I love 5 Minutes For Mom, for a whole lot of reasons, but one of them has to be their incredible giveaways. If your familiar with them, then you know.

Today they posted their most recent giveaway.. a pink Dyson.

Dyson is helping to find a cure for Breast Cancer.

They have created a limited edition, oh-so-fashionable Pink vacuum and they are donating $40 from each sale to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

The pink beauties are exclusively available at Target… but you need to hurry because they are already 50% sold out! And since these Pink All Floor vacuums are a limited edition, once they’re gone… well you know the end of that sentence.

Head on over and enter before October 1st!

Ok, right from the start here, I'll lay out the disclaimer.. I really dislike our local PBS station. And most of you know why. If you don't know what my exact reason is, but you live in the Syracuse area, you may know part of it. WCNY has developed a bit of a bad rep in the past two years.

But first, let me say, I grew up on PBS. I lived in a household that supported its local PBS station yearly, and attended its community events. I, (or rather- we as a family,) strongly believe in public television, and its connection to the community.

Now I've known for a long time, that WCNY was planning on going "pledge free". At first I thought this was an interesting idea. In fact, very interesting that a PBS station could be self sustaining without the financial support of the community it serves. But then I thought.. what a bad idea! See.. in my opinion, and the opinion of many others, its the members who ultimately run (or should run) the station. The perfect PBS affiliate is very involved in its community, and the community in it. This was the case with my hometown affiliate, WVIA. And it was this way with Wisconsin Public Television in Madison.

WCNY.. not so much.

Forget "Central New York's Own".. lets call it what it is, "Corporate New York's Own"

So yesterday I got a phone call, and according to the caller ID, although it said "unknown caller" it did display a phone number outside of this area code. The call went a little bit like this...

"hello"

"can I speak with Carla?"

"speaking"

"hi, I'm calling on behalf of WCNY.."

"um, before you go any further.. the caller ID says this is not coming from my area code, where are you calling from?"

"Oregon City, Oregon"

Oregon.

The one 2,000 miles away.. soliciting me to support WCNY.

Three days before "Pledge Free on September 23".

And if you read the statement on their site, "pledge free" is total misnomer, because they still need the community's financial support. They just won't be interrupting programming for pledge drives. I guess instead they've hired a marketing firm on the other side of the country to call me during dinner?

I have to say, I personally, looked forward to pledge weeks. Who doesn't love a whole night of Dame Judy Dench on Britcom night? Or goodness, as a Deadhead, I practically counted down the weeks until Grateful Dead night (even though I own the dvd that they're airing!) I treated the "intermission" where the pledge drive actually took place, as a nice break to get up stretch my legs, get a snack, whatever. I'm more irritated by getting a call from Oregon than I was with George and Liz begging for pledges.

So what this tells me is that the original notion of going "pledge free" has failed since they apparently still need member support via pledges.  Not really pledge free is it? You'd think they might forget that whole idea, and embrace their volunteers, right? You know.. stick with tradition. Well when local talk radio personality, Jim Reith goes on air and begs his listeners to give some time during a WCNY pledge drive, since WCNY is falling short, you know theres a problem.

What I do know is that I've met a lot of people since moving here. And few continue to support WCNY.

"Pledge Free on September 23"

Not really. They just want you to think that.

The Memory Walk was done.. in the rain. However only 2 of us made it.

Friday night everyone started to get sick, so when we woke up to rain on Saturday morning, an executive decision was made and only myself and Cassidy attended. (Pictures later.. I still haven't downloaded them to the PC from the camera)

Then there was the mandatory fridge shopping (it arrives later this morning.) And what a delight (not!) that was. The Kenmore I wanted was no longer available (unless I wanted to rent a truck and move it myself! (Um, NO!) Then there was the Frigidaire, I was almost sold on, but it wasn't rated very high by Consumer Reports (who knew Frigidaire made crappy compressors?) The GE that I would have really liked, because it would match my GE stove, was like 600.00 more than I budgeted. Lastly, the Maytag french door, ooh la la that I really wanted but was twice what I budgeted. So I went with a Whirlpool. I'm not as thrilled as I would be with that gorgeous french door Maytag, but I'm still doing the happy refrigerator dance. No more leaky fridge. No more 50.00 a month in electric costs. No more frozen milk and melting ice cream.

*sigh* Fridge shopping is worse than car shopping, and I hate car shopping a lot.

Then the playing nurse to one big sick baby (Richard.) And cuddling, wiping noses, doling out meds to the rest of the tribe. And now its finally raining down on me *cough cough - sniffle sniffle*, while trying to pull "Goldie" (our 20 year old, groaning, GE almond side by side) out to clean behind and under, in prep for the new fridge (holy crap, where does all that dust come from?) And now I need to empty it (goodness, why do we have 4 bottles of Italian dressing, 6 jars of pickles, and 3 bottles of mustard?)

So while I hope to get pictures up from the Memory Walk later today, I'm not promising anything. I have a very full inbox to deal with (this happens when you don't check your mail for three days!) , and I think by the time Lowes brings me my fridge.. and I get everything put back where it belongs.. I'll likely just curl up on the couch with the also coughing, sniffling, feverish Connor.

Names entered into random.org, then mixed up and assigned a number, using the list randomizer..

42 total entries. So using the custom random number generator at mathgoodies.com, entering a low number of 1 and a high number of 42.

Watch video for the whole process, and find out who the winner is!

Thank you, THANK YOU, to everyone who entered, and especially those who donated to Team Martin. I'll have pictures from the walk tomorrow morning posted sometime this weekend.
Now off to email the lucky winner!

..Until I draw a winning name!

We're 125.00 from our goal!

Haven't entered yet? See details on the contest page.

Off to start getting entries organized and assigned numbers for the drawing..

To enter my Memory Walk contest.

(and keep in mind - we're walking as a family, all SIX of us.. not just me)

Just. One. More. Day!

Random drawing, tomorrow night (Friday September 14th) at 9PM!

And thank you to the new and old friends who have donated so far. From the bottom of my heart! 

Mostly because I'm cold today. Really cold. And wasn't the outdoor temperature here something like 100 degrees, a mere 5 days ago?

And I pulled a muscle in my left thigh..

Not great news since theres this thing called the Memory Walk on Saturday morning that I'm totally committed to doing. Three and a half miles with a pulled thigh muscle. This should be fun. I'm also missing Hemlock (a.k.a. The Finger Lakes Fiber Festival) on Saturday, but its not as if I'd give up raising money for a cause I care deeply about, to walk around a field spending money at a fiber festival. We could always hit Hemlock on Sunday, but I'm thinking with the pulled muscle, by the time I finish the walk on Saturday, I may not even be able to manage planned fridge shopping on Saturday afternoon.

But the icing on the cake?

A double wide trailer, being moved by way of driving down my hill, and attempting to make the very sharp turn, got stuck and hung up on the guard rail across the street. Normally this wouldn't make me grumpy. But I'm sick of trucks coming down this hill - period. There are other ways to get into the Valley and safer ones for sure. But what really ticked me off about that trailer issue today, was that it caused quite a back up of traffic, reaching up the hill and around a corner where drivers couldn't see what was going on. So whats a rude New Yorker* to do? Honk the freaking horn.. Repeatedly. And then they just started pulling out and driving down on the wrong side of the road, causing quite a back up on the other end of the mess, where, guess what? More honking. I swear this has to be a New York thing*. I've had jerks honk at ME while I'm trying to turn left into my driveway, but waiting for oncoming traffic to pass. Yeah dude.. I'm just sitting idle on this corner, with my left blinker on, watching the day go by just to piss you off. Oy!

Theres more going on in my noggin today, stirring up crap, but nothing family related, and certainly nothing serious. Just stuff making me grumpy.

* Not all New Yorkers are rude honkers. I always feel guilty when I rag on NY because I have quite a few wonderful friends here who are not at all rude or honkers.

I'll be honest, I forgot what today's date was.

This morning was just like any other morning. After the frantic rushing of children to get ready for school and on the bus, I was finally able to sit down with the just awaken Connor for some morning cuddle time. Flip on the TV and it turns out MSNBC is replaying the Today Show coverage from 9/11 in real time.

What was odd about this to me was that on that day in 2001, I got up like any other morning, and sat down in the rocker to nurse the then 15 month old Alex, a bit uncomfortably mind you, since I was 6 months pregnant with Dylan. I flipped on the TV, The Today Show, just in time to see the second plane hit.

So this morning, when I sat down with Connor on my lap, turned on the TV, just in time to see the second plane hit. Weird.

I think its important to remember what happened.. and learn the lessons from it (like paying attention to certain national security warnings,) but I'm more than a little irked by some networks, replaying the coverage in real time, every year. Last year it was CNN, this year MSNBC.

I don't think it needs to be relived. And it has to be incredibly painful for loved ones of those who died that day. If anything I think this day requires quiet thought, remembering those lost, honoring their memory, and for petes sake... finally healing. Reliving, in real time, doesn't help the healing process.

But thats just my opinion.