Happy "International Talk Like a Pirate Day"

Ahoy! The wee lass has declared she is once again going to be a pirate on Halloween. We ain't lyin', she did it all on her own. Out of the blue. Poker Chick is most pleased.

But now for the real story, lads and lasses. T'reporrrrrrt on her other post, Poker Chick is happy to tell ya that it would appear the booty was intended to be so free. She received several follow up emails. One, a notification of shipment ho! Another, a notification of a few back-ordered items with a sincere apology. Then two more. One, a giant coupon off future loot. And another, a jolly celebration of "International Talk Like a Pirate Day," (no, really, it's real), claiming a lucky few ordering today will have their order comped. So they really do this stuff, do they? Randomly comp orders?

Shiver me timbers!! Methinks me conscience is now clear.

Well, we'll still drop off 5 giant bags of clothes and shoes to Goodwill this weekend. You know, karma and all. That's karrrrrrma to you.

Cupcakes For Everyone

Now that school's in again, Poker Chick is getting a lot of questions of how to deal with food allergies at birthday parties. It's easy. Thanks to these guys, you can have your cake and eat it too. And p.s. the pancakes rock.

Thanking Her Peeps

We can't thank our readers enough! 5,000 visitors is an amazing milestone. We're both honored and flattered. Keep reading, will ya?

The $744 Shopping Spree

Ever enter contests, daydreaming about spending like crazy in any store? Ever wonder what it must feel like to buy anything you want without even thinking twice about how much it costs?

Last night Poker Chick got the chance to experience what we'll call shopping euphoria. Here's the story:

Unlike most parents, who purchase back-to-school items before the start of the school year, Poker Chick likes to wait until school's started and scramble at the last minute. That's just the kind of forward-thinking parent she is. On this particular occasion, while purchasing a few basics, she decided to get it all at once and order the winter coat. Last year it took a few weeks to arrive so she gave herself points for not leaving everything until the last minute.

In a rare moment of hyper-responsibility, she went through Upromise (4%!) and even found a strange but valid-looking coupon online. Buy 3 items, get the 4th for $1. Cool. So of course this gave her license to add some things to the order. A cute sweater dress the mini "needs" for all those birthday parties she'll be going to. 4 pairs of tights because she couldn't decide which went with it best. A nightie. And so on until she had spent a couple of hundred dollars or so.

And then a funny thing happened. It looked like she was getting more items for $1 than she should. She experimented, adding a few things to the order to see what happened, removing others. Finally, she figured out that she was getting any item $28 or less for $1. That was some coupon. She stopped trying to figure it out and pressed on. This was the stuff shopping dreams were made of.

So she added. And added. And added.

Seriously, she couldn't believe it. She'd chosen every long-sleeved t-shirt on the site, and they were all $1. That's long-sleeve, peeps. She got more colors. Still, the order just increased by a few dollars. It was unbelieveable. Each time she clicked on the "add" button, she froze in fear, waiting for the "total" to jump to some kind of excessive amount. Each time it increased by only $1.

At this point she had to get creative. She couldn't buy more expensive items, but she could buy every shirt already in her cart in the next size up. After all, the mini will need clothes for next year too.

So she added again. And again. And again.

When she'd added every shirt she moved on to accessories. Socks. Tights. Footless tights. Underwear. Undershirts. Wellies. The order continued to go up by just $1 each click.

When it was time to hit "submit" on the credit card, Poker Chick's heart was pounding. She wasn't sure exactly how many items were on her list, she had stopped counting at 30. The total hadn't changed but she was afraid, very afraid. She clenched her fists and squeezed her eyes shut and clicked.

And then came the order confirmation via email. A couple hundred dollars of big-ticket items and $744 of free stuff. Confirmed. On its way. She could hardly breathe.

Who's gonna be the best-dressed kid in pre-school this year? That's right!

Thanks, magic internet genie! And the free shipping? Nice touch, dude.

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Stay tuned to see if we actually get the order. An interesting experiment indeed.

Thank you, Tina!

I was right! How often do you get to say that?

So much so, turns out, that NBC pounced on the likeness Poker Chick called over a week ago. The resemblance is so uncanny that even as she types this, Poker husband is still challenging, claiming that it really is Sarah Palin on SNL's season premiere opening. Let's all re-watch Dave and do some scenario planning, shall we?


How many of you think McCain would win hands-down if Tina Fey was his actual running mate?

Hell, yeah.