Margret Sloan

Condo life sometimes means putting up with little nuisances that you might not have to deal with in a single family home with a yard and good distance between neighbors.

Even though this condo development is upscale and the construction is high end, there can still be nights where the noise from your neighbor’s TV or sound system creeps into your bedroom and makes sleep difficult. I don’t have a garage band next door, but for some reason the neighbors like to listen to rock and roll ALL night. Now, I like rock and roll, but not at 3:00 in the morning when I’m trying to sleep.

So we’ve come up with a solution other than calling the police and filing noise complaints against the neighbors. We bought a little machine called Sleep Mate, which makes a nice little sound during the night called white noise and you don’t have to listen to that rock and roll or even hubby’s snoring anymore. I’ve known about White Noise Machines for years, but it wasn’t until we moved here that I needed it.

And to take the chill off in the morning, I bought a pair of foot cozy heated slippers from Vat 19 - the same site that sells the Sleep Mate. A good night’s sleep is a whole lot easier now, and getting up in the morning is just a little nicer, too.

I talk to dozens of people every day, most of them are people responding to an ad for new employees. The ad lists my cell phone number so people only know my name and not the company they are calling - it’s a privacy thing.

But sometimes keeping up with all the numbers without names attached can be very challenging. I was happy to find a web site that lets me look up numbers, including cell phone numbers. It can be hard to find a good place for Reverse Cell Phone Lookup. And a cool part of this site is that if you don’t want your number to be given out, you can subscribe to a “No Call List” and they will remove your number from their database.

I don’t usually get excited about electronics gadgets, but I found something today that really rocks. This charger runs on solar power and will recharge all your portable electronics - everything from an iPod to a laptop to digital camera to MP3 players. This is so cool - you have to check it out. I found it on a website called EcoGeekLiving because I was looking for some ideas for greening up the house. I refuse to buy regular lightbulbs anymore and I know there are other great ways to save the environment by changing our habits at home.

Anyway, this awesome recharger is solar powered - as in free energy! -  and is called a power monkey explorer. It comes with all the adapters you need to recharge all your electronics using the sun. A fantastic gift for any of the geeks in your life, too. Let me know if you get one - I can’t wait for mine to get here!

My neighborhood is usually quiet and uneventful. The neighbors have all lived here for 4 years or more, and although we aren’t great friends, we all do try to be good neighbors and look out for each other. It seems like once a year we have some kind of excitement with the police involved. Twice we have had a car run up into our yard as a result of a police chase from elsewhere. The perpetrator makes the mistake of turning into our street too fast and loses control of the car, jumping the curb and running into a tree or a fence and taking off on foot.

I guess this year’s excitement happened last night, as I discovered this morning when I went to get in the car to run a few errands. Sometime after midnight my cars were broken into. Everything that was in the glove compartment and the middle console was pulled out and dumped onto the seats and floorboards. But nothing seems to be missing. I don’t leave anything valuable in the cars anyway. But it is disconcerting to think that someone would violate my property like that.

My neighbor and I are considering putting a video surveillance system in place that would encompass her driveway and mine, and also the front and rear doors of the houses. We are both concerned that whoever broke into my cars might get a little bolder and try to get into our houses. She knows of a place online that sells audio video surveillance equipment and it’s not as expensive as I feared.

IT Planet has a good variety of cameras and systems that can meet just about any need, from worried homeowners like us to small business owners concerned about shoplifting and robberies. I like the way you can either order online from their site, send an email with questions or call them at 866-468-6044 and talk to one a customer sales representative.

We’re going to get together in a little while at her house and talk it over again.

My daughter-in-law is in the process of moving to her new apartment this week. I rounded up all the large empty boxes I could find and sent them over to her so she could get started packing. The new apartment has an extra bedroom and is more spacious, so I’m glad she’s moving up.

She’ll be turning the extra bedroom into a home office so she can do more work from home and not have to pay for child care, plus she’ll be saving cash by not having to commute. Of course, setting up the home office will take a bit of cash, but you can’t make money if you don’t spend money.

We’ll be underwriting some of the home office equipment to help her out. Since we are on a tight budget, we are looking for ways to save as much money as we can, yet we can’t always get the cheapest products - there are some quality and reliability issues to consider as well as price.

A great source for money saving coupons is a website I found online. There are a variety of coupons to save significant money on Dell small business computers. We are also going to need some home office furniture, at the very least a computer desk and task chair.

I’m not sure which way to advise her on a printer for her new home office. I haven’t had much luck with the last ones I’ve bought. At the moment I’m using a cheap laser printer that only prints black and white, but it is a workhorse and I can use refilled toner cartridges, which saves a lot of money. I think for the sake of just getting started, she should probably have one like what I’m using, and when she starts making money she can upgrade to a color printer later.