The Poddyland News

Busy As A Bee is a good way to describe my last couple of weeks, and I have spent a lot of spare time either creating or updating web pages and lenses, as well as propping them up with different promotions. Poddyland has ended up taking 2nd place, but to me at least the blog here is important, and I like to think that I have a growing audience among both Squidoo Lensmasters and other friends from around the world.

We are coming up to the halfway point between when my girlfriend headed back to her home in England and when I go over for Christmas, which is wonderful! Having spent 9 1/2 weeks together it’s hard having to spend 2 months apart. And so being 4,500 miles apart, the weekends are still somewhat lonely, despite us both having webcams and phone calls being cheap these days, there is no substitute for being together.

The weekend as always went by far too quickly…

Friday as usual I finished work early, and as it was still nice, I headed down to the pool to get a quick workout before the sun went down. Then it was time to grab a bit to eat, and log into NASA TV in preparation for the Shuttle Launch. This is something special for Debbie and I, since we spent several days up at Cape Canaveral last October to watch a launch, and the experience is amazing. Well Friday night the skies were completely clear, and as I live on the 7th floor of a condo building and the balcony faces north, we are lined up for a great view, even though Cape Canaveral is 150 miles away. The internet feed must have been about 30 seconds behind, since the countdown from 10 down to Lift Off had only just begun when we could see the bright red glow of the rockets propelling the craft up into the skies. You could also just about make out the separation too, before it became just a shooting star and disappeared behind a cloud as it headed over the ocean. Then it was time to take a walk, which was really nice on a warm evening, strolling along the fairways of the golf course around which the condos are built. You are away from the lights and trees a bit more, so the stars shine brighter, and it’s very peaceful.

Saturday I had to get up early, and headed off to the Toyota dealership to take my car back in - 3rd Saturday in a row! The previous week they had replaced a part in the rack and pinion on my car, which cost me close to $1,200 (ouch) but led to the car making clonking noises as I trned the wheel. They took hours trying to locate the problem, and now tell me it needs new shock absorbers and engine mountings. Another $1,000, but luckily I shouldn’t have to do this for a few months, however the noises are still there every time I turn a corner, which is not good. While the car was being looked at, I took my daughters out for breakfast, then to the park, where it rained a bit, but they were having fun on the swings in the rain. However taking them back to their Mother I got into trouble for getting their clothes damp, which would cause her extra work getting them ready to go to the theater in the afternoon. Well she still had to get them changed and showered, it wasn’t going to be any extra, but as usual she has to find a reason to find fault, it’s her way… Headed back home, via Wallyworld (Walmart) to do my groceries, filled up the car ($2.13 a gallon which I am very grateful for), then hit the pool, the sauna, the pool again, and another long walk before bed.

Sunday I woke up really tired. Sometimes the sauna will do that to me, I fel sleep coming on Saturday night, but forced myself to watch the end of a football game and got overtired, subsequently I had trouble sleeping. I wish I wouldn’t do that! It’s so much better to just get a good night’s sleep. However, between watching the end of the game and trying to keep up with all my messages at Tagfoot I overdid it, and subsequently regretted it. So Sunday I didn’t do a lot until lunchtime, other than grab a bite for breakfast, washed the car, chatted with Debbie on the webcam for a while, did some promotion of my new lens I’ve Been There and also Debbies lens on Christmas Crackers, and then since the skies were blue and it was a lovely day I headed off to the beach.

The skies were blue, that’s true, but there was a coo breeze, and the temperatures were in the low 60’s. However there were quite a few people down at the beach, ranging from girls in bikinis to people wrapped up in sweaters and hoods. It’s amazing when the weather cools off how some people feel the cold and others don’t. I went from where I usually park, north up to where there is an inlet to the intracoastal waterway, somewhat over a mile, walking along the waters edge all the way, watching a few people playing frisbee, and some surfers trying out on the waves. Walked there and back, which took just over an hour, and then decided to be one of the people who were brave enough to take a dip, you could count them on the fingers of one hand… There were some good waves coming in, the tide was way out, so the water surged in strongly, great for body surfing. A bit of an undertow as well, but not strong enough for dangerous rips. I did some good body surfing (well I think I am good, but since I haven’t seen a video of myself I have no reason to think otherwise, and I have yet to hear cries of Thar She Blows which is a good thing…) Of course it was nice in the water, but the cold wind made it a little chilly getting out… Well back home, a bite to eat, watched one of my favorite shows, The Amazing Race, more attempts to catch up with my email and messages on Tagfoot, and off to bed.

Well that was my seemingly eventful weekend. I hope yours was as good or better.

SQUIDOO STATUS AND LENS UPDATES

In the last week I have been working on a new lens, the concept for came to me suddenly and so far it’s doing pretty well. The lens is I’ve Been There and it’s about some of the places that I have travveled to around the world, through Squidoo lenses. I don’t have my own lenses on everywhere, so I am hunting around to find other good lenses that fit in. Well that’s the first part of the lens, the second part is where you come in…

Other lensmasters are invited to tell the story of some of the places that they have been to, and to then submit up to 5 lenses about those places, either their lenses or from other lensmasters.

For each submission, I am creating a Text Module for the story, and a Featured Lens Module for the lenses. If you want to get fancy, send me the text/html for your module, complete with formatting, pictures, whatever, and I will be happy to add that.

I think it’s a pretty unique lens and I am hoping it takes off well. So far it looks like it might, but it’s early days yet. If you know of a lensmaster who has lenses on travel and places around the world and isn’t on the lens yet, please let them know that this lens exists. I would appreciate it. Plus, if you have some of your lenses listed, the better my lens does, the more exposure your lenses are going to get as well.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 4
Top 10,000: 8
Lenses: 70

NEW LENSES
I’ve Been There
The Daily Joke October 2008

MY TOP 5 LENSES
The Daily Joke October 2008
My Pet Peeves
I’ve Been There
The Daily Joke Lensography
Bournemouth

I haven’t posted for several weeks because I have been too busy catching up on things since Debbie went back home to England after her 9 1/2 week stay with me, and although I had made several postings in the last month, when I came to clone the format for this post I realized that it’s a month today since my last Daily entry. WOW!

As expected with the closing of October the nights started to get darker ealier here in South Florida, and of course the clocks changed last weekend, so now it’s REALLY dark soon after I get home from work.

The weather has also cooled off somewhat, and we had a few days in the last 2 weeks where the temperature dropped to below 50 degrees overnight, reducing the temptation to take a dip in the pool after work even more. I’m not that fond of taking a dip in the pool at night - well not on my own at least, but if I don’t have the sun shining down on me to counter the cold water, I really have to be in the mood.

However with it being cooler and me living on the 7th floor of a condo block, it’s been possible to turn the air conditioning off and to leave the balcony door open all day and night, which lets a nice cool breeze blow through, so much nicer than having the air artificially cooled. Although you never know what’s going to happen overnight! You might wake up to find the temperature plummeted and you are freezing, then again you might find the breeze has dropped and you wake up in a sweat.

Football season here is winding down, and although my team Notre Dame has done better than last season, last Saturday saw them lose narrowly to Pittsburgh after 4 overtimes. All 3 games they have lost, they should not have done, such a shame. There is always next year though…

Well my earnings with Squidoo are expected to be down for September and even worse for November, but my Adsense revenue shot up to over $80 in October which is a new record. This was partly due to the seasonal traffic on my Halloween Jokes pages, and as a result so far in November my earnings are down. All more incentive to work on completing the revamps to my Christmas Jokes pages to update the format and to include Adsense links.

Thanks very much to AJ2008 for giving sending me some excellent funny dog pictures that I was able to use in my Daily Jokes For October lens, and thanks also to Just Bon for cross linking with my Song Lyric lenses and my Music And The Arts page on The Poddys Directory. As a result I have a great new jokes lens for october, and my Song Lyrics lenses are showing increased traffic.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 3
Top 10,000: 8
Lenses: 69

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke October 2008
New York City Break

MY TOP 5 LENSES
My Pet Peeves
The Daily Joke October 2008
The Daily Joke Lensography
Bournemouth
My Claim To Fame

The weekend here in South Florida was quite a washout, especially on the East Coast, but as planned yesterday we set off for the West Coast and the Islands of Sanibel and Captiva, taking a risk that there was a 60% chance it would be cloudy and a 40% chance of rain.

We got up early, and were out of the door just after 7am, grabbing bagels and coffee before heading southwest to Alligator Alley and the 100 mile drive across Florida. Alligator Alley is one of the few roads that cross the Everglades in South Florida, and in the canals at the side of the road you can frequently see alligators sunning themselves. Not sure whether it was because it was cloudy and also early in the day, but Debbie only saw 2. The only other time I had been the full length of Alligator Alley I saw over 100! Reaching Naples on the West Coast we headed north to Fort Myers, and then across a pretty causeway to Sanibel Island.

I have to give Debbie 5***** for her navigating. We only had a printout from Google plus a tourist leaflet that we picked up from a tourist information place when we hit Naples, and she did amazingly well. We did get lost on Sanibel, but as it’s only a small island (5 miles long) you can’t get too lost. Still, we saw some very nice houses with very interesting mailboxes, which gave us some ideas for another lens maybe, so we stopped and took photographs as we tried to find the main road again. There are lots of great holiday homes there, it’s very quiet, and although most of the beaches are private or for residents, there are 3 public beaches.

Debbie thought that Bowmans Beach, about halfway along Sanibel would be a good place, and it was a perfect choice. The parking was good, plenty of space, good facilities, and a wonderful beach. Sanibel and Captiva are world famous for their shells, the beaches being covered in them. Unlike most beaches, these have dunes and mangroves at the back of them rather than buildings, so it seems really remote, and there are just thousands of shells. I found several hermit crabs in nice shells (put them back though), and also a puffer fish that was about the size of my finger nail. I managed to pick that up and Debbie filmed it swimming in my cupped hands. We got great pictures of Blue Herons and Ibis’s fishing, and one Blue Heron let me get within 20 feet of it too. Didn’t manage to get any spectacular shells, but we did find lots of pretty smaller ones to bring home.

The weather turned out to be practically perfect, and we had a wonderful time. However we hadn’t got more than 20 miles on the way home before it started raining - hard - and it rained most of the way home too. Whereas we had a wonderful day, back on the East Coast it had rained most of the day and was gloomy, so we were again incredibly lucky, just like when we were in New York a month ago.

Got home around 8:30pm, having driven just under 400 miles. The rain had stopped, The Amazing Race was running 35 minutes late so I didn’t miss any of that, and the whole day was just another perfect example of how wonderful life is with the two of us together.

And then we looked at the lens stats for yesterday…

I think I should call yesterday Black Sunday as far as the Lens Rankings go. I now have only 3 lenses left in Tier One, and 9 in Tier 2, despite higher traffic. I have had over 2,200 visits in the last 7 days, the highest ever by far, and yet the worst ranking status in almost 6 months.

Despite having updated lenses and got more traffic, several of my lenses as well as Debnet’s have just dropped thousands of places yet again. It’s not got to the point where I want to give up, but it’s almost to the point where both of us feel that we are putting in an awful lot of effort for precious little return.

I haven’t managed to check Squidu yet to see if anyone else commented on the rankings, but I know that several of our lenses got more traffic in the last few days, yet still dropped heavily. It doesn’t give you a lot of confidence when that happens.

The only thing that is going in the right direction financially is Adsense. A record for September with $74, and based on the daily average, including today, we should be set to earn close to $100 this month. I hope so, since nothing else is working.

Thanks very much to Mulberry for giving some good advice on how to potentially make more money with my lenses. This is very much appreciated, and I aim to do something to try and turn our earnings around by re-focusing lenses. Hopefully by next month we can see some positive changes.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 3
Top 10,000: 9
Lenses: 67

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke September 2008
New York City Break

MY TOP 5 LENSES
My Pet Peeves
The Daily Joke September 2008
Religious Jokes
Bournemouth
The Daily Joke Lensography

Well things have been busy here in Poddyland, with work being hectic, lots of things to do, and writing to my blog has been given a lower priority, so it’s almost a week since my last entry.

Today doesn’t look much better, so I’m taking 10 minutes to just get a quick posting out…

I was hoping to get home for lunch so I could take Debbie to the beach and pick her up after work, since she is stuck indoors all day apart from going to the pool. She can’t go out if it’s raining, or if it gets too hot (which being South Florida…), so the beach is a good option. But I got stuck at work, so she has had to make do with the pool today, and I am hoping to get off work early today so we can head down to catch the sun for a couple of hours.

We are both enjoying Tagfoot, since as well as having another means to promote our lenses etc, there are some good people on there and some funny threads. They just added a feature for creating notes last night, and that has generated some really good and funny feedback.

Hoping you all have a great weekend.

As long as it doesn’t rain, our plans are to drive to the West coast of Florida on Sunday to Sanibel and Captiva Islands, where apparently the beaches are loaded with some of the best shells in the world. It will be good to see - as long as it’s not a wet day! Still, it will be a day out… We might even get some great photos and be able to create a lens out of it. Even better if we can take some good photos for use on Zazzle designs…

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 5
Top 10,000: 6
Lenses: 67

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke September 2008
New York City Break

MY TOP 5 LENSES
My Pet Peeves
The Daily Joke September 2008
Religious Jokes
The Daily Joke Lensography
Bournemouth

Hope you all had a good weekend.

Mine wasn’t bad, it wasn’t wonderful, but not bad overall. Both Saturday and Sunday it was mostly overcast, with rain showers Saturday morning, and a Monsoon Sunday evening. Still, we managed to spend Sunday afternoon at the beach, and it was nice to not get fried for a change. The sun did peek through on occasions, but the cloud cover was probably 80% most of the time. Still, when the temperature is in the mid-80’s you don’t worry too much…

Both Debbie and I were busy working on our joint New York lens. It’s coming along, zooming up the rankings, but traffic is still very light. We hope that with New York being a popular topic and with putting everything we have into this that we can get it up to the top, keep it at the top and maybe even get a Lens Of The Day to share between us.

I do admit to getting jealous at times, not having had any of my lenses get Lens Of The Day yet, and some picks recently haven’t (IMHO) been lenses that took a lot of effort to create. I would rather see the award go to lenses where the lensmaster has obviously put a lot of effort into making the lens something special, and there are a lot of exceptional lenses out there, rather than seeing one of the ordinary lenses get this coverted award.

So since the shake-up in the lens rank formula last week my lenses continue to slide down the ratings, despite editing and in some cases an increase in traffic. I am getting despondant at the thought of having a much lower earning for this month, with my affiliate income being trivial, with the exception of Adsense, where I expect a record $50. I wish I could figure out where my earnings were coming from on Adsense, since in the last 2 weeks I keep getting clicks that are worth almost $1 each. I’m only getting 4 or 5 of them a day, but if I could figure out which ones, I would promote the heck out of the pages the adverts were displayed on. CJ isn’t bringing much in, Amazon nothing, but Adsense is starting to work. I need a lot more than $50 a month for it to make a difference to my lifestyle though…

One other affiliate program that you might like to try is Opinion Outpost. It’s a survey company that does actually pay you in REAL MONEY! As always you earn more by referring people, but the surveys are genuine, and the earnings are coming in, slowly but surely. There is a banner at the bottom of this message if you would like to take a look at them.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 6
Top 10,000: 5
Lenses: 67

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke September 2008
New York City Break

MY TOP 5 LENSES
My Pet Peeves
The Daily Joke September 2008
Bournemouth
My Lensography
Poddys Lensography

I am sitting her at 9am waiting for the rankings to update. My lens The Daily Joke September 2008 had 27 visitors 3 days ago, 147 the next day, and 93 yesterday. The lensrank yesterday was 1,137 so I’m anxiously waiting to see if it can get close to the Top 100 today. It was my 3rd place lens yesterday, I’m sure it will be my top ranked lens today, after just 4 days. Maybe, just maybe, it’s Lens Of The Day quality…

** SHOCK HORROR OMG **
It’s 10am and the lens rank updated, but not good news at all! Although the September Jokes went from 1,137 to 575 in rank, most of my other lense plummetted by up to 10,000 places. Despite an increase in traffic, my Daily Joke Lensography went down almost 1,200 places. They must have changed the formula for lens rank, and I’m not liking it at all. Yesterday I had 9 Top Tier and 5 Second Tier, today only 4 Top Tier and 8 Second Tier, and most of my top lenses have had increased traffic the last 2 days.

Yesterday was a tough one at work for me, and also hard on Debbie, since it rained on and off most of the day, and she was stuck in the condo. No going to the pool, no chatting to the old folks who have been residents for years and years, just stuck indoors on her lonesome. She can chat to family and friends back in England of course, has the internet and television for entertainment, but sometimes it’s not enough - you just need to get outside and be around other people.

So last night we went out to eat at one of our favorite places, Sweet Tomatoes. For those of you who don’t have one of these locally, it’s a buffet restaurant with a huge (and I mean humongous) salad bar, with just about every type of vegetable you can imagine. They also have 8 types of soup, all home made, home baked breads and focaccia, pasta, baked potatoes and sweet potatoes, rice, and the best muffins ever, not to mention chocolate lava cake… Also fresh fruit, frozen yoghurt etc… With a buy 1 with 2 drinks and get 1 free coupon, the whole meal the the two of us cost just $15.09. The quality of the food is excellent, and since we both love soup and salads, it’s a great place for us to eat.

We then drove to another local outdoor mall and wandered around the Dollar Store for a while. Not so much to actually shop, but to see what’s there. Although a lot of the merchandise in Dollar Stores is low quality, sometimes you find a gem of an item, and last night it was Christmas Gift Bags. Really nice bags, large ones too, for just $1 each. So Debbie was happy, managed to get a few of these, and we got a bit of a walk in to work our meal off (because the chocolate lava cake is magical - it calls to you… and so do the muffins…).

Back then to the condo, where we spent a couple of hours catching up on email and tweaking lenses. I added some more photos to our joint New York City Break lens, which although it has been published for close to a week has only had 4 vsitors so far, and 2 of them have been US! It’s still not completed, might take another week for me to add all of my sections, and to add other links etc, but we both think it’s starting to look pretty good and we hope it makes a good read. Well there it is - out of wraps now, the link is there if you would like to take a sneak peek!

Today looks like a wet one as well, so more lens work no doubt, but tonight is also the start of one of my favorite shows, Survivor, so we may have to spend an hour tonight glued to the television for a change. My two favorite shows, Survivor and The Amazing Race will be on as from this week, and I usually try not to miss an episode, but with Debbie only here for 4 more weeks, television will be playing second fiddle this season. Fortunately she likes the shows too, and they don’t show them in England any more.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 4
Top 10,000: 8
Lenses: 67

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke September 2008

MY TOP 5 LENSES
My Pet Peeves
The Daily Joke September 2008
My Lensography
Bournemouth
Religious Jokes

I couldn’t believe it when I saw the rankings just now. 2 days ago after I first published it, The Daily Joke September 2008 was ranked 119,461. Yesterday it was 6,509, and today it’s 1,137! It’s now my 3rd place lens in just 3 days!

I hope you will pay a visit to this lens, if you haven’t already, and if you have any lenses related to dogs, please feel free to add them to the lens. Why dogs you ask? Well the lens is full of funny dog pictures, some of which have never been published before. So drop by please and take a peek (no not a “peke” dear - we aren’t giving away free dogs…).

This lens has had almost 200 visitors since it was published, partly due to my friends at Tagfoot, partly due to more at Stumbleupon, but largely to the members of my Laughline mailing list at Yahoo, which I have had for the last 8 years. There are some great people on this list, who would probably enjoy Squidoo a lot, since they enjoy reading about people’s lives and writing back. The Squidoo forums would suite them just fine.

It just goes to prove that blogging really does help your traffic, but it’s not just writing about your lenses or other promotions, I find that people enjoy reading about the things that are going on around you, even if it’s nothing important, just the silly daily things. That I believe is what makes a blog popular.

Well last night was one of those silly not much happening evenings, and yet it was eventful for the two of us. I came home, dinner was all ready (I have her well trained - well no not really - my girlfriend had the meal ready so that we could go out straight after), so we ate and then went out for a walk. As it common in many parts of the USA, roads are not designed to facilitate walking from one place to another, either there are no sidewalks, or like the community we live in, the buildings are surrounded by a golf course and beyond that a solid wall with no gates through it.

We decided last night to walk down the road to the local strip mall to see what was there. It’s only a small strip mall (row of shops set back from the main road for those of you not familiar with the USA), and hard to see exactly what is there by driving along. The only path through the gold course is for the golf carts to take, so we had to walk the long way around the buildings and down the main driveway. Then we walked along the shops and several medical offices, a deli and a local bar, past a run down movie theater, then stopped at a Checkers (drive-thru fast food place) and got banana milk shakes. I don’t know what it is, but in England banana shakes are very popular, but you hardly see them over here. Anyhow, we then walked through another mall section, and you couldn’t help but notice that half the shops were either closed down or had obviously very little business. There was a Thai restaurant and also a Chinese, both set back, hard to see. There was one couple in the Thai one, and nobody in the Chinese. Rather sad really. So we walked back, sneakily cut across a fairway to the buildings, half expecting the sprinklers to start up, got home and then watched tv while working on lenses and catching up on email.

Well there you are, not a particularly exciting evening in the scheme of things, but it’s often fun walking through somewhere that you haven’t been before. You see so much more when you walk, whether it’s shops or a park. We both really enjoy it.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 9
Top 10,000: 5
Lenses: 67

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke September 2008

MY TOP 5 LENSES
My Pet Peeves
Bournemouth
The Daily Joke September 2008
The Daily Joke April 2008
The Daily Joke Lensography

Well I wouldn’t call this weekend a really exciting one, but it was a good one.

Friday evening after a frustrating day at work, we went out to a local Greek run American restaurant that does good breakfasts, just to see what their evening meals were like. Both of us had had a frustrating day, with my brain about to explode because of work and not having been able to get home for lunch either. We had a good meal, and then went out for a walk along the beach.

It was still fairly crowded down there, it being a nice evening, and we hadn’t gone far when a crowd were gathering on the shore to see something. It was a baby octopus that had been washed up, only about 6-8 inches across, and it looked like it was attached to a clam shaped shell that was about 6 inches across. At least it appeared to be attached to it somehow. Still need to look that up on the internet. The ONE time we go down and don’t take the camera with us!

We walked for a good mile along the waters edge, dodging the odd jellyfish that had also been washed up, and watching surfers try out their skills as there were some good waves coming in. It was fairly dark when we got back, and the city of Deerfield Beach was giving a free concert down where we park, a Blues band, who were ok. There was a good sized crowd, and we just got out chairs out of the car and listened to the music while people watching, one of our favorite pastimes. There were a few small children dancing along to the music, and a few old folks too, plus couples walking along to the rhythm - all good fun.

Saturday I took my youngest daughter roller skating as a treat for her 4th birthday which was last week. She wanted her sister to go along, which was nice, so I had an 8 year old and 4 year old in tow. We went out to breakfast first, then to the roller rink, which fortunately wasn’t crowded at all - only a dozen people there. Well, by the time I got the skates on for the three of us my back was out! Trying to do all those laces while bending over pretty much did me in! Then of course my youngest couldn’t hardly stand on the carpet in her skates, let alone on the rink, and I haven’t skated since I was about 8, and I couldn’t then either, so it was tough trying to get her around the floor. Since she couldn’t stay upright, I had to hold her all the time, with my hand up high, which killed my back and had me straining a lot. It took about 30 minutes to complete a lap of the arena, by which time I was soaked in sweat and sore. She did improve a bit by the end though, and her older sister did pretty good too. Then I took them out for a snowball (shaved ice cone) and home to their Mom, before heading back home and down to the beach with my Princess.

The ocean was quite rough on Saturday, and whereas the water is quite shallow with a sandbar normally, this time the water was deeper. It was still fun in the ocean, but by the end of the day my back was really stiff. We went home, cooked a meal, then went and did some grocery shopping, home and to play catch up on lens maintenance.

Sunday we got up, made some breakfast, then wandered down to the beach late morning. I have neved seen the surge like it there, with the waves crashing in and water piling up the beach. Of course we like most people expected the tide to start going out, but instead the waves surged stronger at times, catching people unawares and they had to scramble as water poured all over where they were sitting.

The lifeguards were kept constantly busy with so many people letting their children play near the rocks, and even adults were being swept off their feet as the waves surged in. It was a wonder that nobody got hurt! Luckily we picked a patch of beach behind some low rocks, and although we caught a few sprays of water from time to time, the sand was higher on our part and we never once had water come where we were sitting. Once it was a near miss, but I ended up making a small wall of sand to stop any others hitting us, and the ocean took the hint and didn’t even bother. I felt a bit like King Canute, with most of the people on the beach sitting much further back than we were. We just picked the right spot! I had a great time in the water being washed around by the waves, while my Princess worked on her tan.

After the beach, we headed home, cleaned up, then I fixed us some chicken and salad which was yummy. We wandered out for the evening to Delray Beach, about 15 miles to the north of us, which looked like it had a street with some fancy shops and restaurants. I had only driven down it once before, and unfortunately last night there wasn’t too much going on, but we did look in some shop windows at some curios, and pass some good cooking smells, and best of all there was a Kilwins there. This is an ice-creamery and fudgery chain from Michigan, which now has quite a few stores in Florida as well. So we naturally of course stopped for an ice cream, had a nice walk, then home to the lenses…

My Princess did a bit more work on our joint New York lens, which is now published, but still needs some finishing touches to it. I finally got around to creating my Daily Jokes for September lens (which gives you an idea of how far behind I am). It’s almost complete, and I will give you a run down of that, plus the New York lens very soon. The Lensrank took so long to update yesterday that I’m only now publishing this, and the Daily Jokes lens is complete.

It’s funny watching us working on our lenses, 2 pillows propped up behind us, both lying on the bed, computers on our laps. It’s very productive though at times.

If you haven’t registered with Tagfoot yet, it’s a great place to make new friends and to promote your lenses. You can also earn money with Adsense on Tagfoot which is great.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 7
Top 10,000: 6
Lenses: 67

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke September 2008

MY TOP 5 LENSES
My Pet Peeves
Bournemouth
Religious Jokes
My Claim To Fame
The Daily Joke April 2008

If you haven’t registered with Tagfoot yet, this is taking off really well.  It’s a lot faster than Digg, which just seems to be getting impossibly slow these days, and a lot nicer, plus all your friends are signing up too.  People are posting some great articles on there this week.  You can also earn money with Adsense on Tagfoot which is great.

Work was very busy yesterday, so when I got home dinner was ready, and we headed off down the beach for a walk as the sun went down, then watched the full moon rise from the water.  It’s very relaxing walking along the water’s edge in the moonlight, very romantic too, except the recent storms had washed up lots of seaweed and this was washing back and forth, so you had to constantly watch where you were walking.  Lots of coral had been washed up too.

My girlfriend is now ploughing ahead with her lenses having got a new laptop over the weekend.  That means we aren’t fighting for mine in the evening or at the weekend, which is nice.  So we should now be able to both work on lenses at the same time, as well as not having to wait for each other.  I’m hoping I can now start to catch up a bit.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 7
Top 10,000: 7
Lenses: 66

MY TOP 5 LENSES

My girlfriend and I are both still working on our joint New York lens, which is coming along nicely, but I think it’s going to be a monster. We have so much material to add yet, lots of photos, descriptions, advice on what to do and what to see, plus our own observations. I hope it will be a hit when it’s published.

My Pet Peeves
Poddys Lensography
My Claim To Fame
Religious Jokes
Bournemouth

September 11th is an odd day for me these days. It’s often a quiet one, reflecting back on the events of 7 years ago, for not only was this a very emotional day for the whole world, it was my son’s 21st birthday. So now every year the opportunity for him to celebrate his special day gets dampened by the remembrance of that awful day.

I was lucky this morning and managed to find him at home in England when I called on the way to work here in Florida. We had a long chat which was nice. He is usually impossible to get hold of, since he works shifts and when he is not working he is usually either out or sleeping.

My girlfriend started on our new venture yesterday, a joint lens on New York, and I am looking forward to adding my sections to this. We had such a wonderful time there, I can’t wait to see our commentary together in the same lens. Since she has the same crazy sense of humour that I do, I hope it will be a really popular lens. For a change it should be a popular subject compared with some of the lenses that we have both created.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 7
Top 10,000: 7
Lenses: 66

MY TOP 5 LENSES

My Pet Peeves had some more modules added to it yesterday, plus a Squdcast, and although this was late yesterday evening I guess it did the trick, moving the lens from 6th place to #1 as far as my lenses. Bournemouth also rose slightly due to imoroved traffic and more backlinks. I’m waiting for other changes to kick in still and have more lenses to update and promote on Stumbleupon.

My Pet Peeves
Poddys Lensography
Bournemouth
My Claim To Fame
The Daily Joke - April 2008