BTL is now brightstorm.com.  not a bad name, methinks.  check it out & sign up for the beta even if you are not a HS kid.  i want lots of feedback.  seeing myself online in professionally-produced, non-pornographic videos will soon be something i can check off ye old bucket list.  there's some kind of deal with winning free amex gift cards to people testing out the beta now, so do give it a gander, won't you?  much obliged.

i have a total geek boner for the wii game my word coach.   it might be seriously my dorkiest pleasure ever.

i bought the first two seasons of 'entourage' at plan 9 the other day.  i've never seen an episode but 4 (or is it 5?) seasons of uberhype have finally pulled me in.  plus i've been craving a marathonable new show to get into…  not that i'm not thrilled with the new fall TV lineup of the equivalent to a tray of twinkies and ho-ho's - "90210″ and "gossip girl" and "the hills" - ah, nutritionaly-void gluttony, i love you so.

yesterday whilst giving a reading assessment my eager little elementary school learner read the word "hour" as WHORE.   the sentence was, "we waited for an hour for the clue."  the notion of waiting for a whore, particularly when ennunicated by a teeny tiny little squeaky-voiced girl had me biting the inside of my cheeks to keep from completely busting out laughing.    best yet, the story she was reading was called "father's new game"  "father" surely is up to no good, methinks.  and what of this mysterious, clue-giving woman of the night?  now there's a pitch for a tv show.

big tree is actively recruiting HS age kids to check out our content and offer feedback.  they have the opportunity to earn free online courses and gift cards just for offering opinions, so please forward the hell out of this link:

www.bigtreelearning.com

they can list 'linda' under how they heard about BTL and i'll get mad respect.   much obliged!

Proving that there is something for everyone online, here is a blog documenting what claudia wore in the Babysitters' Club series.

Seriously.
I think this tops the post I saw yesterday about gimps gone wild (nsfw).

And I might the only person to put those two topics/sites together.

do you have babies?  do you have friends who have babies?  are you a baby?

if you answered yes to any of the above, you need these.

rockabye baby are CD compilations of rock songs transformed into beautiful, kid-friendly instrumentals.  the range of artists covered is pretty extensive - radiohead to the stones to tool to smashing pumpkins to metallica.  you can preview the tracks or buy them as single mp3s at amazon and some of them are nothing short of amazing - ethereal and gorgeous.

i already have quite a few i want to purchase for my own hypothetical future offspring, not to mention those hypothetical future offspring of my friends, as super-creepy as i realize that sounds.

tripp's babies will get rockabye baby U2, michelle's will get rockabye baby led zeppelin, and dutton's, will of course, get rockabye baby NIN.

who wouldn't want to put their babies to bed to such quality?

i have never been one to hide the fact that i pretty much avoid politics. i understand it's not a smart decision to be ignorant about what's going on or abuse the right i have to vote, though, and as a result, i appreciate this website. it breaks things down really well, matching you up with the potential presidential candidate most aligned with your personal belief system. as far as i can see, it appears bias-free - created to educate and encourage people to vote, not to push a particular party or candidate. oversimplification of the process of candidate selection, perhaps, but good for those of us who don't know what from what in the political arena.

my first match was mike gravel, whom i have to admit i had never heard of before. our belief systems were about 80% compatibility, with the biggest conflict in our views being in pay raises for teachers. hmmm.

hillary and john edwards came in at a 78% match for me. i like the idea of supporting a woman's bid for the presidency, i just wish my option for this was a little more…personally appealing. barack, whom i also would like to like more, was at a 76% match for me. ron paul, whom my sister and brother-in-law have a scientologist-comparable level of devotion to, matches up with my thinking only 44%.

food for thought, at least.

my celebrity gossip habit is OOC. every day, as my treat and wind-down after work before todd and zane come home, i read, in order, the superficial, perez, tmz, and X17. seriously!

i suppose it's a better vice than the booze i used to guzzle or the boys i used to…chase, but it's probably just about as unhealthy. do i really need to speculate on celebrity pregnancy, check out nips slips, watch clips of C-listers getting denied at hyde, view pictures of britney in a public gas station/behind the wheel/at starbucks?

the answer, of course, is yes.

so, at long last (again), i believe you have the choice of emailing the author of any post. it isn't perfect yet, but it's 85% of the way there. and functioning, which is the important part.

i'm down in san diego for the week, hanging with the roxy's family and trying to kick this kidney stone pain. its been not too terrible, due mainly to my prescription of percocet. though i did swim for quite a while today and have been slowly taking less of the painkillers — i bet 3 is my max today, compared to 4 yesterday and 4 on friday. seeing that i havent had any since 7.30 am, it seems a good sign.

while i am down here, i am going to try to spend at least an hour a day on the site; there are some pieces that are desperate for repair. that's one task, another is to finish reading harry potter. i decided to re-read them all before jumping into book 7. so for the past 2 weeks, i have been reading reading reading. i'm halfway done with 5 right now — which is also saying something, considering i started it right before bed last night and it weighs in at 850 pages. 425 pages in 18 hours isn't shabby.

yeah, that's about it for today. yay kidney aches and pains!