Life of MJ Schrader

Christmas Card

It is that time of year, that everyone should be receiving Christmas cards. In my case I can not send a card to each of you my readers, because I don’t have all of your addresses, nor do I have time enough to address all those cards. Yet you are still very important to me.

However, what I learned last year, was a picture is worth a thousand words. Sending a simple picture of me with my “family” was a great way to share a thousand Christmas words.

Now this year I decided to do something different and made an online scrapbook. Thus between the pictures, the “Christmas Time is Here” song and all that’s at least 20,000 words I am sharing with you and that HAS TO BE BETTER than a card right?

Ok, all joking aside… cards aren’t my thing. Writing is my lifelong dream, while graphics are a passion of mine. So writing a blog post to you and showing you a few pictures from the past year is the best way for me to send a Christmas card.

Thank you for spending valuable time with me. Thank you for all you do. This year has been so stressful, with jobs, finances, economic worries, worries about society and more that I know sometimes you may question what was good this past year… but you are a gift to me. Your life touches so many that you will never know…

Thank you, and I hope you enjoy my Christmas card, please feel free to comment below.

Please read the note below the card…

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

MJ Schrader

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Make a Smilebox slideshow

And as a writer, who often gets comments in private, I want to share 2 more posts with you.  If you know anyone stressed please send them to this post or the post they need.  Please forward it as necessary.   Unfortunately I know for a fact that both of these are more likely during the Holidays.

Abuse Odds-Are about abuse and  Healing then But He Doesn’t Hit Me Which deals with non-physical abuse

Depression -How-your-life-touches-others and Dealing-With-Negative-Thinking and Celebrate Moments

And please recommend Rockstar Guide Books this is how I make money

Make it so

A month ago I took off “suddenly.” The thing to know about me, is I never actually do anything suddenly. Having been alone for most of my life I plan things out with great detail in my head, so when I act it looks very sudden.

The visit was months of discussion, months of persuasion and me resisting. Actually I had planned to go since April, but things didn’t work. Yet this new factor was both a temptation and a reason to resist. One resistance was budget in nature, but I will explain that later.

On July 3rd a classmate came to town from Las Cruces for a family wedding. A third classmate joined us, and we went out to eat around the corner from her hotel. Soon we were joined by her husband. He had already eaten so he stayed for a drink and left, then her brother showed up, a friend on facebook.

The 5 of us soon went out to a club, her brother and I danced the night away at the Mambo Club. We laughed and acted like we were a couple (see the image above). So the next week, I asked my classmate about him. She didn’t say much, but a few weeks later she said to talk to him.

The conversations were few, but comfortable. Often with him encouraging me to visit his sister and him in New Mexico. Finally in November, my resistance broke, and I am glad it did. Yes, it was nice to get away from home. But truth is I had a lot of fun, and all we did was hang out, like a first date (that lasted 2 days) Well, I guess it was… and soon we will try a 4 day second date.

Unfortunately for him, I have dated more than a few jerks, so he’s got a mountain to climb. Which really isn’t fair to him; but, something tells me he’s up to the task. Course this is going to be a bit weird if he reads my posts… although he’ll probably laugh.

Now drifting back to the first resistance and the related. Part of the disillusionment with taxes and bookkeeping is the pay has not gone up while the bosses have gotten progressively meaner. In my 20s I shopped for designer labels on sale, although I could buy them full price. My savings was nice.

In my 30s after a bad business deal, the business partner made off nice . Followed by a period when no one would hire me, my savings disappeared, debts appeared, in droves.  A few years of work helped, but when I was laid off in April, I decided to quit in July (long story).  It was time to follow a 30+ year dream of being a writer, but the starving artist is NOT part of the dream.

I want to able to pay bills, even better to buy things again, without worry. But after New Mexico, my urge and urgency has grown. My debts need to be paid off, the sooner the better.

So what’s the plan o’ action? First are goals, $1500 to raise before the end of the year, $5000 by February 1st. That will be great forward progress.

• Sell my Wendi Friesen and Joe Vitale stuff on eBay to raise money ASAP (see if there is more stuff I can sell) http://bit.ly/6oBTJQ

• Promote my products more on http://RockstarGuideBooks.com,

• Produce new products.

• Find JV partners.

• Write articles.

• Do more graphics. I do graphics for fun but it’s a little bit of income.

• Offer ghost writing

• Make the ex-boyfriend pay his debt to me.

• Believe.

• BELIEVE.  (worth repeating)

• Make it so… (Star Trek: TNG)

So if you need to learn something in particular, have ideas to raise some funds, ideas of what I can sell, please leave some comments. If you know (or even better are) a potential JV partner, please leave a comment.

MJ Schrader

Halloween Costumes

For 3 days before Halloween, every few hours my facebook status changed to say what costume I was going to wear and why. By popular demand these are the statuses I thought up, which were quite a few more than I actually used.

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Branding

• is dressing up like a Timex cause she takes a licking and keeps ticking
• is dressing up like a Facebook page just so people can comment
• is dressing up like Coke cause she’s the real thing
• is dressing up like American Express, because people don’t leave home without it
• is dressing up as AIG so she can ask for her bailout…
• is dressing up like bread because she’s a Wonder…
• is dressing up like the Energizer bunny cause she just keeps going and going…
• is dressing up as Bud Dry… why ask why?

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Food

• is dressing up like chocolate because who can resist chocolate?
• is dressing up like peanut butter so she can find her jelly
• is dressing up like sugar cause she’s that sweet
• is dressing up like butter cause she’s that smooth
• is dressing up as a peach to prove she’s not nuts…
• is dressing up like peanut butter cause she didn’t want to look cheesy
• is dressing up like a walnut, because she’s nutty
• is dressing up like tomato so people could argue if she’s a fruit or a vegetable
• is dressing up like coffee, so she can be smooth and rich
• is dressing up like salsa because she’s spicy…

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Bad Puns

• isn’t dressing up like a dolphin in case anyone thinks she’s got illegal porpoises… * rimshot *…
• is dressing up as cheese so she can ask “Do you want cheese with that?” when kids whine where’s the chocolate?
• is dressing up as a tiger because she’s not lion about her costume… (read out loud)
• is dressing up as a vampire because she’s not a mummy…
• is dressing up a corpse because it goes with the coughin’ …
• is dressing up as a pyrite… don’t you just love spell checkers…. (pirate, pyrite)

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Candy Hunting

• is dressing up like a thief to steal your Halloween Candy
• is dressing up like a ninja so she can sneak around grabbing candy
• is dressing up like Chuck Norris, because then Halloween candy would come to her…
• is dressing up as the teenager who bangs on the door w/o a costume and asks for candy…
• is dressing up as the IRS so she can tax kids on their candy haul…

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Geek Alert:

• is dressing up like the Spanish Inquisition because nobody expects that
• is dressing up like Captain Kirk because he has a thing for green alien women (for the guys)
• is dressing up like Spock because it’s illogical to be anything else
• is dressing up like a dead parrot… in case anyone needs her for a certain skit…
• is dressing up as Darth Vader, so she can walk up to people and say “I am your father” (really amusing since she’s a she)
• is gluing cinnamon rolls to her ears so she can be Princess Leia…
• is dressing up as 42 so she can answer the ultimate question
• is dressing up as Ford Prefect because she’s a hoopy Frood.
• is dressing up like the Doctor so she can have a sonic screwdriver

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Assorted:

• is dressing up like an icicle because she’s that chill
• is dressing up like an airplane cause she’s just that fly
• is dressing up like dynamite cause she’s a real firecracker
• thought about dressing up like the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn’t want to look easy
• is dressing up like a kid so she can get Halloween candy
• is dressing up like a deck of cards to prove she’s playing with a full deck….
• is dressing up like a deck of cards because she’s a heart clubbing with a spade full of diamonds
• is dressing up like an angel cause she plans on partying like a devil
• is dressing up like an IRS agent because she couldn’t find anything scarier
• is dressing up like a firefighter in case she catches any guys on fire…
• isn’t dressing up, so people can see she is a witch..
• is dressing up like a spider, because they eat their mates… (for a divorced friend)
• is dressing up like snow because she’s cool
• is dressing up like music, cause the rhythm is gonna get ya
• is dressing up like a broken shovel because she used to have a handle on life
• is dressing up like salmon because she likes swimming against the stream
• is dressing up as a dust bunny so she can hide your bed…

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From Others

• is dressing up like butter cause she’s on a roll ~ TY Mike Shippey
• is dressing up like a habanero cause she’s that hot ~ Freddie Franco
• is dressing up like air conditioner because she’s a cool breeze ~ Fred Maestas
• is dressing up as a magnet because she’s so attractive ~ Maggie Miller
• is dressing up like a Mallard because she’s just ducky ~ Maggie Miller
• is dressing up like Fort Knox cause she’s pure Gold ~ Maggie Miller
• is dressing up like a Physics Equation because it’s scarier than the evil clown ~ Stella Todd
• is dressing up as dynamite cause she’s having a blast ~ Paul Hobart
• won’t dress up as a stock certificate because she doesn’t want anyone to sell her short ~ Mike Sweezy
• dressing up as a credit card because she has such high interest rates? ~ Mike Sweezy
• is dressing up as a car because she’s so driven ~ Trapper Sherwood

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Movie Monday

Movie Monday

People have asked me both what is Movie Monday and how to play it… So here’s the quick story.

So many people do not like Monday so I thought I would add some “spice” by creating “Movie Monday.” This is a fun game to make people smile.

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* HINT
Each Monday my Facebook Status will be a quotes from a popular movie.* I will post one hint which is direct link to the movie on IMDB.  IMDB does not put the title of the movie in the link, which is great for those who want to figure out what movie I am quoting, or if you want to guess.   If you click the link you can check it out.  If scroll all the way down to the bottom you can click quotes to get more quotes   Yes, that’s where I get the actual quote so it should be right.

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* RULES
But the rules of the game are simple.

Comment with other quotes from the movie.

I try to pick positive quotes from whatever movie. Last month I decided to start quoting only one movie on Monday.  Why? Because people would ask me later in the week, “what movie did you quote?” So let’s do a quick poll… stick with one movie with a couple status changes? Or do a couple movies on Monday?

* POLL

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* Re: Popular movie I am a bit of a sci-fi nut, but know people like romance so I will try to choose popular movies.  Also if you want me to quote a particular movie, please feel free to comment below

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* MY RADIO STATION

AND on another note check out my favorite radio station, it’s online. Mostly undiscovered artists, but it’s beautiful music and a wide variety. I listen all day and choose what type of music I want to hear that day.  Some days I listen to friends’ radio stations to find new artists.  Http://TheSixtyOne.com/MJSchrader

MJ Schrader