Happy Canada Day to all my fellow Canadians! If you live in Toronto, like I do, then you’re probably feeling pretty annoyed about the strike situation today. For those of you outside the Toronto area, let me catch you up to speed:

Our city workers are on strike. For starters, this means we haven’t had garbage collection in over a week. It also means that all of the city-run fireworks events that families are used to attending have been cancelled this year. Call me a pessimist, but I foresee a lot of injuries happening when parents who are inexperienced with fireworks try to entertain their children by setting off their own. Did I mention that ambulance services are also affected?

This year, my crazy boyfriend and his crazy friends are blowing up watermelons to celebrate our country’s birthday. I will be standing far away attempting not to get injured and/or covered in melon bits. Oh, boys. I only wish my camera was functional.

A couple of days ago, the Mister told me that it was time to update because he’s tired of looking at my blog post about video games, so that’s when you know you’re definitely falling behind. When real-life people start calling you on your lack of updating.

It’s not just here, either, guys. I have barely touched my Twitter account in weeks. And I’m about to say something that I suspect will make me very unpopular with my fellow internet addicts: Guys, I just can’t get behind Twitter. I can go for days without even logging in, and then when I do, there are so many tweets to catch up on that I lose interest after the first page. It’s not that you guys aren’t interesting… but I want to know more about you! I want to get more in-depth than a quick 140-character statement.

Maybe if I had an iPhone or a mobile device that was meant to keep me in the loop with all the new tweets popping up, I’d have more of an appreciation for the site, but as it stands right now, I would much rather read blogs and Tumblelogs than scroll through pages of short updates on Twitter.

If you’re a big Twitter fan, tell me how you stay on top of everything and what it is about Twitter that you enjoy so much. Maybe there’s something I’m missing.

Last night I decided to make a visit to my storage locker and retrieve the Super Nintendo that has been collecting dust down there for years. That proved to be a mistake. It has poorly affected my productivity. I completed Super Mario World - start to finish - this afternoon, while taking intermittent Street Fighter II breaks. I love SNES, I really do. I don’t know why I abandoned it for so long.

Don’t get me wrong - today’s gaming consoles are awesome, and the graphics quality of some of the games out there is just insanely amazing. I am particularly fond of the Wii. As a kid, my older cousins used to tease me relentlessly for moving my arms along with the controller, and now? That’s exactly what you’re meant to do with the Wii. I like to think I was just anticipating future gameplay. But I just get so nostalgic for the games I played as a kid. I’m a big fan of Mario All-Stars.

In other video game news, I have lost my boyfriend to The Sims 3, which he purchased today. I had a serious addiction to the original Sims, and have been avoiding any new versions like the plague, but when I was talking to him on the phone during gameplay, it just sounded so cool. I gave in and checked out a few videos on YouTube, and now? I MUST HAVE IT. If you have The Sims 3, leave a comment and tell me what your favourite new features are. I gotta say that I’m pretty excited over being able to change locations / go into “town” without loading a new screen. What else has been changed / improved that I need to know about?

That’s it from me tonight, guys. I have four meetings on four opposite ends of the city tomorrow and I need to get an early start… and since it’s already nearing 2 am, it’s definitely time for this girl to hit the sack.

OK, I apologize.  I’m not exactly one of those “updated daily!” bloggers, right?  But there’s actually a reason for that.  In the past few days since my last post, I haven’t been living a very blog-worthy life.  It’s the truth - I’ve been going to meetings, working on client websites, sending out proposals, and so on.  And when I’m not working on business-related things, I’ve been mopping the floor, washing the dishes, making blueberry muffins, trying to convince myself to throw out the dead flowers beside my bed no matter how pretty they were when they got here, and napping.  It’s been a very mundane couple of days.

I’m not the type to just blog for the sake of blogging.  You guys want to read something of substance, right?  You want me to have some semblance of a topic, and not just throw together a couple of sentences about the weather and what I found under my bed when I was sleeping… right?  I want that, too!  So if I don’t have anything worth writing about, I’ll probably keep my mouth shut (metaphorically speaking) and stay silent until I actually have something to write about.  Random silly updates are for Twitter*, and I even feel bad posting to my Tumblelog when I feel the topic is lacking substance.

But here’s where you can help.  What do YOU want to read about when you visit my site?  This blog is for you guys, too, and I’m open to suggestions!  Do you want me to review more downloadable games from sites like BigFishGames and PlayFirst?  Do you want to hear about movies or my spin on current events?  Are there shiny new gadgets that I should discuss?  Should I track down really awesome websites and share them?  Should I take pictures around my hometown?  Do you want me to talk about dating and makeup and popsicles and stuffed animals and girlie things?  This is your chance to get involved and send me out with projects!  Let me know what YOU want to see more of and I’ll do what I can to make it happen!

* For the record, I totally have a Twitter account, and yes, I do update it with random silly things.  And sometimes I feel guilty about it there, too.

A few nights ago, I was battling with my insomnia and decided it was time to purchase a new game. You guys, I am so hooked on Wandering Willows, I can’t even begin to describe it. I think I require a 12-step program. I took a few screen shots without including anything too spoilery. Check out how adorable this game is.

The basic premise is this:  You have crash-landed on an island after a seagull tore a hole in your air balloon.  In order to get all the parts you need to repair the ballon and sail home, you’re asked to complete tasks for the townspeople in the game.   Your task can be anything from making someone a particular snack or sewing them an outfit to helping prove the existence of a giant sea creature by amplifying sound waves.  At the start of the game, you’re given a little garden plot to grow supplies (i.e. cotton or wheat), and a pet who follows you around and does your bidding (digging up earth patches to discover buried items, climbing trees and knocking down fruit, or charming other animals to supply you with wool and other items).

Not only is the gameplay really addictive, but I’m happy to say that you don’t solve it in an hour.  It took me quite a few multiple-hour sessions to get to the end of the game, and even then you can opt to continue playing and earn all the trophies possible.  I hate it when you download a 1-hour trial, enjoy the game, and purchase it - only to discover that there’s only 2 stages left.  That irks me.

Click here to download Wandering Willows if you’re on a PC or here to download it for a Mac.  If you like cutesy little cartoon games like I do, I promise - you’ll love this.

Well, insomnia still reigns at my apartment. It’s… almost ten after 2 (AM!) and I am still wide awake. This is especially problematic because I have a few client meetings tomorrow and one of them is bright and early. But thanks to Amanda Blog-And-Kiss, I have some new reading material in the form of other people’s business! Check out the comments on my Digital Eavesdropping post to check out some of the blogs she sent me.

I wish I could tell you guys that I’ve been productive, but the truth is that a good portion of my evening was spent on OMGPOP! playing games. I have recently become hooked on Letterblox. Look how much fun it is!

The head-to-head gameplay really brings out my competitive streak. If any of you guys have as much trouble sleeping as I do and want to take me on, come find me. I dare ya.

Something that you may or may not know about me is that I have a love/hate relationship with sleep.  Sometimes, sleep and I are BFFs and I can spend days wrapped in my bedsheets, snoring throughout day and night.  Other, more frequent times - times much like tonight!, I can not sleep to save my life and will still be tossing and turning when the birds start chirping outside my window and the sun begins to rise.

I’ve given up on trying to fight sleep.  Nothing works… not warm milk, not turning the lights off a half hour before I want to fall asleep, not reading, not even pulling an all-nighter and trying to work my way back into a normal sleep schedule helps.  And, call me crazy, but I’m not about to start a sleeping-pill habit just to fall asleep at a normal hour.  If anyone has any other sure-fire suggestions, please - PLEASE, I beg of you - let me know.

In the meantime, I play video games on my computer while everyone else catches their z’s.  For a long time, I mostly played the online games at BigFishGames (and a few of the download ones, too) because they were one of the few sites that I found that was both Mac-friendly and supplied me with the fluffy, cartoony games that I adored.  Recently, I’ve become pretty hooked on OMGPOP.  There’s a game on there called Draw My Thing!, and I cannot leave it alone.  (I promise it’s nowhere near as filthy as it sounds.)  Another good one?  Dinglepop.  The beauty of OMGPOP is that you can play head-to-head with other players, which really brings out my competitive streak.  If you’re awake at ungodly hours of the night, come play with me.  My username is AJcupcake.

Send me your sleep remedies!  Or, you know… more Apple-friendly gaming sites.

Did you miss me even half as much as I missed you??  You guys are all so silent!  If I didn’t check the stats and see how many views I’m getting, I’d think I didn’t have any readers!  Don’t be shy… leave me a comment and say hi, OK?

About the week-long hiatus:  I wish I could say that I was whisked away to some tropical location for an adventurous vacation, but sadly that is not the case.  I spent the first portion of the week battling severe strep throat and crying every time I swallowed, curled up in my Snuggie* with a fever of 103!  It was brutal!  Just as I was starting to feel like I could re-enter the land of the living, my Macbook died on me and I had to take it in for repairs so they could replace a few parts.  It’s back now, and better than ever.  HUGE thanks to Riverdale Mac for not only replacing the corroded bits inside, but for replacing my chipped keyboard faceplate without being asked and cleaning my screen.  My laptop looks like new again!

So now that my laptop and I are both healed and healthy, I have a question for you guys!  I’m strongly considering getting a Flip video camera.  Do you have one?  What’s your opinion of it?

xoxo

Amanda

A question for the readers:

Who are your favourite bloggers / videobloggers / lifecasters?  Who’s blogs do you read every day?  What makes them stand out?

I adore reading blogs, and I do it on a daily basis.  I especially love bloggers who tend to “overshare”; I love when I get the feeling of “knowing someone” by reading about their work, their relationships, their thoughts, their hobbies.  Especially when the blog is filled with pictures of everything from themselves to their homes to what they bought at that cute store downtown… Do you think that makes me an intellectual voyeur?  That I am so enthralled by peeking into the online windows of strangers’ lives?

One of my all-time favourite bloggers is Heather Armstrong of Dooce.com.  Let’s face it, everyone and their dog has heard of Heather.  She is an exceptional writer, and I constantly find myself laughing - out loud - while reading her posts.  Heather shares her life online; as a mother, wife, daughter, and writer.  Plus, I can’t help but check out The Daily Chuck.  That is one well trained dog.  I’ve been reading Dooce for years now, and I almost feel like if I were to run into Heather on the street, we could grab a coffee and discuss our most embarrassing moments at length, even though we’ve never actually conversed.  That’s kind of creepy, right?

So who’s updates do you find yourself checking for daily?  I need some new reads… help me start a blogroll!

I realize that if you’re a college student or a computer programmer and you’re reading this, it won’t be nearly as impressive to you as it is to me, but:

I have successfully pulled my first all-nighter in… well, I can’t remember how long it’s been, to be honest.  And I did it without the use of caffeine or other stimulants, without a crazy client deadline, without any real driving force.  As I type this, the sun is rising, birds are singing outside my window, and the clouds are a really soft shade of pink.  Ten more minutes and I’ll have made it to 6 am.

Recently I have become a nocturnal creature, which just really doesn’t fit with my lifestyle.  I’ve been a fan of afternoon naps for a while now, but the problem is that due to scheduling conflicts, sometimes they get pushed to later in the afternoon.  Or I end up napping longer than expected.  As a direct result, I’ve been having trouble falling asleep at night.  The cycle has continued, and over the past few weeks of this happening, I have become a complete night-owl, staying awake until almost 4:00 in the morning and then, obviously, being unable to wake up when the alarm goes off at 7:30.  My solution?  Stay up all night tonight, and all day today, basically exhausting myself.  Come 10 pm, I will be a zombie and pass right out, allowing me to get up early tomorrow and restarting a normal person’s sleep schedule.

Now, maybe my plan is flawed a little.  If I exhaust myself, I might oversleep tomorrow, right?  Sure, but even if I sleep until 10 am, it’s better than staying in bed until 3 pm like I have done the last two days in a row.

Uh oh…  Did I just yawn?

Wish me luck, guys…

Amanda