Today turned out to be quite a day with a big win! I’ve been on the go non-stop since I got up at 9:00 and am only just now finding the time to write. Our great day started off disappointing, though. Mid-morning or so Tom’s phone rang while he was out dumping the rat’s cage. I thought it was a call to go on another waste-of-time job interview, but it was really a lady saying, “Hi, your wife won the Jayco second chance drawing for our camping prize pack.”

At first I didn’t get excited. Yes, phone calls usually mean big wins. Not as often as those overnight FedEx letters do, but often enough. I was just finishing up the rat’s cage and shooing him home when I asked him if he thought it was a big win (I enter so many sweeps it’s hard to keep track of them all). “Yes, I do,” he said.

So I called the woman back and was told I’d won a $500 Walmart card, a $500 gas card to the gas station of our choice (we decided on Shell), and a $700 card to use at a Yogi Bear Jellystone Park Camp Resort. Later I learned the prize pack also includes a flip video camera and “goodies for the road.” The entire package comes to $2,000. The odds of winning – 1 in 30,000.

I was all excited and mentioned it on Twitter and Facebook and of course Andy had to bring God into it saying “God is good” besides “lucky bitch.” If there are two things that annoy me about him it’s his not taking me for face value at times and bringing God into everything. He brings God into everything like blacks bring race into everything. I wonder why he lied about viewing my blog, though. I asked if he’d been to it yet and he said no, yet my tracker said otherwise.

It was funny because right before the call I bitched to Tom that I hadn’t gotten any win notices all last week and was wondering if I should not bother renewing my sweeps subscription due to our shitty connection anyway.

But here’s where I started to panic and get really pissed. The lady I talked to said I needed a code that would’ve been generated upon entering the sweep and emailed to me. I ran and checked but since I entered in early April anything that I may have accidentally deleted or that hit my spam box from then has been deleted. I asked if this meant I wouldn’t get the prize and she said, “Correct, I’m not legally allowed to alter the rules or make any substitutions.”

To say I started to feel cruelly teased from above is an understatement! I vowed then and there to never ever sweep again. But then the lady called back to say that since no one seemed to have their codes (there was a total of 5 winners), they were going to go ahead and grant the prizes anyway!

So we printed out some forms, one of which we had to get notarized, and got it out in time for the 3:00 pickup. The other form we’re going to take a picture of and email it.

I’m a little too tired due to the excitement and being so busy to write much more right now so I’ll wrap this entry up and expand later. Let’s just say we’ve been having fun coming up with ideas on how to spend that Walmart card. :))))))

Later…

Been tossing around ideas for the Walmart card with Tom. More than likely we’re going to get something I’ve wanted for years – an electric running treadmill. I’m so excited at the thought of having one! They range from just under $300 to $5,000. I didn’t think Walmart sold anything that expensive! The one I’ll be getting is about $300 and goes from 1-10 MPH. I was almost afraid to even bother looking at first because there was simply no room in here for one, but then we found that we could just fold it up when we’re not using it. :) I’d love to be able to run indoors and never have to worry about the weather! Running is the only thing that helps me lose weight. We considered a Wii fitness pack and an elliptical machine but I’d rather just run. It’s straightforward and it works.

We also may get some stuff for the car. We need Freon to recharge the AC.

A shower massager would be nice, too. Some of the spouts are blocked or spraying at funny angles.

It wouldn’t hurt to get some more memory for my computer, so we’ll have to make a list and prioritize it.

Other than the lack of job calls and Tom having the runs for a couple of days and then him getting stung by a bee this morning when he went to oil the belt on the cooler, life is pretty good. Well, except that the damn dogs barked two nights in a row this week instead of one. Last night they went off and I said, “Oh no. You mean they’re gonna bark Sunday nights now, too?” I used to be able to at least count on peace Sunday – Wednesday, but now I see that the drunk up the hill may take off any night and leave me to have to blare the sound machines to get any peace. Before he’d sometimes go out on Thursday nights, but usually just Friday or Saturday.

It’s amazing they can even concentrate at the mail place on not screwing things up with the way they let this kid run around screaming like a little monster. There were two women and a guy there and one of them had a little boy that was around 5 years old. It was like a wild animal, running, shouting and banging whatever toy he had into things, and just totally out of control. My mother never would’ve let me act like that when I was a kid. Christine said she’d rather work than watch little kids after her boyfriend’s kids drove her nuts last weekend. Me too, and I am ever so glad not to have had any kids of my own. I’d rather do work I hated!

The connection is still cutting in and out like crazy and it really sucks that we can’t get the service we’re paying for.

Now for a people update. Last night I chatted with Maliheh. She’s losing students since she teaches kids and it’s now summertime, but hanging in there. She and Alison are the only ones I told about the newest tracker we installed on my blog that is incredibly detailed and much easier to use than Google Analytics. This one is tracemyip.org and as usual, you have to pay to access all the features, but what I can get for free is still nice. I love how it lets me block access from certain IPs. The only catch is that I can only do it for 14 days. You can choose from their list or make up your own screen to display for whoever you’re blocking access to your site. I joked about having it say. : Ha Ha, Molly! But I don’t want to even make the slightest reference to her so she’ll go back to viewing my blog a few times a week instead of more than a few times a day. As it is I’m worried she saw the conversation Kim started about her on Facebook. It will simply say that the page is no longer available. The only problem is that true stalkers keep checking old links daily and so she’ll no doubt discover she can view it again in two weeks. She still checks my old blog. She’ll probably check it for years. She comes in from my Twitter account, from my Formspring account – from everywhere. As harmless as she is she still has a way of putting the creep in creepy with her voyeuristic ways with people she knows damn well can’t stand her.

This tracker zoomed right in on Maliheh’s house. It’s a nice neighborhood for being in the city and the houses aren’t so closely set. They’re still too close for my tastes being in the mainstream, but at least the driveways go up to the houses and not between them, and there’s more than just a few feet between the houses as well.

I’m almost certain Nane has indeed viewed my blog, is reading my messages, and has been on Facebook, but is keeping in touch with people privately and probably posting things on her wall that I can’t see as well. Why she doesn’t just dump me if she truly is upset with me is a mystery to me.

I noticed with HitsLink that she never showed up on my visitor list yet the page of my wins I sent her after I told her about the sweeps and all that showed that it had been accessed. I also noticed on my old blog at Blogger that their stats said I got a hit from Germany after I gave her the link to my bio there. Well, after I gave her my new blog link, but before I had any extra trackers installed, I got a hit from Germany on Blogger’s own tracker. Same with after I gave her the link to the first story she’s in, Beneath the Smile.

I sent her a message yesterday “thanking” her for the nice comment on my blog to see if it would trigger a response from her, even though she never left any (I would have said it was a troll playing games) when I also enclosed the story link letting her know I’d delete it if it bothered her. Well, she’s only been to my blog once since then and she couldn’t have read it all in one sitting, so she either didn’t care to do anything more than just glance at it, plans to finish it later, or she copied it.

This morning there was a message from Irene saying she messaged Nane but no one knows where she is. Maybe she’s in love, maybe she’s on vacation, who knows.

I replied saying that as far as I knew she just got back from vacation and only sees her boyfriend on weekends. And then I realized my mistake and that Irene was fishing to see if I’d say, “But I heard from her. She left a comment on my blog.” So then I told her and Nane that a friend admitted to leaving it as a joke. Sure enough, I haven’t heard from Nane, but I’m sure Irene will have something to say about it.