Melinda’s Musings

I have a bad habit of collecting domain names and have been parking them with Sedo Parking for a while in an attempt to make a few bucks by having ads on the domains. The idea is that I would make enough to at least support my habit and have the domains pay for themselves through ad clicks. A few months ago Google made its Adsense for Domains available to regular folks so I finally got around to trying it out at the beginning of March. I took one of my domains that I had parked with Sedo and switched it to use Google Adsense for Domains. I wanted to see how it would perform before I moved all of my domains over.

Google Adsense for Domains is like all other Google products, very minimalistic. It doesn’t have as nice of reporting capabilities as Sedo and the template choices are very limited. Also, it is somewhat cumbersome to set up the domain with Adsense and could be time consuming for a large numer of domains. But the real issue is, how does it stack up as far as ad revenue? I suppose it would be better if I had more than a month’s worth of statistics, but it is probably a pretty good indication of how it will do in the future. Here is the low down:

Google Adsense for Domains:
March $15.09

Sedo Parking:
December: $5.83
January: $7.42
February $3.65

I thought I would include three months of Sedo data for a better average. It looks like Google Adsense is the clear winner here in the money department, just as I suspected it would be since it is cutting out the middle man. The difference is pretty significant. Now I will be working on switching over all of my other domains. I know I’m not going to get rich since I don’t have any really good domain names that people would just type in on accident or domain name misspellings, but if I can make enough to have the domains pay for themselves, I will be happy. Then one day when (or if) I actually get around to developing them into money making sites, I will be glad I kept them.

Day 5 was our last official day of staycation (since I’m not counting the weekend). We decided to check out a couple of local museums. We went to the James A. Ramage Civil War Museum in Fort Wright, Kentucky. This is only about 15 minutes from where we live and we had passed it several times but never had a chance to check it out. It is run by volunteers and is free admittance, they do have a donation box available. The museum showcases the part that Fort Wright played in the Civil War and also has many interesting artifacts from the war. From cannon balls to Confederate money. The volunteers were very knowledgeable and even showed us where some archeology students from a local college are doing an archeological dig on the grounds and have uncovered several artifacts. It is definitely worth a visit.

Slave holding pen

We decided to stop for lunch at Montgomery Inn located in nearby Fort Mitchell. This is our all time favorite barbecue place. I had a delicious pulled pork sandwich. After our lunch it was on to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in downtown Cincinnati. We had a bit of a theme for our museums. As many times as I had walked by the Freedom Center, I had never actually been there. I am so glad I finally made it, it is an excellent museum. We did the included audio tour and it really makes the museum come alive. They even have a log cabin that was used as a place to house slaves while the slave traders were waiting to sell them. It was taken apart and put back together inside the museum. While it is disturbing to look back at that part of our nation’s history, it also shows us how far we have come.  I highly recommend checking out the Freedom Center if you have a chance. We closed out our last day of staycation by having dinner and hanging out with some friends.

One of the newly mulched beds

Since we didn’t get our mulching finished on Day 3 of Staycation we finished it up Thursday morning. It was nice to have it all finished and the yard is ready for summer. Jake also worked on his traffic light project in the garage which involves hooking up a traffic light and sensors so that when we pull into the garage, the red light tells us when to stop. The old hanging tennis ball just doesn’t have the same appeal.

Thursday night, Jake had a surprise for me. He took me out to dinner at Brio Tuscan Grille at Newport on the Levee. This is one of my favorite places to go but we don’t get there very often. He had another surprise planned but unfortunately, it was foiled by the weather. It was apparently something outside and since it was getting ready to rain, it wasn’t going to work out. So we consoled ourselves with dessert at Coldstone Creamery and also took a walk across the Purple People Bridge before the rain set in. Then it was on to browsing at Barnes & Noble, one of my favorite things to do. It was still a fun evening even if the surprise didn’t work out, he wouldn’t tell me what it was though because he still plans to surprise me sometime when the weather is better.

We decided that one day of our staycation we should get the yard in order for summer. We pruned some of the bushes since they were getting scraggly. We edged and mowed the grass and also put mulch in the landscaping. We ran out and didn’t have enough to finish, it is always hard to estimate how much to get. Since we were facilitating our Financial Peace University class Wednesday night, we didn’t have time to go get more and finish unfortunately. But that was okay since we still had the rest of the week for staycationing. After FPU, we went to Starbucks and hung out with some friends which was nice. Normally we would be rushing home to go to bed since we have to get up early for work. Then we made a trip to the evil empire of Super Wal-Mart on the way home and got some more mulch. Just FYI, there is hardly anyone there on a Wednesday night at 11 p.m. It’s a great time to shop.

Our second day of staycation proved to be more interesting than the first. We planned a day trip to Nonesuch, Kentucky about an hour and a half from where we live. It is near Lexington, Kentucky, but it named appropriately because there isn’t much there! It is a beautiful drive through horse country though. The main attraction there is the Irish Acres Gallery and The Glitz restaurant. We met my parents there for lunch. See my review of The Glitz for the low down on the restaurant. After a lovely lunch, we browsed over the gallery. It is a huge building that used to be a school but has been renovated into an antique gallery. According to their somewhat outdated looking website, the building is 32,000 square feet. While their web site might need some work, their gallery certainly doesn’t. It is gorgeous the way it has been set up. It is chock full of antiques and each room is beautifully decorated. Even if a person isn’t into antiques, it is still worth a visit just to see everything. They have everything from affordable antiques to a bedroom suite for $42,000!

After spending the bulk of the afternoon at Irish Acres, we were ready for some refreshment. We stopped at a (somewhat) nearby Dairy Queen and also made a stop at Starbucks so I could get a chai latte that I had been craving. It was a lot of fun and great to see something in the vicinity that we hadn’t seen before.

The Glitz Restaurant is located in Nonesuch, Kentucky which is near Lexington. Jake and I went there with my parents as part of a day trip on a staycation (link) we were on. The Glitz is open for lunch Tuesday through Saturday, it is a three course meal for $19.95 and reservations are required. They change the menu bi-weekly so there is always something different to choose from. As soon as we were seated, we were served the spiced apple refresher which was delicious. It was served in chilled champagne glasses and the bottom was ice with a cherry frozen inside. When we were there, for the appetizer course the choices were Irish potato soup, crab or avacodo appetizers. The main entree was salmon en croute or chicken lasagna florentine, both served with a salad and The Glitz’s signature poppy seed salad dressing. For dessert we could choose from the Nonesuch kiss which is their signature dessert of jamoca ice cream, meringue, chocolate fudge and almonds. The peach melba crepes or wild berry sorbet were the other selections.

I chose the potato soup for my appetizer and it was creamy and delicious. The chicken lasagna florentine was my entree and it was excellent. It was very flavorful and hearty. The salad was also wonderful and I liked the poppy seed dressing so much, that I bought a bottle of it. The peach melba crepes dessert was also excellent. It was served with a small shortbread cookie and scoop of vanilla ice cream. The service was good for the most part but did drag a little toward the end. We had to wait a bit for our check.

The restaurant is decorated beautifully, it is really hard to describe. It is somewhat dark and the ambiance is nice. There are a lot of clear glass globes and decorative white lights on the ceiling and give it almost a fairy tale look. Overall, our visit to The Glitz was a good one and definitely something I would recommend.

On Monday, the first official day of staycation, Jake and I decided to sleep in and relax a little. We also worked out and took a nice run outside. Since we didn’t have a plan, it ended up being almost dinner time by the time we were finished. We also had some errands we needed to run and grabbed some dinner while we were out. One of the things we wanted to do on our staycation is work on the yard so we bought some mulch for our landscaping. We also bought some storage bins so that we can organize a messy closet. I know, so far staycation doesn’t sound too thrilling but day 2 should be more interesting. It is nice to sleep in and do things at our own pace instead of working all day and then coming home and trying to get everything squeezed into an evening. Our cat Gracie is already a fan of staycations, she likes having us home and not being left alone to have someone else come in and feed her.