there for half the price with a reseller account. The $75 Google AdWords credit is great, but I also refuse to have anything to do with Google.

This is my preference though, if you’re looking for hosting then head over to concentric.com.