Wide Awake at 3 a.m.

Have you heard about Little Gizmo? A company called Genetic Savings & Clone are offering a commercial cat cloning service. They just reduced their price from $50K to $32K and hope to further reduce their price as they streamline the process. Although I love both my cats, I have a special attachment to my black cat, Shadow. At $10K, I admit I’d be tempted, especially after reading Little Gizmo’s owner Dan’s letter. When her time comes, I know that there will be a lot of great kitties available for adoption. That’s probably what we’ll do. But I think I’ll look into gene banking, just in case…

My girlfriend and I went to Japan with my family for vacation last summer. As a Christmas present, I wanted to create a slick DVD of our trip with pop-up bubbles like VH-1’s Pop-up Video (I used to love that show!). I’d never done any digital video editing or animation, but I thought I’d give it a shot. So I bought the Adobe Video Collection Pro 2.5 and started to go through the tutorials and dabble around. The software bundle was awesome and even let me design every aspect of the DVD. This motivated me to create a short “music video” intro that plays when you first pop the DVD into the player. It took me over a week to put it together — it was very tedious at times, but I learned a lot and had a blast. It’s not quite South Park caliber [grin], but I got things to wobble and fly around to music. Enjoy!

Watch the video! (01:13)

I bought a Canon SD300 digital camera earlier this week and it arrived on Friday. I’ve played around with it all day and I’m really happy with it! It’s been raining here in Santa Monica, so I’ve been taking photos of my two cats, Shadow and Neko. I’ve posted a few of the pics on my photo blog.

Let me just start by saying, “I know.” I know it doesn’t sparkle, I know it doesn’t melt in your mouth, and I know it doesn’t go well with heels. My Valentine’s Day gift for my girlfriend was a Gregory Forester backpack. [Gasp!]

We’re going to Europe this summer for 3 weeks and my girlfriend is really excited. She immigrated here from Poland 15 years ago and hasn’t traveled outside the United States since (well, except for our trip to Japan last year). Combine that with one of her favorite shows, The Amazing Race, and alas! My brilliant idea!

We’re not going to be dragging a 5-piece luggage set on this trip. No siree! We’re going to run around Europe with all our belongings strapped snuggly on our backs. Since my girlfriend is always trying to convince me that we should sign-up for the show (and I always say “no”), I’ll need to arrange a Roadblock (skill challenge) for her — I’ll call Mark Burnett for some ideas.

[Ahem.] What’s that? Oh, yeah, she loved it! But I got her a dozen pink roses too, just in case.

My girlfriend and I agreed to tell each other what we’d like for Valentine’s Day so we’re not stuck with white elephant gifts. This may seem like cheating, but it’s a lot more practical (not to mention more convenient). Unfortunately, neither of us could really think of anything we wanted.

Today, my girlfriend came home hopping with excitement. She found a Valentine’s Day gift for me and couldn’t wait the few days to give it to me. I had no idea what to expect as I reached into the brown bag — I pulled out an awesome The Northface jacket. The color, the style, the fit… my sweetie knows me all too well! It may not seem like your typical Valentine’s Day gift but for me it was the most romantic present I could have hoped for, especially since it’s something I would’ve picked out but didn’t.

Now that I know how special a thoughtful gift can make me feel, I have a new appreciation for gift-giving — and my girlfriend. Now the hard part… what do I get her?