To celebrate hitting the 400k mark on my review counts, I decided to register the domain mrs-j.com. There's not much up there, but I thought it was cool that the domain was available, and couldn't pass up the opportunity.
I'm in my thirties and I live in the south with my fantastic husband and our pets. He's an accomplished musician, financial analyst, marathon runner and an excellent cook. I'm a writer, photographer, boxer (just for fun) and cyclist. I recently moved up into a new, exciting and challenging job. I'm finally doing what I've wanted to do for many years.
My husband and I travel often. We've travelled throughout North America and to several European countries, including Italy, Greece, France and Germany. We usually take at least two "big" vacations each year. Right now I'm scouting ideas for our winter getaway. For next spring we're still trying to decide between Tuscany or southern Spain.
We're also getting to the stage where we want to see completely new parts of the world: the Amazon, Australia, Africa and Asia to name a few. Regardless of the places we choose to explore, I'll do my best to post reviews of what we've discovered, and links to photos as well.
When we're not in strange lands, we enjoy relaxing in our back yard, grilling out and hosting parties, playing with our pets, enjoying time with our friends, or spending time on our boat out on the lake. Life is always good with a cold beer in hand and water lapping on the boat or on shore.
My Time Here at Epinions
I joined Epinions in June of 2003, as a newlywed with lots of things we'd been given for our wedding just dying to be reviewed. I remember clearly the night I was loading Windows XP on a computer as a surprise for my husband and while waiting, stumbling about the Epinions website. I wrote that first review with a minimal amount of prep and looking back on it, I'm surprised it fared as well as it did!
Since that day, I've written on a fairly regular basis. Sometimes I write more. Sometimes I write less. Right after we moved in 2004, when I was taking a hiatus from work, I was cranking out an insane number of reviews a day. It was fun, but it couldn't last.
In the past I've been honored with TR hats in H&G, Online Stores & Services and Beauty, at one time or another. My favorite part of having a "hat" has always been meeting other TR's and members in that community via various websites and mailing lists. I've never been, or really aspired to be, an Advisor, a role that takes both a great deal of time and courage. (Telling someone their review isn't great is a job I'd rather leave to others! And doing it with tact is an absolute art form that I highly respect.) I'm currently hatless (Woo! Let my hair fly free!) though, especially since work and travel have been taking a huge chunk out of my Epinions time. Perhaps later this year I'll find a little more spare time lands me back in front of the keyboard writing.
I come from highly opinionated stock. My mother used to write and mail letters to various companies, and early on she taught me the value of "constructive criticism", particularly when it garnered her free coupons! Once upon a time, in fact, my mother came home to find a five gallon pail of "pickle brine" on her doorstep, compliments of Claussen Dill Pickles. My mother has Crohn's disease and because of that, she doesn't retain salt well. She loves pickles and in particular, the brine from the jars of Claussen Dill Pickles. She loved it so much, she wrote the company to tell them so, hence the free pail o' brine. The sad thing was, without pickles actually occupying the salty water and lending their flavor to it, the brine tasted like crap. But she was so proud to have scored five gallons of it for free, all for simply writing a letter!
The good things that have happened to me in the past three years because of Epinions are countless. My husband and I were in a Weber commercial (and received two grills) after one of the commercial creators read my review of our first Weber grills. Thanks to Epinions I've also had a chance to review many products I might never have tried otherwise. And I was even offered a freelance writing gig after someone read some of my reviews! And of course I've always enjoyed the "beer money" check that I cash in every couple of months. The pennies have added up nicely over the years. Why, I've even earned enough on a few select reviews to pay for the item I was reviewing! That's a mean feat, although they certainly weren't big ticket items.
So that's a little bit about me. Thanks for stopping by. Several links and pictures are below.
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