Mishmash Musings

My brother Rob likes to buy military gear even though he’s a civilian. He wears combat boots the way most people would wear regular shoes and he wears camouflage stuff when he goes hunting. Rob also likes to use military-grade accessories like pocket knives, compasses, and even watches. In fact, I heard that he’s looking at new Luminox watches, which apparently are the kind that Navy SEALs wear. Since his birthday is coming up in just a couple of days, this might be a good chance for me to surprise him with a new watch.

I started checking some websites yesterday and I found several that offer nice discounts on genuine Luminox watches. I’ve got to think of some subtle way to find out which watch in particular Rob likes so I can make sure to get the right one.

I don’t do subtlety very well, however, so we’ll see how this goes!

My husband keeps his motocross bikes and tools in the garage, which leaves us no room to park our cars. This is of course very inconvenient for me, but I put up with it because Jerry was into bikes long before I arrived on the scene, so I have no right to complain. We have no place else to keep the stuff right now, and since we’re not planning on moving into bigger digs anytime soon, I’m going to have to put up with the situation.

Nevertheless, I do have a right to insist that Jerry keep the garage as organized as possible. I’ve told him to go ahead and buy some sort of tool storage unit so he can keep the floor and workbench relatively free of clutter. Hopefully he’ll take advantage of this three-day weekend to finish the project, otherwise I’m going to have to go into full nagging mode until he does!

My son just started at his new private preschool (or “learning center,” as they call it) at the beginning of last week. He goes for just over three hours per day, so it’s not too bad. But still, there obviously needs to be a period of adjustment after the long summer vacation and we’re still going through that right now.  You know, getting to bed at a decent hour each night and waking up on time each morning for starters. Then the whole process of getting ready for school in the morning even when he’s cranky or would rather sit around playing his Nintendo DS.

Things were much easier today, so I think my son is getting the hang of the routine. At least he likes his teachers and has a couple of new friends already — that always helps! Hopefully it will continue to get better from this point forward.

One of the key tasks facing the Atlanta Falcons this season will be to rebuild their tarnished image after the whole Michael Vick fiasco. I think this will actually be fairly easy for the team to accomplish, particularly if they use a good market research firm to help them get a feel for the way fans are thinking. I believe that most fans realize that the organization had nothing to do with Vick’s dogfighting activities, so it won’t take much for them to move on.

The Falcons will still sell out their home games, they’ll still sell jerseys and other logo merchandise (just nothing with #7 on it), and they’ll still generate decent revenues all the way around.

Whether they make the playoffs or not is another matter altogether… but that wasn’t exactly a lock with Vick calling the signals anyway!

I just read an article that said late hotel heiress Leona Helmsley, who died earlier this month, left $12 million for the continued care of her dog. That’s more than she left for all four of her grandchildren combined, as two of the grandkids will get $5 million each and two will get nothing at all.

How ridiculous is that??? Why is it that rich people always seem to make the most eccentric provisions in their wills? I mean, how is it even possible that the care of a dog, even in the most luxurious circumstances, would approach $1 million in its lifetime, let alone $12 million?

Think of all the good Helmsley could have done with that money. The people she could have fed, the schools she could have built, the difference she could have made. But no, she decided to waste the money on her dog. How sad.

Obviously she had a right to do anything she wanted; I just wish she hadn’t been so selfish.

Since I work from home in a web-related field, I spend several hours per day online. I naturally want to make my time as profitable as possible, so I try to find different ways of scoring cash and prizes — even if the methods aren’t directly related to working.

What do I mean by this? Simply that I’ll fill out the occasional survey or sweepstake entry form in order to get free gifts in return. These forms usually just take a minute to fill out (especially if I use the AutoFill feature in my browser toolbar) and I can get anything from pens to keychains to t-shirts to water bottles in return for my time. Not bad at all!

In addition, I routinely visit sites like bid4prizes.com to try to win big-ticket items or even a cash prize. Bid4prizes.com is a unique site where registered users can win free prizes by submitting the lowest unique bid on a particular auction. If your bid wins, you get the prize — without having to actually pay the amount you bid! Bid4prizes even pays the shipping for you, so it doesn’t cost a cent to play. Past prizes awarded include televisions, computers, vacations, game systems, and even a brand-new car.

I haven’t won anything at bid4prizes yet, but I’m going to keep trying. I know one of these days I’m bound to get lucky over there!

You’ve probably heard by now that actor Owen Wilson was hospitalized in Los Angeles Sunday. Different sources on the Internet are saying different things, and while it hasn’t been confirmed by anyone in the Wilson camp, the predominant rumor is that the 38-year-old actor tried to commit suicide. Nearly all the reports agree that he was treated for a superficial cut on his left wrist as well as an overdose of pills.

Wilson’s publicist released the following statement from her client earlier today:

“I respectfully ask that the media allow me to receive care and heal in private during this difficult time.”

I’m not a fan of Owen Wilson’s at all (I can’t stand his movies), but I still hate to see this kind of thing happen. Hopefully he can get his life straightened out soon.

One thing that I have to constantly remind myself to be careful of is channel surfing when my son is in the room. We have a lot of premium cable channels, so of course there’s always the danger of landing on a network that’s airing adult-oriented movies filled with bad language, violence, or nudity.

This has never been much of an issue before because my son was too young to understand what was going on, but now that he’s getting older and has a better idea of what he’s looking at, I try to shield him from the R-rated stuff. The last thing I want to do is have him see a movie where characters are dropping the f-bomb every other word or parading around in open tip bras right before a steamy sex scene.

So now we’ve programmed our “Favorites” button on the remote control with stuff that’s safe for my son to see: regular networks, news channels, and sports channels. We’ll save the other channels for after he’s in bed!

I recently wrote about how I’m going to force myself to take at least one day off from blogging/writing every week. Well, this week I managed to squeeze in two consecutive days off. It was nice not to be chained to the computer and to just go through my day without constantly thinking of how I could turn the mundane happenings into a relevant blog post.

I think I’m definitely suffering from a bit of burnout after blogging constantly for a year now. I like being able to step back for some much-needed distance and perspective, and hopefully, I’ll recover my drive in a few weeks.

Until then, please bear with me, even if the posts on this blog become a bit irregular for the time being!

Here’s another convenient web tool that I’ve been meaning to post about for some time now. It’s called TinyURL and is a free service that converts very long URLs into something very short and manageable. The example given on the TinyURL site is this:

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&mqma
p.x=300&mqmap.y=75&mapdata=%252bKZmeiIh6N%252bI
gpXRP3bylMaN0O4z8OOUkZWYe7NRH6ldDN96YFTIUmSH3Q6
OzE5XVqcuc5zb%252fY5wy1MZwTnT2pu%252bNMjOjsHjvN
lygTRMzqazPStrN%252f1YzA0oWEWLwkHdhVHeG9sG6cMrf
XNJKHY6fML4o6Nb0SeQm75ET9jAjKelrmqBCNta%252bsKC
9n8jslz%252fo188N4g3BvAJYuzx8J8r%252f1fPFWkPYg%
252bT9Su5KoQ9YpNSj%252bmo0h0aEK%252bofj3f6vCP

which converts to something like this

http://tinyurl.com/6

The shorter URL works great for emails and websites, and the TinyURL that you receive never changes or expires. More importantly, the service is free and it takes just a second to convert your URL.

The only problem that I can foresee is that some people might be a bit wary of clicking on links when they don’t know where the links are pointing, so you should keep that in mind.

I definitely recommend giving TinyURL a try; I’m sure you’ll love it!

My mom is nearing retirement age, and boy is she looking forward to a life of leisure after working hard for so many years! I think she has just over one year left to put in, and then she’ll be eligible for a nice, fat pension from her company, as well as social security benefits. With those two sources of income, she plans to travel the world, take cruises, and do all the things she didn’t get to do because she was working 10-12 hour days for the last 30 years. Good for her!

At the same time, I can’t imagine having to wait until my husband retires in order to travel as much as we want. Unfortunately, that’s exactly how things are shaping up for us. Right now it’s nearly impossible for my husband to take more than 3-4 days off at a single stretch, and that doesn’t give us enough time to go anywhere interesting. Plus, my son is going to be in school full-time soon, which means we’ll have even fewer chances to get away. How depressing!!

Have you ever heard of Google Trends? It’s a site where you can view the 100 most-searched-for terms of the day. They even keep an archive so you can go back and see what the list was for any date you’re interested in. I think Google Trends has been around for several months now, but I’m late to the party (as usual). I just found out about the site a few days ago.

Anyway, I love looking at that site because it’s cool to see what everyone else is searching for. For example, the top search right now is for “loose change.” I didn’t know what that meant, but figured it wasn’t just referring to the coins that drop between your couch cushions . So I ran the search myself and discovered that it’s the title of a movie from a guy who believes the 9/11 terrorist attacks were planned and carried out by the U.S. government. (Oh, puh-leeze.)

I was surprised to see that Rex Grossman was in the top-5 in searches. What has he done lately? He was 9-of-11 for 59 yards and an INT in tonight’s preseason game against the Colts. Nothing special there. Maybe people are checking to see if his starting job is in jeopardy!

So, yeah, Google Trends… check it out if you haven’t already!