05.30.07
New World of Coke
The new World of Coca-Cola Museum in Atlanta opened last week. I toured the old museum as a teen-ager and fell in love with all things Coca-Cola. This sparked a collection of unique cans and bottles, tins, stuffed polar bears, etc. My bedroom had Coca-Cola border with shelves of memorabilia. Picture the Coca-Cola section in Cracker Barrell.
I had a dream of having a Coca-Cola kitchen so when I got married and had a house of my own I had all my Coke memorabilia displayed above the cabinets and we had Coke dishes, glasses and silverware, even! When we moved and moved again and moved again (4 moves in 3 years) the Coke stuff stayed packed up each move. So finally last year I decided to part with a lot of it and only keep the sentimental items: a Coke can that my parents brought me back from Israel (the writing is in Hebrew); a Coke girl figurine my husband bought me; a stained glass-looking lamp from my mother-in-law; the lightswitch cover that my dad hand-painted with the Coca-Cola scripted letters.
I sold about half of the collection at a yard sale last summer. The other half is still in boxes in my garage. My hubby is pressuring me to get rid of it — throw it away even! But I can’t bear just to trash it. Someone somewhere will appreciate it. I just need to find them. So I turned to the internet, which is where I found the news about the new site opening. We’re planning a trip to Atlanta in July (Braves baseball) and I hope we can see the new World of Coke while we’re there. Hopefully I’ll have found a new owner for my collection by then.
05.24.07
Nancy Drew
I just heard that a Nancy Drew movie is coming out next month. June 15, to be exact. It seems like a movie for tweens but I think it will get a lot of adult fans, like me, who read Nancy Drew mysteries when we were tweens ourselves. I won’t see it in the theater but definitely one to add to my Netflix queue in a few months.
05.23.07
T-ball Is Over
Last night was the last game of the 3- and 4-year-old instructional t-ball season for my oldest son. The season included 10 games, and I have to say he’s come a long way in the few short months that he’s been practicing and playing games. The first two or three games he ran to wherever the ball was hit. It didn’t matter that he was playing second base. If the ball went to third, so did he. If the ball landed two feet in front of the tee, he was off to get it.
After much coaching from his coaches and his dad, about half-way through the season he understood that he was to go after the ball only when it came in his general direction, and he shouldn’t dart all the way across the field and wrestle other kids on his team for the ball. This realization that he was supposed to stand still and wait for the ball to be hit to him, however, led to boredom which he exhibited by playing in the dirt, tossing his hat in the air, hitting the kid nearest him with his glove, etc. So we had to work on that. 
By last night’s final game, he had it down. He took his position at second base and stood there. He didn’t chase the ball. He didn’t toss his hat. He didn’t swing his glove around. He just stood there — waiting for the ball. And a couple of times the ball came his way and chased it around and threw it to first base.
His hitting improved too. His dad has been working with him on swinging all the way through. They watch Braves baseball together and my husband says, “See. Watch Andruw (Jones). He swings alllll the way through.” Over the weekend my son was practicing hitting in the backyard and said “I swing alllll the way through, just like Andruw.”
Not Enough 3s at the Gas Station
Nearly all of the gas prices are now more than $3 a gallon. I noticed yesterday that the gas station where we frequently fill up doesn’t even have enough ‘3s’ for it’s sign. The regular was $3.11, the mid-grade $3.21 and the ultimate $3.31. They needed four 3s for their sign. The regular and mid-grade prices had official ‘3s’ in their prices. But the ultimate had two hand-painted ‘3s’ in its place. Guess they’ve never had to use that many ‘3s’ before.
05.21.07
Where do you get your creativity?
I had a flashback to my childhood this weekend. There’s a large water tower shaped like a nasal aspirator standing on its end on the top of a hill in the city where I live. When I top the mountain coming from the area where I live into the city, I can see this distinctly shaped water tower standing taller than anything around it (except for the Saturn V rocket in the background).
Seeing this reminded me how when I was a kid I used to imagine that the water tower was, indeed, a large nasal aspirator and the whole world was a shoebox like the one my mom used as a medicine box. In mom’s medicine shoebox there were band-aids, cotton balls, iodine, Neosporin and other first-aid items — and a blue nasal aspirator. As we’d drive around town I’d look for other things that would fit my theory that the whole world was a medicine shoe box. Clouds represented cotton balls. The large tents at car dealerships were gauze pads. Etc. Never found anything that looked like an iodine bottle, though.
This recollection led me to ask, where do we get our creativity? Why did my mind connect the water tower with the nose sucker? Why did I go over the top and make the whole world a medicine shoebox? I’ve often wondered similarly about the creative minds behind TV shows and movies. M. Night Shyamalan (Sixth Sense, The Village, Signs) for example. I love his movies. But where do his ideas come from? Is it a God-given talent or has it been learned through life experiences or things he’s read or seen? I think perhaps a little of both. At least that’s how I view some of my creative talent. All talents come from God but our life experiences shape how we use that talent.
Speaking of Shyamalan, he’s working on a new film set to come out next year. “The Happening” is scheduled to be released in June 2008. The plot (according to wikipedia) involves Earth’s vegetation unleashing an invisible neurotoxin causing all those who breathe it to brutally kill themselves. The protagonist, a science teacher, goes on the run with his wife and friends as hysteria grips the planet. Creative, I tell ya!
05.14.07
Clipless Coupon
The only blog I’ve ever read on any kind of semi-regular basis has gone out of the blogging business. Slavetotarget.com is a blog about Target — aka Tarzjay. 
The blog was all about the latest and trendiest finds at Target. I stumbled across the blog while I worked for a Target Distribution Center as a communications specialist. Part of my job was very similar to that of the blogger behind Slave to Target. I had the inside scoop on what cool and trendy gimmick Target was pulling next. I wrote communication materials for Target team members, often keeping them in the loop about things like Clear Rx, new clothing lines, summer products, Christmas specials, Global Bazaar, The One Spot (now, See. Spot. Save.), etc. My ‘target audience’ saw all of these things sometimes months before they hit the shelves. But they often only saw them in brown cardboard boxes so I felt the obligation to educate them on exactly what was in the box and how it was so cool they should run to the store and use their 10 percent employee discount to buy one for themselves!
I don’t work for Target anymore so not only is my 10 percent discount gone, my ‘target audience’ is gone, too. So I’ll occasionally use this blog to go on and on about all things cool at Target. Which brings me to the point of this here entry: Clipless Coupon™. I received in the mail last week a Clipless Coupon™ from Target. The Clipless Coupon™ is a red card — about the size of my Target Visa — with a shopping list of items and how much you can save if you buy the item and present the coupon card. Like $1 off Market Pantry™ milk, $1.50 off Pampers diapers, $.75 off Kraft cheese. The card is good on a total of 20 items, saving up to $17 if you buy them all. And its good for the next six weeks so plenty of time to shop!
If you don’t get one of these in the mail, I don’t think they’re giving them out at Target stores. Not sure why I was on the list of folks to get one, but I’m glad I was. Internet theories say the coupons only go to Target credit card holders or that Target sends them to people who have been known to buy the products featured. I do know that Target tracks who buys what and targets their promotions accordingly. So maybe I got one because I buy a lot of milk, cheese and diapers? I dunno. But they’ve certainly convinced me to buy at least one more round of milk, cheese and diapers at a total savings of $3.25. Just enough to go to Target’s Food Avenue and get a strawberry smoothie! They end up getting my $3.25 one way or the other.
05.11.07
Fascinated with Stamps
I’ve been intrigued by postage stamps since I was a little kid. I remember where my dad “hid” the stamps in the back of this bill book. He always bought the boring ones — the ones with the American flag or birds. I always liked the really different ones, so now I look forward to going to the post office to see what kind of new, fun stamp I can buy.
I sometimes wonder why the fuss? They just get thrown in the trash anyhow. But if a pretty heart or a fun Disney character makes me smile while I begrudgingly send out all of my hard-earned money to the utility, the phone and the credit card companies, then it’s worth asking the postal worker to show me all the stamp possibilities so I can choose a stamp that suits me.
I actually don’t use as many stamps as I used to. I do a lot of bill-paying online. I’ll probably use even less once the postage rate goes up Monday to 41 cents.
Also starting Monday, the post office will sell new Forever Stamps for 41 cents. The new Forever stamps will always be good no matter how high the price of a stamp gets. I’ve thought about “investing” in the Forever stamps by buying one book of Forever stamps every time I buy a book of regular stamps. I’ll use the regular ones now and put the Forever stamps in safe place. Then when the postage rate goes up again (and it will) I’ll have a stockpile of stamps to use!
05.08.07
More on Good Vibrations
I got to thinking more about the Good Vibrations song on the Sunkist website. I looked up Good Vibrations on wikipedia only to find out this: “In 1978 the song was used as a jingle for the introduction of Sunkist orange soda in New York.” The wikipedia entry also noted that Beach Boy Brian Wilson re-recorded Good Vibrations in 2004. So I wondered if the version on the Sunkist web site was by Wilson. I figured the Sunkist site should note somewhere something about the song. And it did. I went back to the site — heard the song again — and found a link at the bottom of the page to the web site of the band Gym Class Heroes. A May 4 posting in the news section on the band’s site said “In case you have not seen it yet, we have a little promotion going with Sunkist, where you can win a ton of cool stuff including iPods, music downloads, signed guitars by yours truly, or even the grand prize: a VIP experience for you and 15 friends at one of our shows. Head over to www.drinksharewin.com for details and how to enter, and check out our cover of Good Vibrations while you’re there!”Now aren’t you glad I researched that further? We’ll all sleep better tonight.
