There are days when I think that the Information Age is just flying by too fast for me to keep up. New social bookmarking sites spring up with goofy, made-up names. Everyone wants to be the next new buzz word, but bizarre spellings and strange names don’t guarantee being memorable.

Then there are the texting codes springing up among heavy text messaging users. These range from BFF (best friends forever) to NBD (no big deal) and from there, you have to be on the “in” crowd to keep up. Sorry, not interested.

I do sympathize, to a degree, with the need for such abbreviations. I am a Twitter user and 140 characters is awfully short to get a message across. But it has taught me to be economical with my words. That or have a part one, part two and sometimes part three to a Tweet. I know, that defeats the whole purpose of tweeting on Twitter. But that’s better than sending something like this: “Get ur p-s pw 4 Tarzan tx 2day,” and hope my followers know p-s pw means pre-sale password.

I was what, six years old when the original Star Wars came to a movie theater near me. I remember standing in line, a long line, at a theater that we had driven nearly 2 hours to get to. There weren’t people dressed up at that particular viewing but I do remember the subsequent movies that we went to where there were all sorts of people wearing costumes from or inspired by the movie.

We were avid fans and had many of the gadgets and gizmos made for the movie. I had one of the original light sabers and a stuffed Chewbacca toy. The Millenium Falcon wasn’t among my stash but I so coveted that ship……..

Now, some thirty plus years later, the love for Star Wars is no less than it ever was. There are new toys made every year for both the young and older fans. I’ve recently seen a DVD projector made to look like R2D2. It has several other functions too, but in general, it is going to appeal to only a true Star Wars fan.

How is it that my grandma is still driving? She’s in her eighties and can’t see over the steering wheel, yet she still drives herself to the grocery store at least once a week. She doesn’t do too badly but there are days where she rides the middle line and scares the heck out of me and the on coming traffic.

It seems like they should make it mandatory to get a driving test every year after the age of 65 in order to get their auto insurance renewed or even to just get an auto insurance quote!

I mean, how much does our car insurance go up because of drivers who are too old to see or even walk and so cause accidents? I remember a few years ago the man who was elderly and drove into a crowded farmer’s market by accident because his eye sight was too bad.

Pretty scary stuff, if you ask me.

It doesn’t matter the reason for wanting to ride in style. From heading out on that special date, to wowing classmates on prom night. Or from just plain showing off at graduation, to arriving and leaving in comfort for your wedding. From the sad but necessary rides from a funeral to the cemetery, to stress free travel to and from the airport.  Or from “there and back again” at the theatre, to simply going for a night out on the town. For all of these reasons and more, people are queuing up to secure a luxury limo hire.

This is not a local phenomenon. All over the world limousine hire is big business. Online ads for “limousine hire Cleveland,” “limo hire Surrey,” and “top of the line limos Vancouver” are appearing with increasing frequency.

You can chose luxury SUVs, sedans and the ever popular Hummer these days. In my humble opinion, the inside is more important for me, but the outside is where all the ooh’s and ah’s come from. It’s a toss-up.

My husband has been running his own computer business from home for quite awhile now and he is considered to be a little bit of a guru when it comes to computers. We constantly have people calling him to ask questions about computers, both about the hardware and about programs that they are running and having problems with.

We have a friend that owns a used car dealership and he has recently built a web page for his business. My husband helped him out immensely and answered all of Erik’s questions to the best of his ability. When it was time to put the page up, my husband suggested that he go with dotnetnuke web hosting.

When the page was online, we went to take a look at it and were really impressed with how it looked and how easy it was to navigate. Erik said that he could not have done it without my husbands help. It is nice for my husband to hear things like this, as sometime he feels that his help is taken for granted.

I can testify to the fact that a trader absolutely needs to find a reliable, skilled and compatible commodities broker, if she wants to be successful in the futures business. Commodities are not for the faint of heart and the concept can be difficult for some to master. There’s a whole new vocabulary to learn, including “puts” and “calls.” (I’d love to know who came up with those…)

A point of particular caution should be sounded for technical traders when choosing a broker. Don’t choose someone who thinks they know more than your charts do. That’s all you must base your transactions. The fundamentals don’t enter into your buying and selling decisions. Naturally they play their part in the overall market dynamic, but the real analysis comes from your historical data and the patterns emerging on the charts. Whether you make your own by hand or utilize an online service, a technical trader can’t do without charts. Like the famous spaghetti sauce slogan, “It’s in there!”

As an artist and a former performer, I find that MMA or mixed martial arts is a fantastic form of both. Not only do the competitors hone skills to an art form and use them against their opponent in the ring, they do want to give a good performance for the fans.

However, MMA is nothing like the wrestling community shown on TV. There is no showmanship or choreographed moves. The fights are very real and so is the contact. If someone gets punched, there will be blood eventually.

Another way art comes into the fights is that many of the fighters wear special MMA clothing designed just for teams or even individual fighters. They have some fantastic and up to date detailed designs for both men and women fans of the sport too.

With lines like TapouT and Jesus didn’t Tap, you can see that the sport actually appeals a wide fan base.

I have some friends that I would call world travelers.  You see, they’ve traveled many places and countries around the world and they seem to know the right places to stay irrespective of your destination.

For example, when they were visiting Bali, they stayed at the villas Seminyak, one of the most trendiest resorts on the island.  Not only were they treated like kings, but the photographs they brought back were some of the most amazing pictures of I had ever seen.

What was even more amazing was the ridiculously low price they paid compared to the luxurious room that they had.  I would’ve thought that they would have paid well over $1000 per night when in reality their cost was a measly $300.

All I know is that next time I go on a vacation, I will ask their advice on where to stay as well as where I can get the best price.  I hope that I will be able to share my grand tales of adventure that I experience on my next vacation.

We were very lucky to have our first child William.  You see, the pregnancy was full of complications and we nearly lost him a couple of times.  But when I heard him cry for the first time, all of that seemed so far away.

But, as it turned out, we were not in the clear.  In fact, our problems were going to continue for awhile.  After the first night in the hospital when he stopped breathing, we were told that he had sleep apnea, and we would have to keep a watchful eye on him.

Having no idea what that meant, we sat down with our doctor to ask what his condition meant for both his and our lives.  He told us that we would need to use a sleep apnea machine and he would have to wear a sleep apnea mask every night to make sure that he wouldn’t quit breathing.

Thankfully, there was a CPAP Supply company in town and we picked up all the needed equipment before we brought our son home.  Hopefully, he will outgrow his condition and won’t have to use it for the rest of his life.

Sometimes I feel that most of the businesses in town are all business, but no fun.  Sure, something like a car wash really isn’t that exciting, but I wanted to start something new and fun.

So, I looked far and wide to see if I could find the perfect business for what I was looking for.  Out of all the choices that I could pick from, in the end I decided to have a party rental shop.

Now, what that means is that I had to find some bouncy castles for sale and some inflatable slides to get started.  I also picked up some cotton candy machines, and a couple of canisters of helium for the balloons.

We have a storefront leased already, and we are waiting for our signs to be delivered.  I figure that we should be able to open our doors next week.  I can’t wait to see how well the company does - we will be the only ones in town that offer the services that we do.