UPPER lower: The Wind of Change

For the record, I always thought it was “WindS of Change”, and was a little disappointed when I found out that it wasn’t.

But, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that sometimes things have to change. And, usually in hindsight (my 20/20 foe), that’s a really good thing. Or at the very least, a chaotic neutral thing, which I can totally deal with.

Today, 2 big changes are happening at Broke207. The first should be obvious:

I’ve decided to capitalize like an adult.

I know this comes as a bit of a shock to all of you (or maybe you never noticed), but last week when the tampon post ended up getting 33,000+/- page views, A LOT of people said really terrible things about my grammar/puncuation/capitalization/general writing ability. And for the most part, I was ok with that.

i’m podcast famous! also, i’m an asshole.

i’m a lucky lady. in the whole almost 3 years of this blog (my blogiversary is on the 23 if anyone wants to get wasted on cheap champagne with me), i’ve gotten nominated for stuff, got to speak at stuff, guest posted on a whole mess of wonderful bogs, and met a shitload of wonderful people.  but because i’m also an asshole ( a lucky asshole), i don’t say thank you enough.  or in this particular case, soon enough.

i’m panel of experts famous!

everyone, i’d like you to meet bettysue higgins. this spring, a friend forwarded me this article from the kennebec journal. nothing too fancy, just your garden variety article about a 54 year old secretary embezzling $166,000 from the maine trial lawyers fund. you know, the usual.

over the forthcoming weeks, more and more information would come to light regarding bettysue’s “situation”. normally, i wouldn’t  bother paying too much attention to this kind of small town scandal. but as the details regarding the case began to trickle out, things got more and more bizarre. apparently, this was not bettysue’s first foray into embezzlement, having previously hijacked funds from a both a middle school hot lunch program AND a local little league.

but that’s just the back story. here’s where things got really weird: turns out, bettysue higgins was stealing all this money so that she could level up her character in an online game called yoville (from the same jerks that have infected your facebook stream with farmville invites). bettysue may have been living in a distressed property in the middle of a foreclosure, but in yoville, she was a queen (her character’s name was actually QUEENIE. no jokes). in addition to her queening duties, she was also an active member of the YOVILLE BUSINESS LEADERS ASSOCIATION. yes folks, that is something that actually exists.

i’m channel 6 famous!

i hate watching myself on film. i hate my voice. i make funny squinty faces and wave my hands around too much… it makes me cringe. but every now and again, a girl has to get on camera for the greater good. (and no, girls gone wild does not count as the greater good).

well, i’ve been posting on the wcsh6 around town blog for a while, and a couple of weeks ago their fabulous community web producer asked me if i would be in a promo spot for the website.

scary, right? but who am i to turn down free publicity, and the opportunity to help out someone who helped me out.

the process was actually really fun and totally not traumatizing. the producer and camera man came over to my house, microphoned me up, and asked me a bunch of questions. i tried not to look like a fidgety spaz. the best part was when we were done filming and we all hung out and talked about nerd stuff. i also love that in the final cut, my apartment is heavily featured.

well, as if recording my very first (and likely last) commercial wasn’t enough…

i’m fashion blogger famous!

i promised a long long time ago, that i was going to add a budget fashion feature to the ole broke207. well, i lied! totally! i’ve been trying all year to figure out how to get it going, and i just couldn’t figure it out. i would start and stop and reconfigure, but the post just never… posted. well, a few weeks ago, i had an actual revelation! perusing a guest post on the goodwill of northern new england blog, i realized that maybe the fashion post didn’t belong on broke207, and that’s why i was having such a hard time writing it.

well, i decided to nut up and contact goodwill, and see if they were interested in a potential weekly fashion feature. you never know unless you ask, right? well, they received my idea very very kindly (thanks for being awesome michelle!), and my very first post is up today! if they like it, it will be a continuing thing. if they don’t, at least i got a totally sweet outfit for $10.49. it’s a win win!

so anyway, go and check me out, and maybe even leave a little comment love so they let me do it again. and if you’re really lucky, i can talk some of my favorite local fashion bloggers into doing it with me.

i’m coupon goddess famous!

there are a lot of crazy coupon lady websites out there (and i do me A LOT). there’s actually even one called the krazy coupon lady, that is pretty rad. but if you’ve hung around these parts long enough, you’ll realize that in my book (and coincidentally also the highlander’s book), there can be only one.  and that one, is the coupon goddess. i love her because alongside her supernatural powers with coupons, she is a margarita swilling high-heel junky with a mouth for sass. she is also constantly blowing me away with her generosity. speaking of which, she was the one who gave me my blog start way back when in 2009, when she wrote a post about me and my irreverent (and profanity filled) coupon antics. since then, she has continued to pimp my site, and just be generally all around awesome to me. i really could not ask for more… but she gave more anyway. when melanie decided to take a 10 day blog break and jaunt off to greece (lucky bitch), she asked me if i would be one of 5 lucky bloggers to fill in while she was gone. i actually got to talk to her on the phone, and did a lot of yelling SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE! afterward. i should probably apologize to my dog, he really DID NOT appreciate that.

but i digress. i wrote two posts- with proper capitalization and absolutely no swearing even (though several unfortunate typos that i am unable to correct)! one about me and how i suck at couponing (and that’s ok), and another one about a very weird experience i had with some himalayan pink salt. anyway, humongous thank you to melanie for the opportunity, and if you’re bored and want some good clean family friendly reading, you can check them out. or, if you’re really really bored, you can print them out and try to figure out where the swearing would have been had i written the posts for this site. either way, good times!

i’m guest post famous.

i’ve always wanted to write a guest post. i didn’t have any idea where, or about what,  but the honor of being asked by another blogger to write for them just seemed like it would be totally awesome. as it turns out, i was correct! the very amazing chris over at part time vagabond recently gave me the honor of writing a little article about budget travel tips that made its debut this morning. what i love about PTV is that it’s grounded in reality. it isn’t all “let’s jetset to morocco for a long weekend”. it’s about the eternal struggle between wanting to aimlessly wander the globe while still tending to the responsibilities of things like jobs and pets and property ownership. chris is all about escaping when you can, and finding adventure in even the shortest jaunt. it’s everything that is amazing about travel, translated into real life. anyway chris, you rock, and thank you for letting me get my stink all over your kick ass website!

i’m wordpress famous!

chances are if you are visiting my blog today, it’s because you got here from the wordpress.com landing page. you know, the one with the “freshly pressed” section where a random selection of blogs with provocative or interesting articles get a little pimp every few days? well, in case you’re in the 1% of my regular readers who didn’t wander here via the wordpress train, I AM ON THAT SHIT RIGHT NOW! (and i’m totally peeing my pants about it).

it’s funny actually, because a few weeks ago, i read an article entitled “5 ways to get featured on freshly pressed“. and i was all like “hell yeah i wanna be on freshly pressed”, what do i need to do? apparently, the answer was something about no typos and no adult content. considering that my blog is written entirely in lowercase, and is riddled (and i do mean RIDDLED) with profanity, i figured my chances of being picked were pretty much slim to none (leaning toward the none side). apparently, i was wrong. all i needed to do was write an inflammatory article about not paying for the education of my imaginary future children.

as it turns out, a lot of people have A LOT to say on the subject (some people’s responses were longer than my post!). at 62 comments and counting, i’m feeling completely overwhelmed (in an awesome way) by the response, but even more shocked that the majority of it has been positive. ok, one guy called me an idiot, and another person told me that my uneducated daughters would grow up to be whores (hand to god, you can not make this shit up), but mostly i was feeling the solidarity of so many people who just wished that they had put the secondary education on pause for a minute while they did some growing up.

i have every intention of answering all 62+ of those comments as completely and thoughtfully as i can. that said, it will probably take me a while.  so while you wait, in the absence of any neil diamondesque elevator music, please just accept my humble thanks for coming to visit and bothering to have anything to say (good or bad) about my insane ramblings (or if my thanks isn’t enough to keep you busy, maybe you can go look at this for a while). this has been the best blog day ever.

i’m newspaper famous!

which is probably not that big of a surprise, since i’m fairly certain that’s how the majority of you got here today (thank you for coming!). but anyway, the very awesome justin ellis over at the PPH interviewed me on friday, and here i am in monday’s paper (print & online versions)! i am pleased to report that i didn’t make too big of an ass out of myself, and that he was able to pull out at least a couple of quotes that didn’t involve overt swearing or the word vagina. as a final testament to his awesomeness, justin decided to close with the voltron quote. the voltron quote! who said that newspapers were dead?

i’m iphone famous!

prepare for some serious horn tooting! i’ve done little bits and pieces of graphic design for the totally awesome local vegetarian cooking show delicious tv for about a year now, so how cool was it when they wanted me to help them design  their first iphone app! well, it’s on the market, and it was actually featured in the portland press herald this morning. woot!

veg-ez is packed full 50 great recipes & 32 videos from the show (all nicely sorted by category). what i love about the delicious tv approach, is that they’re not militant about vegetarianism/veganism. they’re not trying to convert anyone, they just want to make the concept of meatlessness more accessible to everyone. they make beautiful comfort food, accept the existence of dairy products (though they always give vegan alternatives), and are presenting their recipes in a way that can be appealing to everyone (not just the veggies).

anyway, i’m total small-time freelance non-professional graphic design dabbler, so this is kind of a huge deal for me.  i’m pretty freakin proud to be associated with something so cool.