And then the power went out

The only thing that did not happen last night.

So yesterday, I fielded a phone call, annoyed someone on Facebook (if you talk about me, I am going to annoy you), did some household chores. Then I started to get ready to nuke myself some dinner before starting to write. I figured that I had time; my wife was stuck in a class last night.

I am popping open the tupperware container containing the leftovers that I plan on eating, confident that I am going to get a couple of hours of writing done. So what happens?

*drum-roll please*

Yep, that is right. The power goes out. For over fifteen hours.

So instead of writing, I ended up thinking about writing, and going to bed early. I also had a surge-protection power-strip fried. And as I write this, I am still one of the lucky ones. There are still a thousand people near-by who still do not have power, thanks to this fall snow storm.

Let's see if tonight's writing goes as plan, shall we?

Such a fun week

So it has been a terribly fun week. It started off last week with a call about my financial aid, a call that went very badly. For awhile there, I thought that I was going to drop out of college due to the lack of funds. So I spent the entire seven days between the initial phone call and follow-up stressed out of my mind.

For some reason, it is a little hard to write while one is stressed out of their mind. Not only did I get no writing done, outside of a partial online lecture (lodge related), I really did not feel like going to classes. But I did anyways, I figured if it was my last semester, by god I was going to attend every minute that I was entitled to.

So Tuesday morning, the follow-up call happened and a solution was found. But here is the joke, that afternoon I talked to Zoe Levitt, an advisor for the Community College of Denver, and she advised me to transfer to either Metro or CUD and do my fall semester 2008 at one of them, instead of CCD. It is a matter of not losing any more credits when I transfer, and the fact that I can back-transfer the one science class I have left to take (something that I didn't know that I could do).

So now I have more stress because I need to apply to both Metro and CUD as soon as possible. Plus the normal stress of finals. Such joy. I think the writing is going to suffer for another couple of weeks.

My best earning articles on Helium 2

One of the things I learned over the last couple of years is that when I am really stressed out that doing some of the day-to-day writing chores helps. So instead of screaming about the horrors of student aid in Colorado (exactly how is one supposed to survive on a mere sixteen thousand a year?), let me talk about the articles that are earning the most for me so far this year on Helium.

My top earner so far this year has been Credit scoring: How FICO 08 will change the rules. It is not surprising that it has been my best earner so far this year. After all, most of us have concerns about our credit score, and this change in the FICO scoring system affects this score.

Another article in my top ten earners is How to flip a house, which I find surprising is still so doing so well considering the bad housing market. Though it does make sense if one accounts for those people who are snapping up foreclosed homes.

I am not sure why The importance of teamwork in the company is among my top ten earners. It puzzles me that it earns so much even when earnings (at least for me) seem to be down on Helium---perhaps due to the Reward-a-thon that just ended, or maybe the reformating of the URLs on the Helium site, or perhaps changes in the Google index---it seems to keep on ticking despite all. It is an example of one of those articles that you end up writing that surprises you with its earnings (better this surprise than shock that an article that you thought was going to do well is stalled at the bottom of your earners--but that is a whole another column).

Another puzzler is Everything you need to know about doing paid surveys. It is one of those articles that earns in spasms; it is not a constant earner, or at least I don't think it is (I will have to check my monthly records to be sure). My current theory is that it is doing so well because of the hard economic times.

Rounding out my top ten are three Golden Dawn articles including What is Golden Dawn (though a better title is A Brief History of Golden Dawn) ,two wicca (witchcraft) articles and one lonely mythology article. I don't think that half of my top ten earners are occult articles is a really big surprise. After all, it is my speciality. And besides, it is what I wrote the most--in fact, I plan on writing a few more this summer, provided of course that I don't have to drop out of college due to this student aid problem and go back to flipping burgers (heaven forbid).