Highway 9 Clean Up

The Area 8 Rotary Clubs (Campbell, Cupertino, Los Gatos Morning, Los Gatos, and Saratoga) did a big clean-up day along Highway 9 between Saratoga and Los Gatos Blvd on Saturday, April 25, 2009. I volunteered to help out since many of those Rotary clubs have helped support West Valley Community Services in the past or presently are!

It was definitely an interesting and fun experience. We found weird plastic things, lots of cigarette butts, a number of floss/toothpick things in one area, evidence of *intimate* activities, and lots and lots of glass... people! come on now.. just find a rubbish bin for crying out loud! Is it that hard?

Ohana Mama's Giveaway!

I found Ohana Mama through 23Monkeys and it's another cool website by another cool mom with stuff to give away for Earth Day!

Check it out the giveaway information on her blog entry.

She's giving away a Sigg bottle from buygreen.com. I switched to Sigg's after some discussion with my friend High Entropy. They're really great bottles when it comes to cool drinks (don't put anything hot in it because it passes through the aluminum really easily. But they're sturdy bottles and good for the environment (they're recyclable and reusable)! They do dent easily but I dont' really care, after all that stuff about plastic I think switched was a better idea. I still use my Nalgene's but I'm careful about where I put those, supposedly if you put these things in the sun and it heats up that's not good. Plastics will leach things into your drinking water.

So go check it out and help celebrate Earth Day by making a few more changes in your life!

Other things I'm moving towards to help the planet:

1) switching my cleaning products to green/organic stuff
2) switching my bath products to green/organic stuff
3) trying to learn about composting more! :D

Things you can do really easily right now:

1) Use reusable bags (the giveaway Ohana Mama is doing includes one!)
2) Use biodegradable trash bags
3) Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

Barkhunt - A doggie scavenger hunt!

Twitter has gone to the dogs! Not only is it a way for people to spread information or tell others what they're doing at the moment.. it's a way to play games too! If you have a dog or even if you don't, four very creative members of Twitter have created an online scavenger hunt! The prizes are dog or animal related items and it's a LOT of fun! Very fast paced but fun and you get to find out about new things along the way!

It' called Barkhunt - created by @askspikeonline @bestbullysticks @fourleggedmedia @pawluxury.

The way it works.. it's held on a Thursday night from 9-10pm EST (6-7pm PST) and a clue is given out every 5 minutes. The first person to Direct Message the answer to the person asking wins the prize! They ask them in alphabetical order - askspikeonline first, then bestbully sticks, then fourlegged media, then pawluxury - rinse and repeat until 10pm hits. Sometimes the contest lasts a little bit longer with some fun challenge questions that require taking photos of your pet doing things and other sponsors joining in.

Make sure you check it out on facebook and at Barkhunt.com! They've got a few more hunts this season and new ways to get points to win a big prize at the end of the season! So take a look and get going on the fun!

KEY - You NEED to follow all four of the creators on twitter otherwise you won't really be able to play.

If you join up in the fun, DM @askspikeonline and tell him @jadeheart sent you! :)

Icing my knee :(

:) last day of the season for me

Blood Center of the Pacifics

I'm here to donate blood, it's right down the street!

Looks like they need more Type O- blood.. I can't remember what my blood type is.. I should probably know this. Mental note to ask my dad later.

First they poked my left arm, nothing, must be empty.. just kidding. They found it in the right arm really quickly.

For some reason my blood was flowing quick today, I wasn't waiting for very long, something like 4-5 minutes. Go blood!

All Done! I ate two granola bars, drank a cup of OJ and a cup of apple juice and went to buy a Quizno's sandwich.. really wanted fast food but there weren't any places on the way back to the office. Sandwich is probably better for me anyway. :)

There is still a blood shortage so go donated today! While I was there, some guy had reached 1 gallon of donated blood! WOW!

Check out Blood Centers of the Pacific to donate!

@mommy23monkeys "Little Green" Machine Giveaway

I stumbled across this on Twitter via @wemeanclean (yes the Bissell vacuum cleaner company).

This super cute blog by a mom of three boys is giving away a "Little Green" Machine Cleaner. Now I've ALWAYS wanted a steam cleaner.. but upon moving back to my parents house after college it just didn't make sense to buy one - our house is already packed and we have other cleaning supplies. But I'd see the stains on our carpets from a house well-loved and lived in for over 20 years and wish I could take them out. Resolve and Nature's Miracle only work so well...

So here's my chance and yours - to win a Little Green Machine! When I go back to school this baby for sure is coming with me, good bye stains!

Check out Mommy23Monkeys blog entry for details about the giveaway and here for Contest Rules.

I'm not sure if it's sad that I love household appliances so much or if it's a good thing - hey I like a clean home.. granted sometimes messy but still CLEAN! (Messy is different than dirty). :D

Soon to be Starving College Student trying to Win Stuff!

I'm lucky that I still have a job right now and that I got a scholarship for school, but still it never hurts to buckle down save money and where you can't save.. try and win stuff in giveaways! :) There's especially a lot of contests out there for dog items - Morgan's excited about the boxes that have come in so far.

I decided to document my journey, especially since some of them require me posting entries in blog for another chance at winning! Tt's not like I'm actively looking for giveaways, but as a result of being on Twitter I'm made aware of them. So why not give it a shot right?

The nice thing is that most of these items are stuff I can use.. from software to dog items (food, treats, books), and cleaning supplies! After all, a clean home is a happy home. The other plus, I'm learning a heck of a lot about different things just traversing the web, especially as I'm trying to build a social networking presence for Furry Friends Rescue. It's been a crazy few months just on Twitter alone and learning what #hashtags are and what via means and the software pieces I can use to track my three different accounts - @jadeheart, @morganthedog, @furryfriends.

Gotta love the internet and it's ability to connect people from all over the world!

Great day in Santa Cruz!

It started off with an easy drive, 2 people, 2 dogs, to a local beach tucked away amongst some homes. Laid out and ran around, let the dogs sniff some other dogs, interesting things and play in the water.. sort of. Morgan hates water, he likes the cool wet sand though..

Then it was off to Aldo's for lunch! We walked over to the light house and back during our 20 minute wait for a table. It's so dog friendly there, they even will give you bowls of water for the dogs. We saw some cute dogs there. Everyone was quite well behaved.

I had a delicious Blackened Mahi sandwich (forgot to take photos of) and Dan and I shared a fried calamari basket! YUUUUM. Seriously, it said (best in town) next to it and it was probably one of the best I've ever had!

This was the view from our table...

The nice thing about taking the pup to the beach is that he comes back and does this:

:D All in all, a wonderful day, felt like we were on vacation!

iPod Rip

My friend showed me this program when I first got my iPod, Gen 2 I believe it was. It was great! I was able to easily transfer songs and instead of having to lug their laptops over to my house to share music, my friends brought their iPods.

The program was the iPod Rip and if you're looking for a program that can help you easily transfer songs from Ipods to your Mac or Windows then this is it. I've only tried the Mac version but it was really easy to set up and use.

Go check it out at http://www.ipodrip.com

Chinese dessert :)