..and Over the Cubicle thought it was fascinating to see a snake sleeping and sunning in the tree.

For the record, I HATE SNAKES.

Detest them with a passion.

And I would even put a picture of a snake in here to jazz up the post but I don’t even want to Google them.

Instead, you will have to be entertained with 3 stories.

The first is the root of my psychological fear of snakes, the second is funny and the third makes me shudder at them even more.

Story #1: Why I hate snakes

I was always flipping through this set of encyclopedias my parents got suckered into buying when we were kids. Something about wanting us to read through the different topics for school, and to enrich our lives?

Whatevs. That was back in the day before the Internet.

Anyway, I used to flip through them, staring at pictures because I couldn’t read like my siblings yet, and I desperately wanted to pretend I was in school too.

And I flipped to the back of the “SH-SN” section and saw this HUGE HONKING picture of a snake eating this poor, sad looking furry, cute mouse.

His belly was already dotted half full with other little animals he had eaten, and this mouse was caught mid-bite in the picture.

Screamed, threw the book down, ran out crying and had to be soothed with promises of ice cream from my parents (I was banned from eating anything cold because of my severe asthma, and cold stuff caused a major reaction and sent me to the hospital), and the vow to put the book up in a high shelf where no one could go.

Did I ever get the ice cream? No. That may be why I am still deathly afraid of snakes, but who can say at this point?

And my siblings who were watching the whole thing, would grab the book by standing on a chair and run around the home torturing me with the picture to make me scream before our parents came home.

They only stopped once I started bawling because they couldn’t explain to my mom why I was crying on the verge of starting another asthma attack, and would try to soothe me before my parents came home and figured out what was going on.. and laid the all holy parental smack down on them.

Story #2: Accents are funny things

I was working in a very French office, with a girl who came from France at a young age, but kept her French accent and never really learned more than 200 English words.

And as you know, in French accents, pronouncing the “H” is quite difficult, or “TH” because they haven’t learned those sounds, as they don’t really exist in the French language.

Much like how “RRRR” and “BRE” sounds are hard to get right as an Anglophone.

We were talking about what we didn’t like.

FB: Je déteste les serpents. Vraiment! I hate snakes, truly!

Girl: Mais pour moi, je déteste les insectes. But for me, I hate insects.

… ride goes on …..

Girl: *thoughtfully* …… Eeets funny. You ‘ate snakes. And I ‘ate insects. Eeets so….

[cut off by me]

FB: ATE? ATE!?!?!?

Girl: Oui! ATE! ATE!

FB: ATE!? Comme à manger?!!? Like to eat?!!

Girl: NON! Comme à détestés! Like to dislike!

FB: *heart beating* I thought you said I liked to eat snakes!

See? Total visceral reaction and REJECTION to all ideas of snake anything.

I told her to use the word “I detest” from now on instead of “hate”.

BF does that sometimes too with the ate/hate thing and sometimes I don’t quite catch it right and think he ate someone or something equally strange.

FB: How was your day honey?

BF: I really ‘ate that co-worker I was telling you about.

FB: … Ate ….*motions eating*…..or HHHHHate?

BF: HHHHHate! *horking the word*

FB: Phew. Go on.

Story #3: Snakes may not make fun pets

There was a story about this girl, who had a pet snake.

(I may have told you this before)

She loved it. She even slept with the boa constrictor every night.

One day, the snake stopped eating completely and stretched out beside the girl at night.

This went on for a while.

Growing increasingly concerned, she brought the snake in to a vet, saying she was so scared her snake was going to die.

The vet told her the snake had to be killed.

The reason? Because the boa constrictor was measuring how tall and big she was.. SO IT COULD EAT HER.

Yeah. That’s all I’ve got.

Eyes Glaze Over wanted an explanation for why I was upping it to about 2 Pay Per Posts per day.

I clicked on this post to comment to complain about all of the recent sponsored posts, but now that I’ve gotten to the comment page, I see the explanation. *

Two posts per day that are sponsored is a little excessive and I feel kind of scammed when I get to the bottom and realize it’s sponsored.

It would have been really nice if you’d been upfront (without me having to go to the comment page) about why you’re doing all these posts or at least put that it’s sponsored at the beginning so that I can ignore it if I want to.

I totally respect your reason to do it, but it’s very unexpected to go from like 1 PPP a month (I’m not actually sure about this, but I know they were very rare on your site) to being inundated with them.

The explanation in my comment page was that I was going to basically try and make my spending money from PPP, but I made it a pact to myself to have to make DOUBLE what the item cost before I could buy it.

For example if a necklace is $25, I have to make $50 before I can buy it, so that I can save half.

So far, it’s been stopping me from wanting everything in sight. I just think of it in PPP posts and groan.

Why am I doing it? I think it’s pretty self-evident…. it’s FOR THE MONEY!

This is my blog, and I know you respect my decision to do it, but quite frankly, I really don’t have to explain myself to you at all.

So writing this post? Total courtesy to you.

I already have a Full Disclosure post on my sidebar that says from time to time, I will write posts not in your best interest located in my sidebar.

I think it’s pretty straightforward, even without needing an explanation why I’m doing it.

I don’t do it to annoy people.

I don’t do it to make people read sponsored posts out of some sheer, evil agenda.

I don’t do it for fun.

I do it FOR MONEY.

Especially when I am not on contract. I was on a contract before, so I didn’t have time to go to PPP, dream up posts, find something worth writing about (I’ve skipped over stupid ones just because I couldn’t feel like it could be put properly into a blog without sounding weird)… and I was making $4000/week.

I’m not doing that now. I’m not making ANY MONEY except with bit of Adsense and PayPerPost.

I need to stem the draining of my bank account, because it irritates me under the skin that I’m not working or making any money (just a habit from when I was younger, holding down 2-3 jobs), but I can’t live like a monk and constantly be pinching a dollar like when I was in debt.

My other alternative is I could just start asking you guys for money to donate to the site, but that’s just annoying and I’m not a beggar.

PPP Post $ amounts got better

PPP posts WERE rare on my site before, but I’ve started getting rare opportunities available at $10/post instead of $1/post.

Approximately $600/month COULD be earned (as a max), or a little over half my budget for
each month (I’m hedging more along the lines of $100/month COULD be possible now because $10 posts don’t come along every day. They’ve just been showing up in droves lately.)

Why the need to make money?

Sure, it’s a hobby. I started doing it for fun and not for money. And I am still doing it for fun and not for money.

But if I can make a little on the side (very little, considering the hours and amount of work that goes into this blog), I’m going to do it.

This is a small price to pay if my readers are going to read a couple of posts per day.

No one is paying me monthly stipends to link to their sites.

A lot of bloggers have these opps, I don’t.

And some bloggers make their money by having $25/month – $50/month payments just to have a link on their site, and they don’t irritate you with paid posts because they don’t have to do them.

Or, they make $100/month off Adsense.

I’ve made $2/month on average off Adsense so far because I am not slamming ads all over my website and compromising the layout and annoying people with ads up the wazoo.

Not all sponsored posts are bad

Most of my PPP Posts are (I think) fairly well written.

I actually put some thought into it, to make it entertaining. You didn’t even realize it was a sponsored post until you got near the end.

I am not saying stuff like “Pig Flu. Pig Flu. Click on this link” I am actually trying to make them interesting to read, even if they ARE sponsored posts. And some of the stuff that I’ve done posts for before, were interesting products like Zenni Optical that I ended up buying my current pair of glasses from.

I’ve always said that I’d promise to put “SPONSORED POST” on the post content so that everyone knew up front what the deal was.

If you want me to start lying, and to stop putting “SPONSORED POST” and to make you believe it’s a real post of my site, I am totally fine with doing that.

Skip past it in your RSS Reader if it really bothers you.

I’ll just start putting “SPONSORED POST” near the front so that you feel vindicated that you are making a point NOT to read a post that could actually be interesting, even if sponsored.

Bottom line:

Like I said, I don’t have to explain anything to you but thanks for voicing your disgust.

I’ve already talked about this a long time ago on my site, I have the Full Disclosure link at the bottom and I’ve been doing as I’ve promised in the past — telling you when it IS a Sponsored Post so that when you click on the links, you know I got paid for writing that.

And if you find the post interesting, and the links interesting… it’s all water under the bridge, because these advertisers are trying to get a message out to you like the one about swine flu, even if they paid me.

That’s it. Not that hard, I think.

P.S.

If any of you are truly irritated by my sponsored posts, AND would like to pay me $500/month to stop doing this, please contact me at: brokeinthecity at gmail dot com and I would be more than happy to stop.

I know y’all think I’m some sort of harsh bitch for writing this kind of post basically laying it out for you.. but that’s why you come to the site.

Because I have an opinion.

If you didn’t like it before because you felt I was being too harsh and I should be more marshmallow-y, then you would have left for another blogger who fit your style. It’s just the truth.

I don’t read certain bloggers because I don’t like their style. That’s it.

I unsubscribe and move on.

I expect you to do the same.

I know, I’ve been a bad Traveling FB. I took these trips in April….

But better late than never! As promised – Boston in pictures.

Will keep it tlog style (pictures, very little talking) for reasons of laziness and a sprinkle of forgetfulness.

We didn’t buy a pass or anything there to get around. Boston was so small (for us) that walking everywhere was fine. We were also only there for 1.5 days and the .5 of the day was spent travelling to New Hampshire to fly to Chicago, so it wasn’t as though we could have really done everything but I think we felt the heart of the city.

The Bulfinch Hotel (Bulsh*t Hotel we called it)

Originally $399/night, we paid $70/night.

Guess we couldn’t complain much.. but still, they could have PRETENDED we paid $399/night.

Now we’ll never actually go back there if it was full price.

• Room was tiny (you’re going to see, we were crowded in there. Smaller than half a studio)
• They gave us the tiniest hotel room in the entire building, yet half the hotel was EMPTY with larger rooms. Hello? Customer service? Could they not have given us a semi-decent room, considering every room was empty!?
• Had rowdy party crowds on our floor. Bar sluts screaming and talking so goddamn loud I want to scream. I woke up at 2 a.m. to some chick’s incessantly loud, shrill voice, banged on their door and told them to keep the party down.
• No Food TV channel (wtf?)
• Place had a weird heating/air conditioning system. We broke open the regulator just so we could turn the heat up/down
• Kind of expected more. At least, more space.
• No wi-fi, I had to plug in the cord just to surf the net.

At least they had cool original art instead of stupid floral prints.

And they had this cool soap. The box basically says they cut out the middle of the soap because no one uses it, so it was a waste of soap, but this one was molded to your hands (it was!) and more eco-friendly.

If they wanted to be more eco-friendly, they could have given us a smaller piece of soap. Like half, especially since these get tossed after each customer.

The downtown-ish area of Boston

Note the streets are Summer & Winter?

Naturally had to stop into a DSW. We don’t have these in Canada.

And here is the famous Opera House, of course.

Near the Omni Parker House where we had clam chowder.

My saviours on the trip. Tape to wrap around my foot joints and blister block. (FB Read: Prevent Blisters)

This was kind of a cool market, but not exactly something we found really incredible.

The ceilings inside Quincy Market

And the inside. Kind of commercial.

Faneuil Hall. A must miss place.

The inside of a tourist trap called Fanueil Hall.

Saw a hawk.

Artistic shot near the Italian area.

Paul Revere’s house (gloomy looking grey one)

Architecture in the Italian area is gorgeous.

A must-go-to-eat place. Mike’s Pastry.

I have dreams about this cannoli and its delicious custard filling.

Wow look! It’s just like home! (Montreal) Awful streets, lots of potholes.. er.. actually, this is better than home. Montreal has potholes the size of beaver traps.

Totally random dollhouse outside.

Boston Harbour. Very relaxing.

The famous bridges on the way to the harbour.

We called this the “Gold Building”.

And this was across the gold building.

Walked around a historic part of Boston – Beacon Hill. Love the tree.

Beautiful architecture in Beacon Hill.

We saw a lot of what they call “Chads and Trixies” there, or tie-wearing, sweater-dofffing prep school guys and their J. Crew wives.

The guys were kind of creepy. They were so.. bland.

BF was laughing at their little sweater sets and snickering.

This is.. also like home in Old Montreal but better maintained/kept.

Cute carousels in the display.

Around Beacon Hill area..

They also had a lot of these steps leading down to doors.

BF said it was like being in England

And everyone in this neighbourhood had flowers in their planters.

Awww….

We. Love. Whole. Foods. But nothing beats the New York location. We were drooling at the amount of fresh, quality produce available, there.

Boston didn’t have as much choice as in NYC, but it was still far better than what we had in Montreal.

I forget if it was at this location in Boston, but I hate some pretty awesome pizza. Couldn’t find this quality of pizza in Chicago, surprisingly…

On the way to the Mapparium we saw this huge, gorgeous building. BF said it was like being transported back to France.

Inside the Mapparium, which WE MISSED because they were closed Mondays, and we arrived on a SUNDAY too late for the last showing.

Arg.

Still, the place was kind of cool.

Everyone loves a lil’ fat disco man.

Again, stunning buildings.

Cute church.

Around the shopping district. I forget the name. High end stores in this area.

In the park

They had these yellow things hanging. No idea what they mean. Found them cool. Easter maybe? They looked like eggs.

It was really calm and relaxing. I felt more at peace here than in Central Park in New York.

My favourite park of all.

And we saw these guys EVERYWHERE.

I don’t have any clue what they were doing. At first, I thought they were promoting cheese for some reason….

Their Chinatown. Quite small. Only shining star was Penang Restaurant.

LOVED that we found a Penang in Boston. This was just like the one in New York’s Chinatown.

Nearing the Italian Area

More architecture. A lot of the alley ways were like this, I could almost picture it back in the day, people dressed in costumes, doffing hats at one another..

Entrances. I love the geometric shapes.

Central Station where we took the Greyhound to Manchester Airport in New Hampshire before flying to Chicago. Was cheaper.

Near to our hotel. Just a quaint area.

And they had a monument to the Holocaust there. Extremely touching.

All their numbers.

Eerie to have the slight twinge of fear for what they went through, being gassed.

And just because you made it so far without sleeping…!

Fashion CRIMES

It was seriously cold the first couple of days.

COMING SOON: Chicago, Parts 1 and 2.

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