While talking to my sister, we were talking about how our kids were doing in school.  You see, we talk quite often about our experiences raising children and how good (and bad) things are.

For the most part, our experiences have been good, but her daughter, Claire, has been having problems with the coursework in school.  They have tried to help her with her problems, but so far nothing has worked.  At the rate things were going, she would have to repeat her year at school.

While at the bookstore the other day, I found some books that covered the A Level Coursework and GCSE Coursework that she was having problems with.  I bought them and took them to the post office to send to my niece.

I hope that the books help her as it wouldn’t be good if she had to repeat a grade.  I know her sister that is a year younger than her, wouldn’t let her live it down.

I have been fascinated with eBay for some time now.  You see, I bought a number of baseball cards on there over the years and I have found some really good bargains.

But, I felt it was time to get rid of my hockey card collection.  Some of the cards I have date back to the early 1980s and are worth a pretty penny.  But, I am moving shortly and I figured that it would be better to sell them than risk losing them when I moved.

I was looking for the best ebook about eBay.  Sure, I had bought an eBay ebook or two in the past, but they were so outdated now, that I feared they would be useless.

So I have been looking at ebooks download sites to see if I can find a good one, but so far, I have had little luck.  I just hope I will be able to find one soon, as I need to pack what little I have left - especially if I won’t be selling my hockey cards before I move.

I have a nephew that is in college that I am very close to.  In some respects, I am like a second father to him.  He is currently in his first year of college and hopes to be a psychologist some day.

One of his biggest challenges is thesis writing.  Though he has always been good in math, the whole writing in English is another story.  In fact, the first dissertation that he wrote for college, he received a failing grade.  That is not good.

I thought that maybe there might be someone that taught how to write a dissertation properly.  I did a quick search in the phonebook and found a company that offered classes on how to write an essay.

I have signed him up for the course, and it will be all day Saturday.  I just hope it is enough to help him become a better writer, or his status as a student might be in jeopardy.

I learned a few new things today.  My day started off as normal with unplugging my mobile phone from the wall and turning it on.  Now, that may seem a bit weird for some of you, but my business phone is only on during business hours, and if there is something important that someone needs, they can leave a message.

As I was turning on the phone I was looking at the screen.  Ever since I bought the phone, it has shown me new products or services offered by many companies.  After I bought it, I figured out that one of the SIM applications on the phone was designed to show ads to me when I turned it on.  Instead of taking it back, I have taken the attitude that I can learn something new from my phone everyday.

Today I learned about a local company that specializes in card encoding for gift cards.  On the phone, their rates were displayed and they were quite reasonable.  The best selling feature was the chip card readers that they offered that would allow your customer to use their gift cards while shopping online if they installed the reader in their computer.  Talk about cool!

I should be getting back to work, but it will be interesting to see what new thing I can learn about tomorrow when I turn my phone on.

I am a big advocate of learning something new everyday.  I make it a habit to learn something new, whether it be on purpose or just a result of my daily routine.

I always start my day with crossword puzzles.  I have a book that I sit down with at breakfast and work on at least a couple in the half hour I sit down to eat.  This gives my brain a little stretch before I get on with my day - and I tend to learn something new each time I do a new puzzle.

My learning continues throughout the day once I reach three in the afternoon.  I take a break from work and do some free online crossword puzzles - it breaks the monotony of work.  The best part of doing them online is there are thousands of free puzzles at my fingertips.  If I feel like doing a puzzle on a particular subject, I can find what I am looking for easily.

At the end of the day, before I go to bed I make my own puzzles using a free crossword puzzle maker I found.  I send the puzzles that I complete to my brother to try out - and he sends me some each day.  I find by creating my own puzzles, it helps give my mind a different perspective on crosswords - which helps me to solve puzzles quickly.

So, all I can suggest to you is make a habit of learning - if you do a bit each day, you will keep your mind sharp and keep learning.  The result:  your mind will not get old.

I sure get a lot of different types of junk mail in my mailbox (my real life one).  Now, most of the flyers I get end up getting recycled, but there was one today that caught my eye - and I would like to share what I read with you.

The title is what got me to read the pamphlet: "Parent Involvement: The Crisis our Children Face."  Now it sounded kind of gloomy, but I wanted to know what it was about.

Now as I was reading the pamphlet, the message was clear - due to the busier lifestyles that we are living parent involvement in education has declined over the past twenty years, resulting in a lower level of education for our children.  Now this doesn’t just mean lower grades in school, but our children are missing out on learning other life skills because of our choices with what we do with our time.

There has also been a decline in parent involvement in schools over the past twenty years.  This decline in involvement has meant that teachers have less individual time with the children - increasing the gap between the kids that don’t need help in school and those that too.  It follows the old adage that you can only go as slow as your slowest member - so there are times where the education level is not where it should be.

Whoa - I didn’t really have any idea that this was going on.  But now that I stop and think about it - it makes sense.  So for those of you that are parents listen up - get involved with your child’s life - they need you!

If you are like me, you are always trying to get an edge over your competition.  I read a lot of books, articles, magazines, do puzzles and play games in an effort to increase my brain power.  One of the easiest and most useful tools I have found (not to mention convenient) are crossword puzzles.

The real benefit of crossword puzzles may not be so apparent - most people would consider spelling to be the primary skill you learn from crosswords.  But really, the learning doesn’t stop there: you learn problem solving skills, learn about history, current events, celebrities, music, etc.  To be honest the possibilities are endless.  In fact, studies have shown that people who do some sort of mind puzzle daily are more likely to retain or even increase their cognitive abilities later in life.

Convenience also makes this brain challenging tool so much more attractive than other learning tasks.  I can do a crossword on the bus, on a plane ride, at breakfast, and even on my break at work.  Also, there is not much setup involved - either I can do the one in the newspaper, in a crossword book, or even do printable crossword puzzles I found online.

If you do crossword puzzles for a long time, you may feel that you have what it takes to make your own puzzles.  Take it from me, doing it on paper doesn’t look so pretty.  I did manage to find a free online crossword puzzle maker that was easy to use, and did infact create some nice, professional looking puzzles.