Sorry I couldn't reply sooner. Had trouble getting back in...
I took the advice given and went to
http://www.wheretomine.com and did some research on alternate coins I might be able to leverage against bitcoins. I tried CinnamonCoin but could not get started mining (signed up for pool mining but couldn't get either CGminer or CPUminer to work).
I also looked at WorldCoin, but not sure if that is a good alternative.
In the meantime, back to my original post -
I think someone from Slush's pool read my post because my account started updating again. Don't know if my balance is right because I can't get a daily log. Does anyone know how to keep a running ledger for their mining activities?