I would have had a post for today, except C. and I spent most of last evening playing with a computer game I downloaded: Spore Creature Creator.

If you’re looking for something to entertain your kids for a while, go download it. From what I gather, there’s a video game coming out in September called Spore, which has you make creatures and set them free in an environment to see how they survive. That’s all I know about it, so I can’t endorse or criticize it.

BUT, they’ve released this Creature Creator in advance — a little program that let’s kids create bizarre dinosaur-type creatures. They can add features, paint them, take pictures of them, and even — C.’s favorite part — animate them while “filming.” The program creates a movie of their animation, which C. finds totally cool. (That’s one of my creations up there.)

Anyway, the download is free. You can upgrade for $10 in order to get more features to add to your creatures, but we had plenty of fun with the free version.

That ends this completely un-paid advertisement.

But while I’m telling you about things…

5 Minutes for Books (an awesome new site managed by my good friend, Jennifer) will be hosting a monthly carnival-type event called What’s on Your Nightstand? You can click Here for all the details, but the general idea is to share what you’re reading a why. It will be held the last Tuesday of each month and the first one is next week, July 29th. Hope to see you there!