I promised Al Gore that I would throw a Live Earth party. I failed in that promise, unless Matthew, Smokey, Bandit, and I count as a party. :) I let down Al Gore, but I can't feel *too* badly about that as long as Al Gore is letting me down by not running for president. (Dream ticket: Gore/Bobby Kennedy, Jr.)

We certainly didn't watch all of the coverage, even though it was in HD. We did watch a spectacularly boring rendition of "Black Hole Sun" by Chris Cornell and an amusing attempt by Tom Chaplin to get the London audience to sing along with "Somewhere Only We Know," which isn't exactly a sing-along song. I found the highlights from the non-English-speaking countries to be much more enjoyable, especially from China. The best part, though, was definitely all the little mini-movies and hints for saving the world. I can only hope that it will make some difference. It certainly made me feel guilty for not doing enough, and I already recycle, take my own bags to the grocery store, replace old lightbulbs with fluorescent bulbs, walk or take public transit whenever possible, etc.

So, since I failed in my promise to hold the party, I will at least ask everyone to sign all or part of the Live Earth pledge: http://liveearthpledge.org/. Don't do it for Al Gore; do it for the future of our planet.

My green tip for the day: Stop buying bottles of water. Please! A much more environmentally-friendly, not to mention cheaper, option is to buy a Brita or Pur faucet mount or filtered pitcher. Get a Nalgene bottle or two to carry around your water, and you'll save a ton of money and reduce your carbon footprint.

My quad *still* hurts! Damn getting older. It's kind of just hitting me that I'm turning 29 next week. Not as bad as Matthew turning 30 next month, but I definitely don't feel young anymore. :)

I just booked our plane tickets to go to Portland at the end of July. My mom and dad will join Matthew and me, and we'll be visiting my brother and his fiance. It will be the first time Matthew and Claire will have met, and it's also the weekend of the Oregon Brewers Festival. Beer-woo!

The problem is that now all I can think about is going to Portland. I desperately need a vacation, and I haven't left the city much this year (maybe a week in total) since Christmas. Plus I miss my brother and haven't seen Claire in ages. At least work will be quieter after tomorrow, but still two months is waaaay too long to wait. :)

I feel like a tech geek today. Actually I wish I was more of one that I am. Maybe I should've gone to Carnegie Mellon to study computer science instead of NU for religion....

Anyway, on to my geeky accomplishment of the day. You may have heard that Mozilla finally released Thunderbird 2. It's not that big of an update over 1.5, but I like to have the latest and greatest of these kinds of software (unlike my officemates who resent having to move from Eudora to TB and never want to update). I love Thunderbird, but it's only really usable in the work world because of the Mail Redirect extension. Unfortunately, when I installed TB 2.0 today, I was informed that the extension wasn't compatible with the new release! I spent waaay too long looking for a similar extension, or news about when the extension would be updated, to no avail. And then I read Mozilla's instructions on how to build a new extension. I did not build my own, but I did use my new-found knowledge to tweak the existing extension so that it would work in 2.0. And it works now!!!

/sad geektalk

I had a dream last night that I ran a marathon in one hour and was asking people whether that was a good time. Keep in mind that I can't quite run a half marathon in two hours. And that a one-hour marathon would be a world record. By over an hour.

I am *not* registered for the marathon this year. But I may start running again.