Wednesday, August 17, 2011

I'm gonna teach my crotch to do math!

I was at work, sitting on break, flipping through a tabloid magazine to keep myself entertained. I can usually make it through an entire magazine in 15 minutes to get all that I want out of it on one break. I generally skip through the ads, but one in particular caught my attention a short while back. I was amazed that someone actually took the time to advertise that they were selling these. What was it? Wait for it...

"Designer" feminine products.

I would say that I saw it wrong, that no one would actually invent this, but someone did. Pads with patterns on them, and tampons in brightly colored applicators. Really? I really wish I could the inventor what on earth was going on in his or head (but I am assuming probably his) head when they came up with these.

"Anyone have an ideas for a new product?"
"I'd imagine that special time of the month would be so much more fun and exciting if a lady could bleed on a picture of flowers instead of a plain old, boring, no-fun pad."
"That's a great idea. Let's do it!"

Do these people seriously think someone's crotch is going to get so bored that they want to look at a pretty picture? Nethers don't have eyeballs, folks. I wonder if the dude that invented this is related to the genius that invented bras with patterns on the insides of the cups. If my chest or privates are that bored, maybe they should print the insides of bras and feminine products with Shakespeare or Calculus so at least those areas can learn something if they are that bored.

Meanwhile, the smarty that invented these is probably laughing all the way to the bank, while I am working retail, touching used toilets seats, dead fish, and sweaty worn clothes at the returns desk. 

-duckyone












Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Hot summer!

I don't really like the summer. Hot weather, tornado sirens, beach sand, humidity- ugh! Not really my thing. I'd be okay if the temperature never got above 75F. Alas, it hit 100F last week- on my birthday, no less- so I've been sort of melty and pitiful lately.

I am content to sit inside the house and relax on the couch or play with Curly Girly. Of course, she wants to go outside every day and stay out there for over an hour until I drag her in because I start sweating in places I didn't know I could sweat from. In fact, I think I may have grown extra body parts just so they can sweat too. :(

Apparently, there are actually people out there that like hot weather. Apparently almost everyone else beside me. So here we go, a song about it:



Yes, I am aware it's not in English. (It's in Korean, in case you are wondering.) It's called "Hot Summer" and the group is F(x). I like their songs, they are catchy. If life were colorful and un-sweaty like this music video, I might tolerate summer a little more. Thank goodness for air conditioning and popsicles in the real world!

-duckyone.

Friday, February 11, 2011

I'm still here!

Yes, I'm still here! I watch too much tv and yet I have nothing too exciting to post about TV-wise. Wednesday nights I watch "Toddlers & Tiaras" with my sister, sort of. She lives in another state, but we confer over Facebook chat about the general zaniness of the show.

I think I might have more to say about tv once Playhouse Disney switches to Disney Junior. They have been building up hype for about 3 months, but I think it's going to be a letdown. We'll see. They have 3 new shows: Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Tinga Tinga Tales, and a Babar cartoon. The pirate show looks a little too mature for toddlers, Tinga Tinga Tales is a show about African tales, and the animation for some reason looks very stereotypically "African." I hope the stories are better than the animation. Babar is Babar, I've never seen him before but he's an institution- he looks cool enough. They have 3 new short segments too, "A Poem Is..." which looks cool except the voice in the ad sounds Joan Cusack-ish, and not in a good way, "Oso's 3 Healthy Steps," which my daughter will like and I will be annoyed by, and "Mouskercise," which I am sort of curious about. It looks like most of the lineup will be the same, except that "My Friends Tigger and Pooh" has been phased out and "Little Einsteins" seems banished to early mornings and holidays. "Charlie and Lola" disappeared a few months back too, much to the rejoice on my husband, even though I thought it was cute.


I was watching The Bachelor but it's turned out to be pretty lame and boring. I watched the auditions of American Idol, which are funny and really the only exciting and entertaining part. I've been mostly watching a lot of Disney Channel and way too much Elmo, as usual.

And in real life, things are going quite normally. I'm still working part time and spending the majority time with my daughter. My husband is still working from home, which has turned out really well for us so far. It's winter in the boonies, so it was getting pretty cold last week, with -35F wind chills at night. For now, it's warmed up a little, to the 30s and 40s, so I'm thankful for that. My daughter, Curly Girly, is doing really well- being cute, learning a lot of words, being a typical toddler. She recently learned to jump, which is super adorable!

And in internet life, I've cashed out for Amazon gift cards on Swagbucks.com, iRazoo.com, and Zoombucks.com in the past week or so, ($5 on Swagbucks and iRazoo, $20 on Zoombucks), so I am raking in some nice $ to start off the year! I am saving for a new iPod Touch so hopefully I will have enough before my birthday in June. :)

Well, hopefully I'll have something exciting to ramble on about soon. Anything is more exciting than Disney Junior!
-duckyone.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Happy 2011

Happy New Year....a whole bunch of days late!
Honestly, there's not much going on right now, so I don't have much to ramble about. My favorite shows aren't on right now. My life is pretty normal and boring at the moment. Two of the shows I like (America's Next Top Model and The Amazing Race) start up next month, I think, so I'll probably give my 2 cents about that.

Right now, I've been watching The Bachelor (trainwreck) and Toddlers & Tiaras (even bigger trainwreck). Actually, The Bachelor is pretty lame and tame compared to Toddlers & Tiaras! Those little tiny 2 and 3 year old beauty pageant contestants- getting spray tans, fake hair, and $1000 dresses- it's crazy! I saw a mom on last week's episode who gave her 4 year old 10 Pixy Stix and about a can of soda because the poor girl wasn't energetic enough! And one dad mentioned that his daughter was a product. Classy, isn't it? But I can't stop watching! Next week, one of the little girls brings a PONY on stage! I so have to watch that!

In my normal, boring, average life, I accidentally taught my 2 year old to say "stupid cat" last week. She's officially in her "parrot" phase and repeats near everything we say. She did let me finally put her hair into a ponytail, which was totally cute!

Hopefully I'll have something awesome to blog about soon! Happy New Year everyone!
-duckyone.

Friday, December 31, 2010

The mysterious empty box

So if you saw my previous post of Twitter parties, you may have been skeptical about whether or not I am actually getting the prizes. I can tell you that in the last two months since I started going to Twitter parties, I have recieved exercise pants, several toys, coupons for food and diapers (a whole box of diapers for free, woo!) , and gift cards. The largest value thing I won was a $100 gift card!

I do have to mention, though, that I had my first bummer experience. I won a toy. It looked cool, and I was curious about how it worked. They sent me a message saying I'd get my prize in mid-December (I think I won it at the end of November). I went to work on Christmas Eve, and when I returned home, my husband told me that FedEx had dropped off a package for me. From his description of the box size, I figured it was the toy I had won. But when I got home, all I found was an empty box!

To call it a box was being nice. It was actually a giant piece of cardboard, folded in half, and the three open sides were taped shut with packing tape. I'm assuming it's difficult to find a box in the size they needed, but I figured it was possible. Maybe not! Anyhow, I looked at the return address and decided that the toy had indeed been in the "box" at one point. I was a little bummed out, but mostly amused at how both the delivery guy and my husband could have the box without realizing that it was just cardboard and nothing else.

My husband called FedEx and they were really nice, said they'd get a claim started and that someone would call early the next week. They called the following Monday morning (impressive!) but we were sleeping so they left a message saying they just needed to know a little more information about the problem. So my husband called them back, told them that no one had noticed that it was just a tapey slab of cardboard until I got home and looked at it. At that point, they basically said that due to the way it was packaged, they were denying the claim and to talk to the people who sent the package.

I got on Twitter, contacted the people, and they got back to me fairly quickly (nice!) and they asked me to send them a message about what the problem was. I told them we had called FedEx first and what they said, and that all I got was an empty box. They basically told me that they sent the prize, that it wasn't their fault that it wasn't in the box, and that they had no replacement for it because they already gave out too many prizes already.

Basically, I am now the proud owner of a big piece of cardboard. I just hope that whoever got the toy is happy! I'm not mad, not even disappointed really, just boggled about why it's no one's fault. One of my friends did point out, however, that it's my fault for accepting an empty box. So there you have it. It's my husband's fault. :) But like I said, I'm not mad, it was just a prize, not anything I paid for, and nothing I am entitled to.

So there you have it. My sad box story. But I promise, I do get the vast majority of the prizes that I win! Don't let this scare you from attending Twitter parties and entering Twitter contests!
-duckyone.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

This is cool!

I don't really have anything funny or exciting to post. I just thought this was a cool video- beer being filled up through the bottom of cups! People say there's a magnet thingy in the bottom to make it work. I don't care how it works. I just think it's cool.



I don't even drink beer and that's making me thirsty! I wish they had those when I worked in restaurants, it would have made my work day slightly more entertaining. What do you think of this machine?

I hope you all had wonderful holidays. I had a nice, relaxing Christmas, and a not-so-relaxing day after Christmas taking back 100s of returns at work. (I'm not exaggerating either, I easily took back over 200 returns on my own during my shift, and there were several other people working the returns counter too. We easily took back over 1000 returns that day, and that's a lot considering I live in a relatively tiny town.) Tell me how your holidays went!

-duckyone.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Reality tv week of 12/12

Last week was the final week of The Amazing Race and Hell's Kitchen. But both were so predictable and noneventful that it took me this long to get around to talking about it! Sorry!

*The Amazing Race: The final 3 teams raced back to California, where put together part of a parade float and had issues finding cabbies to take them to their final locations. Of course, this is the one episode that ended up all glitchy on my DVR, but it was so boring that it didn't really matter. Nat and Kat, the doctors, were the winners. Woo. Hoo. The host announced that popular teams that didn't win would be back for next season to try again. They showed clips of a lot of this season's teams, which is pretty midleading because most of them won't be on the next season. The final cast for the next season hasn't been officially announced. However, even though Team Jumba was shown on the teaser, I am pretty sure they didn't compete in the new season. Bummer! That would have been really cool.

*Hell's Kitchen: Russell and Nona were the two finalists. Typical final individual challenge was the two cooks making 5 dishes in an hour and having professional chefs judge them. It was a close challenge but Russell ended up winning that. Then, old castoffs came back to make up the chef teams for the two finalists to make it through their final dinner services. Nona had issues when Boris made something wrong like 3 or 4 times- she told him to cook something for 5 minutes, and even after that he kept cooking it for 4! Russell had problems trying to get Vinny to do much. Vinny wasn't actively trying to derail him, but he wasn't trying too hard to help Russell win either since he felt that Russell was the cause of him going home before the final 6. In the end, Nona won the season and the chance to work at an awesome fancy restaurant, and Russell vowed that none of the other chefs that season would ever work in the same city as him because he'd say bad stuff about them till they turned tail and ran away. Stay classy, Russell.

So anyway, now I have no reality tv to watch, so I guess I won't be doing these for a while. ucky you guys!
-duckyone.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

I don't want your stupid vacuum!

So I was watching tv and getting ready to change Curly Girly's diaper tonight at 8PM, and my doorbell rang. Who would possibly want to see us at 8 at night? I peek the door open, and I see a guy standing at the door holding a box of baking soda. That's all the tipoff I need to know it's a Kirby salesman, from the Kirby dealership a few streets over. How do I know? They have the same predictable shpiel every time they knock on the door.

1. They offer you a free product. Today apparently it was baking soda, but in the 3 years I have lived here they've been here no fewer than 5 times and have also offered paper towels and tissues.

2. They offer to clean your floor for free.

3. Once in your door they take forever to show off their vacuum, they say that their vacuum gets up way more dirt than any other by taking a white circle and vacuuming against it so the carpet dirt goes onto the pad for you to see it more easily. My husband made the mistake of letting them in once and they also vacuumed part of my mattress apparently. GROSS! At least they put a clean white circle down, I guess.

4. They try to sell you a ridiculously overpriced vacuum. (I've read about people being charged up to $3000 for these stupid things.) Once you say no, they pretend to call their boss to get the price knocked down. I've heard the price being knocked down to as low as $600, which is still way more than I ever want to pay for a vacuum.

So here's what happened tonight.

*ding dong*
Me: *opens door* *Curly Girly has taken off her diaper and is running around naked and shrieking*
Kirby dude: Hi, I'm here from *insert random initials of some company here* and I'm here to do a survey on cleaning products.
M: You're here to sell vacuums, and I'm not interested. Sorry.
KD: How did you know? Has someone been here before?
M: Yes, several times.
KD: Ok, bye.

So I shut the door, grab a diaper and wipes, and manage to wrangle my daughter and am attempting to put on her diaper when I hear a knock at the door. Freshly diapered kiddo runs around some more and I answer door. There's a different guy, with the baking soda at his side like he is hiding it.

Me: Still selling vacuums, huh?
Kirby dude 2: *fake innocent face* What? Was someone here before?
Me: Yeah, like 30 seconds ago. Oh, and don't bother knocking on the one next door, my neighbor just moved out. (*That was true, neighbor moved out.*)
KD2: *runs off*

How dumb do they think I am? It may have been dark out, but my curtains are open because my Christmas tree is in the window, and I could see their car, lights all on, pulled up in front of my building. Do they think that since I wasn't fooled the first time that I might get a case of the stupids in a mere minute and be gullible when the second guy bangs on my door? And who thinks it's a good idea to try and clean a carpet and sell me stuff at 8PM? If anything, it's not easy to see dirt in your carpet at night, so their demonstration wouldn't be as effective. Anyway, it's just plain rude. Lots of people are eating dinner, having family time, or putting children to bed at 8PM. I've looked it up online and I am not the only one that this has happened to. Not even close. There are hundreds of stories of Kirby visiting at all sorts of weird hours, not telling why they are there at first, or claiming to be taking a survey when they aren't, and being charged way too much for a vacuum. Inside Edition even did a story on it a few years back.



I'm thinking of getting a No Soliciting sign for my door. Not that they'd pay attention to it. There was one on our last apartment's door and people would just come on in and bang on doors anyway.

And just so you don't think this is a Kirby hating post, it isn't, even though I am annoyed at them right now. There are also these college aged kids trying to sell magazines, saying they need a certain number of points to get to go on a vacation to Hawaii or somewhere equally nice. Usually I see their nametags or magazine brochure and I'm like, "I know you're selling magazines, I don't have money, sorry. Bye!" and close the door. The last guy actually said to me, "Don't you want to help me go to Hawaii?" Well, sir, no, no I don't. Why should I be pressured into buying a magazine I don't really want so you, who can apparently afford to go to college when I can barely pay my bills, can go on a fancy vacation. In fact, that $20 I spend on a magazine I don't want makes me $20 shorter for any vacation I may want to take some day. Or, more realistically, $20 short on gas money or my electric bill.

I live in a small "city" where most of the town doesn't have much. It's a nice place, but a lot of people are barely scraping by and a lot get government help. Kirby picked a dumb town to try to sell $3000 vacuums.

Sorry, but I just had to vent about this. I just get so annoyed when these people come to my door over and over and don't take no for an answer. I am especially annoyed that they tried to trick me. They didn't even do a good job at that. Lame.
-duckyone.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Just wondering...

Why on earth is Jeopardy! filmed in HD? Is it more entertaining if we can actually see the contestants' drippy nervous sweat? Honestly, I don't see the fascination of HD- as long as I know what's happening on the TV, I'm good. I don't want to feel like I'm right there in the show. Anyone else?
-duckyone.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Reality tv week of 12/5

There's only 2 shows I watch right now, and they both end next week! I tried to watch Skating With The Stars, but I just couldn't get into it. (I do hope that Brandon Mychal Smith wins though, I did see that he was sick this week and the judges rated a video of his rehearsal and were pretty harsh!) Anyway, here goes!

*The Amazing Race: The teams went from China to South Korea this week. First they had to drive up to the border near North Korea, which is sort of scary but I guess not too bad if they were able to film a reality show there. Then, they had to go into the demilitarized zone and go rafting down a river. From there, they took military vehicles to a US military installation (Camp Casey, I think it was called), where they had to match some symbols to a soldier's headband, and then the matching soldier kicked through a board revealing their clue. After that they had two choices- speed skating (or should I say "speed" skating) or deliver big ginseng roots. Then they had to go to a park to find an airplane statue, and from there was a temple that was the pit stop.

Nick and Vicki were behind because of the 6 hour penalty they took last leg, and at first it looked like the playing field would be evened because there was only one flight that day to South Korea and the other teams had to wait for it. Alas, Nick and Vicki were mere minutes late for the flight, and had to wait 9 hours for the next one! They also had an extra penalty challenge for being last on a non-elimination leg, which involved washing a ginormous tank. They realized once they missed that first flight that they were done for, and they weren't even shown throughout the majority of the episode. They were shown at a montage at the end and they looked like they had a lot of fun, because they knew they couldn't catch up and just enjoyed themselves. Brook and Claire got to the pit stop first, but had a penalty because they took a taxi during a point where they could only walk or take public transportation (did they learn nothing from Team Jumba?), and that cost them first place and the vacation prize that came along with it. Jill and Thomas (the only man standing) got first place, followed by Brook and Claire, and Nat and Kat.

I've heard that next week's episode takes them back to the US to sunny California! And the previews said that there will be an announcement regarding next season. I wonder what it could be? And who do you think will win this season? It's hard for me to tell at this point!

*Hell's Kitchen- The final 4 were spared last week, but this week the field was cut to 2! The challenge this week was to pick two flags and make a dish combining those two country's food styles. Trev got Mexico and China, and despite all the hot peppers he put in there, his dish was called bland. Russell's dish was slammed as well (France and India, and he clearly focused on French). Nona, who got Greece and Italy, was also met with disappointment. Jillian, who didn't have enough time to cook her beans for her Spanish/Thai dish and had to make rice instead, was panicking about her dish but ended up winning the challenge! The reward was dinner with Chef Ramsay and her family!The losers had to move furniture out of their apartment and then prep for that night's dinner service.

The dinner service moved fairly smoothly, and each contestant had their turn running the pass (aka being a little Chef Ramsay), and the show's sous chefs were sabotaging them by making stuff wrong on purpose to see if they were paying attention. Nona did well at calling out orders but didn't realize a wrong side had come up. Russell had trouble calling orders but watched the food like a hawk and mistakes didn't get past him. Trev was being ignored by his fellow contestants but noticed the incorrect food. Jillian was hollering her orders like Chef Ramsay would, swearing and all, but she missed a mistake on a main dish. After the service, Chef told them to discuss who should stay and who should go, but that didn't matter, since he had pretty much made up his mind. As soon as the final 4 came out, Chef sent Trev home. After that, he gave the other 3 the chance to say why they should stay. Russell was announced as the first finalist, Nona the second. I was shocked! I thought for sure that Jillian would have made it through. At this point, I hope Nona beats Russell because Russell is so arrogant!


One more week of updates and then I have no shows to watch! What will I blab on about next?
-duckyone.