It’s obvious that people in Hollywood are running out of ideas, so naturally when they turn an old play, or even a comic book for that matter, into a movie – I tend to not really pay much attention to it. However, when it’s a play that I’ve enjoyed both reading, and seeing, I have to say that it’ll spark my interest pretty quickly. On December 21st, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” will be in theaters and I have to say, I’m excited about it. I’ve read the play quite a few times, I was even on the lighting crew when my high school preformed this play a few years ago. With the amount of fun I had behind the scenes, it’s no surprise that I see the movie itself as something of great interest to me.

Johnny Depp plays Benjamin Barker (aka: Sweeney Todd) and as the story goes he returns to London after being deported on trumped-up charges to Botany Bay prison. Upon his return, he learns that his wife and child were brutally murdered by Judge Turpin. He learns this information from Nellie Lovett, the widow baker and someone who’s always had a crush on Todd. She tells him about what happened and it sends Todd into a rage of madness which is consumed by the thirst for revenge against Turpin. Ever-practical, with the possibility of murder and mayhem, Mrs. Lovett thinks of a fiendishly clever way that they can both make a killing – literally. Those whom Todd murders are baked into the mince-meat pies that Lovett serves in her bakery.

Now, this is a rather morbid story but when you really pay close attention there is a very interesting story line that isn’t filled with blood. This particular installment was directed by Tim Burton who has been known for making things much darker than they actually are. I’ll just use “Willy Wonka” as a key example right now, even though he based it more off of the book than Mel Stuart did in his rendition back in the 70’s – but I digress.

So there are a few easy ways to learn some more about the movie. You can visit the official Sweeney Todd movie site, or you can heady over and visit Sweeney Todd on MySpace. I’m going to say that bringing anyone under the age of 13 to see this movie would be absolutely stupid considering how morbid the story line is but if you know that your kid can handle it, knock yourself out.

In search of “free” advertising, I came across buildasign.com.¬† They offer the ability to get everything from custom banners to car magnets and real estate signs.¬† Sean and I have been thinking about investing in some bumper stickers to get some free advertising out there for the business so handing out a magnet to random people wouldn’t be such a bad idea.¬† I’m sure that there’s someone out there that needs a programmer or a web designer to take on one of their projects.¬† We should have thought of it sooner though, with all of the businesses down here and the HORRIBLE sites that most of them have, we could have made a killing.

The thing I like about them is the customization process.¬† I could design something in Photoshop and send it over to them, no need to use their existing templates at all.¬† I’m sure I could if I really wanted to but custom is always the way to go, heh.

I’m behind on a lot of things, mainly email but that’s because I’ve had to slack off today in preparation for a few things. I did manage to get through the important ones this evening, but the ones that really don’t require an immediate response were put on hold, I’ll get around to them after I’ve been able to sit back and relax for a little while, hopefully that’ll be after I get my laundry done and finish packing.¬† We’re leaving pretty early (I hope) so who knows how much time I’ll have on the PC tomorrow once I get up to NY.¬† Family is a little more important to me at the moment anyway.

I’ve been helping my friend get her new business ventures off the ground.¬† She’s with a new advertising agency and they’re looking to expand, so she’s asked for my help in both the design and hosting fields – she’s an amazing graphics artist but unsure of everything code based.¬† She also didn’t know where to go when it came to hosting her domain, she knows that she doesn’t want a dedicated server, so I pointed her in the direction of VPS Hosting.¬† She needs ample space and a fairly decent amount of bandwidth, spending the money on a shared account isn’t really worth it to her boss at the moment.¬† I’ve heard some good reviews on NetworkSolutions so I pointed her over to them.¬† I hope she’s able to get everything she’s looking for.

While I’m not exactly vocal about it, something not many people know about me is that I’m into the stock market. When my grandmother passed away she left me with quite a bit of her stock in AT&T and a few other companies. The money has fallen and ballooned over the past 10 years and while the number is great, I don’t plan on selling or cashing out anytime soon. I want to say this is the case for all of the shares that I own, but the smaller unknown stocks really didn’t do very well at all, thank god for the iPhone, right?

In any event, today I came across MyWallSt.net, it’s a social networking site for those interested in investing. You can learn about investing, trade ideas with other members, and trade virtual money with real stocks as well. I like this idea based on the fact that there are many people out there who don’t quite understand the process, so by investing fake money into a stock that you follow for your own enjoyment, you can learn about how things rise and fall at any given time. If you then grow confident enough to the point that you’d put in your own money then that’s exactly what this site is for. Helping you during every step of the way. Through this site you’re given the ability to get in touch with numerous members both in stocks and learning through trial and error themselves. You can get financial decisions, with a focus on stock picks to help you. You just create a profile, like you would on many other social networking sites and then go from there.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been putting together a pretty large list of bookmarks for household items that I want and need for the new place. Everything from pots and pans to small appliances, this list is beyond full at this point. With all of the baking that I do, having the proper mixing equipment is important to me as well. I’ve found a few that interest me. The Eclectrics¬Æ Mixer comes in numerous color and is just about large enough to handle everything I need to do. Heck, this thing can handle up to 9-dozen cookies which would make my Christmas baking an absolute breeze. I’ve always been a big fan of the Hamilton Beach¬Æ Mixer. I know that my aunt has been through a few of the in the past 10 years or so. She’s got two of them in her kitchen, but she also does a lot of baking. My grandmother is the women to go to for dinner, my aunt is the one to go to for all kinds of baking – including Theme Cakes – she’s famous for those. So when I happened to come across the Hamilton Beach¬Æ Stand Mixer I knew that it had to go on my list. I think I’m going to get the Black one so it matches the theme of the kitchen, but in that regard the Apple one would work just fine as well considering the theme of the house itself is going to be in the Mint Chocolate category.

More shopping to do!

Millions of people have made some kind of money by selling products on the Internet. Whether it be selling off a few house-hold items on eBay to pick up extra cash, or designing bracelets that you sell in bulk off your own site. The possibilities of making some money online are borderline endless. Just recently I came across www.StoresOnlinePro.com. With this site you can run your own personalized eCommerce store online. It’s also easy to use. You get some of your content together, design your website, publish your products and then the rest kind of does itself. There’s no guarantee that you’ll be making millions of dollars but that also depends on what kind of products you’re selling as well.¬† If you’re looking to start up your own eCommerce business, then this may be the route for you to take.

With the move we’re going to have to transfer the insurance over to whatever is available out in Ohio. So I’ve been poking around looking for a Car Insurance Quote that will better suit our needs. Luckily, Sean has a pretty clean driving record so his insurance shouldn’t be TOO high, the fact that he’s under 25 will play a role in things but I’m sure we’ll be able to figure something out. His brother has a pretty bad record and even he has full coverage for about $90 a month on two brand new cars. We’re not quite sure as to how that’s possible but that doesn’t mean we won’t be able to find something just as good, if not better considering there will only be one car under the insurance from the get go.

Once we’ve settled in and have some money being put aside after all the bills have been paid, we’re considering purchasing a second car. For now we’re both content with the one we have but having another one for when I wish to run errands without having to use his wouldn’t be such a bad idea. I’m thinking more along the size of the car, as opposed to the price. Yes, naturally I’m interested in getting a good deal on the car, don’t get me wrong, but knowing that his car really isn’t large enough to handle the trips to the grocery store without filling up the trunk and the back seat – getting something a bit larger is the route I’m interested in taking. I’ve been considering a CR-V for quite some time now, my aunt owns one and it’s one of the most comfortable cars I’ve ever driven in. She has more than enough room to do everything she needs to do and when you’re traveling long distances, you aren’t concerned about sitting on top of someone the way you would be in the Baretta. Extra room means more comfy trips for all involved.

Getting involved in the environment isn’t exactly a new trend, but it’s been important for quite a few years now at the rate of global warming and many other environmental issues coming up. With this, there’s no surprise that the BP Solar Decathlon has sprouted up. BP has recently partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy and is sponsoring the Solar Decathlon. It’s an annual event where 20 university teams from around the world design, build and operate livable, every-efficient, and completely solar powered homes. It’s a week long competition in the National Mall, located in Washington DC. It’s from October 11th to October 19th.

They’re sponsoring this event as part of their commitment to discovering cost effective and clean energy solutions for everyday living. They’re currently one of the main corporate sponsors, and the only energy company to sponsor the 2007 Solar Decathlon. They’ve been involved since the first competition back in 2002. BP is investing $500 million into the Energy Biosciences Institute in which the company will partner with the University of California Berkeley, the University of Illinois and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab to find bioscence solutions to reduce the impact of energy consumption on the environment.

Many people each year are spending quite a bit of money to upgrade their homes. Some of them put in new wiring, others install new piping for their main plumbing needs. What many people don’t do is consider looking into Solar Power. While it’s a bit pricey to install at first, its also more cost effective and you aren’t exhurting unnatural gasses back into the environment that could potentially harm you down the road. If you had an area of 200 square miles covered with solar panels, you could provide all the electricity that the world would ever need. BP’s jointly-owned Nerefco wind farm generates enough zero-carbon energy to power 13,000 average homes. wind can potentially provide around a 10th of the world’s power. That would then cut down dioxide emissions by a billion tons a year.

If you’re interested in learning more about this decathlon and are unable to make it to Washington D.C. then you can gladly check out their blog. BP has created this blog where all of the teams as well as on-site reporters will be posting throughout the competition.

I’m waiting rather patiently for the mail to show up. I hope to see a letter from HSBC in regards to the loan. We’ll have to take the car in to get fixed and then we’re heading up to New York for a few days so I can collect on the loan and visit family. I know my grandparents aren’t doing very well and I just recently found out that my father is having some heart and liver issues that have given me some cause for concern.

I didn’t want to take the route of loans in regards to us moving but sometimes you really have no choice in the matter. It’s a personal loan, because the place kind of is a junker that requires quite a bit of fixing up but this is going to be our starter home so finding cheap loans was just a requirement for us, looking into mortgages wasn’t really even worth it for us. I’m scared, I’ll admit that. I’ll be very far away from family and we’ll really be on our own. We won’t have the outside influence of his mother or my father when it comes to how we do things, or where we happen to do it. It’s going to be our place, our bills, our lives. I know that I can emotionally and financially handle it, it’s just a big step in our relationship.

I know it seems like I’ve been slacking a little bit here. I haven’t blogged as much as I used to in the past, and I didn’t even bother putting up a new template for October, but I do have a reason. I haven’t really had the time to do much lately. I’ve been going through emails, sending out bills, designing sites and I just recently won a bid on GAF for website optimization. I’m doing everything from bulking up keywords to code validation to help on the actual loading time of the page. The site now is coded without any kind of doctype and they’re looking for a new template, and I’ll also be submitting to lord knows how many other directories and paid-blogging sites so that they can get some more incoming links to help with Google rankings. I recommended that they setup some kind of a free directory so that users can submit links to their site and in turn get free backlinks to their own site because of this service. Minus all of the drama over on AGn before I moved to this domain, the PR5 still stands thanks to the backlinks for the directory and any other project I’ve done there over the years. I really do need to get my booty in gear on getting myself up to date on that stuff too. I’m sure there are a lot of pending members for all of the fanlistings but that doesn’t mean that I’ll have enough time to get through them with this upcoming move. There aren’t enough hours in the day anymore.

When you read the headline “Bored with the same old natural bath and body products?”, and you’re anything like me, you’re kind of drawn in to find out more information. So you continue to read and then you see “Looking for a little humor in your daily routine?” followed by “Trying to find the perfect gift for the biker-wanna-be?” you’re sucked in and basically can’t leave. There’s a site online that sells many different biker related health products. If you’re at all interested in the ability to Get in touch with your “Inner Biker” at Big Bad Mama Biker Body Works, then heading over to bikerbodyworks.com would be a great resource for you to bookmark. They have everything from Biker Body Wash to Biker Mojo Mist. There are even fragrances that are named “Beer”, “Herb”, “Weed” and “Born2BWild”.

I looked into the Biker Groove Lube Lotion because that kind of stood out for me. It’s made with rich organic macadamia nut oil, shea butter, extra virgin olive oil and other exotic ingredients. The cool thing about all of their products is it comes in a beer bottle with “Mama” designed on the cover in a tattoo fashion. The flavor that I thought was the most interesting to me was “JailBait”. It’s a wild cherry scent. The description is : “JAILBAIT” – wild cherry, of course. Bail, Bond, and Attorney not included.

Having road hogs in the family, I’ve always been drawn to the biker lifestyle. Now, I’m not sure if I’d ever trust myself to actually own a Harley but I’d like to think I already started most of the lifestyle with the fact that I’m a cigarette smoker who’s filled with tattoos. I’m not going to say that you should go out and invest in a Harley, a good one will run you quite a bit of money, but at least you know you can smell like one by using these products – heh.