My Uncle Wayne is one of the biggest golfers I know. For as long as I can remember, he’s played a round of golf at least a couple of times a day while visiting. My grandpa gets a little annoyed with it because he says that he (Wayne) should be spending time with the family. He’s actually spending time with some of the family when he’s playing though, so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. The last time he was visiting, he was showing off his new Titleist golf clubs. Now golf isn’t really my cup of tea but you know what? I have to admit, those were some really cool golf clubs.

I feel bad for all of you stuck in those triple digits still. I can remember what it’s like and I can tell you this - I do not miss it at all. I am so fond of this cooler air we have been getting the last week or two, I don’t think I want to trade it in for anything. It drops down to about 45-50ºF throughout the night and early morning hours but it manages to get up to around 65-70ºF during the day.

This is the kind of weather I could enjoy all year long. I mean, I absolutely love winter but I think I could really get used to these temperatures too!

Having cats, shopping for window blinds has become pretty regular. My cats have this thing called otherside-itis. This basically means that they have to know what’s behind everything - a closed door, a piece of furniture, the shower curtain and of course, the blinds. They’re both pretty rough when they leap behind the blinds, which puts a lot of wear and tear on them. It’s basically come down to us buying blinds at least every couple of months, which can be expensive.

I recently heard about a new site, Freeblinds.com, which allows customers to share referral codes with other people. When those people use that referral code to purchase something, the customer who referred them gets 20% of the purchase price. What this means is over time, you’ll be able to get your blinds for free! I don’t know about you but I love anything that’s free and having to buy blinds so often, this would awesome.

Shop for Free Window Blinds at Freeblinds.com, with their patent-pending rewards program.

FREEblinds.com Debuts Patent-Pending Shopping Concept

June 20, 2007
St. Augustine, Florida

FREEblinds.com, Inc. (www.freeblinds.com) announced today the launch of their FREEblinds.com website, a Next-Generation Internet shopping site offering an extensive variety of window coverings with the ability to earn back 100% of their product purchase price. It’s just the first of many websites providing customers the opportunity to get their products for FREE through the patent-pending FREEshopping.com Rewards Program.
With the look and feel of other consumer websites, FREEblinds.com operates in similar fashion. First you shop from a vast array of products offered at some of the lowest prices to be found on the Internet; you make your selection; then submit your order. It’s at checkout where the similarity to all other sites ends. Upon conclusion of checkout, the customer is assigned a unique code, and presented with the option to share that code with others interested in purchasing window coverings. Then each time a referred customer’s order has been completed, 20% of the referred customer’s product purchase amount is Rewarded (via a check refund) to the original referring customer. This process continues for each referred order until 100% of the original customer’s product purchase amount has been returned. Customers have a full FIVE years to earn back their product costs. And, every referred customer has the same opportunity to earn back their total purchase amount through the Rewards Program.

The process of “Totally Free Products” was created by FREEblinds.com and FREEshopping.com founder Joe Mehm. A pioneer in online retailing, Mehm asks, “Why shop anywhere else? What’s better than free?” And, since we sell our products at the most competitive prices on the Internet, even if you don’t earn a single Reward, you will still save money.” he asserts. “That’s reason enough to shop at FREEblinds.com. Then giving customers the opportunity to earn back 100% of their product cost, is just icing on the cake!” Mehm concludes.

The process making this concept possible is so distinct, so unique that Mehm has been awarded Patent Pending Status by the United States Patent Office.

Simply put, the customer rewards are offset by savings realized from reduced expenditures of conventional Internet advertising. FREEblinds.com pays past customers to bring in new customers. While it might be said that one expense just replaces the other, this process does much more than that. Internet advertising costs, as with other conventional advertising costs, are not tied to results. Therefore, one pays for advertising whether business is created from that advertising or not. With the FREEshopping process, advertising is only paid after sales are made, for revenue already generated. And, like a gift that keeps on giving, satisfied, fully Rewarded customers are naturally going to continue to tell others how smart they were to shop FreeBlinds.com, now creating business free from any advertising expense.

To make it easy for customers to get their referrals started, FREEblinds.com has positioned valuable tools at the end of order checkout to help automate the referral process. Customers can easily print a sheet of referral cards formatted with their name and referral code. Another feature allows the customer to enter the names and email addresses of friends and family, so that an automated link explaining the program is forwarded to them along with the referrer’s code. And, for those customers with their own website, MySpace site, etc., a section of copy and paste text is available for pasting a small banner on their site. Once pasted on their site, any purchase made through that link, embedded with their referral code, automatically posts a credit to the customer’s account. It then becomes possible for a customer to receive all of their money back without ever having to refer someone personally.

FREEblinds.com…the first of an exclusive group of fine merchants offering consumers quality products along with the process to receive back 100% of the cost of their product purchases. Next-Generation shopping is here today!

Contact Information:
Media Relations Director:
Robert (Rewards Rob) Till at (866) 254-6314 ext 10.
RewardsRob@FREEshopping.com
www.freeblinds.com

FREEshopping.com vendor program:
Joe Mehm at (866) 254-6314 ext 18.
Joe@FREEshopping.com
www.freeshopping.com

As you can see, I’ve given Scribblescratch.com a face lift. I really loved the leopard print design but couldn’t make it work properly in IE. It bugs me when that happens, so I said tata to it. I’ve checked this theme in IE and it works like it should.

I will also be adding some graphics, free for download sometime tomorrow. I will start with a few headers that will work on your vox.com blogs. They’re the ones I had offered before, privately. Now if anyone would like to use them, they can - once they’re up of course.

Note; Contest will be posted before noon MST tomorrow.

My good friend Helen recently purchased a new dining room suit, which has given me the itch to do the same. We currently lack a dining room suit because we knew we wouldn’t be in this apartment very long. We didn’t want to buy a lot of furniture, only to have to move it down 4 flights of stairs and into a new place.

Now that our lease is almost up, I’ve been looking around in some of the local stores. This is rarely fun for me because I hate being pestered when I’m trying to make decisions and let’s face it, buying furniture is a big decision. I have a hard enough time choosing styles and colors, so it can get really frustrating trying to choose those things when a floor salesman/woman is following me around.

I’m glad there’s a stress-free alternative. I can shop for dining room furniture, or any furniture at that, without being hassled into buying something I really don’t like or something extra, that I really don’t need. Plus, I can do it in the comfort of my own home, whether it’s day or night, rain or shine.

This is the kind of shopping I love to do, stress-free.

Edit; First, I changed the layout back. Why? Because my darling Stacey noted how horrible the previous looked in IE.

Second, here are photos of the handbags I recently purchased. I bought the black one because of the interior lining - pink leopard print, which is something I have never really liked until now! The camel colored is the one this entry was about, lol. The other is a bag identical to the one that started this “Guess” problem - the woman at East Side Mario’s.

A few days ago my husband gave me the OK to buy a handbag off of ebay. No, I do not have to ask my husband for permission to buy anything but I did want his approval considering the insane number of handbags I have purchased in the last month or so. He said he didn’t mind at all, which I figured but it was nice to get that confirmation. I have never in my life paid more than $80 or so for a handbag and if I have, I really don’t recall it happening. I remember seeing a woman at East Side Mario’s (restaurant here in Calgary) with a cute handbag by Guess. So that’s what I decided to start browsing for. I haven’t decided if I should be embarrassed at how many bags I purchased after that “OK” from my husband, so I won’t disclose that at this time, haha.

So anyway. There I was, my eyes fixated on my monitor - a beautiful camel colored handbag staring back at me. It’s absolutely gorgeous and totally worth the price I paid - another thing I won’t disclose. Hey, my family reads this and I would hate to have to explain how my handbag fetish has tripled since arriving in Calgary. Should I blame it on the altitude? Kidding. I sent a quick message to the seller, whom I’d just purchased another Guess handbag from a few days earlier, though for much, much less. I asked if I could pay the following day if I did a buy it now on it. Normally they require you to pay this immediately and because of how silly Canadian debit cards work (or rather don’t work), when I pay through PayPal with an empty balance (in PayPal) it will run it as an e-check. Those take about a week to clear, which pushes shipping dates back. I was given the OK from the seller to pay the next day, since I knew I had a big payout coming from a couple of places.

Pay day arrives. I log into PayPal and see that I now have sufficient funds to pay for my purchase, so I send my payment. I hadn’t thought about the receipt thing at the time, so the price wasn’t something that bothered me.. then. When Jo got up the next morning, he had a pretty little PayPal receipt sitting in his account. He always reads those because he uses that account for online purchases as well. I looked over as he was laughing and shaking his head like “Tsk, tsk Teresa”, so I asked him what was so funny. “Did you buy anything today?” he asked. “Well yeah, we just got back from the grocery store. I’d say I bought something.” “No, other than that have you bought anything today?” he arched a brow and folded his arms over his chest. “I.. well..” he stopped me right there and said “Well, I know I didn’t buy a Guess handbag so it must’ve been you!”

I was so busted.

I am happy to say I had him change the password to PayPal to something else, something I couldn’t possibly figure out. Even though my own funds are the primary contributor to that PayPal account, it’s time to have a little self control over this handbag situation. This is the best thing I could come up with.

Speaking of handbags. Keep a check on Scribblescratch.com throughout the day tomorrow. I will be announcing the new contest, with the prize being a beautiful handbag by Rebecca Weis (from etsy), sometime in the late afternoon!

My grandmother was about the same today. They are still not sure when she will be allowed to come home, but they are hoping it will be sometime early in the week. She has not improved a whole lot though. She is slightly better, but she is nowhere near 100%. Today made a week since she has been in the hospital. I really hate that I cannot be there with her right now. She got really ill last winter and I decided I would stay there with her at night, most of the time. I did not get very much sleep while there, but I was happy to be there helping out. Plus I am positive she felt better having family there over a sitter.

I will be calling my mom again tomorrow afternoon to get another update. Hopefully she will have improved a little more by then.

Thank you for the comments and emails regarding my grandmother by the way. It is very appreciated.

A friend and I were talking about how expensive homes are in California recently. I know at one point I thought I wanted to live there but honestly, I doubt it’s something I could ever come close to affording. I did, however, decide to look at the California mortgage rate for a couple of townhouses a couple of years back. I actually think the rates were lower then.

I have another friend living who also lives in California. She says even the rental rates are outrageous there. I guess it really depends on the area you are in though, like most places but it just seems like either way, it’s pretty costly.

My husband picks at me about how picky I am about certain things. One of the things I am very picky about is water. I most occasions, I will not drink water from any tap. This stems from the city water back in a town we lived in back in Georgia. The smell was horrible and even though it had been tested and proven safe, the smell was such a turn off. I am also not drinking the water from the tap here in Calgary because of the smell. The only water I drink that isn’t bottled is at my mom’s house. She has a deep well and it isn’t smelly, and taste great.

Maybe we should consider investing in portable water filters or something.

I spoke with my mom this evening, regarding my grandmother’s deteriorating health. She was rushed to the hospital last Sunday after her blood pressure reading was 186 over 124. By the time they got to the ER, it had dropped to 70 over 30. They also found blood in her urine, so they started running all kinds of tests. She has a severe kidney infection but thankfully, her blood pressure has stabilized. She’s in a regular room now but has had a lot of difficulty walking, talking, going to the bathroom on her own and has been getting very confused.

They have no idea when she’ll be able to come home but when she does, hospice will be coming in 5 days a week to help my mom and Tammy out. I hope she’ll be better by the time we get there. At least enough to be able to enjoy having company around and not remember us stopping in for a visit (she can;t remember who’s visited her and on most occasions, can’t remember who her visitors are when they are there with her).

September 17th can’t come too soon.

“Oh, yea. It’s right here - Samsonite!”

Any guesses? It’s a quote from one of the movies that I personally consider hilarious - Dumb and Dumber. Lloyd is trying to remember Mary’s (the woman he drives to the airport in the beginning of the movie) last name. Her last name was actually Swanson but when Harry notes that her last name may be on her Samsonite luggage (well, it was a briefcase). He takes a closer look at and sees the name “Samsonite” - this is one of the funny parts of the movie for me! I can remember watching this in the theater and having to cover my ears because the laughter was so loud.

We have this movie on DVD, maybe I should pop it into the player tonight!

My mom recently started adding some personal touches around her house. She actually did this once before, when she first bought the place but after my grandmother moved it - decorating took a seat on the back burner. One of her goals has always been sprucing up the light fixtures (she and I share that passion). An unattractive ceiling fan originally hung over the dinning room table. I hate to say it was unattractive because it wasn’t that bad but it didn’t suit the elegance of the dinning room. She made the decision a few months back to replace it with a chandelier - she’s always loved the idea of having chandeliers in dinning rooms verses regular lighting or ceiling fans, as I’m sure most people do.

We’re heading back to Georgia next month and I cannot wait to see the changes she’s made, especially with the dinning room.

It’s been a really long time since I’ve taken a vacation to Orlando, Florida. Some of my favorite vacations were spent at Disney World - my mom’s love of all things Mickey Mouse was passed on to me. I can remember , very vividly, spinning in those Alice In Wonderland Teacups. Jo’s never had the chance to go to a park like Disney World, so I’m hoping that sometime next year we’ll start looking into an Orlando vacation rental house or condo for a 3 or 4 day vacation.

My mom has already expressed her own interest in this, so it will likely turn out to be a big family vacation. That would actually be really nice, considering we haven’t done that in such a long time - more than 10 years, it’s usually just my husband and I.

What a lazy day today has turned out to be. It’s a little cooler than it was a couple of weeks back and really hazy. On top of that, it’s also been stormy off and on today, with more storms in the forecast. These are the kind of thunderstorms I’m used to back home but it’s nice to hear a clap of thunder and the leaves rustling from the wind. Sort of makes me feel like I’m not 3000+ miles from “home”. I hope it will continue through tonight.

On the subject of weather - that hurricane Dean looks frightening. It looks like it’s already knocking on the door of a category 5. I would hate to be in the path of that sucker. I sure hope everyone in it’s path will head somewhere safer.

Like many people, there are various organizations and charities that I donate to every year. Some go to medical research, some help and benefit domestic abuse victims, some that help and benefit children and all that help and benefit those in need. These are all things I feel strongly about because of personal experience (not of my own but of loved ones).

I’ve always said that if I were ever in the position to do so, I would donate something far larger than the dollars I donate already - such as a house or even a car. For those of you in a position to do this, there is a non-profit, Christian organization called Car Angel that provides a way for you to Donate Your Car In Los Angeles (or even boats and houses) , which then will help orphaned children, widows, single mothers, the poor and the needy. Anyone nationwide can donate through their towing service and it won’t cost you a penny. If you have an automobile that is in need of repairs or simply isn’t running, they can and will use it (some restrictions apply). They’ll even handle all of the transfers, releases and any other paperwork that has to be done.

Donations fund programs like literacy and education around the world. Donations also fund fun projects like Free DVDs for Kids, such as The Adventures of Donkey Ollie.

Some of the benefits of a Car Angel, Los Angeles Car Donations are: A deduction on your taxes, not having to worry about selling you used car or dealing with the task of transfers or other paperwork and of course the ultimate benefit of helping someone in need.

I hope that someday it’s possible for me to donate to something as wonderful as Car Angel.