You know how it's annoying that Coinstar takes a small fee, typically around 8%, every time you use it? Well, some of you probably don't care about that 8%. But I have good news for the rest of us.

I just switched my car insur--- wait, nope, that's not it.

There is a way to take home 100% of the money you put into a Coinstar machine, each and every time.

How? Just take your money back in the form of a gift certificate. As far as I know, all Coinstar machines offer e-gift certificates to a variety of major retailers, including Amazon, iTunes, Borders and many more.

Taking advantage of this option is so easy that I'm surprised that more people don't know about it. All you have to do is select the "gift certificate" option on screen and follow the instructions. The Coinstar machine will then print out your receipt with a long code on the bottom. This code is your gift certificate. Simply logon to the retailer's website, enter the code at the bottom of the receipt and you're all set!

Want to know exactly which retailers offer gift certificates at the Coinstar down the street? Just check the Coinstar website before you go.

Obviously the Coinstar route isn't for anyone. Many people still roll coins and take them to the bank, where they have immediate access to their funds and can use them as they see fit. Others use Coinstar because it's convenient and don't care about losing 8% of the funds. For the rest of us, though, there's the gift certificate option. Give it a try the next time you're saving up for something big from Amazon. You'll be glad you did.

GET A FREE!!!

• Give your student a Lowe's gift card that they can use to help set up their new living space while they are at school.
• Great way to help them budget their expenses.
• Use at any Lowe's store like cash.
• Easy to use secure payment method.
• Any unused amounts can be used for future purchases.
• Parents can add to the cards value as needed.
• Never any fees or expiration.
• Check balances with our convenient toll free number.
• A Lowe's gift card can become their storage solution, portable fan, heater, or air cleaner to keep comfortable, house plants, desk or table lamps for studying, area rugs, RTA furniture, wall and window décor.

What is a gift card?

The Lowe’s Gift Card is a stored value card that can be used to purchase any merchandise or service that Lowe’s sells.

Can you reload money onto the gift card?

Yes, you can reload your gift card by taking it to the customer service desk at any Lowe's store.

Do Lowe's Gift Cards have an expiration date or devalue over time?

Lowe’s Gift Cards do not have expiration dates or fees.

What denominations are available for Lowe's Gift Cards?

We offer gift cards in any amount between $5 and $5,000 per card.

Does Lowe's offer discounts on volume purchases?

We do offer volume discounts. Please refer to the corporate orders page for more information.

What is the shipping time?

For standard or priority mail, please allow 3-7 business days. For Internet orders placed before 12:00 pm EST that request UPS, the package will arrive the next business day. For corporate orders, once payment is received, we will fulfill your order within 48 hours and ship per your delivery method.

Can you ship to P.O. boxes?

We can ship to P.O. boxes if you select standard delivery when placing your order.

Do you ship to Canada?

We currently ship only within the United States.

Can I buy a gift card online and have you send it to someone else?

Lowe's Gift Cards can be mailed to you or directly to the recipient.

How do I check my order status?

To check your order status, call toll-free at 1-877-66LOWES, or e-mail us at customercare@lowes.com.

How do I place a corporate gift card order?

To place a corporate order using a check, please fill out the order form and mail the check and order form together to the address at the top of the order form. If you are paying by credit card, you can fax in your order – fax number at top of order form.

Do you receive cash back on a Lowes's Gift Card?

Lowe's Gift Cards are declining cash balance cards. The remaining balance will remain on the card and is not available as cash.

Where can I use my gift card?

You can use your gift card to shop online at www.lowes.com or in any Lowe’s store for any merchandise or service that Lowe’s sells.

SIGN UP NOW!!!

Okay, I believe spontaneous human combustion is a real and very rare phenomena, personally. It is, IMO, caused by an imbalance of the electrical system in the body. A friend of mine's daughter has Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum, which is a rare birth defect where the bridge between the brain's hemispheres fails to develop properly resulting in their inability to communicate with each other, and one of the medications the doctor wanted to put her on has a possible side-effect of spontaneous human combustion. My friend refused that medication... I don't blame her.

One more video, this one's kinda funny:

This post is part of the Boogers and Book Bucks Giveaway. Don't forget to enter at the original post for your official entry. Comments here count as a bonus entry :-D

Can a head live without a body?

In 1988, the U.S. government granted a patent for a device that would keep a severed head alive after being surgically removed from the body. The device has never been used, so it is uncertain how effective it would be. However, the creator of the device has been contacted by a number of people who want to know how soon the operation will be available and how much it will cost. Some of these people are dying or paralyzed, and many of them say that they would welcome the operation, if it meant that their minds would remain clear and they could still think, see, read, remember, talk, and listen.

The proposed procedure would involve attaching the decapitated head to a device essentially consisting of a series of plastic tubes. These tubes would be connected to the bottom of the head and neck and would provide oxygen and fluids, as well as maintaining blood circulation, to keep the head alive.

In 1973, an American brain surgeon called Dr. Robert White carried out the world's first head transplant, using two monkeys. He decapitated both animals and successfully managed to stitch the head of one monkey onto the body of the other. The "hybrid" monkey regained consciousness, opened its eyes, and tried to bite a surgeon who put a finger in its mouth. It also ate, and it could follow people around the room with its eyes. However, the monkey was paralyzed from the neck down because its spinal cord had been severed, and it was impossible for the surgeons to reconnect the numerous nerves necessary for it to regain any bodily movement. The monkey survived for about seven days after the transplant.

White claimed that this surgery could benefit parapalegics, who may die as a result of the long-term medical complications that often accompany extensice paralysis. He believed that if these people were to receive new bodies, donated by patiens who were brain dead but otherwise physically healthy, it would give them a new chance of life, even though they would remain parapalegic.

There are some really strange video out there that demonstrate the mind-bending ability the brain has to survive. One video shows a dog's head revived and responding to stimulus. The monkey vid's on out there, as well, but the one I saw on YouTube had one of those "scream scenes" in it so be careful.

When I read this segment, my mind immediately went to Sarah Jessica Parker's head on the body of her character's pet chihauhau in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! (great movie if you haven't seen it)

This post is part of the Boogers and Book Bucks Giveaway. Don't forget to enter at the original post for your official entry. Comments here count as a bonus entry :-D

I'm not much of a sports lover anymore ... not since high school when I participated myself. Likewise, I'm not much into the Olympics, but I hope the United States wins a record number of medals.

I do, however, love China and always have. How could I not? I was born in Taipei, Taiwan which is the Republic of China ~ a small island located off the coast of Mainland China. Although I've never visited either country (since birth, but believe me I've tried), I will always hold a fondness for both. It's my heritage! Well, half of it anyways. My father's side of the family is Irish. Irish-Chinese ... what a combo, huh?

There were so many online sweepstakes opportunities offering trips to the Beijing Olympics this year, but I didn't enter even one unless it had smaller prizes I was eligible for and wanted to win. The reason why? There are ongoing, long-term bad relations between China and Taiwan. So bad that I can't use my U.S. passport to visit the country of China. It was a choice I had to make a couple of years ago when I got a brand new passport.

I really hate China-bashers! I grew up with prejudice against Asians and Orientals. When it comes right down to it; not much has changed. I read so many discussion posts on bulletin boards that are against products "Made in China" for many reasons. Well, I was "Made in China" and I'm very proud of it. It took me until my 20's before I was finally able to admit that I'm half-Chinese.

I love the Oriental cuisine and culture (including martial arts), and its history and people.

I haven't ever eaten at a Panda Express (yet), though we do treat ourselves to a Chinese takeout dinner from a local restaurant every two weeks on payday. As a matter of fact, that's what we're having tonight :)

How to Enter: Blog about about what you want to see in the Olympics and/or what interests you about China and link back to the giveaway post at Three P's in a Pod; or email five friends if you don't have a blog. Earn extra entries by subscribing to the feed, adding a button to your sidebar, adding the blog to Technorati favorites, or reviewing the blog at Blogged.

Enter Before/By: 8/15/08.

How Often to Enter: Up to five times.

Who Can Enter: United States.

What You Can Win: $10 Panda Express gift card.

I'm blogging about this giveaway for my entry. Your comments here are always welcome, but please remember to visit the source -as described- for your own entry. Good Luck!

Does anything eat facial hair?

There are bugs that will eat just about anything, including facial hair. The American cockroach, Periplaneta americana, is a large, brown, winged cockroach, about 1 1/2 inches (4 cm) long. This cockroach is commonly found in the southern United States in tropical climates, and will often be found living in sewers. It will eat practically anything including leather, book-bindings, glue, flakes of dead skin, and soiled clothing. It has also been known to munch on the eyelashes, eyebrows, fingernails, and even toenails of people while they are asleep.

OMG, I am actually having to choke back the vom right now. Seriously, several things went through my head as I copied this factoid. Huge winged cockroaches like from the horror movies. They'll eat book-bindings, oh no, not the books! They eat eyelashes and eyebrows Oh no, not the eyelashes and eyebrows again! I wonder if they'll eat the mites, though... Gawd, I'd rather have the mites! Then the things they do while their victims sleep! I remember hearing stories at the meat packing plant *lots of roaches there, btw!* about people who didn't clean their earplugs going to the doctor for an earache only to have a baby roach pulled out of their ear. AND children living in filthy conditions who have sores from where the bugs had been nibbling on them as they slept.

GAG!!!!!!!!!!

This post is part of the Boogers and Book Bucks Giveaway. Don't forget to enter at the original post for your official entry. Comments here count as a bonus entry :-D

Answer: So they can kill the cockroaches in the corners! -Dan Rather on the Late Show with David Letterman

However, this little critter is the subject of today's factoid.

Do bugs live in eyelashes?

Most people don't like the idea that bugs can live on their skin and hair. However, the truth is that many bugs do, and they live with us in harmony, most of the time. By the time we reach late adulthood, most of us have wiggly, microscopic, wormlike mites called demodex mites living in the roots of our eyelashes. If you pull out one of your eyelashes and examine it under a strong magnifying glass, or better, a microscope, there is a good chance you will see one of these tiny mites clinging to the base of the lash. They can also live in our skin pores and the hair follicles on our face, such as the eyebrows.

These mites are cigar shaped, a third of a millimeter (a tiny fraction of an inch) long, and have eight stubby little legs situated at the front of their long, so they waddle along fairly slowly. When one of these mites reaches a hair, it burrows headfirst down into the follicle. Their bodies are layered with scales, which help to anchor them into the follicle, and their needlelike mouths eat dead skin and oil that is produced by the skin. Fortunately, although the mites eat, they don't actually poo in the follicles.

An individual female can lay a number of eggs in a single follicle. When mature, the mites leave the follicle, mate, and find a new follicle into which they lay their eggs. Each mite can live for several weeks, and mites can be transferred between humans if two people's hair, eyebrows, or the sebacceous glands on their noses come into close contact.

Mites living on our eyelashes are usually quite harmless, and most people are totally unaware of the little squatters living in their hair follicles. However, if too many accumulate in a single hair follicle, they can cause itching, certain skin disorders, or an eyelash to fall out. As many as twenty-five eyelash mites have been found huddled together in a single follicle! There are some great pictures of these mites in a variety of poses on the Internet.

Okay, now I'm itching like crazy!

This post is part of the Boogers and Book Bucks Giveaway. Don't forget to enter at the original post for your official entry. Comments here count as a bonus entry :-D

Last Friday I had another 3 cards workshop, I thought I was having a small class however there ended up being 11 of us which was wonderful. It was a great evening and the versions of the cards made were great. Thanks to two ladies involved in swaps for their inspiration Jacinta Ryan and Louise Ryan. Their cards were the templates of 2 of the 3 cards made that night. Thanks also to Tegan for her tips re taking the photos to use on my blog I think these turned out better.

At the very end of this post you will find a list of TAGS:

"Tag" is short for metatag, which is a techie term for information about information. They're basically labels that describe content, whether it's words, images, files, audio, or video. You've no doubt seen tags at work (they're ubiquitous in the blogosphere), but perhaps you aren't aware of all you can do with them.

Use the list of tags at the bottom, select something you can relate to, and then write an article, essay, short story or poem. Make sure that the tag you select appears somewhere in the subject line or article at least one time! Make your donation and then email your entry to Contest@Secret-Angels.org!

To enter the contest, Secret-Angels is only asking for a $1.00 donation - but feel free to donate more if you feel called to do so! You can snail-mail the donation to:

Secret-Angels
1700 CR 468
Elgin, Texas 78621

(Just make sure to include your email address and contact information in case you win!)

You can also make the donation through the Secret-Angels PayPal Account. Please make sure you designate the purpose to Tag Writing Contest so we have a record of how many people entered! CREDIT CARDS ARE NOT ACCEPTED (Secret-Angels support responsible stewardship of your money - and who wants to pay those interest charges anyway?)

Secret-Angels is a nonprofit management company that assists emerging nonprofits with fund-raising, grant-writing and overall business development. If you would like more information about this organization or any of the other grass-roots projects that it supports, please feel free to contact the director, Tara Deck at (512) 281-0202 or by email.

LIST OF TAGS FOR TAG WRITING CONTEST:

Spiritual gifts

Faith

Things worth dying for

Mother’s intuition

Gut feeling(s)

Dream(s)

Voice(s)

Vision(s)

Defend your faith

People call you crazy

Things are not always as they appear

Who are you?

The deadline for the contest is
September 11th
and the contest winner will be notified, awarded and announced no later than
October 1st
so GET STARTED NOW!

A little secret for people that read this far......

You will retain all copyrights for your work but all articles submitted will be considered public domain and distributed freely to anyone that requests a TAG ARTICLE from Secret-Angels, feel free to include whatever signature information you wish to include with your article.

The contest is all about spotlighting the relationship between a mother and her child(ren). What makes your relationship unique? Do you and your child(ren) look amazingly alike? Do you and your child(ren) have the same quirky habits? Explore Spring and Houston WAHMS wants to know--and see--the dynamics behind you and your children.

August 1 through August 31, 2008, mothers and kids of all ages will be able to enter the Explore Spring/Houston WAHMS Mommy & Me Photo Contest for a chance to win a $35 Visa Gift Card and a Explore Spring personalized shirt(s) for each member in the photo. The winner is chosen by Explore Spring online viewers. Entries and voting take place online. The entry with the most online votes at the end of the month wins the prizes.

"The Mommy & Me Contest gives kids and moms the opportunity to showcase their relationship and really have some fun," says Holly Munsinger, Houston WAHMS Founder. Photo entries may be from anytime and anyplace or can be taken specifically for the Mommy & Me Contest. For more details about the Explore Spring/Houston WAHMS Mommy & Me Photo Contest, please visit the Explore Spring website. If it's about Spring Texas it’s on Explore Spring.

About Explore Spring
Explore Spring Texas is a locally owned and operated online city guide and business directory for Spring TX. Here you can find all kinds of services - from restaurants and automobiles to shopping and home services. ExploreSpring.com provides a central online location 24 hours a day to find information relevant to the Spring TX Community. The web site is located at http://www.explorespring.com.

About Houston WAHMS
Houston Work at Home Mom is a networking organization for mothers who are striving to open, grow or establish a home-based business. Launching in January 2007, this local organization is for those in business for themselves. After several months of being up and running, our membership has grown to 44 members from different direct sales and work from home companies. The web site is located at http://www.houstonwahms.com.

If we just consider the traditional gift voucher or card which someone has actually paid the retailer full face value for, this is excellent business for the retailer for a number of reasons:

• there will almost certainly be a delay between purchase and spend when the retailer can earn interest on the money
• a proportion of vouchers and cards will be lost or simply never spent - pure profit
• many customers when they come to spend the voucher will exceed the value - increased sales
• customers who do not usually shop in a particular store may be encouraged in - increased customer base

Technologically there are three main approaches:

• traditional paper pre-printed vouchers - many will have serial numbers and scanable barcodes and stolen vouchers can be cancelled
• vouchers printed at the till with scanable barcodes - these don't look as pleasing but are easily tracked by EPOS systems and don't exist before issue so therefore cannot be stolen
• gift cards which can be charged with money at the till, the value usually being stored in a central database - these arguably look the most pleasing and are certainly marketing as being superior for presents. Gift cards can also be precharged to be sold away from the till, most often in so called "gift card malls", where a retailer offers a selection of other retailers' cards in return for commission.

I used all three types this weekend with equal success.

The third annual Retail Gift Cards Europe Conference lasting two full days in London in September is testament to how big this business is and considers the details and challenges of setting up a scheme. It also reports on creative ways of marketing gift cards. Even retailers with successful schemes might find some new ideas.

In the meantime, clear out your house, find out what you've got and go on a spending spree !

Amazing amazingness from Reciprocity's Flickr photostream.  He creates images using only light, plastic/glass, and a camera with no lens.  Gorgeous!  [via NotCot]

I found the fascinating I Hate Perfume site months ago and have yet to decide which enticing bottle(s) to choose.  Names such as "I Am A Dandelion" and "Greenbrier 1968" are evocative and most have stories behind their creation.  (I hate perfume too, by the way.  I am 27 and have found very few that I like.)  [via NotCot]

Beautiful photos of a giant Japanese sewer system.  [via NotCot]

I haven't tried Bitter Betty's strawberry lime jam recipe yet, but the flavors sound perfect together!

Lovely reuse of leftovers Starbucks cards at OCD Knitter.  [via Craft]

How hard would you laugh if somebody served you milk from this pitcher?!  [via NotCot]

Enjoy!

Sluggish economy and the high rise in gas prices got you feeling broke? Well, don't let it happen to you! Get a free Best Buy or Circuit City gift card by just answering a few simple questions.

Today's topic: Book-swapping. Do you do it? What site(s) do you use? How did you find out about them? What do you think of them? Do you use LT's book-swapping column feature for information on what to swap? Do you participate in any of the LT communities that discuss bookswapping, like the Bookmooch group for example?

I certainly do book-swapping, how else could I have such a magnificent Mt. TBR? I'm grateful for BookMooch, because without it I wouldn't have found LibraryThing, and without LT I wouldn't be blogging. I heard about BookMooch on NBC's Today Show, when they'd had a segment on free and almost free sites on the internet. The name "BookMooch" was catchy and easy to remember, which is a good thing because it was a week or so before I finally got around to signing up.

From BookMooch, I found LibraryThing through the "LibraryThing add" button. After a month or so on LT, I found out about PaperBackSwap, which is different enough from BookMooch to warrant both accounts. I'm very thankful for LibraryThing, because through the "other places to find ARCs" thread (now ARC Junkies group... YaY!) I found a lot of opportunities to get ARCs, and finally graduated to a blog, and more books than I could read in 2 years snowed in and alone!

I like the LT swap column fair enough, though it's rarely accurate, and includes the UK only sites in the "books available" numbers. I do participate and enjoy the BookMooching group on LT. My current favorite BM thread is the "Book search for friends" one.

I not only enjoy getting books, but also sending them out to people who I know have been dying to read a book I've enjoyed, usually... though there was one book I was so glad to get out of my house (it was the worse book I've ever read).

Don't forget to enter to win a $20 Borders Gift Card... or a $10... and now that there are over 500 entries, a $5 gift card is on the table! If we hit 600, I'll add another $10, and at 700 another $5! That'll make $50 in My First Ever Giveaway!