Shane Life

Today was a good day for heifer fundraising, but we are still $70 short of our $500 goal. There are less than 7 hours left in this day…if that $70 is raised, I will be giving up red meat for 4 long months.

FOUR MONTHS.

As someone who has been craving a burger for the last 48 hours, there’s definitely a part of me that doesn’t want that last 70 dollars to be raised. The thought of giving up burgers, steak and barbecue for the until Memorial Day isn’t something I am too keen on.

But.

If you make the sacrifice and donate your money, I’ll make the sacrifice and give up red meat. It will suck, but I want to make sure you understand the full level of my commitment. I didn’t want you to give something for nothing. I get the added benefit of better cholesterol levels. You get the benefit of my suffering. Click below to donate.

The month of my red meat fast is almost over and I’ve raised about $200 of the $500 needed to purchase a dairy cow from Heifer International. Many thanks to those of you who have contributed thus far. I’ve also received another $100-150 in pledges so we’re theoretically over halfway there.

So here’s my end-of-the-month push to close the deal:

If I can raise enough money for the cow before the end of this month (midnight tomorrow night – it has to be deposited into my PayPal account)…

I will remain red-meat-free until Memorial Day.

Believe me when I tell you that this is no small task. I’m really starting to crave a burger and our church’s chili cookoff is in February. To abstain from eating red meat until the end of May is not something I look forward to, but if that’s what it takes to inspire the blogosphere to contribute, I’m willing to do it.

Consider that my gauntlet being thrown down. Click the image below to donate.

When I was a kid, I loved Garfield. I don’t know why, but I think it had something to do with the fact that Jim Davis is a brilliant marketer and released a new book regularly. I liked how all the books lined up nicely on the shelves…they always looked so nice together.

The comic itself isn’t really all that funny. It always relied on the same tired jokes – Garfield loves lasagna, Garfield hates Odie, Jon is an idiot, and of course, Garfield hates Mondays.

I’ve become Garfield in that aspect. Mondays are really difficult for me because the weekends are becoming more and more like extensions of the week, crammed with things to do, places to go, people to see. I am someone who really enjoys relaxing and by the time Monday rolls around, I haven’t yet recovered from Saturday.

The triple skinny gingerbread latte helped this morning, but by noon, I was dragging. It’s now 8:00 in the evening and I’ve yet to leave work at work. My awesome wife made us some makeshift homemade pizza on some naan we bought at Wild Oats yesterday and we’re watching Celebrity Apprentice until the State of the Union starts. Here’s hoping there’s some way that Bush can salvage the last year of his presidency and at least get some sort of a line item veto policy into place that will curb these earmarks (also known as “pork”). That would at least be a start towards getting some sort of stability into the economy…so that our government stops giving places $50,000 for a mule museum. But while I watch, I’ll be working on the 48-page brochure I’ve been spending time on all day long. Good times.

Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays…

With my pledge to not eat red meat for the month of January, I thought I might at least be a little cranky without a burger or steak to sate me, but thus far, it hasn’t been too bad.

Not that I haven’t been tempted.

Every time I go to Chipotle and they ask me what kind of meat I want on my burrito bol, I almost out of habit order steak, but I’ve gotten into the habit of ordering chicken enough that there haven’t been any missteps.

Around the house, since my wife is a vegetarian, things are a little trickier. We eat a lot of Mexican food and we have our vegetarian meals that I can eat (throw enough cumin on something, you don’t miss the meat nearly as much).

Last night we tried something new.

Alli likes Rachael Ray a lot and enjoys trying new recipes. Last night, she fixed a Buffalo Chicken Chili Mac that was really good. “Chicken?” you might ask. OK…it was fake chicken, but it was really good. All it took was the title for me, but after Alli assured me that it was healthy and told me the ingredients – obviously fake chicken, mac, cheese, vegetables, tomatoes, hot sauce – I was sold.

What I’m really psyched about is that it made a TON of food. And as is often the case, food like this tastes just as good as leftovers. I’m actually looking forward to my lunch today.

While you’re thinking about food, why not help me buy a cow for Heifer International? (For background on the project, visit this post. We still need plenty of donations.)

Most of the music I listen to is classified by my favorite people as “sad bastard” music. I’d say that’s an accurate representation considering my playlist tends to circle around Ben Folds, Dave Matthews, John Mayer, Duncan Sheik, Nick Drake and others of that sort (really digging Alexi Murdoch and Joshua Radin lately).

Anyway, I’ve bought some music on the iTunes store lately that falls outside the aforementioned category for a couple reasons:

1. The singers are overwhelmingly female
2. While not universally true, the songs sound joyful

Who are these “joyful pop singers”? you might ask…

In order of purchase: A Fine Frenzy, Sara Bareilles, and Regina Spektor. I think I heard about A Fine Frenzy on a news channel who was featuring her (AFF is one singer, Alison Sudol). I heard Sara Bareilles on a commercial initially and Alli told me how much she liked the song. (I think I bought the album for her, but haven’t really let her listen yet.) Regina Spektor…I think I first saw her video for “Fidelity” on VH1 where it’s all stark colors and then all of a sudden she and a dude are throwing what looks like ink toner on each other.

Anyway, the point of this post is to state that I’m branching out of my “sad bastard” listening and moving onto something a little more joyful. If you’re into Singer/Songwriters like I am and are wanting something that makes you happy, I suggest giving these three ladies a try. I’d start with Sara Bareilles. Thus far, she’s my favorite.

So the Fed cut interest rates yesterday. I won’t pretend to understand the inner workings of the economy, but here’s what bugs me:

Everyone keeps talking about it.

I’m convinced that the more that people say things like “we’re headed toward a recession” or even just ask the question “are we headed to the recession?” that we move closer and closer to it. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I’d like to give the American Public the benefit of the doubt, but the pundits in the media are being pretty irresponsible in the way that they throw around the word “recession.” The public tends to listen pretty intently to the media (even though they really don’t have any reason to trust them).

There’s no doubt that the crash of the sub-prime mortgage market has had an effect on the economy, but there’s fiscal irresponsibility going on all across the US. I was listening to some woman talk the other day about how she’d racked up thousands of dollars in credit card debt BUYING CHRISTMAS GIFTS.

Here’s my free tip for the day:

Don’t charge Christmas gifts. If you don’t have the money, don’t spend it. I didn’t realize that it needed to be said, but people use credit cards way to liberally. As great as they can be, they aren’t YOUR money. You have to pay it back. I’m not saying credit cards have no place. But, if you have outstanding debt already, you might want to think about paying it off before you rush to get more plastic.

Maybe I’m crazy. I thought this information was common sense.

CNN is reporting that Heath Ledger is dead.

This sucks. First and foremost for his daughter with Michelle Williams, Matilda.

They have not said what the cause of death was yet. I hope for his daughter’s sake it wasn’t suicide or drugs. I imagine that would mess a kid up pretty good. I never saw him as the suicidal/druggie type. He seemed to have a decent head on his shoulders despite the whirlwind romance/marriage/divorce he had with Williams.

He was also a really good actor. More details available in the main news outlets.

After the unboxing this evening of my MacBook, I’ve had some time to get settled, download my necessary programs (Adium, Growl, CyberDuck, TextWrangler) and spend a little time working inside of this beautiful little white laptop.

First things first…it’s pretty. It’s so clean and well-designed that just looking at it makes me happy. Alli and I spent the first 10 minutes just photographing it as we took it out of the well-designed box.

There are several things that I’m particularly excited about:

First, I have an integrated iSight for the first time. I doubt I’ll even use it that much, but it is so freaking cool.

Second, one of the things that I wasn’t sure I would like was the redesigned keyboards. I was wrong. After a short 10 minute adjustment, I can’t figure out what the old one even felt like.

Third, Leopard. Sweet sweet Leopard. What a beautiful and fast operating system. I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what it is capable of, but so far, I’m really impressed.

I probably should go to bed, but I just want to keep playing. I am wanting to get an AppleSac to keep it safe in my bag, but I’ll probably wait until after I pay my ticket.

Click the pictures to see all my unboxing photos.

I don’t think I officially announced this last week…I bought a MacBook. I didn’t go hardcore and get the Air…I just couldn’t justify what I would lose (optical drive, removable battery, ports) to the price and portability. The difference between the MacBook and the MacBook Air is 2 pounds. If I can’t carry that extra 2 pounds I should reconsider everything.

My laptop arrived today.

I’m so excited that I can’t even see straight. The importance of me having a laptop for work just went down considerably. Now I have a portable APPLE laptop that I LOVE.

The impressive thing about the whole situation is that I got the notification that it shipped late Friday night. It departed from Shanghai, so I didn’t expect to see it until Wednesday or later (scheduled delivery was 1/23). I tracked it all weekend (ask anyone…I have the tracking number memorized). I saw that it was in KC this morning and I thought I would at least get it by tomorrow since it might need to be sorted.

God Bless FedEx – it was sorted and out for delivery by 6 AM, delivered to my house by 10:00 this morning. That’s an impressive delivery time from China (via Anchorage), especially considering that all FedEx packages are routed through Memphis. My laptop flew overhead to Memphis before making its way to my house.

I still can’t believe that it is here already. I can’t wait to go home and hug it.