I apologize to all of my regular readers. I have not been keeping up with my blogging duties. I have plenty of excuses up my sleeve, but I won't bore you with all of them. Instead, I'll tell you what I have accomplished in my absence.

First, I have written a lot of articles. Some good, some not so good. It's funny how what I think sucks passes through with flying colors in my various projects and the articles I put in more time and effort into just don't make the grade. Only sometimes, and I do take some responsibility. Sometimes I forget which project I'm working on and how easy/hard my different editors are. Some of my favorite articles of the past couple of weeks include my coin collecting articles. I have written short guides on collecting Three Cent Coins, Mercury Dimes, and Roosevelt Dimes. In fact, that's one thing that has torn me away from some of my writing duties. I began collecting coins as a serious hobby and I wanted to learn all I could about it before I made my first purchase. I managed to pick up this nice little 2007-S Lincoln penny on eBay:



But I'm out of extra money and back to work on my articles, my blog, and my poetry manuscript. I really wanted that thing done by the end of this month, but that may not happen. I want to at least get it to the point where I know the number of pages the final book will be so I know whether I need to get illustrations or not. I'm only including 13 poems and since the book needs to be at least 32 pages, I'm pretty sure I will need a few pictures to grace some blank pages.

And genealogy? Well, if you follow my genealogy blog you know that I haven't done a thing with it. I'm stuck because I forgot to get my GEDCOM file off of my old computer before it was loaned out to my brother. Now I have to recreate that... it's not a terrible thing since the names on it were just educated guesses in the first place. Maybe this will give me the motivation to find primary sources before I link family members to my tree.

What does all this mean? Another new schedule. Yep, blocking off time does not work. I must work in numbers instead: X amount of articles before lunch, X amount by the end of the day, etc. This is probably why I need a boss to regulate my 9-5 actions.

And before I forget--some other articles that may be of interest to you:

Tips for Investing: Mutual Funds
How to Make Paper Lanterns & Pagodas
How to Sell Coins for Profit
How to Teach Yourself Car Mechanics
How to Study Winemaking
How to Monitor Your Computer
How to Make Japanese Paper
How to Make a Matryoshka Doll
How to Identify Old Glass Jars
How to Buy the Right Size Generator

Shameless promotion I know, but I don't get paid unless people know that these articles are out there. (Good ratings don't hurt either!)