Rich Woman

Hi all,

I am notorious for being in the middle of multiple books...as summer has hit full force I find myself wanting to laze about and read all day long. At the moment, this has been a very good thing, since I am in the middle of three awesome books.

I am reading, The Metabolic Plan by Dr. Stephen Cherniski, Men are from Mars Women are from Venus, and Rich Woman by Kim Kiyosaki. I would recommend all of them as quick and entertaining reads, not to mention chalk full of helpful, insightful and awesome information.


The book I would like to highlight today is, Rich Woman. I have to thank James' mom for sharing this book with me. She let me borrow her copy right after I graduated and I find myself not wanting to put it down and re-reading sections over and over again hoping to pull out every last detail of goodness.

In short, Rich Woman, I would say, is an inspirational guide for women's financial futures. It outlines the path that Kim Kiyosaki followed to become the strong woman and investor that she is today. Through reading this book I have found a new sense of direction and motivation to become financially secure and independent.

I am a woman, I am a teacher, I am in love with James and want to share my life with him, but ultimately I am capable of being completely financially independent regardless of my gender, profession or relationship status.

If you are a woman, definitely get a hold of this book. It will change the way you think of money, investing and taking care of yourself. To be cliche, your owe it to yourself to get all of the education you can to prepare for your financial future...no, not just your financial future...your happiness, success, your dreams.

Well, that was my rant...really it is a good book. I recommend it highly :)

Hope everyone has a happy 4th of July!

Jessi

Wired Once Again

Little did you know, but I have been "living" (if you can call it that) without the Internet in my apartment for the last month or so. It has been an interesting experience. Though, as of this week, I am once again connected to the world. There will be no more waiting until I get to work in the morning to see if I received another email. During this time though I noticed a couple of things.

First, I really like being online. I mean, I do so much online it's kind of sick. It's my source for news, communication, work and entertainment. I'm sure if I could figure it out, it would also be my source of physical exercise. Without being connected at home I felt empty.

Second, I played more video games. I re-discovered all those old PC games I had completely forgotten about. I probably logged too many hours playing Rome: Total War and other excellent games. Oh yeah, I also reached pro status on Tennis for Nintendo's Wii Sports. Basically, without the Internet I had trouble coming up with ways to entertain myself.

Being at school, with the Internet included in my tuition, I didn't realize how expensive the Internet can be. This is especially true since I don't have a TV and only use my cell phone which means I can't take advantage of bundled packages. Furthermore, since I'm living in a smaller town I don't exactly have all the choices of some in larger towns. I can easily see how people who are not as dependent on the Internet as I am decide not to get broadband/DSL or any other relatively expensive option.

I'd like to say I came out a better person from this experience, but pretty much I'm just glad to be sending emails and watching You Tube late into the night. With that, I'm off to enjoy some clips of "The Office".

The Nintendo Wii

I own a Nintendo Wii and I must admit it is absolutely as cool and awesome as I thought it would be. Here's what I like about it:

A way to exercise
Nintendo made a smart move to create Wii Sports. As any other blog will suggest, it's simply great fun. My favorite is the baseball game - especially going through the training games. It's exciting to connect the bat to the ball and see it soar out of the stadium. I'm also getting pretty good at tennis as well and have been regularly using tennis as part of my morning wake up routine.

Jessi likes it
This was huge for me. I wanted to get something that both Jessi and I could enjoy and play together. Any couple knows that it takes planing to find an activity both people enjoy and thankfully playing theWii is one of them. We especially like playing against each other on Wii Play with all of it's mini-games. Jessi is pretty good too, often leading me with overall wins.

Internet browser
OK, we all love YouTube and other video content sites. You have seen the latest Ask A Ninja and Homestar Runner updates, right? What's great about Nintendo is that you can surf the web and watch all of these videos right on your home TV! I realize that Apple is claiming to be the first to bring YouTube to the television with their appleTV, but the Wii already has this cool feature.

Backwards Compatibility
Sony originally came up with this idea with the PS2: be able to play your old games on the new system. This was one thing I really disliked about Nintendo's new consoles, but no more. It would have been cool to just be able to play GameCube games, but Nintendo made one more smart move. Owners can now download classic games and play right on the Wii. Nintendo was equally smart in how they priced the games. I can buy any NES game they offer (they are slowly releasing them though) for $5. That's enough money where I don't think twice about buying a game I know I want and like, and it's enough that Nintendo will actually make some money off the sales. Brilliant. I have recently been enjoying three classics: Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda and Excite Bike.

So, thanks Nintendo for making a console that I fun, nostalgic and at least more physically healthy than alternative game systems. It's no surprise to me that Nintendo is leading the pack in console sales by 5 to 1 in many areas.