Does Anyone Else Read Their ND Alumni E-mail?

I do, but only when I'm bored at work. For those of you that do, did you happen to catch the "special message from the NDAA Board President about our ND football team?" For those of you that missed it, I'll summarize.

First, there was a portion to bitching alumni who didn't get the tickets they wanted in the lottery. It basically says, too bad, so sad. They are continuing to "explore ways" to work this situation out. As long as it doesn't involve standing in line to get a number so that you can stand in another line to get tickets, I'm ok with it.

Second, there was a portion to more bitching alumni who are upset because their slacker kids didn't get admitted to ND as legacies. The response, well we accept lots of legacy students, so your kid was apparently just not good enough (but of course your money still is).

But that wasn't my favorite part. The best part of the e-mail was the "Football-Let's Support the Team" section. That is seriously what it was labeled. We're all disappointed. blah blah blah Go to the pep rally blah blah blah Cheer at the game blah blah blah Send a supportive e-mail that the alumni department will forward to the team. Wait? What? I can just see little Timmy the 5 year old kidlet of some Domer finger painting a condolence card to the team right now. Then we somehow manage to tie in Catholicism. So this part I'm going to quote directly because it's golden.

"This past week, Father Basil Moreau was beatified in his home country of France. In many ways, his story can be a guide for all of us. It was through his efforts the Holy Cross Order was founded, Father Sorin dispatched to Northern Indiana, and Notre Dame became a reality. It is only now, perhaps that his legacy is being fully realized and here at Notre Dame he is being celebrated for his persistence and vision.
The motto he chose for his congregations “The cross, our only hope” represents the challenges, the hardships, the frustrations we all feel when we are committed to a task and beset by setbacks and attacks. It really was the first example of “what though the odds be great or small, ol' Notre Dame will win over all.” In the tradition of Father Moreau let’s have that same faith. We can and will get over this tough time because we will do it together as a family. God Bless you all. Go Irish !!!"

I couldn't have said it better myself, Mr. Nussbaum. Ok, now forget that we're talking about football and reread that. What would you have thought had happened to the University? Massive fire? Devastating flooding? Plague? Well, no...something worse. We have negative rushing yards for the year ::gasp::

Can't wait to see what follow up we get this week after the Michigan State game!!

Please Let Me Not Really Be Hurt

So two nights ago, I got up in the middle of night because I was hot and wanted to turn down my thermostat. Somehow, my right foot got caught in my left pajama pant leg and I face planted into the carpet in the middle of my living room at like 2 am. I was so deliriously tired that I just went back to sleep. I woke up the next morning and was like "ow". I have rug burn on my hand, a bruised knee and a foot that seriously hurts when I walk. My only thought was I hope that I didn't really hurt myself because I don't want to have to explain to a doctor how this happened.

Like a Kid in a Candy Store

Yesterday during lunch break, Amanda, Charlene and I went to Zimmerman's candy store. It was the best candy store I've ever been in. And I've been in a lot of candy stores. They had old school candies like candy cigarettes and licorice pipes and new candies like vanilla creme Hershey kisses and mint Three Musketeers bars and they had stuff I've never seen before like gummy army men. I bought a Sky Bar which I had heard good things about but it didn't impress me, a club sandwich candy bar which was yummy, peachy penguins which I love and swedish aqualife which when are like swedish fish except multi-color and with a variety of marine animals such as dolphins, whales, and stafish. When I was in college, we used to give swedish fish Swedish names before we ate them, but most of them were named Sven because that's pretty much the only Swedish name we could think of. Oh, and I bought homemade peanut butter there too.

Book Review

Yes, my friends, I finished a book. This is of course shocking to anyone that knows me because I hate to read. I don't really understand why anyone would like to read and like to brag that I made it the entire way through high school without finishing a single one of the required readings. (Made it pretty far through Lord of the Flies though). Even more shocking is that I finished this book in about three weeks. A new record.

The book was Everyone Worth Knowing and is by Lauren Weisberger, the author of The Devil Wears Prada, which I have also read. ::gasp:: In a lot of ways Everyone Worth Knowing is like Devil Wears Prada. Girl takes job several rungs above her on the social ladder; ditches friends, family, and moral values to become a workaholic only to realize how much she's screwed up her life. There are some differences. In EWK, she actually likes her boss, there's more drugs involved and a homosexual oral sex scene which caught me a little off guard and makes me only slightly uncomfortable to be handing this book over to my mom next week when she's in town.

In summation, if you liked Devil Wears Prada and liked it, read Everyone Worth Knowing. If you didn't like it, don't. And if you didn't read it, do.

The Best Yogurt Class Ever

So yesterday I had the best yoga (aka yogurt) class EVER. My yoga teacher Nancie (who is the awesomest aerobics teacher EVER. Nancie decided to do her yoga for kids routine -- the ABC's of yoga -- because "ever well rounded adult needs to play". Each letter of the alphabet stands for something different (except for Q...she didn't have a Q). Like a was for alligator and we rolled on our sides and smacked our hands together like an alligator. We also got to moo and ribbit and roar like a lion. It sounds ridiculous but it was a lot of fun. She mixed in some harder poses and made us do flow through some of the poses so that we still got a work out. (PS I'm on the phone with Danielle right now and just got called a whore because I wasn't listening to her and was too busy typing) Zzzz was for sleeping which is actually corpse pose but "she can't tell kindergartners that." We had to close our eyes and she put a "treat" on our face. Mine was on my forehead and the girl beside me's treat was on her nose. And as long as we didn't laugh or move, we could keep our treat. Do you know how difficult that was to feel it sitting on my forehead and not be able to see it or touch it or anything for like 3 minutes? It was horrible. My treat was a Starburst.

Hersheypark Happy

Cindy, one of my coworkers, had free passes to Hersheypark and asked me if I wanted to go with her today. I decided that it would be less painful than watching the Notre Dame/Michigan (which I think I can now safely say that it was--doesn't Julius Jones have an extra year of eligibility from when he got kicked out that time? no? well, it was worth a try.) and went with her.

It was fun though a little crowded, but the highlight of the day was when I saw three girls get kicked off of the claw. I'm not sure what happened but there were two bratty pre-teen girls in line behind us a ways and then when they got on the ride there were five bratty pre-teen girls on the ride. Someone alerted the ride operator and surprising she did something about it. After protesting a little while the people still in line chanted "kick them off. kick them off." they finally relented and got off with there middle fingers in the air. Can you please refrain from that type of gesture as Hersheypark is a family park?

I also tried a Reese's Whipps. It was the first time I had ever seen them, and I found it most enjoyable.

Camille, the Gym Junkie

I love to take different classes at my gym. I probably go to an average of 4 or 5 a week and every class I have ever taken, Camille has been there. Camille annoys me. 4:30 pm Friday Muscle Pump class...Camille 9:00 am Monday Power Step....Camille 5:30pm Tuesday Power Yoga ....Camille 10:00 am Saturday Latin Cardio....Camille I think you get the idea. She thinks she is the most popular person there and saves spaces for all her friends at the front of the class and gives them sweaty hugs when they come in, which I can tell they REALLY enjoy. (Note to all my friends: if you have just worked out for an hour + and even if I haven't seen you in 5 years, please don't hug me. It's not you, it's me)

Camille is also one of the most uncoordinated people I have ever seen which is surprising with all the classes she takes, you would think she would get better. She stands up front and is actually distracting to me as her arms flail wildly (picture the "Elaine dance" from Seinfeld, but with hand weights). She also looks like a starving cat that you would see on Animal Planet. Have you ever watched Animal Cops (I'm addicted) and they take like 40 cats out of the old lady's house and the vet shows how emaciated they are. You can see their hip bones and ribs and every one of their vertebrae...that's Camille. Disgusting.

Is it over yet?

Is this painful thing called football season over yet? I don't know which to be more concerned about. Notre Dame's complete inability to do anything offensive or the Philadelphia Eagles' inability to field a punt? My only solace is the crying Michigan fans.

Things that Annoy Me

This is a two part things that annoy me post and both have pictures to accompany them, so that's exciting.

1) I buy a blouse last March at a store moving sale for some ridiculous percentage off, but don't have a chance to wear it because the weather gets warmer. A few weeks ago when the weather was cooler and after our CEO casually suggests that we dress in more professional attire, I pull it out of my closet only to find this:

I call the store and beg them to take it off, but since after months of having this shirt, I made the mistake of throwing out the receipt, they could do nothing. I said I think I probably charged it on my store credit card is there anyway to look it up and prove that I paid for it..."um...no". So I go on the company's website, e-mail a long descriptive e-mail about how the store is no longer there, and I bought it months and months ago and no longer have the receipt, yada yada yada. I get a response "Please take the garment along with your receipt back to the store where it was purchased and they will gladly remove the security device." I wanted to write back "listen you jackass, you obviously didn't read my first e-mail or you would know I can't do that." But since the e-mail said "please do not reply to this address" I didn't.

Instead I turned to the internet for help. Because you can find out how to do everything on the internet. It kinda let me down this time. It gave me two options: 1) pay $40 to purchase some machine specifically designed to remove those things (or as I like to call it "The Shoplifters Helper") or 2) Bash it with a hammer. I decided upon #2. I took out my whole tool kit but bashing it didn't really work, so I ended up using pliers and came out with this.

2) My toothpaste bottle cracked along the side.

And left me using this to get toothpaste.

Who knew toothpaste came out of such a space age looking thing! Or that the bottle could crack like that under normal use?