Before you read another step further, you must promise not to groan at my next paragraph. Got it? I’m serious now. No groaning allowed. Okay, here goes…

Poetry. I love it, love it, LOVE it!

Whew. There. Got that outta the way. Now let’s continue on with this lovely post.

I used to have a link to each one of my poems in my left sidebar, but if any of you have ever clicked over there, you would have noticed that I have deleted them. Those of you who haven’t noticed, well… I’m currently blowing raspberries in your direction. Would you like a tissue?

Anyhoo, I figured that providing a link to the website where I publish all of my poetry would simplify things and clear up a bit of space around here. So if you scroll on down my left sidebar, you will see the heading: ‘Poetry’. There you will find a link to my poetry: SandyToo (aka Stacy Anderson… uh, me. Sandy’s a nickname). My friend, ‘Mat Larkin’ is in the sidebar as well. He’s incredibly more talented than I.

If you enjoy good poetry, I urge you to visit a few more of my favorite poets, such as Lady Ireland, MasterBlaster, and Ozymandiaz. Or one that I have newly discovered and enjoy reading; Sandygram. Amazingly talented folks, every one of them.

Currently I am in the slooooow process of moving all of my poetry (from another website) over to AllPoetry.com, so check back every-so-often for updates–if you are so inclined.

And on that note, I leave you with a couple of Mat Larkin‘s latest pieces…

The following poem earned Mat Larkin a ‘Gold Trophy’ in Cannonsfire’s ‘Pic Inspired’ contest.

Technorati Tags: Mat Larkin, All Men, Set in Stone

Air tastes kinda like water, only not so liquid-y.”

“When I’m finished with my schoolwork, do you want to play Solitaire together?”

“I hate to interrupt this wonderful moment, but I don’t know what to do with this box.”

“Daddy, I have a problem that I’m not quite certain how to solve.”

“When you’re done cleaning the gunk out of the freezer, can I smell it?”

4 out of 5 of the above comments/questions were spoken by the same 9 yr old girl. Can you guess which one didn’t belong to her?

(*Side note: My Wordless Wednesday is below this post, for those interested.)

Everyone has a reason for starting up their first blog, whether we figured on making a profit or just having fun. Upon the recommendation of a friend of mine, I started up my blogs (nearly 1 ½ years ago) as a means of making a small side income. I wasn’t expecting much, but figured I’d give it a go. Boy, oh boy was I clueless.

In the first three months of placing sidebar advertisements on my blogs, I profited a whopping financial windfall of .05¢. But do you think I was disappointed?

Heck no.

Okay, well maybe a wee bit. [grin] But what I’ve gained in place of that cash is priceless–You–the amazingly intelligent and witty bloggers of cyber-space. I’ve gained friendships and knowledge and laughter and tears. You’ve touched my heart and filled me with joy. You’ve made me cringe and shudder and sigh and gape in silent awe of your incredible talents. You are a real and glorious treasure that I shall horde for as long as I please. [heh-heh] In all seriousness, you blogging guys and gals totally rock! Thank you for being you.

Now that I’ve spoken from the heart (which is what truly matters in life), it’s time to get down to business. So guess what?

I’ve found a way to make that side income through blogging after all; a real and true method of earning some serious cash. I’m not talking nickels here, folks. Thanks to Mr. Fabulous turning me on to PayPerPost (see link below), I’ve actually profited a bit of real, green, spend-able, cash-money by placing post ads on my blogs.

Want to know the best part about earning this cash? It was simple and fun; as easy as a Sunday Morning.

(Did I just say that?)

With PayPerPost, not only am I allowed to choose which opportunity I would like to blog about, but I am given creative license to write the ad up as I please. Did you get that? PayPerPost pays me for my words.

Thus far, I dipped my toes in to test the PPP water, and was paid $22.50 for what amounted to be 20 minutes of blogging/writing time. That’s approximately $1.13 per minute, or, equivalent to $67.50 an hour. I could easily become a PayPerPost junkie with those numbers. That was a dabbling effort. Imagine what I will earn when I delve in on a regular basis.

This post will earn me another $10.00. How cool is that? That’s enough to buy 3 large bags of Peanut M&M’s and still have change left over for a diet Pepsi.

Chocolate! Woo Hoo!

I’m so excited that I’ve inadvertently written more words than PayPerPost required.

Wow. This is fun!

Technorati Tags: blog, advertisements, blogging, PayPerPost

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Wordless Wednesday

I was all set to purchase some new bicycles for the family. I had decided that riding bikes along the Katy Trail would be a terrific way to keep the whole family in shape, while having fun too. Yesterday the kids and I cleaned a bunch of junk out of the shed to make room for our new bikes. Then, since we finally got our Internet back up and running, I thought I’d check my bank accounts online to see which one would fund our bicycle shopping spree. That’s when I uttered…

WTF!?

While I was away in Mississippi and my hubby was in Kentucky, some asswipe cleaned out our checking account. It happened last Thursday. CLEANED OUT!

I went into the main branch of my bank today to find out who/what/why of this withdraw made on my checking account. I sure as hell didn’t authorize it. I was informed that someone went through the drive-thru (around 11:43 am on Thursday) and used a blank withdraw form to empty out BOTH my checking and savings accounts.

Argh.

My savings wasn’t hooked up to my online banking, as of yet, so I didn’t know that it had been cleaned out too.

This lower life form knew my SS# and bank account #’s (which were written into the withdraw forms), and had an ID which apparently had my information listed on it; and, even though it had the wrong damn birth date listed, that didn’t matter. They were able to forge my signature and clean me out anyway.

Fuck.

It didn’t even look anything like my signature. I asked the bank employee why it didn’t raise enough suspicion that they would have checked my signature card (to verify). You know. Someone coming through the drive-thru, and filling out a ‘blank’ withdraw form to completely clean out both accounts. I mean… ‘Hello!’ But no. She said, “People do it all the time.”

I then asked her if I could get a look at the video from the transaction, so that I could see if it was someone I recognized. They showed me the video from all transactions during that timeframe. Unfortunately, I didn’t recognize anyone. Then again, maybe I should have said ‘fortunately‘. But I’ll tell ya what. There was one lady that seemed rather suspicious. She did absolutely everything she could to cover her face and keep it covered while the cameras were rolling. But that’s okay, because the bank has other ways of finding out her identity, and they will be giving that information to the police.

I told the nice bank-lady that it was probably a good thing I didn’t recognize anyone, because I’d be out kicking some butt right now. She laughed. I was serious. I don’t think she realized that. Then she said to me, “It’s a good thing they didn’t know about your overdraft protection, otherwise they could have withdrawn more than what you had in your account.”

Grrrr!
(Lemme at ‘em!)

So then I said, “Can you give me the license plate numbers to each one of those cars?” To which I was told, “Sorry, but we can only give that information to the police.”

[sigh]

I suppose that’s a good thing, because I was so ready to go on the hunt for a forgery-account-pilfering-identity-theft-fucktard’s heinous hiney. Pardon my lingo, but I really, really, really would like to know who did this. Yeah. I guess you could say that I’m a wee bit peeved.

All ended well enough though, I suppose. Even though I had to close out my accounts and open new ones, my bank was extremely helpful and courteous. They will be removing all of the overdraft charges on my account, and they will be refunding my money back to me. This was a huge relief.

Of course, now we have to wait 7-10 business days before everything is returned to normal and we have access to our money. There’s more hassle and headache involved in changing accounts, but I’ll deal with all of that knowing, thankfully, that all of our money will be returned to us.

So. How’s your week coming along?

It took me 10 hours to drive home from Mississippi on Saturday, but I made it! Yay! I got in around 1:30 in the morning.

But what should I find out when I get home? Our cable modem is down and we have no Internet. When Bob called the cable company for assistance, he was informed that they were under-manned and would not be able to send a tech out until next Wednesday.

Wednesday?

[gasp!!!]

OMGawd! Not that! Oh, please! Not that. How can I play my Trivia game without the Internet? Waaah!

So Bob and I are sitting in the parking lot of the Country Kitchen right now, bumming access to their free WiFi. I suppose we could have gone inside and ordered a cup of coffee and a piece of pie, but who cares about food… I’ve got the Internet!

[heh]