Win a Sweepstakes

Within the last five months, I have won ten different sweepstakes. Let me start off by differentiating between a sweepstakes and a contest. A Sweepstakes is a random drawing that is completely won by luck. A contest is won as an accomplishment based on merit. Sweepstakes are an embodiment of the American Dream. You can win something for doing nothing more than filling out a form with your name, address and by living within the United States. A contest requires more active participation. For these you need to submit the best picture, recipe, description or essay. If you are skilled and willing to work a little harder, contests are easier to win due to the number of entrants. I think of myself as skilled and NOT willing to work harder, so I stick mostly to sweepstakes. I’m not really interested in writing a well-thought out essay as to why I prefer this brand of toilet paper or why these are the best insoles and how this battery has changed my life. Therefore, I primarily stick to sweepstakes.

Go To A Shooting Range

Before this excursion, I had never shot a gun in my life. That is, unless you count the BB gun that my brother got when he was thirteen. By the time that I got to shoot that gun, the barrel was bent and a BB ricocheted off of the garage that I had a target propped against and hit me in my shoulder. As a kid, I spent a lot of time home alone.  My worst fear was to have somebody attempt to break into the house while I was home. I would have imaginary knife fights while jumping off of the couch. When somebody eventually broke into our house, I wasn't home. These events led up to more scared alone time until I moved into a safer neighborhood with my mom. At the time, I was an awkwardly large kid that was afraid to put my feet on the ground when the lights were out because I didn't want to 1. step on a mouse or 2. have a mouse run over my foot. Although there were mice in the house, this never happened. Despite all of fear that I experienced when I was home alone, I've never considered a gun as a solution to help me feel more secure. I did grow up with a gun in the house, though. I don't think there were ever bullets to accompany it. Its purpose wasn't for protection, its role was more of a reminder of the harm that could come from them. This particular gun was the gun that my aunt used to commit suicide before I was born. Let me be clear; I will probably never have a gun in my house, but I'm not against there use by others. On the flip side, I doubt that I will ever be a gun advocate. I simply feel impartial on the topic. When my future brother-in-law, Nate asked me if I wanted to join him at a shooting rage a couple of days before his wedding, I was excited. As a gift to me for performing his wedding ceremony, he told me that he would also pay for me. I was even more excited.

Childish Letters From An Adult

One day, when I was looking for an empty folder that I could store one of the many recipes that I had been printing off for the Food Blog, I came across a folder that had some printouts of some things that I had written back in 1999. They were some crazy letters that were inspired by a series of 'Nut' books. In these books, a guy wrote a bunch of crazy letters to business that were funny to read. What was even better was the responses from these companies that had to treat them seriously. I thought that these were really funny and it inspired me to write a few letters of my own. I also addressed all of these letters from Dirk Williams. My thought was that not only was this a funny name, it was also a way that I could easily identify a response for one of these letters when it came in the mail. My first letter is as follows:

Left Handed Week

            Did you know that the word “sinister” originally meant left-handed? After centuries of negative association with left-handedness, it came to be associated with evil. Most people are familiar with the term ambidextrous, two right hands, but few have heard of ambisinistrous. This means two left hands, or clumsy or unskilled on both sides. I came across this word with my word of the day app, and it really stuck with me. I have always been fascinated with the fact that my dad writes with his right hand and draws with his left. It made me wonder how long it would take somebody to truly become dual-handed