Nothing in life is free

I was tipped off to a deal at Staples for $25 worth of free Sharpie's products. Now I never really believe that something is free but after hearing from a few friends that they actually ordered it, I was tempted to believe.

The bottom line is instead of paying in dollars and cents you will be paying in time. You, of course, have to open a Staples account. Then, since there is some kind of bug in the system, you process your order and pay for it and then have to call customer service (we all know what fun that is) to get the money back. Then, if you want to avoid shipping costs, you have to go to the store to pick it up. Yeah, not exactly free.

In the theme of black friday sales, I spent time looking for airline tickets for my cousin (not a bad price at usair). Then I looked up some Israeli sales going on at bug (not a bad deal on the external hard drives so I will probably head over there after work).

Now it is time to get back to my snapfish photobook. I have 2 days to finish before their 50% off sale ends. The pressure!

This is getting serious

If you have been reading some of my posts you know I want to find ways to make some money on the side while I am making money at this boring job. So today I joined Google Adsense. I opened a profile and am pending approval. This means that you, my faithful readers, will be able to help me make money! All you will have to do is click on ad links that will show up in my blog and I will make money!

Now I don't want to take advantage of my friends and family alone so I started researching ways to get my blog noticed. I joined a site called technorati which is a catalog of blogs. I applied for recognition there and who knows, one day my blog maybe listed there. It also provides hours of reading!

There are many other sites where you can promote your blog or create a more advanced site. I think I will start with this and see how it goes.

I was also reading a post on yahoo about the top 10 movie flops of the decade top 10 movie flops of the decade and I am proud to say I only saw one of them. Take a guess which one.

I watched a youtube video on sand animation that was pretty good. It seems to have won some talent show in the Ukraine, though I don't think I would have the patience to watch the full 8 minutes if I wasn't at work!

A bit of this and that

When you are bored you eat a lot more. I spend time making coffee with vanilla flavored milk (seriously the best invention) and peeling oranges which ordinarily, are to messy for me to be bothered with (also they were on sale so we have a huge bag of them that need to be eaten). I bring yogurts or pita or canned food with me, as well.

It is a serious problem when you are trying to make a photobook and most of your pictures come from a professional photographer (my sister: http://www.leahsportfolio.com/)! The quality is so good it takes a long time for each picture to upload. Also, since every shot is amazing I end up using a lot more pictures and have problems narrowing it down. I think this photobook is going to end up being over 50 pages! I have been working on it all morning.

While waiting for the uploads to finish, I watched a few youtube videos like "Flash Mob Jerusalem" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULtglogZbR8 (apparently I am not the only one with to much time on my hands). I also read our alumni newsletter so I am up to date on all the births/weddings and the like. Having twins seem to be in fashion!

I also attempted to find a decently priced plane ticket from the USA to Israel for Dec/Jan. I really want my cousin to come visit! So far all the prices are insane. I hope something cheap comes up soon!

The sad news is our Wed. tiyul day is cancelled yet again (last week we had a wedding so it didn't happen either). I have a feeling it will turn into "once-a-month-tiyul-day". Oh well. You take what you can get.

Slow and steady

As promised, I am working on my snapfish photobook. It is slow going, though the site really isn't so slow when you consider all the pictures and graphics it involves. However, being of the MTV generation it can feel like forever.

They have also added more background choices, layout changes, and more flexibility. While this is of course, a good thing, to many choices can sometimes make you go crazy. Instead of looking through 50 background colors or patterns you now look through albums of options. I do appreciate it but it does take a long time to do each page when you are trying endless layouts and colors.

I can imagine most people don't have time to do this so if you want you can pay me to do a photobook for you :). I have lots of experience since I did two of them of my trip to Spain last summer.

Other than that, the usual emails, facebook, blogs, online news, weather, and shopping kept me busy while snapfish was saving or loading different things.

New and improved

I decided that I am getting bored with "surfing" so I came up with a more productive way to waste the time away. Today I brought my external harddrive full of pictures and uploaded over 600 pictures to snapfish! Tomorrow I am going to start a photobook on their site. It really is genius (if I do say so myself) because once the pics are uploaded I can log in to snapfish and work on the album whenever I want. Plus they have some pretty good sales going on for the holidays.

While my pictures were uploading, I also researched the next city we will be traveling to. On Wednesdays I go with my sister and a friend to random places in Israel just because we can. This week I have randomly chosen Rishon L'Tzion. It is a city that has grown enormously over the past decade and has lots of parks, museums and a boardwalk on the beach. There municipality website even had three suggested "trails" to take in order to see the interesting sights. I just hope the weather will be good!

Since I switched shifts today (I usually work mornings and today I did the afternoon shift) I was able to im people (like my darling cousin) in America! Amazing how time can fly.

If you break it you buy it

I had a really nice weekend. The folks were away so we had a few friends over for shabbat. Nice seeing everyone and catching up.

The only bad thing was my clumsiness. I broke a china serving bowl. I don't understand how this bowl made it through my entire childhood unharmed but now that I am a "responsible adult" I manage to break it.

How did I manage to break it, you may ask? Well I was washing dishes and put the huge serving platter up top to dry (Israeli kitchens have drying racks above the sink). The serving bowl to the set was in the sink. All of the sudden the platter fell down right into the bowl and shattered it. At least all the pieces were in the sink and the platter was fine.

Needless to say, I have spent some of my morning tracking down a replacement on the internet (once again, yay ebay). I also am considering calling up a few places like Macy's and Penny's to see if I can order it through them and then maybe use one of their holiday coupons to get a discount (we have an American phone line so I can call for free). How anyone ever affords to buy a 12 piece set of china and all the serving pieces is beyond me!

On a happier note, Chamshushalayim is back! For those who don't know, the Jerusalem Municipality sponsors free cultural events for the three weekends before Chanukah in an effort to boost local tourism. Free museums, concerts, tours, and discounts at restaurants are all part of the long weekend (named for the army term of "chamishi shishi shabbat" or chamshush when soldiers get off for a long weekend). It is a lot of fun and most places have extended operating hours until 1 or 2 am!

The only problem is navigating the municipality website. It can take a few hours (which I have) to read through all the happenings and decide what you want to do. So far I have worked on the first weekend but seeing as it is also Thanksgiving and we are going to a yummy turkey dinner, I am not sure what time I will actually be able to join the chamshush festivities.

I also had to work some today (I know- how awful to work at work) because 2 people are out sick and the bigwhigs are in the office. I think about 70% of Israel is sick right now (yes, I made up that stat but it sounds pretty good). Everyone you speak to is sick or recovering or talking about how their school/workplace/kid's school is like a ghost town. Refuah Shlayma to all and to all a goodnight.

Yay for Thursday

Thursday is a great day; the weekend is close, the boss doesn't work (cutbacks), and I can plan my weekend to keep myself busy.

This shabbat the parents' are away so the kids can play. We are having a few people over for shabbat so a menu had to be planned and a lot of text messages (what to bring, who is coming) sent back and forth. Good thing I can do it all for free from here.

We decided to do a Thanksgiving dinner theme for Friday night, in honor of the fast approaching holiday. We will even have pumpkin pie courtesy of my mother and Libby's pie filling. Lunch will be the usual (alcohol soaked chicken) and pretty low key.

I also spent a while online shopping at Jo-Ann's. The scrapbooking craze has a strong hold on me and Jo-Ann's is having a huge winter sale on albums and paper. It takes a long time to look through their thousands of scrapbooking items!

Hope everyone has a great weekend and see you back here on Sunday!

It's not me, it's you

I don't want people to think I am a slacker. Really it is not my fault that I do nothing all day. It is not like my boss does anything productive. So far this week she has spent an average of three hours a day (out of the 5 that I am here) on messenger or the phone, having personal conversations. And she has taken iming at work to a whole new level- she was using a webcam. Seriously, we all IM at work but a webcam?? At least they kept their clothes on.

With a role model like that can you blame me?

I have to thank everyone that answered my cries of boredom and sent me some ideas for ways to amuse myself. Today I helped someone research a trip to the pyramids, spent a while on lamebook.com, visited the site where people share secrets, read some Israeli news, found some recipes for thanksgiving food, and caught up on my oldnavy/snapfish/joanne's sale emails.

Sadly, I also spent a while reading about Adira Blatshauser z"l who passed away after giving birth to her first child. She had subbed quite a bit at my mother's school.

I really should come up with a way to turn this spare time into $$$. There has to be something I could do that will result in some cash. Maybe I should work for one of those sites where people buy term papers. I have time to write papers. Or I could write a novel. Or work for online customer service. What I should really do is install the software I need for school on this computer and finish my final project. But this computer is so old it would probably crash and then where would I be.

Welcome to the wonderful world of blogging

Obviously I am spending my morning starting this blog. My first accomplishment was switching the default from Hebrew to English. My Hebrew is pretty good but it will never be my mother tongue!

I should mention that I was inspired to finally do this for two reasons:

1. I finally have the time.

2. Two great blogs: what I ate for lunch today (http://whatrebeccaateforlunchtoday.blogspot.com/) and what I wore today. Both are no longer being updated but they are still amusing ;)

Of course, it goes without saying that everyday I check my 3 email accounts (hotmail, yahoo, and gmail) and read the latest updates on Facebook. I haven't gotten into Twitter but if I am really bored I might check it out. I keep hearing about it, especially on the Ellen Show, which I often watch while I am at the gym.

One hour of work left.

Intro

For the first time in my life I have a job that requires little work. I pretty much sit by a computer answering emails (not that there are many of those) and the phone (which doesn't ring enough). This leaves me with hours and hours of free time. I have tried reading books but that feels kind of weird because my boss and other people in the office are always around. I find that as long as I am on the computer noone cares what I actually do. SO I try to find stuff to keep me busy...and here you will be able to read all about it! Hey, if you have a job like mine this might actually give you some ideas. Enjoy.