Category: Program

I don’t usually come back to topics on this blog, which is… absurd, considering how often one comes back to topics in life. And one of the topics I’ve come back to recently is sweepstakes.

It’s lost some of its novelty since the last time I wrote about it – I’m definitely less excited about free paper towels – but it’s still neat to peruse. I’ve been using a different aggregator, too, Sweepstakes Fanatics, which is laid out so that it’s way easier to tell what each giveaway is for, at a glance, and it marks the items that have been added in the last day. (They take weekends off, so there won’t be any of those right now.) The added convenience has definitely been helpful, as someone who prefers to casually scroll through sweepstakes when I bored.

Casual or not, I continue to have opinions. Last time, I talked about website experiences and travel daydreams, which are still my preferred subset of the bunch, and recently I’ve been thinking more about the actual mechanics of each of them. Some companies exclusively offer the cruise – you’re on the hook for actually getting to it, shore excursions, etc. etc. Some offer the cruise, the airfare, a hotel room the night before embarking, ground transfers… And they all have their own terms and conditions for by when the trip should be. Of course, the targeted trips are way more specific – there’s not a lot of flexibility when it comes to music festivals or sports.

“What does it look like to believe you can win?” was my topic last time. The delight of raw possibility. “What does it look like to win?” I’d like to ask. Do you want to spend a week in the Caribbean enough to pay for airfare? Do you want to spend two nights in California, where just about everything is covered and your itinerary is pre-planned? Do you want to spend specifically February 12-15 in Milan, Italy, to watch hockey? The options are pretty endless.

Ok, so it’s a fairly loose use of the term “around the world.” What we’ve got are live bird cams, courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and I’m defining “around the world” as “it’s almost always daylight in one of them!” They run around the clock, regardless, so you can always check in in Ithaca (New York), either of their two feeders in Panama, the one in Montana, and – my ‘light out when it’s night here’ – the one they have in New Zealand, watching the Northern Royal Albatross! There are a number of other cameras that are either currently off or retired, for which you can still go through the archives, and highlights for the active feeders too, if you prefer that to watching live.

Friends, I’m a big believer in micro-dosing bad decisions. Have some small vices here and there, at a scale where it doesn’t matter and won’t blow up in your face, so you don’t make all your bad decisions at once and explosively. Venting the saucepan, etc. etc. I have a similar rule for hope.

My standing hypothesis is that the stereotypical midlife crisis (see: buying a car) is an abrupt expression of needing something to look forward to, or at least the idea of a something forward to engage positively with. I think most of us could use a not-quite-midlife crisis right now, without the raw expenses of purchasing a vehicle. My solution? Free-to-enter sweepstakes.

In the perpetual vein of if it’s free to use, it’s because you’re the product, sweepstakes are a marketing ploy built either on garnering contact info to advertise towards, or buying your attention outright with the prospect of free stuff. If you’re willing to field that, there are many websites that dedicate themselves to compiling the links, and the one I’ve taken recently to is The Freebie Guy! Which also covers actual freebies and steep discounts, but I’ve only paid attention to the sweepstakes, because window shopping Free Paper Towels For A Year or a trip to Universal is an enrichment activity. (There were, when I first checked, four or five different trips to Universal up for grabs. They were all different promotions. My favorite was probably the Jurassic World one with the scratch-off dinosaurs, though the How To Train Your Dragon rendition of Flappy Bird came in close second.)

Interestingly, if you partake of the daily entry options at their optimal frequency, you get to be familiar with the aesthetics, daydreams, and the user interfaces, until you have opinions on all of them. Such it is that I forgot to enter “the pepperoni one” (Hormel Pepperoni is giving out a most-expenses-paid trip to somewhere) (“somewhere” is four different locations, and which you enter for is your pick) before midnight Eastern and I’m sad about it. It was one of the first sweepstakes I ever entered, and it closes tonight! The march of time is alarming. I’ll miss window shopping that trip to Cancún.

(Obligatory disclaimer that if you enter for a big-ticket item, like a car, be prepared for the income tax. That is a thing that exists.)

I am, tragically, deep in the delights of audiobooks, new games, etc. etc., such that tearing myself away to write this post was an exercise of will. But! They raise an excellent point. Most of my distractions at the moment are a product of our library’s Summer Challenge, and my participation therein, trying to finish enough items by the end of July to win prizes, and completing the per-household Bingo card for chances at more! This has done exactly what it was intended to, and forced me to take stock of what library resources I’m not making full use of yet. Here’s what I’ve learned:

-Your library likely has a staggering amount of online resources! Ebooks and audiobooks, yes, but also potentially music, movies, TV shows, and ours even offers access to Great Courses! Which are well-regarded, but definitely expensive.

-Along with checkout resources, there are databases for language learning, practice written driver’s tests, and information resources for finding books you like! These will vary wildly depending on your library, and they’re definitely worth getting to know.

-There are back corner sections of physical resources you had no idea exist. I checked out a how-to-read-Braille kit last year, because Experience Kits were on the Bingo sheet. We have physical media for audiobooks, board games, and a not-zero amount of video game cartridges – I didn’t even know there was a Lego The Incredibles game!

-There’s a good chance your library’s digital media covers more languages than its physical media does. If you’re looking for practice, e-media is your friend!

-The library program usually has something neat going on. That may seem obvious, but I periodically forget to check and then surprise myself by the summer concerts or presentations they’ve got going on. There really is something for everyone.

-I can’t speak for anyone else’s regions, but if you’re in northern Illinois, it’s worth checking to see if your library partakes of the Explore More Illinois or Museum Adventure Pass programs, both of which can get you admission and/or discounts to a whole host of local attractions. We checked off that Bingo spot by going to the Ellwood House Museum in DeKalb, which I may write about separately. It’s a great way to find museums you didn’t know existed!

I adore our library and make use of its resources constantly, and I’m sure it still has features I don’t know. So take a moment, and see what you have to work with!