Do It for the Dogs (and Cats)

I read over on The Naughty Secretary Club's weblog about an animal shelter called A Place to Bark that is run by a fellow crafter, Bernie Berlin. She has been running the place solo for a long while but is now competing for $50,000 as part of America's Giving Challenge sponsored by Parade.

Along with sending in donations via a special badge, you can also host the badge on your blog - unless you have a cheesy freebie blog here at blogger.com because every time I tried to load up the code, I got an evil IE message and my browser crashed. But, if you have a decent blog, I'm sure they would really appreciate more badges as well as more donations.

So, I'm off to donate on the badge over at The Naughty Secretary Club, so pop by there to find out all the details and to drop a little cash down or pick up the code for your own A Place to Bark donation badge.

More Consumption

Part of my web shopping lately has included some new walking DVDs, and I'm amazed to be able to say that I've actually been able to keep up my exercising to a certain extent, even with the new job. In fact, I even managed to get rid of 1/2 lb of the 4 1/2 that I took on during the holidays.

The DVDs are part of a package I got off of QVC: Leslie Sansone "Walk Slim" 5 DVD System with Firming Band. They had a New Year's Day special. For about $25, I got 5 DVDs, some weird elastic band thing, and a little diet booklet. So far, I've done the DVD pictured above. It says it has 1, 2, and 3 mile routines, but really the 1 and 2 are combined to be really 2 miles. They tell you when you've hit a mile, and I guess you can stop at that point if you want. Any way, if you are a Sansone fan already, this is a good DVD. The music is a little more contemporary then some of her previous DVDs, and the tempo is pretty fast, so you get an excellent workout. I started with this DVD since the longest routine is 3 miles but hope to work up to the 4 mile ones soon.

The band DVD I'm not sure about. I guess it would be good for firming, but I'm not big into gimmicky stuff, so we'll see. The diet book includes a10-day menu where you eat three 600 calorie meals a day, and you do the 3 or 4 mile routine every day. She claims in the booklet that you end up almost burning off one of those meals a day. I'm not sure if I buy into that. I could see burning maybe half of that, but more than 300 calories, hmmm...not so sure about that.

New School Duds

One of the rituals about returning to school is getting new school clothes. Starting with the fact that I've only had to look professional a few days a week for a couple of years now and then add to that my small amount of weight loss and then put my new dream job in the mix and you have a totally valid reason for doing lots of Internet shopping for clothes and shoes. I do have a few Burks I can wear on casual days that aren't too Burkie-looking, but that's pretty rare. Otherwise, it's back to the pantyhose, skirts, and heels. But, these days as a fat and 40 year old, I can't wear heels like I could when I was a skinny 20 year old. Luckily, I discovered some of the "kitten heel" designs from Me Too (amazingly comfy). And I also discovered Zappos!

Truthfully, I have seen them on the net before, but never thought to buy anything from them until I saw that they carried Me Too shoes. I've been looking for some navy low heels, and the only place I could find them was Zappos! So, I took a chance. I literally ordered them last night about 10pm. Today when I got home from school, they were magically at my door. Wow! Plus, shipping was zippo, nada, zilch! They even have a 365 day return policy as long as you don't wear the shoes out and you return them in the same packaging. Holy Cow!

[Pictured are Me Too "Agitha" in navy patent leather.]