I subscribe to a couple of Wired feeds, and earlier today an article called Apple’s ‘Green’ Notebook Doesn’t Impress Environmentalists popped up. Without even reading it, I knew it had to be something about Greenpeace - which reminded me that I really wish people would stop conflating individual organizations (like Greenpeace) with environmentalism as a whole. It’s possible to be an environmentalist and also think a lot of the things certain environmental groups do do are ridiculous - just as it’s possible to care about animal rights without supporting PETA.

New York is in the middle of a couple days of freakishly warm weather. Yesterday was in the low 60s, and my weather widget claims it’s going to get up to 68 today. We’ve got the apartment windows open and I’ve been walking around in a hoodie instead of a giant winter coat, which is lovely but extremely disorienting. When I wake up in the dark and hear the sounds of the East River drifting through the window instead of the steady hum of a heater, my brain is completely fooled into thinking it’s already spring. Just like the confused crocus sprouts I saw peeking out on my way to work this morning.

This year I finally switched over from my motley collection of bookmarks and RSS apps to Google Reader, which I love and now use for everything. By far my favorite new subscription this year is Morbid Anatomy, which is one of the best blogs I’ve ever seen. Other things I added this year and like include Monoscope, Inspiration Boards, Skull-A-Day, Stephen Fry, Passive Aggressive Notes, and the feeds for a few of my favorite Etsy stores.

2007 was also the year of Twitter, of course. I don’t think I really need to talk about Twitter much, as everyone else already has, but feel free to follow me.

I also unsubscribed from the last couple of big blog network sites I still tried to read, which were Joystiq and Kotaku. My experience with both of them, and with almost everything else from Weblogs Inc and Gawker Media, has been pretty uniformly negative. The writing on both Kotaku and Joystiq is such utter shit that it’s frequently unreadable in a very literal sense. The volume of posts is artifically and unmanageably high, and the extent to which they pander to an imagined mouth-breathing teenage gamer archetype had me rolling my eyes every time I refreshed either feed. Their particular sort of desperate, local-news-style non-humor is also extremely off-putting. I now rely entirely on Zonk and 1UP for my game news.

And speaking of games, 2007 was the year I finally escaped from the clutches of Warcraft. I’d quit before, for weeks or months at a time, but my WoW-need was such that logging in even once or twice meant I’d be fully back into it within a couple a days. Now I seem to be able to log in once in a while, play for a couple of hours, and be done with it. You know, like any other game. And as for those other games, this was also a good year for consoles - our household acquired a 360 and a Wii, which we’ve really been enjoying. The graphics might not be as nice as what’s available on our Windows gaming machine, but Xbox Live and the Wiimote more than make up for any prettiness that’s lacking. My favorite games this year were Portal, BioShock, Viva Piñata (new to me if not new this year), Super Mario Galaxy, and The Simpsons Game, surprisingly enough.

My year was a lot more than RSS feeds and video games, of course - there were weddings and travel and events and movies and books and projects and family and Chris and everything else you’d expect. But I think I’ll save all that for another time.

I don’t know what disgusts me more: that “Do you think a woman can be as effective a President as a man?” is an actual, non-ironic “Political Debate” question on Facebook, or that 21% of people who responded said no. Even though I’ve found the site itself valuable for getting back in touch with old friends and classmates, I think we’re nearing the point at which I delete my fucking account. I can’t even log in without being repulsed by something sitting on the homepage anymore.

My Christmas shopping may be long over, but my Etsy love continues unabated. Here are a couple of recent sellers whose items I’ve coveted:

• I couldn’t resist the tentacle necklaces I found at bunny X productions. I also love the tiny SWAKtopus creatures, in particular the zombie and chaos versions.
• The Mixed Species shop is not to be missed. While the beef jerky underwear was a little out of my holiday price range, I passed out packets of You Park Like Shit static clings as stocking stuffers, and they were well received.
• Cyberoptix, of Skinny Puppy tour costume fame, can be found on Etsy too. I got a Sharp Dressed tie for Chris, but it was excruciatingly difficult to pick just the one.
• I haven’t yet ordered anything from Maggie C. Mowery, but I’ve got my eye on several of her items. Check out the skull buttons.
• And finally, I picked up a set of these mushroom pushpins from The Cupcake Girls and they’re just as cute as they look in the photos, in case you were wondering.

Today’s my last day at the office until next week, when I’ll be back from my short but much-needed Christmas break. Most of my shopping has been done for a while now, so from here on out it’s pretty much all fun, with the possible exception of many hours of driving between here and Massachusetts over the next week or so.

Every year I spend so much time trying to think of the perfect present for each person on my list that I often forget I usually get presents too, and so far this year is no exception. My friends and family have proven over the years that they know my taste very well, but it never ceases to surprise me when they demonstrate this talent by finding the coolest things in the world that I never would have thought of looking for on my own. Or maybe it just means I’m predictable. Either way, really.

I don’t think there’s anyone who knows me and does not yet realize I am a nerd. Nevertheless, I am going to admit something to you that makes me a nerd even by the standards of other nerds. And it is this: I am a huge sucker for the holiday content in World of Warcraft. Although it’s almost a year ago now since I stopped playing much WoW at all, I still make a point of keeping my game patched and my subscription active, and one of the reasons for that is my shameful love for the goofy holiday shit. (Another is that Chris and I have a pair of low-level alts we like to play together.)

Anyway, here is some evidence of my problem for your consideration. (Those of you who don’t play Warcraft can safely avert your eyes.) Last December I did tons of instance runs getting red and green Santa hats for myself and my friends. Then in January, I feverishly leveled my newborn hunter so she could pick up some of the seasonal engineering recipes before the Lunar Festival event ended. This fall, I logged in at least twice a day on three different characters to collect Brewfest tickets. But not just for my regular characters: I am that person whose bank alt is decked out in lederhosen. Hallow’s End was much the same - I have so many goddamn Weighted Jack-o’-Lanterns and Hallowed Wands that I have no fear at all of running out before next October. In fact, I have an entire 18-slot bag in my main bank devoted specifically to miscellaneous holiday items - and this is distinct from the 18-slot bag reserved for non-combat pets. This doesn’t even begin to cover the non-soulbound stuff sitting on bank alts.

So there it is. Not only am I the grown adult who has seen every Pokémon movie to date, I’m the one who will be logging in early tomorrow to see the Winter Veil content go up. Speaking of which, does anyone know where those new tailoring patterns come from?

You know that thing where you wake up on, say, a Tuesday morning and think it’s Friday? And it doesn’t stop there, so that your whole day becomes a chain of little disappointments as you continually realize that no, it isn’t Friday?

Yeah, every day for the past couple of weeks has been like that. I think it’s a December thing - my Christmas shopping has been more or less done since Thanksgiving, and I’m so completely ready for a few days off that I keep tricking myself into thinking the holiday break starts tomorrow. When confronted with the awful realization that it’s still only the 11th and tomorrow is not even a regular Saturday, I console myself by adding more movies to my Netflix queue (for lazy post-Christmas watching) and admiring yet more things on Etsy that I ought not to buy.

Anthony (Ant to his friends and baristas) is absolutely correct about my recent Etsy obsession. I spend more time than I care to say browsing the listings there, most recently in search of the perfect scarf. I didn’t find anyone already selling it, but I did find an awesome seller who makes custom knit scarves. A couple emails later, my neck is protected from the cold and snow by the scarf of perfection. What you won’t understand from that photo is exactly how soft and non-itchy it is, and how it goes with almost everything I own. (This may be related to the fact that almost everything I own is gray or black.)

My other favorite Etsy finds so far include glow in the dark Pac-Man coasters, awesome and inexpensive gift tags to be distributed shortly, and this wicked cool ceramic pendant. I have not, however, found the perfect girl for Anthony. Yet.

My own CMOAT had a birthday earlier this week, which resulted in the arrival at our apartment of three highly anticipated boxes: one containing the complete Buffy DVD set, one containing the complete Firefly DVD set, and one containing sweet, sweet cupcakes.

Unlike Chris, I’ve previously been immune to the many and varied charms of Joss Whedon, and so have sampled the delights of Buffy only briefly. But we’ve been making our way through Firefly over the course of a few evenings, and I am firmly hooked. I’m not sure how I missed this when it was on the air (although it probably had something to do with me watching very little television in that 2002-2003 year) but in some ways I’m glad I’m seeing the episodes for the first time in the order in which they were intended to be seen. I think one of the reasons I never got into Buffy was that by the time I bothered to watch an episode or two, there was too much backstory I didn’t know and I found it too confusing to hold my interest for long. It’s possible I’ll start that from the beginning too now that we have the DVD collection.

Although this is our first exposure to Firefly the series, we did rent Serenity a while back. We enjoyed it probably about as much as people who have not seen the series could have enjoyed it, but it’s already become clear that we’re going to have to see it again as soon as we’re done with the show, now that we actually know who all these people are.