Best Video of the day

Yes - it's a commercial - but oh so fantastic! Makes me long for summer time (too bad it will be snizzling here tomorrow)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRFfJJjLpqw

and - as a bonus to the stunning visuals - a great song by Cinematic Orchestra

Best Photo of the Day: Ahh, youth

Thank you Chicagoist for this awesome reminder of what it was like to peruse the local quick-shop aisles on a weekend night pre-marriage and pregnancy.

Best photo of the day: What is that, Dad?!?

Thank you Chicagoist!

In today's Quick Bites, they dig up this utterly awesome photo of Hungry Mag writer Michael Nagrant's photo of his son gawking at a 23-ounce bone-in ribeye at Harry Caray's.

As JT and I have agreed that our kiddos will be vegetarian growing up, this photo strikes a particular cord with me. (Whooo - and one of them is kicking in agreement right now!)

Best list of the day: list + music, a two-fer

I love random lists of things - I get an appetizer of info that I can later follow up on in greater detail and there's nothing better than a list you don't agree with - it really gets you thinking about your personal Top 20 trashiest starlets or overused Bartlett's quotes, etc.

Oddee is always a great source of these, but today my email delivered a list that has blown all others out of the water: the 25 Greatest Duets of All Time! No. 1 is definitely on my "must have if ever stuck on a desert island with only 25 songs" list.

H/T: the Very Short List

File this under "awesome"

A blog that is entirely dedicated to "unnecessary" quotation marks (as if there were such a thing).

To the writers of The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks:
my fellow grammar enthusiasts - I salute you. Thank you for alerting us to the elusive double comma, the sketchy use of quotation marks in a logo and hand-lettered gradeschool signs that go against everything those poor 6th grade teachers are trying to get across.

- writergrl

hat tip: dittoheston

Best tool of the day - Percent Change Calculator

For anyone who is a non-numbers type and has to do anything resembling financial PowerPoint slides, consider this my little Valentine's day gift to you:

NewsEngin Percent Change Calculator

The best part -- the only line of extraneous text on the page says, "The fact that you need this tool will be our little secret."

Mwah! xxoo

Best misspelling of the day

Now - I'm not an awesome speller. In the 6th grade I was finally chosen to be in the spelling bee and I was the first one of everyone in my grade school - kindergarten through 8th grade - to have to sit down. The word that outted me? Access. I hesitated on the last 's,' tripped by the bright light of scrutiny. My shame is still acute.

Which is whyI think I perpetually look for others in the same situation. Taking the bus with JT to work, we stopped at the corner of State St. and 16th St. [Ed note - in Chicago, when giving cross streets, you always begin with the north/south street and then give the east/west street, i.e. "Dearborn and Harrison" not "Lake and Clark." You're welcome.] As passengers loaded on, bundled and booted from the weather, I read the signs posted in the corner shop, which appeared to be some kind of mortgage broker or financial services shop.

"Equity Loans" "Refinancing" "401k Rollover" "Business Financing" "Dept Consolidation"

Wait - what? Dept consolidation? On a professionally printed sign in a window. So, if someone is going to handle all the Ps and Qs of paperwork relating to your DEBT consolidation, shouldn't they be pretty detail oriented? And with the current state of the financial industry's reputation for overlooking details (and thus lending people money they can't afford to repay for homes which are overvalued to begin with) I'd think a start-up operation would have the brains to say "Hmmm, perhaps I should not hang this one and order a new sign."


See previous: http://writergrlsramblings.blogspot.com/2008/01/blog-post.html

Best Misspelling of the Day

I am definitely one of those poor souls who derive schadenfreude from typos - menus, advertisements thinly disguised as letters to my home, you get the picture.

There are some mistakes made because letters are close together on a keyboard (meet vs neet)

There are those made because the words are homynims (there and they're)

And then there are those made by people who listen, but do not read. Those are my favorite! Check this one out from a CNN blog today:
http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2008/01/31/the-obama-clinton-debate/
See the comment by Karl in SF: "The economy is a mute issue."

It's a moot issue, Karl. Thanks for playing.

Best photo of the day - Grand Prismatic Spring

From the WashingtonPost.com,

Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park, captures the essence of Yellowstone's world-renowned geysers and hot springs that are fed by the enormous heat from its active volcanic system. This 60 meter-wide, boiling hot spring has an array of vivid colors produced by thermophile bacteria that thrive in hot water.

Photo by Henry Holdsworth, Courtesy of Robert B. Smith