Got health insurance? If not, you can get some free testing this Saturday at any Sam’s Club location that has a pharmacy. From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., both members and non-members can take advantage of: Total cholesterol test Blood pressure reading Vision screening Glucose test Body mass index screening Oral health questionnaire “Dental tablets,” … Read more
Last month several dozen personal finance bloggers collaborated in a Valentine-themed giveaway sponsored by Rather-Be-Shopping.com, a site specializing in online coupon codes. The contest generated so much response that site founder Kyle James decided to do it again.
This time the theme is “spring and saving money.” The prize remains the same: $500 cash via PayPal. [Edited to add: Although the giveaway is over, the information below can help you with your spring cleaning. Read on!]
When I was a kid I felt sorry for people with “hay fever,” the catch-all name for seasonal allergies. Those greatly magnified images of pollen on the Contac commercials gave me the creeps: Imagine all that pointy-edged stuff digging its way into your nose and eyes! (It didn’t occur to me that I’d inhaled the same li’l monsters.)
A few years ago I discovered that you can develop seasonal allergies after childhood. Lucky me.
So if you’ve noticed sniffles, itchy eyes and raw throat in the springtime but figured it was just an end-of-winter cold you couldn’t shake, you might have developed allergies as well. You can find out for free on Saturday, March 9 if you live near a Sam’s Club with a pharmacy.
I go for months and months without getting a cold. When it’s time to go to a conference, I get sick. But what makes that particularly amusing is the subject of this week’s giveaway: another cold and flu package.
If the items I’m giving away were here, I’d have been into them all by now.
I am at war with my body. That was the thought that came to me toward the end of the massage I had on Friday. Sometimes the oddest things come to me when I’m not focusing on a dozen things at once.
Oddest, and usually the most apt. When my defenses are down, the truth sneaks up.
It’s been an odd winter, uber-balmy in some areas and freaky cold in others (hello, Fairbanks!). But colds and other bugs are not choosy about where they set up shop.
With this week’s giveaway, you’ll be ready.
Last month I was fried extra-crispy: too many things to do in too little time before I left for a seven-week trip to Alaska. Will Chen over at Wise Bread did a telephone intervention, i.e., I sort of melted down while he was on the line.
Bless his heart – he didn’t start to make bad-cell-reception noises and say that he couldn’t hear me so we’d have to talk some other time. (Like, um, never.) Instead, he listened to me whirl and howl about so many things I wanted to do, so few days until my plane left, so many professional plans but no time in which to bring them to fruition.
Then he gently encouraged me to think about how I’m spending my time.
Each of us who attended BlogHer 2011 found a “SinuSense” in our conference bags. The best way I can describe it is a turbo neti pot. In a good way.
Made by Waterpik, it provides nasal irrigation quickly and efficiently. You’ll want to stand over a sink when this happens, by the way, and far from relatives with cell-phone cameras and visions of YouTube stardom.
Why would you want to irrigate your nose? Because the Mayo Clinic says it is “a safe, inexpensive and easy way to relieve symptoms of nasal and sinus congestion,” that’s why.
Anybody else here old enough to remember hot-water vaporizers with Vicks Vapo-Rub dissolved in them? Big glass-bodied things that bubbled and murmured and released a menthol-scented steam that helped us croupy kids breathe.
I rediscovered that aroma at BlogHer 2011 — in a box of tissues.
Carved on my gravestone would be the phrase, “Died of surfeit. She was smiling at the time.”