Your Birth Verse

I thought this was neat. You enter your birthday and it generates a scripture verse based on the numbers. For example, mine is John 10:29, "My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand."

Try it for your own birthday, and then leave a comment and share the verse!

BirthVerse

Confessions of a Shopaholic

Last night I saw a preview for the movie of Confessions of a Shopaholic. It looks like it won't be out in theaters until next year, but I am looking forward to it. I enjoyed the book -- and the follow ups (Shopaholic Takes Manhattan, Shopaholic & Baby, Shopaholic Ties the Knot, Shopaholic & Sister). Sometimes it's weird when books are made into movies -- the book is always better! But this looks like it will be cute. I hope that it will be appropriate for the girls to see also.

BTW, I saw the preview while watching the premiere of the new series, 90210. I used to love the original show ("back in the day" - how did I get so old?), but I'm not sure what to make of the new one. Definitely racier. One of the first scenes shows a guy sitting in a car with a girl's head in his lap, ahem. Nothing explicit shown, just implied. The girls want to watch it, but I just don't know. Still have to think about it some more. I wish there was a way on the DVR to edit out that scene!

Who Knew PB&J Could Be So Good?

While shopping at Fresh Market I picked up some peanut butter that has really struck my fancy. I just want to lick the jar clean. It's from the Peanut Butter & Co and it's called White Chocolate Wonderful. If you can imagine, it is peanut butter blended with white chocolate. HEAVENLY! It is not overly sweet, but it definitely takes the flavor of peanut butter up a notch. And the pb texture is much better than what you'd get at the grocery store.

They also have several other varities which I want to try!! Like cinammon raisin, dark chocolate or honey. The company also sells jams, candies and nuts. From what I'm reading on the company website, they also have a sandwich shop in NYC.

The website has a store locator feature or you can purchase products online. If you're so inclined, t's quite a treat!

Five Things I Can't Live Without

1) San Pelligrino -- I stopped drinking Diet Coke this past spring. No real reason behind it, just the thought that soda is a lot of unecessary chemicals. Then when I tried to stop drinking it, I realized that I was addicted to the caffiene. I literally couldn't get through the day without it. So I was even more motivated to give it up. Now I only drink water, and I love sparkling mineral water. I prefer SP over Perrier, but I also like some store brands (Target, Fresh Market). And I love Voss - the bottle is so cool - but it's so dratted expensive.

2) Paperbackswap.com -- As much as I read, this is the perfect way to feed my book habit ... and clear out my bookshelf when I'm finished with a book. It's a place where you (obviously ... duh) swap books with other members. They don't have to be paperbacks, by the way. It's free to request a book; instead, you incur a cost when you ship a book to someone else. Then, when they receive the book, you earn a credit you can use to request a book from someone else. It's costs about $2.00 - $2.50 to mail a book, depending on how big it is. So ultimately that's much cheaper than buying books at the bookstore.

3) My iPod Touch ... I think that I've explained that one pretty thoroughly already.

4) Summertime tomatoes from the garden -- I could eat them every day for every meal. Sometimes I get lucky and my mom hooks me up from her garden. Other times I have to buy them from the farm market. I love them plain, with a little sprinkle of salt, or in salads with some fresh mozarella and basil, or on sandwiches, nice and squishy so the juices soak into the bread.

5) Conair Infiniti -- As I've gotten older my hair has gotten much curlier. If I want it to be straight at all, I have to use this. The nice thing is that you can use it like a blow dryer, and straighten it at the same time. Yes, it's clearly infomercial fodder, but I did NOT buy mine from an infomercial! I bought it from Amazon.com, thankyouverymuch.

Ten Things I Love About My iPod Touch

Brian got me an iPod Touch for my birthday last year. I'd hinted that I wanted one, but knew it was really an indulgence beyond necessity. I already had a perfectly good iPod Nano. Luckily, his covetousness won out; by getting me the iPod Touch, he inherited the Nano!

Since last year, the iPod Touch has really increased in functionality. First there was an update adding email access and weather reports. Now that Apple has allowed third party developers to offer applications, there are even more fun things that I use it for. So here's a list of things I really love about it:

1. Safari Browser: After being away from the Apple interface for several years, it was so lovely to discover the simplicity of Safari. I like it so much on the iPod Touch that I've started using it on my laptop.


2. Reading My AOL Mail: The iPod Touch makes it really easy to access and utilize AOL mail, even easier than doing it on my laptop becasue I can bypass the AOL program and just get the mail.


3. Updating Facebook: Who could ever imagine that I could give me friends real-time updates about my sailing vacation, from an isolated island in the Caribbean called the Bitter End?


4. Units App: This is the handiest thing ever. It's a new app that you download that lets you instantly convert things - currency, measurement, weights, time etc. I don't really know why it thrills me so to know how many weeks are in 12 years. But it sure did come in handy when our friend from Italy was visiting and she wanted to know what 90 degrees was in Celsius or what a $25 shirt from Aeropostale would cost in Euros.


5. My Beddy-Bye Playlist: I made a playlist of my favorite soothing, relaxing songs. Like Pachelbel's Canon, Andrea Bocceli and John McDaniel. Whenever I listen to it before I fall asleep, I always sleep really well!


6. My Pictures: It's like having a wallet-full of snapshots, without the "full" part. I uploaded some of my favorite pictures from the sailboat trip, and then I always have them handy to show to people. Or just to look at in a quiet moment and relive the happy memories.


7. Trism: This is a totally addicting game. All kinds of games because available for the iPod Touch when Apple introduced it's App Store earlier this summer. This one is a puzzle game where you connect triangles to form triads. I spend way too much time playing it!


8. Audiobooks: I can't read in the car - it makes me sick. But I can *listen* to books on my iPod Touch. Up next: Mommy Tracked by Whitney Gaskell.


9. TV Shows: I'm not a big TV-watcher, but I do have shows that I really like. And I can download them on my iPod Touch and watch them whenever. That way I'm not tied to the TV schedule - or even tied to the DVR box. I can watch it in the car, walking on the treadmill at the gym, waiting in the dr.'s office (or during volleyball tryouts). My favorite shows are The Tudors, Grey's Anatomy and old episodes of Sex & The City. I also download the free shows - usually pilot episodes of new programs.


10. Notes: There's a little notepad feature that I find really handy. Like when Kim and I were traveling in Arizona and wanted to keep track of expenses. But I love the Notes feature most because there are little surprises there - whenever the girls get their hands on my iPod they will leave me little messages in the notes. Like this one, "Hi mom! How are you? The bathroom will look amazing! You don't need to worry about a thing just be happy and pray about it. It will work out fine." -- that one's from Meredith. She was playing with my iPod while we were in Home Depot stressing over the details of our bathroom renovation.