Contest entries

Admit it, we all like to get free stuff. Free samples, free food, free anything because free is, well, FREE. There are tons of wonderful bloggy giveaways going on daily around the blogosphere.

Here's my question - why does everybody make it so darn difficult to enter? I guess, if you only want one entry and you leave a comment, that's cool. But more often than not, to get a "better chance at winning" you need to comment, follow the blog, subscribe, follow on twitter, tweet about the giveaway, blog about the giveaway, stumble, digg, refer 5 friends, stand on your head, recite the alphabet backwards and do a cartwheel. (You know I added this for dramatic effect!)

Anyway, I noted a while ago that I would be having a giveaway. I'm still planning to do that. I don't know what the prize will be yet but once I figure it out, I'll post here and all you will have to do to enter is leave a comment telling me why you want it. That's it. Everybody who comments will get their name in a hat and they will all have equal chance of winning. Super easy, super fun, and super free for the winner.

I'm Back....

I just wanted to leave a quick note that I'm back! We had a gret week in the North Woods of Wisconsin and I'll be posting photos soon. I just need to figure out how to make them smaller without losing half of the photo.

Right now, I'm off to get caught up on homework...but I did get a 90% on my math test. Nice!

See you soon!

My Phone

Many of you know that I recent had my cell phone and my ipod touch "in the shop". I was able to get them both back within a few days of each other and all was right in the world. Until last night.

I took Jazz to her flute lesson. Then decided to get my haircut. It was so long, and I was so overdue. I was talking on the phone to Kelley on the way in. When I hung up with her, my phone turned itself off and back on.

While I was sitting in the chair, Lyric says "Hey, mom, when we get home you need to plug in your ipod. I can't get it to turn on." Uh huh. Not happy. Then, I leave there and head to Target. While I'm checking out, I try to call Kelley to tell her about something I bought (that is super cool and I should have photos next week). My phone turned itself off and on again.

Not cool! Since US Cellular is in a strip mall in front of Target, we head on over there. I explain my situation and the very nice girl (I'm SURE she was younger than me) isn't really sure what to do. We have a few options. A loaner phone again and send mine out, try putting in a new battery, get a new phone (and I did find a very cute one that will be my next phone), or do a used for used swap. Huh. Now I have to think. I like my phone very much, I just need it to work. Finally, we decide to do used for used. Let's see how long this will last.

BTW, I plugged in the touch at home and it's fine...so far. :-)

Review - Lifewater

Hello, my fellow bloggers! Today's item of review is Life Water.

Specifically Yumberry Pomegranate.

I picked this up on a whim a couple of months ago because I tend to like anything pomegranate. This did not disappoint. It's great for those times when you want water, but you want flavor. Each Life Water has a different herbal content and a purpose if you will. This one is purify. I don't know if it purifies, but I do know that it tastes good and it suites the need when I don't want water or soda. The only drawback for me is price. But at work, it's the same as a bottle of soda, which makes it a wash.

There's no fat, no sugar and 100% of your daily value of vitamin C. Oh, wait, I forgot to mention - NO CALORIES! Yay!
Each bottle is 2.5 servings, so you're gonna want to drink it in moderation.

Wanna check out some of the other flavors?? Click here .

Let me know what you think. What is your favorite, or what kind would you be most willing to buy??

PPPP - "Injuries"

Disclaimer- no children were hurt in the making of this post.

This is Lyric's arm...she did this to herself. But it didn't hurt.

She recently got a theater makeup kit for her drama class. She figured out how to do this....

and this (this is Jazz's arm. I think it's supposed to look like a burn)

creepy, right?!? She's going to use her kit to do Jazz's make up for her dance recital too. It's a pretty big kit. You can get it here .

Thanks for playing PPPP. Check out candid carrie to see who else is playing today.

A Soft Impeachment...a surprise post

This is sooo totally cool.

ASI Click on the link. I dare you.

My book, "A Soft Impeachment" is available on Amazon.com. Amazon people!! I got the email from Lulu that is was going to be offered and I could log in, click on a link, blah, blah blah if I didn't want it to be listed. I kind of didn't do anything about it because, well, I'm a procrastinator and I don't always have a lot of computer time.

So, today, I decided to finally check it out and see if it is true. I guess I should do some more digging because it says only one copy is available. But you can get as many copies as you want by clicking the link to the right "My lulu store".

If anybody does buy it, I'd love to hear what you have to say. Good or bad. Really! It's okay if you hate it. But even better if you love it.

I have a few more ideas in the works. In one, the main character is Abbi's sister. (Abbi is the main character in ASI)

Technical Difficulties

Random Thoughts is currently experiencing technical difficulties. I have some "techno" type posting I want to do, but it seems to be harder than normal.

Here's a list of what's coming up.

* Lyric and Jazz's injuries (don't worry, nothing major)
*The National Anthem (Lyric sang at The Riverhawks game last night. She did a phenomemal job! Even better than last year)
* The Ellwood House (this was Jazz's field trip that I went along on. Very very cool place)
* the possibility of a new blog - I've been writing stories for over 20 years, I'm toying with a blog for the shorter ones....we'll see how this plays itself out

I'm also looking for people who would like to be guest bloggers. This will be part interview, part discussion, part party! Comment or email me if you are interested. Amy, once I work out some details, you can be up first!

So, there you go, as is typical with me, lots of things in the works. Stay tuned!

When Life Give You Lemons...

buy lemonade ! I created a virtual lemonade stand. You can donate to the Ovarian cancer cause. I'm not entering to win the Electrolux fridge, but you could! I think you can like to that information from my "stand".

The kids are out of school now and it's going to be a busy summer. Lyric is going to be babysitting and volunteering at the hospital. She proved yesterday that she can't really be left alone right now. I won't go into it, because that's not fair to her later one. She made a bad choice, and now I've filled her calendar for summer. We'll see how things go. Since she has 3 weeks of vacation type activities this summer, she'll only have 6-7 weeks at home.

Last night I got my Ipod touch back! I had to reload all of the songs, videos and apps, but it's such a relief to have it back. I also need to reload some CD's so I can get them on there, but at least it's a start. While we were at the store, Lyric was checking out laptops. She decided she wants to get a macbook. With her babysitting money from this summer, she'll be well over half way there, unless she spends it in the mean time. But she's been very good about setting goals and meeting them (IE- paying for NYC)

New York is on the fence again. Everybody has to be willing to put forth some extra money to make it a go. We should know by the end of the month what that outcome will be.

Summer classes started for me over the weekend. I still think it's very funny that my teachers are married. Kind of amusing. Anyway, I'm ahead of the game in math, but we don't get any actually "math" assignments until tomorrow. Up to this point, it's been all orientation type stuff. But I did get 100% on the orientation quiz!

I have homework due Friday for Genetics. I'm half way done, and should be able to finish the rest of it tonight. Interesting class, this Genetics class. I'll keep ya posted.

So, what's going on in your world?? I'm still taking book suggestions. Also, I'm going to be doing a 4th of July giveaway. Keep checking back for details!

Update and insight done right

Hello, Random Thoughts readers. Random Thoughts is going through a bit of a change, but is not going away. Starting 7/1/09, all blog posts will have an extra "tag" in the title. I've been doing some thinking and I need things in my life to be organized, streamlined and necessary. There are so many things that I want to do in my life, with my family and for myself and others. I want everthing to have some sort of meaning or use (even if that is pure entertainment for you!)

I will be pulling out of Mom Bloggers Club. I don't spend a lot of time there, and it's just one more thing for me to "check". I pulled out of Mom Spark the other day. I will only be using Twitter on a very limited basis. There is a really fun Twitter thing that I will be involved in....but I can't tell you about that yet! Facebook will still be a daily "necessity" when I get the touch back. I've deleted a couple of other blogs that I had. I just can't give everything the time I want. So, it's a little about priorities.

The tags you will be seeing are:

Book Reviews - I read like a fiend. You should see the list of book I have right now that I want to read. Hopefully some of them will get checked off on vacation.
Guest Blogger - I would like to have guests regularly. But regularly might be monthly! If you would like to be featured (I promise it will be easy) leave a comment or email me.
My Favorite Things - this will be posts that are reviews of items I use every day or items that I have been asked to review. I'm on the list for a few freebies and I hope I get picked.
Wonderful Wednesday - these will be reflective posts about what good in my life. Hopefully these posts will be really long!
Crazy Kids - Kid specific stories, could be anything
Fisher Friday - these are Fisher specific. I don't expect a ton, but sometimes there's something going on with him that I need to share.
Picture Perfect - some of the other posts will have photos too, but when there is a photo that I really want to share with everybody, it will go here.
Super School Stories - most of you know I'll be starting nursing school in January 2010. I have 5 classes to take before then. You know there are going to be stories to tell.
Check It Off - I'm re writing my bucket list. These will be posts regarding things that have been checked off.
Random Thoughts - Anything that doesn't fit into one of the above categories will go here.

Sometimes, I can see how there might be more than one post per day. I will try to keep that to a minimum.

I'm looking forward to you coming along on this ride with me. Hold on tight, keep your hands in the car at all times, and if you need to scream, it's okay! :-0

A weekend of Titanic Proportions

The girls and I went to see the traveling Titanic exhibit this weekend. It was significantly smaller than the one that's making the rounds of the musuems, but still it is very cool to see the artifacts. There are so many stories to be told about the ship, the crew and the passengers. It's amazing to me that they have been able to recover this stuff. Lyric thinks some of it is fake/recreations. Like the papers and the money.

Anyway, while we were there, we got our picture taken in front of the grand staircase. The girls look super cute, I look, well, not so cute.

If you get a chance to see this exhibit, take it. We had to wait in line for about an hour, but the exhibit is free.

Without Technology

some of you may have seen my facebook update: my ipod touch is in the shop. Yup, the little sucker locked up on Thursday night. I freaked. Ran it out to Best Buy. They don't do automatic replacements anymore. They are sending it out. If it can't be fixed, I'll get new. Otherwise it will be spiffed up. But that was three days ago. They said it would come back in 3-5. I'm really feeling a little mental about the whole thing. My ipod is my constant companion. For music, games, lists, address book, countdowns, whatever I needed, there it was. I feel like I lost an arm or something. It's weird.

Since we were running, I took Jazz's ipod nano, that used to be Lyric's before she got her touch. It was locking up and the screen was going dark. She was so tickled that she got the automatic replacement. She now has the green nano. The rectangle shaped one that you shake?!? Yup. She got to pick out her own color. And when we got home, I put "her" songs on it right away. Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus, Jonas Brothers, Demi Lavato, Twilight soundtrack, Wicked, and a few others. I mean, what kind of mom would I be if I didn't give her some Rick Springfield!?

And my cell phone is currently out. I have a loaner phone. My phone should be back in about a month. That was a couple of weeks ago. I wonder if it will be back before we go on vacation??

What's up with me and technology.