I dont know about your children, but our kids have just gone crazy with webkinz. They have been around a few years now, but we just caught on after the holidays. Basically, you buy a special stuffed animal at the store that comes with a Webkinz logo and id number on it. You come home and get signed up. Now you can have friends, trade items, buy stuff and especially have fun decorating your new room My kids have had a blast all along and so have many of my parent friends. Its harmless and the games do not seem to eat up too much time.  In fact, some of their games take a lot of thought and problem solving skills. When you run out of webkinz tokens, you just play the games to get more and then go the store. The only thing that I thought was a little over the top happened to our good friends. They bought a webkinz last year and then this year, they got a message saying they needed buy another webkinz to keep their account up to date. So, they collected their 10 bucks and bought another. Everything else is great about it though!

One of the new struggles my family is facing is the fact that our grandparents are using a wheelchair full time and are in need of dependable transportation to get to and from doctor visits etc. You just cannot go out and find any type of van, it has to have special equipment. That is when I found mobilityworks.com who sells vans that have an electric wheelchair lift among other items to suit your access needs. They have 12 dealerships around the country that look and work like any other auto dealership. They have hundreds of new and used vans from all the major van manufacturers. You may want the typical minivan or a full size Econoline van. Perhaps you just need a lift to attach your scooter, they have those too. Their website is great! They have a very cool link to YouTube to watch videos to demonstrate their product. They have a link to their conversion van inventory. I looked into their current specials and found everything from $9,000 to $30,000 vans with all different kinds of ramps for wheelchair access. Make sure you read on their EZ lock docking system to find out just how your loved one will be secure once the van is on the road! Finally, what will be great for my family is that my grandfather is a veteran and they can help you through the process of getting the VA to help pay for the system as well as for Medicare and Workers Compensation programs. So its not just a nice site with an inventory list. Its much more with customer service, financing, great videos on YouTube and rental information. It is truly a one stop shop for wheelchair access vans!

When you cannot event, buy someone who can. My heart goes out to Pfizer. They have tried for years to bring a new pharmaceutical to market with no avail. Lipitor is not there own. They had to buy Warner Lambert at I believe 80 billion dollars. Not bad when Lipitor generates over 12 billion a year. But here is the catch. Now they need to replace it soon and they are still trying to replace Zoloft another billion dollar molecule now on the cheap list at most pharmacy chains. I believe Viagra was their last product they made on their own. So it should come to no surprise that they needed to buy Wyeth who is just blasting away with a new pediatric vaccine. They too have lost Effexor and are trying to replace it. So its just another great marriage, well lets hope so. Today’s WSJ reports that the banks were willing to help with the purchase but only if they can keep their Standard and Poor’s rating high. Hopefully this will mean more money for other top notch companies. I guess we will have to wait and see how the layoff go because they will no longer need that many sales staff or research analysts. We all need to understand too that it is no cakewalk to bring a new product to market. Years and years of billion dollar investment has taken Pfizer almost no where. Its too bad. It also speaks to the fact that the FDA is very hesitant in new drub applications and make the process very slow sometimes. Then you have to hope that your new pharmaceutical will work and not cause too many side effects. Its takes billions and if Pfizer cannot do it, who can?

Its hard to believe but yes now Christmas is over for a month and its time to think about buying flowers for Valentines. After all your hard work buying just the right gift for Christmas, its great to know that buying Valentines Candy and flowers is still and always be greatly accepted by our love ones. FTD has been around for as long as I can remember and with their website our challenge of buying just the right gift for our that special someone is even easier. Right now they have a 10 day sales event where you can save up to 50% off. I found great gift ideas already set up for you such as arrangements, gifts and glass blocks that outline just what a Soul Mate is. How clever! My wife loves the puppy with a set of red roses in its mouth and the stuffed bear holding onto a flower vase. As for me, I will end up buying her the Mrs Field’s Chocolate Covered Strawberries and the Passionate Petals Valentine Bouquet for her. I should include the stuffed animal, but I need to be original on my own you know! Whats more is that with FTD, you know you are going to get great customer service. Plus, their website is very well made with great images to show just exactly what you are going to buy along with easy pages to click through. Have a great holiday and stick with what works!

I have to admit that the one item that saved me on huge trip to China was my Baby Sling! I strongly encourage you to look into baby slings here and see what a life saver this can be. What I especially love was the comfort level and the bonding I had with my new baby. It was easy to pack to a foreign country and its washable. I was there for 14 days in a very crowded country where the sidewalks are packed and the cars are so small, it gave me sense of providing safety for my child. My personal favorite is the moby wrap which comes in several styles such as the Hand Painted Moby, Mini Moby for kids, Moby D Silk and the Stretch wrap. Further, not only are there slings but also carriers! The website is very nice and easy to use. You can choose by style, price and see several photos to get a good idea on how the style will look and fit on you. They also include links on nursing your child, love letters from very happy mothers and a solid FAQ site. I have very fond memories of picking up my daughter in China and getting all kinds of comments from the locals on my babysling. It is very unique so get ready to have some very interested people asking how to get one!

Well yet another bank will be backed by the Federal Government again today. Is this not the slippery slope to a socialist state all while we are blind just thinking to ourselves, OK do what you have to do now to get us out of this mess? What will be the ramifications? I want someone to create a political cartoon where the board of directors at a bank is actually the US Government. Could you imagine Joe Average family coming to the loan committee asking for a business loan and across the table is a series of elected politicians dictating if your business idea is worth the peoples money. That right, its not your money its the tax dollars that will be used. Private banks who make their own decisions will be limited. It was their money at risk for your start up, not anymore. Perhaps I am a little over the top here, but just think. Your idea will have to pass someone whose only interest is getting re elected and there you are. Or even better, you want a home and now its, “Sorry, you just don’t pass the government test. “Its a little hard to digest, but it could happen. Why? Lets fast forward 5 years and say things have settled down and the government will now sell off the their shares to private market. Who on earth will want to buy that, a bank full of loans with little to no profit margin and totally our to your control all these years or given to people you never would have loaned to. Its time to take pause before we go South.

I just mentioned that you need a solid career to ride the wave any recession, especially now and in the future. There is one job that is simply going no where and that is pharmacy jobs. Think about it, the baby boomers are beginning to retire and use many prescriptions and will for some time to come. You can work at a large retail chain like CVS, Rite Aid or Walgreens or you can find a locally owned and operated store. There are jobs all around the US for these places and you can find the jobs on the web, such as the link above. You can work as a Pharmacist that requires a PharmD or be a Pharmacy Tech or work the register. What a great rewarding job that survive the economic downturn.

I am a little suprised that the value of rental property has stayed so flat and that prices for rent have not moved much either. I would seem to me that many will sell their homes, pay off their debts and move into a rental home for a little while, until things settle down a little. Perhaps everyone is bracing for a huge fall, cannot sell their homes if they even tried or they could even be taking advantage of the new interest rates on homes. I just heard about a couple getting 4.7%, now that is like giving money away! I just cannot believe that with that interest rate more people are jumping on top of this. Sure the world will never be the same but we all need homes, food and gas. Yet again, we need jobs to pay those mortgages and get approved for them in the first place.  I just read that the UK may need to go bankrupt like it did in the 1970′s by excessive spending, encouraging people to buy homes they could not afford and let the price of those homes to go up, and then do not put anything in savings for the rainy day government fund. Wow, that sounds like the typical American these days. I still believe its just a correction and not a collapse.

I have been reading about the amount of security it will take to guard the inauguration. It will take about 46,000 officers to do so. That is staggering. Have you taken the time to understand a much more realistic threat in 2009? How about the very device you are using to read this, that is your home or office computer system. I did some research and found that Sandisk is on top of this. They saw that Forbes magazine did some research and found 2008 to be the worst year in in data losses and breaches. This is staggering. So who is the most at risk of Cyber Terrorism? Well, I believe that is now corporate America. I believe this because with the meltdown of the economy, there are competitor companies looking to gobble up market share and breach of security of corporate operations is too tempting to steal. What kind of Cyber Terrorism will we see? Database exposure is the greatest asset to protect today and without encrypted data with strong password protocols, companies have so much to lose. I could see internal personnel as the great threat with so many losing their jobs, it could be tempting to steal data and take to another company. So how can a company keep its data safe? I believe you go to best in usb encryption and that is SanDisk. They have the brand, the experience, the patents and customer service to protect all of us from theft or loss due to malicious cyber attack. Portable encrypted data is one way along with central management and access provisioning that will save companies critical data. Its time for all businesses in America to take action to secure their USB drives and gain control over their database management of sensitive information. With this economy, you cannot afford not to.

One of the great subjects that we teach our youth today is the perinial topic of literature. From the Illyad to Dickens to Psalms to Tolstoy, human kind has endeavored to put to paper, stone or papyrus, their story into the written word. What is it over time that we still do this? What is the lure? Could it be that the authors understand that what they write could be passed down for generations to come? I like to think they wanted us to know our part of their culture, what was important to them and the issues of life they faced. We see the searching of the soul it seems in every story, with heroes and villains, rich and poor etc. It just seems amazing to me that stories written 500 or even 2000 years ago still strike a chord with us. I wonder if these authors struggled with youth who found the classics boring and a waste of time. Why is it that the youth find this a waste. I think they have not seen the world yet and all the troubles that adults have seen and lived. The youth have not tasted adversity yet or daily struggles of life because they are still under our wing. They need real life to compare it to, they need to experience love and marriage, politics, war etc. I have been hard on the young for not taking literature seriously. Perhaps they just cannot do so until their soul has tasted the struggle of life.