One thing I enjoy about local restaurants are finding desserts that have local flavor. Key Lime Pie is a favorite of mine, and I know from experience who actually uses Key limes in their recipe, and who doesn’t! (Ooh, and I hate seeing green Key Lime Pie! It should always be a pale yellow!) Another local dessert I love is the bread pudding at Ohana at Disney. And I can’t forget about Old Meeting House homemade ice cream! It’s sold at a particular ice cream shop near us and we’ve fallen in love with the brand. And speaking of local desserts - don’t forget about the kind made in Tampa homes. Many residents have banana plants in their yards, which means they can whip up banana bread recipes using REALLY local bananas. I’ve even seen pineapples growing in yards here!

Oh - I just thought of another favorite local dessert…baklava! I buy it from a little bakery in the Sponge Docks. Jim thinks it’s too sweet, but I love it. It’s been a long time since I was down in Tarpon Springs to buy any though.

Speaking of hotels in Tampa (the ones NOT on fire…ha!), if you ever need a cheap hotel, or cheap flights, I highly recommend a site called SideStep.com - I’ve used it for years. Normally, comparing prices online for hotels, flights, and car rentals means that you’ve got to:

1. Go to each site, like Travelocity, or Expedia, or Alamo
2. Plug in your dates and destination
3. Take note of prices
4. Repeat steps 1, 2, and 3 as many times as needed
5. Compare prices

Who wants that hassle? At Sidestep, you just put in your information ONCE, and hit search. You’ll be shown a listing of all prices for that particular city (when searching for a hotel) or flight or rental car. You can pick the cheapest option, or maybe you want a flight without a layover? No problem - you can filter your airfare search results by fare class, children, or if you prefer non-stop. You can now use Sidestep to find vacation packages and cruises, too!

I’ve been using the site to find deals for years, and it’s a great tool. You’ll save time and money, and you won’t get annoyed by having to type in the dates you want at 10 different sites to compare prices. Oh - and it’s FREE!

I just saw on TBO.com in their breaking news section that there’s a huge fire at the Best Western Hotel near Waters Avenue and North Dale Mabry Highway. And I mean huge - it’s a 4 alarm fire! Streets around that area are closed - it’s sort of close to where my sister works, so I hope she planned to stay IN the office today for lunch. I’m glad I’m not out in that mess!

Meeting new people can be hard.

You could join a online group (or start your own) for people with like interests. You can join community programs, volunteer groups, or chat people up at the PTA meeting. But perhaps you want to meet a “friend” - as in, a person to date and possibly fall in love with? Singles bars and socials are one way, and another option is FriendFinder. I just pulled it up and it immediately took me to listings in the Tampa area. (They must have some built in tools that detect where your IP address originates from, and then it matches you up with people in your area? Eliminates the searching through cities and states at least!)

At FriendFinder, you can meet singles to date for romance or friendship, and they’ve got over 1.7 million members. In fact, almost 3,000 are online right now. Most of the listings have pictures, and you can join for free. My sister has tried the online dating thing, but I’m not sure if she’s tried this site, so I’ll need to make sure she reads this blog entry I did a search for men ages 40 through 50 in her zip code and came up with 20 results right away. You can see the persons age, photo, and location without even leaving the page of search results.

I just checked weather.com, and I see the temperature back home in Tampa is in the high 80’s, with 68% humidity. Phew! I’m in Niagara Falls, Ontario, and the temperature is the same, but the humidity is only 44%, so it’s DRY! We’re enjoying it a lot. Our tour guide today kept saying how hot it is, and we told him this is nothing. We stayed cool, calm, and collected while he had sweat dripping off him - poor guy!

When you’ve got limited time, you don’t want to waste it, right? You only get two days off a week, why do you want to waste an evening at a brad restaurant, or a day at a horrible golf course? You want to know about the best of the best, right?

Residents of California have a neat site called The Rundown that provides you with a new place to visit each day. You might find a recommendation on a great place to play golf one day, and the hottest place for happy hour on another day. You’ll find a place off the beaten path to spend an afternoon doing some scuba diving, or where to shop (and what to buy, in some cases!) The content changes daily and it won’t take you an hour to comb through the site and find what you need. The newest content and places are highlighted on the main page of the site, but all of the old stuff is in the archives.

Did I mention this is all free? I think we need a Rundown for Tampa!

Sheikra went floorless this weekend! What does that mean for riders? Well, while your stomach is turning at the thought of dropping 200 feet or more, at a 90 degree angle, you can actually SEE the ground below you now. Instead of just feeling queasy, you may just lose your lunch on someone below. HA!

I’ve never been on Sheikra, and I don’t plan to go on it anytime soon, either! A neighbor of ours has an “in” with the ride people and can get us on without a wait - still not interested! I don’t mind Montu, or Kumba, but I am not down with the straight down drop to Earth.

PayPerPost, the company that pays me to talk about things on my blog, has come up with another $7 million in capital for their second round investment. One can only wonder what they’ll do with the money - finally get RockStartUp on TV? Pay for my airfare to PostieCon? Start more controversy? I’m betting on #3 for sure.

I was amazed to read that there are over 28,000 bloggers using PayPerPost. (I wonder if that is truly bloggers, or not BLOGS, as some of us have more than one?) No wonder it’s so hard to grab opps at times! I’d like to see them use some of the cash to market to advertisers to advertise on blogs, maybe radio or TV spots, or more trade shows. And of course, more rewards for us, the extremely loyal bloggers who have argued on their behalf and received hate email and nasty comments as a result of who we’ve chosen to align ourselves with. While PayPerPost is a company, I do take what I do VERY personally. It’s a huge part of my day, and I plan for things to continue in that vein. It’s not just a way for me to make money, it’s become part of my lifestyle! I wish the company nothing but the best, and hope that they continue to have great results.

The PayPerPost Revolution Accelerates, Sponsored
Blogging Marketplace Secures $7 Million Series B

Draper Fisher Jurvetson leads round and joins Board of Directors

ORLANDO, FL – (June 12, 2007) – PayPerPost, the leading marketplace for advertisers to reach bloggers and other consumer content creators, today announced it has completed a $7 million second round investment led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, an investor in the company’s Series A and one of the world’s leading high-technology venture capital firms. The financing brings the total amount of capital raised by PayPerPost to over $10 million, giving the company considerable resources for further development as the industry’s leading Consumer Generated Advertising marketplace. Additional participants in the round include existing investors Inflexion Partners and Village Ventures as well as new investor DFJ Gotham. With this investment, DFJ Managing Director Josh Stein also joins PayPerPost’s Board of Directors.

“PayPerPost created this exciting new advertising space and has established itself as the industry leader,” said Ted Murphy, chief executive officer of PayPerPost. “Although we’ve only used a portion of our first round capital, this added support from investors unlocks significant growth potential. Our content creator and advertiser ROI metrics clearly demonstrate the upside for PayPerPost’s model. We intend to use this capital to build the infrastructure, visibility and professional expertise necessary to reach and retain a greater network of advertisers and content creators than ever before.”

Since its founding in June of 2006, PayPerPost has signed more than 6,500 advertisers to its groundbreaking service, which has enabled Consumer Content Creators to be compensated for their efforts discussing specific companies, products or services via blogs, videos or other media. The content creators are required to disclose relationships with advertisers on their blog, providing transparency for the end reader. Over 125,000 Internet postings, most in the form of blogs, have already earned money for their creators through PayPerPost’s innovative marketplace. PayPerPost recently released PayPerPost Direct, a disruptive new service that allows advertisers to contract and negotiate directly with individual bloggers they identify through a safe, managed system.

“PayPerPost has laid a strong foundation for the future,” noted Tim Draper, founder and managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. “It continues to attract a critical mass of participants from both the advertising and blogging communities. Analogous to Overture’s sponsored search model, we believe PayPerPost’s business model holds disruptive potential and will enable the company to thrive in the evolving paid-content arena.”

To mark the $7 million dollar funding, PayPerPost has launched a new website detailing the company’s service offering at http://www.payperpost.com. Bloggers and advertisers can easily sign up at the site and begin leveraging the self service marketplace.

When I was about 8 years old, my parents took me to Mobile, AL, where I remember touring a battleship and a submarine. Cool stuff, even then! Tampa parents have a similar opportunity right now, in fact, all residents can enjoy this tour. Now through March 14, 2008, you can tour the SS American Victory. The ship is a WWII vessel currently docked down at Channelside. The tours range from $4 to $8, and this Sunday, Father’s Day, Dad can get in for free! This is one of only 534 ships remaining of this type, so see it while you have the chance!

Do you believe in ghosties?

We did a walking ghost tour in Ybor City last year, during winter, and despite being with a large group of people, in a place I’ve been to many, many times, I felt creeped out. With all of the fabulous stories our tour guide shared with us, I saw everything, even the familiar in a new light. And yes, I did have a quicker pace when it was time to head to the restaurant for dinner. The hair was standing up on the back of my neck!

I’m not sure if I believe in the supernatural, but it would explain a lot of things. Have you ever had the feeling you’re being watched? Or seen something out of the corner of your eye that disappears in a flash? Yeah, me too. I think there’s definitely something out there, and in some cases, it’s hard to tell whether it’s a GOOD something, or a BAD something.

It’s easy to tell in the 1408 Movie. It’s a BAD something! John Cusack sets out to prove ghosts don’t exists, and checks into a hotel that would definitely have bad reviews on Travelocity. He sees things, he feels things, things see him - and oh, the 1408 Movie stars Samuel L. Jackson too. Two guys I love! Anyway, John is such a non believer because of his daughter’s death. He would love to connect with her, but he’s just found that all of the spirits people have said they’ve encountered haven’t been spirits at all. So do ghosts exists? I want to find out if they do in 1408!

My sister and I will be heading to the nearest Chipotle at lunch time for free burritos! If you bring in a donation of a non-perishable food item, you get a free burrito, bol, tacos, or a salad. Of course, I remembered it was free burrito day AFTER I left the house. When I got into the office, I scrounged around in the break room to see if there was anything I could bring to claim my free burrito. I didn’t think Chipotle would be happy with my donation of individual coffee creamers (no refrigeration needed) or coffee packets. So I switched to plan B, a quick stop at the drug store on my way to lunch to buy something. I mentioned that to my sister, and she was smart enough to bring in TWO canned goods today, so I can bogart one of hers.