One that I've thoroughly enjoyed is The White House Cookbook by Mrs. F.L. Gilette and Hugo Ziemann, Steward of the White House (1887). It's a fascinating peek into the social and culinary customs of that era. It's also a free one for Amazon Kindles.

The Bic Pens for Her are in the Pantone(r) Colors of the Year! Oh, my, it took me a while to *there* with some of the reviews. BOL, the first Q&A on that bizarre security setup: Question: Can I buy separate figures of various skin color to teach racial profiling? Answer: Luckily, with Playmobil™ playsets, all characters from other sets are interchangeable with those of another set. With sets like Liquor Store Robbery and Suicide Bomb Fiasco you can turn your security checkpoint in to a great learning tool for all ages.

There are groups out there on Facebook and other places that exist to receive products at a discounted rate in exchange for a fair and honest review. I was part of one for a while, mostly just to see how things worked. A FB friend of mine posted that a Facebook review group was looking for referrals to participate in getting low cost products, and did any of her friends wish to participate. I bought (for cheap) and reviewed 6 products before I dropped out. This is how it worked: each day a number of products were listed in a special FB page as being available. Usually each product had only a certain number of slots, so maybe 100 people or even 700 people could sign up to try a product. The idea is that if the product was something you truly wanted to try or use, you could sign up. Then we were given a discount code to use. Went to Amazon, ordered the item using the discount code. When the item arrived, I would use it for a week, and then post a review. Now the deal is you are really to use the item and post a "fair and honest" review, and then let the group know your review is posted by way of a submitted form, at which time the admins go read it to make sure it's written well with enough detail about why the product was great and gives 4-5 stars. If you can't honestly give the product 4-5 stars, you are supposed to contact an admin prior to leaving a review, at which point they advise you not to leave the review at all. So in the case where reviewers don't like products or could not give them 4-5 stars, you are not going to see any negative reviews at all. As I said, I tried 6 products before dropping out. They were truly things I wanted to try, like a bike lock and a potato masher, and bought from anywhere from $1.50 to $4. I was able to review 4 products with 4 or 5 stars, but two of them I couldn't review because they weren't up to snuff. Even though there were thousands of reviewers in this group, I did see some of the same names over and over again signing up to try new products. So you know people were buying products they might not necessarily want or need. (Maybe they were reselling them on eBay or Craigslist.) I also looked at lots of reviews for things I purchased and reviewed in this program - some reviews were very good and thoughtful, but the vast majority were sloppy and whipped out. I dropped out because I didn't want to support this system, the manic pace is hard to keep up, and I really only did it to find out how these reviews for discounted items worked. These people who seem to do it professionally must have lots of junk drawers filled with useless crap or maybe they donate a lot to Goodwill. Now if they had sold an iPad or something for $4.50, I might have stayed in a while longer. ;) While I appreciate Amazon reviews, I do now read them with a much bigger grain of salt. I was looking at an item the other day and many reviews included the same canned verbiage, so it was easy to tell they were faked.

Just wanted to update. I just got an email from the manufacturer. It said that even though this has been a very reliable product, they would like my mailing address to send a new one. They would also like to send me tags to send them the defective one to check it out. I am very happy about it. First, usually a manufacturer that does just sell wholesale sending the product instead of coupons doesn’t happen often (not that I complain often, once every three years if that) and even happier for them to have a professional look at it. I am very wary of the second lamp I have. Having the house catch fire, especially if I am not home and my dogs are locked inside is one of my biggest fears.