I've been a little busy lately and I've fell behind a bit so this is a catch all post of sorts. I promised to stay dedicated to posting frequent until the end of the year at least, so I need to start doing that. Not a lot of card related stuff today, but I do have a couple to show, but I'll get to those in a bit, first let's get sauced.
Lord I apologize for that joke. And I bet Larry The Cable Guy probably would like to apologize for this BBQ sauce.
I tried some of it the other day, and while I'm not a sauce expert, I just wasn't a fan of it. I did try it on some chicken in the oven though it it wasn't bad, it just wasn't good as a dipping sauce. I got the bottle during a family gathering before Thanksgiving. I always like trying different products, but needless to say I doubt I get another bottle of this. Though I think they've stopped selling the Billy Butler BBQ sauce locally so I need to find a new brand. For now I'll stick with whatever's on sale.
Something I forgot to post before Thanksgiving and Black Friday is something else I got recently.
Gottadeal is a website I use mostly during the Holiday season, but has great deals year round. It is a site that posts about sales and such and I've been a member of the site since 2005. I got hooked on their Black Friday message board and go back each year. The post the ad scans before a lot of sites, and the only one I really trust. Anyways, each year they have contests you can win. Luckily I usually win every year, and in years past, it has always been a shirt. I think I have about 6 of them. This year they decided to go a different route and give out a prize pack instead. I'm not complaining because its still cool. I got a stocking cap I can wear when its cold (it snowed today, but didn't really accumulate), and the cap is really warm. I also got some business cards, some magnets, some stickers, and decals. Also a couple ink pens, which I've already used as well and a bottle opener. I have another one from them, but don't seem to have many bottles I need to open. As a bonus they also included an Amazon Gift card, with one lucky winner getting $100. I only got $5, but I was still happy because besides being free money, it also allowed me to get just a bit closer to free shipping without signing up for Prime (last time I did, I forgot to cancel it and was charged 80 bucks). As for the Gottadeal site, I really do love the site, even if I didn't win the contests. besides the blogging community, its about the only other online community I feel welcome in (I mean besides TCDB, which I consider an extension of the blogging community).
PERRY THE PLATYPUS? WHERE DID YOU COME FROM?
No, seriously, I have no idea where this came from but it just showed up one day inside the house. I'm thinking about making it my version of Elf on The Shelf, which oddly enough seemed to disappear about the same time this appeared. Either way, I like Perry, so I'm not mad about it.
It's been a while since I posted this shelf, and I decorated it for football season. I moved the bobbleheads and added some helmets. I have more, but they might be in storage. The Chiefs car helmet was my dad's, which I just saw for the first time this year. As for the Bud Light helmet, I was so excited when I found that also in my dad's collection. I forgot he had one of these, as I was so used to seeing the red Budweiser helmets. The problem now is that I misplaced the red helmet, or else I could display the Bud Bowl helmets and thing back to my childhood.
As for the other items, they are stayovers , but I might switch out the Clemente soon for something else. Not that I'm tired of seeing it, but I'd like it to sit up straighter and it keeps falling. I might look into getting a bigger shelf at some point too just so I can add a few more items.
So let's get into some cards.
The new SI For Kids came in the other day and I was pleasantly surprised to find a Chiefs player made it on one of the cards. Marcus Peters is the real deal. I fell asleep before the end of the game today, but I heard about the crazy ending. Atlanta scored a TD to go up by one, and instead of kicking an XP, they went for two. Matty Ice threw the pass on the conversion and Eric Berry intercepted running it all the way back for two points, and the Chiefs won by 1 point. Unreal. It was Berry's second INT of the day and his second score. He had more fantasy points today than most of the guys on my team did.
I like the variety of cards in this issue, and also happy to get the Kris Bryant, but to be honest I would have loved to see them have Ben Zobrist get a card. I usually keep a few and give the rest to a friend, but I might keep them all this month.
I won this card off Lisita. Truth is, that I haven't watched much wrestling as of late. As I write this the WWE has a PPV on and I'm not too concerned keeping up to the minute on it like usual. Since WWE split the brands again, I've just lost interest. It's not because of the split, but I've just lost interest. However whenever I know Nia Jax has a segment I will tune in. For whatever reason, I've really become a fan of hers. Like her T-shirt on WWE Shop site says, "I'm not like most girls". She doesn't present herself like the other female wrestlers, and that's what makes me like her more. WWE tried so hard to change the image of the division from DIVAS but for the most part, none of the other female wrestlers have really toned down the Divas persona's yet. Throw in the fact that only 2 wrestlers seem to be fighting for the title, and Nia Jax is a nice alternative. Plus I like that in 2016 WWE is going back to having squash matches with enhancement talents, aside from that bozo Ellsworth. See, I still keep up, I just don't watch. Maybe next year I'll stop keeping up. Until then, I'll proudly display this Nia Jax card.
Okay, so above I mentioned I use Gottadeal for the holiday season. I did this year too, and since I had a Walmart GC, I used it to get some Black Friday items, not all have arrived yet but a couple have (plus a bath mat, which I did need but not really picture worthy). I thought I'd so off what I got so far.
One item I was looking at was a wireless mouse for my desktop. I normally would switch the one I have between the laptop and the desktop, and thought a second one would cause for less wear and tear and also save time and trouble. As I found a few deals, up popped a combo wireless mouse and keyboard. I have a keyboard already, I got it at the Dollar Tree of all places and was one of those glow in the dark ones they tried to sell on TV many years ago. I like it, but the cord does prevent a lot of movement. So when I saw this was a wireless set for just a few bucks more I thought about it. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it was a great deal, and I should get it. The clincher for me is that it only uses one USB port, and I could put it in the back of the computer so it not only saves a slot but it is hidden. I've already tried it out, and the keyboard works like it should, and the mouse seems a bit jumpy, but I think I will get use to it. I think it was a great deal for the 14 or so bucks I spent on it. Now I need to find my old mousepad so I won't have to switch that back and forth. If I can't find it, I'll make a new one from Shutterfly, or just look at Dollar Tree where I found my old one. The one pictured I mad on Shutterfly and I like a lot, but not sure I want to spend much money on another one. I might if I get a free offer which I figure I will soon.
Finally is the item I really wanted and the reason for the title. I finally got a Roku. This model is one of their newest ones, and a Walmart exclusive, the Roku Express Plus. The difference between the regular Express and the Plus model is that this one allows you to use the old red and white cables to connect it. That doesn't affect me really but this one was cheaper on Black Friday so its the one I got. I want to see if I could hook it up to a VCR or DVD recorder and maybe record stuff that way, but for now I'm just messing around with it.
I set it up on Friday night and have played around with it a bit. I got an amazing deal on it for only 25 bucks. Normally 40 bucks, it would I think be well worth it at that price even. Though I must say the reason I jumped on it when it came back in stock (it was out of stock for a while) was that this model and the Roku Streaming Stick were both on sale and both were selling crazy fast. I heard the stick might be a bit faster and a better deal (I saw it for 35 bucks instead of the normal 50) but since both were selling out fast and I wanted anyone I could get, I got this. The deals I got with it were 2 months free of CBS All Access, which I think I won't use because you can only cancel by phone, and honestly I hate using the phone, and since I still have cable hear for now, I don't really need it. I also got 2 free months Hulu, which I will try before the middle of January when it expires. I also got 2 free months of Showtime as well. I also plan to use that before it expires next month. I'm waiting until a few things I really would like to see come on, and right now all I see on there is a Madonna concert and something else and I can do without either.
After I ordered it though, I got an email from Walmart saying since I bought from them, I also get 3 free movies from VUDU, which I do already have an account with so that's good. The bad part is they pick the movies, and none are any I care about too much. One of them is Taken, another is a kids movie, maybe one of the Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs movies, and I forgot the other one. But hey, its free, so who am I to complain. I do need to reinstall the app though as the movies I already have wouldn't load yesterday. I was going to watch one of the 15 I already have through the app.
In addition, I also got a free 2 month trial to Sling also. I haven't activated it yet, but I have until April 1st or so, so I might wait. My friend loves Sling, and I wanted to try it out anyways. If I like it enough I might get rid of cable, but there are a few channels missing that I would still like to have.
So since I haven't activated all the free offers I got yet (which by my count is upwards of 80 bucks), I'm checking out the free channels for now. I never planned to buy channels or anything on Roku at first at least until I tried out the free stuff, and its a bit of a learning curve but I'm catching on. I wanted the Roku for two reasons, first really to mess around with and also to see if my internet was fast enough for it, I'm still at the low end of internet speed as of now. The second reason is I am wanting to teach my mom how to use it so we can dump cable and maybe use Sling or something cheaper than the cable we have already. Before I teach her I need to test out the channels. One thing we both like the idea of is watching local news from various places. So I've already installed a few apps for that.
I've added a couple news channels from Kansas City, St. Louis, and Springfield, but also added apps like NewsOn and Livestream so I can watch more. Honestly, I could probably be happy with just that for now, but I hope they get more local channels like in the Columbia market even though I get those now. If we do dump cable, I don't think an antenna will pick all them up and the thing we'd miss the most is the news.
In addition to the news apps, I also got a Weather app. Its Weather Nation and it works good. After that I tested out some random apps, and so far have been drawn to Crackle for no other reason than watching Sports Jeopardy. Beyond that I have about 20 more channels added so far ranging from church to Christmas to cartoons and such. I watched the first episode of the Beverly Hillbillies the other day to mainly test it out, and it worked good. I do think I'll need to upgrade my Internet a bit, but I had already planned to do that anyway. In a few months I bet I'll get around to getting Netflix or something. For now the free channels will work, and I can find stuff on Youtube. I think I will like it.
One thing that was easier than I thought it would be was the remote. Not many buttons so not much to get use to. I was also surprised at the size of the Roku. Its almost the size of a flash drive, its really small.
Well, its getting late and I want to test it out some more, so if you have channel suggestions let me know. Thanks for reading and have a great night.
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