I am Midnight?

I stole this idea from Julia's blog. This explanation is about 40 percent true. Unusual habits? Experiment with lifestyle? Huh?

You Are Midnight

You are more than a little eccentric, and you're apt to keep very unusual habits. Whether you're a nightowl, living in a commune, or taking a vow of silence - you like to experiment with your lifestyle. Expressing your individuality is important to you, and you often lie awake in bed thinking about the world and your place in it. You enjoy staying home, but that doesn't mean you're a hermit. You also appreciate quality time with family and close friends.

What Time Of Day Are You?

New baby!

This is my new nephew, Cohen. I was there for his birth last week. It was amazing. He is the sweetest little baby in the world!

Wake up annoyances

Waking up to an alarm stinks. It's alarming and annoying. But here are three other noises that, to me, are worse.

• Car alarm
• Hair dryer
• The dog throwing up
  

Excel is afraid of Roger Waters

I was attempting to help a colleague with formulas in Excel. It wasn't working so I went back to my desk to mess around with the file. Before I opened the file, I turned on my iPod and chose Pink Floyd. Presto! The formulas worked!

A must-have shirt

I saw this on the Mental Floss site. It made me laugh out loud. If you don't know Lady Macbeth, check her out on Wikipedia.

Mental Floss is the best magazine ever. How could you not love a magazine that has this subtitle: Feel smart again.

How well do you know your side affects?

Mental Floss has a great new quiz: Popular Drugs, Ominous Labels. In the U.S. there are many, many pharmaceutical ads on TV and print. The ads on TV are particularly funny since they have to read out the possible side affects. They are often horrifying.

Take the Mental Floss quiz and see how well you know your drug side affects.

Sophie and the toads

Sophie got her first taste of toad over the weekend. There are many in the garden around my parents' house. Sophie stuck her face in this particular plant (nice and brown from the frost). When she pulled her head out, she was licking her lips like she'd just tasted something awful. Even so, every time we were by that plant she'd go in for a check. Maybe she thought that only some of them taste terrible.

Swag!

I was at the MIMA Summit (Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association) earlier this week. It's one of those events that, when you leave, it feels as if your skull was forced open. In a good way.

One of the great things about marketing conferences, besides the great info you glean, is that you usually get some pretty cool swag. At the MIMA Summit attendees received a swag bag full of the cool and useful items at right.

The conference was packed with design, Web, tech and marketing geeks. The presentations were all about how the Web is changing how we live and what that means to marketers -- how to use the Web and e-mail in new, cool and effective ways. The morning keynote was by a guy from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. He talked about trends in Web use and provided lots of stats (I love stats!) about Internet use, type of use, etc., by various segments of the population.

One of the presenters, from Schematic, had the most brain-busting presentation. He talked primarily about how we'll be navigating the Web in the future. Take a look at the Schematic site and you'll see what I mean. The first part of the presentation was so out there I felt disoriented. (Like I was walking in eight-inch heels through deep mud on a listing ship.) After I got acclimated I was fascinated.

I work at a school that is part of a larger church. MIMA gatherings are full of people who do things we could only dream of. But that's the beauty of it. The ideas open up my mind and push me to keep learning and growing. And it's just plain cool.

Mean about cats

My brother Mike has a t-shirt with "Cats, the other white meat" printed on it. I wanted to take a picture of it but he wouldn't let me. He was in a very foul mood.

This is exceedingly mean but I'm still working off a bad cat experience. A college roommate had an evil Siamese cat. He would jump up and bite people in that fleshy area between the nostrils until you pried him off.

The shirt at right is for sale at CafePress.