Monday, August 1, 2011

I Left My Callus In Sand Diego - Now With Giveaway!

Smooth Operator

This Thursday, I will be heading down to San Diego to attend BlogHer 2011 where I will be taking advantage of every opportunity to eat like a horse catch up with old blog friends and make new ones.

As you may know, conferences are all about handouts or, as they say in China, "tchotchkes."

Naturally, I agonized over the goodies I should take to BlogHer to promote my forthcoming humor book, The CHICKtionary: From A-Line to Z-Snap, the Words Every Woman Should Know. Once I started looking at the bajillions of options, however, I became completely overwhelmed.

What would the discerning BlogHer attendee be looking to snag while cruising the conference floor? And which promotional product says "CHICKtionary" (in a sexy kind of "Mad Men" voice, not a screechy, accusatory meter maid one)?

The jaunty trucker hat? (So Von 2004.) The hardworking lanyard? (BO-ring.) The peppy pedometer? (Just thinking about it makes me tired.) The prim personal hand sanitizer? (Too stern.)

So I kept searching...scrolling through product
after product...looking for the one item that felt right - the one I could hand out with gusto knowing the recipient would cherish it for years to come while thinking fondly of me each time they encountered it in their junk drawer jewelry box.

And then I found it.

And so...

Let Me Be The First
to Offer You a
Complimentary Foot Sander!


Awesome, huh? Doesn't it make you want to roll up your sleeves, start grinding and kick up a swirly of your own discarded skin cells? I know.

So if you're going to BlogHer, I hope I'll see you and have the opportunity to lay one of these babies on you and your petrified yet adorable peds (standard exfoliation rates apply).

And, even if you're not going to the conference, there will be lots of opportunities down the road for you to receive one of these limited edition personal grooming appliances.

Especially since I ordered 700,000 of them.


Hope to see you there!


Did Somebody Say "Giveaway?"

I just finished reading author, comic and fellow
Listen to Your Mother castmember Stefanie Wilder-Taylor's new book "I'm Kind of a Big Deal: And Other Delusions of Adequacy" and I loved it so much that I'm giving away a brand-new copy! Right here! Right now!

One of the funniest aspects of Stefanie's collection of personal essays is her succession of lousy jobs. We've all been there, right? (This one-time children's shoe salesgirl says, "Hell, yeah!")

To enter the drawing for the book, just
leave a comment before midnight on Friday,
August 5 and share your lousiest job ever. Then ride that high over to Amazon and read all about the book to get jucied up to win your free copy.

The name of the lucky book winner will be drawn from our ten-gallon hat and announced the week of August 8.


And remember: no matter what
your mother anyone says, you ARE a big deal.

Good Luck!

24 comments:

hokgardner said...

Dang. One more reason I'm bummed not to be going to Blogher.

And my worst jobs were some of my babysitting gigs. Like the time I babysat for two demon spawn for six hours and then had the mom tell me that my $1.50 per hour was WAY more than they usually paid sitters. That was the last time I sat for them.

Fantastyk Voyager said...

I guess my lousiest job would be mucking out horse stables. I had to get there by 5:30 in the morning to feed the horses and then shovel poop all day. It was hot, dirty and there were lots of flies. However, being the horse nut that I am, I kind of liked it. ;)

egbrat said...

My worst job was not only enforced by my ex step mother but also under the table. I was also in 8th grade! I would walk to her bank job after school and sit in a tiny window-less room and shred bank papers. It was horrid. Nobody to talk to, staring at trashbags full of paper and the worst part was smelling like shreds!

Vicki said...

I'm waiting with bated breath for my chance to win one of those foot sanders!!!

My lousiest job was standing at a conveyor belt while raw plucked chickens mosied by for me to pull the fat off of them. G R O S S !

To make maters worse, I was pregnant. Pukey Gross!! I couldn't eat chicken for YEARS!

Florinda said...

I'm not entering the giveaway, but I am most bummed I will not be seeing you at BlogHer!

Nicole Pelton said...

Some of those jobs beat mine by a mile...but I worked in a hot, chemical laden dry cleaning with the world's meanest owner. His parents worked there, the world's sweetest couple, and I remember him yelling at his mom then docking her pay by like $50 for a charging error she made.

Kevin McKeever said...

If I don't win the book, could you at least mail me a foot sander?

And someone to use it on me?

Heather said...

Wow, my (trademarked) Heather's Hobbity Hooves would benefit from such an awesome tchotchke, but alas, I am not going to BlogHer. *sob sob*

Now, on the subject of lousy jobs, it is hard for me to pick *just* one...

- The time I house sat for six weeks for friends of my parents who bred bulldogs (not sure which kind beyond "extremely gassy" - they were short, squat, mouth breathing, bulgy-eyed critters) and thus, I had to take care of 24 stinky, craptastic tiny dogs along with 4 boxers and a parrot - that's a LOT of poop, yo. And they lived out in the boonies and I didn't have access to a car (which I was supposed to have but they "forgot" to leave me keys), so I was stuck out there in Deliveranceland with the barky, extreme-excrement-excreting mutts and the squawky, scary bird.....

- The summer I worked as the weekend "office manager" of a self-storage rental place, where (lured in by the title - I was a manager! of an office!!) many an undesirable type rented units to store illicit property, and I thus had to deal with said undesirable types when they'd need something or had to come in to pay (or to complain when I would overlock their units for nonpayment), as I sat there in the tiny, concrete block office in the middle of rows and rows of storage units, far too far away for anyone to hear me scream.........

- The job Hubby (then Boyfriend) and I took through a temp agency when we were broke college students that was supposed to be *answering* phones but turned out to be a *telemarketing* gig, where we had to sit at a computer and dial the numbers that popped up on the screen, then go through a script (a TWENTY MINUTE SCRIPT, no less) and record their responses on the computer. We hated it instantly and spent most of the night entering "no answer" or "hang up" instead of making calls and quit at the end of that first shift. As much as I love to talk, I do not have it in me to be a telemarketer (and neither did Hubby). *shudder*

Oh, then there was the job I had working in the "gourmet food" section of a local grocery store in college, wherein I had to grate so much parmesan and pecorino romano cheese in a ginormous, industrial grater that held a quarter wheel at a time that I would come home at the end of each shift looking like a human Cheez Doodle and my car subsequently smelled like the garbage disposal at an Olive Garden whenever it was remotely humid outside, but that one doesn't even come close to the top tier of Lousy Jobs I Have Had, though it did leave me with a lasting hatred for all the blue cheeses (roquefort, gorgonzola etc)...

Knock 'em off their feet at BlogHer! (Or, at least, you know, knock the calluses off their heels!)

xo

Cheryl said...

I do like the way you think. What better way to say, "I've been published; buy my book so I can afford better swag next year."

Worst job? So many to choose from; so litte space.

Gotta be a tie between the week I spent with my grandmother working on a farm when I was 9. Almost lost a finger cutting flowers for drying. When I was 13, my dad hired me to paint our own farmhouse (yep, it was hugantic). Got to the spiders in the eaves and left those parts undone. Now that I think about it, that might have been my dad's worst hire rather than my worst job.

Lo said...

During my 1st lifetime as a starving artist I took a job working part time for a "dirty" (soft porn) record company......their stuff was not really dirty but the police would periodically raid the place just for the hell of it and take the office manager off to the pokey for a bit. One day I was named Office Manager and the cops raided us......I escaped the pokey by the skin of my teeth and have felt blessed ever since.

Pearl said...

You are just incredible. :-)

Pearl

Ann Imig said...

It's a toss up between name generator and dish washer.

jubilee said...

My worst job was when I cleaned tables at a restaurant owned by a brother and sister who couldn't stand each other.

It wasn't the busing that was bad, it was watching the dastardly-duo spit in people's food, change workers' schedules without warning and over-charge a poor lady who was trying to throw together a rehearsal dinner (after her initial restaurant choice flooded that morning) and refusing to serve her guests any thing other than a side salad and one stuffed pepper a person.

Only worked there about four weeks. And it was four weeks too long.

Harley May said...

I would like to win this book! And this is the first I've heard of your upcoming book, Anna. What rock have I been under? Let's blow up this rock!

You're awesome!

larainydays said...

My first and worst job ever was as a motel maid (and believe me it was a MOTEL not a hotel). I was only 14 and child labor laws did not apply because it was owned by a relative. It inspired my pursuit of education.

Perfect giveaway for the conference. Every mound of foot dust will bring fond thoughts of you.

Anna Lefler said...

I'm testing here because I've heard that the magical comment box is busted.

Let's see if this works...

:-})

Anna Lefler said...

[I'm posting this comment on behalf of Dusty Earth Mother because apparently her computer has had a nasty breakup with Blogger and they are no longer speaking...]

Way excited about sanding down my unfeminine feet, Anna.

And my worst job? Sorting last season's clothing in the dank basement of J.Crew's headquarters. And crying.

When Pigs Fly said...

Have a great time at BlogHer! I'm going to Bloggy Boot Camp in Chicago later this month. Should be fun to catch up with the women I only see in cyberspace.
Would absolutely love to get a copy of that book. I think my lousiest job was as a camp tennis instructor to little girls in the middle of summer. None of them wanted to be outside since it was so hot. We were all miserable and then on Fridays we had to take them to an amusement park all day. It was torture.

C said...

foot sander...no thanks, I need my callouses to protect my feet from the hard road ahead....worst job? maybe when I was 16, entertaining kiddies in a real estate office while their parents house-shopped...I did not smile enough, or so they said. I had to clean all the ash trays too...lots of smoking in those days.

HermanTurnip said...

Hey, how did you know what I was going to give the wife for our upcoming anniversary?

1st anniversary: Paper
2nd: Cotton
3rd: Leather
4th: Foot Care Products

This is correct, no?

Alexandra said...

I never thought of being a big deal in my own mind.

I like that.

I'm going to do that.

Worst job ever: where do I start?

Oh, I know: the one where everytime I had to make a concrete malt I got an electrical shock.

That's a good one.

Nora Blithe said...

DAMN IT! I'm not going!!!! How am I going to get rid of my used skin cells? I had no idea BlogHer was so hygienic! I miscalculated on this one. Lesson learned. Lesson learned.

Anonymous said...

I just found you through Shari's blog and I am so glad! I love your witty writing.

My worst job: being a mom? Oh I guess you mean worst paying job? Working at Talbots which is a women's clothing store. Talk about entitled clientele. They were the worst!

Kulio said...

I wonder if you saw my cousin, Kelle Hampton there? (Enjoying the Small Things)

Or maybe that's like meeting somebody at Disneyworld and finding out she is from Michigan and saying, "No way, I HAVE AN AUNT WHO LIVES IN MICHIGAN DO YOU KNOW HER?"

Anyway.