1.  Farmville.  Diggory introduced me to this goofy little Facebook app, which has since been sucking my time away like a Shop-Vac in a box of Cheerios.  Perhaps it’s because it connects with my fond memories of growing up on a farm.  Perhaps it’s the bright colours and pleasant looking fruits and vegetables it sends prancing about my screen.  Perhaps it’s because it is free and yet of comparable quality to a farming sim game I remember paying good money for about 10 years ago (Don’t ask.  Please, don’t ask).  Whatever the case, it’s one of those simple, simple games that I find myself almost unwillingly wandering back to from time to frequent time.

2.  Trail mix.  Elizabeth took it upon herself to make our own last week, after doing some quick math and realizing that she could manufacture trail mix at roughly one-third the cost of what the grocery store would charge for the pre-mixed stuff.  To her great irritation, Diggory and I then proceeded to scarf the whole gallon of it down in the space of a day and a half.  Elizabeth has threatened to visit all manner of horrors upon me if I do not ease up on my trail mix consumption.

3.  Mint.  We’ve been using this site to track our finances and attempt to uncover the black hole that seems to absorb a startling amount of our disposable income each month.  The black hole may or may not be chocolate; the jury is still out on this one.  Still, the site has proven a handy way for us to keep tabs on things and track where the money’s coming in and going out each cycle.  The good news is that it’s free; the bad news is that it isn’t available in Canada yet.

photo credit: kevindooley

“I saw this guy speak today,” she said.  “They made a movie, and posted a big section of it on the website.  We should watch it.”

Innocently, I complied.

Now, when a movie advertises itself as being about the zombie apocalypse, or a witch hanging out in the woods, or a guy with an overdeveloped interest in chain saws, I expect to associate a certain level of fear with the film.  I can brace myself accordingly or (more likely) just avoid it altogether.

I had not expected a movie about economics to be pants-crappingly horrifying.  The image of the swelling US national debt, along with projections of where it’s heading, is frightening enough.   But when you couple that with the realization that debt payments have partially been funded by drawing on surplus Social Security, and that the aforementioned surplus is going to disappear pretty quickly as a whole lotta people get set to retire…

I spent much of last night trapped in fitful nightmares of a post-meltdown world that was curiously reminiscent of Fallout 3.

photo credit: i eated a cookie

1. The Escapist.  If you’re not interested in video games or video game culture, or if you are interested in it but struggle with the overwhelming geekiness of it all, this site is probably not for you.  If, however, you can happily wallow in your own nerddom, there’s a lot to enjoy on this site.  Zero Punctuation and Unskippable are definite highlights.

2.  Gord Downie on CBC Q.  The May 11 episode features a lengthy interview with the frontman for The Tragically Hip, one of the best Canadian bands ever.  The interview is a fascinating look into the mind of the poet and performer.

3.  Uncle Jay Explains the News.  More than Fox, CNN, or even BBC, I look to Uncle Jay to make sense of the events in the world around us.  And then to mock them.

photo credit: Pipe ?

1. My cousin’s wedding.  My cousin (and his new wife, just so’s we’re clear) just got back from the Dominican Republic, where they celebrated their wedding / honeymoon.  I’ve seen a couple of pictures from the trip, and suddenly I find myself longing wistfully to be someplace warm and lazy.

2. The Hip.  They just released their new album, which Amazon kindly delivered to me on the day of its release.  I then spent yesterday afternoon listening to it as I worked, and felt reconnected with my homeland and the artistic community at large.  Since Elizabeth got us tickets to see them here in New York in May, I felt it was important to become familiar with their new material prior to what promises to be a great and intimate show.

I had a moment’s panic when I first tossed the CD into my computer’s drive, and opened Windows Media Player.  For some reason, Media Player decided to just start playing some of the random tracks that came bundled with the software, rather than the CD that I had just put in the freaking drive.  As the lilting strains of someone I’d never heard of playing a song I did not care for filled the room, I wondered if perhaps my favourite band had gone off the deep end.

They had not, and contentment reigned throughout the house yesterday afternoon.  Though the first song on the disc was a little more country than I had expected.

3. BioShock.  Diggory and I are a little late to this party, since the game has been out for months, but we picked it up this week and have been enjoying it considerably.  It’s a pretty tense, suspenseful game, with a surprisingly intelligent story line.  BioShock is like something from Alfred Hitchock‘s mind, if he was channeling Jules Verne while going through a dieselpunk phase.

I have decided that I will not play this game if I am alone in the house.

photo credit: Andrew*