Found this out surfing today, have a read. Be sure to read through the comments, too!

…at 5:30 in the morning, the Princess was awakened by a small furry white creature. This beast obviously has no sense of timing, or perhaps just a very poor sense of timing, to dare squeak ever so softly but at such a high pitch at this time of day.

The Princess began to stir, and refused to accept that this white fuzzball was going to dominate the day. At the prompting of a gentle yet forceful reminder of the “jingle bell” collar, she realized that if she did not obey, the castle’s new floors would be destroyed. “Yes, ma’am,” she murmured. The Princess threw the covers back into a careless heap, sleepily made her way to the entrance and began to unbolt the castle doors.

The creature must have wanted to punish the Princess for her lack of expediency, as a gust of freezing air swept into her face and jolted her completely awake as she opened the doors. With what appeared to be a half grin on its face, this little white beast haughtily pranced out the door.

More alert now, the Princess made her way into the dining hall to search for a maid that could pour a warm morning brew for her and perhaps help her return to her slumber. Upon arrival into the main hall, she soon realized that the maid was off for the weekend and she was left to her own defenses. She stumbled over a plastic gadget that the Castle Munchkins had planted on the floor beside the brewmaster, nearly causing her to sail into the cabinets. When she regained her balance, she began the painful process of MMR, morning memory recovery.

The Castle Munchkins are still asleep. The brew requires a special combination of ingredients, could she remember so early in the day? Or should she begin to rummage through the maid’s things to try to find instructions?

Just then, the beast began to pelt the door with giant boulders, creating a wretched pounding noise loud enough to wake the neighboring Castles. The Princess was terrified! Would she ever be able to appease the beast enough that she would not be continually tortured? She hurried to the doors to beg forgiveness for her ignorance, jolted further awake by another slap in the face by the brisk breeze as she fell to one knee in front of the beast.

This brazen little fuzzball completely ignored her attempt at friendship and forgiveness, flitting quickly past her back into the Castle.

The Princess closed the doors, mumbled something to herself about the time of day, and returned to the dining hall for her morning brew. The creature, seemingly very pleased with its morning torture routine, found a quiet place to began plotting its next session.

5 Annoying reasons that I consider every time I sponsor/partake in giveaway/contest thingamajoobies.

By the way, if you entered the Gift Basket Giveaway you’ve received your announcement this evening from me with your entrant discounty stuff.

Now let me get on to my reasoning and get this outta my system. FYI, I do this every time I have a contest. The annoyance factor is very low, but exists. So I’m coming here to rant about it. It’s late. I’m tired, and I haven’t ranted about anything in a long time. heh. 😛

1. Thousands of people who will never visit your site again enter to win something without even reading the rules.

2. A handful of the people who don’t read the rules will spend 10 minutes locating an e-mail address to write you and ask you what the rules are.

3. Thousands of people enter the contest, many of them use invalid e-mail addresses, even when you remind them that they can’t win if you can’t contact them. Bouncity-bounce-bounce-bounce.

4. For some reason, receiving one winner notification mail at the end of the contest equates spam, and those who entered immediately “opt-out” of a list that has a one-time mailing.

5. Reporting the announcement as “spam” to the ISP. Someone entered the contest. They subscribed to receive the notification. They entered their e-mail address, twice. It’s not spam. Ding-a-ling.

Ok there. All better. I will run another giveaway sometime in 2005! Next time I’ll just announce it here though, not list it with the Sweeps sites. I’d like someone who is around more often to win. 😀

Webcam Link

My webcam is on if you would like to watch me as I work on Barney & Bailey this afternoon!

We went out yesterday afternoon with Grandma, it was fun! Jayden had a good time, too. 🙂

I’ve been fiddling with some new blog/website layout ideas, hopefully you will all get to see it in action very soon! I’ll keep you updated, it’s going to be a fabulous surprise!!

Ooh yes, I have a quick (literally, a couple of minutes) doodle to share. This is for you, K! 😉 Do you recognize the character?

I saw this link in another blog, you have to see this! It’s like a virtual haunted-house sortof a roller-coaster ride, aka Zoomquilt. Very cool graphic design in there!

Here you go, this is a fun Friday night plan for those of ya hanging out at home:

Open up my webcam, resize the window to your liking.

Then open up this nifty little gadget, and cut some snowflakes!

Have fun!

This is the cutest e-card I think I’ve seen yet! It’s a java card, about 5 minutes long.
I LIKE YOU!

I’ll be painting on cam this afternoon, I’ll update when I get started! I will be working on W’s eyes first, makin’ them shine. 🙂

Would someone please explain to me the point in spamming products to every e-mail address on the planet, when filters have been so jam packed with keywords that spammers can’t even complete a full normal sentence with correct spelling and punctuation anymore????? What is the point? Look at this! (I’m sure you’ve probably seen it before!)

Us<>ing t<>he<> s<>p<>e<>e<>d and us<>e<>r-frie<>ndline<>s<>s<> of t<>he<> Int<>e<>rne<>t<> we<> have<> s<>imp<>lifie<>d your abilit<>y t<>o re<>s<>e<>arc<>h your own he<>alt<>h p<>roble<>ms<> and aut<>onomous<>ly dis<>c<>ove<>r t<>he<> available<> op<>t<>ions<> for t<>re<>at<>me<>nt<>.

LOL!

::grumble grumble::