I am working for Microsoft again, but doing demos is even harder than it was last semester since campus is not allowing me to do the things I need to do. I am thinking about just telling them I won’t be able to reach my goal and turning in my materials. I have 5 weeks to do 320 demos (already did 80), and I just don’t see that happening. I have emailed countless organizations and haven’t heard anything, so I just resent them emails again. I am hoping and praying a few of them contact me. I really need the money and the job to put on my resume.

Meanwhile, I am scrambling to read 2 books every week for classes plus write papers and work on final projects early, due to a trip to NYC I am taking towards the end of the semester.

Also, it’s getting warmer outside and the last thing I want to do is be inside stressed out and doing work!

Wish me the best of luck and keep me in your prayers, because I need all the help I can get!

Yesterday it was snowing, today it’s in the low 50′s and sunny. I walked to one of my favorite eateries for lunch and read a good book while sipping hot chai tea. I’ve had a great day.

Next week is spring break! I only have one class tomorrow, then I am free for a week! I am going to Tulsa (where I grew up) to visit my ill grandmother for her 86th birthday. She is in a nursing home rehab center, because she was in the hospital for almost 2 months with pneumonia. I am sooo proud of her going through all that she has been through at her age. I can’t wait to see her next week. I got her a few Vandy goodies including a plush Vandy basketball (she’s a huge basketball fan) and a bright yellow Vandy tee. Also in Tulsa, I am going to see one of my favorite bands (Hanson – I promise they are way better than they were in the Mmmbop days!) film a music video. It’s going to rock.

I’m coming home on Tuesday and begging my boyfriend (Brent) to drive to the University of Alabama with me to see one of our best friends! I am in a traveling mood. I also want to drive to Pensacola (about 5 hours from UA) because I haven’t been to the beach in like 7 years. So, hopefully Brent will be up for going!

I can’t believe I’m already half way through this semester! I’ve been thinking about studying abroad in Spain next spring, and I’m getting so excited about it.

I promise to update more often!

peace, love, and cake! xoxo

Today is my lucky day 2.22.10, because 222 is really lucky for me! I can’t wait to see what the day brings for me.

I joined www.lockerz.com today and it’s pretty awesome. You do dailies (watching videos and answering a quick question) to get 2 PTZ (points) per item and you also get 2 PTZ from logging in every day. You can redeem your PTZ for really awesome prizes, and this is NOT a scam. There are tons of people who have done this and received prizes.

Right now they are not sending prizes because it is not fully launched, but they will be sending them soon so start getting PTZ today.

You can only join the site by invite, so if you want an invite send me an email to lynne.moody@gmail.com with the email you want me to invite you with.

EDIT on 3/4/10: So I’m starting to think Lockerz is a psuedo-scam. I’ve heard they send out very few prizes during redemption, making it not a complete scam, but probably not worth the time. I’ve also heard that the unboxing videos on Youtube are all from an advertising company that Lockerz hired. Still not sure exactly how I feel about this, but I will most likely continue to log on every day and get PTZ. Maybe I will some day be one of the lucky few that gets a prize!

I am utterly shocked at the number of people from high school that are now pregnant, engaged, married, or living with a significant other. All of the people in one of these four categories are the people who drank themselves silly in high school, never showed up to class, probably aren’t in college now, and were the “popular” people in school. I am kind of jealous, because getting married and having a family are two of my main goals in life. I am working my ass off trying to finish college so I can get a job to support married life and a family of my own. It doesn’t seem fair that these slackers get to enjoy what I am waiting so impatiently for. I guess the most positive way to look at this is to think that when I done with school, I will know for sure that I can support the lifestyle I want to have, while the ones beginning early without a foundation won’t have such a stable foundation upon which their families are built.

I think every day about what I want to be when I grow up and how having a family and husband will work into my career goals. Right now, I plan on finishing my remaining two years to obtain my two bachelor’s degrees. I then will either find a job or get my master’s degree so I can become a professor. This decision depends on job availability, school acceptance, and my boyfriend’s plans. All I know is… I can’t wait to finish my undergrad degrees and figure out my life!

Now onto fashion. I am in a history of fashion and costume class, and I absolutely love the material but not necessarily the class. The professor is a costume designer for the theater department, and it shows. She tries as best as she can, but class is super boring and repetitive. I’m not sure of an alternative to the class that would make it better, but I know that it is boring as hell as it is. All the girls in that class bother me too. They are all the rich girls who wear leggings, Uggs, and a Burberry coat to class every day and think they walk on water. I may not look the best every day or spend hundreds of dollars on one item of clothing, but I usually try to look presentable and somewhat fashionable. I wish I had an infinite amount of money to buy a new wardrobe. I think it would give me so much confidence and happiness from having things I love! I am so jealous of movie stars who buy fantastic dresses and wear them once. I would kill just to own one of their dresses and I would wear it all the time! I get the urge to be fashionable and go shopping, but of course everything I want is at least $100 per clothing article, so I am SOL. I try to make what I have the best that it can be, but I have an insatiable desire to have more.

We are under a winter storm warning for the next 2 days, expecting a grand total of TWO inches! (haha)

My guess is we will get about 1 inch, and it won’t stick and people will be going crazy for no reason!

I just hope I can make the 45 minute drive home safely tomorrow and enjoy the snow with my boyfriend and my dog

-get married in Disney World

-get a career started

-buy a nice “starter” home

-travel to Europe and Egypt

-start my family

Most of these will have to wait at least 2 years, and I cannot wait!

To date, I have won about $1,100 worth of prizes, including a pair of designer jeans, EA Sports Active for Wii, $125 Starbucks giftcard,  and brownies to name a few, since late October ’09. It’s such a rush to get an @ reply or Direct Message beginning with “Congratulations!”

I got into Twitter contests first. I won a prize on my main account (@Lynne222) at a Project Runway Twitter “party.” A Twitter party sounds completely ridiculous and impossible, but they happen every day. It’s when a bunch of people are on Twitter looking at the host(s)’s tweets and usually answering questions to enter giveaways throughout the parties that usually last about an hour. Well anyway, I won a handmade necklace at a party, and I was hooked. I was brought into this whole new world of contest entering online. I checked out a few of the other people tweeting at the party who had won other prizes, and I noticed all of their tweets were something like “RT @xyz123 I want to win a 64 GB iPod touch! follow and Rt to win!!” I didn’t believe it could be so easy to win an iPod Touch, but it is! I began by copy+paste’ing their contest tweets, favorite’ing contests I wanted to enter often, and entering every day as much as allowed by the rules. I, myself, have not won an iPod Touch (yet), but they are among the most popular prizes for Twitter giveaways. Many companies use their Twitter accounts to promote themselves by doing giveaways, like Overstock’s “Winsday” every Wednesday. I had to create a contest Twitter account to keep from spamming my friends on my main account. If you are interested in seeing my tweets and starting out in the Twitter contests world, follow me @leetgirl and copy and paste contest tweets. Fun fact: Most of the people who enter Twitter contests are stay at home moms.

One of the Twitter contest groupies saw me a newbie contest enterer and told me about a website to enter other online contests. From there, my amount of daily entries, called “dailies” more than doubled. There are so many things being given away on the Internet every day! I also learned about blog giveaways. Companies send products to popular bloggers to review and to giveaway. Usually all you have to do to enter is leave a comment on the giveaway post. I have only won one prize on a blog (a book), so I haven’t had much luck with them.

Some people use contests as a second income. One lady I read about has won thousands upon thousands of dollars in prizes in the past few years, including multiple big screen televisions and multiple vacations.

If you want any info on the websites I use to find contests or just have a question about contest entering and “sweeping”, leave a comment!

I’m off to do my dailies…

I am going to use this blog to post pictures from my life and also to further explore topics from my courses in college and other topics in general that I like.

Today, I went to a Microsoft event on campus where the CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, spoke! It was fun, except it was aimed at developers, one of which I am not. I enjoyed hearing him speak and being around that group of people, though I only knew one person there. They are holding a raffle later. I’m thinking of going since luck tends to be on my side, but this random thunderstorm in January is altering my decision quickly.

I also attended two classes today. One focusing on genetics and literature, http://geneticsandliterature.wordpress.com, in which we talked about the movie Gattaca and the nation’s policies on cloning. I remember hearing about cloning around the time the article we read was written in and being completely freaked out about Dolly. I have rarely thought about cloning since then. It seemed to be an issue that rose quickly and faded even quicker. I am enjoying the topic in an intellectual light in this class.

Hopefully I will have something more interesting to write about tomorrow!

I find this post funny, because Bill gates joined Twitter yesterday and his first tweet was “Hello World!”

Such a classic computer geek phrase that makes me smile. For this reason, I will not delete this automatic post!