A Blogoversary Giveaway!

One Ping Only turns six today! Sometimes it feel like it has been forever, but other times it feels like it has been no time at all. I'm not going to wax poetic about it, I'll just say thanks to those of you who have been a part of it during some or all of that time. It means a lot to me, especially your comments (yes, Ben, I do put a lot of stock in the commenting!) and the fact that you are supportive even when I'm spotty on regular posting. OK, on to the fun part!

To celebrate the blogoversary, I'm doing a little giveaway. I'll be sending to one winner the following:

• A copy of My Life. My Loves. My Lists. (For you to do your own lists this year)
• A $20 Starbucks card (Or Peet's or the like, if you'd prefer)
• The new Norah Jones CD, The Fall (I'm loving listening to it right now.)
• Two single-serve packets of Nutella (In honor of my friends who are big Nutella fans)
• A six-pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (Don't need to explain those, do I?)
• A donation in your honor to the UNICEF Haiti Emergency Fund (Keep reading for info on that one)

Here's the deal: It's a simple affair, no requirement to tweet about it (though if you wish to, you're certainly welcome to); subscribe (again, unless you'd like to), write an essay or otherwise turn cartwheels. All you have to do is submit a guess in the comments, in the form of a dollar amount, as to how much money you think is in this bank:

Though he looks like a hippo, the fine people of Target said he's a donkey. So, it's a donkey bank.

I love banks and I have probably too many of them. I put all my change in them -- my rule is that if any coin makes it to my room in my pants pockets at the end of the day, it goes in a bank -- with one for just pennies and one for silver coins. Mr. Donkey there is the one with silver coins. Usually when he fills up, I take them all out and wrap them up and bring them to the bank for a little mad money.

He's almost full and instead of saving the money, I'm going to take Mr. Donkey to a Coinstar machine when the entry time is over and his contents will be tallied up and donated to the UNICEF Haiti Emergency Fund in honor of the person who can guess how much he holds. To give you some perspective on the size of the bank, here he is posing in front of my laptop next to a soda can. (That is not an ad for Dell, by the way, I just needed a clean background!)

What I'm looking for is a guess of the total that will appear when his contents are emptied into the Coinstar machine. Because there's only silver coins inside, the total will be to the nearest nickel. The person whose guess in the comments is closest to that total wins -- that's it! If two guesses are the same distance away from the correct amount, the person with the guess under the total will win. I was going to limit it to North America, but what the hell, it's only postage, right? (However, I don't think the Starbucks card can be used outside the U.S. so I'd have to leave that out. That would go to the next-closest person in the U.S.) Comments with a guess must be submitted by 11:59pm PST on January 29, 2010 to be eligible.

Let me be clear: This money is getting donated to this cause even if no one enters. I just don't like random number generators all that much and picking names from a hat is a lot of work -- I did it once and that was enough. I thought this would at least be a different way of picking a winner! Also, I have no idea how much is in there; I'll find out when the total shows up on the screen, which I'll take a picture of to share here.

So help me celebrate my blog's anniversary with a little fun and a little giving; two things I believe in greatly.

Wanna know?

Do you know what I'm doing right now? Right this moment in between bouts of tap, tap, tapping on the keyboard?

No, of course you don't because you're not here to see me.

And, I must selfishly admit, I'm glad you're not here because you might want to do what I'm doing right now this very minute and that would mean I'd have to share. I'm a generous person in most cases, but I don't want to share. Not with you, not with anyone. Seriously.

To paraphrase and misquote a very young Brooke Shields: Nothing comes between me and my Reese's.

Photo by Cybele

I've had a love affair with Reese's peanut butter cups since I was a child and, while over the years I've had many pricier, "better," high-end chocolates and people may sniff at Hershey's products in our age of sophisticated palettes, it's still the one I'll choose when it's offered to me.

And, oh, does it take me back. I remember the joy of unwrapping the foil wrappers from the miniatures and feeling like it was the most special of treats, debating with my favorite cousin whether the name was pronounced REE-sis or Ree-sees (it is, of course, the former), trying to peel off the tiny brown cups without breaking off the "teeth" along the edge, and figuring out my own personal way of eating them. (For the record, with miniatures I'm a fan of biting off the entire cup, leaving the thicker chocolate wafer, which I then let melt on my tongue. For regular-sized cups, it depends on my mood.) I remember having the money to buy a fancy gift box of miniatures when I was about 10 years old and treasuring them like the gold they were wrapped up in. I've had most every variation they've come up with, when I can find them, and have even ordered them direct from the factory. Major yum.

I guess you could say I'm a very devoted Reese's fan, and I was recently invited to join a place that recognizes people like me: Devoted to Reese's. It's pretty new and the content is still being developed, but there's a possibility that it will be more interesting in the future. If you're a fan, too, I invite you to check it out and sign up. If nothing else maybe we'll find out about giveaways and specials before the masses.

Right now they're having a big tie-in with the upcoming Batman movie, The Dark Knight, and have a sweepstakes (though you can't enter online) and some unique branded products which they made in both milk and dark. I have yet to find the individual bat-shaped pieces, so that's my current quest. I did find the medallions and look forward to trying them soon. There's a whole bag of each so I might consider sharing. Maybe.