I have started a new Journal at AOL. It seems like every big player in the Internet has a blogging platform to use people’s writing to make money. It did not look like AOL Journal is very sophisticated like Google’s Blogger/Blogspot but maybe it has momre under the hood than I see at first glance. Anyway, the address of the new Journal is
http://journals.aol.com/ericwfrost/windy-city/
I am hoping that doing this post will help to get the AOL Journal indexed and visible to search engines. How’s that for honesty?
Today I am going to think about what to write more on AOL Journal.

We are beginning a new year now, I would like to send out some postcards to market myself as a real estate agent in the neighborhood, however, who to mail the list to is a question. We come across the consumer mailing lists provided by wholesalelists.net, which only provides the finest consumer mailing lists and residential mailing lists. All of their lists are available on manuscript, mailing labels, magnetic tape, diskette, CD-Rom, 3×5 cards, or can be emailed directly to my computer. Also they will format the file to fit our specifications. This will save lots of time to get the names, addresses on the envelop. Also they are linked to the post office site so you could pick your own stamps on the site too, they you could print everything your need from the site.

We are thinking to get a magnet calendar with my picture and my info on it to mail, as in that case people would keep it on their fridge and then they would be able to see my name all the time, I got this idea from my father in law. He mush have gone to an open house, then he has received the little calendar in the mail.

My boss would be interested in this site too as each year he tends to send two mailings out in the neighborhood to promote our company, Help U Sell. He has been using the traditional way, which is way too much work, plus his mailing list is not accurate then he tends to get lots of returned mail. This spring I will recommend this site to him and I am sure that he would find it very helpful. The price is reasonable too. You could get a free quote by either e mail them at info@wholesalelists.net…or call them at: (866) 954-LIST (5478) between 8am-5pm PACIFIC TIME, their agent always returns phone calls within the next 24 hours.

Our current nanny, Ms Zhu was the nanny for our older daughter, and she came back to us last November to help taking care of Lydia, our younger daughter. However, she does not like Lydia as much as Elizabeth, She is working very hard to clean our house and cooking, but I do not see that she is passionate with Lydia, so Lydia could not see me in the house, otherwise, she wanted me to play with her or pick her up. I like Ms Zhu, she might want to go back to the family that I have introduced to her while I was in China on my vacation at the end of January, so I am looking forward to get someone new, hope everything will be good!

Recently I have rediscovered by passion for Mahjong and I have been playing it a lot on Big Fish Games. Mahjong is a traditional Chinese game that is played with pieces like dominos but has features of rummy and euchre as well.

The site Big Fish Games as many variations of Mahjong including Mahjong Holidays 2006, Mah Jong Quest II, Venice Mystery, Mahjongg: Ancient Mayas, Mahjangg Investigation - Under Suspicion, Mahjongg Artifacts: Chapter 2, and Cafe Mahjongg among many more including World Jongg. In total there are 33 variations of MahJong on Big Fish Games. The site also includes information on How To Play Mahjong and the types of melds: Pong, Kong, Chow, and Eye.

Go here to join me and get started playing Mahjongg online - bigfishgames.com.

We were visiting relatives over the holidays and our youngest daughter is turning 1 on January 4th so we wanted to throw a party for her.

Unfortunately the date we picked between Christmas and the new year also happened to be my birthday. So we ended up celebrating my birthday as much as hers. I really wanted it to be just our daughter’s party but I guess it was inevitable someone would buy a cake for me since it happened to be the actual date of my birthday.

I’m sure it’s the first time we ever celebrated my birthday with Curious George and Elmo decorations, Dora the Explorer cups and plates, and pink and purple balloons!

By the way, our older daughter is turning three in March so got her a cake and celebrated her birthday as well. In fact we sang Happy Birthday four times because my brother in law’s birthday was less than two weeks ago. I guess that’s what happens when family’s only get together a few times per year.

Recently I started to notice a trend, although I do not go to many weddings each year, it seems like many of them are now using LED lights instead of incandescent bulbs. I talked with a wedding planner friend and she explained the many benefits of using using LED rope and string lighting for decorations as wedding lights.

LED lights can be a variety of different colors and shapes and they are durable so they don’t break very easily or fail during the wedding.

For the environmentally conscious they are much more energy efficient than standard incandescent lights (80%). The LED light are also much less of a drag to install and work with. You can actually get 125 strings lit off just one outlet. The best lights are rated to last for 100,000 hours or more so they can be used over and over again at all of your weddings.

It makes it easy to be a wedding planner or facility manager these days as the lights save lots of work, electricity, and they last longer - all of which make a difference to the bottom line.

Our family visited Mexico and took a real vacation for the first time ever last week. We booked an all-inclusive resort which was only about the price of any downtown hotel in the states but included lots of entertainment, all the food and drinks you could want, and several pools, an oceanside jacuzzi, large inflatable to play on out in the ocean, etc. etc.

They also had free ocean activities like snorkeling, Hobie craft rides, kayaking, and windsurfing (assuming you know how to do it). There are also five restaurants some of which are more formal and some are very informal for the kids. We made the mistake of taking all the kids to a more formal restaurant one night and although the staff was very nice I am sure we annoyed some people around us.

I took our older daughter (3) later one night to one of the more formal restaurants and she was a perfect dinner companion actually, it was just when we had all the kids together (1 & 2 years old) that it was very difficult. Anyway, since we enjoyed it so much we’d like to go back again in March!

We have a company makes kids’ clothes in the bay area. A lot of this kind of companies have moved to overseas, but we are still surviving and actually we are make decent money. One thing is that we are using a los angeles fulfillment to help us to finish the packaging and performing shipping for us. So it’s kind of we use them to outsource part of our business, for all the orders we received we just send to them and they will pack and ship within 2-3 business days. I have been to the warehouse a couple of times and am very impressed with the work they are doing. The warehouse is very neat and clean, plus they have all the products in the computer system that you could find it within one search. The warehouse is huge, but it is also very organized by vendor name, they do have good knowledge people to work for them too with the best tools and warehouse machines. Every night the data between the warehouse will be updated in our computer system, so that we could have update information of how to order material and what are the hot sale items, etc.

AMS Fulfillment is the only warehousing and fulfillment services company that offers OnGuard Inventory Protection™, a safeguard for total inventory management and product fulfillment precision. Can you imagine your customer get the damaged products or even worse get the products that the shelf life is expired without knowing it? Then you will be responsible for law suit and this will damage your company’s image. So it is very important to use a good fulfillment company, then at least half of your problems are solved. It is not easy to find someone that you can trust, but I can guarantee you that you can trust AMS, they will never let you down.

We went out on Friday afternoon to see the annual tree light at the Daily Plaza, between Washington and State Street. The tree is very tall and wide, like 10 floors tall, lots of beautiful decorations on the tree. It was very cold, but the plaza was packed. We found a place that we could peak behind layers of people. Then the exciting moment came, we were counting down together, wow, it is so beautiful with the light on. Suddenly we heard fireworks on top of us; it is from the ceiling of the Culture center. We have never seen fireworks from above, it was so cool!

There are so many dating sites these days, but to find a free dating site is not very easy, click here to go to Smooch then you will have the best dating site with great software to support. The most important thing is the great people on this site, you can search your Mr. or Ms Right here and I am sure if you have the patience to spend some time, you will be able to find him or her. Good luck!

I did a showing at 340 on the park yesterday and I am very impressed with the interior design of the 2 bed rooms facing south, the view is spectacular, the design of each room is great, very easy to put furniture. The bathrooms are very well done, pretty but not very luxury looking. The entrance is not big to waste lots of square foot. The price is a little too high for us, hope not too high for my client.

You can request a print catalog and complimentary samples of the Holiday or All Occasion cards be sent to your business or home address. Then you could pick the themes that you like to order the Corporate Holiday Cards Company. This site supports the troops. They donate a greeting card to be sent to each soldier that wishes those Happy Holidays and Happy New Year and tells them THANKS. Additionally, they donated a blank card and envelope for troops to write home. Gallery Collection has lots of different selections, although we understand that lots of people likes to use e-card, I personally still interested in getting and sending the real card as you can keep people’s handwriting, which is the most valuable these days.

There is a Thanksgiving parade each year which is sponsored by Macy’s. We have been there two years in a row, but this year we saw from the weather report that it is going to snow, so we are not sure if we will be able to make it. Maybe just stay in to keep warm.

While I was in college, Celine Dion is my favorite singer. Veteran songbird Celine Dion has commissioned Ne-Yo to collaboration for some upcoming tracks the French-Canadian has been working on. From the hiphop weekly news show, we can find out what’s new with her. I really would like to go to Las Vegas to watch one of her shows, I have been following her music video but it will be cool to see her on stage. Maybe next year, when Eric is going to Las Vegas for a business meeting, we could book a show then. You can find other hip hop news on this website too.

We have invited some friends come to our place to have a Thanksgiving lunch together. This will be our first time to hold a party, I am thinking to serve, mussels, cocktail shrimp, fruits, pork tenderloin, scallops and green bean casserole, so let’s see how I am doing that day! All the kids like the shrimp cocktail. After lunch, Eric took everyone to the roof top to enjoy the view of the city, but they came down very fast due to the cold weather. Everyone loves my green bean casserole, Lily and Shannon asked me to send them the recipe so that they will make it during the holiday season themselves.

We are in the process of refinancing, there are so many things to consider, such as front load fees, back load fees, discount points etc. So we are not only talking about interest rate, we have to consider all the related fees. But since the Fed has cut the rates recently and will meet again on Dec 11, 2007, I am sure to meet with your mortgages broker is a good idea, just to regroup to see what options you have as far as for refinancing. But also during this holiday season, lots of lay offs are happening, so we need to be careful, may be to get mortgage payment protection is a good choice, you could find lots of different options from this web site, they will help you when you lost your job for a period of time. In that case you do not need to foreclose your house, I do not understand why there are so many people go that route, there are so many other options before that, we need to plan our life better. remortgages has become a popular way for many consumers in the UK to enjoy the benefits of getting rid of a poor value mortgage and switching to mortgage that offers better value for money and huge savings over the term of the loan. When interest rates start to rise remortgaging becomes even popular, with many consumers looking for different ways to try and cut back on repayments and to save money on the interest that they have to pay on their mortgage loan. Since our interest rate is getting lower, we do not need to worry about it now.

I have graduated from college for over 14 years now, next year will be our 15 years anniversary, so maybe we could try to arrange something that we could get together. I have good contacts with most of my classmates, but since I have moved so far away and had two girls, things change a lot. But it will be very nice if we could get together again before we are so old that we could not even recognize each other. Any thoughts?

Each year we will spend lots of money on Christmas lights, they are beautiful but pricy. This year we would like to try the LED lights. LED Christmas lights will last for more than 50,000 hours v. only 2000 for incandescent lights. So not only will you save money on electricity but you’ll have money on replacement lights too. LED holiday lights also operate at only 1 degree above ambient temperature so they do not heat up and become a fire hazard like incandescent lights. Especially if we think to put on the fake Christmas tree, it will be so dry and easy to have fire with the light on 24 hours per day.

I watched Next yesterday by Nicholas Cage, it was a cool movie, talking about a magician in Las Vegas who could know 2 minutes of future. Isn’t that great, so he always winning at the blackjack table. Later he has helped the FBI to get rid a nuclear bomb.

I did not know title insurance is this important until I took the real estate class recently. There are different types of title insurance you can get which would cover different liabilities. For buyers to protect your most valued asset, your home, from fraudulent claims against your ownership, liens, and undisclosed heirs are just some of the reasons you need title insurance. In this site you will find information on the steps you need to take to purchase a home and secure your ownership. For sellers, you have to make sure your sale closes smoothly and efficiently is one reason to choose an established company with a long history in the real estate process. title companies offers customers the most complete real estate services in the nation. From title and escrow to mandatory disclosure, title insurance companieshas a 150-year history of serving its customers with accuracy and efficiency, and has unequalled financial strength to back your policy. For assurance and security for you and your heirs, rely on title insurance . You do not need to pay each time after purchasing a title insurance, instead, you just pay once and then you are covered for the years that you own your property. There are so many foreclosures happening, we really need to get a good title insurance to make sure we are not in debt with anything that we do not know.