Well, my blog has taken the well-beaten path travelled by many of my previous blogs. I start out strong, but life gets busy and suddenly it's been 2 and a half months without a post. I'm not going to just discard this one though, as was my previous method. Hopefully in the new year I can start getting a few more posts out.
Recently I have been hearing some ads for a contest being run at one of the stores in my city. For Christmas, they decided that every day, at every store, someone would win back the money from what they purchased that day. It sounded like a pretty good contest; I mean, who doesn't want to shop for free? But at the end came the disclaimers. "No purchase necessary, see in store for details."
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't "winning your purchases" require buying something in the first place? How can a contest be "no purchase necessary" when you can't win anything without a purchase?
Of course, this isn't the first time that a company has run a contest that raised my eyebrows in this regard. There was once a bag of chips that proclaimed "Win [insert desirable prize]! No purchase necessary, see inside of bag for details". However, that at least had a shred of realism to it. Perhaps you could also visit the website for details, or obtain the information through some other means. In fact, if all you have to do is read someone else's bag of chips to figure out what you're supposed to do, then technically there really is no purchase necessary to win the contest. This store, however, wasn't even trying to pretend to follow the rules.
I thought that contests were required by law to be "no purchase necessary", but it turns out that isn't true in Canada. You can make someone purchase your product in order to gain entries, so long as you ask a skill-testing question. That strikes me as an incredibly odd way to run things, but I'll save that for another day. If this is the case, why even bother with the claim that purchases are not required to win a prize?
I do suppose you could technically enter to win back the $0 that you spent. Perhaps I should go do that now, I could really used the money.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
Someone dared me to do it.
I woke up this morning with the sudden realization that I desperately needed a new teddy bear. I know it probably seems strange, but they've advanced so much since I last got one! If I went to the Build-A-Bear shop I could pick what kind of teddy bear, clothing, even give it a beating heart. Though I wasn't so sure on the beating heart thing. It sounds kind of creepy to me.
First things first: I got up and grabbed a cup of coffee. As I drank it, I watched Oscar and Wally, my pet t-rexs playing in the yard. For those of you who don't know, I found them abandoned in a park, fairly freshly hatched and clearly not going to survive unless someone took them home and took care of them. Of course, I forgot how big they get. Handling one is okay, handling two...it's a lot of work. On the bright side I get to pick one each day to ride in to work. A lot less people have been cutting me off since I started riding in on a t-rex.
Today Wally seemed to be in a better temperament, so I chose to take him to the mall. This time though, I made extra sure to bring his feeding bag. You all remember what happened the last time I forgot it. DISASTER. Anyways, I got to the mall, tied up Wally with the other dinosaurs, and almost skipped to Build-A-Bear. I was so excited. I've never actually built one before.
Unfortunately, when I got there it was just being closed. Apparently a winged monkey had escaped from the zoo and had decided to make the store her home. Can't blame her, with all the cuddly things just laying around in there. But until the zoo could send someone to pick her up, the store had to be closed for everyone's safety. Those monkeys can be vicious when they feel threatened. I walked around the mall for about 30 minutes, and when I saw the store still wasn't open I decided to head home. I didn't want to leave Wally unattended for too long, he can be a bit of a mischief-maker!
So I didn't get my teddy bear today. Perhaps I'll try again tomorrow. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I hear some screaming outside. I need to go check if the boys are getting into trouble again.
If any of you are a little confused, I was challenged to make a blog post that included a teddy bear, two t-rexs, and a winged monkey. This is the result. Hope you enjoyed it!
First things first: I got up and grabbed a cup of coffee. As I drank it, I watched Oscar and Wally, my pet t-rexs playing in the yard. For those of you who don't know, I found them abandoned in a park, fairly freshly hatched and clearly not going to survive unless someone took them home and took care of them. Of course, I forgot how big they get. Handling one is okay, handling two...it's a lot of work. On the bright side I get to pick one each day to ride in to work. A lot less people have been cutting me off since I started riding in on a t-rex.
Today Wally seemed to be in a better temperament, so I chose to take him to the mall. This time though, I made extra sure to bring his feeding bag. You all remember what happened the last time I forgot it. DISASTER. Anyways, I got to the mall, tied up Wally with the other dinosaurs, and almost skipped to Build-A-Bear. I was so excited. I've never actually built one before.
Unfortunately, when I got there it was just being closed. Apparently a winged monkey had escaped from the zoo and had decided to make the store her home. Can't blame her, with all the cuddly things just laying around in there. But until the zoo could send someone to pick her up, the store had to be closed for everyone's safety. Those monkeys can be vicious when they feel threatened. I walked around the mall for about 30 minutes, and when I saw the store still wasn't open I decided to head home. I didn't want to leave Wally unattended for too long, he can be a bit of a mischief-maker!
So I didn't get my teddy bear today. Perhaps I'll try again tomorrow. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I hear some screaming outside. I need to go check if the boys are getting into trouble again.
If any of you are a little confused, I was challenged to make a blog post that included a teddy bear, two t-rexs, and a winged monkey. This is the result. Hope you enjoyed it!
Friday, September 30, 2011
DO NOT WANT
I went to bed last night feeling just fine. I woke up today with a cold. Or, at least, what I assume is a cold. My head is stuffy, my nose still manages to run like a faucet, and my throat is rebelling against me. It was early, the sun wasn't up yet, and I had a day full of work and school ahead of me. If I was less broke I may have called in sick, but my bank account urged me to get up and be a responsible adult.
All the way to work I was praying that it would be an easy day. I work with developmentally disabled adults and while there a lot of days, bad days are usually REALLY bad. At first it was looking good. My client that I work with was in a good mood, all laughs and smiles and funny jokes. Our ride to the program was pleasant, with lots of awesome music on the radio. Everything was going great. Then, when we got to the program, my client informed me that her bag was wet so her juice must be leaking. No worries, that's easy enough to deal with. We get inside and I ask to see her bag. I look through it to make sure everything's okay. It wasn't juice that was leaking. There, hidden in the bottom of the bag, was a rotten, liquefied apple.
DO. NOT. WANT.
Normally I do okay with stuff like this. But for whatever reason today I couldn't handle it. I gagged. I will admit to seriously considering just leaving it for the next person to find. Instead, I did the responsible thing and composed myself and helped the client take care of it.
Not a great start to a friday.
All the way to work I was praying that it would be an easy day. I work with developmentally disabled adults and while there a lot of days, bad days are usually REALLY bad. At first it was looking good. My client that I work with was in a good mood, all laughs and smiles and funny jokes. Our ride to the program was pleasant, with lots of awesome music on the radio. Everything was going great. Then, when we got to the program, my client informed me that her bag was wet so her juice must be leaking. No worries, that's easy enough to deal with. We get inside and I ask to see her bag. I look through it to make sure everything's okay. It wasn't juice that was leaking. There, hidden in the bottom of the bag, was a rotten, liquefied apple.
DO. NOT. WANT.
Normally I do okay with stuff like this. But for whatever reason today I couldn't handle it. I gagged. I will admit to seriously considering just leaving it for the next person to find. Instead, I did the responsible thing and composed myself and helped the client take care of it.
Not a great start to a friday.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
More productivity equals less brain power
The brain is definitely a muscle. Okay, not literally, but at least figuratively. The more you exercise your brain, the more useful it becomes. Like a muscle. Also, if you stop using your brain, it atrophies and then takes work to get it back to where it used to be. Like a muscle. And finally, if you overuse your brain, it starts to get tired and act funny. Like a muscle. At least, that's what happens in my case.
Today was my day for catching up on school work. I did some editing on a group lab report. I completed a quiz for my astronomy class. I rewrote four-and-a-half lecture's worth of notes on how to condition your muscles. It was all very productive, and it felt good to finally get caught up on all of my studying. But today was also my day off, which meant I spent the morning sleeping in and my early afternoon catching up on the internet, followed by the required procrastination time. I didn't get started on my school work until 5pm. Not so good.
At first I was powering through it, but as the hours passed my hand-brain coordination was slowly waning. The words I was writing out took a bit more effort to process, and I kept adding random g's in places they don't belong (seriously, where did I find a g in "creatine kinase"?). Just as I was deciding that maybe it was time to call it a night, my boyfriend sent me a text letting me know that it was "tim" to make some tea, and he was just going to put his clothes in the laundry and call me in a "non". A SIGN! I giggled at his autocorrect fails, and sent him a quick text asking why Tim was making him tea and how long a non was before packing up my school work. As I happily put my books and pens away, a thought slowly dawned on me. When he said it was time to make tea, he also said something about studying. Why would he be studying? He doesn't go to school. My brain struggled to process what had happened. Eventually, I went back to the text message and confirmed that niggling thought. He hadn't sent that text. I had.
I had a good laugh at myself and went to clear up the confusion. The hand-brain coordination continued to remain at an all time low as I talked about "tra" instead of "tea" and typed symbols instead of letters. When my boyfriend called a few minutes later, he listened quietly as I stumbled over my words trying to tell him what happened (the mouth-brain coordination also becomes compromised). At the end of my story, his only response was "you should probably take a break from studying for a while."
We are now at 2 hours since I stopped studying and brain function is almost back to normal. Only the occasional errant letter or two. Lesson of the night: 4 hours of straight school work is probably a few hours too many.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
A puzzling puzzle.
Every time we have family over for an event, a puzzle comes out. It's a tradition. However, we also will rarely, if ever, do the same puzzle twice. Meaning that for every get together we have, we need to buy a new puzzle. More often than not a trip to the toy store will be made for this exact purpose, but occasionally we stumble across the perfect one unintentionally. This is what we thought we had done for my brother's birthday. Soon we were to learn how wrong we were.
It all started out innocently enough. We were on a walk through a small shopping district in our city when something in the window of a shop catches our eye. It's a puzzle, very different from the ones we've been doing and therefore a nice change of pace. It was 1000 pieces, our standard, and had a picture of a fairy looking at herself in a mirror that is surrounded by candles and cobwebs. My mom and I both agreed that this was the puzzle we HAD to have, and that day we walked away full of excitement about our find.
After weeks of patiently waiting my brother's birthday finally arrived. As soon as I woke up I excitedly dumped the pieces onto a table and began sorting out the edge pieces. In the process, a realization slowly dawned on us: there was a lot less colour in these puzzle than we had originally thought. In fact, everything was a shade of either beige or grey, with the occasional little dot of colour here or there. As a started trying to assemble the puzzle, I discovered that the pieces also were the type to fit together even when the weren't supposed to. It took us most of the afternoon just to get the outside edge together. We're usually very good at puzzles, but this was our achilles heel.
When buying the puzzle, my mom had commented that we always finished our puzzles so quickly and maybe this one would take a bit longer. She turned out to be right, but much more than expected. The puzzle is still upstairs a day later, with barely more than the edges done. Perhaps a month from now you'll get a post from me celebrating that we finally finished. That, or we finally just burned the pieces and are pretending the puzzle never existed. One of the two.
It all started out innocently enough. We were on a walk through a small shopping district in our city when something in the window of a shop catches our eye. It's a puzzle, very different from the ones we've been doing and therefore a nice change of pace. It was 1000 pieces, our standard, and had a picture of a fairy looking at herself in a mirror that is surrounded by candles and cobwebs. My mom and I both agreed that this was the puzzle we HAD to have, and that day we walked away full of excitement about our find.
After weeks of patiently waiting my brother's birthday finally arrived. As soon as I woke up I excitedly dumped the pieces onto a table and began sorting out the edge pieces. In the process, a realization slowly dawned on us: there was a lot less colour in these puzzle than we had originally thought. In fact, everything was a shade of either beige or grey, with the occasional little dot of colour here or there. As a started trying to assemble the puzzle, I discovered that the pieces also were the type to fit together even when the weren't supposed to. It took us most of the afternoon just to get the outside edge together. We're usually very good at puzzles, but this was our achilles heel.
When buying the puzzle, my mom had commented that we always finished our puzzles so quickly and maybe this one would take a bit longer. She turned out to be right, but much more than expected. The puzzle is still upstairs a day later, with barely more than the edges done. Perhaps a month from now you'll get a post from me celebrating that we finally finished. That, or we finally just burned the pieces and are pretending the puzzle never existed. One of the two.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Not-So-Fast and Furious
I am not a brave driver. I've had a few accidents before that happened due to basic mistakes on my part, so I don't often take many risks. That said I drive a standard car, and secretly, deep down, it makes me feel a little bit bad-ass. Now, I don't do much to encourage this feeling of bad-assery. I drive at a reasonable speed, I take corners carefully, and I certainly do NOT do doughnuts or burn rubber or drag race. But when I drive to work I have a brief moment where I feel like a professional stunt driver.
The whole thing happens when I'm getting onto the bridge out of my suburb. There's a highway leading up to it, and immediately after my on-ramp is an off-ramp into a shopping area. Each time I drive I turn onto my on-ramp and start to speed up. I shift from 2nd to 3rd, from 3rd to 4th, from 4th to 5th, gaining more and more speed as I approach the highway. I've got one hand on my steering wheel, one hand on my shifter, and music blaring from my radio. Sometimes I even have aviators on. The on-ramp ends and its time for me to merge. I pick a spot between two cars and go for it. With a flick of my fingers I put on my turn signal and smoothly glide into the lane beside me. As I'm starting this manoeuvre, the cars that I've picked also put on their turn signals and change into my lane. It's like a graceful dance performed at 80 kilometers an hour. As soon as we swap places we go our separate ways, without looking back.
This happens to me every time I go over this bridge. And as much as it's a simple, everyday manoeuvre, I come out of it feeling like a rock star. At least, for a few seconds.
The whole thing happens when I'm getting onto the bridge out of my suburb. There's a highway leading up to it, and immediately after my on-ramp is an off-ramp into a shopping area. Each time I drive I turn onto my on-ramp and start to speed up. I shift from 2nd to 3rd, from 3rd to 4th, from 4th to 5th, gaining more and more speed as I approach the highway. I've got one hand on my steering wheel, one hand on my shifter, and music blaring from my radio. Sometimes I even have aviators on. The on-ramp ends and its time for me to merge. I pick a spot between two cars and go for it. With a flick of my fingers I put on my turn signal and smoothly glide into the lane beside me. As I'm starting this manoeuvre, the cars that I've picked also put on their turn signals and change into my lane. It's like a graceful dance performed at 80 kilometers an hour. As soon as we swap places we go our separate ways, without looking back.
This happens to me every time I go over this bridge. And as much as it's a simple, everyday manoeuvre, I come out of it feeling like a rock star. At least, for a few seconds.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Nothing to see here
Well, it had to happen sometime. Yay for writer's block!
I'm quite overdue for a blog post. The fans are demanding one. But day after day I think, I need to do a blog post. What's something funny that happened to me recently? And the question just hangs there in the air, unanswered. Of course there's some funny things that have happened at work, but due to client confidentiality I'm not sure I can share them. A blog is not worth getting sued over.
Day after day the blog sits here, feeling neglected. Yet I can not bring myself to look at it, for I know that I can't give it anything new. It would be like showing a dog a piece of bacon, and then taking it away. I don't want to tease my blog. It wouldn't be fair to the poor thing. I can only ignore it for so long though or else the blog will die, and I certainly don't want that. So here I am, writing whatever comes to my head, making a sort of meta-blog post. Fun, isn't it? Okay, not really. But it's the best I can do, all considered.
Here, to make up for it, I'll give you a funny picture of a cat.
I'm quite overdue for a blog post. The fans are demanding one. But day after day I think, I need to do a blog post. What's something funny that happened to me recently? And the question just hangs there in the air, unanswered. Of course there's some funny things that have happened at work, but due to client confidentiality I'm not sure I can share them. A blog is not worth getting sued over.
Day after day the blog sits here, feeling neglected. Yet I can not bring myself to look at it, for I know that I can't give it anything new. It would be like showing a dog a piece of bacon, and then taking it away. I don't want to tease my blog. It wouldn't be fair to the poor thing. I can only ignore it for so long though or else the blog will die, and I certainly don't want that. So here I am, writing whatever comes to my head, making a sort of meta-blog post. Fun, isn't it? Okay, not really. But it's the best I can do, all considered.
Here, to make up for it, I'll give you a funny picture of a cat.
You're welcome.
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