Arizona State Law allows school districts to increase their Maintenance and Operating (M&O) budgets by up to 10 percent of the Revenue Control Limit (RCL) with voter approval. The RCL is a state formula that determines how much funding school districts are allowed to spend each year.

Yesterday, this went to vote and did not pass. What does this mean for my kids?

1. Possible loss of school buses
2. Possible loss of sports or having to charge as much as $400 to participate
3. Possible loss of any type of provided school lunches… IE Brown Bagging only
4. Possible Year Round classes
5. Possible 10 hour days Monday thru Thurs
6. And much more like loss of field trips, after school activities, art & music classes, etc.
7. Possibly closing one of the 3 Elementary schools & 1 of the 2 Middle Schools.

Apache Junction has a large number of children thanks to the housing boom from a few years ago. You would think, with this many families, it would pass. Why didn’t it? Because we also have a huge number of asshole zombies snow birds. And guess what… even though they only live here for a fraction of the year, they still get to vote. Any why would they vote to pass something that will raise their taxes, no matter how slightly, if it’s not for their kids?

So… thanks to our Government, Greedy Corporations & the lack of anything resembling community pride, our kids will now suffer even more than they are already.

Gee thanks

What better way to spend Halloween than with a Scary Movie, right?

Well, last night someone (who shall remain un-named LOL) introduced us to 66stage.com & we were able to watch Paranormal Activity. We are, basically, home bodies, so this was perfect for us.

As lovers of all things paranormal (even the shows with deepasses that run around trying to “provoke” via macho man complex or lame ass rituals!) we were SO excited to watch this, for Free and at home. I mean look at all the trailers & reviews! This was going to be better than The Exorcist, Nightmare on Elm St and Saw all rolled into one!

What we got… the BIGGEST waste of 86 minutes of our lives! WTF!!!???

It stared out kinda cool & cute. The interaction between the two seemed believable. But after 60 minutes and the only thing that happened was some odd electrical noise & and a grunt, I was so over it. They had both begun to grate on my nerves, her whinny attitude & his ignorance, I just wanted to slap them both.

I kept watching only because there just had to be something good that happens that made everyone freak out about it. Instead… she kills him & the police accidentally kill her. OMFG…. LAME! Ya… that’s never been done before!

I felt two things during this whole movie… extreme irritation & extreme joy when they both died.

T and I came up with a WAY better ending in a two minute conversation…

After she kills him, she zombies back up to the room, but just as she walks back into the room, she’s dragged back out towards the closet with the attic access…

They do the “speed video” thing slowing down for the phone call… then again when the friend comes in. The friend does her scream thing when she finds the dead doober… speed up until the police arrive.

The cops do all the same crap only they find the girl in the attic & you hear the “OMGs” “WTFs” and so on… then you see a cop stumble into the doorway where he stops and blows massive chuncks.

Now that would’ve been great! You would know that something god awful had happened, but you would never know what it was. Ya… WAY better!

All in all… I give this movie 2 thumbs down and a 3.5 / 10. I mean, lets face it… The Wizard of Oz was scarier than this pile of crap.

I hope you all had a great Halloween! This year was pretty lame for me, I just couldn’t seem to find the time or energy to decorate! =( No skimping next year though! I promise… with my fingers crossed just in case! LMAO

The kids didn’t dress up or go Trick or Treating, but let’s face it, they’re 12 & 16… kinda old for it. Shelby did semi dress up on Friday for a Halloween dance at DJ’s school… if you can call shredding some of her already shredded clothes to make a sorta zombie looking outfit a costume! LMAO

My nephew, however, had the most kick ass costume EVER!

LMAO… Is that not the greatest! It’s a cell pic from his mom, but hopefully I’ll get real pics!

I’ll try to do better this month with posting! LOL, between the kids, the nephew, the templates & the freaky ass weather that gives me horrible headaches & make my joints ache… Sometimes it’s just hard to think up something to post about! LMAO… we’re so friggin boring around here!

LOL, I’ve been busy with both clients & making premade blog templates.

I’ve started making templates for TV shows & Movies like True Blood, Psych, Dexter, Ghost Hunters & Rocky Horror Picture Show… See to the left.

With the girls on Fall Break, they’ve been helping out a lot with Squish and letting me get A LOT of work done.

Tomorrow is Tony’s first day of his last year as a 30-something and we’re gonna do a “craft project” for him & he’s taking Friday off so we can go do something, so today is my last day for some hard core template work until Monday.

OK, back to work… before the kids hit me up for lunch & I have to break. LOL

But… like I said, I’m desperate! So, here I go a-whoring! LOL

In the past few days, I’ve added 2 Halloween & 2 Christmas / Winter templates to my premade line up. I’ve also listed them on eBay for 1/2 price ($10), buy 2 get 1 free! I also listed custom templates for $35! That’s $15 off the regular price & they are also buy 2 get 1 free. They end on the 14th & I’m not sure if I will be relisting them.

Here are screenshots of my 4 newest ones! You can click on them to go to a working preview. I also plan on adding some Autumn ones over the next week or so.

I really need to get my butt moving on getting tickets!

To help in this quest, I have listed my services on eBay. I’m whoring blowing out custom templates for $35! Not only that… I’m also offering “Buy 2, Get 1 Free”! They can all be used for the same blog or 3 different blogs… you can even gift them out!

I’ve also added 4 new FREE Halloween Twitter skins.

Mystery Movie Madness is something I’ve been working on for a couple of months… whenever I could find the time.

Mystery Movie Madness comes from my love of movies & puzzles.

I was inspired by an episode of CSI: New York where clues were printed on t-shirts in the form of graphics that created a word which was used to gain access to web pages. I just transformed the idea to work within a blog.

I took a couple of weeks to come up with the movies, keywords & graphics to have 6 movies. It seemed easy in theory, but turned out to be a lot harder than I expected. Trying to come up with 5 keywords that are important to the movie, yet not to obvious was hard enough, but then to come up with the different images to depict the keywords without being obvious OR having anything to do with the movie it’s self was super hard.

Then, when that was done, I thought of two more games.

So… If you think you have what it takes to figure these out, give Mystery Movie Madness a go!!! And, please, let me know what you think! I’m still working on the Amazon links in the lists of movies, but the games are ready to go!

The big news was getting a hotel room! HOLY CRAP! I know it’s San Diego, summertime and CCon weekend, but give me a break! Hotels are already booked or double, if not more in price! Thank god for sis-in-laws! LMAO… mine just happens to work for the Starwood Hotels & was able to get us room at the Sheraton in Mission Valley for $99 a night! Not bad when split 3 ways!

This so rocks! It’s right next to the place we normally stay & being from San Diego, I know where I’m going! LOL PLUS I get to be tour guide for a bit since we’re going a day early so they can see a bit of San Diego… the beach… maybe Sea Port Village… Old Town… Coronado… we’ll have to discuss it!

Also… in order to raise the money to do this, I’ve set up an affiliate program for my templates…

When you sign up for the program, I will send you a link to a special ordering page that you can post about, add into your sidebar, Tweet… what ever you want.

What you get: $5 off a template for every referral up to 4 people. So, for 4 referrals you get $20 off a template. For 5 referrals, you get a FREE template!

What they get: Everyone who is referred by you gets $10 off a custom template or $5 off a premade template!

It’s a WIN-WIN-WIN situation! LOL

You can sign up HERE.

Oh… And what do you think of my Halloween template? Are the stripes too much? LOL… I can’t decide!

So, what have I been up to the past month? Squish… LOL, my nephew. Watching him is fun yet completely drains any real computer time I get… right now he’s napping so I’m rushing to get this done!

All is good here in our house. Our game room looks great, I just shampooed the carpets & couch & we just installed a folding door in the entry to the rest of the house to keep the cats (and baby lol) out. The pins look amazing. T’s been replacing all the regular bulbs with LED’s and they look AMAZING. It’s sure is a ton of fun being able to play pinball anytime we want. The only thing left to do is get a new computer armoire. We want something a little smaller.

The girls are doing great, although Nikki gave us a bit of a scare. She was having pain in her lower right abdomen. Having gone through appendicitis, that was my immediate thought, but it turned out to simply be “the cramps”. Shelby’s doing great too.

T is… well, T. LOL… He works his butt off at work, comes home & works his butt off on the pins. LOL, he says it’s like having a part time job on top of his regular job. It’s worth it though as they look great.

Other than that… RIP Patrick Swayze… Kanye West is a douche… and I’ll try to be better about posting! LOL

Wednesday, August 5, 2009:

My friend, @rickybarbie and I both LOVE Burn Notice on USA. She had tweeted that she thought they should offer Burn Notice themes for Twitter. I was like, huh, I can make one, so I did…

It turned out to be quite fortuitous.

Thursday, August 6, 2009:

Woke up to Twitter being down… the dreaded DDoS attack. What sucked was that both @BurnNotice_USA & @Psych_USA we supposed to have Twitter instant win contests in the morning. Well, after they got the site back up (if not working 100%) they started. The first contest was from Burn Notice… The first 10 peeps to show that they had a Burn Notice themed twitter skin won a kick ass Burn Notice boogie board! And yep, my friend won!!! How awesome is that!!?? I, of course, didn’t win a thing, but it wasn’t for lack of trying! LOL

Friday, August 7, 2009:

Uh, I got nothing.

Saturday, August 8, 2009:

Happy Anniversary to T & I… 16 years married, 20 years together! We had a nice lazy day… got Outback curbside for dinner… love me some Roasted Filet Focaccia Sandwich!

Sunday, August 9, 2009:

Got a new coffee maker & watched T play the 007 PS2 game I got him…. I just love lazy weekends!