Hey with the holidays coming up soon I bet quite a few of you are beginning to do your shopping. If you are you might want to visit Kickstime.com where you can take advantage of their back in business sale and get some great deals!

If you need to buy shoes for the kids or yourself take a look at their selection of Air Jordans, Bathing Apes and Air Dunks - both of which are on sale right now.

Of course they don’t just sell running shoes. They have a selection of Prada and Gucci shoes as well as Red Monkey Jeans, Evisu jeans, hoodies, shirts, handbags and hats.

The company is based in London, England but they ship world wide. I always appreciate an online store that offers international shipping. As well as shipping worldwide they ship for free!

Another thing that I like about this company is that there are several ways to contact them if need be. You can write to them using their postal address or by email or call their toll free number. Most online stores don’t offer a telephone number let alone a toll free one so I appreciate that Kickstime.com does this.

As I said if you are starting to shop for the holidays visit this online store. You might find an item that would make a perfect gift for one of your friends or relatives.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a debt card that you could use to pay for purchases on the internet or top up with cash and use pretty much anywhere in the world?

Well, there are such debit cards. It’s called the EPAY debit card.

The EPAY Premium debit card is internationally accepted. You really don’t need any other debit cards as this card will be sufficient for all your needs. For example, you can withdraw money from over 1 million ATM machines worldwide, and it can be used for secure online money transfer.

You can use the EPAY debit card exactly like you would your favorite credit cards to make purchases, book trips or pay for service. In fact it’s accepted in all major point of sales.

My wife and I actually do quite a bit of work over the internet. Some companies pay us by check for our services, but most pay online using another popular service. We think that’s great, but we can’t use our money until we transfer it to our bank accounts. There is no debit card with that particular company for international members. I’d love it if we could be paid through EPAY as we’d be able to use the money we’ve earned right away with the EPAY debit card. I’m certain that others who get paid online would love to have access to their money right away instead of having to wait up to a week for it to transfer to their local bank.

EPAY has much more than convenient debit cards. You can visit their online site to make online money exchanges or send or receive money from any country. It’s easy too. Epay can be used via email, SMS or as I said - online.

Another great feature of EPAY is that you can send or receive money from any Country. If you need to send money to a friend, relative or pay a bill you can send money instantly. Did I mention that there are no limits? Some companies only let you send or receive a certain amount of money. That doesn’t happen with EPAY.

If you are a merchant you can use EPAY’s universal payment system in your online store to accept payments from clients. Even if your clients aren’t yet registered with EPAY they can still pay directly into your account using bank transfers, pecunix or e-gold. Payments are made using EPAY in the most popular currencies - USD and EUR.

I really do think this is a great service. I think I might create and account and give EPAY a try.

It’s amazing what you’ll find if you stare at your food long enough. Bodega Chocolates in Fountain Valley California says it found a 2 1/2 inch piece of chocolate that resembles the virgin Mary. A worker noticed the glob of chocolate in a mixing vat and thought that it had an amazing likeness to the Virgin Mary standing in prayer. “It’s absolutely a miracle,” said Jacinto Santacruz, 26, a Roman Catholic who in August discovered the 2 ½-inch-tall apparition at Bodega Chocolates.

This isn’t the first time that we’ve heard of religious images appearing in food or other items, for example they’ve been seen in bricks, logs, the gritty underpass of a Chicago expressway, a Tennessee coffee shop called Bongo Java and, last month, a tiny gold nugget found in the Arizona desert.

In 1977, a woman making burritos in Lake Arthur, N.M., saw the face of Jesus in the pattern of skillet burns on a tortilla. She was so enthralled by the tortilla that she built a shrine to house the Jesus tortilla, which was blessed by a priest, and thousands of people from across the country came to gaze and pray for its divine assistance in healing their ailments.

Muslims have also found Arabic script for Allah or Muhammad on fish scales, chicken eggs, lambs and beans.

Scientists call this phenomenon Pareidolia, the perception of patterns where none is intended. One professor who has studied this phenomenon says that it’s really just how humans are hard wired - “It’s really part of our basic perceptual and cognitive situation,” said Guthrie, a cultural anthropologist, retired Fordham University professor and author of “Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion.”

“It has to do with all kinds of misapprehensions that there is something humanlike in one’s environment, when really there’s not.”

At the root of the phenomenon, he said, is the survival instinct.

“It’s a built-in perceptual strategy,” Guthrie said. “In a situation of uncertainty, we guess that something is caused by the most important possibility.”

Hence, if you’re alone and hear a strange sound, even on a gusty night, you’re more likely to ask, “Who’s there?” than think it’s the wind. And if you happen to be religious, Guthrie said, your answer to “Who’s there?” may well be God. More specifically, Jesus in a fried tortilla.

The feelings generated by these perceptions can be powerful.

At Bodega Chocolates, Santacruz and her co-workers placed the chocolate Madonna in a small plastic case, and as news spread, crowds of the curious and devout began making pilgrimages to the shop, where they prayed, crossed themselves and knelt.

“It’s really emotional,” Santacruz said. “I can’t describe the feeling; the emotions make me cry.”

Other alleged miracles have proved profitable: A 10-year-old grilled-cheese sandwich with a pattern resembling the Virgin Mary sold on eBay in 2004 for $28,000; a pretzel in the shape of Mary cradling the infant Jesus fetched $10,600; and a water-stained piece of plaster cut from a shower wall bearing what looked like the face of Jesus brought in nearly $2,000.

Some manifestations get worldwide attention.

In 1996, the owner of Bongo Java in Nashville, Tenn., said he discovered a cinnamon bun bearing the likeness of Mother Teresa in profile.

Dubbed “the miracle nun bun,” the pastry got so much notice worldwide that he parlayed it into a commercial venture, selling nun-bun T-shirts and coffee mugs on the Internet.

The items were taken off the market when Mother Teresa complained, but he refused to stop exhibiting the renowned sweet, even after she died.

Eventually the bun was stolen during a 2005 Christmas Day break-in.

But it was the famous Jesus tortilla of New Mexico that some believe set the world standard for claims of miracle sightings.

After discovering it while making her husband’s breakfast, Maria Rubio mounted a display of the tortilla.

She quit her job as a maid to become full-time attendant to the shrine of the tortilla constructed in her home. And although a few competing miracle tortillas cropped up in subsequent years, none attracted anything approaching the fan base ascribed to the original.

Religious traditions are filled with tales of apparitions.

On Dec. 12, Roman Catholics celebrate the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who they believe was first seen by a Mexican Indian named Juan Diego in 1531.

Similar apparitions of a gentle woman speaking soothing words have been noted worldwide.

Church officials say they don’t encourage such interpretations.

“The church encourages Christians to see the face of Christ in the homeless, the poor, the destitute and the immigrant, not in a plate of pasta,” said Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Planning a vacation for next year?

If you are you should visit HotelReservations.com and browse through their hotel room listings. That’s right, they have hotel room listings for cities from all over the world.

If you’re planning a trip to Italy, it’s simple, just choose the country of Italy in the drop down list on the main page, and a new page called Italy Hotels will come up where you can then select what cities you plan on staying in and view the various rooms that are available during your holiday time period, and you can book them right then and there too.