See, I have several dog's names picked out (for the dog we can't have until we move back to the States): Kiva and Kelso for a pair of Huskies, and Abernathy for a black lab. Our cats tend to get religious names (current cat, his name is Legion; previous was Extreme Unction; before that were Retribution and Penance). And all cars are named from Shakespeare.

So without a theme, I'm flailing a bit here.

I know I've wailed about this here before, but choosing a name seems like one of the biggest responsibilities possible!

My daughter's name 'Emaryn' was a little tough because while my wife liked it, I wasn't sure since it was the name of my cousin. 'Leif' was easy, as soon as the name came up it was a slam dunk.

Whoops, off to dinner. Y'all have a good day.

Oh, but I did meet a rather noteworthy woman at a party, talked for an hour or more. I was getting the 'You're worth talking to' signals, mirroring posture and that kind of thing, though no flirtage.

Awwwww... it's like geek-boy Wild Kingdom.

Has anyone heard of The Team? I've been invited to join their wide world of getting rich using The System of consumerist revolution. It does actually seem legitimate, but it's all business-y and stuff.

P-C, "The Team" is also known as Amway, if that clears things up. That link breaks it down, but yeah, pyramid-y is a good summary. It's legal, but icky. And it's not a way to make big bucks, either

I can vouch for this. Unless you're willing to spend a lot of money and put ALL your free time into it, it will not pay off. In the link where it explains how you get paid notice that I person has to spend at least $200 a month. The way they will explain it is that you are buying for yourself and getting others to do the same. That is only one aspect.

The second thing (to brainwash you) is that you have to go to a weekly meeting ($5), get the book of the month ($20), two inspirational tapes a week ($12/wk), attend a monthly seminar ($25) and quarterly leadership conferences (out of town, $100 plus travelling expenses).

The third thing is that they will tell you to spend ALL your free time to cold call people, contact people you come into contact with and try to get them all to do what you're doing.

A Dateline research on the company/group says that the people who are making the big bucks are doing it by having others buy their tapes (made at weekly meetings, monthly seminars, and quarterly conferences). I believe that some of that is true.

I personally know some people who are involved in it and are doing alright. Speaking from experience, it was not worth it for me. The books that they recommend you to read, for the most part, have sound business advice though some of it is geared towards people in the business.

As far as the structure is concerned, it's not a pyramid, per se. It's set more like a line. For example: If person A brings on 3 people, those people will not be directly tied to A. A will sponser B who will sponser C who will sponsor D. That way anything that D buys will also count as credit towards C, B & A, not just A (This group is known as the tap root). Everyone benefits. Person C can also add on lines of heirarchy to the side, but built in the same way.

It gets more complicated structurally (and if you want the hows and whys explained I can do that) but this additional heirarchy allows for the possibility that C can grow a bigger business than A or B and make more money.

If you want my opinion, don't do it. I'm not saying that ALL people shouldn't do it, but for me, being in college and trying to do it...not fun. I spent more money than I had and started me on my road to having debt.

t /someone who got suckered in

Hi everybody!!! I'm all crazed now because our cd is coming out and we're having a big release show next week and I just talked to somebody at City Paper (our local free weekly) and will shortly be talking to somebody at the Sun. Which is very very exciting and I'm hoping the press brings lots of new people to the show and they all want to buy the cd. But I'm all nervous I'm sounding like an idjit AND I totally forgot to put on deoderant this morning and I'm sweating like a sweaty sweaty fool. eeeeekk. And I'm worried about not having our website done in time and not being able to quickly get ahold of a good, high rez picture of us. And that I won't find the perfect top to wear at the show. and and I should have minions to do this worrying and sweating for me! I'm the Lead Singer damnit!!!

okay...I should stop freaking and start dropping new images into the big install guide i'm working on. that should calm me down some.

Wow, Lisah, I'm all kinds of impressed!

Mortimer Firefox is a cute nickname for the sprog-to-be.

Name choices weren't as hard as I'd anticipated. Side effect of having so few we agree on, I think. When we finally hit on one (for each gender possibility) we both liked that sounded just fine with Marcontell, we stopped looking.

I am ready for the medical merry-go-round to stop. My husband has been prescribed Warfarin. Rat poison. Yes, effective blood thinner, etc. etc.

But. Rat poison. Oh, and he's to eat a healthy diet and avoid leafy green vegetables while on it.

There is wrongness here.

Side effect of having so few we agree on, I think.

This didn't help DH and me. We got it narrowed down to five or six choices pretty quickly, and with a month or two to go had more or less settled on Annabel or Eleanor. IIRC, we finally decided about two weeks before she was born.

And we'll probably have to go through the exact same process if we do this again. Eleanor is a great name, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's in the top 25 by the time we sprog again, and it doesn't seem quite right to give one daughter an ultra-rare name and another an ultra-popular one. I like Cordelia, but DH doesn't, and we both like Harriet, but I'm afraid it might sound like a Bertha-Beulah kind of name to a lot of people. And boys are even tougher. We'd sort of vaguely agreed that if the ultrasound was wrong we'd name him Brendan, but I've never been crazy about the name. And it's hard to come up with boy names that sort of fall into that same grouping of classic and recognizable, yet fairly rare, that Annabel does. The pool is just smaller.