Basketball Tickets

Posted on June 8th, 2007 by gail helen.
Categories: Personal, Omnia Vanitas, Sponsored Posts, Random.

Now, one sporting event I think my whole family can agree upon is basketball. In my last ’sporty’ post, I should have used Miami Heat Tickets instead of the Dolphins. I’ve always found football (and wrestling, for that matter) to be ridiculous to watch. What is the attraction to attending these events? I guess I don’t really see the skill in getting all padded up to knock each other around (isn’t that like bumper cars?? — real men play rugby! :) ) or in dressing down to roll around on a mat that might as well be a petri dish (while fun, and yes, it does require skill, it seems both pointless and useless — just hit the gym and avoid developing ringworm — seriously, I dated a guy who was a wrestler, and he picked up impetigo from his ‘partner’ which I then caught with a vengeance). But basketball is fun, limited contact, fast, and requires such an extraordinary amount of hand-eye coordination that I will never, ever successfully even manage a granny shot. Living within 40 miles of Chicago, I remember the craziness associated with getting tickets to a Bulls game when Jordan was leading the team to championship after championship — even I developed the fever. My dad had friends with box seats, and so my older sister got to go even when all the tickets had been sold ages in advance. I bet that was nice, but sadly, I never got to see them play. Maybe I will use the aforementioned PremiumSeatsUSA to take Fraser to a game or two when he’s older — I bet they would have a whole stockpile of tickets for the Bulls if they’d been around back then . . .

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Akismet Spam Filter

Posted on June 8th, 2007 by gail helen.
Categories: Personal, Blogs, Omnia Vanitas, Random.

I will never understand why people (and its often the same people, over & over again) try to comment spam my site.  I activated the filter before I even put up my first post, and all comments require approval.  The futility of of it makes me wonder at their perseverance — do they get paid per attempt, en masse, or only for those links that go live?  It makes the little demon in me want to go to other sites, and repost the junk just to see if it goes up — ’cause doesn’t everyone with their own domain have some kind of system in place? Well, obviously not, since you see garbage comments all the time, which just makes me wonder at other people’s lack of diligence — I almost blame them more than the spammers, since they obviously encourage this sort of behavior . . . ;)

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When Babies Become Boys

Posted on June 8th, 2007 by gail helen.
Categories: Personal, Omnia Vanitas, Sponsored Posts, Random.

Fraser is already fully transitioned from bubba to boy, and it’s a little sad. He actually said to me the other day that he was playing with “girls things,” a statement that almost made me cry — and I resorted to a very didactic lecture that probably made no sense to my beautiful little three year old, although he nodded very gravely at the conclusion. I think that we have no capacity on my side of the family for dealing with the XY set — we’re all girls, even though we’re not “girly.” I realized that pretty soon he’s going to be liking sports, not just the throwing and hitting of balls in the backyard, but the competing and spectator-ing that seems to be almost inevitable in boyhood and male adolescences. I’ve been imaging taking him to things like the Phantom of the Opera when it’s very likely he will prefer to have Miami Dolphins Tickets. La sigh. At least places like Premium Seats USA makes getting to either event easy by providing a huge selection of first-class tickets online to all concerts, sports and theater shows nationwide — no more hassle racing to ticket windows only to discover that the ones I want are sold out or otherwise unavailable. They appear to have decent customer service, so hopefully they’ll still be around when Fraser wants to go to the big game!

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Disclosure Policy

Posted on June 8th, 2007 by gail helen.
Categories: Work, Personal, Omnia Vanitas, Money, Random.

I added a disclosure policy to this blog today. When I was only doing a few sponsored posts here and there, I thought using the “Sponsored Posts” label was enough to clue potential readers into the fact I was being compensated by companies for some of my writing, and counted on the fact that my readers probably knew me well enough to understand that I would never shill for something I couldn’t get behind. Now that I’m in a bit of a cash-crunch, I will be doing more posts for more companies, and figured it might be a good time to have an official statement on how I go about getting paid to post. Mostly, I want to make it clear that I never have and never will offer a false or misleading testimonial — I only give my honest opinions, take them or leave them — and will never post content that I personally find to be objectionable, immoral, or exceedingly pointless. Unless I am favorably inclined to a product or service already, I won’t be taking offers from companies requiring a “positive” tone, as I don’t think cash can substitute for integrity. My blog is my own, and I plan to keep it that way. Unless of course someone offers me a million dollars and a house and a pony — but I’ll warn you if that happens. :)

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Phoenix Condos

Posted on June 8th, 2007 by gail helen.
Categories: Personal, Omnia Vanitas, Travel, Sponsored Posts, Random.

Although we have decided on Vegas as our eventual hometown, for a while my boyfriend and I considered Phoenix — he’s very familiar with the city, likes the layout, the ASU girls, and the restaurants, but its a little too hot for me personally. I know, I know, Vegas is not much better, but the other advantages weigh that out for me. Still, I read an interesting web release today for some cool Phoenix Condos that are listed on CondoCompany.com. They allow you to easily find the contact information for a number of Realtors, including “building specialists” that have met certain requirements in order to specializes in a particular condo building, especially those that qualify as luxury high rises. As a person who believes there are few jobs that wouldn’t benefit from additional certification requirements, I think CondoCompany wouldn’t be a bad way to start a forray into the Phoenix, Arizona condo market. But I refuse to move anywhere that my boyfriend would include “hot coeds” on his “top three reasons to live in” list — that’s just asking for his heart to be broken. ;)

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