Dear Walmart

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . October 25, 2010 . 12:14AM

Dear Walmart,

Honestly, I rarely go to your store for a cornucopia of delightful reasons. The main reason being that when I go into the store I come out feeling musty and dusty and like I need to take a shower. While you may have a more varied selection than my preferred store, Target, I’ve noticed that some products look like someone has run them over with a Hummer and that they have been opened, sampled and then put back like I won’t notice that someone else has taken a huge bite out of the Doritos I plan to purchase. Consequently, I no longer purchase Doritos, but I will talk about that in a later post.

In any case, I frequent your store in two circumstances: when I’m in a city, like my hometown, that does not have a Target, or when the item I need is not one that Target, Best Buy or any other store in the whole world (the whole world being a 15-20 mile driving distance) sells. In this case, I was looking for a 16G Zune player. This was necessary being that I was overly zealous on the treadmill the other day and whacked my rhapsody player off the treadmill deck and sent it spiraling to the belt where it promptly went zinging to the back of the treadmill and skidded 5-feet across the gym floor. It inadvertently almost knocked a boy off the elliptical behind me because he was laughing so hard he couldn’t stay upright. I realized it was unusable when it popped open in my hand. After trying other rhapsody players from my beloved Target, I gave up.

Wal-mart online showed me a Zune player that was $30 less than Best Buy. By this time, I’m already crabby because I haven’t worked out in 24 hours and I am kind of wishing I’d pushed the boy off of the elliptical machine. I got to Wal-Mart and, lo and behold, they have the Zune in stock. For $30 more than they advertised online. This isn’t new. Wal-Mart frequently discounts their items on their online store and charges more for their items in-store. So, to get something that is IN STOCK, I get to pay $30? Pass. I’ll go to Best Buy where I get a clean store, great customer service, a Best Buy rewards system and can use my $5 certificate for my rewards and where that same player will count towards MORE rewards. Oh, and hey, where BEST BUY won’t UNDERCUT ITSELF online. I’ve heard stories about Wal-Mart doing this with various products and refusing to honor the prices in their stores. If I wanted to wait five days, I could get Amazon free shipping. Or, better yet, use Amazon.com and get prime shipping or one day shipping and pay $30 less than both Wal-Mart & Best Buy.

What I know is this: I won’t be using Wal-Mart. And their policy of not meeting their own prices? Bull. This isn’t a franchise. This is a corporation. All the money goes to the same place. Enough is enough. I walked out today even though I really wanted that player and I had spent time, gas and money going there.

Places that continue to give me good service, Target, Best Buy, Amazon, the little stores around here? They’ll continue to get my cash. Keep up the good work, Wal-Mart. You make it easy not to give you my money.

Sincerely,

Earring giveaway

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . October 22, 2010 . 10:51PM

What the soup is this about only 2 people entering? Angie you won the earrings, but I feel bad for Amber so if you send me your address, Amber, I’ll send you a little Blueshelled.com swag, too. Angie, let me know when I can get you the earrings since you are in town. Amber, please email your info to me at jillian at blueshelled dot com.

Thanks for reading and keep watching for more giveaways!

Book Review: Cheap Cabernet by Cathie Beck

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . October 21, 2010 . 8:04PM

I don’t like to read non-fiction. There. I said it. Judge me oh you finger pointers, you. I’m in a doctoral program, cut me some slack. I spend oh so many hours a week reading non-fiction that sometimes, I will dramatically swear, make my eyeballs fall out of my noggin. Therefore, I usually pass when I see that someone is offering a biographical novel. However, when I read online that Cathie Beck was offering up Cheap Cabernet: A Friendship for review, I couldn’t pass on it.

Something compelled me towards this story. It may have been the storyline. Lonely woman finds dynamo friend who changes her life for the better. Don’t we all want a little firecracker sidekick in our lives who drastically changes it for the better? Maybe it was the secret sense of foreboding? From the first page you get the sense that Cathie’s friendship with Denise is doomed. Why is that? Maybe I just wanted to know what made this book so special.

Whatever it was, it was special indeed. For a week, I was wrapped up in the friendship of Cathie and Denise. I found myself taking sides when something went wrong, agonizing over decisions both of them made and reading the book like a work of fiction. It’s rare to have true life read so well. Overall, you know what is going to happen from the start and it doesn’t stop you from wishing it isn’t so and that the book can go on and on and on. The writing is superb, though there are times I wished this book was a novel so I could know more about Denise’s thoughts and feelings. It’s just not meant to be and it makes the story that more poignant. This is a well-written novel on the ins and outs of an imperfect friendship. It was a beautiful read.

*Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book in order to review it. Thanks for allowing me to read this book and share my thoughts on it with others!

Earring Review and giveaway

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . October 13, 2010 . 8:11PM

Every now and then a company will send me something and say “Please give my product an honest review.” I remind them that all of my reviews are honest and they might not like what I say. So far, no one has pulled out of their offer because of it. I received an email in August from the people at Diamondearrings.org asking me to review their earrings and letting me know they’d throw in a pair for me to give to a lucky reader if I’d like as well. I have super sensitive ears so my first response to them was “Well, sure, but I have to let you know that my ears hate even the most expensive of earrings so if they aren’t good quality, the review won’t be good.” I’m serious about that. I have what must be a nickel-allergy or something because, though earrings look great on me, my ears get irritated, puffy and red after I’ve worn them all day.

It could actually be post-traumatic stress from when I got my ears pierced. I only vaguely remember this. I was young. My mom could verify the age, but I’d guess I was 6 or 7 years old and I’d wanted them pierced for a while. Luckily for both of us, my mom’s best friend at the time was a beautician and she could do it for me. All went well until she pierced the first ear. Commence extreme wailing, gnashing of teeth and a refusal for her to do the second ear.

I wasn’t playing. There was to be no holding still for a second ear. I was doomed to go through life with only one ear pierced. One ear pierced with a fake gold stud and sapphire. I was going to look like someone from the boy-band Colour Me Badd. My mother wasn’t having it. She had to get creative. There was a happy meal in my future if I’d only consent to the ear piercing afterward.

I’m assuming I was bought because I have a hole in each ear. Actually, I have 2 holes in each ear as I got bold when I was around 14 or so. Regardless, I do believe the upset caused by that first encounter has given me a condition I call “angry ears.” It doesn’t let me wear earrings easily and I feared this review was going to be a nasty one.

It almost never happened. I never heard anything from the company and never saw anything in the mail. I deleted the emails and assumed that they decided against someone who was not a sure bet. I was wrong. My post office had held a package addressed to me for over a month because they “wanted to make sure it was me.”

…

I’ve always been me. I’m glad the post office figured it out.

Onto the review of the earrings from Diamondearrings.org. If you look at the site, the premise looks simple. You mention them on your blog, twitter, facebook, somewhere online, pay a cheapie fee for shipping and they send you some earrings that look like diamonds, but aren’t. Why bother? Because eventually they won’t do this anymore and they are going to rely on word of mouth for advertising and all those posts add up to some serious advertising.

Here’s why I think it’s going to work: The earrings are good. I was really pleasantly surprised. In the box, they looked a little bigger than what I’d normally wear. I’m a small earrings kind of girl and I require a clean look at all times. They wore really nicely, gave me a little bit of bling and I can wear them all day without experiencing ear fatigue or “angry ears.” I’m used to taking my earrings out and rubbing my ears for about 10 minutes. This was incredibly pleasant for me.

So, here’s what is going to happen. You are going to go look at the site and decide you want your own pair and enter my freebie giveaway to try to win a pair and avoid paying shipping or you’ll just try the deal on your own. One way or another, the earrings were really nice and a great surprise to me. Thanks again to the company for a new pair of classy, everyday earrings. I appreciate them greatly.

If you want to try your chances on my giveaway, here’s what you can do:

1) Visit DiamondEarrings.org and tell me what you think about the idea in a comment here.

For an additional entry each:

2) Stumble them on Stumble Upon

3) Twitter about them or this contest.

4) Facebook about them or this contest.

5) Write about them or this contest in your blog.

Things to know:
**Comments posted after the deadline (October 20, 2010 at 5pm CST) won’t be included in the drawing.
**If you win, you must email me your mailing address within a week of the drawing end in order to receive your prize. If you do not, I will re-draw for the prize. I am not responsible if you do not receive your prize. If it gets lost, etc., I’ll feel really bad, but I can’t replace it.
**I will be using a randomizer to choose the winner of the giveaway. As long as your entries fit the criteria, you are eligible.

My date with the Loch Ness Monster

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . October 12, 2010 . 1:20AM

You got me.

I admit it, and not even grudgingly: I am fascinated with conspiracy theories.

I’m not one of those people that has to follow them or go after them or do anything to spur them on. However, from the time I was A.J.’s age (9-ish), I remember being fascinated by things that were of a titillating nature. Do they really exist? Unsolved Mysteries was some serious stuff for me growing up. There were many nights, after watching that show, that I didn’t sleep. It didn’t matter if it was a school night. I was sufficiently freaked out that sleep was out of the picture. My eyes were glued to my window because there were most certainly aliens coming through it to do a probe if I closed my eyes even a little bit.

I was a naive child. My son is much smarter than I am. Even if there were aliens right outside his window, he wouldn’t for one minute presume that they would bother probing him. He’d be more concerned about whether or not they’d touch his stuff, eat the junk food in the house or make enough noise to get him in trouble. He’s a skeptical little guy. He loves shows like Paranormal State.

He’ll curl up on the couch and talk to both me and the television. I’ll be minding my own business and farming my Farmville (don’t you judge me, I love my farm!) and suddenly I will hear, “Ohhhhh, no! Don’t go in there. Mama, he shouldn’t go in there, should he?” After a couple days of this, A.J. looked at me from the backseat of the car. He’d been quiet and this usually tells me that something is coming that I’m not going to be able to explain. The gears were grinding and he finally came out with it. “Mama! I don’t think Paranormal State is real. They keep going into house after house and I still haven’t seen a ghost.”

…

…

“Mama, do you think it’s real?”

There’s the question. What’s real and what’s not?

Here’s the deal, A.J. Perception is a tricky beast. There are things out there that are difficult for me to prove exist, but I know they do. There are things out there that I think may exist that I know don’t. There are things I wish didn’t exist but do. I’ll tell you what I’ve always told you in that you need to make up your own mind.

“Well, mama, I don’t think it’s real, but I like to watch it anyway. It’s a good show.”

Well, alright then.

When I was A.J.’s age, I read everything I could find on aliens, UFOs, ghosts, Loch Ness, Bigfoot, you name it. It then, as I aged, extended to government theories. What I’ve determined is that people need to make up their own minds about things and that curiosity about questions that are on the edge of reality have led to a curiosity in research for my profession that propels me immensely.

This would explain why I’m sitting here watching a television show about the Loch Ness monster and devouring it like a starving woman discovering bacon for the first time.

Sometimes, 9-year olds have the answers that adults don’t have. I subscribe to A.J.’s theory in that I don’t know if it’s real, but I like to watch it anyway. It’s a good show.