Justin Germino Ramblings

With my upcoming cruise looming next month in August, my wife and I were talking about next year’s vacation and how we were looking at some Caribbean cruises. My wife and I have taken a Carnival cruise back in 2007, it was a Mexican Riviera Cruise and we enjoyed not only the destinations and excursions, but we enjoyed just how many great activities, shows and things to do there were aboard the ship.
Cruises are definitely in many ways a cheaper and better experience than just flying to a destination and getting your own hotel. These include the all inclusive meals, entertainment, drinks (not alcoholic..bummer) and other services and activities. The price per day is actually much lower than if you travel alone even if you upgrade your stateroom to an oceanside room with a balcony.

My wife and I definitely want to visit the Bahama’s or Grand Cayman islands next year, and are positive that we will be planning the trip assuming budgeting allows it. That would be our ideal cruise vacation and we are hoping to make it a reality next year. It is a 16 hour flight from Phoenix to the Grand Cayman islands, so the cost of the airfare is almost more than the cruise itself.

-Justin Germino

I feel like I am living the movie groundhog day sometimes, I work all week barely able to keep up with all my projects and make progress as new ones come in, only to spend my two free weekend days working around the house and come and go so quickly. Then its back to the work grind all over again after barely having enough time to catch my breath. Many people live this same way and I think the only way to truly break up the monotony of this cycle is to do something unique every second or third weekend.

Try to break out of the normal routine and mix in something different, whether it would be taking the family to the lake or park (in cooler area’s than Phoenix) or going to a museum, movie, or something else. Savor your Saturday for a family activity and do all your chores on Sunday, or vice versa so that you can at least spend one meaningful day as a fun and relaxing family day. Of course sometimes I wish I could just sleep on Saturday’s or Sundays, but with two kids under six years old sleep is something I have been lacking for half a decade now.

-Justin Germino

I was told about a unique blog competition where Ms. Janette Toral is in search for the Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs for 2009.

To qualify the blogs must be created on or after May 2008 and are exerting a certain influence in the blogosphere. Nominated blogs could win cash prizes of $100 each and also 10 writing projects can win $100 each. The rules of the contest are here.

Ten blogs will be chosen based on the blogs with the most votes.

I have actually gone through the contest and several other people’s posts and read about casually perused twenty two blogger who were nominated from various people,these people I would list as the top ten emerging influential bloggers based on their blog topics, styles and how friendly and personable the blog owners are.

1. Jena Isle Online – by Jena Isle

JenaIsle has become a twitter follower and friend and consistently plays my twitter poetry game with enthusiasm almost every weekday.   Her blog provides excellent advice, articles, recommendations to people in a wide variety of topics, but she gets my #1 spot as she helped me network with most of the bloggers on the below list and got me involved with the Jedi Circle.

2. Zorlone – by Zorlone

I first came in contact with Zorlone by competing with him in the PlotDog Writers Offering Our Finest (WOOF) contest, and he is a great guy, fellow poet and provides some great competition.  We have mutual respect for each others creative writing styles and I always enjoy reading and recommending his creative works, he is also one of the friendliest guys I have ever met on twitter.

3. The Struggling Blogger – by Roy

I run across many of Roy’s blogs via entrecard and other networks, but this blog is valuable as it is specific to helping bloggers blog, and has many of the same goals as my own dragonblogger.com.

4.Writing to Exhale – by Jan

Jan is another super friendly guy running a blog that is around a year old, he is very talented with his creative writing and is someone who I enjoy connecting with on Twitter.

The remainder of the people on this blog I don’t know as well, having only been in communication with the occasional comment or so and entrecard visit for those who use it, but they would be my top picks based on what I found on their blogs.

5. A Walk in the Dark – by Luke
6. Tales From the Mom Side – by Dee
7. Father Blogger Dot Com – by Angel
8. It’s all a Matter of Perspective: Mine – by- Holly Jahangiri
9. LifeLots – by Irene
10. I Love/Hate America – by Bing

The sponsors for the prizes are:
Absolute Traders, My Brute Cheats, Business Summaries, Fitness Advantage Club, Events and Corporate Video, Events at Work, Dominguez Marketing Communications, Red Mobile and Blog4Reviews.com.

Yesterday my wife and I went grocery shopping at Fry’s and it was the most odd thing when we were greeted with friendly good morning chatter by no less than a dozen Fry’s employee’s, in addition we received cheerful greetings from some other patrons at McDonald’s. It was odd having so many people act so friendly in such a short period of time and you couldn’t help but be in a good mood when everyone around you is so friendly and cheerful.

Isn’t it sad when lots of people acting friendly is a “Freak Occurrence” and the norm is to expect rude behavior?

Anyway, I am probably still sleeping right now recovering from being up until 2am at last nights rock show, I will try to give an update about the show later today.

-Justin Germino

My wife’s music production company Rock Along Productions “Red, White and Blues” show is tonight at the Goat Head Saloon in Mesa, AZ.  As always I help her with her shows by running door, greeting people, taking tickets and providing moral support and good company (sometimes).  Rock Along Productions MeetUp group has just over 40 people in the Greater Phoenix area who have signed up to enjoy local Arizona rock music and we look forward to everyone we meet at the shows as the companies primary goal is to spread live local rock music to show people that we have some great music coming out of local bands right here in Arizona.

Look forward to seeing some of my twitter fans at the show tonight, and will report on the show and bands tomorrow.

-Justin Germino

As news articles around the US have recently written and published, Gaming continues to thrive and make money in tough economic times. As people turn to cheaper and distraction type entertainment during a tough economy. The fact is that games have a dollar per hour value that is far better that most forms of entertainment and movies.

But there are ways to spend less gaming even, such as with online rental services like GameFly. For those of us who shell out fifty dollars for a single console game only to beat it within a week or two, it is better to rent games and play six or seven games per month for the same price as purchasing a single one.

Other creative ways to save money gaming is to find online MMO games that are free, there are more of them each month and one of my favorites right now “Runes of Magic” is as engaging as World of Warcraft or GuildWars, and has such depth and richness that you could play for weeks or months before growing bored.

Even for people without powerful computers or money to purchase a new console can get an older Playstation 2 at dirt cheap prices and play thousands of games for very low costs. People are using trade services like SwapTree to trade used games between each other so they can constantly get new games to play for the cost of shipping and handling.

Gaming is more affordable than ever, and even if you play the latest java, flash, or online games, there is always some way to get an escape and find a game to bury yourself in.

-Justin Germino

For almost two years we had a really nice pool table in our front room that didn’t get much use and we wound up selling it when we thought we would move to California. Now the front room has a small sofa but is much emptier without it.

The pool table we had was a really nice custom table with a ping pong table top that can slide over it, so you can play ping pong if you were tired of playing pool. I was never very good, but I enjoyed playing once and a while and my youngest used to play rollie ball with me.

I really didn’t play it enough being the fact that we don’t have company very often, but my wife and I occasionally played a game at night when the kids went to bed. Ah well, you always miss the things you don’t have and hindsight is 20/20.

-Justin Germino

Guest post by Shona Daily-Germino

Keeping the young ones busy especially during the summer can be really challenging. This article lists a few must have toys to keep you child busy. Remember to choose toys that are safe and age appropriate for your children. Also just a quick note, watch your child around water!
Everyone loves getting wet during the summer. A great way to do that is with the Beach Ball Sprinkler made by Little Tikes and for under $12 your child can have some giggles in the outdoors. The ball inflates and hooks up to a hose which makes it portable to take to friends houses. For the price this toys is worth it.
Plug and play electronic games make it easy and fun to just hook up a game to your television without having an expensive game system. The SpongeBob Square Pants Plug ‘n Play is great! This game is super easy to use. There are 4 different games included, which gives some variety and for under $20 it’s a sure thing.
Toys made by Alex Toy Company are some of the best and most creative toys out there. The Alex Clay Fun Kit is no exception. This kit comes with 4 lbs of air drying clay, Gray and terra cotta colors, Paint , Mosaic tiles , and Gemstones. This product is under $15 dollars and is a great way to let your child be creative.
Another great must have toy is the Fisher-Price Digital Arts & Crafts Studio which hooks up to your computer. This product features Kid-friendly tools, drop-down menus, voice prompts and an on-screen assistant which makes it easy to use for a child. This product is good for the 4 year old to 9 year old age range. It’s easy for your child to create multiple arts and craft projects. This product sets up quickly for quick install. This product is under $50 and the best part is no mess! Activities include Jumping frogs, Flying airplanes, Paper people, Greeting cards, Invitations, Party hats, Dot-to-dot, and Digital coloring.

Finding great activities for your child to do can be tough, but there are some really great products out there, all you have to do is look! Make sure you go online and read reviews and articles like this one to find out what other people are saying about different products. This will give you an idea of what parents and kids are saying.

-Shona Daily-Germino

I have always suffered from speech anxiety which is ironic because as my wife can tell you, I am a motor mouth and a chatterbox in my home life, and clearly I speak often and all the time at work on conference calls. I do however have anxiety about crowds and speaking in public, and I when I spoke at CA World in Las Vegas in November 2008, I was vomiting for days before the conference and even several hours before I gave my speech.

That being said I had a little bit of anxiety last week and this week when contacted by several media journalists, one from the Arizona Republic the largest AZ newspaper, and the other a freelance writer who was writing an article for MSNBC.com Tech site. AZ Republic had an idea for an article about blogging, bloggers and interviewed me as a blogger, poet and my inspirations, start…etc.

The writer for MSNBC.com was writing a piece about Twitter Schemes and follower sites, and wanted my input since I had done some research and written an article on dragonblogger.com about the subject last week. I also read that BenSpark, one of my socialspark and blog friends recently mentioned he had interviews with NY Times and Wall Street Journal, which tells me that bloggers are getting more media coverage lately overall.

I am still a very small wave in the ocean of bloggers out there, but it is good to be able to contribute to the community as a whole and help open public awareness to what we do as bloggers and why we do it.

-Justin Germino

To break up the monotony of being around the hot desert for nearly the whole summer, we took the kids up to northern Arizona to go fishing on July 4th at Woods Canyon Lake which was one of our favorite fishing holes. It was all my wife’s idea and she had been fishing these area’s for trout since she was a little girl and introduced me to the lakes when I came to Arizona so many years ago.

The trip was a little bit of a drive, and we all woke up at a quarter to five in the morning to drive almost three hours and arrive at the Woods Canyon Lake by just a little after eight. The kids enjoyed having the cool temperatures and looking for bugs, crayfish and minnows to catch in the water’s edge. We took our two Boston Terriers who enjoyed escaping the heat and rode in the car very well.

Due to so many people being there and just poor luck, we didn’t catch any trout, and only by using a bug net, was I able to entertain the kids by catching some Crayfish, minnows, a caterpillar and a dragonfly. I did take the kids for a hike in the woods and they enjoyed walking among the majestic pine tree’s and exploring dead tree trunks and moving aside large rocks to see if any creepy crawlers lay hidden within.

After a few hours we decided to rent a small boat, which they cleverly use car type batteries to power the small motor so they don’t cause any pollution to rent and operate them. We took the two year old, five year old and my wife and I into the boat and we explored the deeper channels of the small lake.

Just under an hour of fishing the lake a monsoon storm blew in and thunder cracked around us, rain poured into the boat and we hastily sped back toward the dock to escape the cold rain. We were soaked and we tried to wait out the storm by waiting in the truck, but alas, it rained for about two full hours and we decide to call it a day at almost three in the afternoon.

Though we were rained out and only got forty five minutes of boating time (no refund even if rained out) was the store policy, we had a grand adventure and this was the first time my kids were on a boat. The whole family enjoyed being at the lake and in the cooler northern country, and now that we have an annual fishing license we probably will make the most of it by doing several more trips up north this summer.

-Justin Germino