An Award, Gearing up for A-Z, Life and a Giveaway!

An Award

All of my other blog posts were scheduled to publish so I am a few weeks behind in thanking Tina from the Life is Good blog for presenting me and the other Tina's Terrific Team Members with the Very Inspiring Blogger Award.  Please feel free to take it and use it on your own blogs, as I'd just end up nominating all my friends for it anyway.  I'm supposed to list a few things about myself but I have really run out of stuff that I haven't already shared, so sorry if these are repeats.   Let's see...

1.  I'm very non-competitive and I think that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  I am thrilled if my friends decide to try a craft idea because they saw that I tried it first.  We need more crafting and hand made stuff!!!!  I never liked board games, esp. ones like Trouble, that require a certain killer instinct.  Trivial Pursuit is the only game I really like.  I never joined any teams.  I don't compete with anyone with the games I play on Facebook.   I do, however, enter contests but I don't get upset or in a twist if I don't win.  And if I do win, I will back off on entering on the same site so as to give others a chance to win.

2.  I love having my back scratched and drawn on (with fingertips) and my hair played with.  When we were little, Sharon, Diane & I used to sit one in front of the other and draw on each other's backs, taking turns at regular intervals because one of us would be in the front and not have anything to do while one was in the rear not getting their back drawn on.

3.  Jobs I have held:  Chambermaid/hotel laundryroom (Cape Cod), part time/summer relief radio station engineer (Cape Cod), answering WZOU Boston's Hot Hits request line, switchboard operator in Boston (lasted 1 day), McDonalds cashier in Hyannis (lasted 2 weeks during high school), TV production engineer in Hyannis & Boston, secretary to the owner of a construction company (San Francisco), receptionist/office manager (SF), legal assistant/paralegal (California & Washington), fill-in school lunch lady (current).

4.  Major league pet peeve is that very few people ever, ever, EVER pronounce or spell my last name right.   They always leave out the second 'N', even when I have just said and often spelled the name for them.  It pisses me off to no end and was a source of great frustration growing up.  However, it was important to Russell that I take my name back when I divorced Brian, even though my life was so much easier when my last name was Wolf.

5.  I loooooooooove being a stay at home wife.  I love to spoil Russell when he's home, and believe me, he's spoiled rotten, to the point where I'll dish out the food and bring his plate to him so that he can kick back in his recliner.  I love to cook & bake for him & have all his fave foods when he comes home.  I enjoy the domesticity of cleaning & cooking, taking care of the dogs, being flexible enough to do lunch with Marsha on the weekdays and see mom & my cousin.  I love being a stepmother, especially getting to know my stepdaughter, and being there for her if she needs something during the week.

Gearing Up for A-Z

A-Z starts on Monday, April 1.  I'd like to wish all the participants the best of luck and hope that everyone sticks with it to the end.  And please, for the love of all that is holy, TURN OFF THE CAPTCHA!!!!!  I will not be leaving comments on blogs that have this annoying feature.  I have already backed off on commenting regularly on blogs that have CAPTCHA.  Dump it.  It's only pissing people off and will decrease the amount of traffic and comments you receive.  

That said, I had to make one small change in the comments on my blog. It's so minor that no one's probably even noticed, but I disabled the ability to leave anonymous comments.  I went into my blogger spam folder and was surprised to see the hundreds of comments that landed in there.  Just for the heck of it, I also checked all the comments left on my blog since Day 1 in 2006 and was shocked to see how many anonymous spam comments had accumulated, especially since January of this year.  One of my old posts from 2007 had 247 comments on it, 240 of which were links to garbage!!!  It took me hours and hours to delete all that crap.

Where is this increased spam coming from?  There's a work-at-home thing that's apparently making people money; it was written about in a few reputable sources but said sources failed to give the details of what it entailed.  I had started the sign up process several months ago, but I stopped at the part that stated that you had to "share links to products and services with people".  Reading between the lines, I realized that meant spamming blogs and Facebook pages with said links.  I refuse to do that so I never went through with the sign up.  I can only guess that is what has contributed to the increase in anonymous comments.

I left the ability to email me, although I'm not terribly comfortable with it because I'm getting way more spam on my email since I turned on that feature.  I hardly ever got spam before that.  I will leave it on for the time being because some of my bloggy buddies like to respond via email.  I have also had a problem with a former classmate of mine who got in such a twist over my unfriending her on Facebook (then I had to block her), that she's tried stalking me on Pinterest (I had to block here there too), and she made a FB account in her dead mother's name in order to send me a super nasty message.  If she finds this blog, I will have to disable the email and possibly have to take it private for awhile.  So far she hasn't *knocking wood*.

Life

Not much going on, life-wise.  I continue to look for work but there's not much around here.  I'm on the sub list for cafeteria work in the Wareham School District.  But that pays minimum wage and I figured out that at $8.00 per hour, for a 2.5 hour shift, it's a whopping $20.  Deducting the small amount of taxes and social security, I'll come home with like $15.  Hardly worth it.  That, in no way, helps my dire financial situation, especially when you factor in the high cost of gas and wear/tear on my car.  Not that it's a far drive (7 miles one way).  Almost everything I've applied for on Craigs List has been a big fat scam.  One place was based in Wisconsin and the email I got from them mentioned 'multi level marketing' (aka Pyramid Scheme), and said that I'd be acting as a bill collector for their local accounts, deposit the money into my account and transfer it to their account after deducting my fee/cut.  Um, no. I think not.  Another one said there were court jobs in this area and I applied for it and it turned out to be an ad for paralegal school.  WTF?!?!?!?!  All the other jobs are located way too far away; farther than when I commuted from Bonney Lake to Tacoma.  I'm not going through that grind again, esp. with summer coming up.  I'm getting pretty close to 'would you like fries with that?'  If I could score a M-F morning job at a fast food restaurant that'd be fine, but I don't do nights or weekends.  I applied for a part time data entry job and they emailed me to say they were interested in talking to me but wanted to make sure I knew it was part time and $12 an hour, and was I still interested.  I emailed back that yes, I was interested and part time was what I was looking for.  Have I heard back?  Of course not.

Then we woke up to this on Friday, March 22.....I was NOT amused.  Winter's got a stranglehold on us and won't go away.

At least it melted fast.

So I've been spending my time crafting as you know, spring cleaning which with dogs in the house is like brushing your teeth with oreos.  I haven't done much photography since I quit 365.  I need more memory cards and haven't had the cash to purchase them.  My camera's sensor is dirty again and that's a source of great frustration.  I paid $50 to have it professionally cleaned last fall and it was dirty within 2 days.  I continue to try and clean it myself with limited success.  One of my high school friends is a builder and has offered me a paying gig shooting pics of a remodel he's working on so that will be good.

Here are a few more projects I've done over the past week or so:

Glitter magnets

2 Artist Trading Cards...on the back of this one I put sticker letters that say 'Tempest Fugit'.  The ATCs are about 2.5" x 3.5", so pretty small.

And one that's beach-related.  I added the glitter to her bra and scales.

And here are a couple of colour book pages I did recently as well.

A Giveaway

Finally I want to promote a crafty giveaway at Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe.  If you enter, please mention that I sent you there so that I get more entries!  I know I don't have a snowball's chance in hell to win anything because of their huge following, but I keep entering anyway.

I'll see you all Monday, April 1 for the beginning of A to Z!!