Last week, I announced a drawing for a copy of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and I had some very enthusiastic responses. Unfortunately, more people wrote in specifically asking that I pretty please never ever send them that book than people who actually wanted to enter the drawing.

*kaff*

And the winner is… Plonkee, at Plonkee.com! Congratulations! Now, everybody else, go over to his site and congratulate him on his brave literary decisions.

Next time, we have a book on the Quarter-Life Crisis… cross your fingers for me that it’s an improvement, won’t you?

Hey folks, before the weekend hits us full force, I just wanted to remind you that we have a book give away in progress. Everything you need to know is posted here, submissions close this coming Monday evening, and the winner will be announced Tuesday.

That’s it. See you all Monday!

Due to “some hard disk issues” on our DreamHost server yesterday, Living Behind the Curve was inaccessible for the majority of the day. Everything seems to have been resolved, but please bear with us while we perform some post-crash cleanup. Today’s Goat-Free Simplicity post will be up within a few hours.

Every Thursday is Goat-Free Simplicity Day at Living Behind the Curve.

I hate mornings with an unbridled passion usually reserved for dental work, flat tires, sewage backups, and bad hard drives. My circadian rhythm’s complete disregard for daylight would have me wide awake around noon, doing my best work around 10 PM, and sailing off into dreamland sometime close to 3 AM.

My current lifestyle does not lend itself well to my night owl ways. I need to be as functional for my hour-long commute at 7 AM as I am when I leave class at 10 PM. I’ve struggled with this cycle my entire life — my mother reports that getting me up for school was a Herculean task — and it wasn’t until recently that I began to fight back. When I made the decision to fit 30 minutes of exercise into my daily schedule, it was painfully obvious where that time needed to fit — I needed to become a morning person.

Would you like to know my secret? The one thing that turns me bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 5:30 AM?

The secret is that there is no secret. There is nothing in this world, including an IV of double-brewed espresso, that can make me happy to be awake at that time of day. Every single morning, I grumble as I put on my sneakers, snarl when I fill my water bottle, and say things to my elliptical machine that I wouldn’t dare send to PostSecret. And yet somehow I do it. Every single day, I muster motivation from the depths of my brain and I get my butt out of bed.

I’m still half-asleep when I shower in the morning, and I still can’t listen to podcasts on my way to work, because listening to people read puts me to sleep. (Fortunately for everyone else on the road, the local shock jocks are enough to keep me amused and awake.) Having that extra time in the morning, however, has enough benefits to keep me coming back for more. I’ve found that starting my day off with a little cardio keeps the blood flowing to my brain on long days, and that the combination of exercise and stretching has done wonders for my fibromyalgia. Above all, there’s a certain sense of accomplishment. Not only do I feel good, I’ve added an extra 30-45 minutes to my day without skipping a beat.

So there you have it. My secret to living the early life is to accept mornings for the hideous creatures they are, and concede that it’s OK for misery to be part of the process. I’d love to hear how you cope with mornings — just don’t expect a coherent response from me before 10 AM.

Image courtesy of Morgue File.

Every Monday is Intents and Purchases day at Living Behind the Curve.

On Saturday, we had the pleasure of attending a family picnic at my grandparents’ house. When I was small, picnics like this were commonplace, and the entire neighborhood would arrive on Sunday afternoons for fresh local corn and burgers or pizza made lovingly from kits provided by Charlie K’s, the pizza stand at the farmer’s market.

Those days are long gone, but I found great joy in watching my baby sister toddle around the yard, getting into mischief behind the shed just like my brother and I used to. (Yes, sister. She and I are almost exactly 27 and a half years apart.) I chased her around all day, and in addition to some sore muscles, I got some great pictures. Two of them in particular are so nice that I wanted to have them blown up to 5×7 and 8×10 prints. My printer is good, but it’s not quite that good, so I popped online to research the cost of online print services.

All told, it took me about 2 hours of research to find a price I was happy with. I found I could not get an accurate quote (cost to print + shipping + time) unless I created an account on each site, uploaded the files and added them to my shopping cart. I would not normally spend 2 hours to save a few pennies, but some of the prices differed so greatly that I felt the research was warranted.

For four 5×7 prints and two 8×10s, this is what I found (delivery methods and times noted):

• Snapfish: $11.26, shipped direct, 3-5 days + processing time
• CVS Photo Center: $13.94, available for in-store pickup in 1-2 business days; $15.83 shipped direct, 2-4 days + shipping time
• Flickr: $8.03 shipped direct, 5-7 days; $12.34 available for in-store pickup at my local Target in one hour (they do not offer non-express printing for in-store pickup)
• Clark: $10.69 shipped direct, 3-5 business days + processing time
• KMart Photo Center: $10.11, available for in-store pickup in 1-2 business days
• Walmart: $6.24, available for in-store pickup in 7-10 days; $7.89, shipped direct in 5-7 days

In the end, I purchased the direct ship package from Walmart, because it was the most cost-effective. I paid the extra $1.20 to have the photos shipped because I’m impatient — according to their estimates, I’ll get them faster that way. I also know that Walmart is a landmine of financial temptation, and by spending the $1.20 now, I may actually be saving money.

While doing some last-minute fact-checking for this post, I came across Winkflash. Their prices are great ($6.03 for my 6 prints), and from the looks of their site, they appear to be a relatively new company. Their WYSIWYG-type upload interface is a nested javascript file browser that, while buggy, was easier to use than any of the interfaces I encountered on the other sites. (It seemed that all of the sites used one of two basic interfaces, actually, so Winkflash was also a breath of fresh air.) They also promise a 24 hour processing window, except during busy holiday seasons.

If you’ve ordered prints from Winkflash, I’d love to hear your experiences. The reviews I’ve come across have been indicative of the love/hate bipolarity typical in online reviews.