Bucket List

I first heard of "Bucket Lists" after the movie came out with the same title.  I never had a format one in my life, just different things I wanted to accomplish in my life.  Overall, I'd say the list involving travel would be-

1. Visit all 50 U.S. states.
2. Looking through one of the early "Entertainment Weekly" magazines, I saw a foldout advertisement for a hotel in the Bahamas called the Atlantis and decided I wanted to go there.
3. Go to Canada.
4. Go to Mexico.
5. Go to London, England
6. Visit Las Vegas, NV
7. Check out a Broadway show.
8. Visit Disney World and DisneyLand.
9. Go to a Major League Baseball game.
10. Go to a World Series game.
11. Attend a NFL game.
12. Go to a NFL Superbowl.
13. Attend a Indianapolis 500 race.
14. Go to a NASCAR race.
15. Go through the Panama Canal (when I was a kid, I read a book about the Panama Canal and was fascinated by it!)

 So how have I done?  I made it to 23 states (adding two more soon!), been to Atlantis, the Panama Canal (on our honeymoon), Canada, both US Disney parks, went to three major league parks (Wrigley Field, Great American, and Busch stadium), went to the Hoosier Dome for Indianapolis Colts games, and went to the Brickyard 500.  Not too bad!
Where do the rest stand?  Well, I'm going to the Superbowl for 2013!  Other than that, I'm not as much on going to London as I used to be, I'm not as excited on going to the World Series as I used to be, same for the Indy 500.  The way things are going in Mexico, I'm not really sure I want to go down there.  I think Las Vegas is pretty doable one day and I think Broadway is possible!
I know I'll add to the list in the future, but I know as long as Wanda's going with me, and maybe the girls, I'll enjoy whatever roads we travel!

One of my big hobbies is to participate in contests.  Before the Internet, I'd sign up at stores that had entry boxes with stuff they were giving away.  I've never been too successful with that route.  There were contests you could mail in entries, except the postage costs would soon be way too much to justify!  I always dream of winning that big prize--money, trips, cars, electronics, etc.  Of course, little wins always brighten my day too!  Then the Internet and cell phones came along and finally made it practical for me to start doing all sorts of contests!  What type of contests do I enter?  Here's a breakdown of what all I do-

• Entering through forms on different Internet sites of Facebook.  These are usually one time entries or can be entered each day.  I have a program installed called Roboform that makes most contests easy to do!  For the dailies, I have bookmarks in my browser that I maintain to make it easy to enter each day.
• "Instant wins"--These contests tell you right away if you won or not.  Sometimes, you just fill in a form, hit Submit, and it tells you of the results.  Sometimes, there are little games you play (memory matching games are really popular for these!) 
• Twitter contests-consisting of "RT" contests (where you just ReTweet a post) or answer a question that is posted.  
• Twitter Parties-where a company either directly sets up a Twitter chat or sponsors a blogger to host.  The host(s) ask a series of questions, participants posts answers or join in discussions, then winners are drawn from the ones who joined in at the party.  
• Text contests-where you send a text out to a certain cell number.  Most times, these are daily contests.  On rare occasions, there are even instant win contests for these. 
• Pinterest contests-new for me (haven't won from one yet!)  You "Pin" a series of pictures, then winners are determined various ways. 

It can be a bit daunting and a lot of work, but I enjoy doing it and the rewards are well worth it!  I do a little E-mail newsletter of the first two types of contests listed above and would be glad to add your E-mail into it if you're interested (it's just E-mails with the different links and pertinent information for each contests).  I can also do some blogs posts with more details on how you go about doing all of these contests.  The biggest thing to know is that you have to be patient!  There's no guarantee you'll get a big win, just keep trying!

Hmmm... my first blog entry!  Actually, I've blogged once or twice before, but I'm pretty sure I was the only one who read it!  I hope the readership of this one exceeds the last mark!  If you don't all know me, I'm Kevin, and my profile picture shows the rest of my most wonderful family!  The lovely woman to my left in the picture is Wanda, the two beautiful kids in the background of the pic are Martha (on the left) and Daisy (on the right).  Two of our "family" not in that picture are our two crazy cats, Zippy (on the left picture above) and Angel (on the right).  I used to be an avid cat hater, but Zippy has completely changed my mind on how I feel about cats, so I'm a big dog AND cat fan now! 
What will my blog consist of?  I'm not really sure at this point. I'll probably tell some long winded stories about what's going on in my life.  I'll probably not get too political.  In what I've seen of political blogs, they get too heated in discussions and soon people get mad.  Even though I mostly vote for one political party over another, I'm really more of a common sense person.  There are politicians I like/dislike on all sides! 
Otherwise, I'm pretty easy going.  I'm really big into the Internet.  My Facebook account is where I put any kind of regular updates, while my Twitter and Pinterest are mostly for contests I like to participate in, even though I love to follow what different people have to say on Twitter.