If you didn’t win the Pay it Forward contest and you’re still kind of cheesed about it, you can go to winner Melessa’s contest and try to win that! (Also, you can see what I sent her, if you’re voyeuristic like that.)
Those of you who like giveaways will want to head over to SundryBuzz: I reviewed a digital reader (it lets you read books on a little handheld electronic thingie), and I’m giving it away to a randomly-chosen commenter.
Remember this?:
Henry
May 31, 2007
8:35 a.m.
8 pounds 2 ounces
21.5 inches long
Awwww! Newborns! Love! But they are so rude, changing so much in just one year!
The employee pep rallies they have, the degrading ones where the employees are forced to “Give me a W! Give me an A!” etc., clapping and yelling how much they love working at Wallllllmart, every single day. How many days could you do that before you brought in a squirt gun and started using it?
They raise a price briefly, then “rollll it back” and brag about it: “We’re rolllling back prices allll over the store!” Uh huh. Those crackers WERE $2, until a week ago when you marked them up to $2.47. Then you rolled them back to $2. Wow, you do rock.
If something is marked “rolllled back,” it’s highly likely it’ll ring up at the pre-rolllled-back price. I’ve shopped at three different Walllllmarts in three dramatically different parts of the country, and they’ve all been the same. If it says “$1.50! Was $2.78!” it might ring up at $1.50 or it might ring up at $2.78. I try to keep an eye on things when they’re being rung up, but I’m usually distracted by the kids.
If something is “30% more free” on the packaging, Walllllmart will often have it at a higher price—i.e., the extra is NOT free. If the 10-ounce one is $1.00, and the “30% more free!” 13-ounce one is $1.25, that is not 30% free, that is 30% for 25 cents. I know not everyone is good at math, but I have tried to explain this to SEVERAL Wallllmart employees (including, in one case where I was there without children and highly determined, the STORE MANAGER), and NONE of them understood what I was talking about, except for ONE perfume-counter worker who instantly grasped the situation—and then couldn’t get her manager to understand. (Her manager kept saying, “Yes, but see this is a THIRTEEN-OUNCE. That’s why it costs more. It’s a larger size.” And she and I would say in unison, “But is says the part that makes it ‘larger’ is supposed to be FREE.”)
It is often difficult to find the prices on things. Shelf tags will be missing.
When you can find prices, the unit prices are unhelpful. One kind of vegetable oil will give the price per ounce, one will give the price per liter, one will give the price per gallon, and one will give the price “per each.”
They will be out of something for months at a time. On every visit, the shelf space will still be there, empty. They are unable to tell me when—if ever—they will be getting more. It is out of their hands: they are merely conduits for the Delivery Gods. They’ll be getting a truck in on Thursday; I could check back then. I understand that they don’t have stone tablets telling them of each Twix bar that will be delivered and at what minute of what day. But I would like them to DO something about it if they haven’t received a shipment of Twix in three months. The empty shelf space is not good for either of us.
The employees put pallets and carts in all the aisles, so that you can get trapped: every way out is blocked, and the only way out is the way you came—halfway across the store. In an emergency, where they run out of pallets, they will fling their own bodies in front of your cart.
Their bags rip. Sometimes the clerk goes through a couple ripped ones just bagging things up. The others rip in the car, or while I’m carrying things into the house. I once had three glass jars of jam fall to the basement floor as I carried the groceries down to put them away. Astonishing mess.
Their bags shed choking-hazard-sized ovals of plastic, just perfect for a baby to inhale. I panic every time I forget to bring my reusable bags with me and have to use those horrible dangerous plastic bags. Other stores use plastic bags and manage not to shed those little shapes.
If I hear it called “Walllly’s World,” as if it’s a fun and happy amusement park, I’m getting out the squirt gun.
If you want to enter the raffle to raise money for the Preeclampsia Foundation, you have today and tomorrow and that’s it: Preeclampsia Awareness Month will be over, and you will be out of luck! Shannon is running the raffle, and she has made a gorgeous baby quilt I want to CHEW ON, it is so gorgeous. And after she chooses a winner, she’ll send me the remaining names and I’ll choose another winner. I forget what I offered, but I think it was a choice of either a treat or a book. Plus, I tend to use a flat-rate box/envelope and fill up the empty space with miscellaneous crap from my house. Bonus!
The term is not “magic bullet,” it’s “magic pill.” That makes a lot more sense, doesn’t it? Compare: “There’s no magic bullet for weight loss” vs. “There’s no magic pill for weight loss. “Magic bullet” IS an existing term, but it is used to describe, for example, the way a medical treatment might be able to zip in and kill JUST the bad bacteria, without harming the good bacteria: a magic bullet, weaving into the middle of a crowd of hostages and killing just the bad guy. It is NOT used to describe the concept of “an effortless way out.” That is when you use the term “magic pill”: You can’t just take a magic pill and make the problem disappear. Magic PILL. No one is SHOOTING AT the problem and hoping for good results.
When people make fun of the “hot fudge sundae and a diet Coke” combination, that’s the same as saying that if you spend money it’s stupid and contradictory not to spend more. I mean GEEZ! Why would you spend money AND not-spend it? If you’re spending some, you might as well keep spending, even if you don’t want to! If you buy a couch, you have to buy a new bed, DUH! …And this is all assuming the diet Coke means what those people assume it means, which is that the person is “dieting” and therefore being a stupid moron by eating ice cream. I drink diet Coke because I prefer it. I hate regular Coke: it’s way too sweet, it never seems cold enough, and it’s not thirst-quenching. But I guess I should drink it anyway EVEN THOUGH I DON’T LIKE IT, if I’m eating ice cream: if you eat ONE item with fat and calories in it, you are DUTY-BOUND to eat the maximum possible fat and calories with all other choices you make. That makes NO SENSE.
I am still feeling low and sad and crabby and like everything is the end of the world: “My computer is running slow! Slowwwwwwwwwwwwwww! *flops listlessly in chair*”
Today I’m trying a depression-combating method I read about a long time ago and periodically call into service: drinking 1/4th cup of coffee every hour, as if taking medicine. It’s supposed to give you a more even keel than if you drink a huge honking mug in the morning and try to coast all the way to bedtime.
If you are at a loss in re Father’s Day gifts, Sundry and I each wrote a post of ideas over at Milk & Cookies. Here’s hers, and here’s mine. I’m chalking that up as our good deeds for the month: looking for Father’s Day gifts is borrrrrr-ring.
Okay! Marie Green thinks it is time for a diet update, and I agree.
The diet and I are in a fight, but still together. I’m doing a modified Weight Watchers Core. Core basically says that if it’s sugar or fat or in any way baked (crackers, bread), you barely get any of it (you have a Treats Budget you can use on those items), but you can have as much as you want of the approved food list, which is surprisingly long and inclusive. It’s an excellent diet for a nursing mother, because it lets you have huge heaping helpings of nutritious stuff like chicken and vegetables and brown rice and fruit and eggs and milk and so forth, while leading you away from the ice cream and the candy and the cake.
The reason I call it “modified” Core is that I don’t follow it exactly. My diet is more “based on actual events” than “the true story of.” I think Weight Watchers, along with the rest of the dieting world, has gone too far on the anti-carb spectrum. I think, for example, that 100% whole wheat bread is a GOOD food, not an EVIL food. So I don’t use my Treats Budget for it if I eat it. For some people, this would not be a good modification: they’d eat a whole loaf of bread right off the bat. But I don’t even like bread all that much, and find I only crave it when it’s forbidden, so it’s a good modification for me: if I can have it, I’ll barely ever eat it. If I can’t have it, I’ll keep sneaking it.
Another sample modification: you’re supposed to use the Treats Budget for the frosting on Frosted Mini-Wheats. SCREW THAT. If I am eating SHREDDED WHEAT, I don’t really care if it has sugar on it. I’m not going to sit there eating a whole box. So this, too, works for me: if I have to count the frosting, I won’t eat the shredded wheat and will instead lose control with a bag of chocolate chips; but if I DON’T have to count the frosting, I’ll eat the cereal and pull through the hard times. I’m not in this diet for UTTER RIGHTEOUSNESS.
I think the idea is that certain foods give some people problems, so Weight Watchers has made sweeping rules for that. But there are a lot of foods that I know are not problems for me (my problems are sweets and sweet fats, not potatoes and whole wheat bread), so I change it.
Right NOW, though—I mean, I am eating out of a bag of chocolate chips AS I TYPE. There are chocolate chips IN MY MOUTH. And I don’t think I can call that a “modification.” I’m finding that with the diet, as with any relationship, I have times when things are going well and times when things are not going well. “Hang in there anyway” is one of my mottos for this diet. Yes, I am eating chocolate chips right now, but I don’t have three bags of candy waiting for me in the other room. SOME improvement is better than NO improvement, and perseverance is still worthwhile.
My mom likes Marshalls, so we went there on Saturday. I don’t usually like Marshalls: I’m always finding things that I like ALMOST enough to buy, but either I don’t like them QUITE enough or they’re just a LITTLE more expensive than I want to pay. Or it’s a brand I’ve never heard of, so I’m thinking, “Is this a ritzy bar of soap marked way down, or is this a cheap bar of soap that is made to LOOK like a ritzy bar of soap marked way down?” Or I’ll find something I like, but it’s in every size but the one I need. I find the whole store depressing.
But look what I found there on Saturday!
It’s a set of purse accessories: business card holder, lipstick case, and there’s also a round compact (not shown) that my mom has because the enamel piece had come unglued and she’s gluing it back on for me. (SPOILED MUCH?)
Do I NEED these? No. But the whole set was marked down to $5, and they’re satisfyingly heavy, and I….well, it was like my heart reached out for them and grabbed them with grabby little hands. I just WANTED them as soon as I saw them, so they came home with me. I’m going to have to get business cards now, I guess.
And do you notice something about the COLOR of those items? They’re Swistle-colored! (= same as the color of the blog background, for those of you reading this in an RSS reader!)
Um, hi. CRABBY MUCH? I told you I was hormonal. I mean, what in the blue blazes do I care about how other people mange their blogging hobbies? Do I give two shakes of a lamb’s tail? NO I DO NOT.
Seriously! How does it affect me if people choose to focus on promotion rather than on creating something worth promoting? NOT AT ALL, that’s how! Do I even notice who’s doing it and who’s not? No! Did I even know those promotional sites existed before LAST NIGHT? No! So what is in MY bonnet? How come I’m STILL making crabby remarks? I mean, look at that sentence about “promotion rather than creating something worth promoting.” BIT-CHY.
And would I want someone else flouncing in telling ME how to handle MY blog hobby? Certainly not! Some people think ads are stupid, and what do I have over there?—->
A big old ad, that’s what! Do I want someone saying, “Ads are stupid! What are you, a writer or a BILLBOARD? What are you doing, blogging or SHILLING FOR CAPITALISTS?” No! So what business do I have flouncing around saying that the promotion websites—which, as I say, I spent all of five minutes learning about—are stupid? None, that’s what! NONE!
Furthermore, did I even take a few minutes to make sure I was making my alleged “point” clear? No! It was near bedtime, so I just dashed it off and went away in a snit. NICE. So now it’s like I’m flinging dirt around at everyone who has ever hoped—utterly naturally—to attract more readers to their blog, and has taken perfectly ordinary steps to do so! NICE. And who was it who just finished saying that when you vent, you have to make sure the shrapnel will not hit innocent bystanders? THAT’S RIGHT.
Sigh. So here is what I am: sorry if you got hit by annoying little bits of my vent shrapnel. Because I didn’t mean you. And I can say that with 100% certainty and 0% lying, because I had literally NONE OF YOU in mind, nor have I ever noticed your blog-promoting activities with narrowed eyes, nor do I care what blog-promoting activities you participate in. You know who I had in mind? An imaginary person, possibly based on my pyramid-scheme-participating high-school boyfriend: someone grasping at anything that looks like fame or fortune, no matter how stupid and useless. Someone who doesn’t understand that attention for the sake of attention is meaningless and stupid. Yes, that sounds just like him. Well, or like Paris Hilton. And they don’t sound anything like you, now do they? And so I should have been a little more careful before I started yelling at them, now shouldn’t I?
So let’s kiss and make up! I’ve got fudge AND brownies! The brownies turned out really awesome, too:
Kiss and Make Up Brownies
3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) butter
5 squares (5 ounces) unsweetened baking chocolate
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, and butter a 9×13 pan. Melt butter and baking chocolate in a large saucepan. When melted, remove saucepan from heat and use saucepan as a mixing bowl. Add sugar, then add eggs and vanilla. Then add flour and salt. Then add pecans. Do not eat all the batter; instead, put it into buttered pan and then onward into the oven. Bake for 28 minutes. Remove from oven. Let cool (HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA—just a little joke there! Do not burn tongue on pecans.).
I have had three—THREE!—emails this week from readers, asking me what I think of sites such as Techsquirrelrati and Skirtaroo and TripOver and Del.i.cacy and Dugg.
Here is what I think: I think I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are they…for promotion of your blog? That’s what it looks like, when I go to them and try to figure out what they’re for. They seem to exist solely for promotion and tit-for-tat trading of promotion.
And so here is what I think: I think it depends why you’re blogging. Are you blogging as a hobby, or are you blogging as your latest get-rich-quick scheme? Are you a writer, or are you “promoting your brand”? Are you a blogger or a networker? Are you enjoying the act of writing, or are you trading virtual business cards and doing virtual lunch sometime? I’m not saying you can’t be/do both, but if you’re spending most of your time scrabbling for FAME! and RECOGNITION! and you’re trading in comments as if they’re currency*, and promoting things that don’t deserve to be promoted in the hopes that someone will do the same for you—-then it looks like those sites are exactly what you need to do that.
[*Clarification: I don’t mean regular commenting, which is when you read a post by a blogger you like, and you feel like leaving a comment so you do. I mean like when bloggers act as if people OWE THEM comments, or MUST comment, or are in any way obligated to comment. Or when people act as if comments are currency: I commented on your blog, so now you have to comment on my blog, and if you DON’T, I’ll stop commenting on YOURS. This ends up with people reading blogs they DON’T EVEN ENJOY, just so that they’ll get comments in return from people who don’t enjoy THEIR blogs. Dumb!]
Um, not that I have an opinion on this. Or that I think there’s a right and wrong here, or that you should do what I do just because I say so. Um, clearly. Especially considering I spent all of five minutes on researching what these sites are about. For all I know, they’re actually about using blogging to save starving children.