• that women gain weight in marriage; men in divorce
• that relationships thrive when one spouse sacrifices for another (who knew?)
• that married couples tend to fall out of love between year 10 and 19 of marriage but fall back into love after year 20. (Then, what about all of those later in life divorces between long-married couples? hmmmm)
• that cohabiting can be just as fulfilling as marriage.

There are a few more good tidbits in there. I always enjoy reading about these kinds of studies. Must be fun to carry them out too!

http://glo.msn.com/relationships/10-studies-that-affect-your-relationships-7870.gallery#!stackState=0__%2Frelationships%2F10-studies-that-affect-your-relationships-7870.gallery%3FphotoId%3D86764

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-stir/5-things-not-to-say-to-di_b_1273651.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl7%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D136649

It is kind of like the things you shouldn’t say to a never married person. Like, what happened?, why have you never married?, Are you too picky etc., etc. Again no one else’s business. It assumes that there is something wrong with being never married. While many of us, including me, used to pine over our single status, most of the time, I rejoice in it now. Not that I wouldn’t love to meet my soulmate, but I am not going to pine about it anymore. And I am just glad I am not one of the 50% who married when I shouldn’t have and am now thus divorced.

Botttom line: just don’t ask rude and inappropriate questions. Even if they are well intentioned. Join this century!

We have started looking for affordable airfares and hotel rates. We may not all be able to fly together, but hopefully we can agree on a hotel. Something nice but that won’t break the bank.

I am very excited about going to Orlando–I haven’t been there since shortly after college. and so much has changed. One thing I really like to do is go out to eat. I don’t have to eat at a fancy restaurant every night, but I do like fine dining at least a couple of times while on vacation. I have been researching Orlando Restaurants and have found a number I would like to try. I might want to go to Tommy Bahama’s and have their coconut shrimp again, the award winning Emeril’s restaurant, the Bull & Bear Steakhouse (sounds yummy!) or hearing some good music at the House of Blues Orlando. And who could resist going to Bubba Gump Shrimp at Universal Orlando?

Eating out is an important part of a trip for me. You get to try new dishes, soak up the restaurant’s atmosphere, and relax and talk with friends. I know we will have a lot of fun dining in Orlando.

So that begs the question–how would Carrie Bradshaw behave on the Bachelor? There are two possibilities that I see. One scenario would be that she would get emotional like Jenna and be a trainwreck just like Jenna. Like the dating/relatonship blogger who fails miserably when put on the spot. But I think Carrie would have handled it with more humor and there would have been some upside. There didn’t seem to be an upside with Jenna.

Or, Carrie would have excelled on the show, either to be eliminated right at the end or to be proposed to, only to decline. Carrie, after all, is complicated. But she would have handled the show with humor, grace, vulnerability, but in the end she would have acted like the journalism professional.

So, that begs the question–how would the other characters have fared on the show?

Well, Miranda probably wouldn’t have been chosen. Sorry hon, but you were just not sexy enough.

Samantha wouldn’t have made it very far either. She is sexy and attractive, but she would not have been able to make the emotional connection, and she would have pissed the other women off.

Charlotte is the one person who could have pulled it off. She has just enough of the good looks, feminine wiles, and good strategy to know when to hold them and when to fold them.

It would have made a good episode of SATC.

I have to admit, that being a blogger, I was excited to see how she would play out. Her blog is titled The Over-Analyst, which I thought was cute. I too over-analyze, particularly when it comes to love. So what could be more fun than to see a blogger who blogs about love put it all in action.

Except….it wasn’t very pretty. Another contestant, Monica, seemed to glom onto her and want to terrorize her. (How mature is that?)  For some reason, Jenna let Monica get to her. Monica would cackle like a witch, and was kind of scary to be honest. . She gave me the creeps. But I would hope that it wouldn’t bother me so much that I would sabotage myself on the Bachelor. But that is what Jenna did. She was crying all the time, and seemed to act like Monica was a stalker. Monica was sort of like a stalker to her, but still…Jenna should have found a better way to handle it. Walk away….jeez.

Jenna only lasted a couple of episodes before she got the boot. She was just having meltdown after meltdown. Monica herself eventually didn’t do much better, and she is off the show now. She mellowed some with time, but you couldn’t forget her first frightening behavior.

As to her blog, it is passable. It seems a little unfocused and trying to be all things to all people. I can criticize, because not only am I a blogger, but I have been a magazine writer and editor for years. There is also not much personality in the posts. It takes a writer a while to development a voice, and maybe she is not there yet.

But she is no Carrie Bradshaw.

I am not wanting to buy a lot of things right now, but am searching for websites where you can find good deals on products when you do need to get something. There are websites out there to find deals on everything from skincare to dishes to collectibles to western saddles (not that I would ever need that–I don’t ride horses!) But you know what I mean. Sites that are aggregators of sorts and list sales prices.

But for the time being, I want to be in frugal mode. Now, if I can just get my niece in that mode too.

I didn’t have anything like Good Sam Roadside Assistance, but the highway patrolman was so nice and helpful. He made the tow truck driver stay with me and help me clean out my car. He then asked the driver to take me to get a rental car. The patrolman was so nice–just unbelievable. The best part of the bad story is that I did not get a ticket. I guess he realized it was a hard section of driving, even though the wreck was my fault. That is good, because my insurance hardly went up at all.

Our company has given client holiday gifts for the last few years. We may cut back next Christmas, but I hope not.  Gifts can really keep your company in the forefront of your customers’ minds. I would even like to give corporate gift baskets to our best clients. After all, they have helped to keep us in business all of these years.

I really love picking out what I’m going to wear. But I only like doing it the night before because I can never seem to find anything that I need in the morning in a hurry. So I decided to finally do something about it because it meant more often than not that I would end up wearing something that wasn’t anything cute at the last minute because I couldn’t concentrate on putting together something that I really wanted to wear.

I thought that it wouldn’t hurt to go online and find some good tips on how to organize my wardrobe. I’ve just had so many pieces of clothing for so many years. When I was online looking at that, I ran across some info on tv and internet packages and after I showed it to my boyfriend, we decided to change over our apartment’s service to one fo those packages.

I was really proud of my newly decluttered closet. It just has made such a huge difference when I’m getting ready in teh mornings. Plus, I have more room in my closet for other pieces of clothing that i love!

If I went out on my own, I would want to make a go of it. I have been reading up on how to start a small business and hwo to fund it. I would prefer not to take loans–I have had too much personal debt in my life to want to add professional debt to it. I have heard that you can can get small business grants, which you do not have to pay back.  Any thing you don’t have to pay back would be ideal!

I have looked online for information about small business grants, and there seems to be a bit out there.  I am raring to go about this. I need to make more money and be financially secure. It seems to me that the only way to do that in this economy is to start your own business. But the scary part is the financial part–you don’t want to lose your shirt. If you can keep overhead down and cash infusion low,  and get small business grants instead of loans,  you may be a winner.

You just want to make sure that in case the business doesn’t succeed or take off like you want, that you haven’t lost that much. Minimize your losses in other words.