My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings » list

About that new car . . .

Lisa — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 03:08:42 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

Remember that Prius we went on the waiting list for back in July? Well, we had one false start about 3 weeks ago when they told us our car was in. However, when we got there, it was the wrong car completely! Needless to say, we were not happy campers. However, there really wasn’t much we could do besides complain. Well, we got a phone call today (after we noticed the missing mailbox — see post below), and guess what they said? No, it wasn’t for discount furniture. Our new car was in! I was still a little nervous that it was going to be the wrong one again. However, it was the right one! Though things weren’t as smooth as it seemed. The car actually came in yesterday, but our sales guy doesn’t work on Fridays. When they logged the car into the system, they actually mixed up our car with another blue Prius that came in today. Now, our sales guy called and said it was here quite early this morning. I was out and had to come back home. We then fed the kids breakfast, and took them over to Grandma’s house. In the meantime, the dealership was looking for our missing car. From the sounds of things, they had found it shortly before we got there. I can only imagine how bad our salesguy was freaking out. All in all though – we got the car we wanted with the package we wanted. We are happy campers. It was too darn cold to take pictures today, so hopefully I will get a chance to get it up tomorrow.

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Gift Card Beware!

Lisa — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:46:29 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

I’ve gotten this same email about five times now, so I wanted to give everyone a heads up that if you tend to give gift cards around the holidays, you need to be careful that the cards will be honored after the holidays. Stores that are planning to close after Christmas are still selling the cards through the holidays even though the cards will be worthless January 1. There is no law preventing them from doing this. Below is a partial list of stores that you need to be cautious about:

Circuit City (filed Chapter 11)
Ann Taylor- 117 stores nationwide closing
Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug ,and Catherine’s to close 150 stores nationwide
Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January
Cache will close all stores
Talbots closing down specialty stores
J. Jill closing all stores (owned by Talbots)
Pacific Sunwear (also owne d by Talbots)
GAP closing 85 stores
Footlocker closing 140 stores mo re to close after January
Wickes Furniture closing down
Levitz closing down remaining stores
Bombay closing remaining stores
Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January
Whitehall closing all stores
Piercing Pagoda closing all stores
Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January.
Home Depot closing 15 stores 1 in NJ ( New Brunswick )
Macys to close 9 stores after January
Linens and Things closing all stores
Movie Galley Closing all stores
Pep Boys Closing 33 stores
Sprint/Nextel closing 133 stores
JC Penney closing a number of stores after January
Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores.
Wilson Leather closing down all stores
Sharper Image closing down all stor~s
K B Toys closing 356 stores
Loews to close down some stores
Dillard’s to close some stores

(If any of these stores are wrong, let me know so I can correct it. Snopes has confirmed some of these)

Box Tops & A $50 Giveaway Too!

Lisa — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:55:05 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

The school that Madison is going to next year collects Box Tops. If you don’t know what Box Tops is, let me explain. There are a ton of items that you can buy that have the image to the left on the box. You collect these for your local schools, and they get 10 cents for every one you turn in. Now, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but when if you can get a bunch of people together, it adds up quickly. Now, the school’s goal is to earn $750 from Box Tops. Last year, they made $536, and I would love for them to meet their goal for this year (even though Madison is not even enrolled yet. I understand that any extra money to the school with benefit her). Now, there are several ways we can do this for our local schools.

First, you need to log into the Box Tops site and create an account. You enter your state and your school or if you don’t know that, just enter your zip code. I personally entered the school and state. From there, you are able to see how your local school is going. Now, how do you increase that number? Well, you can collect box tops with that logo on it. They also have a Marketplace. Now, until recently, I did not know about the Marketplace. This works so awesome too! There is a list of stores that will give a percentage of whatever you buy from them back to the school. There are stores like Avon, Gap, Kohls, Best Buy, Leap Frog, Target, and Walmart (this is just a couple of them — the whole listing is on the site). All you have to do is log into the Box Tops Site, click on marketplace, then click on the store you want to shop it. That’s it. Once you checkout, the percentage you purchased will then be applied to your school. If you are Christmas shopping online anyway, why not help out your local school (and if you don’t want to help any of them out, I’ll tell you the school we are sending our money too, and you can use them).

Did you know that Box Tops has donated more than $250 million to schools nationwide since 1996? Would you like to help raise that number? Then start collecting Box Tops and use their Marketplace to do your online shopping! To help you get started, I am giving away a $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble (thank you Barnes & Noble for your support of such a great program!). What do you have to do?

Each one of these things will give you one entry:

1. Leave a comment on this post. I want to know why you want this $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble!
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc.

For 5 additional entries,

1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
2. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
3. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed
4. Add my badge to your sidebar:

This contest will end November 26th at 8:00 pm CST and is for US residents. Good Luck!

Entrecard Forums Censoring Again

Lisa — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 04:55:29 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

I really do like Entrecard. I really do. However, some of the missteps that have occurred over are just crazy. One of the ongoing missteps is their moderators on their forums. This was an issue a while back before. New forums popped up due to the censorship that a lot of the members were feeling on the Entrecard forums. Seriously, that was how bad it got.

Now, I thought that was over and done with. We were told that wouldn’t happen anymore and blah blah blah. Well, I learned firsthand myself how much crap that was (I’m a little irritated . . . can you tell?) Now, I have moderated before (I was moderator at the Izea forums over a year, so I know what a pain it can be. However, we were never ever ever allowed to delete anything unless it was spam.) Now, the thread in question is this one: http://entrecard.com/forums/7/15804/#p=21. Now, they posted a question and people started responding. I happened to be one of them. And my response got deleted since he (the moderator who started the question) didn’t like the answer. He also removed the reference to another forum called Firestorm. I’m sorry, you can’t ask a question on a public forum and then start deleting the answers you don’t like. Sorry, that is crap. The part that I especially love is that other forums are listed there. His reasoning? Firestorm and Forum Finder (which is the one I listed) are too close to what Entrecard’s forum does (huh?). I wouldn’t be half as ticked if he didn’t leave other forums up there that do the same darn thing. I don’t understand the double standard. I am not one to kiss ass which is probably why my comment is gone (I’ve left two more comments questioning why — we’ll see how long those last).

Now, I don’t own either forum that got taken off the list. I get no benefit for writing this post, besides releasing some of my anger. I just am sick and tired of Entrecard’s double standard when it comes to their forums. Obviously, the only way to get your posts to say is to kiss up or keep your opinions to yourself (which I would think is counterproductive on a forum).

Let me know your thoughts.

Epson/Sparkplugging Event

Lisa — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:50:43 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

I am sooo far behind, but I went to this awesome event last Thursday. Wendy Piersall was so kind to invite me, and I met so many awesome Chicago women. It was a great girls night out. The drinks and food were awesome (note to self: don’t drink the drink above and expect to go to bed. It was 2 am before I remembered that that drink had Red Bull in it). I’d like to give a shout out to all the wonderful women I met (now, if I don’t mention you and you were there, I didn’t get your card! Just let me know, so I can add you to this list): Barbara, Beth, Kim, Kim, Karen, Arianne, Jessica, Amber, Jayne, and Sima. It is nice to exchange ideas with fellow women who understand social media and the uses of Twitter. I hope to meet these incredible women again.