Today I found www.stumbleupon.com, and i’m not sure if I’ll ever be bored online again.

Between Bill and myself, we’ve got a very respectable music collection, heavy on the ecelectic. I’ve got all of mine plus maybe a third of his on my external hard drive, and stream tracks directly to our old but still very servicable stereo. I don’t work well in total silence, and usually something’s on for background noise. Since the old TV died in the summer (and the new one only gets turned on for movies, if that) It’s been the radio or the home jukebox to keep my ears occupied, and I’ve noticed something of late – I’m ignoring my rock collection. Actually, I’m ignoring almost anything that’s got a vocal track.
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I had jury duty today. My civic duty included sitting around in the Bergen Co. couthouse for seven hours before being told that the trial they needed us for had been settled out of court, so we could all go home. Thank god I brought books and an iPod. And my sketch pad. And lunch.

So, I have a gmail account, but I don’t use it much. I *do* make frequent use of Google’s “customize your homepage” feature to get my news headlines all at a glance, but I’ve been holding off jumping onto their web based feedreader – my last online reader was newsgator (the folks that bought feeddemon, a piece of software I’m still fairly loyal to), and that did not go swimmingly.

Google’s app thouugh? It rocks. (imported my OPML database like a dream and even kept all the classification folders intact) I might even ditch the desktop software alltogether if this works as well as I think it’s gonna.

Every year I try to get myself a little something silly for christmas, just because. (And yeah, I’m hard to shop for. Even when *I’m* the one doing it.) This year, I’m trying out a knitting loom. (All those fancy yarns at Michaels are *soooo* seductive).

This isn’t that radical a departure, as anyone who’s watched me compulsively braid things will attest to. If I don’t have something going on with my hands, I just don’t feel right. (Which might explain why I revert to biting my nails when I’m bored and/or stressed.)