Office Freaks run on coffee. Let it be written. Let it be brewed.
I’ve written reviews for North Star Fine Coffees on my food blog several times. Several several times. It’s outstanding coffee – I believe I even referred to it as the Cadillac of coffees in one of the reviews. Such a drama queen. But, if there’s one thing that can be said about this drama queen, she knows her coffee.
Honestly, I was thinking about it the other day – I can’t think too many brands of coffee I haven’t tried. I’ve covered all of the varieties you can find in stores. I’m a regular at my local Starbucks. I keep expecting them to present me with an apron any day now.
I’ve also had the pleasure of trying many gourmet coffees which can only be purchased online or in specialty shops.
When asked what my top 3 coffees are, North Star Fine Coffees always make the list. You can taste the excellence – heck, when it’s brewing, you can even smell the excellence as it fills several rooms with the Heavenly aroma. It’s a coffee that makes you anxious to jump out of bed. Knowing that it’s waiting for you in the kitchen gives all new meaning to the phrase RISE AND SHINE.
You can read my glowing reviews of this amazing, full-bodied coffee in one of the following posts…
… Or you can simply trust me (one Office Freak to another) and head on over to North Star Fine Coffees and place the smartest order you’ve placed in a while. You won’t be the least bit sorry – this coffee is beyond special.
*** Note: This post is filed under Office Productivity, for obvious reasons!
Many companies – online and off – are in full Back to School savings mode. Any office freak worth their weight in paper clips knows that means one thing: It’s Christmas in July! If you’re anything like me, you find yourself hovered around the season’s new notebooks, pens, binders (my pulse is starting to race), paper clips, index cards, post it notes – right there with the kiddies.
Remember the scene from Andy Griffith where Andy’s telling Opie and his friends about the Minute Men – trying to turn them on to history? Andy’s encouraging them to start a history club. Barney’s standing right behind the boys, hanging on every word. When he can’t stand it any more, he blurts out, “Will you help us?!?!”
I was perusing the seasons new binders yesterday at Target, amongst about 5 giggling little girls – and the scene above played out in my head. I didn’t let it deter me, though. I had my eye on a killer purple binder and had no intention of letting one of the gigglers get to it before me.
Yay, me.
Below are a few office supply bargains I’ve rounded up. Sure, some might call them Back to School sales – but we know what they are: Signs that God loves office freaks.
Vista Print has a great deal on business cards. You can get 250 of their Premium Business Cards for only $3.99.
Choose from thousands of designs and get more customization features. The printing is free – you pay for the shipping and handling.
Click through to check out their amazing graphics and selections. I have ordered from Vista Print before and could not have been more satisfied if they’d paid me instead of the other way around.
Office Depot has a couple of sweet deals going on as well:
Permanent Labels – buy one, get one free
Big savings on HP Office Paper – Online Only and only through tomorrow (24th)
Save over $100 on select computers
Also, on Office Depot‘s website, you can print out a coupon (good through tomorrow) for $10 off your in-store qualifying purchase of $25 or more. Print out your coupon and, right after supper, go make a little merriment in your nearest Office Depot.
As you’ve probably guessed, I have a gravitational pull toward the outrageous and the unusual. Swing Clocks fit this bill beautifully.
Product Description
When Galileo Galilea first envisioned using the regular motion of the swinging pendulum in a timepiece, he had no idea what implications keeping accurate time would bring us – computers, timesheets, general relativity… Granted, he didn’t create the first pendulum based timepiece.
That honor falls to Christiaan Huygens (the man, not the Saturnian space-probe). See, the pendulum swings at an incredibly predictable rate, as long as the pivot remains still, the force of gravity is constant, and the length of the pendulum is fixed.
Sure, if you want to go all non-Newtonian on us, you can also include distance from a gravity well, but let’s just keep things simple? Anyway, since the motion of the pendulum is highly predictable, we can mark each cycle of the swinging bob as a measure of time, and consequently keep track of our inexorable grind towards the heat-death of the universe. Hooray! Still, it’s usually the pendulum that drives the clock – what if the entire clock was the pendulum? Done and done!
This super-cool Swing Clock mounts on your wall, and sashays back and forth, marking the passage of time. Watch as your friends take hilarious double-takes once they realize the clock is apparently floating and swinging itself. Granted – it’s just a timepiece.
It’s not likely going to help you with a thorough understanding of general relativity, though if you wanted to put one in a spaceship and accelerate it to a fraction below light-speed and return, that might work.
Sigh. I’m just so completely in love with this clock. Anyone can make time fly. A few people can make time stand still. But making it swing? Now that takes a serious set of skills.
I can’t even tell you how attractive the Foot Machine above looks to my feet, legs, knees, and lower back.
Suffice to say they’re all gathering for a chorus of ooooooohs and ahhhhhhhhhhs. My arms have no idea what’s going on – they just wish they were in on the good time.
If you sit at your desk anywhere near as much as I do mine, you know what I mean when I say that the back, legs, and feet can often get stiff and achy. My biggest problem is my lower back and I’m pretty sure I have a car wreck (years ago) to at least partly thank for that.
Whether I’m working online or watching television, I’ve noticed that my lower back is much more comfortable if my feet are at least a little elevated – I guess it takes some of the pressure off of my back.
My solution, when at my desk, is to sit on my legs or sit with them folded up. Bad habit. One that only worsens the circulation and causes more stiffness.
The Foot Machine looks like it is an ideal solution for easing lower back pain at the desk. It looks like just the thing to make knees feel better too, to say nothing of the feet!
Product Description
The Foot Machine by Humanscale, with its ball bearing roller design, encourages gentle rocking of the feet in the same way a rocking chair encourages motion. Performing as a standard footrest, it provides support for the legs and relieves pressure on the lower back.
See Foot Machine for more information. Your back, legs, and feet will thank you for it. They may even serenade you – which is, frankly, kind of cool.
Darren Rowse, at ProBlogger, has issued a really cool challenge for bloggers. It’s such a cool challenge that it zapped me out of my antihistamine fog (cursed allergies). Seriously, before logging onto Problogger, I was sort of just staring off into space wondering if I was awake, alive, asleep – or if I’d come up with my own state of being.
Or not being, as it were.
Darren’s challenge is the Seven Links Challenge and it involves using the following categories to link to different posts on your blog. It’s a great way to get the creative juices flowing, highlight old posts, and provide a fun post for your readers.
It’s proven beneficial to me in an unexpected way, too. As I poured over some old posts, I saw that I had a lot of housework to do. I had zero idea what I was doing early on with titles, keywords, and so forth. Not that I’m top of the line now, mind you, but at least now I’m aware there is a line! Your first post – Willow Fall’s Computer Desk with HutchCan you say embarrassing? I still had on my blogging training bra. And the last hoorah of a sentence. Seriously? When I saw what my first post would be, I nearly backed out of this exercise all together, but I figured, what the heck… I’ve been pulled out of my trance, I might as well go with it….
A post you enjoyed writing the most – This one! I always enjoy the one I’m in the midst of the most.
A poston someone else’s blog that you wish you’d written - 8 Habits of Highly Excellent Bloggers by Celestine Chua. Seriously, this post was so outstanding, I felt like I should have been charged for reading it. I took notes! I considered copying the article in its entirety and posting it on my Self Help blog. But my visitors would have been tipped off right off the bat – I could never have come up with such a great title. As we’ve proven, here, my titles are the stink. If you’re in a bit of a hurry right now, at least go to this post and bookmark it for later.
Oh, and have pen and paper ready. The lady will take you to school.
Your most helpful post – De-Clutter Your Desk A post with a title that you are proud of – Work Out at Your Desk With Jillian Michaels, I Dare You Not To Oh, I just kill me! Seriously, I’m not a title writer (obviously). I sit and stare at that long white rectangle sometimes for minutes on end – with it just staring back, mocking me. At least, prior to the most recent WordPress upgrade, it just stared back. Now it cops a sarcastic attitude: “Enter title here.” I’m pretty sure they put this feature in just for me and my title struggles. A post that youwish more people had read – A Wooden Cabinet for the Funkiest of Office Freaks – How could anyone not want this amazing piece of furniture in their office or home? It’s outrageous and I love it.
Well, it’s Friday and you know what that means, don’t you? Time for mermaid boobies. I dunno, I guess it’s a new tradition I came up with.
Whatever, I’m running with it.
Product Description:
If your Mp3 player or cell phone is often “lost at sea,” you’ll want to catch “Madeleine the Mermaid” to anchor it into port! Slip your Mp3 player, phone, or remote control into this hand-painted, designer resin sculptural resting place for safekeeping. Though we can’t guarantee they’ll never be castaways again, Madeleine will do her best to provide an artistic lounge for your treasures!
If you have a taste for the unusual (and I’ve heard that you do), you’ll be as impressed with this The Claremont Helmet Lidded Bin as I am. No doubt you’ve heard about my own quirky taste for the unusual.
The sure-to-be-the-talk-of-the-officeThe Claremont Helmet Lidded Bin is from a retailer I’m completely obsessed with – Design Toscano.
To put it simply, they’re just as off-beat as we are. They, no doubt, have an inner Office Freak, and he – make no mistake about it – knows how to get his freak on.
Product Description:
Though the “Claremont” is an accurately rendered, medieval sculpture, the helmet opens to make this knight eminently useful in the charming English tradition of “the book hide”—as a dust bin with removal mesh basket, an ice bucket, a storage compartment, or as a stash for your latest cloak-and-dagger novel! Accurately sculpted, then cast in quality designer resin and finished as faux metal, this is a functional work of decorative art for your castle.
From everything I’ve read and seen, most people have a similar problem: How can you get enough activity and exercise when so much time has to be spent at your desk working?!
It’s a real problem for most people. Truthfully, I can’t imagine how anyone with a desk job for 8 hours a day finds time to fit their workouts into an average day – I mean, on top of eating, cleaning, cooking, sleeping, reality TV…
I work at home and make (and break) my own schedule, but even I run into the dilemma of, “How do I find time for everything?” If the house would be kind enough to clean itself and the laundry would follow suit, it’d help. But, alas, that’s almost as ridiculous as asking a teenager to clean up after themselves.
Almost.
I just read a great article on Everyday Health by Jillian Michaels about fitting workouts into your workday. Great advice – which is what you’d expect from Jillian Michaels.
A few of Jillian’s tips were:
Bring a pair of light dumbbells — or use water bottles — and do biceps curls, triceps extensions, and shoulder raises and presses, all while sitting in your chair.
Bring a pair of light dumbbells — or use water bottles — and do biceps curls, triceps extensions, and shoulder raises and presses, all while sitting in your chair.
Do 30-second static squats, in which you hover over the seat of your chair, every 20 minutes.
She also recommends walking during your lunch break and eating at your desk. That sounds like another great idea, as long as lunch isn’t a Big Mac, fries, and Coke.
For the rest of the article, click through the following link – Desk Job Blues
How about this for making your office a cooler place in which to be stuck?!
This knock-out wall mural is from All Posters and is a must have. Click through the link for tons more wall murals, inspirational and motivational posters and art prints, movie posters, and more. There just isn’t a faster, more economical way to add personality and punch to your workspace.
Adjustable height raises your laptop screen to eye-level with 360 rotation for easy viewing. No more neck strain and shoulder pain from looking down all day. Here’s something extra – An In-line copyholder positions documents for easy and comfortable viewing. I could use this sort of thing a couple hundred times a day.
Cooling vents help prevent discomfort from laptop heat. Supports up to 10 lbs.
Tired of an aching back from sitting in old beat up office chairs? BusinessChairs.com is the internet’s original source for office seating and accessories. Whether you’re looking for a stylish executive office chair, leather desk chair or big and tall chair rated up to 500 lbs, they are sure to have what you need. Save with free shipping and no sales tax* on all US orders!
Darren Rowse, at 
