Last night we attended the Broadway production of Phantom of the Opera. This was a special treat and I took advantage of discounted tickets offered through my employer. I opted for this as my birthday present to myself and I have absolutely no regrets!

My husband and I had seen Phantom over 20 years ago in Los Angeles and I’ve always had such wonderful memories of the performance and had even told my daughter all about it numerous times. When the opportunity to buy tickets came up, I jumped on it. I even took advantage of paying in advance for our valet parking which really turned out to be a blessing.

The performance, while it didn’t quite live up to the LA performance, was fantastic. There were a few singing issues and the voices weren’t as strong as Michael Crawford, but still, extremely enjoyable. Our seats were very good and the view was excellent. I was disappointed in the theater because they allowed people to continue entering even after the performance had started. I don’t mean for just a few minutes after, but the entire show there seemed to be people coming and going. This was distracting and, at times, while people were walking down the aisle, blocked our view which was annoying.

So, the performance of Phantom of the Opera I give an A. The Music Hall at Fair Park in Dallas, I give a B.

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I can’t even say I’ve been overly busy, although, I have been busy! I just really seem to have been out of the blogging mood lately. This is my secondary blog, and I haven’t felt much like blogging on my primary blog, so this one has definitely been in hiatus and I’m sorry about that!

Right now we’re getting a record snow fall here in Dallas, the largest snowfall in 30 years. That’s ironic since the reason my husband wanted to move here from Chicago was to get away from the snow. Oh well!

I’ll try to post photos later. The dog sure loves it. We’ve got about 6 inches on the ground and she likes to run around biting it. She’s pretty funny to watch.

I’ll try to stay more current here, I promise!

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This is Fran & Marlo Cowan, married for 62 years! I could only pray to be so happy with my spouse!

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Please visit my other site to enter my Holiday Gift Giving Giveaway!. It’s very simple to enter, just leave a comment on that post telling me your favorite hand made item you’ve ever given or received. The prize is a wonderful eBook from www.youcanmakethis.com. The contest ends this Friday at 11:59pm, so don’t wait around!

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I wrote a fully detailed article listing over 20 websites that pay you to blog online and which ones worked best for my and my own blogs.  This article is to help bloggers who are trying to monetize their blogs and be able to make some extra money while doing what they already love to do.

Some of the sites that work best for me include SocialSpark, PayPerPost Version 4, BlogsVertise but I have recently been making almost $50 per month from my twitter account with SponsoredTweets and Ad.Ly both of which pay you to advertise with your twitter profile but you have full control over what you want to promote (no auto DM’s and no spamming).

Google AdSense works best over the Chitika, Kontera and other context links and ad programs on my own blogs.

I can tell you that I have never had any success with Smorty, Blogger Wave, LoudLaunch or LinkFromBlog.

This is a snippet and sample of my full detailed article on the top companies to earn money blogging, if you enjoyed the article come over and read the full article and share any services you may have used that I don’t have listed in my article.

-Dragon Blogger

Reminder:  This is a sponsored guest post.

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My comment email responder isn’t working properly.  It’s probably something minor, but I’m easily frustrated and intimidated when it comes to technical stuff and looking at blog code falls right into that category!

Forgive me if I’m not responding!

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Just wanted to send a quick “shout-out” across the Pacific to my friend Ali in sunny Honolulu, Hawaii!

Ali runs the airfare-now.com website with all kinds of tips, coupons, strategies, etc. for findng holiday airfare deals. Now airfare comparison travel sites have come a long way in the past few years but there are still literally thousands of them to choose from. So here’s a big aloha and mahalo to Ali for keeping it simple on a pretty nifty little travel website!

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