I got this in the mail this morning…

Solid vinyl, peelable, and completely customizable stickers

And – it was for the low, low price of FREE! Well, free if you count iCoke coins as free.

I’d never heard of StickerYou before (although I’d seen another custom sticker site a while back), but when I was looking through my “rewards” the other day I found this “design your own sheet of stickers” option. That led to checking out the neat CocaCola stickers I could get, which led to discovering they also had Star Trek stickers, and that I could upload my own images, too. When I ordered it, it said the projected arrival date was September 2nd, but they arrived today – only 4 days later. And I live in the boonies!

I made a couple of minor booboos I won’t repeat – the smaller CL sticker overlaps the “giving her all she’s got” sticker slightly which will leave a notch in one and a slightly cropped edge on the other (that was just a placement error I didn’t notice) and the rounded corners on the CL stickers nip off a tiny bit of the S in SEIZE.

Also, is anyone else going nuts looking at the word “seize” while their brain recites ‘i before e except after c’ over and over? No? Just me? Cognitive dissonance rules.

I can only order 1 sheet a week for free, so I sure hope iCoke still has these as an option next week, and for weeks to come. I want to get some more CarpeLumen stickers, as well as some other stuff. Maybe it’s the 10 year old in me, but I think it’s pretty darn cool.

I really enjoy reading. I always have.

I tend to read everything – textbooks, novels, plays, classics – old and new stuff, seemingly at random. I used to read quickly enough that even while working and keeping up with a “normal” working life, I would consume 2-3 books in an average week.

Sadly, my illness has changed all that.

I know it will sound weird to those who haven’t experienced it, but for ME/CFIDS/CFS sufferers, using the brain can be just as exhausting as using the body. For most people, the body is able to easily produce enough energy to power their mental processes without having any sort of feeling of exhaustion. When you spend a long time working on a project that requires a great deal of thought, one may feel mentally exhausted but usually not completely physically drained (barring some extenuating circumstances like extreme stress or duress). For me it’s very different. If I take a long walk, it can be as exhausting as running a marathon. Here’s the kicker – equally as exhausting is something like reading a book.

The energy required to run my brain to read a book or think about our budget (or write a blog post, etcetera) can leave me more exhausted than taking that long walk I mentioned. Or weeding the garden. Or building something. It certainly is equally exhausting in most cases. That means that to walk to the library and get out a book to bring home to read typically leaves me too tired to read it. We live in a tiny hamlet, but we are very lucky to have a library. We’ve lived here for almost 2 years. My total trips to our local branch of the library?

Zero. I don’t even know what the place looks like inside. Read the rest of this entry »

TARDIS mug

Want.

And, available in time for the holidays.

Who’s buying me one? Click the pic to get to the site.

(I’d also like the cookie jar, if you have any leftover change.)

Link: Wide World of Wood by @rgdaniel

This man makes beautiful things with wood. You should check that link out.

(If you don’t see anything you like for yourself, buy me a pen. Or a pen and pencil set.)

Way back in January of 2008, a game called No More Heroes came out for Wii. As new Wii owners at that time (we’d had it for a little over a month), we were into things like Bowling and Wii Sports, and a few other games that made use of the motion controls to get you up and moving. I’d heard about The Force Unleashed and was excited about it coming out in late 2008 but most of what I was playing with at the time was either the group/family type games or sports games like Tiger Woods PGA Golf.

I saw No More Heroes in stores but really didn’t take a lot of interest in it at the time. I mean yeah, the guy on the cover has some kind of light sword but meh – it’s probably just a knockoff of the light sabre concept, right?

Many months later, I downloaded an old episode of the show X-Play (with Adam Sessler), and he LOVED the game. I thought, hey cool… sounds good. But I’m not going to rush out RIGHT NOW and get it.

Then, while catching up on Zero Punctuation reviews, I discovered that Yahtzee had reviewed it. I didn’t think the review would be great, as anyone familiar with Mr. Croshaw knows that he REALLY hates the “gimmicky” Wii games. But he ENJOYED IT.

So, I knew I had to have it. By now it was, oh, probably July of 2008.

I couldn’t find it in the stores any more. Well, I shouldn’t say THAT – it was one available in one place with a sticker price of something like $60 which was RIDICULOUS (and out of my range to boot).

I’ve been looking for this game for over a year and a half. And of course, just to piss me off, they released No More Heroes 2 on January 26th of 2010. I thought – oh, a sequel – surely the original game will resurface now, right? WRONG!

Well, last night we had to go to the big city for an appointment. While the wife was busy appointmenting, I took the kids to the mall. And into EB Games. And found what I have pictured above for $19.99 (used).

I didn’t care that it was almost our last $20 in the world. I am now the proud owner of this game, and right now I am going off to play it. I’ve been waiting for ages and now, FINALLY, satisfaction.

I’ll see you all in a week or two.