Link a Dink

Seems like by Friday my head is so mushy I can't do much but empty its contents here. So that's what I'll do. I've been amazingly busy at work. The kind where I'm barely at home. I've been missing Matt and Tabby loads. But I have next week to play with them, so yay!

We went to see Spamalot last night. I cannot say enough good things about this musical. I enjoyed it more than just about anything I've ever seen. It is completely irreverent, a bit bawdy, and utterly hilarious. It's sort of a cross between Monty Python's search for the Holy Grail and Camelot with a load of Brodaway humor thrown in. The absolute highlight of humor for me was the (Lady of the) Laker Girls cheerleading Routine. K-I-N-G-A-R-T-H-U-R ….. King Arthur, yea! King Arthur. Absolutely brilliant!!

Dinner @ Chedds wasn't bad either. I had roast beef and horseradish cheddar. Yum-O.

What else? Oh yes. I've collected some really brilliant links this week. Don't know what's going on, but there seems to be some really good stuff coming out lately. First and foremost, since I was just talking grilled cheese, I thought this article, with 10 tips to perfect grilled cheese, was worth a read. Personally, we use the George Foreman to make our grilled cheese sandwiches (and quesadillas for that matter), but the stovetop method is classic.

Before I forget, I must also share the latest bag that I.Must.Have!!!! My day-to-day bag, a lime green Ogio backpack, while very nice, has been feeling a bit large lately. I was cruising around ebags (luv that site) and found Overland Equipment. After perusing their website, I have decided that I must have a “Donner.” They come in great colors and are imminently functional. I am only sliiightly deterred that the bag seems to be named after a rather ill-fated family vacation. I also notice they sell a laptop bag that would actually hold my giant laptop.Two new sites just launched recently, both with single-word, food-related names that start with the letter M. That's not really the point, but I did think it was interesting.

I'm quite excited about Mint, a web 2.0 offering for managing your finances. Personally, I use a very OCD Excel Spreadsheet for my budgeting and tracking of spending, but it does require a nontrivial amount of time to maintain. Mint logs into your various accounts (using third-party, very secure and reliable verification that institutions such as Citibank use) and collects all the information and aggregates it for you with pie charts and bar graphs, etc. so you can make the most out of your $$. They make their $$ by suggesting more economical ways to get the same services and goods (i.e. if they see you're spending like $200/month on cable, they may suggest DSL or whatever for some savings). Their site's been a bit bogged down since they went out of Beta, so I haven't had a change to look at it first hand, but it seems very promising and is getting rave reviews.

Mango is a very nicely designed site that features flash-based language courses … for free. Just register with your email address (you don't even have to create a password) and you get access to 11 different language courses, mostly for native English speakers.

I am such a sucker for those “new uses for ” articles. This one on 15 uses for Aluminum foil was particularly good. I've used the trick for sharpening scissors before and it does really work. It also works with hole punches. They did not, however, mention using foil to improve your wifi signal.

I always like alternative concepts for blogs and I think that The Etch-a-Sketchist is a particularly good one. This random guy draws very good pictures on his Etch-a-Sketch every day and posts them for the world to see. Very impressive. I especially like: Jabba the Hut, Harry Potter, Fidel Castro and the Unicorn Eating Sushi (I mean, c'mon, it's a unicorn eating sushi!).

As we are thinking about putting our house on the market, this Lifehacker post about getting free/cheap cardboard boxes for moving was of great interest to me. They have some suggestions I wouldn't have though of, including a forum on Uhaul's website where people connect to give away/sell used boxes. Green and cheap. Yay.

Jottit is another interesting idea. It's a textbox. You write text in the box, hit publish, and you've got instant web page. It's like the simplest web page builder ever. Free of course. I don't know if it'll do anyone any good, but it's kind of interesting.

I'm always on the lookout for good crafty blogs. Crafty Daisies, seems to be a particularly good example of that genre. They have wonderful ideas and tutorials.

And for a fun little take on Origami, here is a site that will teach you 27 different napkin folds. Now you can have a fancy table.

Last but not least, WikiRage will show you what people are interested in looking up on Wikipedia at the moment. I have no idea why some of these things are popular right now, but then again, I don't watch the news.

I think that's all I've got for now. Next week is one of the best weeks allllll year long. Fall Premiere week! Ugly Betty. The Office. Need I say more?