Interupted Thoughts.

Its been hard to find time to blog recently, among the normal ebb and flow of my daily life, spring is fully here now and I always feel a little scattered in spring, (I blame it on allergies) but I think I've shaken off the last of my histamine haze and I should have a bit of extra time this week. I've not yet managed to make a meal with the olive oil I last blogged about, but to be fair we haven't been doing a lot of cooking. I will though, hopefully this week. I've got both the Kindle Fire, and the Samsung Brightside to tell you about, as well as a pair of earbuds that may be the best $10 I've ever spent. Not to mention I still want to tell you all how I quit smoking, and I've even got a couple of books to tell you about. Guess I better get to it eh? Stay tuned. I'll be right back.

It tastes good and its good for you! Its Olive Oil!

Last week I joined a word of mouth marketing company called bzzagent, and today I got my first assignment, I'm really excited to get started with this and wanted to share the buzz here on my blog.


Let's talk about olive oil! Now, I'm not terribly familiar with Filippo Berio, but being of partial Mediterranean decent I am familiar with the health benefits of olive oil, benefits that can be gleaned through both ingestion and application of olive oil.

I do know that Filippo Berio started manufacturing and producing olive oil under his name in the early 1850s and by 1900 his olive oil was Italy's #1 exported olive oil. Also right around that same time, American scientists had published several nutritional articles citing links between the "Mediterranean Diet" and a lower occurrence of health problems.

The key ingredient in Mediterranean cooking is olive oil, and you can clearly taste the difference between a dish prepared with olive oil and one prepared with canola or vegetable oil. and can you even imagine the horrible shock to the taste buds it would be to find an Italian salad dressing that was made with any other oil?

Since Olive oil contains a wide variety of valuable antioxidants that are not found in other oils, its health benefits are rather amazing and extensive, and not at all limited to internal health.

Olive oil can be used on the skin as a very effective moisturizer, it can be used as a hair treatment to help the scalp and the hair, and even ingested alone as a mild laxative. Olive oil is nothing if not versatile, I personally use it in some form nearly every day and recommend it for cooking and beauty needs.

If you'd like to find out more about the health benefits of Olive oil you can take a look at the health info here. While you're on the Filippo Berio site, you can read about the rich history of both the brand and the oil itself.

Keep an eye on the blog here, I'll be trying out and sharing a few recipes in the next few weeks, I'm really excited to try the Gorgonzola Chicken Thighs.

I've been wanting to post a ticker like this for a LONG time

Soon I'll be updating on and reviewing the methods I'm using to quit. I never thought it could be so easy.

Would you like to take a survey?

Wait, before you answer that, what if I told you it was a paid survey? what if I told you that you could make anywhere from $0.50-$3 per survey? I bet you'd tell me you've already tried to make money with surveys and there is always a catch, or that the payouts don't make it worth your while, or any number of other reasons, valid reasons, why you don't want to join a paid survey site.

I speak from experience, After nearly having to abandon an email address, and getting nothing but frustration from survey after survey which I didn't qualify and very small payouts for the ones I did, for I'd given up, I was only going to take surveys if they came through Swagbucks.
I went through and deactivated all my survey site accounts, unsubscribed from the emails and let out a sigh of relief as my spam mail slowly began to dwindle.

Not long after this, with a new wariness and skepticism I once again began to search for another means to earn gift cards and such. My main focus was on Amazon gift cards because you can really buy just about anything on Amazon, and among other things, I had my sights set on a Kindle Fire.

I don't remember what exactly my search phrase was but one of the sites that turned up was something called Amazon Mechanical Turk, or Mturk for short. Now after my previous experiences there was no way I was going to just sign up for it without a bit of research. After I'd satisfied myself that it was not only legit but it wouldn't flood my email I signed up for an account.

Mturk is a virtual marketplace where requesters can find workers, and workers can find work, the hits range from surveys to writing tasks, and many more, some are specialized some are not, but you can always find something that you are qualified for.
From the requesters side, it works like this: say you are a University student working on a thesis and you need to gather information, well with Mturk its very easy for you to gather your info, all you have to do is submit your survey to the site, set the number of people you want to take the survey, and how much you plan to pay for each hit, then you just sit back, and wait for your results.

From the workers side its much simpler, you simply decide on the amount of money you wish to make per task and then search for hits you are qualified for, after you've been active for 10 days you can either transfer your earnings to an Amazon gift card or transfer it into an attached bank account (sadly no PayPal option). The bank transfer takes a few days, and I have not tried it yet so sadly I have no information there.

I was skeptical to be honest, I really didn't think I'd actually earn anything this way but after a few days the hits started being approved, my approval rating went up, more hits became open to me, and my account balance went up.  I joined a forum called TurkerNation and they not only offered very helpful tips but gave me proof this was a legitimate way to earn money.

Not a lot of money, mind you, this is not a way to pay bills, but you can easily make 10 or more a day, I've been using the site for a bit over a month and I tend to do mostly surveys, as I can average about 3-5 in an hour, and I never do hits that pay less than $0.30, but I've also done writing hits, things like 150+ word blog posts and reviews, for these I am generally paid between $1-3 per hit.  I only "turk" in the evenings, and only for an hour or two so I average roughly $5 a day.

Doesn't sound like much? Well, just a few days ago I was able to purchase the Kindle I wanted, and I'm already planning my next purchase.

Check it out for yourself, do your own research, sign up at Mturk and check out TurkerNation, its a great way to make some extra money.

Sacrificial Magic by Stacia Kane (Downside Book 4)

Sacrificial Magic (Downside Ghosts #4)
Author: Stacia Kane
Publication Date: 3/27/12
Publisher: Del Rey

READING, WRITING, AND RAISING THE DEAD
When Chess Putnam is ordered by an infamous crime boss—who also happens to be her drug dealer—to use her powers as a witch to solve a grisly murder involving dark magic, she knows she must rise to the challenge. Adding to the intensity: Chess’s boyfriend, Terrible, doesn’t trust her, and Lex, the son of a rival crime lord, is trying to reignite the sparks between him and Chess.
Plus there’s the little matter of Chess’s real job as a ghost hunter for the Church of Real Truth, investigating reports of a haunting at a school in the heart of Downside. Someone seems to be taking a crash course in summoning the dead—and if Chess doesn’t watch her back, she may soon be joining their ranks.
As Chess is drawn into a shadowy world of twisted secrets and dark violence, it soon becomes clear that she’s not going to emerge from its depths without making the ultimate sacrifice. 

So this isn't going to be a review, because I haven't read the book yet, but I've read the first three, (and a few short stories that go along with them), as well as following Stacia's updates on the books progression, so I am beyond excited for the release.

The Downside books are part of the Urban Fantasy genre - which is one of my favorite genres of literature - The heroine is Chess Putnam, a church witch with a nasty drug addiction, and a talent for routing ghosts and getting herself into dangerous situations.

The first three books were a thrill a minute, I found myself chewing on my fingernails, and biting my lip numerous times throughout all of the stories.

Stacia has created a rich and intrinsic world for this series, one so full of vibrant and varied characters, and settings that at times I swear I could smell the smells of Downside, and feel the fear of the murderous ghosts. To make this world she's created even more realistic Stacia has gone so far as to create slang and colloquialisms for her characters, if you read it right you can even "hear" the accents and the speech patterns in the dialog, Terrible, Chess's Boyfriend is the best for this, he's got this drawl that well, lets just say Chess is a lucky girl.

*AHEM* Pardon, I got a bit distracted there. I wouldn't call this a romance series, there aren't any bodices to rip, and unless you count that one time she OD'd Chess really isn't the type of girl that needs to be rescued and carried off.  But there are some pretty hot and heavy scenes that just might leave you tingling too.

So here we are, Sacrificial Magic is just a week away from being released and all of us in the Downside Army are salivating. From the blurb above it looks like we're in for another stomach twisting thrill ride with Chess, and good old Lex is coming back around, you just know that's going to be trouble right there, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't bite my lip in concern for what Chess might have gotten herself into this time.

I expect Amazon to be getting a lot of my money in the next few weeks, because the latest installment in Stacia Kane's Downside Ghosts is just the tip (a very tantalizing tip) of the new release iceberg that is heading our way.

Click the cover up there if you want to pre-order Sacrificial Magic, or buy the first three books, which really you should do too because I can almost guarantee that as soon as you read one of these books you'll be just as addicted to Chess and Terrible as I am.

Free stuff, the fun and easy way.

There is so much going on, new releases in both books and music, new electronics and websites. I really have been putting off updating because I didn't even know where to start.  That won't cut it, so I thought I'd tell you all about where I've been spending a good portion of my web time and what I've been getting there.

You may have noticed the widgets in my sidebar, you may even have clicked on them to check out what they were about, but if not, well even if you have, I'm going to go into a little deeper detail about one of the sites.

The site I'm going to tell you about today is Swagbucks.com,

Click to find out how!

You maybe familiar with it, you may even be a member, I know I was a member for easily a year before I started to actively use it, but I'm so glad I decided to give it another shot, and I'm going to tell you why, but first let me tell you about the site.

Swagbucks, is a loyalty program that rewards its users (called "Swaggernauts") with "swagbucks" which can be redeemed for entries in "Swagstakes" or saved for things like jewelry, electronics, gift certificates and even real money if you have a paypal account!

Earning Swagbucks is easy, there are a number of ways you can earn and it can be lots of fun, I have a couple of favorite ways to do it.
First, I use the search engine every time I need to search. Searches can garner anywhere from 5 to 35 swagbucks, the results are nearly as good as Google or other mainstream search engines, and its nothing to use a different engine if my results aren't satisfactory, there's also a bit of thrill when a random search turns up 8 swagbucks.
I also do the surveys, you can earn a lot from the surveys you qualify for, sadly a lot of them are looking for demographics I don't fit.
There are tasks to do, games to play and videos to watch, all of which earn swagbucks.

As I said earlier I've had an account for nearly a year, but I never really did much with it, however once I took a second look I really started getting into it, and I started earning stuff.  It quickly became one of my favorite sites.

Why Swagbucks? There are a number of similar loyalty programs out there, they're all the same right? Well I've tried a few of them but I keep going back to SB because they just don't compare on any level, not in their earn ratio, not in site aesthetics and definitely not in fun.

I've already earned over $30 in amazon.com gift certificates in just a few months time, and found some really fun games to pass an idle 10 minutes.
If you are an amazon nut like me, or you just like free stuff then you can't beat Swagbucks its like getting paid for just doing the things you already do online.

I Haven't forgotten.

I've just been massively busy, so much to do, there has been no time for reviews, but I will be back. And we'll have lots to talk about then.