Since I have got my real estate license, there are lots of friends try to talk to me out of the business, they always mention that it is such a bad time now and you would not be able to make anything. But I still believe that real estate has potential, such as in the neighborhood that I live, the real estate price has gone up for more than 30% for the last two years. Now when I look back, I always feel regret about how come we did not buy a place when we first move to the neighborhood, as if we did we would be able to get a much bigger place for the same amount of money. But on the other hand, I feel lucky that we have bought our place last year, as the neighborhood is booming, there are new constructions going on, the price must be going up too.

I have a friend lives in Virginia and she told me that the virginia real estate has lots of potential as there are good schools around it and people likes the neighborhood, lots of trees and good communities. I know that there are lots of people are panic about the real estate market now, but as for a long run, it is still a good market to invest!

We went to Harry’s birthday at the pump it up yesterday. We had a fun time. There are lots of big inflammables, Elizabeth was not happy before we went to the party but she was very excited to see all the big thing and started to try out on each one of it. I went up one with her and slide down together, she was laughing and so happy, so we tried another 5 times, I was so hungry when it’s time to eat, the pizza were from the Tomato Head, very delicious, we had a good time.

We have been talking about to use a third party for our backup for sometime. We have been using two different computers to back up all of our files. But these two computers are all at our house, so if there is anything happens, we will not be happy about it. So we surfed online and found IDrive - Online Backup, which provide online backup for small businesses. We can do scheduled automated backup. Such as every Monday morning. Or we could use the custom selection to pick the frequency of the backup. This will be very convenient as sometimes my husband would run some large files so it would be nice to backup immediately.

Their recent enhancements include ability to manage backups via browser from anywhere. One can modify backup sets and create or modify schedules directly via browser. This is very nice for us to use.

Their charge is quite reasonable too compare to other online backup companies. Plus they did have the SAS 70 audit report to guarantee us that our data will be secure, which is the most important. As you do not want to send your data to just anyone on the street, since there are so many identity theft cases around.

Elizabeth and me went to the Lincoln park zoo yesterday, she enjoyed seeing the big lions outside, then they both went inside. We turned around and found that it’s feeding time for the sea lions, the instructor was training the sea lion Tinkerly. Tinkerly is very smart, she knows to follow the instructor, do flip, go higher out of the water, climb out on shore, of course each time she has a good reward. When she climbed out, wow, she is huge, I do not know how she managed to move, must be strong muscles.

I remember that 4 years ago while I was travelling in Denver, I noticed that there are lots of small rental places which have the payday loans sign. At first I did not understand why there are so many people can’t wait to get their paycheck, instead, they have to pay a fee to get their pay check cashed earlier for just a couple of days. Now since the job market is not good, lots of people lost their jobs. Even I myself have been staying at home for more than 6 months, I mean technical speaking you can’t say that I stayed home since I also work as a real estate agent, but there is really not much to do these days. I heard people in my area are starting to change jobs, even the lenders some lenders have to switch jobs too. The interesting situation is that some of the deals have been agreed by the buyer and seller, however, when the lender re evaluate the property, he decided not to lend the money since the value is lower than the agreed price. Therefore, the buyer could not be able to get a loan so that he could not move forward. Right now if you have a good credit it is going to help you big time.