I have a new post up at Lifescoop, Gear Up: Back to School Shopping for Grownups.

Kindergarteners are cute or whatever, but why should they get all the back-to-school fanfare? Reclaim the September ritual of starting fresh with new supplies for your work. Treating yourself is the best reason to grow up in the first place. Read more…

I want every single thing in my Father’s Day Gift Guide over at Lifescoop, especially this spot-on iPhone alarm clock dock. Go have a look. Tell your dad I said hi.

I’m frustrated with the state of online invitations right now. There’s a plethora of sites, but you have to put a lot of work into developing a polished result. Finding templates a designer could use without shame is still like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. But as long as you have a pitchfork, here’s where I’d start hunting… Read more

Your iPad is so shiny and delicious, until you trip and it skids across the sidewalk. Here are a few of our favorite options for protecting your iPad without ruining the pretty. . . Read more

No point in being uncivilized while you’re escaping civilization, take your tech along with you. These reasonably priced gadgets make camping a little more comfortable, but don’t leave you wondering whether it would have been cheaper to buy an RV. Read more…

You know how you put a pillow on your lap so your computer doesn’t burn you while you work on the couch, but then your laptop fan wheezes and sucks in pillow dust? Stop doing that.

Invest in a lap desk. Here are five options that dramatically increase your ability to work from the couch. Which is what all of us want in the end.

We have a drawer at our house with a collection of slightly broken things — a fully functional iPhone with a shattered screen, a point and shoot that sometimes deletes entire memory cards on a whim, etcetera.

Looking in the drawer, it occurs to me that the convenience of throwing gadgets in my bag is perhaps outweighed by the cost of replacing them when they bang into each other and break. But cases offer the best of both worlds — relatively free-floating gadgets that still work when you turn them on. Here are five stylish options to protect your gadgets without adding too much bulk to your bag. Read more…

(Man I wish I’d had the forethought to post a photo of a laptop on my site before I took this photo.)

How long has it been since you thoroughly cleaned your computer? That’s what I thought.

I clean mine about as often as l spill something on the keyboard. But to keep your computer in good working order, you should scrub it down about twice a year–more often if you like to eat chips while you work. But how do you get everything sparkly without damaging anything? I did a little research.

Before you start, you’ll need some supplies: a large microfiber cloth, a can of compressed air, and a solution of 50 percent isopropyl rubbing alcohol and 50 percent mineral water, and a pair of tweezers. Once you have everything together, shut your computer down (if you’re cleaning a laptop, remove the battery as well). Read more…

A quick recap of everything Intel has made possible in the last few months. Together, we:

1. Redesigned Mighty Girl, (with a little help from Helen Jane).

2. Took tap lessons from Mr. Kloss.

3. Swam with bioluminescent plankton in Puerto Rico.

4. Got a little closer to tasting 1,000 fruits.

5. Had an exceptional time in Greece.

6. Had dinner at the French Laundry.

7. Hosted a giant food fight.

8. Learned to roll in a kayak.

9. Rejected paragliding as a hobby.

10. Zip-lined through a canopy.

Because the campaign let me make my life list a top priority, I even tackled a bunch of goals on my own. We took Hank camping, played with sparklers on the Fourth of July, and introduced him to ice cream cones. I did one of Miranda July’s projects. And I even got a few friends together to help me plan a retreat.

How Did this Happen?

A lot of you have asked me how I got Intel to sponsor my Mighty Life List, and the answer is I didn’t. These guys did.

That’s Paige Thomas, Jason Ratner, and David Veneski. Paige and Jason work for Federated Media — the company that helped make blogging my job. David works for Intel, the company that made my dreams my job.

I talk to Paige nearly every day, and about a year ago I asked her to tell the sales team about my list. Ideas like this can easily come across as “some blogger wants free stuff,” but Jason understood. He told David, and showed me some of the ads around Sponsors of Tomorrow. I thought the main ideas were in line with my values: Celebrating smart people, and embracing the future.

David eventually agreed to have Intel sponsor my life list, which was bold of him, I think. Intel is a huge company with a lot at stake, and most companies of that size want full approval over any text that goes out. That clearly would never work for Mighty Girl, so David decided to trust me, which must have been scary at first.

When we first started the campaign, Matt Jessell at FM sent me this Brady Bunch collage to pin on my board:

It cracked me up when I first got it, and it still does, but now it makes me a little sentimental too. This is the team behind the Sponsors of Tomorrow campaign — most of them have made their own life lists, some have become Twitter friends, and all of them played a part in changing the way I approach my life. I owe them my gratitude.

What Happens Next?

Y’all, I am going to sleep. I had no idea how much I was biting off, or how much emotion I’d feel through all of it.

It may sound cheesy, but these few months have been transformative, and change takes a lot of energy. Doing all this has helped me clarify what makes me happy, and reminded me to be more gentle with myself. I understand now that a list like this requires flexibility, and writing about all of it has shown me that I can be comically rigid. It honestly came as an epiphany that I could change my own list — add new things, delete the things that just didn’t seem appealing when I actually started tackling them.

I’ve also learned so much about all of you. That you want to travel, be role models, buy homes, start businesses. I love reading your lists, and I’m still thinking about a better way for us to work on them together.

While I sleep for a year or so, Paige will be building a succulent wall; Jason is figuring out how to found bed and breakfasts for snowboarders, cyclists and vinophiles; and David wants to write a book. I’ll let you know how they do.

In the meantime, thank you, everyone. For all of it.