Kick

June 24, 2009

(Friday, June 28 UPDATE: Thank you so much for responding to my request for information about health insurance issues. Unbelievably, I have had 94 responses in the last ten days. Woohoo! I have heard from the very satisfied and from those who have run into stumbling blocks and hurdles along the way. One hundred is not a magical number, BUT I sure would like to hit that and beyond. So, if you haven't found the time to drop me a line on the surveymonkey, I'd would appreciate hearing from you. Those of you in Texas don't want to go outside in the 106 degree heat anyway, and the rest of you may need to put off doing your chores for a few more minutes. Clicking on the link to the left will take you to the five question prompt.)

Most of you probably live somewhere convenient, by which I mean, if you need something you walk, ride, or drive to a store and buy it. Even when I get over the true fact that I find in-person, brick-and-mortar shopping as therapeutic as a jellyfish tentacle wrap, I must face up to living in a townish-sized city whose primary demographic target is twenty-five to thirty years younger, and way hipper than me.

Walter will tell you that my solution is to wait for him to buy things for me. His most recent evidence would be our trip to Gander Mountain on Sunday to buy a pair of Keen's.
These hot little mamas replace (under duress) the Nike water sandals that have kept my toes cool and given me an incredibly stylish mid-foot tan for years. When the plastic guy that holds the heel strap split ten days ago, I tried just switching into my soccer flats--too hot and too much trouble. I tried going barefoot more--too much of a tenderfoot. I then solved the problem by using a sturdy paperclip to re-attach the strap to the shoe. Ta Da! Solving the problem, however, caused a secondary problem: Walter thought I looked, hmmm, shall we say, unpresentable and not incredibly professorial. (Note: I was going to use the term looked like a "Culhane," which is a word that Walter's family uses to describe hick-like behaviour and appearance, but when I googled Culhane to see how to spell it and what it really meant I decided prudence was a better course and that Culhane wasn't the best descriptor in this case.)

So, off to the store he swept me, and now I'm presentable and possibly a tad professorial (at least like a summertime, outdoor active professor). They certainly made it easier to jet outside this morning to chase the recalcitrant and unruly goats out of the backyard.

Which brings us to "kick."

Not really. We actually have to go back to my first paragraph about shopping to get to kick. Quite some time ago (months, maybe years), I signed up for a free internet service called iGive (this button is clickable).
The premise was that if I shopped at my usual internet stores like Lands End, L.L. Bean, or LEGOS (just to name some of the Ls), but went to those sites through the iGive portal, the stores would donate some percentage (usually between 1 and 4%) of any purchase I made to the charitable cause of my choice. . .like the Children's Neuroblastoma Research Foundation. I did the logical thing: signed up and promptly forgot about it.

Last week, I needed to order a dozen new soccer balls because the Mystic '97 move up to size 5 this year. Since our local stores would carry either inferior balls or way expensive balls, I went online to a better options: soccer.com. Not, by the way, entering through iGive.

A couple of days later an email from Betty at iGive somehow cleared my spam filter. I read that soccer.com would have donated 2.8% of my soccer balls purchase to CNCF AND given me free shipping. Then I kicked myself.

Let me give this to you straight. This was not gratuitous shopping. I needed these balls. I was definitely going to buy them from soccer.com. If I had taken the simple extra step of going to this page:

http://www.igive.com/shop/merchants.cfm?sort=name

and scrolled down to click on soccer.com, I could have helped CNCF out. I need to do this every time I shop online (see paragraph 1 above where I confess that I'd rather shop online than go near a store). There are 732 different merchant currently participating (click for the full list) currently, and not just Jim Bob's Bait Shop.


To shop and qualify for a donation, you must be logged in as an iGive.com member and you must reach the store through iGive.com or iSearchiGive.com.

Want to join and start shifting some money towards CNCF? Click this button, sign up, choose CNCF (or some other great and worthy charity), and then don't act like me: remember to log in at iGive before shopping.

Did you notice I updated the Davhee Repore? It's Wordless Wednesday over there, but over here I can tell you her name is EVI, and she's Davis's friend.

Beading on Friday, same Bead Time, same Bead Place, same Bead Channel.