Kick Ass...

Maiylah gave me this KickAss B bling that made my heart turn into butter. ;-) I'm not sure if I deserve to be called a kickass blogger but I so appreciate the thought. Thanks Mai!

Do you know any bloggers that kick ass?

Maybe they've got incredible, original content. Or they're overflowing with creativity. Is it someone that helps you become a better blogger? Or a bloggy friend you know you can count on? Or maybe it's someone who simply inspires you to be a better person... or someone else who sends you to the floor, laughing your ass off.

Whatever the reason may be, I'm sure you know at least a couple of bloggers that kick ass. Well... why not tell 'em so?

LOVE ON 'EM

• Choose 5 bloggers that you feel are "Kick Ass Bloggers"
• Let 'em know in your post or via email, twitter or blog comments that they've received an award
• Share the love and link back to both the person who awarded you and back to www.mammadawg.com
• Hop on back to the Kick Ass Blogger Club HQ to sign Mr. Linky then pass it on!

Anyway, I'm passing this to Chuck, Regina, Jae, Melanie and Grace.

SocialSpark Is Here Now

Just last month, I was invited to try out the beta version of Social Spark. For some reasons, this invitation had slipped out of my mind and so I didn’t respond to it. After awhile I got the same invitation again, only that this time, the offer is already open for everyone.

So far, I have liked it there. I’m still learning the system since I’m still new but I am having fun. I have made some friends there. Unlike other social communities, SocialSpark gives you an opportunity to take on paid posts. Not only that, you could even get connected with the advertisers themselves. It’s really a promising venue for everyone, bloggers and advertisers alike.

The feedback system is just good, too. If you are not sure whether to take up an opportunity, you may read the comment section and find out what other bloggers think about the opps. And you can give a prop or a thumbs up to blogs or bloggers or users, if you like them; a drop or thumbs down, if you don’t. Every profile has a message board, too and your friends –or anyone can easily post their comments for you.

To see what it a SocialSpark profile is like, check my profile with them. You can see some of my friends here, who has recently viewed me and the recent opps I have taken , among other details provided.

*** This post is brought to you by SocialSpark***

I Got It, They Have It

I already received my gift pack from Campbell's the other night. And can I just say I was so delighted -and excited-when the guard handed the package to me that it seemed my hands were shaking. No, that's not an exaggeration.

I just love the shirt - because it's so soft. The sad thing is, it is not my size. So I gave it to my mother.

And then, the tote bag - how I adore it. I was already making plans as to what clothes fit best to go with it. But I might just forget about that because there's another soul who thinks it's lovely -my sister. And she practically begged me for it. So how can I refuse and not give it to her?

Thanks Campbell -and thanks Elina.

Project Exlinks

1. Pinay Mommy Online 2. Kristin 3. femikey 4. angel 5. janice 6. eastcoastlife 7. sweetmommy

8. bloglearner 9. pmochet 10. mari 11. ilovephilippinestoo 12. Travelling Strega 13. Sexy n Healthy 14. gizelle

15. mama meji 16. makiko 17. zamejias 18. tips and tricks 19. Do You Want To Chillout? 20. How to Write an Essay 21. rodaflip

Learn more about Project Exlinks here.

I'm Sorry I'm Late

I hardly say that because I don't usually come late in parties or gatherings. But today, I come in late to the Ultimate Blog Party at 5minutesformom. (It's March 14 already in the Philippines) . I really don't want to quote that cliche about getting in late now because 80% of the time, I don't agree with it. But today, I'm in the 20% position. Of course, I can come up with lots of excuses but I'll spare everyone with that. I guess what matters most is I'm here. I'm joining.

I'm Mama Meji. Others like to call me ZAM. You can call me that. Or Zenaida. But whatever name you call me, it doesn't matter except for this one word. I work in the telecoms industry. If I'm not working and mothering my two-year old son, I am blogging. I am a certified blogging addict. I also blog in the office (don't tell my boss please).

My other half is someone I'd like to call Houston. He also works in the Engineering field but he's doing designs and works an hour flight away from home. He is actually the reason why I started blogging.

But Houston said, this kid is the reason why I should blog (so he can read updates of our lives and Matt's development).



This is Matt. And he works so hard to make that tummy bulge -asking "Mama, rice, rice, more rice," "I want to eat pleeeaaase" etc... once too often. Eating is really the least of my parenting concern. I'm more concerned with his antics that drive me nuts (which reminds me that I have to blog about how he brought the CR door vent down). But I love my one-kid demolition team so much.

Welcome to my party! Welcome to my life.

And the food and drinks? We can always visit any one of these restos. I'm not being modest if I tell you I'm not really a good cook. That's the truth. But I could make killer salads and few desserts. Wink.

***

You can also read my interview at 5minutesformom

***

The Ultimate Blog Party has lots of prizes to be given away. And I'm amazed that even bloggers outside of US have a chance to win some prizes. For instance, here are some cool prizes that I'd love to win:

INTL 9 — Pocket Place Mat which is provided by Comfort Joy Designs

INTL 5 — Adventures Along the Way e-book provided by Bobbie Howard

INTL 3 — Ebook Prize Package which is provided by Melissa O. Markham

Something About...

You might have read one of my Thankful Thursday post at Makimeji where I mentioned about financial opportunity. I purposely left the specific detail out but few days ago, I had this burning desire to blog about it. Not so much to brag but to say my thanks for the people or group of people instrumental to this blessing.

One goes to Maiylah, for introducing it to me (or me to it). Another to Elina, the moderator, first for taking me under her wing (accepting my blog Verb even without a PR rating to speak of) and for giving me a chance to be a part of a growing community of bloggers who have taken the great leap to monetize their blogs - now collectively known as the Blogs Do Make Money community.

Yes, I was referring to BDMM in that post. For the most part, that is. I’ve worked for them c/o Elina for less than 2 months and boy was I satisfied. I am satisfied. I am really grateful to Elina and her team for coming up with good projects for everyone. Although one cannot have it all, I’ve been real blessed to have been able to avail of some great project slots.

*******

A month ago, I was in this blogging crossroad of deciding whether to keep Verb or not. I have just started Makimeji then and on top of mothering and keeping an 8-hour job, I just had too much on my plate. (Can you hear my mother already screaming in the background and my son threatening to push the power button again?)

I still do the stressful balancing act from time to time, but I have decided to keep Verb. One because this is where I first started. I know, I know, I’m silly sentimental. Second, I just discovered the wonders of auto-posting with Wordpress (Makimeji) so it's easier to manage both blogs. Lastly, I’m honor-bound to keep Verb alive because of an advertiser who has bought “space” in this blog for a year period (and hopefully it’s going to continue ‘til I grow old! Heheh. Wish!). But, imagine to be paid in advance – again thanks to BDMM (time of payment is never an issue).

Buzz Your Contents Now

There are billions of sites and thousands of contents released in the Internet every day. With that, it’s a tough feat to market your original work or drive traffic to your site.

Now, Buzzfuse.com has devised a way for you to get maximum exposure by rating your work based on "interaction." So for every high-scoring content you have that gets in The Daily Top 10, Buzzfuse circulates this to all of its users worldwide. Fair enough, ey? Also, Buzzfuse is free so sign up now and see what it can do for you. I just did, too.

More Than Blog Blings Love blings

I hope this won't be my last post here. No. As I am writing the first line, I was thinking not. But really I am still undecided if I'll keep VERB. I love VERB *sniff* but I'm sure I won't be able to do all that singlehandedly. You see, I'm building another home -a new home in the Blogosphere. Some have followed me there, some have not. But if you are one of those who have not, lemme tell you I am not holding a grudge against you because I'm far too nice to hold a grudge. *chuckle* But I sure will love it if you'd come visit me. I really am begging here :-)

So anyway, if this were my last post here, I'm at least ending doing it with a high note (of sorts). And what better way to do that than to pass some awards previously given to me and honor the people who have become my friends through blogging; people who are part of this blog. Consider all these awards as token of friendship. Or medal of tolerance. You know, for keeping up with my gibberish. *wink*

Regina and Raquel gave me this Bodacious B thing. Now, I'm passing this to Iris, Scribbit, Sandy and Lynn.

~o~

From Mama Geek and Melanie, I believe the following moms rock: Melissa, Cecily, Ana, Liza and Yenny

~o~

From Sandy, here's a YMMD thing for Pam, Lutchi, Mama Geek, Liza, Tiff and Annie.

~o~

From Regina. Here goes to my blog pals: Maiylah, Raquel, CheH, Thess, Grace and ZJ.

~o~

I got this You Cheer Me Up from Maiylah. Now I'm passing this to Melanie, Regina, Sonya and Amy Shipp

~o~

Again from Melanie: This one I'm going to pass on to peeps I forgot to mention. And to the lurkers here. I'm not sure if have any. But I wanted to think so. Anyway, you can also hop over at Melanie's if you want to be included in her blogroll.

Happy blogging everyone!

aDress Your Heart

The heart has always been a symbol of love (since I came into my senses, anyway). Figuratively speaking, we love with our heart. In fact, the message “I heart you” is already widely accepted to mean I love you. Yes, we love with our heart. We feel through our heart.

Love and live. Live and love. Indeed, the heart is a vital organ that gives us life.

That's why it is very important to take care of our heart. IT IS important to guard ourselves of the #1 killer of American men and women (and Filipinos as well). It is important to take action in protecting and keeping our heart healthy.

Now, the American heart Association together with Campbell invites you to join Go Red For Women movement and celebrate "the energy, passion and power we have as women to band together and fight heart disease." The goal of which is to empower women with knowledge and tools so we can take positive action to reduce their risks and protect their health.

Let’s love our heart. Let’s learn to reduce the risk. Let’s fight heart disease. Join us in supporting American Heart Association's Go Red For Women movement .

Also, you can vote for the dress that Toni Braxton should wear to kickoff American Heart Month by visiting here. For every vote, Campbell donates $1 to Go Red For Women.

Optical Glasses, Anyone?

I still have not made that appointment with the eye doctor. Points for procrastinator me!

But moving on, here's the Great Discovery: Zenni Optical. It offers prescription glasses at affordable prices. For paying as low as $8, one can have the Zenni Optical $8 Rx Glasses. But not only are their prescription glasses affordable, but they are stylish and made of high quality frames as well. Also, all their glasses have thin and light lens, full UV protection and well polished and beveled lens’ edges. So if you’re needing one, check the Best Thing Found: Zenni Optical.

Junk mail and PayPal, Go EON

CustomerService: Mam, it seems that your EON card registration to Paypal failed thus this P1 deduction to your account...

(I had expected a 78-peso deduction or 1.95USD.)

Me: But Sir, I received a notification that it was successfully added... yaddi, yadda...

CustomerService: Mam, it's best that you have to check with PayPal...

The same time I had this conversation, I was the recipient of this email. While I would have ignored it at some other time, that time when I read it, I flipped. But then, what do you expect. I went like whaaaat my PayPal account is suspended? as I felt a chill crept under my skin.

I, of course, flagged Paypal to save my soul but we know how long it takes before they get back to you. But agitated, panic-stricken, worried, etc.. I also asked around and searched the net.

I had yet to hear a word from PayPal when I found this. You just cannot imagine how relieved I was and how pissed I was with all these spam mails. Anyway, I have installed ICONIX now so it's easier to know whether a PayPal email is legit or not.

As with the card enrolment (to PayPal), it seems that there was a minor error somewhere in the process. But that taken cared of, my EON was successfully registered and my initial transfer went smoothly (even faster than I expected). Thanks Unionbank for everything! BTW, to date, Unionbank is the only bank in PI that makes withdrawal possible with PayPal.

Also thanks to PayPal despite the fact that I only heard from them when it no longer mattered to me.

***

This week's MIFS is up and running at To Motherhood And Beyond. Also if you want to read entries for this week's Carnival of Family life, it's right here.

Spreading Some Love

It's almost the love month and beautiful bloggers Raquel, Maiylah and Melanie tagged me to do this Linky Love meme.

Cut and paste the following starting here.

I have randomly selected 5 of you below to be tagged and I hope that you will similarly publish this post in your blog. You will have to tag 5 other bloggers and just keep adding on to the list. (Do not replace, just keep on adding! Yes we hope it will be a long list!)

It’s real easy! Tag others and see your Technorati Authority increase exponentially! The benefits of Viral Linking:

- One of the fastest ways to see your technorati authority explode!
- Increase your Google PageRank fast
- Attract large volume of new traffic to your site
- Build your community
- Make new friends!

The Strategist Notebook | Link Addiction | Ardour of the Heart | When Life Becomes a Book | The Malaysian Life | Yogatta.com | What goes under the sun | Roshidan’s Cyber Station | Sasha says | Arts of Physics | And the legend lives | My View, My Life | A Simple Life | Petra | | SexyMom | Summer in Blue | Happy Life | Bless' Sanctuary | Confessions of an Army Wife | Living @ Evergreen State | Memories Frozen in Time |Raquel| Maiylah's Snippets | Livin With Me

Now, I'm tagging my 5 friends: ZJ, Che, Amy, Thess and Yenny.

For Parents Only book goes to...

I should have posted this last night but I unexpectedly fell flat on my back after Matt slept. It was still so early but I'm glad for the long sleep I and Matt had.

So before I sent Matt to bed last night, I asked him to pick the contest winner (so he can have some sort of participation to my blogging activity) among the yellow Lego blocks -where underneath is a paper with a name written on it.

And he picked the block with Grace's name on it. So Grace, email me your address so I can mail the book to you.

Thanks everyone for participating in my little contest.

Ever Heard of Pay Per Play?

I found something good this morning. It’s called Pay-Per-Play, an online media channel that plays 5 second audio advertisement everytime a visitor opens your page. With Pay-Per-Play audio ads, one will be paid for every visitor and no click is necessary from them. I actually signed up for this. For more details, visit NetAudioAds now.

Also, here's a site that offers you almost everything you need. From web designing needs to audio needs, they have it all. So if are you looking for website softwares or DVD/MP3 players, check them here.

A Sign To Get Back To Prescription Glasses

I was once prescribed to use glasses and I had been using it for more than a year. But you know what they say about getting so used to it and ending up getting a higher grade glasses – so I decided to chuck and forget about it. Last year, I had complained about my eyes and went to an eye doctor – and expected he’d give me glasses but I was prescribed an eye drop only!

Last December, I was considering getting back to the eye doctor again because too much blogging had maybe finally kicked me in the eye- but I made excuses not to.

Now, I’m doing this post for Great Discovery: www.ZenniOptical.com, which offers wide selection of high quality frames and lens. Isn’t this supposed to be a sign to set that appointment again?

What Happened?

I logged in to my PPP account this morning and look what greeted me at this early hour.

Zeroes! Or is it is spelled as zeros? Whatever happened to PPP system this morning? I'm not so concerned with the Have Been Paid but I couldn't say that about the Will Be Paid. E-te-thank you nlang ba 'to? Knowing me, you can just imagine the chill that crept into my veins. I panicked and automatically clicked My Posts.

Boy, I'm just relieved everything's still there. I can deal with the incorrect stats later but I cannot imagine if everything and all of my unpaid posts disappeared through thin air, too.

Few Of My Favorite Things

Found this meme @ Melanie's and I thought to give this a go. So, few of my favorite things are:

My family. I always look forward to family outings/gatherings. And love it most when my cousins bring their kids, who join Matt in producing earth-shaking noises laughter.

Hot Choco. And teas. I'm longing for a cup of thick and creamy hot choco now.

CDs. VCDs. Music players. Music, music, music. Gregorian to Evanescence to Kenny Rogers to Josh Groban. *wink*

Slippers. They make my feet prone to sun damage, but...

Soft Tee- like this one from MNG. But being a cheapskate, I don't have brand preferences. If it's cheap and functional, great.


Books. If I have the time, I'd be contented reading all day. Really. I did that one too many times before -long before Matt -then blogging came to this world. I haven't done much of this (book reading) lately; the last one I read was about Fidel Castro and his daughter and that was 5 months ago. Anyway, there's going to be a reading activity in the Blogosphere set on January 10, 2008 that I'm participating in. For more info visit this site.

Internet. Period. ;D

The Other Wacko

I was tagged by Cheh to do this Meme.

Here are the guidelines :

1. First name
2. How and where did you meet?
3. Characteristics
4. Your plans 20 to 30 years from now.

***

1. Let's just call him "Cris" - but I have never used this or his birthname when I speak with him. I used to call him Tiyoy (a term referring to someone old or has similar characteristics; and yes, he calls me Tiyay, too) and alternately, Honey. Now, it's Pops (short for Papa).

2. We were classmates in College, but we had a one-or-two-sentences-to-each-other relationship. When I moved out of our town to work elsewhere and he moved to the same location where I was working (after his short teaching stint), we both remained reserved. Ummm, despite seeing each other regularly during group gatherings. It was only when I returned home (and he remained in that other town) that the calls and text messages started to come. ;D

3. He is the exact opposite of me. I'm more of a chatterbox, he is not. He is calm and patient, I am not. He has the slow-and-easy attitude on everything that almost always drives me nuts!

Here's the ONLY pic I have with hub when we were in College.

(And I only became "aware" that he was in the pic when I scanned old pics for our wedding!)

4) Lots. But at 50 or so, I would like to see us still holding hands. We'd be real Tiyoy and Tiyay by then but I pray the love would still be smoldering.

u-n-f-a-i-r Change in Blogger

I got a comment from a friend few days ago, asking if I restricted "comments" from non-Blogger accounts. I actually did not.

It's because the OTHERS option on the comment page went MIA. Just when I was getting the hang of using the OTHERS option when commenting to Blogger/Blogspot blogs, it suddenly went "pop" through thin air. It's gone without a trace. Just like that. You might have noticed it too when commenting to Blogger/Blogspot blogs.

This is the new Blogger comment page:

See, it's all gone. No more OTHERS option which one could conveniently use to direct traffic to one's blog with just one click (and not redirected to a blogger profile).

But I've fixed it using the OpenID system (I hope ;D). For instructions on how to enable OpenID support for your Blogger/Blogspot blogs, visit this link.

***

UPDATE: I actually assumed that getting an OpenID account is enough to make a direct link to my blog when I leave comments in Blogger/Blogspot blogs. I was wrong. Slightly. Because before I could do that, I need to do a little tweaking in my HTML code.

BUT. Again, I found a very helpful post that walked me through the process of making what I want possible. Thanks Debbie!

Then again, this will only work to Blogger blogs that have OpenID support. If a blog has none, there's no other way to leave a direct link other than to include your link in the body of your comment (like what Melanie did here). Also, even with OpenID, I still think it best to do this in case there's a downtime with MyOpenID site.

Lakwatsa, Lakwatsa!

Seen this around and I just couldn't resist doing this self check and see how much of a wanderer (in my own country) am I.

My Lakbayan grade is C!

How much of the Philippines have you visited? Find out at Lakbayan!

Created by Eugene Villar.