Happy Blogoversary to me

After reading Mike's post about him finally getting 10K hits, I decided to see if I hit the mark yet.  Turns out I did.  Actually, this happened on January 24th, the day after NY became 1 month old.

My first blog was on livejournal.  Not sure if I even made to 5 posts before I lost interest.  Livejournal's ugly, free version sucks and I only knew one other person there who wasn't a very frequent poster or reader.

My first post on Insanity Now was on May 10th, 2007, though my google analytics statistics are only from January 2nd.  I probably hit the 10K mark before.

There are two main people who I have to thank for helping me get here.  Sally Hazel of My take on motherhood is the reason I started this blog.  I don't remember if she told me about the blog while I was trying to annoy her into joining Facebook or if I saw it on her FB profile after she joined, I think it was the former.  Reading her blog inspired me to go back to what I started before and hopefully not give up as I did last time.

There was one problem, she didn't have a lot of readers and neither did I.  Google wasn't sending me many visitors and I didn't quite know how to get some myself.  Then, one fine day, through the magic of FB, Frum Skeptic found my blog.  We had a lot of friends in common and my profile is completely open, with a link to my blog.  Once we exchanged links, things took off.  Instead of getting one or two visitors per day, it became ten, then twenty, culminating with my current stats of 35 average on days when there are no new posts and a nice 60 average when there are.

A big thank you to Sally and FS for helping me get here and thanks to everyone else for reading and linking.

And now it's time to put this blog to rest.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Kidding. ;-)

Sales Alert - Pomegranate

No minimum purchase:
Ground Chuck Family Pack - $3.99/lb!!!
Chicken Drumsticks - $2.99/lb

$15 minimum purchase:
KC 9" Plastic Plates - $3.99/100ct
Haolam String Cheese - $3.19/6oz

Something new:
More Stash teas. I bought Honey, Ginseng & White fusion.
$2.49 for 18 bag box.
Cheaper than Stash's online price unless you buy a 240ct box.

Sleep walking

Several times, Shlomik climbed into my bed while I was sleeping and went to sleep.  Last night was slightly different.

We're trying to get Shlomik to stop wearing diapers and to use the potty.  Last night, he again climbed into my bed while I was sleeping.  When I woke up in the morning, I saw that he was in my bed but didn't notice anything different.  NY went to sleep late and I was still sleepy so I went back to sleep for another hour.  Shlomik informed me he wanted to watch cartoons and climbed out of bed ahead of me, that's when I noticed that he wasn't wearing a diaper. What the?!  As I followed him to his room, I came upon his potty, situated in the middle of the doorway and definitely not empty.

Last night, Shlomik climbed out of his crib.  Took of his diaper and threw it in the garbage.  Then he dragged out his potty into the doorway and peed in it.  The night's escapades were concluded with his climbing into my bed, sans diaper.

Meme - Finish The Sentences

Saw babysitter jewishside post this and decided to have some "fun" with it. :-D

Instructions: Finish The Following 8 Sentences.

1. I wish I could…
2. My biggest fear is…
3. I hate to…
4. I love…
5. Today I will…
6. Yesterday I…
7. My hair is…
8. I will never…

My "answers" :-D

Instructions: Finish The Following 8 Sentences.

1. I wish I could deport all stupid people.
   
2. My biggest fear is that stupid people will rule America and/or Israel. OMG!!! It came true! On both counts!
   
3. I hate to read something that contains grammar/spelling mistakes.
   
4. I love sleeping and eating.
   
5. Today I will maybe go to Staples.
   
6. Yesterday I bought an otoscope on Amazon.
   
7. My hair is supposedly dirty blond.
   
8. I will never understand why natural selection doesn't work for stupid people.
   

Shlomik and Nochum

Price Alert - Pomegranate

No minimum purchase
Chicken Drumsticks - $2.99/lb
New Square Milk - $2.49/.5 gallon

$14.99 minimum purchase
Nature's Own Apple Juice - $1.69/64oz
Barbara's Puffins - $2.39/12oz
Paskesz Square Rice Cakes - $.89
Tomatoes and Plum tomatoes - $.79/lb

Check out instant miso soup in ethnic section. I'm looking for people who'll split an order with me.

New Minyan About to Commence

From an email from Harry's Black Hole.

New White House - Washington

So far we have:  

Rahm Emanuel - Chief of Staff - Jewish

David Axelrod - Senior Advisor to the President - Jewish

Ronald Klain - Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States - Jewish

Larry Summers - Economic Advisor to the President - Jewish

Paul Volcker - Economic Advisor to the President, Former Head of Fed Reserve - Jewish

Tim Geithner - Treasury Secetary - Jewish

Peter Orszag - Head of Budget - Jewish

Is Barak assembling an administration or trying to make a minyan?

No Pants Poll

January 10th was the 8th annual No Pants Subway Ride. This year, over 1000 New Yorkers got on the subway, took off their pant and went for a ride.

The event was created by Improv Everywhere and has spread to other states and even other countries.

Unfortunately, the event wasn't held at a Jewish friendly time like, for example, Sunday and I was not able to participate. What I want to know is if the event would be at a Jewish friendly time, would you join? Comment and vote on the left.

The results are in:

WOULD YOU PARTICIPATE IN THE ANNUAL NO PANTS SUBWAY RIDE IF IT WOULD BE ON SUNDAY?

YES!	7 (25%)
NO!	14 (51%)
Only if my friends come too.	5 (18%)
Only if none of my friends see me do it.	1 (3%)

Votes so far: 27 

12, pretty good. Now who's brave enough to say they said yes? ;-)

Star Pirates

For the last couple of months I've been playing an awesome game. It's an MMO but is not even flash, plain html, yet very fun and highly addictive. The game is Star Pirates. It somewhat reminds me of the good old BBS game TradeWars 2002. Yes, I'm that old.

You can play solo or join a fleet. You can play for free or pay or get someone in the game to pay for you. Paying members get certain perks that help you in the game but are not necessary and the price is only $4.50/month. You start out with a small weak ship and a basic weapon. As you earn more money in the game and find items you can use or sell for profit, you upgrade your ship and your equipment. With luck and strategy you can easily end up more powerful than the paying players.

Part of what makes this game fun is the one more turn al a civilization. One more kill to get you to next level, one more research to get your stats high enough to switch to a better paying job. A great evil is that you can only search for loot once an hour and until your level is high enough, this is your only way for finding items and money. This makes you go back to the game every hour in search for that elusive rare find that will spell the difference between winning and defeat. This game is also constantly in development. Gameplay tweaks, new items, holiday specific items and more.

Join the game and unlike me, you wont even have to start at the bottom. If you see that you like the game, message me and I'll provide you with decent, not great, those I need for myself, set of equipment and maybe even some money for a new ship.

Macys Gift Cards

Saturday night we were going to a surprise birthday party.  I was planning on getting a Macys gift card.  I decided to send an email card instead of relying on them to send a mail card on time.  Last time, the card came late.

To make sure the email doesn't get lost, I sent it an hour before the party and immediately got a confirmation that's gonna be sent on, get this, Sunday!  On Sunday, 12PM, I got a phone call which went to voicemail.  10 minutes later I got an email that the order was canceled.  WTF?!!!

I called Macys and was given some bs that since there's a lot of fraud with gift cards, their policy is to confirm all orders and if not confirmed, to immediately cancel.  They were very sorry for all the bs but it's their policy so deal with it.  There was no automated system or separate phone number or even a separate division to deal with this.

The convenience of getting an email gift card from Macys turned out to be very inconvenient.  Next time, I'm using Amazon.  I've had 0 problems ordering Amazon gift cards and they were sent immediately and arrived on time.

Dafina: Revision n+1

Revision n

Layer 1 - Chopped onion and 3 cloves of garlic.

Layer 2 - Lamb breast or lamb stew and a bag of roasted and shelled chestnuts.

Layer 3 - Salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, hot red paprika, cinnamon, cumin, curry powder, at least 1 tbsp of honey.

Layer 4 - Bulgur and rice and/or barley.

Layer 5 - Yams, eggs and either hotdogs, salami or veal tongue.

With water add either a can of beer or a cup of coke.