Ever since I have registered my email address, I have been very careful not to put it in any form online.  I had the intention of avoiding spam altogether, and if I didn’t use it publicly anywhere, I thought that I should be safe.

Well, I was wrong.

Somehow, someone figured out what my address was and begun to send me offers to online dating sites, not to mention other, non-family sites.

At this point I was getting very fed-up with what was happening to me and I thought that I should do something about it.

I went to the store and bought some spam filtering software, installed it on my computer, and waited to see what was going to happen.  It turns out that the software does an amazing job, and I no longer receive email that I have no interest in reading.  What a sigh of relief.

Two months ago, I gave birth to the most beautiful little baby girl I have ever seen.  Before this, I had no idea what postpartum depression really was and I have struggled for the past month, thinking I was a bad mom because I was not happy all the time.

My husband was very supportive and he did everything to try and make me feel better.  Every evening, he would take the baby and spend time with her so that I could do something by myself and for myself.  Even for something as simple, as taking a bath or going for a short walk.

One day, he brought home a pair of theatre tickets.  I thought the gesture was great but I started crying as I knew I was not ready to leave her with anyone but her dad or myself.  He told me that the tickets were for me and a friend and that he would be keeping the baby for the evening.  What a great guy.

For most of the trips that I have made by air in the past, I have relied on a cab to get from the airport.  That has been a relatively good experience so far during my life and I thought that it would be the only type of transportation that I would rely on during my lifetime.

But that wasn’t going to be the case.  You see, a couple of years ago I broke one of my legs and had a full leg cast.  Needless to say, between the crutches and the cast, I couldn’t really fit into a regular vehicle.

I had to go on a business trip to Philadelphia, but I wanted to make sure I had a ride to my business meeting once I got there.  I called ahead, and spoke to someone from the Philadelphia Airport Transportation company, and they informed me that they had a special needs van all ready to pick me up from the airport.

All I can say is that the trip was a success, and the help from the transportation company were very helpful in ensuring that I was well taken care of.  From that day forward, I have made a point to utilize their services whenever I am in Philadelphia – I would have it no other way.

We were down in Murrieta, California for a little vacation.  We both had a couple of days off from work, so we thought that we would go down there for a visit.  Some of our close friends had moved there and we hadn’t had a chance to visit them.

Before we went on the trip, I purchased a new GPS.  You know, one of those gadgets that let you leave your map at home.

Well, it should be like that in theory…

We reached the outskirts of Murrieta, and pulled over to the side of the road for a break.  Well, it was more of a diaper change as our baby had a bit of an accident on the trip.  After cleaning up the mess, we jumped back in the car, and the GPS just wouldn’t work.

Well, it sort of worked.  It would show us the city of Murrieta, but nothing else.

We were in a pickle and pulled over at the nearest service station.  There, a clerk was nice enough to give us a copy of the RAAS that had Murrieta maps in it.

Thankfully we made it to our friend’s house.  If it wasn’t for that great magazine, I don’t know what we would have done.

For the longest time, I have been nagging my parents to get me some pictures of their parents to put on my wall.  You see, family history is very important to me and I wanted to share my family history with my children.  I thought that having a picture of my grandparents would be a good first step in accomplishing that goal.

But, sometimes parents can be just as bad as children for forgetting to do things.  I think I had been asking them for well over two years to get me some framed pictures for the wall, but I just wasn’t getting them.

I had a nice surprise at my last birthday though.  There were some large, wrapped, rectangular presents just for me.  I unwrapped them to find pictures of my grandparents.

But these were not ordinary pictures - my parents had put the photos onto canvas to create family heirlooms of my grandparents.  It will be a gift that I can pass down to them when they are old enough.

I am so happy to see photographs of my grandparents on my wall - I miss them so much…

I find it really frustrating when your flight is canceled.  Sure, that doesn’t happen to me very often, but I just happened to get stuck while on vacation a few weeks ago.

What really bothers me is that when you do get stuck, usually you don’t have anything to do.  Most people get something to eat or drink, or read a magazine, but I found myself without much of anything to do.

Luckily for me, two weeks prior, I had read some iPhone news in a popular mobile magazine.  I skipped over the iPhone accessories to the games section.  I had not even realized that there were games that I could download to my iPhone.

I was so thankful that I had read the magazine and downloaded some iPhone games onto my phone.  Sure, staying over at the airport sucked, but at least I had some sort of distraction -at least for a little while.

While I was working as a night auditor at a hotel, I had the pleasure of becoming good friends with an older gentleman that was immigrating to Canada from England. He is one of the nicest people I have ever met and I was rooting for him all the way the day he went to do his Canadian immigration interview.

I thought that Canada needed more people like this and when he went to do the Canadian Citizenship test, I was on pins and needles waiting for the results. He, of course, is a very smart man and I need not have worried. He probably did better than I would have.

The last obstacle we had to overcome was his G1 practice test. This was especially important because he makes his living by driving trucks. I think he was more nervous about this one than he was the immigration one. But, the day he got his official Saskatchewan driver’s license was a day we celebrated. I am so proud to call him my friend.

I was at my cousin’s house one day, as he was participating in a mobile forum. It was the first I had ever heard of forums and I became very interested in them. I made it my mission to find one on gaming.

After a bit of searching, I found a gaming forum and I was surprised at the things that I was learning and the conversations I was able to participate in. I am a pretty big gamer, and besides the computer, I own about six different gaming systems. It sounds lame and I don’t spend all day every day playing games, but it is a part of my life.

Someone suggested a gadget India website in one of the forum posts and I learned that it was a way to acquire games at a dirt cheap prices. With the recommendation from the forum, I placed an order - if the game works properly, I can see myself ordering many more.

Just a few months ago, my son who was six asked me for an Xbox 360 for his birthday present.  Now, I know very little about video game systems, so that seemed like a good idea.

Now the day before I was going out to buy it, I had a funny feeling in my gut.  Something just wasn’t right.  So, I decided to go online and see what kind of Xbox 360 games were available.  Boy was I in for a surprise.

What I found out was not good.  Not good at all.  You see, pretty much all the games I saw were for adults, involved shooting and had blood in them.  Now, my son at six just shouldn’t be seeing these things - it might mess him up for later on in his life.

Thankfully, I came across some Wii game reviews, and they seemed more promising.  Their games were family friendly, and I could get a lot of games geared to my son’s age.  So my choice was clear:  I was going to buy a Nintendo Wii.

I am so happy that I was able to avoid a potential big mistake in my parenting - thankfully, the Internet was available to help me make the right choice.

I know it is not the end of the year yet, but hey, why not talk about my memorable moments for the past year.  Sure, something may come up in the few weeks that are left, but I could talk about them, if they do happen.

The first and worst thing to happen to me this past year was getting my wisdom teeth out.  I don’t know if you have ever done that, but it is perhaps the worst sound I have ever heard.  What really freaked me out was when the dentist put his foot on the chair so that he would have more leverage to heave on my tooth - it left me a little traumatized.

My favorite moment was Valentines day.  It was that day that I received and iPod and some iPod Shuffle accessories.  The sound was awesome and the stereo speakers for iPod I received were a wonderful companion to my afternoon workouts.

I just would like to mention my most unbelievable of this year as well regarding my grandmother.  You see, she gave me a call one day and asked if I could help her transfer her iPod to PC.  Did I mention that grandma is 84?  Who would have thought she would have bought one, but she did for her daily walks.

Well, the year has been very good to me with no tragedies as of yet (knock on wood).  I can’t wait to see what next year has in store for me.