Yeah... it's been a while. But I made it back before Did, did. :P
I'm just not good at the whole blogging thing. I read them frequently but I just don't feel like I have much to contribute myself. Pregnancy is going well. It's been a relatively easy one so far. I'm a bit fearful that it will get really hard come delivery time... because it almost seems to have been tooo easy. We're getting to the short days now and I'm beginning to get nervous. Today I learned to install and uninstall a car seat from either of our cars. I also made a decision on a pediatrician. I spend a lot of time feeling tired.
But other than that, it's pretty much business as usual around here.
I did try an experiment over this summer that I thought I'd tell you all about.
Upon receiving a Publisher's clearing house sweepstakes form ... I got to wondering... which has better odds - that or the lottery? I think the odds are about the same for either. But I went ahead out of curiosity and entered publishers. A few weeks later I got another entry form - a follow-up to the first, of course to confirm your entry you had to hunt through all the junky product stickers to find the "address confirmation" sticker or what have you and send it back. Obviously they want to get as many views of their advertised products as possible... but I'll admit, I kinda enjoyed going on the little scavenger hunt to find them. So I confirmed my address with that little sticker and sent it back... Then I just got curious... just how many of these things will they send before the actual give-away date?
Turns out if you keep sending in the various confirmations, and decisions (do I want the millions as a lump sum or a several payments? Let me find that sticker...) you end up receiving/returning around 8 things before the give-away date. Each with it's stack of advertisements with stickers and little "someone in your town is definitely going to win at least $10" statements. And they are full color too.. I can't imagine how much they spend on that crap. How many trees they kill.
I would have thought that it would be cheaper to enter a sweepstakes than to spend money on the lottery with about the same odds of winning. And I still believe that as far as online sweepstakes go as long as you don't mind getting plenty of junk mail or weeding through advertisements. But as far as Publisher's goes... I gotta say the lottery is actually a better deal. They don't kill nearly as many trees for the little single ticket that you get and in the end you pay less. Because if you sent all 8 entries back that are telling you that you are "this close" to winning - You've spent over $3.00 in postage. I don't care how much fun the little scavenger hunt for the stickers is... it's just not worth it. I was just rather staggered by that after my experiment ended. I didn't send all 8 back by the way. Though I'll admit to sending some for curiosity/boredom's sake.
Just to make it clear... I'm not advocating the lottery or sweepstakes here. I just got curious. And I figure someone out here in cyberspace may have been curious about that too... so if you are that person.. I hope I just saved you $3.
