Sunday Morning Wreck

It can happen in a second.

Darryl and I had not warning this morning as we began our weekly shopping trip. We parked in the parking lot of CVS and headed towards the store, coupons and shopping list in hand ready to go bargain hunting.

As we came out of the store we heard a loud crash and we looked up to see a car veer off the road heading straight down the embankment towards our car.

No one seemed in control of the vehicle that seemed to be coasting almost in slow motion. While you wanted to run to the car to make sure the driver was OK you were frozen in place partly out of shock and partly because the car was still moving and you knew that you should wait for the vehicle to stop to render aid.

The car barely missing our car and came to a stop as it hit the curb of the CVS.

The car was badly damaged and the driver, a woman, said she couldn't move and we told her that she should try. We had already called 911 as had the other people who had witnessed the accident. The next thing we knew an ambulance and a fire truck had shown up.

We stayed with the woman speaking with her letting her know that help was there. Then after she was loaded onto the ambulance we were questioned by the police as to what we observed.

We were told that the woman in the vehicle that had coasted off the road had broken her ankles but that she would be OK.

I came away shaken by the incident because it could have ended so differently. Life is just so fragile and sometimes we get a wake-up call to remind us that life is precious.

Contracts Are In

Contracts came today. When I walked into the faculty room the long sheaves of paper poked out of the teacher boxes like pale yellow jonquils in the red Georgia clay. I pulled mine from my box and stared at the Notary Stamp. It’s now official I will be back for yet another year.

Last year I was biting at the bit to leave so I could find some place closer to home. Home being Acworth, my Barbie Dreamhouse home. I had been so frustrated that I couldn’t seem to get a position in another school despite the fact that they seemed to be throwing new schools up like concert flyers on telephone poles. One school seemed larger and grander than the next and certainly they needed more teachers.

Now of course I’m lucky I didn’t get a job at one of those schools. I’ve lost that home. I would have lost my seniority. It was truly a blessing in disguise but I didn’t realize it then.

Now that Darryl’s lost his job I find a certain peace knowing that for at least this next year I have a job. It will be my eighth year at RHS, the longest I have ever stayed at one job before. When I was younger I changed jobs sometimes twice a year. I would work at this restaurant or that retail store chasing nickel an hour raises. Even when I became a secretary I might stay at a location for two years before I was ready to move on to greener pastures.

Now I’m looking at my eighth year in a single school. This means that at the end of that year I will have seen two sets of students who started out with me in the ninth grade. It’s an interesting perspective. You watch them shuffle in uncertainly that first day of their Freshman year. By the time their Senior year rolls around you’ve watched them get their license, attend their prom, and then finally you wonder if that’s really the same kid you knew for years ago as they walk across the stage to receive their diploma.

There’s another wrinkle in the phone call story from earlier this week. One of my students had walked in just as the phone was ringing and said, “I just have this feeling that phone call is for me.” Yes I’m certain he did. The student at the other end of the phone told me that another teacher was busy right that second and asked him to call me to send my student down to his classroom. Since that teacher was the swimming coach, I thought it might make sense that he might ask a student to call because he was supervising kids in the pool. I sent the young man down to the teacher’s classroom.

Two days later I ran into the coach. “How long did you keep G because he never returned to class?” “What? I didn’t send for him.” The teacher replied. “REALLY?”

The trap slammed shut. I wrote the student up but the difficult question was, who was the student who called? Wouldn’t you know his classmates had heard I had figured out the deception and asked me if I had written up P also. P is not my student. I didn’t even know that P had called me. “Yes. Of course I wrote him up. That was crazy that he would call and think I wouldn’t check on it.” Two of my students laughed and said “Yeah that really was stupid that P would do that.” SCORE!!!!!!!!!!! So I wrote him up also delivering the referral to the Assistant principal personally. I’m certain P feels that his friend G snitched. I don't think I will go out of my way to correct this perception.

Today is also candy day. Every week until the end of September, Mars is giving away a candy bar. I won one last week. I hope I win one again this week. I posted it on ThriftyMaven but I wonder how much traffic it will get.

Here are the blog contests I entered today:

Prize: $50 Red Lobster gift card.

Prize: Pair of eyeglasses from EyeBuyDirect.com [excludes designer frames and sunglasses].

Prize: $25 Build-a-Bear Workshop Bear Bucks gift card.

Prize: HomeFree Treats Organic Cookies sampler pack.

Prize: One-year supply of all small & mighty detergent, The Apprentice Complete Season 1 DVD, autographed photograph of Donald Trump and You're Fired! promotional items (ARV $160).

Prize: 8-day/7-night trip for two to a JetBlue Getaways destination city of winner's choice (ARV $3,296).

Prize: Flip Ultra Series II Camcorder (ARV $149.99).

Confessions of a Thrifty Maven

Rome News-Tribune Features Editor
SAvila@RN-T.com / 706-290-5255

In tough economic times, most people are looking to save a few bucks here and there. But Rome High School teacher Catherine Copeland’s home is stocked with brand new electronics and fancy gadgets and she’s taking trips all over the country, even being picked up at the airport in limousines. The catch is that she isn’t paying for any of it.

Copeland, who teaches business at Rome High, has been sweeping since she was 19 years old.

“Sweeping is when you enter sweepstakes,” Copeland said. “A long time ago I discovered that with patience and perseverance you can win a lot of stuff just by entering sweepstakes and contests.”

And for most of her adult life, Copeland has enjoyed the thrill of sweepstakes and contests and the chance at winning prizes and gifts.

She started with call-in radio contests and won more than 100 albums and saw 70 concerts including Billy Joel, Elton John and Queen for free.

Copeland then graduated to “snail mail,” filling out 3x5 cards and mailing them out to various sweepstakes.

And now, the Internet offers her thousands of choices for entering contests.

She is a member of the Georgia Peaches Sweepers Club as well as onlinesweepers.com. Through those groups, she shares information with other avid sweepers and gets information on thousands of contests.

“On average I enter about 500 sweepstakes per day,” she said. “But you have programs that make doing that very easy. It’s mindless. I could sit and watch television and send those out.”

There is also a big difference between sweepstakes and contests, as Copeland is quick to point out.

“Sweepstakes usually just require you to send in your name and address,” she said. “Contests require some sort of skill.”

Copeland has entered and won contests for recipes, photography, videos and even essays.

And that time spent has certainly paid off. Her home is filled with her prizes including radios, cameras, laptops, printers, gift cards and iPods.

She has won trips to the Bahamas, Disney World, Aruba, St. Lucia, several U.S. cities and even as far away as Scotland.

Her most unusual prize, she guesses, was a double ghost tour of New Orleans and Chicago.

And the most valuable?

“We sweepers have what we call ‘hall of fame’ wins,” she said. “Those are prizes that are worth at least $5,000. I’ve won three of those. Two were trips and one was an electronics package.”

But Copeland isn’t keeping all the wealth to herself. She’s taken to the Internet with a blog, thriftymaven.com, in an effort to share all her thrifty secrets with the community.

“The blog is a byproduct of what I teach my students,” she said. “I’m thrifty. I teach about good business and saving money and marketing and company strategies. So the blog is somewhere people can go to learn about some of those things.

Copeland blogs about everything from how and where to find deals to contests and sweepstakes and even coupons.

Readers can get special promotions, recipes as well as product reviews.

“I just want people to be aware of these money-saving strategies,” she said. “With rising joblessness, housing woes and other economic problems people are looking for ways to cut costs.”

Today is the day that my article appeared in the Rome News Tribune. Some 56 new subscribers signed up in one day. That's about the same number of people who signed up in one day after I began the Home Depot Contest.

I had posted that I had appeared in the paper on OLS and a couple of people were upset because I talked about sweeping and about OLS. They felt that this would keep them from winning because more people would sign up. That was fine. I guess I understand that. I do know that most of the people I turn on to sweeping generally lose interest quickly. They might enter a couple of sweeps and that's it, they're through with it. See I told you I never win!

One person though really lashed into me. She wanted to know why I talked about entering sweeps mindlessly while watching TV. Well if that person talked to my husband she would know that I don't watch TV in the sense that I stare mindlessly at the screen. I have the TV on, I listen to it, as I hit roboform. The reporter had wanted to know how in the world I entered 500 sweeps a day. I had chatted with the reporter about sweeping and I showed him Roboform. He thought that was pretty cool. He said "I guess you could just do that while you are entering sweeps." I said yes. The reporter had gotten the name of OLS wrong and he had put the mindlessly watching TV thing in his article and this bothered the heck out of this person on OLS.

Not once, but three separate times she came at me. Finally I had enough and I confronted her. She had been so snarky and then she said "Why are you being so defensive?" Uh hello? Are you following the same conversation I am I asked? As always I took it personally. So I told her look, some people will always believe they are right. It doesn't matter what is said THEY are always right so "YOU ARE RIGHT." She stopped posting. After that a few people posted how happy they were about my article.

So wish me luck, I'm still growing my blog.

Contracts Are In

Contracts came today. When I walked into the faculty room the long sheaves of paper poked out of the teacher boxes like pale yellow jonquils in the red Georgia clay. I pulled mine from my box and stared at the Notary Stamp. It’s now official I will be back for yet another year.

Last year I was biting at the bit to leave so I could find some place closer to home. Home being Acworth, my Barbie Dreamhouse home. I had been so frustrated that I couldn’t seem to get a position in another school despite the fact that they seemed to be throwing new schools up like concert flyers on telephone poles. One school seemed larger and grander than the next and certainly they needed more teachers.

Now of course I’m lucky I didn’t get a job at one of those schools. I’ve lost that home. I would have lost my seniority. It was truly a blessing in disguise but I didn’t realize it then.

Now that Darryl’s lost his job I find a certain peace knowing that for at least this next year I have a job. It will be my eighth year at RHS, the longest I have ever stayed at one job before. When I was younger I changed jobs sometimes twice a year. I would work at this restaurant or that retail store chasing nickel an hour raises. Even when I became a secretary I might stay at a location for two years before I was ready to move on to greener pastures.

Now I’m looking at my eighth year in a single school. This means that at the end of that year I will have seen two sets of students who started out with me in the ninth grade. It’s an interesting perspective. You watch them shuffle in uncertainly that first day of their Freshman year. By the time their Senior year rolls around you’ve watched them get their license, attend their prom, and then finally you wonder if that’s really the same kid you knew for years ago as they walk across the stage to receive their diploma.

There’s another wrinkle in the phone call story from earlier this week. One of my students had walked in just as the phone was ringing and said, “I just have this feeling that phone call is for me.” Yes I’m certain he did. The student at the other end of the phone told me that another teacher was busy right that second and asked him to call me to send my student down to his classroom. Since that teacher was the swimming coach, I thought it might make sense that he might ask a student to call because he was supervising kids in the pool. I sent the young man down to the teacher’s classroom.

Two days later I ran into the coach. “How long did you keep G because he never returned to class?” “What? I didn’t send for him.” The teacher replied. “REALLY?”

The trap slammed shut. I wrote the student up but the difficult question was, who was the student who called? Wouldn’t you know his classmates had heard I had figured out the deception and asked me if I had written up P also. P is not my student. I didn’t even know that P had called me. “Yes. Of course I wrote him up. That was crazy that he would call and think I wouldn’t check on it.” Two of my students laughed and said “Yeah that really was stupid that P would do that.” SCORE!!!!!!!!!!! So I wrote him up also delivering the referral to the Assistant principal personally. I’m certain P feels that his friend G snitched. I don't think I will go out of my way to correct this perception.

Today is also candy day. Every week until the end of September, Mars is giving away a candy bar. I won one last week. I hope I win one again this week. I posted it on ThriftyMaven but I wonder how much traffic it will get.

Here are the blog contests I entered today:

Prize: $50 Red Lobster gift card.

Prize: Pair of eyeglasses from EyeBuyDirect.com [excludes designer frames and sunglasses].

Prize: $25 Build-a-Bear Workshop Bear Bucks gift card.

Prize: HomeFree Treats Organic Cookies sampler pack.

Prize: One-year supply of all small & mighty detergent, The Apprentice Complete Season 1 DVD, autographed photograph of Donald Trump and You're Fired! promotional items (ARV $160).

Prize: 8-day/7-night trip for two to a JetBlue Getaways destination city of winner's choice (ARV $3,296).

Prize: Flip Ultra Series II Camcorder (ARV $149.99).