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Here’s something that should make you mad – the US government is ignoring the fact that the real cause of the so-called ’swine flu pandemic’ is factory farming. And in their ignorance have decided the best way to handle the ‘problem’ is to vaccinate millions of innocent school-aged children.

Excuse me? You want to vaccinate MY CHILDREN due to your stupid commercialization of farming? You want to vaccinate MY CHILDREN because the FDA overstepped it’s bounds years ago and made farmers who wanted to stay in business – in order to feed their own families, no doubt – to put additives in their animals foods and inject those same animals with antibiotics and the like?

Well, you know what? I think not. We will definitely opt-out of the program and I will not be allowing my children to get this vaccine.

And I think the best course of action is for the government to stop meddling in farming. I think we should call for a revamping of the FDA and any organization that handles our ‘health and welfare.’ Clearly, they do NOT have our best interests at heart.

We can see THAT in the effects of the bail-out monies given to loads of corporations as well. Now the government not only has control of our food supply, our farming methods and our educational systems, but it also has control of free trade.

America is going in the wrong direction and our citizens better sit up and take notice SOON or there will be no America worth fighting for. The lives and sacrifices of our veterans will have been made in vain.

Don’t let it come to that.

Get educated and remember that government is supposed to be “FOR THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE.”

Other links of interest:

In the arena,

The government works FOR us, not against us. Let your voice be heard. Don’t give up any more of your rights.

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business – just as if it were her own.

Well, I’m having a few behind the scenes issues again with WordPress. Actually, more like my database tables are malfunctioning and causing file size errors, which partly have to do with my web host. So they are making things not work correctly for me in the admin area.

I know that’s likely a foreign language to some of you – I apologize. Just suffice it to say, the software and such that runs AA|Blog is not working correctly.

But I think I’ve got the latest issue resolved. If you notice anything out of the ordinary (assuming you’re reading this on the site and not in an RSS reader or email), please let me know ASAP.

There are a few things disabled at the moment, so if you notice some things missing that are normally around (like CommentLuv or something, for example), rest assured those will be resuming as soon as possible.

Again, though, let me know if anything is out of whack – buttons in the wrong places, links that may not be working, or anything like that – so that I can fix them as well. Since I’m having these problems in the admin area, I may not notice things out of the ordinary happening on the blog itself.

So . . . there you have it! And I’m tired (it’s after midnight, even) so I’m off to bed, finally.

In the arena,

“Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get.” ~ Forrest Gump’s Mama

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business – just as if it were her own.

Just wanted to note some additional changes and housekeeping that will be taking place in the next few days as I adjust things to the new theme.

There are some pictures on older posts which aren’t formatting properly so I’ll be updating those and adding captions where I can.

If you notice anything else broken or odd looking, please contact me and let me know.

This theme is meant to have only excerpts on the home page and although I’ve been seriously opposed to that (and basically still am), I’m going to give it a try and see what happens. It should NOT affect anything in the RSS feed, though, and if you read my blog in a reader, you should still get full posts. (THAT is one thing I will NEVER change! I hate excerpts in feeds!)

I’m also going to be adding a couple of new plugins that will allow more options. One of those is a header rotator. That way, each time a page is refreshed, you’ll get a different header. It keeps things fun and exciting! I plan to have the current header plus 3-4 more. So, not too many – just enough to add variety.

And you may find some colors changing over the course of the next few days. I installed a plugin yesterday that highlights my comments whenever I reply to comments on a post and right now, I’ve got it set to a light blue. While I like it, I’m not sure it’s the best fit. So, I’m going to play around with that color and possibly the page background color.

There are also some widgets that SHOULD be showing up in the right sidebar which aren’t. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why. But hopefully that issue will be resolved soon too.

On another note, look for a new Around the Web post this week as well as a new Reading List. I haven’t done either of those for quite some time and that’s got to change! They’re 2 of the most popular things on this blog and I enjoy writing them as well.

Let me see . . .

Oh! More posts coming up on recent events including The Teenagers NJROTC Annual Inspection and Parade that took place a few weeks ago (with pics!) plus some new wallpapers for March that I think you’ll like.

Okay, I think that’s it for now. I hope you’re having a wonderful day wherever you are. It’s overcast and windy here in Seattle but I’m feeling much better today – except I seem to have lost my voice – but for feeling better, I’m very thankful!

In the arena,

Things do not change; we change. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business – just as if it were her own.

The Thanksgiving and birthday shopping (Yes! Little Girl is turning 8 on Wednesday!!) is done for now, there’s a nice fire going to keep the house warm and the kids who are already home from school today are watching a movie. It’s time now for me to sit down, write some new recipes for our Thanksgiving dinner and just relax for a moment.

Just want to catch you up on a few things today . . .

I’ve got some pictures I’ll be uploading soon – once I find where in the mess the cord for my camera has gone! You know, it’s one of those “it’s in the brown box in the basement” situations.

Yeah, Annie. Good luck with that. Hope you find it before next Thanksgiving.
Umm, yeah, me too. Thanks.

Pretty soon here, you will notice a new design on the blog. It’s not the one I really want, but it’s going to be a nice change for a little while. My goal is to get the new one I’m designing completed by the end of 2008. Bring in the New Year with a fresh perspective!

The new design is coming along slowly but surely. I changed it from the original mock up I posted a few months back. I plan to post the new mock up sometime next week. Please let me know your feedback once I’ve done so! I love hearing your thoughts.

I also haven’t posted an Around the Web nor a Reading List for a while so I’ll be doing that sometime next week as well. My husband demanded I go to Half Price Books this Friday and get myself some new reading material. Those will likely be the basis for my new list.

If you have some good reads, please do share. I will read nearly anything although I must admit – I’m rather a geek and I most often read non-fiction.

Sad, but true.

An aside – It’s sure too bad my kids don’t like Wall-E. I think it’s only the 30th time they’ve watched it since we brought it home a couple days ago. Think I should return it and get my money back?

That’s all for now! I’ll be back soon but if I don’t post again before Thanksgiving, please have a happy and safe holiday!

In the arena,

Have you heard about the Sisterhood?

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business – just as if it were her own.

Just a quick post to let you know I’ll be posting some stuff from around the web later today along with a couple of other things and possibly part 3 of “Stories make us who we are.”

I also want to talk more about customer service but that will likely have to wait until Monday or so.

Don’t want to overwhelm anyone. I know these next few weeks are hectic for a lot of folks what with getting kids back to school and all.

So, see you soon!

In the arena,

Did you know I design blog headers and ebook cover graphics, too? Yes, I do. And you can get one now for the introductory price of $55 for a limited time. Just send a payment of $55 to me via PayPal along with a description of what you want. You’ll have a design within 48 hours.

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business – just as if it were her own.

Special Announcement

For the past several years, I’ve been creating blog headers and ebook covers for friends and family but it’s not something I’ve really put out there for my design or writing clients (or on this blog, for that matter).

Until now.

Introducing my blog header and ebook cover design project!

It’s brand new and as a result, I’ve decided to offer a very cheap introductory price of just $55 per graphic. Now, if you’ve looked at my fee schedule for my other services, you will know this is a rock-bottom offer here. And I’m doing it this low for one reason: YOU! To show my appreciation for you – for reading my blog, for following me on Twitter or FriendFeed or wherever. It’s all for you.

So, if you have a blog or an ebook you need a design for, let’s talk! I offer a 72 hour guarantee which means I guarantee you’ll have your design in 72 hours or less. You’ll get the file as your choice of a JPG, PNG, or a GIF in the case of a header and your choice of JPG, PNG, GIF, PDF or Word doc in the case of an ebook cover design.

To find out more, simply follow this link to my contact form, send me a quick description of your blog or ebook cover project and if we decide it makes sense to work together, I’ll get started. (The contact form is broken at the moment so in the meantime, just send me an email to my business email.)

If you don’t need a blog header or an ebook cover, please feel free to send a link to this post to anyone you know who might need one. I’d appreciate it!

Make it a great day!

This week marks the beginning of a couple of new projects, one of which I’ll be posting an announcement about either Monday afternoon or Tuesday. It’s just about something I’m starting – a sort of niche within a niche – because I’ve seen a need for it lately. I’m excited about launching it.

Well, it’s not really a launch, per se, or at least not like one of those big launches most of us have come to expect from the big marketing guru’s. No, it’s just a simple announcement and I hope it’s something that others will find useful. If not, we’ll regroup and take another path. Simple as that.

It’s not an earth shattering thing nor anything new – just a simple thing I hope does well. And if the comments I’ve read recently around the web are any indication, I think it’s going to be a nice little project.

Anyway, enough of that. For now.

A while back, I wrote a post about regrouping and dropping some projects that just don’t fit. In the past month + since then, I’ve done that and I feel good about the direction I’ve chosen. Right now, the decision I need to make concerns what to do with the projects I’m letting go – sell them, sit them on the back burner and come back to them later or just completely delete them. I’m not sure.

I’m seriously considering selling one of them but to be honest, I have no idea how to go about that. I’ve never sold a website/concept/project before. So, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Meanwhile, expect some other things coming up including what I’m working on for the Thirty Day Challenge.

And of course, my announcement later today.

I hope you had a great weekend! If you haven’t checked out what’s new here in the past couple of days, don’t miss my write up about the KWJZ Smooth Jazz Festival my mom and I went to Saturday. Wayman Tisdale brought the house down! Man, what a great show.

It was equally great to spend time with my mom. Not something we get to do very often and I always enjoy it when we do. It’s so great to just get out with her by myself and have fun.

And it was great to come home to a fixed septic system after our relaxing day out. Spending a week + with things out of whack was very difficult, especially with 4 kids home all day. Glad it’s over and things can get back to normal. If you’ve ever dealt with septic issues, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

Oh – one last thing before I go – look out for a post in the next day or two about stuff from around the web. Haven’t done one of those posts in a while and I’ve found some great stuff lately I’d like to share with you. Hope you enjoy it!
In the arena,

Make $10k in a weekend – “Too good to be true.” That’s the first thing I said when

I heard of http://tinyurl.com/5lq2g4. You can’t REALLY make $10K in a weekend. But I quickly bit my tongue once I saw the content. . .

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business – just as if it were her own.