Freebie Friday!

While I didn't get any free samples or products this week I did get 2 books to read for free in exchange for an honest review. 

You can find my review of this book at I Smell Sheep. 

You can find my review of this book at I Smell Sheep. 

Did you get any free books this week? If not, what are you reading?

Could Be A Serial Killer...

So for Christmas my younger brother got this get up to go to fishing. It's boots, waders and he has a float tube. But I told him he looked like one of those serial killers from movies like Hostel 2. LOL My brother is the one on the left. *you know, in case you can't tell which is the serial killer and which isn't* 

He's so gonna kill me for this. 

I May Be Slow To Respond and a Family Visit!

For the next week I may not be making the rounds commenting on other blogs or responding to comments here on my blog. My family is coming into town and I'll be busy visiting and going to my grandson's 1st birthday. I will be back soon and will resume commenting and responding to comments left. I have a few blog posts ready to auto post on the days that I'm not here and hope you enjoy them.

Be back in a week!

My Most Horrible Movies List

There are a few movies that I hope to never have to watch again, they are on my list for the Most Horrible Movies Ever Made. Thankfully, there are only a few of them because I can pretty much watch just about anything and find some type of entertainment value in them. But not with these. I will never again get the time I put into watching these movies, back again. They have left a huge hole where that time and brain space needed to hold the memories of these awful movies. Too bad I can't take the memories of these movies and replace them with others that I liked more. Maybe some day I'll be old and won't remember having watched them...

My list for Most Horrible Movies:

Kill Bill- Great googly moogly can someone, anyone stop this franchise from making any more movies? There was the first one and then the second one which was even worst. The acting, the storyline, the action *if you can call it that* was just beyond ridiculous.

Kill Bill 2- Like I said, the second one is even worst than the first...O.o

Battlefield Earth- Oh great mythical lord of movie makers...please don't make another movie like this one. Holy hell this was one of the most boring, make me want to fall asleep until it's over, movies I've ever seen. The costumes, makeup and storyline was utterly ridiculous.

Wild Wild West- Yes please take a show that most younger people won't remember and make it into a movie no one wants to see. Way to go, movie makers!

Blair Witch- Who came up with the awful idea to make a movie where if you watch it for too long you might fall off the couch into a drooling, seizure induced idiot because they can't keep the camera still, long enough for your eyes to focus on anything?

Happy Raturday!

Welcome to a new weekly blog post I'm calling, Raturday! I've seen Caturday and while that's really cute, I think the rats needs some photo time so everyone can see how cute these little animals are. I've gotten permission from Rat Logic's fb page to share their pictures on my blog. So get ready to smile because these are cute. 

*click on pictures to enlarge*

Antonio Sabato Jr Against Medical Cannabis in Homes With Underage Kids

I recently watched an episode of Dr. Phil where actor Antonio Sabato Jr faced off with Cannabis industry icon Cheryl Shuman. She argued in response to Sabato’s campaign to ban the growth, distribution and sale of medical marijuana in homes that have children under the age of 18.

You can find the article about it here.

I would actually like a law that went a step further and banned anyone who had minor children from getting a Medical Marijuana Card until the minor children were over the age of 18. It doesn't even matter if the kids don't live with the parents full time because parents have weekend visitation at times when couples have split up or divorced and kids should never be exposed to marijuana.

It looks as though pot is here to stay but the laws governing it need to play catch up so that kids, pets, and people who don't want to be exposed to drugs, aren't. 

Weekly Rat Facts: Caring For An Older Rat

Recently I had to raise the ladder leading to the upper shelf of the big rat cage because Marbles has hind leg degeneration and can no longer easily walk up the ramp. The ramp is the black thing over the box. 

Marbles can get around on the bottom level alright, even though he's slow and drags one of his back feet a little bit. He's also a very grumpy boy and doesn't like to get petted or played with.

But when I pick up the yogie treat bag, his ears perk up and he comes to get one.

He won't eat the rat food seed mix or even the other crunchy rat food that I get anymore. He likes, steamed white rice, pudding, baby food, scrambled eggs and bread with mayonaise on it. 

And yogies. Which are yogurt rat treats.

Marbles, the last of the 4 brothers I adopted from a family friend a little over a year ago, has slowed down quite a bit. I had to move all of his beds, food dish's ect..down stairs and pull up the ramp so he doesn't try to get upstairs. Marbles took the time to check out his box and bed being downstairs and then went back inside his pink igloo and went back to chewing holes in the baby blankets. lol I think that must be his favorite thing to do. 

When rats get older they slow down, may have trouble walking and getting around and you don't want them falling from the higher levels and hurting themselves so it's best to keep them on the flat bottom levels of the cage.

Older rats may need help with grooming. Marbles is still able to groom himself and he still comes out to potty in the corner but as they get older they may not come out to the potty corner and in such cases you may need to wash them off or use a baby wipe to keep them clean. Never let a rat sit in their own urine as this can cause skin rashes.

If eating becomes a problem for your rat, you may have to hand feed them several times a day. I am giving Marbles pudding on a spoon a couple of times a day as well as making sure he eats little bits of egg, baby food and rice. Those are what Marbles likes but your rat might like other foods. Try a bunch to find out what he'll eat. 

With older male rats, there are a couple of things that you may have to look out for and help your male rat with. As they get older they may develop skin rashes, lumps, bumps or abscesses so you should check them each week for these things. Abscesses may go away on their own but a lump that grows rapidly and is hard may be cancer and you should have that checked out by a vet. Some male rats also have trouble cleaning their genital areas. The easiest way to tell if they are having a difficult time is to watch them, if they can't bend down to clean themselves, you may have to help with this. If they can't clean their genitals, males will sometimes develop what is called a penis plug. If this happens, you will have to remove it for them or it will cause pain, bladder infections and problems urinating. Penis plugs are a build up of oils, urine and a waxy substance that your rat would usually clean himself.

To remove a penis plug, you will need someone to help you hold your rat on his back. I found giving my rat a small treat to eat helps him ignore what I'm doing down there. You should be down by his tail, put both your hands underneath him and use your thumbs to gently press down on either side of his sheath. You will need to roll the sheath down until you see the sheath plug which will look like a milky white piece of wax, and remove it.

 If you don't feel like you can do this yourself, you can take your pet rat to a veterinarian who can show you how to do it correctly.

Freebie Friday!

Welcome to another edition of Freebie Friday, where I tell you what free samples and full sized products I received in the mail and how you can get them too. Someone asked me why I do a 'Freebie Friday" each week, so I'll tell you.

A while back I listed all the free samples and wins that I had received that previous year and so many people didn't believe that I could have gotten so many free things. So I decided to prove it by taking a picture every week and sharing the sites that I found the links to the freebies at. So now you too can get great free samples coming to your mailbox each week.

You can find links to samples like these at Hey It's Free and Freebie Shark.

This week I received...

Samples of Zarbee's Nighttime sleep aid, Folger's coffee and Cepacol cough drops.

Did you get anything free this week?

Mental Health and Marijuana

If you look on any of the marijuana websites they will tell you that marijuana is now beneficial for treatment of all sorts of ailments and diseases which is just ridiculous and sad. Sad because these potheads are talking to people looking for help with real problems and giving them false hope that getting high will help with their very real diseases. Which it will not. 

Some of the diseases and aliments the pot smokers are now saying marijuana will help with are cancer, migraines, PTSD and mental illness. 

Today I want to talk about about the last one on that list, Mental Illness. 

A little more than ten years ago I was diagnosed with Schizotypal Personality Disorder. Now if you don't know what that is, you can find out by clicking the link below to the article I wrote on the subject. 

What is Schizotypal Personality Disorder

If more people with Mental Illness talked about and explained what it's like to live with their particular Mental Illness, maybe "normal" people would be so afraid of the words, "Mental Illness". Maybe the stigma attached to those words wouldn't effect so many suffering that they choose not to seek help in the fear they will be labeled with those words and others would look at them differently. I have Schizotypal Personality Disorder, that's just a fact of life for me.

But to tell people with Mental Illness that smoking pot will cure them of the problems they are having is in fact doing a disservice to them because not only does it NOT help them, it can make their symptoms worst!

Just read this article, by The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) that spells out the facts about Mental Illness and Marijuana. 

One paragraph from that article that I found particularly helpful states, "Marijuana causes a person to feel “high,” which can involve peaceful feelings such as being happy, silly, hungry or tired. People with mental illness are more likely to also experience negative emotions such as depressed mood, anxiety—including physical symptoms of shortness of breath and heart palpitations—or even paranoia. These reactions are most likely related to marijuana’s interactions with certain chemicals in the brain, including the neurotransmitter dopamine."

I think anyone with a Mental Illness thinking of smoking pot in the hopes that it will help with symptoms should read the whole article at the link above. It spells out exactly why you shouldn't use marijuana to self treat your illness. 

Blogging Etiquette: 5 Unwritten Rules

For those new to the blogging world and it seems even those who have been around a while, I thought it might be a good time to go over what I think are the top 5 unwritten rules of blogging etiquette. These are rules that most but not all bloggers seem to follow and if you don't realize you are breaking the rules, you should because if you break the rules, you might lose followers.

5.) Write original content. Do not copy and paste or plagiarize anyone else's content or blog posts. Adding a link to someone else's post is fine and mentioning that you got an idea for a post from someone and linking to their post is fine. But if you can't come up with your own content...don't post anything until you can write a post in your own words. 

4.) Don't steal other people's pictures and post them as your own. Because of the new rules and laws for bloggers you can now be sued by people if you use a picture without permission. If you would like to use a picture someone has posted...the best thing you can do is just ask..formally in an email that way you have proof that you got permission if the question ever comes up. 

The other thing you can do is to make your own pictures. That's what I've started doing. If you have "paint" on your computer and most computers do have this on them. You can make picture of solid color and write things on them like I did for the picture in this blog post.

3.) Spammy links in comments. It's not ok to leave links to porn sites, or sites that have nothing to do with blogging. I will sometimes leave a clickable link back to my blog in my comment but only sometimes and I only do that for people who also leave clickable links back to their blogs in comments they leave on my blog. 

2.) Negative comments- It's ok to disagree with a blogger but it's not ok to name call or post vulgar language on another blog.

1.) And the #one rule in my opinion is if someone takes the time to leave a comment on your blog, reciprocate and leave a comment on a blog post of theirs. It doesn't have to be the most recent one if you can't relate to it, just scroll through some of their posts and find one you can relate to and leave a meaningful comment. *This does not count if the only blog post of yours a person leaves a comment on is a giveaway post. I reciprocate when comments are left on everyday posts not just giveaway posts*

This is to me anyway, the biggest pet peeve I have when it comes to blog posts. Not having people reciprocate in kind when I take time to leave a comment on their post. 

Happy Raturday!

Welcome to a new weekly blog post I'm calling, Raturday! I've seen Caturday and while that's really cute, I think the rats needs some photo time so everyone can see how cute these little animals are. I've gotten permission from Rat Logic's fb page to share their pictures on my blog. So get ready to smile because these are cute. 

Beading Kits

A friend of mine and I got to talking the other day about how I make my own earrings and she asked how I know what beads go with what wires and how to hook everything together. So I told her that I started out with ready made 'kits' that you can buy from most craft stores and now I know what I need to make the jewelry and other things I make. I figured most people knew there were these types of kits that have everything in them to make a necklace, earrings,watches, dolls ect... But apparently I was wrong. So I thought I would show you some of the kits that I have right now.

These are all different kits that include everything you need to make what is pictured on the front of the package. *The only thing you need are the tools and maybe glue. ie pliers, needle nose pliers or sewing needles*

This is a watch kit. I've made several of them and they are great. They look just like the watches you'd buy at places like Kmart and Sears and cost less. This kit was only $10 when I bought it. 

Necklace kit using tiny seed beads.

There are even doll kits.

and everything you need to make the doll comes with it.

Kits to make your table look festive.

The kit comes with all the beads and wire you need to make everything shown in the picture. 

This kit is for a necklace using a tiny seed beads. These take a while to make and you have to have a little patience because the beads are so small.

But the kit comes with everything you need. 

I've made family members necklaces and earrings as well as bracelets and they are like them. If you're looking for a fun hobby this is a great one. Starting off with a kit makes it easy to finish a piece of jewelry and the more kits you finish the more pieces of jewelry accessories you will use and find out what they are used for. Once you've gotten comfortable making some jewelry you can go to a craft store and pick out some loose beads and jewelry making accessories and make something of your choosing.

Weekly Rat Facts: Losing A Pet

As you probably know by now, Bandit the little guy pictured above died earlier this month. He was almost 4 years old and that's pretty old for a rat. The average life span for a rat is 2-3 years. So we knew that his time was probably nearing but it doesn't make it any easier. 

No matter what type of pet you have, you have to think about what your going to do after a pet dies. What will you do with the body? Ect..

I have a credit card that I keep just for pet emergencies and thankfully, have only had to use it one time when I had to take my pet hamster in to be euthanized. Most of my animals have passed away at home but if you have a pet euthanized at a vet's office you can either have them cremated and have their ashes put in a small box or urn or you can bring them home and bury them yourself. That's what we usually do. I have rats and hamsters buried up in the mountains, at parks, in my apartment complex's yard and one little dwarf hamster is buried right in front of my apartment door.

When my mom's dog passed away a few years ago, I found a mobile pet service that came out the same day and picked her dog up, cremated him and brought him back in a little box. When my mom passed away I put the box in the coffin with her because I thought she would have wanted him with her.

When one of my rats passes away and they have cage mates, I let the cage mate sniff the body because I think rats are very smart animals and know when one of their cage mates is sick or is gone so I let them say goodbye. 

If you want to keep a little bit of your pet with you, there are lockets and jewelry that you can buy that hold little bits of ashes or hair from your pet that you can wear as a necklace or bracelet. I haven't personally done this but I can see how that would help keep your pets memories alive and feel closer to them.

I realize this isn't something you want to think about, but it is something that pet owner's should know.

Freebie Friday!

Welcome to another edition of Freebie Friday, where I tell you what free samples and full sized products I received in the mail and how you can get them too. Someone asked me why I do a 'Freebie Friday" each week, so I'll tell you.

A while back I listed all the free samples and wins that I had received that previous year and so many people didn't believe that I could have gotten so many free things. So I decided to prove it by taking a picture every week and sharing the sites that I found the links to the freebies at. So now you too can get great free samples coming to your mailbox each week.

This week I received a mug and bookmark I won from a blog contest and a nice size sample bag of Hills Science Diet Dog Treats. *My rats like dog treats so they get a little treat*

You can find links to samples like these at Hey It's Free and Freebie Shark.

This month I also cashed out some points after doing surveys and I thought I would share that with you. As you can see in the picture above I cashed out $100 worth of Amazon gift cards this month alone from My Survey. 

I also cashed out $30 from Swagbucks this month and turned that into Amazon gift cards. 

That's practically free money right there just for taking surveys and using Swagbucks to search the internet from. As you can see on my account I have a little more than 1000 Swagbucks still in my account and that's enough for another $10 Amazon gift card and I will be cashing that out soon as well. 

So did you get any freebies, wins or money from surveys this week?

Book Reviews

I'm a guest reviewer over at I Smell Sheep and reviewed this book, Wicked Waves by Sharon Kay. 

And in case you missed it, I also reviewed the first book in the series, Wicked Wind by Sharon Kay.

I also reviewed Dark Wolf by Christine Feehan. This happens to be my favorite series of all time and this is book 25 in the series. 

The Deep Dark Web or Invisible Web

Did you even know something like that existed? I didn't. 

I went searching the Internet to see if there were other ways to...search the Internet. I know, I end up searching the strangest things online. But I was right, there are other ways to search and to narrow down your search so that you get the results you want. I didn't know this, but this is what I found out...

I found out that you can narrow your searches down by writing them like this: Blue+Birds+Nevada this will make sure that all those words are used in the searching and if you want a particular word left out you would write this... Birds+Nevada-Yellow which would eliminate all yellow birds in Nevada from your search results. I actually didn't know to do this. 

Now for the 'other' thing I found...

The Deep, Dark Web or The Invisible Web

Now there are two different things here. There is the Invisible web which you can access by going to certain websites like Searchable Databases. When you search in a library catalog, article database, statistical database, etc., the results are generated "on the fly" in answer to your search. Because the crawler programs cannot type or think, they cannot enter passwords on a login screen or keywords in a search box. Thus, these databases must be searched separately. One such Searchable Database would be Complete Planet which is a directory of over 70,000+ searchable databases and specialty search engines.

There is also the Dark Web or what others call The Darknet that for the most part in order to even search on, you need to download an anonymous browser called TOR (The Onion Router). After reading other articles, I found that there are many things, illegal things that people use The Dark Web for. Things like buying illegal drugs, underage porn, buying guns, hiring hitmen, and probably one of the most disturbing things I found was a site that said they kidnapped homeless people, experimented on them, posting pictures anyone visiting their site can see. The site was called, The Human Experiment. 

I have to say, when I went exploring that night looking for better ways to use search engines, I never in my wildest imagination thought that I would be writing about this.

I also found an explanation for Internet currency know as Bitcoins. According to the articles I read $1 in Bitcoins will cost you $9 US money and when using your Bitcoin currency it's completely anonymous, it can't be traced back to you like using a credit card. Which is why pedophiles and people who are going to buy something illegal on the Internet through The Darknet use Bitcoins so their illegal activities can't be traced back to them. 

So have you heard of the Dark Web, The Invisible Web or The Darknet?

Happy Raturday!

Welcome to a new weekly blog post I'm calling, Raturday! I've seen Caturday and while that's really cute, I think the rats needs some photo time so everyone can see how cute these little animals are. I've gotten permission from Rat Logic's fb page to share their pictures on my blog. So get ready to smile because these are cute. 

*Click on pictures to enlarge them. *