Perhaps I should sit down and list every single internets meme they boys from Weezer have included in this video. Damn. I shouldn’t like this, but I do.

Friday. I haven’t looked forward to a Friday this much in quite some time. It’s been a rough couple of weeks. I’ve not been working out as much as I’d like and since I was getting angry at myself and aggravated at my lack of progress, I decided to take this week “off”. Come Monday, I’ll approach from a different angle and make it work for me. More running, more Pilates, more weights. It can be done. In the meantime, fun stuff!

• PAPERCRAFT STEAK DINNER?!??!? Yes. Fire up your color printer and assemble a paper steak to delight your friends and family. The site’s in Japanese, but you can figure it out.

• CROSS-STITCH! I’ve been thinking that once I finish knitting this baby blanket I’m making for my friends, it might be time to take up a new craft - like cross-stitch. To that end, I’ve been checking out the cross-stitch kits at my local craft stores. They’re all rather corny and so not me- “Footprints”? Precious Moments characters? A bald eagle against the flag? I’d prefer and old school grandma sampler, honestly. But that’s me. My aesthetic runs in a different vein. Just imagine my delight when I discovered this cross-stitch generator at Dark Lilac! I can upload a picture I create in Photoshop or a favorite image and it will generate a cross-stitch chart including the colors of DMC brand embroidery floss you’ll need. I have plans to create one of my gimpy wrist MRI (just have to resize in Photoshop) as well as one of brussels sprouts or other such food.
• SHRINKY DINKS. I stopped at Michael’s on my way home from work with my friend Krys. She was picking up scrapbooking supplies; I went in to buy unnecessary stuff. Craft stores and Target are perfect for that. I found they were selling packs of blank frosted Shrinky Dinks and my childhood came rushing back to me - like the fumes generated by sticking sheets of plastic into the oven to watch them shrink. That said, I bought a pack. I have colored pencils. I have an oven. I have jump rings. This means I can make pendants and keychains and other random crap - but however I want to do it. Crafty crafty! ($4.99 for 10 sheets)
• Summertime = bright nail polish colors. The new Essie colors for this summer left me a little underwhelmed. There was a color near the display, though, that attracted me. It’s not new for this season, but it fits right in and it’s awesome. It’s called Calypso - a bright fuchsia. It garnered compliments and that’s always nice.
• After much deliberation and whatnot, I’ve finally selected and ordered my new cell phone. Not a Blackberry, not the LG Voyager, not the Samsung Glyde. There were issues with each one (bulk, size, price, less than stellar reviews) so I did a Goldilocks kind of thing. In the end, I checked the Howard Forums and reviews for the phones I was considering - these led me to several people raving about the LG enV(2). It also had good ratings from c|net. It’s not as sexy as the others - it’s not a touchscreen phone; it doesn’t have a huge display on the front. But that’s OK. I wanted a full QWERTY keyboard - it’s got that. I wanted a larger display for web browsing and email composition - it’s got that when you open it up. I wanted a phone that’s easy to use AS a phone - this actually has a number pad for regular old dialing. And it cost me a whopping $49 after my upgrade discount. It arrives on Tuesday. Yippee!
• I’ve just pledged to be a part of Firefox Download Day 2008. It’s not a pledge to do anything other than download the newest version (that would be version 3) of Firefox on the day it’s released. Love love love love love. I love a browser. Hmmm. This might be part of the reason I’m single.

This kid has got some good pitch, yo.

(I must acknowledge my friend Sara as the originator of this quote/curse. Please note, this utterance is most often performed while shaking one’s fist at the heavens. There’s another variation of the fist shake in which you state, “I shake my fist at you!” but that’s more of an alternative to “the finger” than a generalized cursing of life. Cuz that’s how we roll.)

Anyway - UPS attempted to deliver my new digital camera (birthday present) today. At 5:03, they were here. And since no one answered the door to sign for the camera, it’s back at a UPS facility, waiting until it can come to its new home tomorrow. Boo-hoo. So I exclaimed, “Darn you, life!” Not that today was horrible by any means - I was just looking forward to a new gadget. New gadgets are tremendous fun.

I went rock-climbing at 8:30 tonight and rolled home a bit before 11. It’s now after midnight and I’m not at all tired. This means I’ll be up late reading.

Maybe watching a movie I’ve seen a million times.

Maybe watching this video until I’m delirious and start giggling uncontrollably.

But I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t.

… but here’s some absolutely unprofessional proof of my specific nerdiness.
However, the whole “social nerd” thing is a bit confusing. I’m not particularly social. Oh, well. Maybe they’re counting the books as my friends.

This is pretty clever in terms of a Valentine’s tie-in. At TYPEmatching, you answer five questions and you find out what your type is. I am Helvetica.

Yes - it’s possible to be Comic Sans, but there wasn’t a moment where I thought I’d end up in that sad state.

This comic sometimes sends me into fits of laughter:

And then other times, like today, it surprises and touches me with its poignancy and ability to position a stick figure right in my heart:

The title of the image (not visible unless you mouse over it) reads: “Oh, look, the ‘make everything better’ button was here behind the bookshelf all along.”

I need a pet hedgehog so I can watch it eat.

Another installment of things that I find entertaining or interesting. Yay!

• A reading meme from someone named Eva (not me). I’ll be writing up my version later tonight.

• Hey, Mac users with Netflix accounts! Soon you, too, will be able to take advantage of the Netflix instant-viewing feature on your computers! That’s right - Netflix announced that they’re working on a Mac-compatible version of the online instant-viewing service. Not surprisingly, the thing holding it back has been that Netflix uses a Microsoft-based DRM service that only works with Windows. Gizmodo said it best, “only holdup is/has been the lack of a Mac-native DRM system that Hollywood approves as sufficiently draconian.”

• “Loneliness is marked by a sense of isolation. Solitude, on the other hand, is a state of being alone without being lonely and can lead to self-awareness.” That’s what I’m talking about. Thank you, Psychology Today, for this little article about the difference. I’ve been accused of being “lonely” - but I think my friends would disagree. I like my alone-time, truly, and sometimes I may feel lonely (that goes with the depression, I think) but overall, I think I’m far more of a lover of solitude than a sad and lonely person.

• Cookthink.com: A very cool idea for a site: “To find a recipe based on what you’re craving, plug up to eight tags into our Cookthink search tool.” Some more info in the little screen portion below. I was craving scallops and dill. So I popped those in. It brings up a little cloud of additional foods/ingredients you can click - or not. Submit those and voila - a recipe for Spicy Scallops With Bell Pepper, Fennel and Dill (that does sound quite good. Too bad I’m going to dinner at a vegetarian restaurant with friends tonight.) If it’s not quite what you want, you can click on a “show me more recipes” link, and you get other things in the same “family” - Barley, Zucchini And Tomato Salad With Mint was one of the secondary results for the shrimp and tomato search.

• Smart kids read “Lolita”? - Books That Make You Dumb [site]

Ever read a book (required or otherwise) and upon finishing it thought to yourself, “Wow. That was terrible. I totally feel dumber after reading that.”? I know I have. Well, like any good scientist, I decided to see how well my personal experience matches reality. How might one do this? Well, here’s one idea.

Amusing, if nothing else. Their “methodology” is pretty interesting, too.

• YouAreBeautiful stickers - a cool community art/social commentary project. Their artists/mission statement is:

You Are Beautiful is a simple, powerful statement which is incorporated into the over absorption of mass media and lifestyles that are wrapped in consumer culture.

The intention behind this project is to reach beyond ourselves as individuals to make a difference by creating moments of positive self realization. We’re just attempting to make the world a little better.

Intention is the most important aspect of the You Are Beautiful project in its idea of purity. Nothing is sacred. Everything that has a perceived value becomes commodified. We work extremely hard that this message is received as a simple act of kindness, and nothing more.

Advertising elicits a response to buy, where this project elicits a response to do something. The attempt with You Are Beautiful is to create activism instead of consumerism.

You Are Beautiful uses the medium of advertising and commercialization to spread a positive message.
Projects like these make a difference in the world by catching us in the midst of daily life and creating moments of positive self realization.

Send an SASE (and maybe a few dollars - though they’re not required) and they’ll send you some stickers that say “you are beautiful.” Or you can download and print your own. Adhere them to things, take pictures, and send them in for posting on the site. They’ve done huge wall and billboard installations of the same sentiment.

There. I just revealed the tree-hugging hippie portion of myself.