What are the History Magazine and Readers Digest?

School started. Check out this www.freescholarshipguide.com

About a year ago I joined the History Channel Club as a life member which is wonderful. Every two months I receive the History magazine. In every issue there is a postcard to be sent in to win a trip and several giveaways with retail values fron about 135 to 400 dollars. In the Sept – Oct 2007 History magazine members can win a great historic vacation on a Majestic America Line Cruise aboard the American Queen cruising the legendary Mississippi and Ohio rivers. This is a 7-night cruise for two. A winner will be selected by random drawing on or about Nov. 5th, 2007.

The giveaways are:

2 winners will receive a 1930s – era Classic Cruiser

1 winner will receive a Silver DC-3 Mode

10 winners will receive The States United Edition Collection.

For more information, go to www.historychannelclub.com

One of the oldest magazines we associate with sweepstakes is the Readers Digest. It was started in 1922 when DeWitt and Lila Wallace published their first issue of the Readers Digest. They sold their magazine exclusively by mail for a quarter. The two worked out of their Greenwich Village apartment and printed 5000 copies. To enter their sweepstakes people are asked to subcribe to their magazine or buy their books and then at the end they say “No purchase necesssary”.

Readers Digest is a monthly family magazine with lots of tips for the consumer and general interest stories. It is the best selling consumer magazine in the US with over 10,000,000 copies in the US. The global editions reach an additional 40 million people in more than 70 countries with 50 editions in 21 languages. It is also published in large print.

My favorite product is the Readers Digest Select Editions Large Type which is published by Partners for Sight Foundations. This is a not-for-profit corporation established in 1955 by Readers Digest co-founder DeWitt Wallace. These condensed large print paperbacks come in 6 yearly volumes with two books in each, fiction and nonfiction. It is awesome how easy the text is on the eyes, even messed-up ones like mine.

I WANT TO STAND AS CLOSE TO THE EDGE AS I CAN WITHOUT GOING OVER. OUT ON THE EDGE, YOU CAN SEE ALL THE KIND OF THINGS YOU CAN’T SEE FROM THE CENTER. (Kurt Vongut)

Who was Everett Lane?

As I’ve said earlier, I am very much interested in clubs. It just came to my attention that the first National Contest Association was started in mid October 1937 by Everett Lane. He was the first president and the owner of a large mercantile establishment in Comorn, Virginia where he resided. He made his first killing with a contest in 1935 when within 3 weeks he won 150lbs. of chicken feed. After that he made contesting and sweepstaking his seerious hobby, soon collecting a booty of bicycles, roller skates, shaving brushes, Indian suits, automobile and cash. Mr. Lane was the originator of the radio program, “Down Contest Lane.” He was also publisher and editor of a weekly contest bulletin, :Weekly Contest Tips.” In addition, he organized a contest-judging agency and established a fascinating and unusual contest service intended for the average contestant.

 The National Contestars Association charged its members 1 dollar a year dues to keep them posted about what was going on in the contest world. Mr. Lane served for two years.

In 1940 Joan Lambert, head of the All-American Contestar School of Willow Grave, PA was the president during the 4th National Contestars Association Convention. Her school had about 2000 students. At that time, there were about half a dozen correspondence schools that charged about 25 dollars to keep their students updated on shrewd contest techniques, and they also criticized their pupils’ contest entries. 

In the 1940s E. H. Sherwood of 20 Rockland Ave. Port Chester, NY was president of the  National Contesters Association. They charged 2 dollar dues by that time and issued a monthly bulletin and other benefits. William Sunners writes that the nationwide group maintained a department to assist shut-ins and wounded veterans. Many inmates in military or naval hospitals won prizes because of the patient assistance and advice given by the officers of this organization

Next Labor Day,  San Antonio is hosting the 19th Conference. I wonder what happened to the National Contesters’ Association between the early years and 1990 when they began their first conference again in Michigan according to the Sweepsheet.

A jewelry store in Scottsbluff, NE had an interesting food drive in their store these past couple of months. The customers brought in non-perishable food which gave them points toward six prizes from the store’s inventory. The manager of the store said that the food drive surpassed all  expectations of the store owners. For me, this is a new way to accumulate prizes for a contest.

A couple Saturdays ago was my first win at Subway for buying a 32 oz. soda. I had an instant win for a 98 cents Garden Salsa chip bag and two letters H. I could use only one on the Scrabble board online but Betsy, my daughter, bought her poor mother another soda nad got me the F. Now I really have a good chance to win a board game or maybe even a trip. I keep my fingers crosseed.

WE ARE WHAT WE IMAGINE OURSELVES TO BE. ( Kurt Vonegut)

Tips

Only enter C+S that you are comfortable with and remember that in the US all winnings of any kind are taxable. Winning a $ 40,000 car or a $ 5,000 trip makes for a pretty hefty tax burden come next January. However, many times you can request cash instead of merchandise or services. If it comes to the worst, you can also refuse the prize. Also beware of a pitfall if you survive a large prize that is paid out in equal payments over an amount of years like an annuity. Let’s say you die before you receive all the installments, your estate will be taxed in a lumpsum, if applicable, on the outstanding balance which might cause your heirs a big headache.

Some C+S enthusiasts or should we call them fanatics like to enter C+S for their family and friends which is wonderful; just make sure you get their permission or you might end up with a quarrel when it is tax time. Those pesky taxes can take some of the fun out of C+S unless the winner has the money to meet the tax requirements for a non cash prize like a $ 5,000 trip.

All the S+C participants who brag about winning consistently a bunch of prizes every year, will also tell you if you pressure them that their bounty includes a lot of small items like movie tickets, cleaning products, sports caps or snackfood. Last Saturday, for example, I spent three dollars for two big cups of soda at Subway to be able to play the puzzle game. It was fun to remove the puzzle pieces and win a 98 cents Garden Salsa chip bag. To win on a consistent basis, you probably have to enter a huge amount of C+S and collect a huge amount of consolation prizes. I’ve played the state lottery since its beginning and the most I’ve won is 5oo dollars. The feeling of anticipation makes it all worth while and the feeling of contributing to the state revenue twice a week makes it double worth while.

Is a local, state or national or international C+S entry more desirable? You might want to consider that the less people enter a C+S the better the chance of winning a prize. When we moved to Nebraska in 2002, I filled out two ballots at our Coop for a first prize of 100 dollars grocery shopping spree at the store and my husband won it. I doubled my weekly grocery money and for one week we ate pretty good. Thanks COOP.

Before you start a contest, you should consider if you can actually take advantage of the prize. Here is my example. When I was enrolled im Gymnasium in Ingenbohl, Switzerland, I entered a screen writing contest. I documented the dedication of the new church bell in my hometown and was awarded a week of free training in Zurich to produce a movie. My parents did not allow me to participate because the travel and room and board would have cost too much. My Dad did not drink or smoke. He had always a need to buy one more tool to remodel the house we lived in which turned out to be a nightmare. Who knows with that free training, I might have ended up a famous producer and could have raked in the dough. I’m writing this blog to put my past behind me as you can tell.

Here is one more event from my early days when I was about six years old. My mother’s cousin Joseph was selling tickets to support his local music band. In Switzerland we did not have any age requirement to buy tickets of chance. Like everybody else in my family I got one ticket, but when I got home, aunt Marie was willing to trade her ticket for mine because I could not make up my mind which number I wanted. We traded and of course she ended up with the second prize which was a brand new 3-piece living room set. As luck would have it, aunt Marie got married a short time later and made good use of her winnings. My advice: think carefully before trading your  ticket of chance with somebody.

When you work on a contest, take your time to finish it. Here is an example from my own experience. When I was 8 years old our local grocery store displayed a jar of coffeebeans. The first prize was a new schoolbag for the correct beancount. I forget how many times I counted the beans in a jar of the same size as the grocery store had, before I turned in my guess of counted coffeebeans. Well, I was correct and won that first prize. I was so proud to have something new to bring to school because usually I ended up with other people’s hand-me-downs.

Always remember, there is a winner for every contest. This brings me to the tough ones. Don’t avoid them because there is always a chance that your entry is as good or better than everybody else’s. It is obvious that the bigger the challenge to complete the entry the less people will have the patience to finish it, which improves your odds of winning with a finished product.

It is a given that you have to send in the finished entry on time and when you get a notice of being a winner by email or by snailmail, you have to claim your prize

THE POWER TO MOVE MOUNTAINS IS WITHIN US.

Tips

I did not know until recently that contests and sweepstakes are subject to state law. Before you start any kind of contest or sweepstake, please read the rules. I went over the rules for the different contests of the National Examiner with a toothcomb and list them below.  What surprised me about the National Examiner’s requirements is the complete omission of the number of entries allowed per person or household. I am assuming that we can buy as many magazines of the same issue as we want and fill out as many contest and giveaway forms as our heart desires or the money runs out, whichever comes first.

Here is the list of rules:

- All entries not properly addressed will be discarded.

- Winners’ names will appear in a future issue of the National Examiner.

- Winners with a correct entry will be randomly selected on a designated date.

- Entries must be received by assigned date.

- No purchase necessary.

- Open to all US residents 18 years or older.

- Allow 6-8 weeks to receive winnings.

- National Examiner assumes no responsibility for late, misdirected or lost mail.

- All entries become the property of the National Examiner.

- Odds of winning depends on the number of entries received.

- Void where prohibited by law.

- Any information entrants provide to sponsor may be used to communicate with entrants for sponsor’s or third party marketing purposes.

These rules are pretty much standard for mail-in contests.  In case you have bad eyes like I have, just scan my list and you will be on the safe side when entering your contests in the future.

YOU CAN’T HOPE TO BE LUCKY, YOU HAVE TO PREPARE TO BE LUCKY. (Timothy Dowd).

Tidbits

My subscription to the National Examiner has expired. It would cost me $ 59.60 to subscribe for 12 months. In the last two years I’ve sent in 3 post cards (3 x 28 cents = 84 cents) and 3 business sized  envelopes  (3 x 41 cents = $ 1.23) on average per week. This is $ 2.07 plus the envelope every week for 104 weeks which equals $ 215.28 plus 2 years subcription was $ 119.20, for a grand total of  $ 334.48. My winnings for that time were a $ 20.00 check, a DVD for a playstation and 2 cans of Pat Robertson dietary supplement. The last item I won is a set of 3 books from the gambling guru Gail Howard, worth $ 56.95. The titles are – Lotto Winning Systems – Lotto: How to wheel a fortune 2007 – Lottery Master Guide. So far, my expense by far exceeds the winnings. Therefore I feel that I have to give up this wonderful gossipy magazine. I will miss the National Examiner;  I just wish I wasn’t so totally broke all the time.

The clincher with Gail Howard’s books is the fact that it will cost me considerably more than a dollar per drawing to play the lottery every Wednesday and Saturday evening. One of her systems requires 46 dollars per drawing to enter the lottery in order to speed up winning those million dollar prizes. We’ll have to see. Maybe the big break is in the making.

It can take anywhere from a few seconds with instant sweepstakes to a few decades if we’re lucky, to win anything. I’ve entered the Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes since 1968, when my then new father-in-law advised me to start reading the magazine on a regular basis. That got me into entering all those sweepstakes and spending thousands of dollars on Reader’s Digest books and illustrated reference guides without ever winning a penny. I’ve also entered my share of entries for non-winners and still no prize ever. Now, I will stick with Gail Howard for a while to see if she is the lottery guru she claims to be. 

Here is a list of the contests I could find in my last issue of the National Examiner. These are all old-fashioned mail-in entries.

TREASURE HUNT -one 100 dollar and fifteen 20 dollar follow-up winners

PHOTO EXAMINER – one 200 dollar and five 25 dollar runner-up winners.

PHOTO SLEUTH – one 250 dollar and five 50 dollar runner-up winners.

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE – one 200 dollar and five 25 dollar runner-up winners.

SECRET WORD – one 100 dollar and fifteen 20 dollar winners.

RECIPE – one 25 dollar winner

NATIONAL EXAMINER GIVEAWAY – 12 different items are given to 5 winners each  for a total of $ 1648.40.

TELL YOUR STORY – If your story, how an event changed your life, is published, you get 50 dollars.

PET PHOTO – If your pet’s photo is published, you get 25 dollars.

START WHERE YOU ARE, WITH WHAT YOU HAVE, MAKE SOMETHING OF IT, NEVER BE SATISFIED. (George Washington Carver)

Rudy on Oprah – Ida in Sachseln, Switzerland

First, I want to remind my readers that on Sept. 10. 2007 Oprah’s new season starts. Her VIP sweepstake closed last week. I got only a few entries in,  but, well, we can always hope for the best. Ten lucky people will be able to go to her show and she will take them out to lunch. There will be another sweepstake in the winter. I am already looking forward to it.

If nothing else, you can always enter the Publisher’s Clearing House sweepstake even so I find it sometimes hard to resist all their attempts to sell me something. I am getting better passing all the merchandise and magazines up, though. So far I only subscribed to the Better Homes and Garden magazine because it was so cheap. Recently, I came across a sweepstake for Esquire magazine with no idea what the magazine is all about. After entering the sweepstake I subscribed to it and found the first copy very interesting. I really love trivia and found out that Mayor Hickenlooper from Denver, CO wears the most expensive shirt, only $ 575, from all the mayors featured in the magazine. On the other hand, he wears a fairly moderate suit compared to the other guys. Interesting man!

Today I will cover the story of a man who has both legs cut off above the knee. His name is Rudy and he was on the Oprah Winfrey show last week. The second person I want to talk about is a second cousin of my mother’s who was declared incurable by all the doctors who diagnosed her. Both of these people passed the contest of life in unusual ways and they show that money is not always everything. Original ideas and to keep plugging along are sometimes the best way to win the contest of life.

The public found out from Oprah that Rudy was born in 1988 with a severe birth defect. Both his legs are fitted with artificial limbe; yet he made up his mind to train for the 2004 Paralympics in Athens. He won the 200 meter individual medley gold medal in swimming and set a world record in the process. He has been an inspiration to many.

Ida Jeker was born around 1916 and grew up in Busserach, the same village as I did. She slept with one of her five sisters in the same bed as was very common at that time. Her sister pushed her somehow off the bed and Ida ended up with a deep open wound on her upper arm with puss coming out of it constantly. Eventually she came also down with epileptic seizures besides the incurable wound. Her mother told her of Bruder Klaus who died in the late 14oo’s after a fast of 19 years. He was a well-known healer all over Europe and the Swiss people had tried for centuries to have him declared a Saint by the Vatican but the simple Swiss peasants could never get the paperwork in order. One day in 1937 when the Marian club from our village made a pilgrimage to Sachseln where Bruder Klaus was buried, Ida attached herself to the group. Her parents knew about it but not her sisters who were in the party, because Ida was afraid they would feel shortchanged and would send her home. Ida had her heart set on coming home healed. In the church of Sachseln, she touched the preserved sutane of Bruder Klaus who healed her on the spot. After great turmoil, the Vatican accepted Bruder Klaus’s intervention as a miracle which contributed to his sainthood and this is how my village became famous in a small way and Ida got her normal life back. To add more good luck, my mother’s cousin, Walter Studer who is always on the lookout for writing projects, wrote a documentary about it. “Das Wunder von Sachseln” is the title’s book.

Since I am glorifying my mother’s family, I should probably in all fairness describe the magical side of my Dad. One day in the early 1920’s when he was a few years old, he fell into a tub of scalding water and had major burns all over his body. So my grandmother sent one of her five boys up the street to get her uncle Lukas who came down the hill, said his usual prayers for these occasions and lo and behold , my Dad Eugen was healed. His skin was that of a newborn and the whole family said thanks to the Lord. The same great-great-uncle of mine, Lukas Jeker who was born on Oct. 21, 1849 and died Aug. 15, 1942,  was also called when there was a fire and his ritual with prayers would distinguish the flames; in addition he started the first savingsbank in our village. He was very upset when it was commercialized and the employees were starting to get paid for their work. Lukas wanted all the proceeds from the savings to go to the farmers in the village. He had never drawn any pay while he was the administrator. I must have inherited that side of the family because I am always cash poor. Lukas was in his early 90’s when he died. I visited his grave often until he was dug up 25 years after his death to make room for new graves. I am adding tidbits about my family every so often to let my readers know that I am a real person and not a virtual phenomena.

Last week I sent in 30 dollars to the St. Joseph Indian School Raffle to win an Indian afghan. The middle of this month I did not win the Raffle of a Catholic charity who had a first prize of $ 10,000 or a car.

YOU CANNOT TEACH A MAN ANYTHING. YOU CAN ONLY HELP HIM DISCOVER IT WITHIN HIMSELF. Galileo

Who was Merv Giffin the Billionaire?

Merv Griffin the entertainment billionaire died last Sunday and will be buried tomorrow while 350 of his personal friends and family will look on. The funeral is by invitation only. I want to rememver this incredilbly rich and versatile man because he has given millions of people a chance to compete to get on one of his gameshows and win wonderful prizes of cash, trips, cars and merchandise.  Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune are the better known game shows that Merv and his ex-wife created together. At first, Merv was reluctant to come forward with his new find because Charles Van Doren was part of a big scandal when it turned out that his game show had been rigged shortly before that time.

 Mr. Griffin said on a reproduced appearance on Sunday night on Larry King that the popular theme song of Jeopardy earned him money every time it was aired, millions and millions and more millions. He certainly knew how to win contests besides giving millions of dollars away on his gameshows. He was working on a new  game show “Merv Griffin’s Crosswords” when he died. It will start in September on TV. He was a very restless individual and said: ‘ If it’s not broke, fix it anyway.” and he quipped that he was never more bored than after he made his first million dollars. So he got into the hotel business and turned over 22 of them, all the way from building them to selling them and anything in between.

Merv Griffin was born July 6. 1925 which means, he shared his birthday with the former first lady Nancy Reagan and the president George W. Bush. I was surprised that Nancy said on the Larry King Show that she refused to see him even after he begged her to come visit him in the hospital where he spent his last month on earth with recurring prostate cancer. At the same time Mrs. Reagan acknowledged that Merv Griffin was a great comfort to her when her husband had Alzheimer. I am sure Merv understood her sentiments since people born in the Cancer sign are known as emotional and not always logical. It was interesting to hear from his ex-wife that she sent over his favorite dessert for his last birthday. She sounds like an  intuitive and well-meaning woman. Doesn’t the saying go: “Serve a Cancer man a meal and he will be yours for life.” It was also nice to hear that Merv’s son eventually made it to his Dad’s bedside even though he did not have the time for it. I wonder if he has time to inherit those pots of gold the old man is leaving behind. I am always astonished when working adult children are not allowed to take a day off when their parents have surgery but they are allowed five days off to clean up the estate.

 Merv Griffin hosted his own talk show  for 23 years. In that time period, Mr. Griffin interviewed about 25,000 poeple. He traveled all over the world. When he was in Ireleand he ended up buying the manor of John Huston, who was also famous in the entertainment industry. It was great fun for him to remodel and refurbish the illustrious estate.

www.shoplocal.eprize/back2school has a $ 10,000 prize. Enter daily until 9/15/07

www.backtostyle.woman’sday.com has a $ 2.000 TJ Max gift card for one lucky person, one entry per person or email per day, ends on Sept. 2. 200

MONEY IS LIKE MANURE, IT NEEDS TO BE SPREAD AROUND. (Brooke Russell Astor – died this week, 105 years old)

Who was Ann Landers?

In your weekend supplement should be the Smart Source coupon insert. It is starting a sweepstake to enter for a chance to win a $ 25,000 Upromise scholarship prize! It looks like it is a website for college students or would-be college students. The sweepstake runs from 8/12/2007/ til 9/28/2007. You can also mail-in the entry form from the Sunday supplement; then you don’t have to buy anything! Check it out.
Do you know that Ann Landers was entering Planters Peanuts jingle contests before she became a famous columnist?  She wanted to keep busy while she was trying to figure out what to do with her life. She urged her daughter Marge to eat Planters Peanuts all the time because each entry repuired a label to be sent with it. In the biogrphy about her mother, Mrs. Howard writes: ” A card table in the livingroom was my mother’s office. It had rhyming dictionairies, piles of paper, pencils, and of course those wretched peanuts.”
Today, from what I see on the Internet, jingle contest have caught up with the age of technology. They consists now of a video. Just go to Ytube and you will be bombarded with those productions. When I last looked, Dairy Queen had a $ 500 prize for the winning entry of a short video with sound. Check it out!

LUCK IS WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU WHEN YOU MAKE OTHER PLANS. (Ann Landers)

County Fairs and Unclaimed Money

Today’s journal entry is all about getting us away from the computer and out of the house to attend the County or State Fair where it’s all happening. Behind these great events which have in many places taken up the slack of church sponsered festivals is an unbelievable amount of hard work by the contestants and volunteers alike.
This week the newspaper is full of showmanships and races and colored ribbons and prizes that are won at the different events where judges are some of the busiest people on this planet. During the pig showmanship, at Scottsbluff County Fair this week, the contestants had climbed into the stalls alongside the animals with spray bottles in their hand to spray cool water on their animals to cool them down. That’s better service than most people get.

What makes these events possible, of course, are the 4-H clubs which are in abundance in this part of the county. I just wish that my two oldest grandsons, Will and Kevin who will be Seniors in Highschool this year, had raised one of those 1st prize bulls. The prize could pay for a whole college education of one or maybe even both of them. Instead, Will had to spend a month with his Dad in California, hanging out every day on the beach and lost a month pay as a pool attendant in Colorado. Now he is out of a job again because sports are more important to him than making money which means that he has to put off getting his driver’s license the end of August unless his Dad comes across and pays for his car insureance and returns his logbook which has his driving record for the summer in it. Getting mediocre grades and flunking French last semester makes Will a good candidate to be a driver to earn some money during the school year. I just hope Kirk helps Will out. In my opinion, broken homes are for the birds as long as there are teenagers involved.
I realize I’m making my family a great part of this journal but I have to mention my grandmother Mathilde here in connection with the pig showmanship. Mathilde had pigs all her life. When she was joung, she would go to the farmer’s market towards the end of the day to see if there were any left that could not be sold because they were too little. Many times she came home with the runt of the litter because cash was always so short. She would lovingly raise them until they were ready to be butchered. As late as the 1950s the butcher made housecalls. It was heartwrenching for me to see those pigs killed and cut up for human consumption.  My grandmother’s parents and siblings died, the five boys left home and her husband was in the local tavern every Sunday afternoon playing cards and drinking red wine with his buddies but the pigs kept her company during thick and thin. In her seventies, my Dad made her give up the pigs, and from then on she went downhill and lost all will to live.
Livestock may bring in the largest prizes but there are all kinds of other events to be judged, like gardening, sewing, quilting, canning, cooking, pickling, baking pies. One woman said, she started growing a new herb this last seasoon, called perilla. I have never heard of it. Have you? Another contestant has about 300 hybrid varieties of iris in his yard and this goes on and on. If your’e restless or bored or have talents that you would like to show off, getting involved in a county or state fair as contestant or volunteer, is the way to go.
In this vast country of ours, ( I am a naturalized and dual citizen), there is a lot of treasure that needs to be uncovered and claimed. I am writing about the Unclaimed Property division of the state treasurer of Nebraska. They estimate that nearly $ 85 million in unclaimed property belonging to more than 250,000 Nebraskans is waiting to be claimed. The same applies to every other state of the USA. The Scottsbluff Fair had a special booth to help people discover if they have any money coming from this source. Everybody can search online at www.treasurer.org.
I hope that my journal entries are benefiting somebody. One good thing about them is that they never talk back like husbands and children. On the other hand they also don’t leave any feedback to let me know if I’m on the right track.

WINNERS ALWAYS SLEEP WELL (Benjamin Cohen)

Millionaire show

I start my morning with a yoghurt and an envelope of Instant Cereal from the Dollar store, except for this week. My youngest daughter Betsy, who works at Cabelas in the personnel office brought me a special treat, Instant cereal from the local grocery store which tastes better than my usual grub. As I was pondering how to organize my day, I remembered my graduate school days when I studied for my teacher’s license. That was around the turn of the century. One professor suggested we use a timer to stay on track with our curriculum and it seems still a good idea now to manage my time.
After breakfast I always start my first Sudoku that appears six days a week in the Starherald. As the week progresses they get harder and take up quite a bit of time. I have been reading about Sudoku tournaments that have been happening in the mathematics department of colleges and of one that was put on by a major newspaper back east with prizemoney of $ 50,000 which gives me the incentive to hone my skill solving those darn things. However, for now I’ve made up my mind to stop after 30 minutes and look up the solution in the next day’s paper if I don’t get it done. This is my first step towards better time management. There are instruction manuals on the internet to get faster, solving Sudokus, which might be a good investment. If someone reads or hears about a new tournament, please let me know.
When I visited my oldest daughter Catherine last weekend, she gave me a poetry book by Goethe, one of the famous German writers of all times, to read. She picked it up on the UCD campus where she works for the financial aid office. Every poem is in German on the left-hand side and in English on the right-hand side. Unfortunately, an English translation does Goethe’s poems no justice. He sounds stilted in English while in German his poems sound so well crafted. Maybe this applies to every poet’s work. I have not read much poetry in life but it aroused my interest while I was cruising the internet for contests to recommend. There are pages and pages of poetry contests advertised and some pay cold hard Cash to the winners.
The big event of every morning for me is the Millionaire show. It runs 30 minutes and is one of my dreamshows to attend in the future or maybe even audition for it. Several years ago I got through on the phone but I could not answer the simple questions they asked. It appears that the audition process has been changed since that time. When I went to their website this morning, I noticed that people can now attend a taping and audition for the show at the same time by requesting tickets for it. In addition, auditions are held across the country in San Diego -Aug 20, Phoenix -Aug 22, and Chicago Aug 24 in 2007. Free tickets for the show only, running from July 26 to Nov. 7, can also be requested from their website. Participants have to be 18 years old.
Today’s Millionaire show was also interesting because the contestant was a lawyer who was out of work because he wanted to make a career change. He found out that lawyering was not for him. He won $ 50,000 on the Millionaire show and told the audience that he still had a $ 100,000 student loan debt outstanding. I am drawing attention here to the freescholarshipguide.com so that people can get their finances squared away before they jump into any expensive post-highschool education program they cannot afford. Just for registering, one person will win a $ 10,000 scholarship and there is no purchase necessary. It is open to US residents at least 13 years of age.

Remeber: HASTE MAKES WASTE!!!