Swimming lessons are over for the season. Actually, I think the last session ended just a few days ago, but I did not sign up Gigi for that last hoorah. I feel like she learned quite a bit over her time in the pool with instructors and we will now hold off until this next summer.

So, now that we are in the habit of running around making sure we are at a lesson on time, it is in the cards to sign Gigi up for her next adventure – ballet.

I have done my absolute best to explain to Gigi that ballet is not all about the tutus, leotards, toe shoes and leaping around the stage. I explained she will need to spend a lot of boring time up front learning foot, hand, and arm positions. I told her it will be slow and without flourish in the beginning. She is still adamant that she wants ballet lessons. And so, I will comply.

In the meantime, I am building up her dance wardrobe. She has a leotard, tights and tutu from the last time we tried ballet lessons. She has since grown out of those things. WalMart and Target have a very small selection and the local dance specialty stores price their merchandise way too high. Just For Kix is an online store that carries a huge selection of dancewear, at prices I can stomach. Yay for online shopping.

Google is a hot topic online lately. For weeks, the screaming has all been about the sudden Page Rank drops many websites were experiencing. In the last few days this hit fever pitch as more and more blogs and static websites saw a final bottoming out to PR0.

Now, it seems stockholders are becoming nervous. All over the internet, there are whisperings that the best stock market tip of the day is to sell Google. And, if you need proof that work of mouth drives the stock market faster than an old guy in a sports car in Florida, just look at how Google’s share price has been dropping steadily the past couple of days.

Wow. How the mighty have fallen.

We might live in Florida, but we get out share of cold front here. In fact, I have all of the windows open right now, taking advantage of the mild breeze and clean air. I have to get the house aired out now, because a cold front is actually on its way as I write this. While it might be breezy and in the mid-70s this very minute (yes, it is indeed paradise in Florida), the season’s first cold snap is well on its ways. A county or two inland could very well see temperature drop below freezing this weekend.

Tonight, temps will be in the low to mid 40s in my own backyard. So, that brings me to one of my favorite things about cold weather – socks. Heh. I’ll bet you expected me to say anything except for socks.

The thing is, I adore socks and tights. I wore them all of the time up north and had an impressive collection. Here in Florida, I usually wear sandals and though I have been known to throw a pair of sock on WITH the sandals on that rare occasion where I forgot to take the trash out the night before, I more often don’t.

My daughter wears socks every day with her little tennis shoes, for school. But now that the cool weather is here for a little while, she is excited about tights. I know. You are probably laughing at me, but you have to think of the old adage “you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.” Socks and tights are fun, cozy, fashionable. Due to my propensity for shopping online (and avoiding the annoying crowds), I love it that Hue.com offers $5 flat shipping on any size order. And now, onto my quest for sweater tights.

I finally downloaded the Opera 9.50 beta this week. Although I have three different browsers loaded on my PC and ready to go at a moment’s notice, I love Opera the very best. There are a lot of reasons, but let me discuss my favorite feature.

As of version 9.2 Opera started a lovely thing called Speed Dial. Now when I open a new tab I get a page that shows me a 3×3 grid of boxes, or thumbnails. I can assign each box a URL and then a snapshot of that URL fills the box. Boom – I open a new tab and click one of my nine top sites. It’s like having my nice most visited sites on, well … speed dial.

Lovers of keyboard shortcuts can simply employ Ctrl + [1-9].

I also have a Yahoo search box at the top of my Speed Dial page. That rocks, too, because Google is kinda like the stinky kid in the corner who pooped his pants, not too popular right now.

Last week one of my best friends sent me a gift basket for my birthday. It contained a whole lot of nuts and chocolate – two of my favorite snacks. She says her kids picked it out, but I am pretty sure she did a lot of heavy coaching in the decision making process.

This morning my daughter was asking me how many days it is until Thanksgiving and then until Christmas. I told her and she lamented about how far away they are. She is 4. I am sure they feel like an eternity must pass before the holidays. I was, on the other hand, shocked! There is precious little time left if I want to get my gift closet in order.
I’ll be taking a hint from my friend who sent me the yummy gift basket and using sites like iGourmet for a good number of my gifting needs. They have all kinds of wine, cheese and gourmet meats stocked and ready to be made into holiday gift baskets. I may as well take advantage of their good planning and let them help me out.

In light of the whole Google Page Rank Spanking that is happening right this very minute, I thought it might be a fine time to write a little about HOW we link when we blog.

There are two theories in linking best practices:

1. The site you link TO is what is important, so it does not really matter what actual text you using in linking. Hotlinking the words “click here”, “this link”, or “how now brown cow” all have the same outcome since all that matters is that the search engines pick up on where you are aiming your link.

2. Links that use highly relevant keywords carry more weight. There is a large contingent that believes firmly that using specific anchor text will help a site gain higher placement in the search engines for that particular anchor text.

Both theories have their champions and both theories very well may hold a portion of the truth, the full picture if you will. Many a blogger has proven that by asking their readers to link back to them using a random phrase, they soon gain the top spot in at least one search engine for that phrase. On the other hand, I have the top spot in my chosen keywords for at least two of my websites and I am reasonably sure that when people link to the sites, they use the titles of my sites. Those titles are not keyword rich, nor are they even reminiscent of the keywords for which I rank so highly.

What are your thoughts on HOW we link?

The motto of my Girly Things free hair bow instructions site is “why pay for what should be free”?

Why indeed?

I had my daughter back in 2003 and having longed for a baby girl all my life, I immediately jumped right into the world of boutique clothing, beaded bracelets, Battenberg lace, and adorable hair bows. The thing was, I was a little unsure as to how to do things like curl korker ribbon and tie a hair bow “just so”.

My initial reaction was the same as most people in my situation: hit the search engines and see what kind of instructions I could find. Sure there would be just tons of free information out there, right? I mean, look at the knitting sites and sewing sites and even sites on wood turning. Most of the information on those kids of hobbies is usually shared freely.

Not so with Hair bows. A small cottage industry had popped up on the internet. People had written out step-by-step instructions for making hair bows and paired them up with great photos. The thing is, most of these in formation packets which are typically sold as PDF files were REALLY expensive — some of them prohibitively so.

So, in 2005 I started stringing together all of the knowledge I had in my head about bow making. I put up my Girly Things website and hopes people would find me. That proved easier said than done. Several of the instruction sellers were tops in the craft of SEO as well! I had a hard time not being buried in the search engines. Eventually, though, people started finding my site and even contributing instructions!

And, oh how the site has grown! Check it out yourself. There are countless step-by-step instructions for bos and other girly accessories. And, in the spirit of Christmas, I am featuring the Christmas Tree Clippie instructions right now.

In the past two weeks, more sites than I can name have seen their well-established Google Page Rank take multiple nose dives. It seems to be happening one or two points at a time. Today, I am seeing report after report of people finally bottoming out at Zero. This blog seems to have found a new home at PR0, despite nice traffic and steady Alexa ranking. Page Rank is heavily dependant on how Google valuates your incoming links and how many pages from you site they have indexed in their database.

So, have you checked your Page Rank today? You might just find a while new score looking you in the face. I primarily hear stories of blogs bottoming out. My non-blog domains seem to be holding fine as far as page rank goes. The thing is, those sites are in the absolute top stop on all search engines for their keywords and I get tremendous traffic on all. I could care less about their page rank.

My blog, on the other hand, is a study in the importance of ranking. Like tens of thousands of other people on the internet, my blog is a source of income. I am not alone in this quest. There are people making six figures annually and their earning potential is almost entirely based on their current page rank.

People have been moaning for some time now, but I expect the roaring to commence. Google, you’ve lost favor.