awesome stuff i found while tens of thousands of feet in midair

This has been a really great week.   (But of course, when you start the week off celebrating the success of a really sweet friend, its greatness quickly established early on, you know?)

As I type this, I'm 30,000 feet in the air somewhere between Houston and Atlanta, on my way to Dayton, Ohio for the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop.  (Don't ask me how it makes sense to go to Atlanta first before heading to Dayton.  These are the Mysteries of Life.)  I know that in-flight wifi isn't a new phenomenon; nonetheless, I continue to be incredulous that we live in a time when this is possible.  As such, I've made it a firmly-held conviction that every time it is available on a flight of mine, I must partake.  So here I am! Blogging in the air!  Partaking!​

The thing about being online when you're 30,000 feet up in the air, however, is that you feel the need to make it count.  I could, of course, use the time to get some work done, but that's no fun.  Instead, I feel obligated to test the limits of the Internet -- after all, this is no ordinary web surfing I'm doing, Sporty.  This is Mid-Air Surfing. Four-Hundred-Miles-Per-Hour Surfing.  Stratospherical Surfing, if you please.  

And so, I thought I would use this time (partake!) to share with you some of the awesome that I've found while hanging ten on the jet stream, baby.  Take a look:​

•  First of all, remember when I asked you for help for Camp Hope, the amazing camp for children affected by HIV/AIDS?  Well, just this second, while I'm winging my way through the air, I received an email:  they received all $30,000 they needed to keep the camp going this year!  So, again, thank you so much for your amazing help, my friends.  This cheers me to no end, and I'm filled with gratitude.​

•  I'm pretty good about limiting the type of media I expose myself to -- I watch very little television, and try to limit my online surfing to positive or informative sites -- but so many times, I fantasize about taking a ful​l-on media break, and really focusing on my offline life for a bit.  I've not yet been successful at it, but my online friend Tara Whitney has -- and I loved reading about her experience.  She has renewed my resolve!

•  I was surfing the Vanity Fair Magazine website -- as you do -- and I came across these three photographs of these three wonderful actors by Annie Leibovitz; but more importantly, the page also has their answers to the Proust Questionnaire.  And I fell in love with them all over again.  (But especially George Clooney and Matt Damon.  Oh, how I love George Clooney and Matt Damon.)​

​• MissRepresentation -- Okay, the truth is that I didn't discover this while surfing the web, but Marcus and I watched this movie on iTunes earlier this week, and became both horrified and enraged.  If you are raising or helping to raise children, you should really check this movie out, which discusses the messages the media (both mass media and the internet) are bombarding our kids with.  The statistics that are shared within it are staggering.

•  Finally, of course, I have to point you to my thoughts on creating a gratitude journal that I ​wrote for Babble.  Because it dawns on me that there should be a good use for all of those camera phone photos that we're all taking.

With that, have a great weekend, my friends.​  See you next week.

Song:  I'm like a bird by Nelly Furtado​