Charlie Sheen’s Epic Meltdown

Charlie Sheen we will miss you and your funny antics on Three and a Half Men, too bad you couldn’t realize life isn’t really a TV script! Charlie Sheen’s epic meltdown seems to indicate that his over-inflated alter-ego has finally caught up with him.

We all have an inherent need to be special, to be recognized among at least a few of our fellow man, that is a normal state of being. Charlie Sheen seems to taken his recognition needs to epic proportions.

One of the lures of illicit, and even some legal drugs, is that it magnifies a sense of self and of self-importance. Anyone who lived through the psychedelic , flower-power days of the 1960-70′s and partook of the popular substances of that era remembers the heightened experiences that drugs can stimulate. Drugs today are much more potent and more rampant in our society and seem especially popular with the celeb set. Many a promising star-power career has been destroyed in an over-stimulated search for recognition and out-of-this-world experiences, drug utopias are always short-lived and have a way of crashing back down to earth.

Poor Charlie seems really caught up in his druggie drama and the press are playing it for all it is worth $$$! Neither he nor the press gives a wit about how some easily-impressed youngster might choose to emulate his rock-star behavior and how many young lives may consequently be destroyed by thinking this is all it takes!

I sincerely hope Charlie wakes up before he becomes a statistic but the odds don’t look good. At least Michael Jackson had the good graces to try to hide it from the public to some extent. It is said that money can’t but happiness but I guess it can buy a stint of unreality and short-live stupidity!

GRANNIES NEED EXTRA MONEY TOO!

I recently had a conversation with an old school chum and she was broadly hinting that times are kinda tough right now and how she could use some extra cash. This topic digresses from senior dating but is important to a lot of seniors in this down economy we are all experiencing. This is a quick method I use myself whenever I want some extra cash for a special purpose, like a cruise!

Everybody has too many books lying all over the house that they will probably never read! You can easily turn those books into some extra money by selling them on Half.com. Half.com is part of eBay but charges no fees for listing on their service until you sell your items. It is not only for books but for DVDs, CDs, audiotapes & electronic game modules etc. Check it out and then follow this plan:

l. Take every book you have in your house that you don’t want to keep for some special reason and all those you know you will never ever read again and list them on Half.com.

2. Beg, borrow or steal every book you can from relatives and friends, tell them you are starting a new charity (yourself).

3. Check out garage sales, you can usually buy books for 50-cents or $1 and sometimes can get a whole box of books for a couple of bucks! Almost any book on Elvis will bring big $$, I recently bought one at a garage sale for $1 and got $36 for it!

4. Estate sales usually have trouble getting rid of all the books. At the end of the sale — buy ‘em all for one low price and list them on Half.com.

5. Thrift stores sell books rather inexpensively, go on senior citizen discount day and get them for less. Large churches sometimes hold special book sales or even church rummage sales are a good target for really cheap books.

6. Call your local library they may have perodic sales of discarded titles, in my hometown they hold a sale 1st a month at a warehouse location but also have racks of discarded books at each library that are pretty cheap. Discarded books do get “marked” as such which makes them less valuable on Half-com but you can get some very interesting titles which will still sell.

You will soon figure out which books can make you some money and which can’t. Fiction & novels do not sell well (there are just too many copies of them), non-fiction sells the best…self-help, animal books, how-to-books, text-books, even children’s books sell well. One of the little-known secrets of Half.com that they won’t tell you about is that you can actually make some money on the postage even if you sell a book for 75 cents which is the minimum price. The postage is a set amount and is always Media Mail which you can print the labels for on your computer thru PayPay (in case you haven’t done that before). PayPal gives you a tiny break on the postage price (they cut a deal with the USPS due to large volume). Avoid selling really really heavy books as it will eat you up on postage, but on most you can make an extra 50 cents to $1 or so over and above the selling price of the book.

Half.com is for newer books, not antiques books, those will sell better on eBay. You don’t have to take pictures or write descriptions like you do when selling at eBay as they use the ISBN# and auto-generate all that information for you in the listing. Do pay attention to the “condition” part of the listings, they are pretty strict about that, if in doubt, just go one category below what you think it might be. They even give “suggested” selling prices but you do not have to follow their “suggestions”, check out what the others are selling for and just be reasonable, usually the lowest price book gets sold 1st, so keep that in mind if there are a lot of books like yours listed. There is a bit of work to Half.com but once you get going it is a lot easier than selling on eBay, you don’t have to concentrate very much while you are listing and can even watch TV at the same time.

Now that USPS actually picks up packages at your mailbox, it is a breeze to do the shipping. I put small & medium size books in a large-size envelope that I buy in bulk at Sam’s Club, add a piece of cardboard for stiffening if the book is flimsy or wrap the books in a heavy brown paper, boxes are too expensive and not really necessary. You can usually get by with not spending more than 10 cents per book to mail.

The biggest problem in the beginning is that Half.com only pays twice a month (they will direct-deposit to your bank account) and you have to pay for the postage up front, so there is a little outlay of expense there. But, Half.com gives you 5 business days to ship so you won’t be out too much for too long.

I recently rounded up a bunch of books I had lying around my house & sold almost $300 in one month, so I know it is possible. You can also do almost the same thing with Amazon and several other used book sites on the Internet. I have not had any personal experience with those but feel free to check “em out. The book market is fairly saturated and competitive so I doubt if there is much difference in the selling fees they pay out.

If you are in need of some quick Granny Cash jump on over to Half.com and check it out!

admin@DateGranny.com

REJECTION in Online Dating

It happened again and it is hard not to let it affect you.  I had spent some time going through the profiles and selected 4 men who I felt some sort of attraction for either in their profile or in their picture.  Its a tough way to really find out about a potential mate, but it is the only way available in most dating sites.  I send out the “winks”, and hoped for the best.  The next morning I had an email reply indicating that one of my “potentials” had rejected my profile and that was the only reply I ever received. Rejection is hard to take even if it is on an impersonal dating site.

We all want to be liked or at least respected and ignoring any connection on a dating site seems rude and disrespectful.  It only takes a moment to reply as most dating sites have an automated reply and only requires you to check the box.  These are the 5 reasons I have conjured up to soothe my own wounded ego and explain why most men never reply;

1.  They never check their email box
2.  They are just lookie-loos and never go to the next stage
3.  They figure it is better to not reply than to give a negative reply
4.  They are looking for a 35-year old with a 44″ bustline that just inherited a million bucks
5.  They really don’t give a damn!

What are men looking for?  Obviously not for “Down-to-earth practical senior gal who only occasionally indulges in hopelessly romantic fantasies and thinks maybe love can still happen”. Should I tweak my profile?  Should I post a younger-looking picture?  Are there tricks to this scene I am not aware of?  These are all the questions running through my head every time I try to play the online dating game and face rejection once again.  I know it is a numbers game of sorts, the more contacts you make the more chances you have of finding someone compatible, but it can be very discouraging and depressing.

Maybe its harder when you are in your senior dating years, there are certainly fewer prospects than before.  Most senior men seem to be seeking much younger women, perhaps they think it will keep them young or perhaps they have a Hugh Hefner complex.  Where are the mature responsible men who are sincerely seeking love, companionship and a relationship, not still chasing their middle-age illusions?  Are there any good ones left or am I just chasing  my own illusion?

admin at DateGranny.com