That darn iTunes Store driving you to the poorhouse with music, television shows and iPhone app purchases? Fear no more. Dive your hands into that couch for loose change, check your pockets before doing laundry and bust open that piggy bank.

Coinstar automated coin-counting machines are now able to dispense gift cards and/or receipts with validation codes on them. And the kicker is that they don’t subtract the normal 9% fee usually charged when exhanged coins for cash.

If iTunes isn’t your thing, gift cards can also be issued from retailers Starbucks, Amazon, Circuit City, JCPenney, Borders, Pier 1, Eddie Bauer, Cabela’s, Disney, Old Navy, AMC and Linens ‘n Things. This is a great idea come holiday time when you’re buying gift cards anyway, simply use all that change that’s lying around and cross that name off your shopping list, keeping the real money for yourself!

America’s Next Top Model is bringing the fierceness for Cycle 11 on its premiere September 3rd. Isis, a contestant from local Prince Georges County (MD), is “a woman born physically male”, US Weekly reports. In what is sure to be a shocker to some of the other contestants (as well as viewers), GLAAD president Neil Giuliano describes Isis’ participation in the show as “an unprecedented opportunity for a community that is underrepresented on television. We applaud Tyra Banks and The CW for making this historic visibility of transgender people possible.”

Isis’ promo page can be found here. Her portfolio modeling shots will expand as we get closer to premiere date and move through the season.

I wish I could take credit for that stolen headline that I paraphrased but I really can’t. There’s a game you can play by matching the abs to the Olympic swimmer and it’s actually on the official NBC Olympics 2008 site. For example, do you know whose torso this is? Hint: This Frenchman stormed onto the swimming scene by breaking three world records at the 2008 European Championships.

Give up? The answer and more can be found here. And for those of you who prefer Phelps with the Fu Manchu, there’s also a Phelps Fu gallery.

U! S! A!

• sleep in
• complete Easy setting of Space Case level in Super Monkey Ball
• read blogs
• download latest Mad Men ep
• repair bike on sidewalk off of Lincoln Park
• turn around and go home, look for tools to repair bike
• have lunch outside at Good Stuff Eatery
• take bike to Capitol Hill Bikes to let the pros do their thing
• ride bike on CapHill streets I’d never been on before
• watch cooking shows for two hours
• place Peapod order
 

I like to sleep in on Sundays. Hell, I’d like to sleep in every day, but necessities like shelter, food and that unlucky lottery ticket prevent that from happening.

My alarm was set for 8:00 this morning and after two snooze hits I finally got into gear. I’m out on the bike at 8:50, on time to meet my brother and his family for a DC Ducks tourist tour. While the DC Ducks is the quirkiest of all the traditional DC tourist tours, I was still excited about doing it, and especially with my niece and nephew. While Will is too young to remember our excursion (he’s only 18 mos) Sarah Jane probably will keep this in memory, especially when we bus dipped into the river for the boat part of the trip. She even got to steer the boat for a while! Apparently, she likes going in circles, but I think that’s because she wasn’t big enough to see over the bus/boat’s dashboard.

After a quick lunch at Union Station, I left to get some things done before the evening and took an extended bike tour throughout Capitol Hill, just because the weather was so pleasant.

Tonight I met up with EFP and his new beau, and friend Justin whom I hadn’t seen in about six years. It’s EFPs 40th birthday which we all know is the new 30th. We met up for some meet-n-greet cocktails and then headed over to Rice for dinner. Our evening was filled with wine, plenty of food for the four of us and lots and lots of loud laughter. All in all it was a pretty fun evening, EFP had a great b-day, and I was able to catch a not too late bus back across town.

I don’t have any pix of the evening since the restaurant was so dark and the iPhone doens’t have a flash. That’s one thing that I’m regretting about not lugging around my actual camera anymore, is that there aren’t a lot of nighttime pix anymore. We’ll have to look into that. The old camera I have is pretty bulky, maybe it’s time to get a new, slimmer one?

meditations in an emergency
twitter error
cut. paste. format. repeat.
how do you differentiate ice from glass?
freedom cage
e.n.a.t.i.g.a.l.w.t.t.b.o.t.y.h.g.b.
dear diary,
been a long time been a long time now
long-distance band 
%20% 
future product transition
hair: brushed & parted
jerky and dried snacks 

Today is reminiscent of those Saturdays I had in Houston, the Montrose, of waking up late and having too many things to do, too little time to do them in. And lots of habits and distractions <wink>. Thankfully, there is no Jack-In-The-Box. Instead, there is Olympic watching, garden weeding and biking on a rather pleasant August day. 

Last night I checked a bookmark I had made a couple of weeks ago. It is a chicken taco recipe and while I think I have the recipe for chicken soft tacos down, I’m always open for new ideas. So while revisiting this recipe I checked out the current posting for this blog and after scrolling past the breakfast burrito recipe, there is an enticing photo of spiced rubbed salmon on a cedar plank recipe. Although I do not own cedar planks (apparently you can get them at “finer” grocery stores) I kept reading through the description and once at the recipe I discovered that, yes, I have brown sugar, yes, I have kosher salt, yes, I have ancho chili, yes, I have ground cumin, yes, I have ground black pepper, and yes, I have honey all in my cupboard. I also have salmon steaks in my freezer. So guess what I’m having for dinner tonight?

My brother has called and asked if I want to join him and his family tomorrow for DC Ducks. For non-Cap City rezzies, DC Ducks is an amphibious tour bus which takes you around the tourist sites and takes you through a plunge in the Potomac. I’ve always wanted to do this, cheezy as it is, and this my opportunity!

Batman tonight? Yes? No? Maybe so?

I’ve made it through another week without getting fired, “let go” or simply asked to step away from the workstation and please follow these kind security guards out of the building, and thanks for playing.

After cutting 10% of coworkers this year, an abrupt demotion and an economy that is apparently spiraling downward at an uncontrolled pace, I always feel a little comforted that I’ve made it through another week of being employed while at the same time having very little billable time, for there is very little actual work to be done.

On Monday during a studio-wide meeting the owner of the studio and design guru shared her concerns about the state of the economy and how that impacts all of us working for a small company. While she assured us that employee levels were going to be maintained and work coming into the studio is forthcoming, I’m still somewhat anxious. Words and promises only go so far in the world of business.

It’s a Wednesday and that means Project Runway. And some blogging.

I originally wanted to write about this a couple of months ago but I guess there was were other things going on that were distracting me. Like, life and memories and dealing with all of that.

So I haven’t had a car in just over five years. I think this is longer than those times when I didn’t have a car in Houston. I’ve realized that, while not having a car is a huge pain in the ass in any American city other than New York, I enjoy driving cars but I don’t like owning them.

The last car I owned was a 1977 Volkswagen Beetle. It was silver, had only one previous owner and 83,857 original miles. It was in great shape and even had air conditioning. I read through the entire owner’s manual and discovered things that VW had learned after 40 years of making basically the same model. For instance, it is inadvisable to drive the car while resting your hand on the gearshift.

I set about doing things like making sure the back seat’s safety belts were available for usage and making sure the oil was always at the proper level. On Saturdays when my landlady’s would be out at their ranch (this is Texas, y’all) I would pull the car—dubbed “Libby”—into their driveway and would give her a wash, in preparation for Saturday night’s cruising. One Saturday they didn’t make it out to the ranch and they moved their truck out of the driveway without me asking, just so I could wash Libby and I thought that was especially nice.

After driving Libby, with The Twins™ inside, to DC with its lumpy pavement, huge potholes, asshole drivers and chemically-treated roads every vehicle inspection was nerve-racking. There was always something to be found wrong, and what was being found wrong was increasing over time, both in quantity and in replacement cost. Eventually Libby had developed the car cancer: RUST :and soon this deteriorating condition was becoming a need for an entire overhaul. Like strip everything out of the car to its shell and rebuild, to the tune of fifteen grand.

It seemed time to put Libby out to pasture, as they say. I guess I should backtrack here. When I purchased the car, the sole owner made me promise to take care of it, so I couldn’t just turn it in to a junkyard or sell it to just anybody. I’d discovered that the father of a high school friend customized old Beetles so I sold it to him in good faith and standing. The Millionaire I was dating at the time was kind enough to offer me transport to central Virginia to drop Libby off but I was able to drive her to my parents and she was picked up there. I said goodbye with a clear conscience.

This is a streamgraph which analyzes the word usage in my last 200 Twitter tweets. More detailed information about its generation (as well as info on how to graph your own tweets) can be found here.

Clickie make biggie!