I've started my Christmas shopping a little early this year. Usually I wait until the weekend right before Christmas. I'm getting a bit sick of the big box warehouse stores. It's seems they all have the same kind of merchandise. And everybody knows what you paid.

The shopping malls are fun if you actually don't have to shop. If you do, they can be a nightmare. Every teenager is hanging out text messaging each other from 3 feet away. People are getting frantic and buying something - anything - just so they'll have a gift.

This year I thought I'd use the Internet to shop. Not just amazon.com or ebay but neat little websites that offer gifts a bit out of the ordinary.

First stop are baby toys. Lots and lots of baby toys. I found this neat little site called baby-wise.com They have toys for every age and great prices. It beats the mall and the big box stores. Now I just have to make up my mind which toys I want.

Dee

One of the areas I've been looking at is how to earn money on the Internet by writing, while cruising I came upon a neat little site that's focused on helping people find jobs. I'm not looking for a full time job but this job search site was a little different. The jobs are ranked by the members. So if someone investigated a particular offering and found it, let's just say not as straightforward as the listing, they could give it a lower ranking.

I also like the tone of the site. It's friendly and has a "we're all in this together" attitude rather than "we're the might job board and you're the lowly job seeker." Reminds me of some publishers I know.

It's too bad that writers only have elance.com and guru.com. It would be nice to have a similar writing job search where the writers could rate the clients. I know elance does have a rating system, but seriously is any writer going to bad mouth a potential client? No.

Dee

Over Time, the novel
A great gift for a football fan or a romance reader. Romance? Yes.