randomly chaotic and frequently mundane

So I was checking out a site called CinemaMob, which I found to be quite interesting. It would certainly be cool to have access to unlimited videos on my cell phone, if I had a cell phone that was capable of playing them. It’s something that I will definitely have to look into when I can get an upgraded phone. It would be fun to be able to have access to all kinds of videos to entertain me when life starts getting to me and I need to unwind. A little something I could take with me everywhere I go. I qualify for a phone upgrade with my provider in 3 months. In the meantime, CinemaMob is being bookmarked for future use.

Nice.  Here’s a ratings guide to the best online casinos, poker rooms, and gaming sites on the web.  A nice resource if you’re interested in online gaming, whether you’re just starting out or if you’ve been playing online for awhile. Knowledge is power, and when you’re playing at online casinos for real money, you want to know what you can expect from the sites you log into. I know when I decide to spend my money at any casino, whether it’s brick and mortar or over the web, I want to have some information on what they can offer me ahead of time.

I’ve always loved the idea of vacation homes. For years I’ve wanted to rent a house at the beach and spend some time with family, friends, alone, whatever.  I’ve done the hotel thing and it’s just not as great as it sounds.  For starters, I love to cook, even on vacation, I want to cook.  A vacation rental would give me the opportunity to cook my own meals.  That would also save me a little cash and waistline since when I can’t cook for myself, I tend to go for expensive food that’s bad for me.  luxury vacation rentals also tend to make a separation between the common areas from the sleeping areas via a living room and separate bedroom(s).  Always beneficial when you either have a larger group of people spending the time together, or if you’re planning on inviting new friends back to your place. The added space and comfort that you get with vacation rentals also makes it well worth it. Vacation rentals just seem like the right way to go to me. Like a home away from home.

This has been a paid post.

Ok, I love Halloween with a passion. When I was a kid, I would start contemplating Halloween Costumes as soon as school let out for the summer. No, I’m not joking — just a devoted fan of Halloween. What can I say, there’s such a great spirit (no pun intended) surrounding the holiday. The mystery, the magic, the “hey, who’s that over there dressed up as Captain Kirk?” moments… Oh it’s something special. I could spend hours checking out HalloweenAdventure.com browsing the costumes and it would take me a month to narrow down my choices to just one. Actually, it would probably take longer than that — they’ve got a lot. This year I’m going with a fairly classic Halloween costume, a clown. Mostly because I decided that’s what my son would be, and I opted to wear a matching costume. Please don’t gag on the cuteness.

The Joker was a serious consideration for me this year, especially in light of the new Batman movie. Most people know I love Batman, and the Joker is such a great villian. If my son was going to be Batman this year, I’d have dressed as the Joker. A geisha was also a consideration. I’ve wanted to dress as a geisha for years. Maybe I’ll do that next year. So many different costumes appeal to me on so many different levels. HalloweenAdventure.com makes the choosing easier and harder at the same time. So many costumes, and only one day per year. I don’t think I’ll ever get to wear all of the costumes that I’d really love to wear. But I’m gonna have a great time trying.

Writing has always been a passion of mine, everything from short stories to poetry to recipes. It’s just something I’ve always enjoyed, and I’ve always dreamed of having something printed. It doesn’t deem so to most people, but the writing industry is so competitive, and of the millions of manuscripts submitted every year, very few actually get picked up. Which is why there’s a certain beauty to Self Publishing. If you can promote your own work, and don’t have a problem with the idea, a site like WordClay.com is a great resource. You fill in the details about your book, upload the manuscript, design the cover, set the cost, compose marketing info and then you’re good to go. The only thing left is to approve and publish. All done, and you don’t have to pay an agent to do all that work for you.

I remember very vividly, going through my mothers albums as a child and pulling out this album. This was many moons ago, I must confess. I was fascinated with the image on the cover, the intensity of the eyes and the blackness of the hair. Maybe it was because at the time my mother’s black hair was very long and very straight, to say nothing of the fact that apart from height, my mom had a very similar body type to Cher. But I’ve always loved her. She’s not just an intriguing person, she’s and amazing performer. I love her voice, the power and the richness of it just makes me tingle.

She’s going to be doing 200 shows over 3 years at Caesars Palace, and I’m hoping that I can see it just once. Cher and Las Vegas just fit like a glove. Vegas is perfectly over the top, and so is Cher. It’s a perfect match — you could call it a marriage made in heaven. I would kill for Cher tickets at Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas. The closest to seeing Cher live that I have ever been was watching whatever televised performances I could. Let me just say that even if you’re not a fan of the woman, the showmanship would be worth the price of admission. She’s a spectacular showman, knows how to work the crowd and make you want to sing along.  It would be even better if I could take my mom.  After all, if it weren’t for her I might not have ever become a Cher fan.  I’d also love to take my little sister, who is as big a Cher fan as I am.

It’s no secret, I love coupons. No, that’s an understatement, I love coupons with a passion. I know, I’m weird, but I get so excited when I can save some money on something that I need (or want) to buy. Which is why I really dig getting free coupons online whenever I can. BuyWithCoupons.com is a great new site for getting free online coupons, including several sites that are perfect for buying those Mother’s Day and Father’s Day gifts that you keep putting off.

It’s coming up on us, mothers day is about 2 months away. Sounds like a long time, but in a blink of an eye it’ll be here. Maybe you’ll be prepared with a special something for mom, maybe not. You can, of course, be prepared and pre-order something for mother’s day delivery now. That’s always a good thing, isn’t it? 1800flowers.com has some coupon codes you can use to get $10, $15 or $25 off your purchase. These are limited time offers, so definitely check them out and place your order as soon as possible. Then you can surprise mom with something beautiful and thoughtful, and be a smart consumer on top of it.

Mar26 - Save $10 no minimum
Mar15 - Save $15 w/min $74.99 purchase
Mar25 - Save $25 w/min $99.99 purchase

I plan on having a look at what they’ve got and collaborating with Sisser tomorrow night so we can have something pretty delivered to Mom for mother’s day. Perhaps some orchids, those are her favorite — though I don’t know if anyone besides me actually remembers that, she’s never actually received any orchids as far as I know of.

A few days ago, I got a sample of Naked Naturals’ awapuhi and lavender natural shampoo and conditioner for color treated hair. I thought it appropriate since I just re-dyed my hair last weekend. I have to say, naked naturals makes a mighty fine product. First off, this sample was no bigger than the normal shampoo/conditioner samples, but I used it twice. My hair’s not that short, I did have it cut a couple of months ago, but it’s a few inches past my shoulders. So a little bit goes a long way, that’s always a good thing in my opinion. 

I love the way this stuff makes my hair smell.  The first time I used the conditioner, while I massaged it through my hair I kept thinking “god this smells great!”  The natural aspect is something that also appeals to me.  No chemicals, so it’s not drying out my scalp — which means that kids can probably use it without it drying out their skin as well.  Another appealing aspect to this particular product is that it’s not tested on animals and doesn’t use animal by-product.  My hair feels thicker, and I like that.  While my hair’s never been what you’d call fine, it’s never had a lot of thickness or body to it.  It feels like the strands are actually thicker.  I pull my hair into a tight pony tail 5 days a week when I go to work, which results in a lot of breakage.  The Naked Naturals is supposed to make your hair 7x stronger.  I don’t know if only 2 applications will do that, but I’m willing to buy a bottle and give it a shot.  It’d be nice not to have anymore new breakage when I get home from work.

One more thing, and maybe it’s low on other people’s list of “good things,” but it’s rather high on mine, my sample came with a coupon for $1 off a Naked Naturals product.  I think that’s incredibly awesome and thank the company for that.  The coupon tells me “here, if you like this, we want you to save some money on your first purchase.”

I love to keep a few good, unique gift ideas in my back pocket for when I have a really hard person to buy for, or when someone asks for a gift idea for their wife’s brother-in-law, that neither of them really knows. Things like the Flying Alarm Clock at Vat19.com, for example. I mean, even if it was never used by the recipient, who wouldn’t at least get a good laugh out of something like that? You know everyone you showed that to would ask for a demonstration. It would, of course, lead to other people getting one if they seemed particularly amused or interested in it. Or you could be bold and get one to actually use.

I’ve always wanted to take a cruise. I went on one once, sort of. It was a day cruise, so we left from some port in Florida at 7am or so and came back at like 8am. There were no stops, no ports of call, and not much fun. We swam in the pool for an hour or so and wandered around. At one point I recall standing outside the casino for a little while while my father went in and played a few slots. That was it. I’d like to go, someday, on a real cruise. The kind that takes awhile, visits nice places and is all around fun. Sometimes, when I’m in the mood for a little fantasy vacation planning, I check out the cruise specials at CruiseLocators.com. I think I’d most like to take a cruise to Alaska or somewhere in Europe. There are some very interesting sounding European cruises that aren’t to the standards like the Mediteranean — Baltic cruises, for example. Hawaii would also be nice, of course. There are some cruises to the Orient that would probably be a lot of fun. Cruiselocators.com even has specialty cruises, like a Lord of the Rings tour — which sounds really interesting.

Being one of those gals who is “well endowed” to put it politely, I often have a hard time finding bras and bathing suits that fit. Especially since the rest of me doesn’t really “fit” that particular proportion. I have a pool party for my nieces birthday to go to next month, and being able to find a Full Busted Bra to go with the bathing suit bottom I already have would be wonderful. The top I have now is ok, but it doesn’t fit my chest quite right. As a matter of fact, the fit is quite wrong — the top is stretched so much when I wear it that you can see white lines where the fabric is stretched to the near breaking point. It’s not attractive, and everytime I wear it I’m afraid that I’m going to end up doing some R-rated variation on the chest burster scene from Alien. Biggerbras.com has a huge selection of bathing suits and bras that come in appropriate sizes for me — I’m seriously in heaven browsing this site. Now I just need to find one that matches the bottom I already have.

I have always loved to shoot pool. It’s a great game combining luck and skill. More skill than luck, of course — I’ve noticed that people who are really skilled at geometry tend to be very good at the game, maybe I should have paid attention at school, eh? I’d be a better player, at least. There’s a special place in my heart for pool tables. Someday, when I have a house of my own, there will be a pool table, maybe two. My parents used to have a table. It was just an old bar table that they bought somewhere. The coin accepter was a little iffy, but we were still able to get the balls out and play a good game. There were many hours spent as a family playing. My step-dad is really good at the game and when you play him you have to call your shots, not just take anything that goes in. The times when my parents were away, my sister and I would be up for hours, sometimes all night, playing pool and laughing. Some incredibly good times were had around that pool table.  I’m a firm believer in the idea that having a pool table and a set time every week for everyone to play a little tournament would make a great family activity.  My sister and I made up all of these really funny “house rules” that we wrote on a piece of posterboard and hung in the room with the pool table.  Everyone who read the list was amused, there were many references to Happy Gilmore.  My parents got rid of the pool table about a year ago, I was very sad to find that out.  They still have their really good pool cues though, which is nice.  They plan to get a new table eventually, a good quality billiard table, I believe.  That would be a good thing, I always wanted to get my step-dad a set of NFL pool balls, Redskins vs Cowboys.  Personally, I’d like to get the swirled balls for myself someday.

I’ve had a lot of people ask me about web hosting. Perhaps it’s because I’ve had a personal website for over 10 years, and in the past 3 or 4 years I’ve had it on my own domain. That takes hosting, to be sure. The thing is, my host might not be the best host for you. I tend to recommend sites like http://www.webhostingchoice.com. They allow a person to search for a host based on the space/bandwidth needs they anticipate along with the set up cost and monthly fees they can afford to pay. Choosing the right web host is like choosing the right car — it has to meet your needs or it was a bad purchase. Sites like this make it easy for people to choose the right host for their website (personal or business) or blog.

When I was with my ex, my credit was pretty much destroyed. It’s not entirely his fault, I was a bit of a pushover then, and I let him convince me (often) that I should just charge whatever it was he wanted. Even when I couldn’t afford it. Of course, when it came time to pay those credit card bills and stuff, he had nothing to contribute or they weren’t his responsibility. It wasn’t a good situation and almost 10 years later I’m still hearing from those bill collectors, because I still haven’t landed entirely on my feet in that regard. I’m working on rebuilding my credit though. I got a few credit cards that cater to people with bad credit, and I’m getting info on bad credit loans to help me pay off a few things and get back on the right track financially speaking. It’s important, I want to own a house and buy a new car someday. I’m not very likely to get financing with bad credit, so we rebuild.