I was just tagged for Rich's new non-meme by my friend in North Carolina Cynthia Tilgman.  If you have not read Cynthia's post you should.  You will find out a lot about Onslow County and particularly Camp LeJeune Marine base.

 Here are the rules:

1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 56.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the next two to five sentences.

5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book or the intellectual one. Pick the Closest.

6. Tag five people to do the same

*The one book that this can not be is the Bible*

I'm a huge reader so have books all over the house.  What was surprising was the book that happened to be closest to me as this came in.  The book is actually a book that I read on the plane going to see my daughter in NYC a few months ago. I left it with her to read.  She is here visiting while our son is home on his R & R from his Army Iraq tour and she brought it back to me. (Actually I say visiting she just moved her stuff back to Texas and will be commuting to JFK from here so will be home about one week out of the month.  Luckily she was able to get her week off over her brother's leave.) I'm planning on sending this book on with him as he heads back to Baghdad as its a heart warming story and both of my children are also huge readers. Thus it was sitting on my coffee table.

The book is - "Rescuing Sprite a Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish" by Mark R. Levin.  Now comes the tricky part when I opened to page 56 it was blank as it was a transition page to the next chapter; so I'm making an executive decision and going back to page 55 as page 57 only had 3 sentences on it.

Here's my excerpt: 

"My family and I were committed to doing everything we could to bring joy and comfort to Sprite's life. And of course, Pepsi would play a big role in it.  But the truth is, Sprite did more for us than we ever could have done for him"

This was a wonderful inspirational book and with an excerpt like that you now need to go and get the book to find our what Sprite did!

So now my five victims friends:

Patricia Beck-  Colorado Spring Realty.  I have enjoyed getting to know Patricia and enjoy her Colordo Springs Realty blog. She doesn't live too terribly far from where my sister lives in Elizabeth so maybe someday we will even get to meet.

Judi Morgan- San Antonio Texas Real estate- I met Judi at our first Texas Active rain get together.  She was instrumental in planning our get together and we had a wonderful time.  

Shannon Gilmore -Naples Florida Real Estate-  Shannon was absolutely wonderful during Hurricane Ike.  It was great to hear from someone who had been there done that as this was my first REAL hurricane. 

Rebecca Levinson- Lake Geneva WI - I have totally enjoyed Rebecca's uplifting positive post.  She is GREAT at giving suggestions to help my business also.

Thesa Chambers - I first got to know Thesa when we were in the great blogging experiement together.  I then had the opportunity to get to know her in person when she came to visit her family in Dallas.  We met up along with Chris Tesch in Dallas and had a wonderful slumber party.   

Okay gals the balls books in your court now.  It will be interesting to see what book is resting by you RIGHT NOW.  When I first looked up after receiving this meme my eyes rested on Life Classic Photographs that I have sitting on my coffee table.  Had this actually been the book that was closest to me my sentence would have read "The defendant was found guilty and put to death in 1936. Presumably the jury reached its verdict because of what one lawyer said about these commonplace objects."  Luckily when I looked closer I found "Rescuing Sprite" right in front of me rescuing me.

Country Meadows is a pleasant neighborhood located off of Zion road immediatly north of Tomball High School in Tomball TX, (a hometown with a heart.) It is approximately 30 to 35 minutes from Houston. It is a small quiet neighborhood with lots of trees and nicely landscaped yards. There are two ways to get in the subdivision so if school is letting out you can go just a little farther east on Zion Rd and take Martens Rd.

The neighborhood was developed in the late 1990's and early 2000's by Royce Homes. With only about 120 homes it is a small subdivision. The homes range in size from 1540 square feet to 3300 square feet with most homes being somewhere in between. Homes sales are currently in the $130,000 to $160,000 range. Typical amenities include 3 to 4 bedrooms, 2 to 2.5 bathrooms, many homes have separate formal areas, the larger homes usually have game rooms, and all homes have 2 car garages.

Country Meadows has a homeowner's association. There are however no subdivision amenities; although there is a vacant lot that may become a park some day. On the plus side the subdivision is NOT in a MUD district. The tax rate is $2.31 per 100 home value. This helps to keep the property taxes fairly reasonable. Being located in Tomball the subdivision has all the Tomball city amenities such as water, trash, sewer and gas.

The subdivision is in the highly acclaimed Tomball ISD. The High School is Tomball, the middle school is Beckendorf and the elementary is Tomball.

It is hard to find this price of a home in the city limits of Tomball so this makes Country Forest a bit of a hidden treasure.

For all your Tomball TX Real Estate needs, contact me today!
Marchel Peterson
Results Realty
Cell: 832-721-8332

Photos are for illustration purposes only and do not necessarily represent current or past listings.

Continuing on with my series on the 100 websites PC World recommended the websites in this post are about planning a vacation. 

Planning a vacation is something that we as self employed individuals find hard to do.  For a long time I was letting real estate rule my life but no longer I plan vacations and I take them.  As you well know as soon as you plan a trip one of your listings sell and someone needs a home ASAP.  When that happens and I have a planned vacation I have started referring them to a colleague and just taking a referral fee.  It took YEARS for me to get comfortable with that but if you are working the entire vacation it is NOT a vacation.  Don't get me wrong I also take trips where I know I'm going to be accessible (I like to travel) but once or maybe twice a year I plan a REAL vacation.  So here are websites to help you plan that trip:

http://www.tripit.com/ This program is still a beta site but it brings all your travel information to one place.  You will be able to add a profile, add your social networks it also allows you to add additional email addresses since we often use different emails when we travel. After spending time filling out my profile and adding my social networks I added my email addresses and found out Oops one of my email addresses is already a member.  I obviously joined a long time ago because I have no recollection and this site is not in my favorites on Internet Explorer.  Tripit has taken that in to account as I was able to merge the two accounts together. 

We are planning a trip this coming September to Newport Rhode Island and I found all kinds of useful information on tripit.  This is also a place to connect with your online friends and share your travel plans.  Somehow as soon as I entered my information I had an invitation from an online friend to connect.  This was one of my favorite travel sites that I checked out.  I'm not sure why it wasn't when I set it up previously but I LOVE it now.  I think it is probably because I am more in to social networking now than I was then.

http://www.kayak.com/ According to PC magazine this is the online travel agent dujour.  You put in your dates and destinations and Kayak brings back price quotes from most of the major airlines.  It also checks with Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity to make sure they are finding the best deal.  You can also check hotels with Kayak.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ This site offers the "wisdom of the crowd" view for travelers.  As I said earlier we are planning a trip this coming September to Newport Rhode Island.  We did a time share trade so I know where we are staying but this was great to find out about local attractions.  I can see a "10 mile drive" that we will want to take.  According to the site it is "10 miles of spectacular wide-open views of the Atlantic Ocean and miles of magnificent million-dollar mansions".  The cool thing about this site is that people who visit write reviews.  If you didn't know where you were going to be staying this would be a great place to go and check out the review before you checked in.  I love the fact that all these sites I saw are now saved in my favorites under my registration.

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/ This is your online guide to offbeat tourist attractions.  Continuing on with gathering information for our Newport trip I put Newport Rhode Island in. I found a 1940's fire truck atop a pub, a feet and the wave sidewalk statue but my favorite was the mysterious Viking tower.  "Did stone-stacking Vikings erect this tower, thus making it the oldest building in America? Not counting anything built by the Indians, of course? Roadsideamerica.com Report...".

http://www.planeteye.com/ You can plan your whole trip here, airline tickets, hotel and attractions. For our trip we already have the accommodations and airline taken care of so I was mainly interested in the attractions.  You can set a travel pack and then add the components you want.  You plug in the place you want to go and it brings up the attractions, dining, and activities.  I was impressed with what I saw.

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/ What I liked best about this site was the Thorn Tree Forum.  You can ask a question about places you would like to visit and then follow the thread.  It is my understanding that many of the post are by people who have been to the destinations several times.

This is my third in the series of websites from PC World.  If you would like to visit the other two you will find them at:

Websites about "Buying, Selling and Renting Stuff"!!

Websites about "Learning Stuff"!!

For all your Spring TX Real Estate needs, contact me today!
Marchel Peterson
Results Realty
Cell: 832-721-8332

I'm continuing on with my series on the 100 websites PC World recommended.  Well kind of; this is my version so I am adding and deleting because I can.

These websites are about buying, selling and renting stuff.

http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites   This was the first site on PC Magazines buying list and I have to admit it is the first on ours also.  We love CRAIGSLIST.  We bought our Canon Rebel XTi on craigslist and then also bought a flash for the camera.  We then sold one of the lenses that came with the camera.  We have also bought and sold cars off of Craigslist.

http://www.freecycle.org/ You need to be careful you put .org in and not .com.  I thought they were nuts to begin with as I was pulling up a site about cycling.  This site is cycling with a twist you are basically recycling your stuff.  This is a grassroots, nonprofit site that connects (Via Yahoo Groups) people who might like to trade items within their own community.  It can work well to have someone come and get something that you don't want.  I guess this comes back to one man's garbage is another man's treasure.  Everything posted must be FREE!!

http://us.zilok.com/ This site is TOTALLY focused on Renting.  The site host rental listings from people in your community for just about anything.  I looked in my area and you could rent anything from camera lenses, to a clearing saw to an RV.  You can either rent stuff or sign up to rent your stuff.  On their website they explain how you go about renting things or having items available to be rented.  This would work for those times when you only needed an item for a few days but really didn't want to buy it. 

http://www.carsdirect.com/home This is a great place to buy a car online.  According to PC World this is the only web site of its kind that instantly shows you a buy-it-now price with no haggling.  I don't know about you but I would almost rather go to the dentist than got to a car lot (used or new).  This is a way to get around the ordeal and make it less painless.

http://www.greenzer.com/ This site brings environmental safe products to the consumer.  They look for companies that walk the walk and are making products that are environmentally sound.    They describe it best in their own words "Greenzer is a next-generation shopping engine designed to make environmentally conscious shopping easier. At Greenzer, we're building a unique service for consumers to browse, compare and shop thousands of greener products from dozens of our carefully chosen merchant partners."  You sign up for a free account and start shopping.

http://www.amazon.com/ I'm not sure why Amazon was not on the PC's list but I couldn't talk about where to shop online without talking about Amazon. I love their wish list function.  My young adult children make a wish list and then I let my fingers do the shopping.  I am not a big shopper and this saves me from driving around trying to find these items.  I found out this last Christmas that when I ordered directly from my daughter's wish list it blocks her from knowing that I have ordered the item but stops anyone else from ordering the same item.  I learned that one the hard way by looking at her list but then not ordering from the list.  We ended up with a couple of duplicate items last year from her friends going on the wish list and ordering the correct way.

http://www.ebay.com/  Ebay was also not mentioned but it is another of my favorite shopping places.  We have ordered all kinds of items off of ebay; some popular and others that were not.  We have ordered a lot of items for our sail boat.  Now if it is a popular item you might be in a bidding war but I love that part of the process.  There's something that gets the adrenalin going when you are bidding against someone else.  The last few seconds of the bid can make the difference between winning the item or not.  Now I set a limit as to what I want to pay so I don't get caught up in the moment.

As I said this is my second in a series about Useful websites.  If you would like to visit my first it is at:  Websites about "Learning Stuff"!!

For all your Spring TX Real Estate needs, contact me today!
Marchel Peterson
Results Realty
Cell: 832-721-8332

In the current issue of PC World they give a section on 100 useful web sites.  I found some of these to be really interesting.  I am slowly visiting them and I am forwarding my favorites on.

This is going to be a series and the first are websites about Learning Stuff. I am only forwarding the FREE sites so none of these cost. 

http://answers.yahoo.com/ I use Yahoo as my home page and have visited this site before.  You can ask questions and then get answers back.  I believe my question was "I think my cat has eaten rat poisoning; what do I do?"  This was quite a few months ago and I didn't wait for the answer but went immediately to the vet.  As it turned out he had not eaten rat poisoning but was sick from an infected flea bit.  It is a cool way to ask questions and get answers though.   Other visitors rate the answer on usefulness.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/ This site is all about learning how stuff works.  You can learn about the history of NASCAR or find out about vulture vomit.  We have vultures that hang out at our Yacht Club and now hearing about that I will make sure not to scare any.  Is a cyber war coming; this is the place to check it out.

http://www.instructables.com/ This is the site for the do it yourselfer.  Find out how to make things yourself.  You can find out how to make an ice pack vest for your horse or how to of braid your horse's tail.  There's instruction on art, crafts, food, games, etc. etc. etc.  If you are thinking green you can go and learn how to make your own LED light bulbs.

http://www.fixya.com/  This is a site for technical support, manuals and troubleshooting for consumers.  Now this is a REALLY cool site.  Say you are having problems with a lap top or a digital camera you can go and ask one of their top experts.  At the moment I have everything running but there have been a number of times where I have needed technical help with my gadgets.  With this site you can either post a message on the site or have a live chat with one of the experts.

http://www.livemocha.com/ This is a free new approach to learning languages.  You can connect with native speakers around the world.  This gives you the opportunity to learn, practice, share and connect.  If you are planning that trip to Italy here's the place to start learning the language and the best part it is FREE.

http://www.about.com/ This one was not on PC's list but I added it as it is where I go to find out about just about anything.  You can go here to solve a problem, get something done or make a decision.  You can browse their channels or explore topics.

http://dictionary.reference.com/ and http://thesaurus.reference.com/ I have to admit these were already on my favorites as my spelling is not what it used to be.  I often use the thesaurus to come up with a different name for the same word.

http://www.anywho.com/ You can find anyone here as this is your white and yellow pages on line.  Thanks Fred Doleac for sharing anywho.

If you have some other website that fit in to the "learning stuff" category please let me know and I will add them to my list.

For all your Spring TX Real Estate needs, contact me today!
Marchel Peterson
Results Realty
Cell: 832-721-8332

TBPW Fall Food Fest 2008 - A success!!

Tomball Business and Professional Women recently completed their 10^thannual Fall Food Fest.  The TBPW Fall Food Fest is our yearly fundraiser to raise funds for scholarships and others in need.

I have been involved with the Fall Food Fest since its inception and I think this was probably one of the most successful fundraisers yet.  I had some concerns going in to the event. Normally we spend our September meeting going over everything but at the September meeting the majority of our membership was still without power from Hurricane Ike so we didn't even have a September meeting.  We had also changed locations this year from the Lone star Tomball College back to what was an original location of Tomball United Methodist Church on Baker Street.  With Hurricane Ike it kind of felt like we were throwing it together but with a lot of dedicated members it all came together.

We had eleven restaurants participate with some incredibly yummy food. 

Image Catering- A sample of their finger foods

Klein's Super Market- Desserts from their bakery

Mel's Country Cafe- chicken fingers and blueberry cobbler

Easy Made Meals- samples of their meals

Main Street Crossing- Chicken salad and mandarin orange salad

Wings, Pizza and Things - Pizza

Pecos Grill - roast, mashed potatoes with gravy and green beans

Kema Seafood House- Assorted fish

Culinary Events - Samples

Trail Mix Coffee House - Coffee, smoothies and trail mix

Gingerbread House - Cookies and Sandwiches

There was a silent auction with a wonderful assortment of items available for the auction.  You can see from all the activity that the silent auction was a popular item at our Fall Food Fest.  Our membership really stepped up to the plate finding all these auction items to donate. 

There was a raffle with some great raffle items available.  We had five raffle items from a 42" flat screen tv, diamond earrings to a smoker.  The winners were picked and announced at the event.

Last year we were able to give six $1000 scholarships and we should be able to give close to that many scholarships this year.