Marc Norris

Many things have changed in the month and a half since I last blogged here.  I don’t want to bore you with all of the details, but here are some things that are different:

• Well, the babysitting job that I started I managed to only last a month.  The kids I was babysitting were brats and were ganging up on my daughter, so that was the end of that.  You should always remember to put your family first before work – and it was a great example to learn from.
• Had a scare this past week with my wife.  She had chest pains and had to be rushed to the hospital.  Thankfully, it was only Costochondritis, and nothing serious, but scares like this are never fun.
• We have been fighting with our new bank and losing money in NSF charges at our old one due to a huge mess caused by transferring banks out to the town that is closer to where we live.  Didn’t help that the person that setup the transfer of our funds messed up and it has been nothing but a headache.
• Another new look for the site was added today as I decided that the old one kind of sucked.  Okay, it really sucked, and I hope that you all like this one better – tell me what you think in the comment section.

Otherwise, that is about it.  Have plenty of work that needs to be done, and I get to spend the weekend with just me and the kids as the wife has gone to the city to take a break – can’t wait until it is my turn

Well, it is a new week and I thought that it is time that I post some updates on the blog.  I feel a little self-centered by writing on a blog with the same name as myself, but I can move past that I guess

Anyway, this week is starting something new for us.  You see, a couple of weeks ago, a lady here in town called to ask if I would be able to watch her kids during the week while she is at work.  Since I work at home anyway, and my girls are here with me, I accepted because I didn’t mind to help.

So, today is the first day, and the first half hour has passed.  After a few shy moments, the three year old that I am watching has warmed up, and Courtney and her are watching Wonder Pets.

We’ll see how much work I can get done with more kids under my wing – I’ll write back later to let you all know how the day goes.

Wish me luck!

I just want to wish all my readers a good morning from my home in Conquest, Saskatchewan, Canada.  Chances are that you have never heard of the town that I am living in, but that is okay – I’ll fill you in on the details.

You see, we just bought a house here back in September of 2008, so this town is new to us.  Our home that we lived in before in Saskatoon was being moved to make way for new commercial buildings, so we were left with the choice of either finding a place in Saskatoon (where rental was going to be our only option as the housing market was overpriced), or buy a house somewhere else.  Since I worked at home, all I needed was a community that had high speed Internet – which most places in Saskatchewan have.

After a lot of house hunting, we ended up buying this house in Conquest.  It was a big change as I grew up in  the city and I was really worried that living in a small town wouldn’t work for me.  We moved from a city of about 300,000 people to a town of about 170 – big difference!

But what I didn’t realize was that it would grow on me.  Honestly, I was at the point in my life where I was getting tired of the rush of the city and I just needed to slow down my life – so in the end, I think it was a good choice.

There is just something magical about waking up to a beautiful sight each morning, going to sleep in the dark (unlike the city where it is always bright), and living in a place that is quiet (something I still can’t get over, though I really don’t miss the constant noise from the city).  I also love that the people are friendly out here and take the time to talk to you – something you will never see in the city.

I hope you all have a great day, wherever you are in the world, and I hope to see you back at my blog tomorrow – thanks for reading

Though it has been awhile since I wrote anything here (like 2 days   ), I have actually been working on other things – most notably doing a little website promotion.

Specifically, I have been working on blog commenting which does take a little time.  I am making the point to read the blog posts so that I can make a constructive comment.  I have been reading a lot today, and have learned quite a bit, but there is one thing that I have really noticed:

Most people are not blogging constantly.

I admit that I am in that boat too, but there are a lot of people that haven’t even made one blog post this year – which is unacceptable.  Not only does this mean that they will see a reduction in traffic, but what makes it worse is that their sites could totally go stagnate and lose all their search engine rankings.

After learning my mistake last year with my main site, I have been making an effort to at least blog once per month, but hopefully I will be able to do more than that – I guess time will tell.

If you hadn’t noticed, this blog is using the default theme and that pretty much sucks.  There is just something about looking like the five billion other blogs out there that bothers me – I am my own person, so it is time to do something different.

So, today, I will be installing a new theme, doing a little customizing and making this site look pretty – I think it is about time.  Hopefully, I can come up with something good – just take a look at it later today.

UPDATE on January 25: Well, it took longer than expected to get a new theme up, but I am in the process of tweaking the new theme for the site. I think it does look a little better, and though it does need some work, I think it will work out fine.

Hopefully the tweaking won’t take too long – I am trying out a new tool to make it work.