You learn something new every day!

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner for the best comment of the week. My super smarty pants sister made the comment that the whole aspartame debate is just one more reason why she won't be going on a diet anytime soon! Here here sister!!!! I just have to fill you all in on how our lives have been since we quit the "juice". Greg, who is diabetic, had been having some serious health issues in the last couple of weeks. His blood sugar was running WAY high, his vision was blurring, he was dizzy and he couldn't focus on anything. This is the reason I started doing the research on what it could be. It was on some diabetic websites that I found that aspartame is particularly bad for diabetics because it raises their blood sugar, etc... So we quit it, actually pouring it down the drain (I must admit that I had one moment of hesitation when I had to dump my brand spanking new bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper). Greg was suffering for the first day without the caffeine, he doesn't do coffee, but he sucked it up. Within two days his blood sugar had returned to normal and all his other symptoms had ceased! Since he started working days he was drinking twice as much diet soda as he had when he was working graveyard and that's when the trouble began. So whether it was a placebo or not, we will never be drinking aspartame laced drinks again. We did discover that Hansen's and Jones soda companies both make diet soda's with splenda instead, as does Diet Rite, they have a bunch of flavors too. So that's that.

On to the next item, this is something that actually happened to my mother, Lonnie. Not some mom of a friend of a friend's cousin, but actually to my very own mother. My mom does online banking with Wells Fargo and a few days ago noticed that $800 was missing from one of her accounts. She called them and they said the money had been taken out of the account in my brother's name for a company called Navaho Networks. My brother is not on my mom's accounts and should not be able to authorize any sort of financial deal. She check out this Navaho Networks and found that they are a massive scamming company. My brother uses my mom's computer all the time and downloads games and music, etc... and when ad's pop up he just delets them. Well this Navaho Networks has a pop up ad that will ask you if you want to delet them, if you click on yes, the company will charge you $100. Apparently they have some phishing software that will go into your computer and get your baking info! If you read the fine print on the bottom of the ad window they say "if you delete this you will be charged $100", some people have had their phone bill charged $100 per click. Soooooo, needless to say double check all your pop up ads or just install a pop up blocker. Here is a link to one of the websites that let you know about the scam http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/047/RipOff0047978.htm. I guess when my brother logged into one of the gaming sites or something it opened the computer up to this parasitic company! $800 y'all, that's no drop in the bucket, that's lunacy, that's what that is! This is the second time that this sort of internet scaming has happened to my parents and both times it was with Wells Fargo, so I'm thinking that they don't have a strong enough firewall or whatever it is that other banks have that lead them to not be scammed.

Just some happy news on a rainy Wednesday afternoon. Have a good one!
Oh, I almost forgot, I was given a coupon for a free Shamrock Shake, hurray St. Patty's day, I love green shakes! That saved me $3 & change, yay me and my frugal self!
xoxo