Freebies & Stuff

Seriously, I’m a bit confused as to why anyone wants to send us stuff to review over our geek blog. I mean, it’s a good blog, and we work hard on it. But it still surprises me to get an email saying, “Hey, we have (insert product) and we want you to review it.” So far it’s only been a couple of books, and most recently an iPad case (that is worth over $60 retail).

It’s been weird lately, with the free things and winning of stuff. I mentioned previously that Ken and Amanda both won 4-day GenCon passes, which are worth $70/$80 each. There’s also the ‘word of mouth sites’ we keep getting stuff from, (like Influenster & BzzAgent). Still haven’t gotten anything from them that would be good with our geek blog, but there’s been some useful items (shampoos, body washes, lotion, dish soap, shoe insoles, etc) . Plus I keep getting food campaigns from BzzAgent, which is awesome. Cause, well, free food! No, they don’t send the food, just coupons to get it free (or discounted) at Kroger.

I could get used to this, seriously. Everyone loves free things, plus I’m broke so that makes it even better. Also, I am at least talking about, and posting, etc, about the items, so I’m not just taking them and giving nothing in return.

Not much happening, trying to take better care of myself, because sometimes I slack in that department. Finding my walks more fun & easy now that I downloaded the Zombies, Run! app.

So yeah…Guess that’s it for this months update…It’s very much like last months. This is why I don’t work on my personal blog much. *sigh*

 

Long Overdue for an Update

I do a lot on my geek blogs, one I’m hoping will starting making some money if I can get it going in the proper manner, so I neglect my randomness “Hey, it’s just me” blog.

I’m not even sure where to start, or where I left off, but I did notice my last post was about the fact that I finally have much needed glasses, so there’s that.

Been doing a lot of geeky things this year, well OK, so I’m always doing a lot of geeky things. It’s not like I have “mainstream” interests. But there just seems to be more this year. Since January we’ve been attending monthly Doctor Who screenings, we even won a couple of things at them. I won a DVD of the first episodes ever aired, and Ken won a 4-day GenCon pass. Speaking of GenCon passes, Amanda also won one, through a drawing with a gaming group here in Indy. So that was pretty awesome, an yes, we are attending GenCon this year, planned on doing it anyway. We also applied for press passes, and got approved, so this is awesome. None of us have to pay to attend, and I can cover it as “press”.

We’ve also been chatting with, and meeting up with, other local geek bloggers. That’s been pretty neat, and actually getting to know people out here, who actually have the same interests as me.

Random: I keep getting free things from word of mouth programs, Influenster, BzzAgent, and more. Nothing that has been good for my geek blogs, but stuff that has been very useful for around the house, etc. Fine by me, saves me a little money, and all I have to do in return is blog about it, spread the word on social media, and write a review, etc. Not a big deal, and I’m completely unemployed now anyway. Hence why I’ve been putting so much time into my geek blogs, and hoping they start to make real(ish) money.

I think I will try to keep this blog updated at least once a month, I could do a “month in review” kind of thing.

 

Glasses

Just doing a random, quick update to say, “Look at me! I have my first pair of glasses!”

I finally had to admit that things in the distance were pretty blurry, and it was getting worse. Signs on the street,  or in stores, etc, were blurry to the point I couldn’t read them, any kind of text on the TV was blurry, and so on. Ken paid for my eye exam, and bought me my glasses, and now I can see properly! It’s amazing!

 

Recent Job Hunt

My recent craze in job hunting has lead me to apply for things I’m not even capable of.

I found out UPS was hiring seasonal “Drivers Helpers”, so I applied. But let’s think about this for a moment, the job is from 8am until, possibly, 8pm (with the Holiday season I’m sure that will be an average day). That means I would have to spend around 12 hours lifting boxes, and most of them will certainly be heavy. Oh, and I have a back that likes to give out when I do the fracking dishes for 10 minutes, and I have tennis elbow, it just hurt me the other day when I tried to pick up a heavy book. Not that it actually matters, it’s not like I will ever be a serious thought for the job. If you had a choice between a 40 year old woman or strong collage age guys, working long hours lifting heavy things, who would you hire? I’ll give you a hint: Not me.

 

Explosion

We went out to the movies last night, and shortly after we got home we suddenly heard, and felt, a large explosion. All our neighbors were out on the street, trying to figure out what happened, we were seeing twitter reports from even further away of others who felt, and heard it. It was pretty scary not knowing.

Shortly after we found out it was a home that exploded a couple of miles from us. The fires were raging, the houses nearby were in flames, and burning quickly, a lot of homes were damaged by the blast, and they obviously had to evacuate the area. All the details are not out yet, it’s only been a couple of hours.

I feel so bad for those directly effected by this tragedy.

 

Job Issues

The place I work for is closing down in a few weeks, and it seems to me they think they are still open. First, they asked one of their other contract workers to work on a logo for an event they used to have every February. Why would they want that? The event is clearly not happening anymore.

The next odd thing was an email I received from them about a posting I made over a week ago, on their Women’s Half Marathon facebook page. I posted, what seemed to me, a relevant article from a fitness website, it was a Fall gear guide for women. There were links in the article to various sites, I did not think this would be a problem. Most articles would have links back to the items they are talking about. They linked to national stores, or sites you could order from (like amazon). In the email they sent me they asked that I remove it because, “this is in competition with our sponsor”. This baffled me. I would think that the sponsor in question is no longer a sponsor for a couple of reasons. #1 the race is over, can’t be a sponsor of something they are no longer contributing to. #2 there is not going to be a race next year, at least not put on by the company I work for since they are CLOSING. How are they a sponsor of an event that is not only over, but isn’t even happening next year?

There’s another issue that I have with this whole “sponsor” thing. The company in question is a local business that sells athletic gear, they don’t have a way to order anything online, and they don’t even show any gear on their site. When I first saw their page I thought they were a training place for runners, because that is pretty much the only thing they mention on there. That leads me to my next problem, this Women’s Half had participants from all across the country. A local company, that has nothing on their site, and no way to order online, does not give me any options to post stuff relevant to our followers.

I won’t even get started on the fact that they have my boyfriend working on a site for some race, but they didn’t add in a charge for the website when they told these people they would give them a site. So it’s evidently being done for free. Things like this are the reason they have to close.

*headdesk*

(just needed to vent a little about this)

 

Frugality & Job Searching

For some reason, that I can’t figure out, after moving to Indy in 2007 I have not been able to find a permanent job. It’s not because I’m being picky, far from it. I’m putting in for everything, well, at least anything I can do, or think I can do. There’s clearly some limitations, for example; I can’t be an electrician, or any other job that requires skills I simply don’t have, and can’t train for on the job. I’m fine with minimum wage, so it’s not like I’m looking to get a lot of money. I use ‘keywords’ and tailor my resumes for each job, I have called back, I’ve looked into employment agencies (they have nothing for me), etc.

Earlier this year I had some stuff that seemed promising, but it never happened (through no fault of my own). The one job I did have, which was barely even part-time, working for my boyfriends grandparents, is gone. They closed up shop. It may not have been a lot of money, but it was something. This job was also Ken’s ‘extra’ source of income (he worked on their website, and worked races). I’m just glad he found a new job last year, it worked out well.

Because of all the above I have been trying to be very frugal lately, more than I normally am. If Ken and Amanda were not such picky eaters they would be living off ramen. Most of our meals involve pasta and….err…and…more pasta? Well, whatever it is I’ve been feeding them I’m able to keep meal costs down. I’ve pretty much just been getting the basics; Cereal, milk, eggs, bread, lunch meat, pastas, rice, frozen chicken tenders, frozen burger patties, etc. You get the idea. Also doing more shopping at ALDI, it saves me a ton of money, and I have no clue why I stopped shopping there.

Earlier I was going over what’s left of my money, and figured out that I have enough to pay my credit cards for the next 2 months, and enough to for about 3 weeks of groceries. I don’t have much, but I’m going to start digging around to see if I have anything I can sell on craigslist. This sucks. I just want a damn job.

Anyway, no real point to this post, except for trying to get some stuff off my chest, and to say that I am fracking losing my mind.

 

Strangers In My Yard

It’s slightly disturbing to learn that you had complete strangers hanging out in your yard.We may have never known if they didn’t leave these behind…

Ken was mowing the lawn when he almost ran over these sunglasses and Swiss army knife. That army knife is well used, but I would just want to know what they were doing with it in my yard. I looked the glasses up online, turns out the sell for an average of $115. Then I realized, I needed a pair of sunglasses, so I cleaned them up…

 

So…My House was Egged

Front door 

Typically, I thought, houses are usually egged as a Halloween prank, or when an adult has pisses off some pre-teen, or teenager. Not that those are actually justified reasons to egg a persons house, but you know what I mean. So I am completely baffled at this random act of vandalism. I can only assume I was the target simply because they got a stupid idea in their heads as I happen to walk past them.

Around midnight last night I was out walking my dog, as I rounded a corner I noticed three teens near one of the houses. I thought nothing of them, realizing I have seen them before when I was out on one of my walks, and also when out for rides I’ve seen them playing basketball at that house. One of them doubled back towards the house (they had been walking away from it), and went inside. I thought nothing of it and kept walking, minding my own business, listening to my mp3 player, then noticed they were behind me (not too close), but once again I thought nothing of it, just assumed they were going in the same direction. I get inside my house, then soon heard something hitting my front door and my large front window. I ran out the door, and the kids took off through a neighbors yard across the street.

I went to the house today, the kid (maybe in mid/late teens? I’m bad at guessing ages.) answered the door, played innocent, and claimed his parents were at work. Though I wondered last night if they worked night shift, because there seemed to be no one home when I walked over there after the egging. He also claimed he had no clue when they get home…Yeah…right. So I told him I will stop by later, and I will keep stopping by until I talk to them.

I can only hope the parents are reasonable, and not idiots who will get mad at me for accusing their demon spawn of something they just know he/they would never do. Though I am sure they will noticed a carton of eggs is missing from the fridge.

Lovely view out my front window

 

Downtown is kind of Weird

Took a walk around downtown today, and saw this….

We walked a little further and ran into this…

For perspective, Ken is 6’4″

Then…there is this thing (not my video), hanging out on a corner…Like a prostitute. Whenever I see it I think of a stripper dance…