It seems that even the coastal town of Emerald Isle North Carolina has no shortage of history, and one of my favorite parts of the trip was to Fort Macon, an old civil war fort that changed hands multiple times during the war, but ultimately ended in Union hands. For whatever reason, I’ve always been fascinated by stone structures, castles in particular, but this is the next best thing you’ll find stateside. While stomping around old battlegrounds was fun, thankfully there was more to do as well!
We also played a couple rounds of one of my favorite past times, miniature golf, went to check out one of the North Carolina aquariums, and racked up plenty of time on the beach (I’ve never been one for sun bathing…so I spent most of my time floating around in the ocean or helping the kids build sand structures). Combine that with plenty of Munchkin, Killer Bunnies, and a few good books, and you have an awesome vacation. Its really prompted me to want to travel more, but that will have to wait until more funding is secured. We’ve begun mapping out destinations for some long term travel, 3-12 months per location, starting stateside, making our way west to a Midwest city, hitting the coast, and then winding north to Alaska. I’ve heard a mixed reaction so far, from envy to “why?” But its all in my head till the debts are paid and more portable work is brought in. Be excited.
My batteries are recharged and I’m ready to hit the ground the running once I get back tomorrow. I’ve managed to sell an extra link to my other blog and pulled in the usual adsense income while I was gone as well. Money for nothing? I will take it!
-Frank
July 21st, 2008
I’m not entirely sure where in my brain the disdain for sleep lies, but it sure gets annoying sometimes. Maybe it was my erratic sleep schedule from high school into college, purposely pushing myself towards deprivation for no other reason than I wanted more time to myself, and physical demands be damned, I was going to get it. Since graduating and being introduced to the wonderful world of corporate drone, and accepting the fact that if I don’t want future health consequences, going to the gym at least 5 days a week is in the cards between now and eternity (or when I bite it, one or the other), things have changed.
Sure sleeping still sucks, but I accept the fact that I need 6-8 hours a night to function properly and go into the next day feeling like I’m ready to hit the sled instead of doomed to a day of lethargy and boredom. Exhaustion breeds anger. If you don’t believe me, try to wake my older sister up in the morning after she’s pulled an allnighter….again.
See in college I said well to hell with it I’ll sleep when I’m ready to pass out and get up whenever I need to. This became a problem when A) I didn’t get up when I needed to or B) Having stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, to get a good nights sleep meant sleeping well into the afternoon, which I also detested. Bottom line is you have to pay the piper one way or the other (my above reference to long term health consequences also applies here).
Unfortunately that doesn’t really make the process all that much easier. Its about 1:30am here, which is later than my usual sleepytime of 12:00 or so. Sometimes I get bouts of defiance, you see. I don’t want to sleep and, much like my oldest brother Don who would bang his head against the window of the car to prevent himself from falling asleep as a child (did I mention he was a god damned diablo when he was a kid?), I’ll reside myself to doing something relaxing but not so relaxing I’ll sleep, such as say..a blog post.
See you tomorrow.
July 11th, 2008
Where is everyone?! Its been sometime since my last post, but that’s likely due to the fact that I wouldn’t want to bore you to death with the doldrums of summer. But since I’m heading out to North Carolina’s beaches next week, I figured I’d drop you in and give an update on my musings and brainstorms of late.
- Don and I have recently been hitting the Adsense portfolio hard, and we’re looking to launch a slew of new sites. Whether they will prove as lucrative as our previous endeavors is unknown, but I’m cautiously optimistic. We’re building up our income so that we can leave the 9-5 grind behind forever, and that’s going to take some doing. We’ve brought in some external advertisers beyond our Adsense, and now have some monthly revenue that’s reliable and doesn’t fluctuate, this is great news as well.
- Freelance work! If you’d like to read more of my Finance ramblings, I’m now a blogger at Billsavings.com. They pay well and my point of contact over there has been great. Love you guys!
- Looking to travel? I’m thinking of picking up this book as a point of reference for future journeys.
- The official Shumpish family vacation is soon, and I can’t wait. Once again we’ll be traveling into the wilderness of central Pennsylvania, stomping around Eaglesmere and fishing and of course some golfing and hiking as well.
-Frank
July 8th, 2008
So our little web empire has been cruising along like usual, with steady gains on a per day basis over the last few months. We’re up to averaging about $3-5.00 in earnings per day, but yesterday something funny happened. For whatever reason, traffic to one of our sites blew up, just way more visitors than we usually see, and the clicks started rolling in.
This led is to our best day ever, at about $16.00 for the day. Today seems to be once again normalizing in traffic and clicks, but it’s definitely a new milestone for the Brothers Locust.
In other news weight loss is proceeding as scheduled, with a pound here, pound there each week. Despite some outings with the family for pizza, I’m clocking in at 227 even, which puts me en route for my goal of 225 by July! Sure beats the 262 I was last April.
Keep on trucking.
-Frank
June 11th, 2008
There’s buzz all over the blogosphere and otherwise about the upcoming release of the Wii Fit, a fitness gaming product designed by Nintendo. Critiques abound as to the actual health benefits associated with it, and I’ve been curious enough to consider buying one. Combining fun and exercise is a topic that I’m always open to explore. MY reasoning is this: I hit the gym 5 days a week, 6 if you count my weekend workout, and despite my new found obsession with lifting and getting in shape, I can tell you this..doing cardio is BORING.
I’ve actually come around to enjoying the physical demands I place on my body on a daily basis via strength training. Pushing through that last rep when your body is screaming “DEAR GOD STOP” is a thrilling example of mind over matter. It takes some time to get into this mindset of course, but if you’re dedicated enough you can get there, as Don and Paul have both discovered as well. There’s a certain amount of pride you can take to a commitment to fitness…but staring at the wall while I hit the rowing machine for 40 minutes isn’t my definition of fun, either.
And so my tangent brings me back to the fit. Previous incarnations like DDR and Wii Sports have managed to burn some calories, but if you’re in any sort of shape, you never came away with that “I just busted my ass” exhaustion from real cardio work (That’s not entirely true, do about an hour of DDR on standard/heavy and you’ll get there). Can the Wii Fit provide exercise and fun? That depends on who you ask, but it seems to be a tentative yes.
I wish I could rent the thing out before I shell out the extra monies for this piece of machinery, but I’ll bide my time for now and check out some more videos/reviews of it. If I do happen to pick it up, you can be sure I’ll give you a full report!
May 22nd, 2008
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