Itty Bitty Hooves

New Old Website

I’ve re-vamped my old writer’s website http://www.tparrington.com Stop by and check it out. I’d really love to have you visit. Of course it has my available books linked up to it, but I also added some free reads, and am planning some other fun things for it, so stop in and check it out often.

Getting The Spirit

I bought hubby an electric massage chair for his birthday this year and it’s really cool, but now I need a new ‘comfy’ chair for watching tv in the evenings. Mine is a really old rocker easychair. It isn’t in the best of shape, but it is comfortable. My biggest gripe with it is it’s so low that it’s hard to get out of. Maybe I’m just getting old. Okay, I am just getting old, but so is that chair. I’ve been looking around, I think I used up my ‘Christmas gift’ possibilities yesterday with my purchase, but I can play that one off as a family gift since I’m sure hubby will use it too, so maybe I can swing a new living room chair into the picture for Christmas. I found some AWESOME leather/fabric combos at Century furniture they look positively luxurious. I’d like something like that since I adore the looks of leather and yet love the comfort of a soft fabric. I’m begining to feel the Christmas spirit already. Maybe I’ll pull the lights down out of the attic this evening.

A Heavy Subject

I try really hard not to think about weight issues. I’m active, and do a lot of physical work every day so it’s kind of easy to tell myself I’m in good enough shape. Until I see a picture of myself that is. It’s probably common for most over-weight people. They convince themselves they’re in good enough shape, and they stay away from pictures. After a short picture taking session today though it’s plain enough to see I have to do something. I know I’ll need help though. A product like Miracle burn can be a great aide in diet struggles. Check out the dietawarenessinstitute.org website for a great comparison of the weightloss products and their effectiveness. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of buying products that can be quite expensive. It’s a lot better to know if they have a good history of success before spending the money, and seeing which is right for you.

Perfect Way To Live

A friend of mine who lives up in the northern suburbs of Chicago close to where I used to live spends half of the year there that used to be her and her husband’s full-time home until they retired. Now they alternate between the Chicago area in the summers and their Orlando vacation home by the beach in the winters. That’s really such a perfect way to live if you can do it. I don’t evny her packing twice a year. Since it’s such a long vacation they have to pack almost everything. They also had to buy a second set of everything permanent for the second house. Things you wouldn’t want to have to pack up twice a year like dishware, and furniture, beding and such. It’s worth it though. I’d love to spend the winters far from the snow of Illinois down by the beach in Florida.

Glutton For Punishment

I was just sitting here thinking earlier today about how suddenly we got back into the goats. Not really thinking about it with regret, but I do have to laugh at the fact that just last year I was saying, ‘no more hay eatting animals’. I wouldn’t care if hay was easy to come by, or not getting more expensive every year. Goats can be a better alternative than most hay eatting livestock as they can do quite well on weedy vegetation that would make most farm stock sick. They can’t live on it completely however, unless you have a vast acerage with year-round grazing. We have pretty good pasture areas for goats. Lots of trees and weeds which they love a lot more than grass. They’re not grazers so much as they are browsers. They like a ‘little bit of this, and a little bit of that’ and just adore posion ivy and other noxious weeds other animals wouldn’t dream of touching. After this last week of escapes and extreme heat, and worry about hay shortages and drought even though we’ve gotten a fair amount of rain this month and are no longer in drought danger, so much of the country is, and it’s such a tenuous balancing act, I think I may need drug rehabilitation myself before too long. I don’t use drugs, and I’m not much of a drinker as a rule, but these critters could really drive you to it. Certainly I’m begining to think I’m just a glutton for punishment.

Pure Heaven

Between all the escapes this week, and the extreme heat and humidity I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than go on a cruise. As vacations go cruises have to be the most relaxing, and complete way to unwind and forget all about the troubles left behind at home, or work. You don’t have to do anything, just lay back on a deck chair and enjoy the breezes, listen to the lapping water hitting the hull, stare at the bright blue sky, and eat. If you WANT to do things there are always various forms of entertainment going on at any given moment, but for me it would be pure heaven just to lay on the deck and let the sounds of the ocean sweep all the aches and headaches away.

Strange Finds

On any given day you can walk our property and find all kinds of strange things you might not think you’d normally find on a farm. Walk through our wooded acerage and you’re likely to find broken arrows discarded from our archery range, paint ball remnants, some even unused from one of our many ‘wars’, and even used golf balls from when Bob has gone out to ‘hit a few’ and couldn’t find it afterwards. As expensive as those little round bullets are I have to clue him into the site where you can get great deals on used balls. Then if he looses them it’s fine if it takes days for me to come across them on a walk through the woods. Of course, it may take longer for him to get them back if I have to crawl back because I’ve slipped on one of those little slippery suckers and broke a leg in the process. I wish he’d keep them on the green.

No Other Way To Watch A Movie

I remember about 20 years ago when Bob and I first got married how excited we were to get something that was cutting edge technology… our first VCR. Yep, we were on the winning team with that one. The big war between BETA and VHS was going wild at the time, and for non-geeks like us it was very confusing to say the least. And scary. Machines back then were so ‘high-tech’ that they cost in the neighborhood of eight hundred dollars a piece, and movies on tape at that time ranged from fifty to eighty dollars. Movies took years back then to make it to VHS, not months the way they do now. The big fear was however, after investing so much money, would VHS win, or would BETA? Would we have to buy a new machine again? All new tapes? Scary stuff for an average young married couple just making ends meet and trying to save to get a house and raise their toddlers as well.

Kind of makes you laugh now doesn’t it?

You can run out to the store to pick up a new VHS machine for about thirty bucks. The new kid on the block, not so new anymore is DVD and even those machines, once selling for hundreds of dollars now goes for about fifty. Of course there are ever new inventions, blue ray, recordable DVD players, etc… But we’re used to the changes now. Everything moves so fast in technology today that we know if we buy something it will be outdated the moment we walk out of the store. Thankfully movies now only cost about twenty dollars on the high end, and you can buy all kinds of older ones for less than ten dollars.

The big craze now is home theater systems. We have one. Bob looked at me over the weekend when we were sitting around watching movies during a rain storm and the sound from the movie was all around us and said ‘There’s no other way to watch a movie’. True, and yet a mere ten years ago we wouldn’t have dreamed of such a thing.

For some folks even that’s not enough. If you have the space, and the money you can create your very own theater in home complete with theater seating. It’s actually pretty affordable. What a wonderful way to really enjoy the movie. You can get everything you could even dream about and turn your family room into a real live theather complete with popcorn and movie posters.

I can only imagine us watching a movie in a few more years thinking, ‘there’s no other way to watch a movie.’

Sell To The Market

It seems I am always doing market research. I’m either watching market trends on goats, goat meat, milk, value added products like soap and cheeses made from goat milk, or following the sales trends of miniature horses, horses in general, and even value added animals in regards to what types of training bring what types of variables in the market place. Same thing with the books. What’s hot at a given moment, how long the moment lasts, how various genres are selling. They all effect my bottom line. There are so many other aspects to good marketing strategy though that as it gets more involved it’s wise to enlist the help of professionals. Finding out what areas of the country are more likely to sell your product well, what places online, how to reach them, all these things get extremely complex. Sales is part of the business no matter what you’re selling from goats to horses, to books, or anything at all, but no one person can do it all, and do it well. Get someone else to study the markets and figure out the best way to reach them, then you can do what you need to do best–sell to that market.

Being a little Naughty Sometimes

There are times when my usual uniform of sweat pants and t-shirts just won’t do. There are times when my ’show’ attire of dress pants and jackets won’t do. There are times when I just want to be sexy. Private times usually, although sometimes even when I want to feel sexy underneath business, or work clothes. Usually though, when I’m in the mood to be extra playful with my husband. After all somethings aren’t meant to be hidden beneath clothing. Whether it’s open tip bras, or lacy panties there are just times when something a little special is the perfect way to set up an evening of snuggling. It’s fun to be a little naughty sometimes.