Randomly, we'd listened to an Amadou & Mariam song in my French class a month or so ago. Otherwise I might never have listened to this song by The Magic Numbers. I heard it in New Moon, but it wasn't until I was looking at the soundtrack list looking for something else that I saw the familiar names. I freaking love this song. It's so mellow and beautiful.
I wanted to share with ya'll a couple of cool "get stuff free" sites that I like. Yeah, I get referral points if you join, but I also think they're cool sites in general.
The first is Swagbucks.com. I'm new to this one and haven't gotten enough Swagbucks yet to get a reward; I found it through SavingDiva, though, so I have confidence in it! There are a lot of ways to get Swagbucks--for example, as a reward points sort of thing for purchases. My chosen method, though, is the totally free Swagbucks toolbar search engine. As you search, you randomly get award SBs. I have 58 right now, most just from searching for stuff and a couple from Swagcodes (a code you enter and POOF! free Swagbuck!). I'm almost halfway to a $10 Barnes & Noble giftcard, just for searching for stuff (although it is tempting to hold out for 3700 Swagbucks for a $300 Apple gift card!).
If you'd like to join, please click the banner below! (Open to people in the US, the UK, and Canada .... except Québecois, weirdly!)
Another site that's fun is MySurvey.com. I've been doing this one for a while; mostly you take surveys. For each survey, you get anywhere from five to 2000 points, and when you have enough points you get prizes. I'll be buying Divine Misdemeanors, the latest LKH book, with a gift card from MySurvey--I'm super stoked about that, because I didn't think I was going to be able to get it for months due to budgetary constraints! I'm so proud I've taken a picture of it, see?
I've also product-tested some stuff. Several months ago, they sent me two bags of dog food to try and take surveys on. My schnauzer doesn't eat that much--I haven't had to buy dog food since then, and I still have about half of the second bag. So that's saved me about $40! Hooray!
Again, if you're interested, please click the banner below! (Unfortunately it's a U.S. only thing.)
Fahrfugkuger is not pretty. She has a big bald spot on her roof and paint peeling off her hood. She's a total mom mobile--a maroon hatchback four door sausage on wheels. Manual windows, manual locks; no CD player; no sunroof; her steering wheel doesn't adjust. Fahrfugkuger is the most stripped-down, basic 1993 Ford Escort imaginable. After driving an SUV for the last eight months, I feel like I'm shooting down the road in a hockey puck or something. The seats aren't terribly comfortable, and I'm not overly thrilled with driving a manual again. She's ugly, and not fun to drive, and hence I've named her Fahrfugkuger.
However, Fahrfugkuger has a small gas tank, only 12 gallons. It cost my only $28 to fill her up last night, and on her last tank of gas she went 394 miles. I can live with it.
(Watch this clip at 2:55 and you'll see what I say every time I get in my car. Yeah, I know Fahrfugkuger isn't what she's really saying!)
This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Charter Communication. All opinions are 100% mine.
Ah, the infamous Black Friday, the day that makes retail slaves tremble in horror and glee. The day that exhausts many a shopper in search of ridiculous bargains. My old mall opened at 10p.m. Thanksgiving night and was open for 24 hours straight. (shudder) Apparently the Monday after is called "Cyber Monday", which I didn't know until now, but I guess it makes sense that people who go online to look for stuff they couldn't get in the stores.
I'm too broke for that to mean much to me--nobody's getting anything from me this year except a hug. Too bad Charter doesn't offer services in my area--because I could totally do all my shopping if I got a $200 gift card to somewhere. I already pay for Internet and stuff, if Charter were in my area I could go to Charter’s Daily Deal Web Site, switch my services over, and get a gift card to do my holiday shopping with. At least, I could do that this weekend. From Cyber Monday onward I could win stuff for me--like a box set of Showtime's "Dexter" or "Big Love" from HBO. I'm a year behind on that, come to think of it!
If you're interested, you can also become a fan of Charter on Facebook to see what their daily specials are. They've got a lot of stuff to give away between now and Christmas, it's worth taking a look at!
My mother's family finally got together for a holiday on Thursday--for the first time in a long time. Usually everybody's working or going in opposite directions, or there was nowhere big enough to get together. This year, somehow, something was pulled together. My mom had to work; her brother let his wife tell him what to do and keep him away; and her youngest sister lives in another state. But my grandma, me, my other two aunts, and my cousins had a freakin' ball! We played dominoes, and a couple other games; we laughed until we couldn't breathe; we talked and goofed around.
It was just so nice to relax and be around people I'm really comfortable with. I'm always slightly tense around my dad's side of my family--they're a lot more stodgy and judgmental. I could never fling a turtle finger puppet at my dad's sister when she takes too long to take her turn in dominoes. My other cousins don't like to do mock interpretive dance to a blues song about being hit with a "ignant stick." When I'm with my dad's family, I also feel like the big fat round peg that doesn't fit in the square hole. With my mom's family, I feel like I fit. I feel like I'm included.
I love both sides of my family; and I have fun with both sides of my family. I guess it's just different types of fun. Oh, who am I kidding. I have fun with my dad's family sometimes, but my mom's family is always amusing. I feel like a horrible, horrible person for saying that, but it's just the truth.
(Hello friends! Today we have another sponsored post!)
It's funny how you can look right at something and not really think about what it entails.
And she has no personality! She didn't talk. We're both servers, so I tried to commiserate over shitty customers with her. My grandma and aunt and I invited her to play cards with us. We all ate at the dinner table.
But she just didn't talk. She stared at the television; she played with the dogs; she and my dad kept kissing. But overall, it was just kind of creepy. She seemed afraid to make eye contact with me, god only knows why. I admit I did go in determined to be ... well, not intimidating, but self-assured. I even dressed up a little more than I usually would--a button-down shirt and jewelry instead of the first t-shirt I saw. Maybe me not being a shy slob was off-putting to her, and that's why she clammed up? But she's met my aunt and grandma before, and she didn't talk to them either.
She also doesn't look a thing like I expected. Her sister was a friend of my mom's when I was little, and I remember her; Tonya is her opposite. Shorter than me, so skinny I think I could break her over my leg, and dressed like an uptight soccer mom.
Really? This is the woman my dad says he loves? My crazy, fox-feeding, Crown-drinking, inappropriate joke-making, rambunctious, sarcastic father thinks he's in love with somebody with all the personality of a wet dish rag? How the hell does that happen?
A little more than a year ago, I wrote a quick post about acai berry advertising being stupid. Basically, I saw the ad on the right and didn't believe it for a damn second. But I was saddened to think that their are people out there desperate enough, and guillible enough, that they'd probably be willing to believe this--no matter the improbability of a person of that size losing that much weight, keeping it off, having no stretch marks or surgery scars to show for it .... and accomplishing all that with a miracle berry drink.
While writing the post immediately prior to this, I was looking at garter belts. I was just idling scrolling through them, when one caught my eye. I looked at it for a minute ... it looked familiar and I couldn't place it at first. Still, I had to go find my old entry to be sure.
Hmm, look at that! Same background, same lingerie, different face. Any doubt now that acai berry is total bullshit?
