Author: Average Jane

As much as my NaBloPoMo schedule has made posting easier every day, it’s also making me feel as though I’m missing out on talking about my usual everyday stuff. Things keep happening, but I can’t talk about them ’cause I said I was posting a recipe or a product review or a meme. I’m a prisoner in my own blog!

Since I gave myself a free day on Friday, let me spew forth all of the endlessly fascinating stuff I’ve been holding back all week. Yes, that is sarcasm.

Monday started with a bang, or to be more specific, a blowout. About a block from work, one of my back tires blew out. I went ahead and parked in the garage, went to my desk and opted to deal with it later. For some reason, I thought I didn’t have a spare tire, but I actually did. In the early afternoon, I put on the spare and made an appointment with the car dealer to get a new tire. It took me an hour to get from work to the dealer because I had to avoid the highway (the spare said 50mph maximum).
Fortunately, only the tire was ruined and not the wheel itself.

On Tuesday morning, I took Velvet and Velcro to the vet because both of them had been sneezing for several days. Diagnosis: upper respiratory infection, with the added bonus of an ear infection for Velvet. They each get an antibiotic pill every morning for 10 days and Velvet gets ear drops. By the time I got them home, they’d lost all trust in me and it was a trial to get the pills down them. Velvet fought me on the ear drops with such vigor that I saved them for the evening. I think that’ll be the routine until we’re done.

In my continuing quest for greenness, I looked up the location of the local household hazardous waste disposal drop-off site. It turned out to be about a half a mile from my house. I made an appointment for Wednesday morning and loaded up my car with four burned-out CFLs (Xena had thoughtfully dashed one of them to the floor, so I bagged up the pieces and brought them), two car batteries, an old tire, and a mishmash of mostly-empty paint cans. They took it all and now my garage and basement are much less cluttered.

For Thursday evening, I’d organized a happy hour for former employees of my favorite dotcom job from the late ’90s. The turnout was rather low (4 people out of the 20-ish employees), but we had a nice time catching up.

Today I’ll be heading to work in the morning but leaving to speak on an Ad Club Career Day panel about copywriting and concepting. I made a four-slide PowerPoint with a few of my work samples, including a cool blog I once did and a couple of games for which I wrote copy. The final slide is a look at some of the unglamorous but strategically important writing I do: meta data, keywords and text-based search ads. It’s good to give the college kids a little dose of reality, I think.

So that’s my exciting week. Aren’t you glad you’re caught up on all of the gripping details? Back tomorrow with more NaBloPoMo thrills.

By the way, don’t forget to leave a comment on yesterday’s post to enter yourself in a giveaway for a $100 prize pack of jewelry and artwork. You have until the end of the day today.

Via a post on Lip-Sticking, I learned about a women-friendly California winery called Mirassou. Check out this contest they’re having for women entrepreneurs:

Since obtaining capital is the No. 1 obstacle
women face in starting their own businesses, Mirassou has created the
"Make Your Dreams Come True with Mirassou" contest which provides
$50,000 in seed money to help start a "Dream" business.

How cool is that? On the strength of that information alone, I made a point of picking up a bottle of Mirassou the last time I went wine shopping. It’s very reasonably priced (about $10 a bottle), and I’m enjoying the Merlot I bought and eager to try some of the other vintages they offer.

* * * * * *
IT’S ANOTHER GIVEAWAY!

I had so much fun with my last giveaway that I jumped at the chance to do it again. This time I have two gift collections from Charming Sam, courtesy of Wickedly Chic and Marmalade Pink. Each one contains a necklace, a pair of earrings, some mini art prints, and a collection of collage sheets, total value $100.

To enter, just leave a comment on this post between now and the end of the day on Friday. Don’t disqualify yourself because you’re outside of the U.S. – I’m happy to ship the prizes anywhere. Guys: don’t rule yourselves out either; remember, it’s almost holiday shopping time.

To choose the winners, I’ll number the commenters in the order in which they posted and have a random number generator select two numbers from the range.

On Wednesday morning, I logged into my bank account just to have a look before my paycheck went in. Imagine my dismay when I saw a debit of about $48 at a Shell gas station in San Bernardino, California. It immediately caught my eye not only because it had cost me TWO $25 "courtesy pay" charges (one of which was applied to a debit that would have been covered by my balance if not for the fraudulent charge), but because anytime I do buy gas at Shell, I use my Shell credit card. Then, of course, there was the fact that I haven’t been to San Bernardino.

I called my credit union the instant they opened and had them cancel my debit card. All I needed was to have the accursed thief steal a big chunk of my paycheck once it went into my account.

Then I had to go to the credit union and fill out paperwork disputing the transaction. It was all very familiar because the same thing happened to me back in March.

I don’t know what it’ll take to keep my debit card number out of the hands of thieves. Stop buying online? Stop using it altogether? I don’t have a credit card, so it’s pretty much my only option for most transactions. Maybe I’ll just have to go back to carrying cash and hope I don’t get mugged.

On top of that drama, I’ve been sick for two days. Things can only get better from here…right?

Update: The credit union credited back the amount of the fraudulent charge and one of the $25 fees. I did some research and found a credit card that offers one-time "virtual numbers" for use in online transactions. I applied for it and was approved, so now I’ll have it available for future web purchases and travel. I guess the lesson here is that you can’t be too careful.