e.l.f. & False Forwards

I got my e.l.f. cosmetics order in today. I am super excited. I have tried a couple of the lip products already and they are nice. I have yet to know if I can recommend any of the other products. There was a little bit of a problem with the order in that they didn't ship a couple of things, but I called them, got a person to answer on the first ring, explained the problem, got a good response and shortly thereafter had a credit refund show up on my card for those items.

BUT, while I was searching on their site for their contact information, I came across a little About Us section which included a note about why they sell their products for $1 and it listed an entirely different reason from the one that they had stated on the Fox 10 morning show back in May. According to their site, they sell their cosmetics for a dollar for the simple reason that they don't sell in any retail outlets, but strictly from their own site. Hmmmm....this is a bit different from the information I garnered from our local Fox station. So I did a little digging at one of my favorite sites - Snopes - and apparently the morning gals over at Fox got duped by an email or one of the numerous blogs (I found about 4 in a cursory search this morning) that have picked up on this false email rumor. Now as any of my email friends can tell you this is one of my pet peeves…false forwards I often call them. Almost any email forward that comes my way that claims to be a true story gets checked by me on Snopes.com or truthorfiction.com. Both of these sites do fact checking and try to get to original sources to get the information straight. Nor do I believe any email that comes to me with the claim that ‘this email has been checked on Snopes.’ Too often I find that some prankster has included this line just to make you comfortable about passing it on without doing the fact checking yourself. This particular instance is not a major situation. I went to e.l.f., ordered some of their products, and will now enjoy them. In fact, now that I know that this site exists and that they are actually quite good at customer service as opposed to some internet based companies, I will be likely to order from them again. However, I have been forwarded emails which were either full of downright lies told about a political candidate or full of indecent rumor that could ruin an innocent person’s reputation or full of silly confusion such as the one that purports that a mid-eastern hotel is the palace of a sheik making millions off of us poor duped Americans buying all of his oil. Though they range from slanderous to silly, they are all false and far too many people see fit to just hit Forward and send them on without ever stopping to consider the consequences.

I am highly disappointed today. Not with my order or the quality of the product I received. Nope. I’m disappointed with myself. I fell for one of the oldest lines in the book and one that I now for a fact is patently untrue – “If they said it on the news it must be true.”

*If you are interested in seeing the e.l.f. line for yourself, you can go to www.eyeslipsface.com. As I said, I haven’t yet tried all of the products that I ordered, so I can’t make any recommendations. If you’d like to read what snopes has to say about this erumor, you can go to http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/elfcosmetics.asp.

Summer Savings Idea

Gina Conroy at Portrait of a Writer…Interrupted has instituted a new Summer Savings ideas share on her blog. The idea is to go to her blog and post a link to your summer savings idea post. Here is mine. My mom and I were just discussing it this morning as we trekked into town to get our groceries. We live in a rural area with only one very small grocery mart, so we travel to the nearest town to do our big shopping runs about once a week. Because of that we came up with the idea of starting a neighborhood grocery buying co-op. This idea is ideal for our rural neighborhood, but with the rising cost of gasoline and groceries it would work just as well in a town or city neighborhood. The idea is that once a week everyone turns in their grocery lists to the ‘designated buyer’ for that week. Then that person drives to town, buys everyone’s lists and brings them home. One thing that we are also going to take advantage of in this co-op is our Costco membership. We will be able to save a ton by splitting our Costco purchases between multiple households. Just this morning we compared Del Monte cans of corn - $0.88 a piece at Wal-Mart or $0.48 a piece at Costco. One household might not want a case of corn, but two or more can split it and save $0.40 a can! The grocery savings, coupled with the gas savings of only having to drive to the stores every few weeks instead of every week combine to make a real money saving idea. The other aspect I like of this plan is that instead of dragging my two year old out for an all day shopping trip every week, we will only have to go every few weeks, so the aggravation factor drops tremendously as well.

Travelogue

We are home. And we had a blast!

Nicole traveled better on this trip than on any previous trip and I believe that this is due to her new found freedom in her booster seat as opposed to being so confined to a two strap car seat. We had packed various “surprise” toys for her and they also went a long way toward ensuring everyone’s sanity in the many long days on the road. Besides the wedding, which was the reason for and the center point of our trip, we also stopped in New Mexico for two days to see family, spent some time with my sister in Denver, got to go to the Buffalo Bill Museum and Gravesite, Red Rocks Ampitheater, stopped to shop at a large outlet mall in Castle Rock, went to the Garden of the Gods park in Colorado Springs, saw an aunt and uncle in Albuquerque and explored Old Town Albuquerque. We packed a lot of stuff and way too much driving into 6 days and made it home a day early so that we had one day to spend at home unpacking, unwinding and doing a couple of small home projects.

I am including a few of our photos. We plan to make a family vacation an annual event, as we believe that it was a bond-strengthening, family-developing occasion. The only downer on the week was an infection that developed in my impacted wisdom tooth just as we were leaving. This kept me in some pain and made me eat funny as it hurt to open my jaw. I’m sure it was quite entertaining to those around wherever we ate, including the very nice wedding reception. I have an appointment with the dentist first thing tomorrow morning.

As soon as the whole dental pain thing is done, I can’t wait to get back into the swing of things around here, get the house in order and get back into a regular writing schedule. I am excited to see what this summer will bring!

PAD Challenge Awards Ceremony

Robert Lee Brewer conducted the first annual PAD Challenge awards ceremony on his blog Poetic Asides yesterday. As you can see at the right, I received a badge indicating my completion of the challenge. Yay! I did it! To see the awards that were given check out the blog at: http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/April+PAD+Challenge+Awards+Ceremony.aspx

To join the poetic discussion forum that resulted from this fantastic challenge, you can go to: http://forum.writersdigest.com/forums/forum-view.asp?fid=44

Character Issues

Wouldn’t it be great if all of our characters were beloved family friends to our readers? I remember a story about a woman calling a pastor for some counseling. After talking with the woman for several minutes, the pastor was quite concerned. The woman had related multiple stories of adultery and murder. The pastor, upon further questioning of the woman, felt quite silly at having been so duped. The woman had been relating stories from her favorite soap opera. She was quite concerned over their fates.

If only all the readers of my stories felt so much connection with my characters. Apparently the readers of Craig Johnson’s stories about a fictional Wyoming Sheriff feel that connection. His main character, Walt Longmire, received 13 write-in votes in the recent Johnson County, Wyoming Sheriff’s election. :-) You can pre-order Johnson’s latest offering – Another Man’s Moccasins – at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Another-Mans-Moccasins-Longmire-Mystery/dp/0670018619/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211428575&sr=8-1

Tripping

Well, that last blog post was written from the road. Our family has set out on our first annual family vacation. We have made a stop in New Mexico and then we are on to Denver. As I'm not sure when we'll be at a computer next, I don't know if I'll be posting anymore until we return next Tuesday the 27th. Hopefully, I'll be able to give you some good blogs and updates from the road, but if not, I'll be sure and give you a whole travelogue when we get back! :-)

Reader's Websites

Here are a couple of cool little websites that any reader can use. Have you read every last one of your favorite author's published works and you can't wait until their new release comes out? Then you need to go to www.literature-map.com and put in the name of your favorite author. Click continue and a cool little map will be built. The author's names that are closest to your favorite have a writing style similar to your favorite and you will be likely to enjoy their work. www. whatshouldireadnext.com works much the same, except for this site pulls up reader recommendations based on reader created lists. Here you can even register and begin building your own list for the benefit of your fellow readers. So, next time you are looking around for your next great read check one of these sites before you head to the bookstore.