A few wins

I finally got finished with the rent house. They moved in yesterday. It felt weird today not getting up and lugging all my tools and paint over there! I lucked out and the electricity work that I had a few bids on ranging from $700-850 ended up only costing me $265 when I found another company.

It was nice when the couple that moved in saw it after I was finished and they were very pleased and said how happy they were with it. Now if they just pay their rent on time!

In the last few days I have won 4 books which was nice since I like to read and then today I was chatting on the phone and mindlessly entering some instant sweeptakes and got a winner. It only said that "You have won, you will get an email soon informing you of what you won". About 5 minutes later I got an email that said I won a Nintendo game boy micro system.

This is my biggest win so far since I started entering again-valued at $99. That makes my total wins since January 1 to $262 and my overall total at $380. Not bad for a fun hobby!

I hope everyone is having a great week :)

Inked and loving it...

I have been wanting to get another tattoo for awhile and for some reason tonight was the night that I decided to go and get one.



This is my 3rd one and probably before the year is over I'll have some more. This one is sort of something for me as well as one for my brother who passed away last November.

He had about 15 of them and I had always wanted to go get one with him and always thought there would be another day to do that. Tonight I started thinking about that and how I took for granted that when I was ready he would be there.

I'm sure some or most of my friends and family think I'm a little nutty for doing so but hey, I have no regrets for this tattoo, future tattoos or the nipple ring I haven't told them about!

I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Almost done...

I have probably 2 days left on painting and can finally get someone in the rental. It's all trim work-tedious and slow. And let's not forget the electrician-my lowest bid so far is $850!

I haven't won anything recently. I read a few sweeptakes message boards for new sweepstakes and to see who is winning what. I log on today and there are 4 big winners. One lady won a Mini Cooper, someone won a trip to the Superbowl, someone won a trip to Las Vegas to see INXS, and a guy won a $500 Amazon.com gift certificate. These are all sweeps I have been entering so I guess if I didn't win, it's nice to see someone did!

Another lady is really jazzed because she got picked to appear on Wheel Of Fortune. I'd love to go on there or The price is right. I would freeze up on Jeopardy!

Rick finally found a great car-a Cadillac Deville but we finally gave up dealing with the guy selling it. He had it priced a bit too high to start with and finally Rick decides if he comes down $300 he will get it. This would be meeting him halfway on the price difference.

This guy wont budge one bit and even had the nerve to call today to tell Rick that he was driving with a lady now that wants it really bad and will pay full price. Rick said if she is willing to pay your price you should probably sell it to her then!

The guy wasn't amused. He called a few other times after that but Rick stood his ground. Something else will come along that will be better.

I hope everyone is having a great week.

We won't need groceries or cigars for awhile...

I made a quick trip to the grocery story yesterday getting a few things that we only have to buy monthly like paper towels, sponges, etc. thinking Rick would forget next time he went.

He went today and didn't forget! He got the regular weekly groceries plus everything that I had bought the night before except his coffee. It was kinda funny everytime he pulled something out I said "yep, got it". He wasn't as amused as I was.

I was entering my daily sweepstakes today and notice my name on a winners list for a box of Honduran cigars at Don Tomas Cigars I don't smoke cigars, but still a win is a win and it had an ARV of $77.50 bringing my 2006 total to $79.50 and my overall total to $197.14. I may have to try one!

I found a sweepstakes that you have to enter by snail mail to win a trip to San Francisco for a private wine tasting. I hadn't entered a snail mail sweep since 2001 but I still have all of my supplies. I still have a briefcase full of hundreds of envelopes, post cards, 3x5 cards and papers, stamps, etc. It had been packed away in the closet.

So here I am digging for it, find it and pull it out while on a step stool and the lid wasnt snapped shut-it looked like a mail bag had exploded in my office!

I also found some storage containers full of hundreds of envelopes and postcards. I found an online message board with snail mail sweeps entries and was thinking of slowly entering them again in addition to the online entries. I'm set for envelopes for awhile that's for sure.

The biggest win with snail mail entries was a $500 gift card to K-mart. That was so exciting-I can still feel that thrill when I opened that fed-ex package and saw the card, then the amount underneath.

I dropped everything and ran to the nearest K-mart and loaded up 3 cart loads-I was so much fun and I went overboard just a tad when I went to check out the total was something like $775!

I am bound and determined to win one of these phones that LG is giving one a day away!

Hope everyone is having a great week :)

Still winning, but not feeling up to par yet...

My hangover is still hanging over. I felt a tad better, but still not 100% yet.

I have still been entering sweepstakes daily. My 2005 total (11/31 - 12/31) was $117.64. Not bad for one month. My 2006 total so far is $2 on an instant win. It took me about 6 months before I won a big prize last time I entered sweeps so hopefully I can do that again. The only drawback is any prize over $600 you get a 1099 and have to pay taxes on-or that is how it was back then, I'll have to check up on that.

I did have a dream last week that I won a trip to Europe and was in a mad dash to renew my passport and get Rick (gramps) started on paperwork to get his. I think juuuuuuuuuuuust in case we are going to go ahead and do that plus we were talking about maybe a cruise somewhere tropical so we would need one anyway.

I made a few resolutions, or more like goals for this year. I want to get more organized. When we moved into the house things got thrown and mixed all around-I want to go through all of it re-organize etc. I have tons of books in bookcases in the office and I would like to get those organized. Twice this year I found myself buying a book I already had!

I also want to get caught up on all my debts. My ex finally payed off close to 90K of credit cards that we shared or were in my name and I would like to get the few I have left payed off and get back on track.

I want to try to help my Dad get out more often and get back to work. He will not leave the house and if he does it's only for about 30 minutes. Hopefully he will start doing more in the next few months instead of being a recluse that he has admitted he has become. He told me a few weeks ago when we went to a few stores that he felt scared to leave the house.

I also want to get the kitchen remodeled. It is decent right now, but I want to refinish the wood floors, paint and get some new cabinet hardware to spruce it up.

I hope everyone has a great week :)

Recovering...

I imbibed a bit too much at the festivities last night to ring in the new year. I had the worst hangover ever. It was not pretty. I couldn't move my head without the world spinning or smell anything without running the the bathroom. Sorry TMI.

I had been painting on my vacant rental and had to take the day off. I'm hoping to get it done soon-I have someone that wants to move in and starting giving me money! You'd think that would motivate me to get off my butt and paint.

Rick had some news today, in 6 months he will be a gramps. He was in shock at first, now I think he is excited. I have been calling him gramps and paw paw all day-he wasn't amused.

I hope everyone had a great New Years Eve and Day and that 2006 is the best yet :)

Birthday wishes and a shaved head....

Today was another cold one-the roads were so bad early this morning it took Rick an hour instead of the normal 20 minutes to get home. He saw several wrecks and even the news was reporting a huge number of wrecks all over town.

We did get out and do some more shopping, but later on in the evening it was starting to get bad again.

It was my Dad's birthday yesterday-he is still down but he is getting a little better. He has his quirky sense of humor still. When I asked him what he wanted for Christmas he said a short single lady with large boobs :O

This is how I can tell that he will be okay after some time, if he lost his sense of humor I would be worried. I thought I would go buy him an insane amount of lottery tickets-he loves his scratch off tickets.

A few days ago I entertained thoughts of just shaving my head instead of worrying about a haircut. Tonight I just picked up the electric razor and did it. After the first run through I was thinking "too late to back out now"!

It turned out pretty good I think. I haven't had it like this since I was in kindergarten. I don't know what it was that struck me to do it, but it was almost liberating in a way.

Hope everyone has a great Tuesday and that it's not as cold for you as it is here!

Slip N Slide

I got up early today (shock) and thought I'd go see my Dad for a bit. I made it about 6 blocks and knew I had made a mistake. It was 17F with a humidity level of about 97%. I had no idea it was going to be THAT bad.

The cars on the road were slipping all over the place, one poor lady was turned around backwards and couldn't get any traction. I looked over at the freeway overpass, the cars were sitting still. About 6 blocks back the other way a gas tanker truck had turned over in front of Rick's parent's house.

I thought yeah right, I'm not going to mess with this.

Later on it got a little better and we were able to go out and do some shopping for the holidays and go to a birthday party for Rick's 7 year old nephew.

The crowds wore me out and I will be out in it again tomorrow. I never seeem to get my shopping done early like I keep promising myself!

Hope everyone has a great week.

14 days left...

I ventured out to do some shopping for Christmas. Found a few ideas, but wasn't motivated to buy anything other than dog food and diet coke.

We drove through some car lots looking for Rick a car-everything is so high and there is slim pickings of used cars at the new car lots. I read in Time magazine that not many people are buying therefore less trade ins and what was there, they were way overpriced in my opinion. We'll probably hit the used car lots tomorrrow and see what they have in stock.

I haven't been in the mood for the holidays lately considering. Rick put up some neat lights and decorations on the outside and has been trying to get me in the mood to put up the tree. I keep thinking I need to but haven't got there yet.

I did have another win yesterday, a Febreeze noticable prize pack-a new plug in thing they are promoting. I'm up to $95 in prizes now.

Hope everyone had a great week.

Yappy puppies and 2 wins..

I think I ended up with about 3 hours of sleep today. I had to bring the puppies in since our temp got down to -2 F last night. They will sleep for about an hour, play for 2 hours and yap for the rest of the time. If they weren't so cute.....

I found homes for 2 of them and I had homes for the 2 left but they both fell through, hopefully someone will want them soon. Who wouldn't want these cuties: (the 2 on the right-temporarily named Yip and Yap) They are Pitbull/Dachsund mix-



After entering all my daily contests I won another King Kong poster from Coca Cola and a $10 old navy gift card on instant wins. These small wins are keeping me going! Now if I could win a luxury vacation or a car!

Here are the links if you feel lucky:
King Kong and Old Navy

The King Kong instant win requires a UPC code from a cup, but if you don't have one you can click somewhere and have one emailed to you. Good luck!

waiting...

I haven't felt like saying anything lately-mostly been being a bum and hiding under the covers. On November 26th my Mom passed away after about 10 months of fighting cancer. We had the funeral that following Monday and it was sad to be in the same place that we were for my brother less than a month before.

My Dad and sister are having a tough time but at least they are grieving, I feel stuck in a time warp like it hasn't hit yet. Not sure what is going on with that. I keep waiting for them to ask me why I'm not crying.

My Dad's Birthday, Christmas and what would have been their 47th wedding anniversary are all within a week of each other so that will be an even tougher time on my Dad. Hopefully I can be there for him.

We are finally getting a settlement on the car insurance stuff this thursday so hopefully we can get another car-having just the one is not fun.

The blurry weekend

After Rick's son wrecks his car, we are going through all the insurance channels, get a nice rent car and are on are way to putting this all behind us.

That is until we get a call today around noon from the son. He had borrowed the rental car and had another wreck! I have a feeling he won't be driving anywhere anytime soon. Rick was beside himself. It is not his month for kids and cars. His daughter wrecked her car going to school a few weeks ago, then the two wrecks with this son and another son got another of Ricks cars towed for not having proper registration. He had given it to him recently and hadn't got it transferred over.

They are all old enough to take care of these things themselves. The only one taking it on themselves to fix anything is the daughter. She is the youngest and it was HER car. The sons seem not to care since they are driving cars that they aren't paying anything for but the gas. I tried nicely to tell this to Rick, but he won't listen.

It came up when one of the sons wanted to borrow MY car. I said no thank you and told him that if they can't even have enough responsibility to handle his cars then they aren't ready for mine. He came really close earlier telling me that he should have listened to me, but that isn't his style!

I went out all this weekend, had a good time with good friends but I'm going to have to stay away from the martinis!

I got some work done on the rentals, it took about 3 hours to clean out all of the trash that the deadbeat tennants left behind. Now after a good scrub and a coat of paint it should be ready.

I hope everyone is having a great wreck-free week!

The blahs

I have haven't wanted to do anything for the last week. I have to force myself to get up, do laundry, dishes, cook, anything.

Today was a little better-I took care of some things and actually felt a twinge of motivation.

Rick's son got hit today while driving Rick's car to work. He is ok thank goodness, but the car is not. An SUV hit it and what windows didn't shatter out were cracked. 3 doors won't open and the one that does open won't shut now. It must have hit pretty hard because the stereo and some plastic areas on the dash blew out. The backend of the car is about 6 inches lower now, it's all buckled down the sides.

Rick was to make the last payement on it December 1.

I finally got the freeloader renters out but it was a mess. I filled up 4 dumpsters of stuff they left behind and someone decided to be artistic and painted what looks like a drug induced mural in the bedroom. Rick and I were disgusted when we saw the mess they left, and they had an infant crawling around in all that-shudder.

Hopefully I can clean it out and get it rented soon before I start getting too far behind on bills.

Hopefully tomorrow I can get off my butt and do something productive. I promised my Dad I would help him take down his air conditioner since we are supposed to have a freeze this week-today was 85!

Hope everyone has a great week :)

Dr. Pepper strikes again

It has been a long day today.

The funeral was really nice. They played "Taps" and had a flag folding ceremony and presented the flag to my Mom. More people showed up than I had expected. A few relatives drove a long way to get here.

There were a lot of my brothers friends that I hadn't met before at the funeral and most of them kept looking at me and then would come over and know who I was since we looked so much alike.

I got to meet two of his kids that I hadn't met before. If I had seen them on the street I would have recognized them.

A lot of the family went back to my parents house and we sat around visiting, eating, and reminiscing. Just about everyone in the family has always inadvertantly called me by my brothers name. We look so much alike and they would be looking right at me and go to call my name and say Lynn. Today it kept happening-even my Dad did it a few times.

Someone brought a past weakness of mine to the house-Dr. Pepper. I had to quit drinking them years ago, when everytime I drank one, I developed excruciating kidney pains. I decided I could sneak one. I am paying for it now. For about 8 hours now I have had a pain in my back like someone punched me in the kidneys.

I got a gallon of cranberry juice so hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow.

Bad news at 3AM

I got a call from my Sister on Saturday morning-I could tell something was wrong when I answered. My first thought was my Mom, she has been doing well lately but my thoughts went there.

My Brother had died at 3AM the night before. I was shocked. I went over to my parents house and they were in shock-they still are. He was only 45. Heart attack they said.

My Sister got the call from my Dad and he just said your brother died, and she was freaking out not knowing which one of us he meant. My sister felt bad because earlier in the evening around 11PM he called her and she didn't answer and meant to call him back and forgot.

The funeral is Wednesday. My Dad is beside himself. My Mom is on stronger pills thanks to her doctor, he is worried about her going through all this now while she is going downhill herself.

I have a lot of great memories of my Brother-he always worried about me and told me he loved me no matter what. He was 9 years older than me and when I turned 16-17 I got drunk with him for the first time, got stoned with him for the first time, he helped to teach me to drive, worked on my cars for me so I could save money, and let me be me.

We sort of fell out for about 8-9 years when he moved to Maine, and he had just moved back a few months ago and I saw him a few times and spoke with him. So that was nice to have that. I just wished we could have had more time to get to know each other again.

I'm more sad right now more for my Parents-them having to bury their first born.

Everything else has sort of been put on the back burner.

Mr. Clean

The scratch off lotto fest netted $29-not too shabby!

I went to clean the vacant rental today, it cleaned up pretty good-still have to clean the bathroom, but I had forgot my rubber gloves :O I learned my lesson the hard way on that.

A lady looked at it today while it was still grungy and liked it. She is going to (hopefully) put her deposit down tomorrow (crossing fingers). I was hoping not to have to spend the extra money to have to put it in the paper. Plus having to deal with all the wack jobs that call.

I'd say 2 out of 11 of the last calls for an ad I had were not escaping their last landlord or didn't have a felony for something or other. I'm serious! 6 had felonies for some type of bodily harm against someone (one was their current landlord) and 2 had a felony for robbery. The other person was a registered sex offender.

The squatters are still there, ugh-they are starting to piss me off. I don't want to mess with going to court but it looks like I'm going to have to. I have given them so many chances but I'm through now.

Some people are more trouble than they are worth. What I don't get is that the electric service was never transferred over into anyone's name since August and they haven't been shut off!

I went to the grocery store earlier to get some dinner. There is one checkout lady that is so much fun that I will stand in her line even when others are open. So Im standing there behind 2 other people after having let someone go ahead with only 1 item and the check out lady (girl) from the next lane over says "I'm open" with so little enthusiasm. I told her politely "no thanks".

She says "whatever" in that rude whatever tone. Usually I let things go like that. I know she probably had a bad day, etc. But so had I. So I told her that I her attitude was rude and I would rather put all the groceries in my cart back on the shelf than stand in your "whatever" line.

After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence (I suddenly realized I spoke aloud) there were a few chuckles around me and she stormed back to her register.

The lady that I always wait for said that she was glad I said that. She said she is always rude and treats people like that. I told this lady that is the reason why I stand in her line because she is always so friendly. She even jokes here and there and has caught prices being wrong, pulled out the circular for coupons, etc.

So after I got done checking out, I went to the customer service desk and asked for the manager. He came over and I told him about the level of service from her. I told him that I stand in her line when others are open and that I was glad she was here.

I decided to not tell him anything about the "whatever" gal-I'll give her the benefit of doubt-we have all had bad days, troubles, etc. I just sent positive energy both of their ways and went home and watched Lost.

Hope everyone had a great day :)

Vacancy

I had one renter move out too soon, and one that won't move out. She has decided that she wants to live for free! I will probably have to go to court to get her out, or spend the money to go to court and she will move out when she gets her subpoena.

I have been lucky with the rest of the renters, everyone paying on time-or at least contacting me if they are going to be late. I'm easy to work with if they let me know what is going on and don't take advantage of me.

Rick won a huge basket of lottery scratch off tickets at work-we are going to be scratching them later-keeping my fingers crossed! There have to be at least $400 worth in there!

Semi Rant

It just amazes me the amount of work it takes to keep a computer virus, adware, and spyware free. The question remains, why is it so easy for all of that crap to get there in the first place?

Even with my 8+ programs to keep all of this stuff out of my computer, it still finds its way in there. I think that after spending a lot of money on a computer complete with the obiquitous operating environment I shouldn't have to worry about this stuff.

I have spent many hours reading help forums to combat all of the stuff that someone can pick up and consider myself moderately skilled at doing this, but what about those who aren't? They hook it all up and hop on the internet and a few weeks later the new computer is lagging and running like crap.

Like my Dad for instance, he goes to maybe 4 or 5 sites a day, thats it. Gets email from maybe 8 friends and family members. His computer is less than a year old. It was on its last leg when I went and fiddled with it and got it back to speed.

OK I'm done! I found this earlier and got a chuckle out of it:

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you'd have to buy a new car.

2. Occasionally your car would just die on the motorway for no reason, and you'd have to restart it. For some strange reason, you'd just accept this, restart and drive on.

3. Occasionally, executing a manoeuvre would cause your car to stop and fail to restart and you'd have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you'd just accept this too.

4. You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought a "Car 95" or a "Car NT". But then you'd have to buy more seats.

5. Amiga would make a car that was powered by the sun, was twice as reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive - but it would only run on five percent of the roads.

6. Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars which would make their cars go much slower.

7. The oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced with a single "General Car Fault" warning light.

8. People would get excited about the "new" features in Microsoft cars, forgetting completely that they had been available in other cars for many years.

9. We'd all have to switch to Microsoft gas and all auto fluids but the packaging would be superb.

10. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.

11. The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.

12. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.

13. They wouldn't build their own engines, but form a cartel with their engine suppliers. The latest engine would have 16 cylinders, multi-point fuel injection and 4 turbos, but it would be a side-valve design so you could use Model-T Ford parts on it.

14. There would be an "Engine Pro" with bigger turbos, but it would be slower on most existing roads.

15. Microsoft cars would have a special radio/cassette player which would only be able to listen to Microsoft FM, and play Microsoft Cassettes. Unless of course, you buy the upgrade to use existing stuff.

16. Microsoft would do so well, because even though they don't own any roads, all of the road manufacturers would give away Microsoft cars free, including IBM!

17. If you still ran old versions of car (ie. CarDOS 6.22/CarWIN 3.11), then you would be called old fashioned, but you would be able to drive much faster, and on more roads!

18. If you couldn't afford to buy a new car, then you could just borrow your friends, and then copy it.

19. Whenever you bought a car, you would have to reorganise the ignition for a few days before it worked.

20. You would need to buy an upgrade to run cars on a motorway next to each other.

Older but not wiser!

I had a birthday a few days back-I didn't want to make a big deal about it and just laid around the house most of the day, watched a movie and read a bit.

Rick got me a neat gift that I had been wanting, it's the one in black:



It is nicer than I thought, even though it is new, it has the heft of an old fashioned phone as well as the ring of one.

Later on in the evening we went out for a bit and word got out that it was my birthday-it gets a little blurry after that. Everyone that knew me decided to buy me tequila, oy. I actually held up pretty well and didn't have a hangover.

A few rather unrelated incidences put a new idea in my head. Actually and old idea that never got off the ground. First I read a blog entry from my friend Ginger about the upcoming NoNoWriMo event. I felt a tingle of excitment, but then put it off. Then later I was reading a webpage and there was a link to it again. Still I put it off.

My dad had given me a book to read, called Level 7. It is written in first person, which I thought if I ever wrote something it would be in that format. Then I started thinking and the next thing I knew, I opened up Word and began writing. I have written twice now, but up to 18 pages and the story keeps telling itself. It is fun. I have no high ideas that I'll be a bestseller soon, but it's a start-a learning experience.

Anyone else having trouble with splog on your blog? I have been getting about 2 comments a day. I found this place to report it, not sure if it helps, but it's a start!

From the mouth of babies...

I went to see my parents yesterday-my Mom was about the same-honked out on morphine. She is eating well, but sleeping a lot. My Dad was running around the house doing laundry, getting her food ready and making sure her pills were in order. I did some dishes for him and vacuumed so he could take a break. He said at one point "I'm tired of being a housewife."

About 20 minutes ago, I overheard something that had me chuckling. I live across the alley from a massive daycare center. This daycare center bought about 7 houses on that block and renovated them really nicely, put up big fences and the house directly behind me is the play yard complete with a fort.

I can hear the the kids playing from about 10am til about 5:30pm. Normally it is just the white noise type sounds of kids screaming, laughing etc.

Today I went in the backyard to check to see if any of the dogs were digging around the fence and overheard:

Girl screaming...

Day care lady: EDWARD! Leave her alone!

Edward: She was only screaming because I tried to kiss her.

Day care lady: She doesn't want you to kiss her, we have been over this before-now get inside for a time out.

Edward: She really likes me, she just wont admit it because Manuel is watchiiiiiing.

Little girl: Oh great, now Manual will want to kiss me too.

I got such a kick out of that-her secret was out now! I looked over and saw her on top of the fort with this look of resign on her face, Edward climbing down for his punishment.

Manuel was probably crossing the yard to climb up in the fort!

It is supposed to get cold here by Thursday with a high of 40 and rainy. I feel fall coming! No more mowing-YAY!