FIVE FRIDAY FINDS

What I discovered this week, in no particular order. There are FIVE, otherwise I mess up the alliteration, doncha know?)

1. If you have a gold Starbucks card, you can get a free refill of regular coffee after you've finished drinking your snazzed up Vanilla Soy Latte. I like to get the iced coffee in the summer with vanilla which is free with the Card and then get my free refills with the Card. (Ok, we won't go into how many coffees I had to buy to qualify for the gold card, but...)

2. Albertsons is now labeling products "gluten-free" which is handy. I'm not gluten intolerant, nor is anyone in my family, but I recently had the experience of having to buy gluten free for a group my daughter is a part of and this made shopping easier. Not sure how widespread this is in this store or others but seems to be a good idea. By the way, I ran across this blog while searching for gluten free recipes. Great healthy recipes! The southwestern chicken was gobbled up! http://celiacfamily.com/recipe-index/

3. Yes, razor blades, pins, needles, etc. have been found in Halloween candy. However, not probably as often as most people believe and most likely not by some crazed maniac. Well, Halloween was Monday and a friend of mine mentioned that he didn't think any of the stories about razors in apples, and tampering with Halloween candy were true. He thought they were just-widely believed urban legends. Of course, having told my kids every year to beware of sharp objects in their candy, I wanted to find out the truth once and for all. I went to my favorite urban legend buster site www.snopes.com . The snopes explanation left me a little confused, but I gather there HAVE been actual incidents, (beginning in 1967 focus shifted from poison to sharp objects), however many of them turned out to be hoaxes, or planted by the kids and/or parents themselves. Of course, the whole Tylenol poisoning incident in 1982 fueled all kinds of doubt and changes. So bottom-line to me: our mothers' warnings seem to be well-placed, I think. Just common sense, don't eat unwrapped candy and food from strangers. Don't bite into anything suspicious looking.

4. If you are an ebook publisher, you can download the Smashwords style guide for free. AND this is the best place to start when you are trying to wade through the confusing formatting mire. I found this out the hard way. I have offered to help my techno phobic writer friend publish his novel as an ebook- not because I know everything about this topic (yet), but because I am a little more comfortable around the computer and social media than he is. What I found is there are all kinds of people offering instructions on how to do this out there. Confusing people. Well meaning people. Highly technical people. Just go to Smashwords. Clear, concise, easy. *sigh*

5. #MentionMonday is a twitter hashtag that can be used to draw people to your blog. Now again, I stumbled on this as I was working on getting my friend's social media presence going. So, yeah, I know you savvy tweeters know all about this but it was new to me! Cool. I love it. People helping other people. Win-win. I won't go into an explanation here, but I found this great "#MentionMonday primer" on this blog:

http://datingafter40okayhopingtodateafter40.blogspot.com/2010/03/mentionmonday-march-22nd-primer.html

in a similar vein, #FF stands for FollowFriday,; a way to suggest people to follow on Twitter.

That's it for this Friday! Next up: Which fast food oatmeal provides the tastiest comfort food experience? Check back next week for our weekly Comparison Review!