martharichardson.com

Archive for the ‘My Education’ Category

Well I wasn’t able to leave on the 8th as I had planned,  there was complications thanks to my son being difficult.  So I left Columbia, MO around 1:30pm on the 9th and made it to Lincoln, Nebraska that night around 9pm.  The I-29 interchange to I-80 in Nebraska was just nuts but I got through it. 

This morning I left Lincoln around 8am got through the rest of Nebraska and into Wyoming today.  But the weather in Wyoming was not very cooperative today.  I went through Medicine Bow National Park  and in the distance I could see the clouds were getting darker and not very friendly looking but after you pass Laramie, WY there is nothing around until Rawlings so there was no choice but to keep going.  It had started to rain as I was coming down out of Medicine Bow National Park and when I got down it really got bad.  The radio kept giving out National Services Advisory which was Sever Thunder Storms Warnings and Tornado Watch and I’m thinking great I spent 10 years in Missouri without seeing a tornado and now I will probably see on in Wyoming out in the middle of nowhere lol.  But at least I didn’t see one of those today but the storm was bad enough, I could barely see the tail lights of the car in front of me.

After that storm passed and I was able to pick up speed again I could make up some time as I wanted to get as close to Utah as possible but Mother Nature had other plans as the closer I got to Rawlings, WY another storm was brewing and it was after 6pm and I thought this is a good place to stop for the night.  So tomorrow I will have a lot of driving to do as I really need to get to Reno tomorrow.

Son found a new place to live so he will start moving out on Tues.

I just wanted to let you all know that I’ve got the uhaul truck to day and will finish loading it up tomorrow morning.  I meet with the middleman at 2pm to go through the house and if every looks good I give him the keys and he gives me the money agreed upon for me clearing out in 21 days.  Then I will be heading on my journey to meet my boyfriend in Reno. 

I will be going through Nebraska, Wyoming, down through Utah then Nevada.  I’m hoping to get at least through Nebraska tomorrow before I stop for the night.  I will post again tomorrow night to let you all know where I”m at in my journey.

I finally got some info from the “middle man” that the person who bought my house is using about when I need to be out.  They offered me something called “Keys for Cash” program and I had until last Friday to decide if I want to do that.  I decided I did so I called the “middle man” on Wednesday and he brought the paperwork by on Friday for me to sign.  This is so that I won’t have the Sheriff come by and serve me a eviction notice.  So I need to be out on or before June 9th and it is good to have a date to be working towards.  I’m trying to keep things at the least amount of stress as possible as I need to move so there is no point in dragging this out any longer than necessary.

My messy house is driving me nuts but I’m using one of the spare bedrooms to put the boxes of things I’m keeping in which helps keep the living room not so crowded.  I’ve almost have all of the downstairs cleared out and just about everything that I’m selling is upstairs.  I’ve sold a lot by contacting friends, posting things online in a local yahoo group for selling items and I’ve put some things in the the local paper’s classified section.  I finally found  new homes for my Beagle’s, which was hard but for the best as I don’t want to travel with dogs and in California I will be living in an apartment.  There is a really good chance that I will be driving to California alone which is a bit scary but mapquest says it is roughly 27 hours and I only need to drive alone to Reno as my boyfriend will be working there that weekend, then we will drive on to California. 

One thing that I have learned in my life is that life is never boring and you never really know what will happen both for the good and the bad.  When I moved to Missouri I was pretty sure I would never go back to California to live but 11 years after I left, I’m going back.  There are things I really like about Missouri such as the snow and the storms though not the tornadoesthat sometimes come with them.  Missouri is really a beautiful state with its rolling hills which are always green in Spring and Summer.  But my youngest son, who right now lives with me, has decided to stay in Missouri so I will be back hopefully from time to time to see him.

Well I found out last week that my house was foreclosed on and since then things have been a little crazy.  My son has decided to stay in Missouri so he is looking for a place to live.  As for me, I’m moving back to California to be with my new love in my life.  We have been talking about moving in together but this just pushed things up sooner than we had planned.  I never really thought I would be living in California again as that is where  I was living when I met Barry but it is what it is.

So last week and this week I’ve been selling whatever I can and what I have left I will put in storage here in Missouri and then come back later to pick them up.  It will be less stressful as we will be able to plan it a little better to work it around his job.

I still haven’t figured out why the comments do not work on my blog so if you want to comment, email me at martha[at]easytoolbox.com and I will try and reply back.  I will still be continuing the business as I can do this from anywhere.

First Happy Easter!  I know I haven’t posted in some time, it is something that I need to get better at. 

So where are things now that a year has past since Barry’s sudden death?  Well the business no longer scares me and I’m actually making some money, which is always good.  I am still working on cultivating a relationship with my subscribers and I think I’m getting better at it from some of the comments I have recieved from some of them. 

My Skype friends are always looking out for me and they always give me a head’s up on new things that are going on just in case I’ve missed something and I really appreciate that.  One of them yesterday as we were talking and Bruno is a subscriber of mine so I asked him how I could make my emails better and he gave me a very good tip about added some tips or tricks to my emails, which is something that I’ve thought of doing for some time but wasn’t sure where to get those tips and tricks from, he suggested I take snippets from PLR ebooks that I have and include them in emails.

On a personal note, my life outside of business is also doing better.  I have my last bankruptcy hearing coming up on April 16th and then I will be done with that.  I’ve almost got all the past taxes filed that Barry never did so that is good and this year’s taxes will be filed on time.

I have a new love in my life, in fact we’ve known each other for about 6 years and he is my best friend, even when I was married, he was the one I talked to about things going on.  As much as Barry and I loved each other it really wasn’t a good marriage and we had some rough times and towards the end we were basically just living in the same place which was sad that things got that bad.  But Barry’s main concern or interest was always working and I had a hard time getting him to talk to me or spend time with me without him being on the computer.

My friend came out to Missouri in March for 4 days and the visit went very well, it was very comfortable especially since it was the first time we had met in person.  Then towards the end of March I went out there for a week and it was better than when he came out here.  Of course I took my laptop and worked while he was at work.  We are planning our next visit with me going out there again since I can work from anywhere.

I know I haven’t posted in some time, there has been so much going on and not always enough time to do all the things that need to or should be done.

Well last month I had my bankruptcy hearing, it was hard emotionally, I cried and then got drunk when I got home.  Barry was not very good at filing his taxes so now I’ve had to do those so that the IRS and the State can’t get my bankruptcy case dismissed.  One of the years I’m needing to file on, I couldn’t find the Profit/Loss statement so I’ve been having to do that year all over.

My lawyer and I have decided it would be best to convert my Chapter 13 to a Chapter 7,  so he is in the process of doing that and that will give me more time and without the a time limit restriction that the Chap. 13 did with getting the taxes all filed.

My resolve that I had on Jan. 1st, is still there and I continue to learn and find ways to accomplish that goal.  At times it has been slow going but as long as I continue to move forward, even if they are small steps that is what is important.

I can’t believe it is almost a year already since Barry’s passing and I want to again thank all of Barry’s friends for the support, knowledge, patience and understanding that have helped me and continue to help me through this new and trying  phase in my life and in business.

My son bought my a new hard drive for my PC since that one only had 80 gb, yea I know but when it was bought years ago it wasn’t  going to be use just for business.  Now that things have changed, I need more space so he bought me a 500 GB, which is great.

Once I put the new drive in and booted up my PC and installed my windows xp, things seemed to be going well.  I started doing the Windows updates and after the first set of the updates and the reboot, my monitor was totally messed up.  So I rebooted again, but it didn’t fix it.  I went and got my disk that came with my monitor, no download/install files on it, it just had the manual on it.  So I found it on the their website but my computer would not unzip it. 

 I made sure to add the pc back to “My Network Places”, went to my laptop, downloaded and unzipped the files the put a copy in My Network Places and I got my monitor back.

 I also did a back up of my old hard drive but after I did the restore, none of the files seemed to show up even though I said to put them in their original place.  Well so I started doing them one folder at a time, thought that would make it easier on the computer and in the report it gave after it was done, I saw that yes they were put in their original place, Windows just decided to take the long way there.  When I check the files using the long way, everything was there.  By this time I was getting tired but I didn’t go to bed because I wanted to get this done.

But late yesterday after getting all the updates and downloads done I realized that my “Program Files” were not included in the backup even though “C” drive was clicked so today I will reconnect my old hard drive and and check it for anything else I or the back up might have missed, then I wipe it out.

 This month I also did 3 adswaps and have 1 more set for the 31st.  That is the most I’ve done so far.  I think that I need to start working on a new squeeze page so that one doesn’t get used too much.

I had my bankruptcy hearing today, went as expected.  I’m still screwed but it will clear some things off my credit history in time I guess.

My friend that took me there stopped so I could buy some beer.  The store didn’t have my usually brand of Rolling Rock so  I bought 12 Budweisers, which is the brand I use to drink until they pissed me off by selling to InBev, which months after I switch to Rolling Rock I found out it is owned by AB which InBev bought so either way they are still getting my money.

Oh well crap happens lol  Like I don’t know that already.  Yes I know it is before 5pm but I’m drinking already and it feels good.

Thanks to my Action Planner I’m getting so much done and without the added stress of not knowing what I need or should be doing.

I got a new squeeze page set up with and OTO added today for a new adswap that I will be doing later this month.  Only took my about 4 hours but I seemed to know what I needed to do to get everything set up right with my pages, aweber list, download links etc.

And at the last minute I remembered I needed to add an OTO to my gift for the SI4 giveaway which starts in the morning.  Only took me 45 min. to edit the page!

I’m feeling really good about things now and I’m in a “I am woman, hear me roar!” mood after finishing up the squeeze page for my adswap.  I can do this, I know I can now.  What a difference my mood and attitude are since the “fog” of Barry’s sudden death has lifted.