I saw this today:

About as close as you can get.

My sister, sweetposiebot, linked to this site: Tiny Showcase

I love the concept:

Beginning on August 23, 2005 – the half year anniversary of Tiny Showcase, we introduced a new pricing structure where a percentage of the money from each print sold is donated to a charity chosen by the artist. This raises the print price slightly, but now the artist, as well as their favorite charity, benefit from each piece sold.

If you check their gallery you’ll see a lot of beautiful artwork up, most of them sold out. I’ll definitely be picking up some pieces if/when I ever buy a house. It’s a great way to decorate and donate to a cause!

Ok, this has been making its way around the internet but in case you haven’t seen it:

Which way is she spinning??

If you see her spinning clockwise, you’re right brain dominant (artsy, imaginative)
If you see her spinning counter-clockwise, you’re left brain dominant (logical, practical)

I was surprised that I saw her spinning clockwise first since I’m a hardcore nerd who loves math and science and I consider myself totally logical. It only took me a few minutes to get her to spin counter clockwise though. Can you make her spin both ways?

I’ve written about Zappos before and how they have really awesome customer service but this blog post just blew me away.

I Heart Zappos

Basically the gist is a women orders 7 pairs of shoes for her mom but then finds out only 2 of them fit. During this time, her mom passes away so she ends up exceeding the maximum number of days allowed to return items (15 days) so Zappos calls wondering where the shoes are. She tells them the situation so that she can have a few extra days to return them. Instead of letting her worry about it, they send UPS to come pick up the shoes for her (normally you have to take it to the post office yourself to mail it back) AND send her a bouquet of flowers.

Talk about above and beyond! I seriously wish more companies cared about their customers like Zappos. They should learn from this…it’s such an easy way to get free publicity as I’m sure more people will be posting about this story on their blogs.

If you’re thinking about switching cell phone carriers, this website is a great resource!

Signal Map lets you input an address and see how strong a particular carrier is at that spot.

It’s based on user input so you can add your own and help build their user data for others as well. Best part…no registration required!

Current song I have on repeat: The Way I Am by Ingrid Michaelson (yes it’s the old navy song!! hehe)

If you were falling, then I would catch you.
You need a light, I’d find a match.

Cuz I love the way you say good morning.
And you take me the way I am.

If you are chilly, here take my sweater.
Your head is aching, I’ll make it better.

Cuz I love the way you call me baby.
And you take me the way I am.

I’d buy you Rogaine when you start losing all your hair.
Sew on patches to all you tear.

Cuz I love you more than I could ever promise.
And you take me the way I am.
You take me the way I am.
You take me the way I am.

Informercial Scams – Website with reviews about which informercials are actually scams
96 sq ft house – I wonder if I could afford this house if it were in LA. hehe
Hot 100 women chosen by lesbians – im not surprised to see angelina jolie near the top!
Music stars’ real names
Clerk attacks deaf man – really sad!
The Office convention in Scranton, PA – omg, i wanna go! hehe (here is the official site about it)

I love going to plays, shows, concerts…you name it. But this can become costly depending on how often you go. Here are my favorite ways to never pay full price for a ticket!

Work – If you or someone you know works at a fairly large corporation, most likely they have access to company-discounted tickets. This can include plays, amusement parks, and even movies! I have even gotten discounted orchestra tickets to the sold out Wicked musical that has been playing in town. If you don’t work at a company that supplies you with these, definitely ask around.

Goldstar (or non-referral link)- I signed up for this a few years ago and I love it! They also keep me up-to-date on events happening around my area that I wouldn’t normally hear about. They have discounts on plays, comedy shows, and even spa treatments. Almost everything is pretty much 50% off the ticket price. Unfortunately, they currently only offer tickets for a handful of cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Orange County, Chicago, Washingtdon DC, NY, Boston, and Las Vegas). They also give you credit for referring friends which is easy because this is a great service that I don’t feel bad recommending to my friends.

Craigslist or Ebay – If the show you want to see isn’t sold out, you are almost guaranteed a cheaper price if you look here. Best part, no fees!

Go right before the show (For Musicals/Broadway plays) – You’ll have to check with each individual theater by calling since most of the time this information is not publicly listed but sometimes they have really cheap tickets right before the show. There is usually a “rush or cancellation line” for last minute tickets. Or like for Wicked, several theaters nationwide (check yours) are having a lottery for front row tickets at $25! (BTW, I read for lottery tickets, Sunday matinee shows have the best odds)

TKTS – Most tourists already know about TKTS but it’s the well-known discount booth for broadway/off-broadway shows. I stood in line for this when I visited NYC, it’s part of the experience! And well worth it for the amount of money you can save. Tickets are up to 50% off.

Group Tickets – A great way to get cheaper tickets is to round up a bunch of your friends. Some theaters will offer you discounted tickets if you have a certain number of people in your party.

I love “challenging” myself and putting myself in situations that are outside of my comfort zone. Unfortunately, I didn’t do quite so well with this latest challenge! I told myself I was going to try the Abs Diet for 2 weeks… I barely made a week! How sad I know! I lasted longer eating vegetarian which I tried doing a few years back. Despite the shortlived amount of time I managed to stay on this diet, I feel like I went away with a few really good habits that I will continue doing now even well after. Which is really good! First off, some people don’t really know what the Abs Diet is all about so I’ll outline the main points here:

1. Eat six meals a day – This actually means 3 meals with 3 snacks. Avoid those big meals where you’re so stuffed you can’t move afterwards. I really have a bad habit of doing this. One good thing about this is it prevents you from snacking on unhealthy things because if you have your meals all planned out and eat them accordingly, you’ll never be hungry enough to want to eat anything else! You’ll want to eat 2 snacks 2 hours before lunch and dinner and 1 snack 2 hours after dinner.

2. Try to combine as much of these 12 Abs Diet Power foods as you can at each meal:

Almonds and other nuts
Beans and legumes
Spinach and other green vegetables
Dairy (fat-free or low-fat milk, yogurt, cheese)
Instant oatmeal (unsweetened, unflavored)
Eggs
Turkey and other lean meats
Peanut butter
Olive oil
Whole-grain breads and cereals
Extra-protein (whey) powder
Raspberries and other berries

3. Cut out the soda – and all of the other sugary drinks. Abs diet recommends that you should only drink water, green tea, and lowfat/non-fat milk.

That’s basically the gist. Most of the diet consists of foods rich in fiber and protein that are supposed to make you feel full. The diet also lets you have one “cheat meal” a week. This is where I got in trouble. Once I was allowed to eat “bad”, I kept wanting to cheat!! Some people might need the cheat meal but I think it just gave me an excuse to keep cheating haha.

I can’t really tell you if it works but I did lose “1 lb”. I put that around quotes because during the weeks leading up to the diet I was weighing myself everyday at the same time and my weight would range between 4 lbs but at the end of the first week on the diet I saw 1 lb lower than I ever saw the previous week. Therefore, I think it’s fair to say I lost at least a pound haha. :P

Well, I think the best part of the diet was that I have developed a habit of eating breakfast each morning. I eat Trader Joe’s Cranberry Whole Grain Oatmeal. Which is quite tasty for something so healthy. I also realized that I don’t really mind subbing a lot of the foods I eat with the healthier/whole grain version including brown rice or wheat bread instead of their white counterparts.

One complaint I had about the diet were the meal plans they had in the book ended up being very expensive. Instead of following the guidelines exactly, I mixed and matched a lot of the different recipes to get one that reused more of the same ingredients so I didn’t have a fridge full of food where half of it went spoiled because I didn’t eat it. I will share some of my favorite recipes and meal plans in Part 2!

I’m a total Google fanatic and I can’t believe I totally missed out on using this google application called Google Notebook. If you’re like me, sometimes you read or see something on a website. Maybe it’s just a few lines so you don’t want to bookmark the whole website. Besides, my bookmark list is overflowing right now! This is where Google Notebook comes in. If you download the app to your browser, you can highlight the line(s) you want to keep track of and “Note this”, in other words, add it to your Google Notebook.

Google Notebook will copy/paste the lines you highlighted including the URL it came from.

I’ve been using Google Docs to copy and paste things but this will make it so much easier. Different notebooks I would keep would be:

Gifts – Sometimes I’m surfing the web and I see a great idea for a gift for someone’s birthday. Now I can easily highlight the product, add it to my notebook with a little comment about who it’s for and have an ongoing list of gift ideas for people.

Recipes – I’m a recipe hoarder. I probably bookmark a recipe a day because I always see something I want to one day make. Now I can highlight the recipe name and keep track of them in this online notebook.

Blog Ideas – Easy way to keep track of blog ideas and where they came from!

The best part about all of this is since it’s Google, I don’t have to set up yet another account (doesn’t everybody have a gmail account already?) and the fact that I can access the notebook from any computer. Now if only the GPhone would come out already.