Domestic Geek

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Three weeks ago I wrote about a Mediflow Waterbase Pillow and today I went to J.C. Penney's and bought one. I saw on Laura's site that the company was offering a $5 rebate and it turns out the Penney's also had them on sale this week. I took it as a sign that I was meant to get one. Of course, the Penney's by my house doesn't stock them. I had to go to Park Meadows Mall. Gah, I hate that place.

Even though I've been exhausted, I just can't sleep. Part of it, I know, is my pillow. I figure that if this little investment makes me actually sleep, it will be so worth it. I have been in the worst mood this week, all due to lack of sleep due to the Blogathon and my insomnia.

I've only put my head on it for a short bit, but so far it feels good. We'll know for sure tomorrow morning.

OK, I understand people paying large sums of money to get something that is sold out of a store right before Christmas. But paying inflated prices on eBay for an iPhone when there is plenty in stock still and you can order them for retail directly from Apple's web site? That I don't get. People are dumb.

w00t! Just won a $5 Amazon gift certificate for searching on Blingo! I was really hoping for iTunes gift certs, but I'll take Amazon. There's tons of stuff I want on their site, too.

See, you really do get stuff by searching through those sites! Hey, become my Blingo and/or Winzy friend and sign up through my badges in my sidebar. Why not take the chance of getting some cool free stuff doing something you already do everyday anyway?

A coworker and I were talking about gardening a few weeks back and she mentioned that she and the kids were starting some sunflowers to put outdoors. I lamented that I haven't grown sunflowers in years since I really don't have a place that receives enough sun. She brought me a little seedling today and told me I should try growing it in a pot on my little back porch. That was so thoughtful, but the poor little guys seems awfully small. I wish I had purchased that small greenhouse at the local craft store that Nina and I saw a few years ago. It would be perfect to nurse this poor little guy along until he's strong enough to survive outside in a Colorado summer.

A store I've written about on here before, Online Discount Mart, has some Greenhouses very similar to the one I wanted back then. I've glad they're still available and I will definitely be getting one soon. While looking for greenhouses, I couldn't help but notice all the great new products they've gotten for summer—flags, statuary, birdbaths and lots more. They carry such a vast array of great items for the garden and the home. I'm still going to get a garden gnome from them, too.

I just noticed they have a Tips & Ideas section in their sidebar. I'm going to go peruse those links and see what great information they have to share.

I've had the most interesting day today. Since Marcus was out mountain biking with Mike, I decided I was going to go browse a couple of my old shopping hangouts.

My first stop was Album Memories, an independent scrapbook store at 64th and Monoco St. in Commerce City. The woman that owns that store is one of the neatest ladies I've ever met. She and I have a lot in common and she even used to be a pizza manager. I haven't been to visit her since right after I lost my job last July and I was kind of afraid that she'd no longer be in business. Fortunately, she was still there and open, so I stopped in. She doesn't have the biggest variety of things, but she does carry things I don't see in the big chain stores. She's also the biggest Sizzix dealer in the country and she does the best demos of what those products can do. I'm in love with the new machine that's out and want to get it. Unfortunately, I don't really have the money to spend ($100 for the machine plus the dies are extra) on something crafty like that. I will one day, though. Those things are freakin' cool. I noticed that there is a die to cut out those cardstock embroidery floss bobbins that I use to wind my cross stitch floss. Anyway, I felt really good and positive after leaving her store. Talking to her about how different and better my life is now than when we last met really made me grateful for where I am now.

The next stop was Black & Read, a cool independent music/book store over at 80th and Wadsworth. My purpose there was to get some used Stephen King books and start working on my summer goal of getting and reading all of my missing King novels. I love browsing that place. I also found an Orson Scott Card novel I was missing. I was chatting with the guy at the counter while he was ringing up my purchases about Stephen King. He was quite knowledgeable about the dude. He asked if I had seen King on television recently in his band. I hadn't, although I knew that King performed in a group consisting of other writers. The woman behind me told me the group was called The Rock Bottom Remainders, so I made a mental note to look that up when I got home. I didn't realize Dave Barry was in it, though. I was watching some videos they had posted on YouTube of the band interviewing with Steve Martin. I'll have to watch more of that at a later date. Funny stuff.

When Marcus got home later in the afternoon, I was telling him about how I had a list of missing King books that I had made that I took with me when I was looking for books. He asked if I kept a database of my books or something and I told him that I had gotten the bibliography off of StephenKing.com and had made myself a checklist in a table in Word. He then asked if I had ever heard of a program called Delicious Library made by the company Delcious Monster. I hadn't. It's an Apple award winning cataloging program to keep track of books, music, movies and games. The company and program are the product of programmer Wil Shipley, founder of The Omni Group, makers of some really cool Apple Mac apps such as Omni Graffle and Omni Outliner.

He told me the program uses an iSight camera as a bar code scanner to input your items into the database. I was intrigued and so I downloaded the trial and I'm hooked! I can't believe how freaking awesome this program is. First off, the interface is really slick. It looks like you're looking at a bookshelf. The icons are relative in size to the actual item they portray. You have the ability to keep track of who has borrowed your stuff via your address book. You can group your stuff into collections (similar to playlists in iTunes). You can view similar items to one you select on Amazon. I'm just blown away by this thing. There is a third party program called DeliciWeb that allows you to publish your library to a web page. You can see a test file over at the Domestic Geek Library. There's also a third party program to bring your iTunes Library into it. I'll have to wait until I raise the $40 to purchase a license before I can try that one, though. I want this software so bad!!!!!



Anyway, I guess that's enough about my day today.