X-Mas Recap

My Christmas was rather boring (at least by my family's standards) though my grandmother still thinks it was crazy. My parents drove in from Indiana on Dec 23rd, but I didn't actually see them till the 24th. I worked on Christmas Eve because I didn't want to use a vacation day and knew I'd get a lot of work done because no one would be in. Plus they let us out at 3, which was nice. That night my parents and I went to a Christmas Eve dinner that we've now been extended an invitation "for life." It was with family friends that we did the 3-day with, and they cook 12 meatless dishes. The dinner has grown and now includes about 35 people. They split families up at dinner so you're at a table with a bunch of people you don't really know...always interesting. We ate and ran because of course the Notre Dame game was on.

FINALLY, no more talk about how Notre Dame can't win a bowl game. We decided that Jimmy Clausen has the same cold weather issue as Brett Favre. So if we just scheduled all away games for the month of November...and possibly October...we should be ok. I'm really disappointed that Kyle Rudolph wasn't more productive because I wanted lots of cheesy Santa Clausen and Rudolph headlines in the paper the next day. It was a great game though wasn't it. I was so bored by the 4th quarter that I hooked up my Wii, played 5 games of Wii tennis and took a shower.

Speaking of my Wii, I get to open one present on Christmas Eve and just told my mom to pick one out and hand it to me. Guess what...the Wii. So then the next morning when I open presents, my last present was mosaic grout. I think I did something backwards. Isn't the big present last? Anyway, I also have a Best Buy gift card burning a hole in my pocket, so if anyone has Wii recommendations I would appreciate it. Also while opening presents, my dad opened a present that he was giving to me, but it took a long time after opening it and staring blankly at it for him to realize what had happened.

Then we went to visit my grandfather at the "retirement community" which is usually painful as he complains about the place stealing all his money and how Donovan McNabb is a bum. But on Christmas, he was actually interesting as he told us how a burst appendix ruined his professional baseball career and malaria saved his life. (His plane got shot down in the war but he wasn't on it because he had malaria.) It did get a little weird when he was talking about how Veteran's Day makes him sad because he thinks about the cannibals eating his dead friends.

We went back to my grandma's house (other side of the family) and then the kids came. We realized that we have at least one kid in every grade from 2nd to 11th. Crazy! I didn't think it was too bad except for the spontaneous outbursts of singing, mostly Sound of Music and mostly from my cousin Heidi.

Friday we went shopping....a LOT of shopping.

Saturday was big Christmas celebration. With all the family members from my mom's side along with my Aunt Jane's mom and sister. There were several awkward moments with people calling someone by the ex-wife's name, talking about how banks are stealing our money (Jane is a banker), talking about how the government is wasting our taxes (cousin Brian is a tax collector), and other various non-Christmasy conversations that no one really backed off once they became awkward. My dad said his tongue started to bleed he was biting it so hard.

Well, that's Christmas with my family. No screaming (except by kids which is ok), no punches thrown, no police, no drugs, so rather calm by our standards.

Sorry, no Christmas Cards

I wanted to thank everyone that have sent me beautiful Christmas cards this year. I love the mail. I also wanted to tell you not to be expecting one from me. I don't know whether I've been watching too much G-word on Planet Green, reading to much Body and Soul, spending too much time on treehugger.com or just generally drinking the Go Green Kool-aid that's been going around, but I decided to save some paper and not mail Christmas cards this year. If you work with me and got one, consider yourself lucky (I gave into peer pressure). So here is my general impersonal blog Merry Christmas to everyone! If I've seen you recently, it was great to see you and if I haven't seen you recently, we really need to get together soon. Stay tuned as Christmas, my birthday and New Year's are always good for some posts (though since two of my cousins are in jail, it might not be as interesting as in previous years.)

Whopper Virgins

Has everyone seen the whopper virgins commercials? Do they bother anyone else? Everytime I see them I think "was this really a good idea?" I mean, come on, have you seen Bizarre Foods on the travel channel? These people drink yak blood and goat urine and think it's good. Am I really going to take their opinion on which burger to eat seriously? In fact, I think it makes the Big Mac look pretty good. McDonald's...we don't taste like goat.

Microwave S'mores

So today was the last day for a lot of people that retired/quit/got laid off so when most of them left after lunch I raided their offices/cubicles/working spaces. I now have actually have a matching set of chairs in my office. Can you believe that? But the big find was a case of marshmallows and a case of graham crackers, so of course of first thought was...S'mores!! Do you know what happens to a marshmallow when you put it in the microwave for 20 seconds? This:

Pretty cool, huh? I highly recommend trying it yourself. I kinda want to put a bunch of mini marshmallows all in together and see them all puff up.

Happiness Is...Having a Job

Yes, I've retained my job. Woot! I was about ready to pull my hair out though. At around 11:30, we discovered that calls were being made to people by HR regarding their status. Later we realized that they were going by alphabetical order. Damn! I had to wait for S. I had a dentist appointment at 3:15, but that shouldn't be that big of a deal, right? Well, the call didn't come, so I went to my dentist appointment. URGH!! (which by the way is a whole other post which would have been posted, if this whole thing hadn't been today.) I come out at 3:45 and have a voicemail on my phone. I call them back. No answer, so I leave a message. at 4:45, they call me back FINALLY. The suspense was killing me.

I'm actually a little bummed that I have my job because I was preparing myself for getting laid off so that I wouldn't freak out and thought about all the great things I could do with the extra time.
1) Go to the gym more. Like Camille the gym freak.
2) Clean my apartment (REALLY clean...clean the oven, shampoo the carpet, etc.)
3) Write the great American novel.
4) Complete my grad school applications before the deadline.
5) Finish the book I've been reading for a year
6) Finish embroidering the table cloth that I've been working on for two years
7) Mosaic...A Lot
8) Wrap presents for Christmas
9) Blog more
10) Sleep in...every day

Sigh...that will have to wait.

Eli, you can send me the invoice for my half of the Houlihan's bill.

Long Time, No Blog

Sorry, I haven't blogged in a fairly long time. Things have been CRAZY since getting back from Indiana and then this weekend I was at Duke. I had randomly applied to go to this MBA Women's Weekend thing and shockingly got picked to go. Duke paid for everything, the hotel, meals (alcohol), I just had to get myself to Durham. It was about a 6 hour drive, which wasn't bad since I'm used to driving 9 1/2 between Harrisburg and South Bend. The only thing that was annoying was that since my car CD player is still broken, I had to seek radio stations the whole time. Upon entering North Carolina, I lost the radio station signal that I had been listening to, so I hit seek and the first three stations I came to were Jesus stations. Not that there's anything wrong with Jesus stations, that's just a lot of them.

We stayed at the Washington Duke Inn (or Wa-Duke) which was amazing. We had been alphabetically assigned to roommates and mine turned out to be pretty neurotic. She was stressed out the whole weekend and taking the thing WAY to seriously. She took notes on EVERYTHING that was said. Then the night before our interview studied them for about an hour. We had already been told that the interview was more like a conversation with a current student to make sure you were a good fit for the culture of Duke. That turned out to be true. In mine, we ended up talking about Bob Davie...go figure. But my roommate was SOO nervous she told me she thought about running out of the interview room. She was also really concerned that if she had to leave before the optional apartment tours on Sunday that it would be held against her and asked every alumna/staff member/alumna that we met to make sure it was ok. Despite doing research on all other aspects of Duke life (restaurants, traditions, apartments, etc.), she apparently missed one integral part. I had skipped one of the sessions (I had already gone to the marketing part and didn't care to listen to anything on finance, consulting, or general management) and headed to the hotel early. I was watching the Duke/Michigan basketball game when my roommate returned.

Her: Who's playing?
Me: Duke and Michigan. Duke's going to lose though. They're down by 7 and there's only 23 seconds left.
::she looks at the TV::
Her: But that's only in the 2nd
Me: Half
Her: Oh
::They show Coach K walking off the court::
Her: Who's that?
Me: Coach K
Her: Oh, that's the guy they were talking about in the part about personal branding. What's he famous for?
Me: Um...basketball

I should've told her that I heard they were going to be asking about basketball later, so she'd freak out. Then she went on the bus and announced to everyone that Duke lost, like she actually knew anything. The rest of the weekend went pretty much like this. Information, eat, information, eat, information, eat, drink, eat. In fact at one point, we walked out of the classroom where we had just finished box lunches and there was a table of snacks outside. Is that really necessary?

In other random news, also attending this event (which included 120 prospective MBA's from all over the world), was a girl from Notre Dame that lived next door to me sophomore. Literally next door. We had rooms 221 and 223 and she was in 225. CRAZY!

Talking to the people there made me feel a lot better about myself since they have even less of a clue what they're doing with their lives than I do. Like the girl I met who was the same age as me. She attended Notre Dame my freshman year. Transferred to Florida State and graduated with a degree in anthropology a year and a half. Didn't know what she was going to do with that. Went to law school. Passed the bar. Practiced law for three years. Didn't like it and is now going to get her MBA because she really doesn't know what else to do. Oh and she has a four month old and a husband that she's trying to drag to grad school with her.

I also spent an abnormal amount of time discussing: where I am from, why Girl Scout Cookies have different names in different areas, where I'm applying to school, when I'm applying to school, what exactly "smart casual" is, if I was wearing jeans the day it says jeans are appropriate and if our student liaisons were reporting back on us even though they said they weren't (we decided no, but that if we did something inappropriate ie got extremely intoxicated and dance on tables, stole ornaments off the christmas tree, or asked why there were so many at the business school that they may have to report that.)

Duke/Fuqua (that's the name of the business school) has moved its way up on my list, but probably the best thing that came out of the weekend is that they waived the application fee, so that saves me $200 or so.

A Note To Various Grad School Administrators

Since I took my GMAT's back in July, I've started getting all sorts of materials from various Grad Schools wanting me to come to their school. I have filed all the e-mails I receive under in a file labeled "MBA" (very clever, I know) and put all the brochures, booklets, letters, etc. in a folder. Well now, its just become to cluttered and I've been forced to clean them out. So if administrators from any of the following schools read my blog, please stop wasting your resources because I'm not interested. I've also posted the reason why.

• Texas A&M: I will not be attending grade school at any place that has A & M, Poly, Tech or other such word in its title.
• Lebanon Valley College: Let's be honest here. We're both grown ups. Did you think you really had a chance of me attending here? Kinda threw up a half court shot mailing out that brochure, didn't ya? I applaud the effort.
• Tulane: I visited your school when I was in high school and your tour guide told me "they have really good locks on all the dorms, so that when Mardi Gras comes around, all the wackos can't get in." Nope...won't be coming.
• Michigan: I'm sure you have a really nice school, but I would rather gouge my eyes out with a needle infected with some horrible painful disease and then be forced to eat my eyes than attend your school. And just between you and me, every time I see one of your e-mails in my inbox, I feel dirty.
• Penn: Great school, so sorry your city sucks! Well, at least you have a World Series now.
• North Carolina Chapel Hill: The powder blue...a little gay
• Stanford: The tree...a little gay
• UCONN: I would have to beat up your basketball teams if I attended. (See Michigan, but with a sterilized needle)
• Pitt: Let's just say I know a Pitt alum and he's an ass.
• Washington University in St. Louis and University of Illinois at Chicago: You only sent me a postcard (a little cocky, aren't we?), so while I know I don't want to attend your schools, I don't really have enough material to make fun of you. Though I can't see myself attending anywhere that has to be specified that its "in" or "at" a city.

Well, I think that's it. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Welcome Back!


Nothing says welcome to South Bend like 21 degree weather, 10 inches of snow, the smell of ethanol in the air and losing a football game that we should've won big. AHHH...the memories. Friday evening I went to the women's NCAA tournament soccer game and force my mom to leave because I honestly couldn't feel the big toe on my right foot. She told me to just wiggle it around a little, and I told her that I was trying, but couldn't tell if it was wiggling or not. So we left. I honestly expected my toe to be white or purple or some other unnatural color when I took my shoe off, but it wasn't, and so my mom just thought I was a fair weather fan...oh well.


Despite having snow in both Cleveland (my connecting city) and South Bend, I managed to have no delays and arrive with both myself and my luggage in tact...well there's always a first for everything. I'm sure there will be more posts before I return to Pennsylvania, I've just been too busy.

At Least I Have Something to Fall Back On

I guess it really started Tuesday night when the theme for the volunteer meeting was dessert social. Everyone was invited to bring a dessert to share. TT brought a pineapple lattice pie (definitely not homemade) that may or may not have been in a freezer/on the shelf of a discount grocery store for the past several months/years. It was the only dessert that no one took a single piece of.

So the next day, there the entire pie sat on our lunch room table free for anyone who cared to be daring enough. I remarked that I felt bad and wanted to take a slice and throw it away, just so it looked like someone had eaten some. My coworkers dared me to taste it. I told them that if they ponied up some dough that I just might. $1.60 later. I had a sliver of pie in my hands and was told to eat two bites (approx. half) of the piece. It tasted mostly like cheap apple pie (cinnamon and goop and what not) but with chunks with the textural characteristics of pineapple. The crust was NOT good.

Then today, I was playing with a cat hand puppet that came in our "Safe Kids" kit (jealous, I know). I took the puppet and peaked it over the top of Stefanie's cubicle. Charlene then said she would give me 20 cents to take it outside Carmen's window. Of course I did it...don't tell Charlene, but I probably would've done it for nothing. She actually ended up giving me a whole quarter then!!

It's strange, but somehow the morale in our office has seemed to have gone up since we all found out that we might be losing our jobs. Bizarre.

Name That Stencil

Today at work I was getting supplies out of the "stencil and sticker" box (aren't you jealous that your job doesn't have a stencil and sticker box?) and I came across this.

Our idea was that is was either a) a lamb with an exposed brain or b) a dog wearing a bike helmet. It looked even weirder once we actually traced it because the face comes out looking kinda like a turtle. Upon discovering that the other stencils with it were a shepherd, Joseph and Mary and Baby Jesus, we concluded that it was meant to be some sort of lamb/sheep type creature.

The Concert

I know that this happened last week, but still I feel I need to finish blogging on it. After making our way back to the car, and driving in rain and Philadelphia rush hour traffic, we made it to the Wachovia Center. We got there early (unless we had purchased the $300 VIP All Access passes, which we didn't), so we decided to walk over to the pub that was located in Citizens Bank Park. (Is there a bank that doesn't have a Philadelphia sports complex named after it?) It was still freezing out. We ordered appetizers and desserts. As soon as the waitress walked back with our order, she turned around and came back out with our nachos. It was almost too quick. I'd at least like to think they took some time in making my food rather than throwing some pre-cooked meat and vat of cheese on it. Danielle and I also had plenty of time to people watch. We felt out of place when we realized that people had dressed one of two ways for the concert: 1) slut 2) flash back NKOTB fan with large buttons and homemade shirts. We also discovered that there were a few men who were totally whipped and their girlfriends were making them attend the concert with them.

We went back to the Wachovia Center and were still too early, so we sat in the car (because it was too cold to stand outside) and watched the people tailgate in the parking lot in the rain. We finally decided that the doors should be opening soon, so we should go get in line. And that is when we first saw it...a very well-proportioned girl wearing ::drumroll please:: a custom made corset which appeard to be made out of NKOTB sheets....HORRIFYING (you can also make your old sheets into a dress if the corset is not for you...I saw that at the concert too). We finally got in and discovered that horrifying corset girl was two rows in front of us. YEAH! I had an older woman beside me that smelled like Bengay and we had an annoying group of girls behind us that sounded like a group of drunken dolphins.

The opening act was Lady GaGA. Bizarre. Luckily she is on youtube, so you can enjoy for yourself. Just click here. Please make sure you watch at least to the point where she is being posed in mid air by her backup dancers. Love the outfit by the way.

Lady GaGa was followed by Natasha Bedingfield who was actually pretty good except that the dolphin girls behind us kept screeching "Sing The Hills...Sing the Hills." OMG, SHUT UP! And Natasha Bedingfield is a big liar. When she went off stage, she said "NKOTB will be on in 15 mins" Um...try 35. Luckily, they had these big screens up that people could text things to and try to win front row seats for the concert. There were a couple of different categories.

1) Just looking for the front row tickets : "It's my friend's birthday" "I just found out I have cancer today, but I still came" "My brother is in Iraq"
2) The flashbacks: "I saw you in 88 and still love you today." "I saw you when I was 9 and now I have my 9 year old daughter here"
3) The dirty: "Jon, I want to S your D" Um...we all know what S and D stand for and you should be ashamed.
4) The play on words: "I'm your cover girl." "You said, please don't go girl and I didn't"
5) The funny: "Donnie, my husband said you can be my freebie"

Somebody texted "Go Steelers" and got booed.

So the concert started, and it WAS AWESOME. Though I'm still not totally convinced that Jon wasn't a body double since he was the only one that didn't talk or have a solo the entire time. There was a nice mix of old and new stuff and even some old songs that I had forgotten about (Like "Games"). Jordan and Joe even did songs from their solo albums. By the time it was over, I had lost both my hearing and my voice. It really lived up to 20 years of waiting (Danielle is still a little bitter that her mom didn't let her go when she was younger. Just ask her. My mom claims that I never asked to go to the concert when I was little.)

We got out relatively easy except for almost crashing into another car (but that happens every time you leave a concert) and seeming like we drove through the entire city of Philadelphia to get on the Turnpike. We stopped at the first exit for Starbucks which was a nightmare in itself. I almost had to jump behind the counter and start making drinks myself because I knew more that the people working there. In planning this trip, I somehow neglected to think about how late I'd be getting home (2:20 AM), but I still made it to work the next day. I was disturbed to find out the Terry says she goes out to the bars all the time till 2am and still makes it to work.

The Amazing Philly Trip, Part 1

I'm really kinda too tired to type this right now, but I'm doing it to keep my mind off of the general crappyness that happened at work today (if you have no idea what I'm talking about e-mail/text/call me and I'll fill you in with all the shitty details). That is why I'm not fooling myself by pretending I'm going to type this whole day's events in one post. I also apologize if this post is lackluster/completely nonsensical.

Danielle and I have been planning this trip for months. It turned out to be a very weird/fun day. We arrived around noon and so decided to find something to eat before visiting our first stop. We walked in about a three block square until finally finding an Irish pub about a half block from where we had parked. We entered and had lunch with some locals who all appeared to be "regulars." I had a cheese steak (because I was in Philly after all), but it left me rather underwhelmed.

After lunch, we headed to the Mutter museum, which Danielle has wanted to visit for a long time. I'm not sure why. For those of you that haven't seen the Mutter museum on the travel channel, it is a place that displays medical oddities. After Danielle got in for the student rate (because she still carries her Penn State id in her wallet...loser), the ticket guy let me in for the student rate as well after I flashed my driver's license "in case, the security cameras were watching."

The museum didn't nearly gross me out as much as I expected it to. It houses a large collection of skulls, items removed from people's throats, a growth from John Wilkes Booth, a malignant tumor from President Garfield, a petrified "soap lady" and various other hands, feet, tongues and babies preserved in glass jars. I think the thing that amazed me the most was the 9 foot long human colon that during autopsy had been discovered to house 40 pounds of poop.

After Mutter, we decided to walk the 6-10 blocks to Eastern State Penitentiary (picture above). Again, a place that Danielle wanted to visit for some unknown reason. The walk did not take us through the ghetto as I had feared, but it was rainy and cold out and stupid me had forgotten to bring my coat to Philly (thank goodness, I don't have kids), so I froze my ass off the whole way...which sure as hell seemed like more than 6-10 blocks. It's weird because it looks like a castle in the middle of the city. We got the guided audio tour and it was actually more interesting than I thought it would be, but also significantly colder. We listened to every possibly interesting entry in order to waste extra time, but eventually were too cold to continue further.

Well, I think that's all for now...stayed tuned for the best part of the day! NKOTB!!

I Hate My Pants

I'm not really sure what the major problem was today, but my pants really bothered me. It was a little weird because I had worn them before, but they didn't piss me off as much as they did today. I think the biggest problem was that Victoria's Secret and I have different concepts of "low rise" and "short".

In my foolishness, I thought that "low rise" were meant to sit low and snug on the hips. Apparently, Victoria thinks low rise means that the crack must make an appearance. And "short," at 5'4", I thought I would qualify as short, but apparently, I'm midget. "Short" is around 5'7". My pants ticked me off so much that I was in a bitter, angry mood the whole day (just ask the people I work with). Even though Terry is still on vacation, we went to the candy store, and I got a free latte at McDonald's (all good things), I was still miserable. Now I'm torn as to whether I give the pants a second chance.

The Pink Lunch

This past week we had lunch bunch at work which is like a potluck with a theme. The theme was pink food in honor of breast cancer awareness month. This seems like a really great idea at first until you try to come up with pink foods. But all turned out good. We had ham and cheese stromboli (I didn't dye the dough pink though and this was apparently very disappointing for some people), mini salmon cakes, seafood salad, shrimp, salad with raspberry vinaigrette dressing, strawberry banana smoothies, pink cookies and this awesome strawberry ice cream pie.
It came with red raspberry drizzle which I kinda glopped on rather than drizzled. But my favorite was Stefanie's pink pasta salad.

That is normal pasta in there. She just dyed the water she boiled it in and tinted the mayonnaise. How cool is that!!

Phillies Win!!

I was all set to blog about the pink lunch that we had today at work, but since the Phillies won the World Series that will have to wait. My family is longtime Philly fans. My grandfather loved the Phillies and my mom used to get in trouble when she was little for listening to their baseball games on the radio in her room after bedtime. I remember when my parents took me to a game when I was around 7. We had gloves to catch foul balls and everything. One foul ball hit the ralling two rows in front of us and skipped off to the right or we would've had it! Anyways, this is a big deal and I have some random thoughts from last night's game. (Which was the result of a conspiracy by MLB to make the World Series go longer, but I won't rant on that because I've already done it enough to random people in the grocery store and such.)

1). I like that Philly fans booed Bud Selig. That's just typical Philly, and Bud probably deserves it.
2). Ryan Howard running to the pitchers mound after the game...that I think, was the fastest he'd run the entire World Series.

3). Brad Lidge. I'm not just saying this because he's a Notre Dame guy, but I still can't wrap my head around what he's done. 48 for 48. I just hope to make a week at my job without screwing something up. There's no way I could go to work 48 times and not make a debacle of something.

4) Did it bother anyone else that the announcer's kept referring to things that happened "tonight" even though it was two days ago? Like (I'm just making this up), Upton is 0 for 2 so far tonight...no, he's not. He was 0 for 2 a couple days ago. They could've said "in the game", but they didn't. The first time I thought they just made a mistake and I was ok with that because it was a weird circumstance, but then they did it OVER AND OVER AND OVER.

It's been a really great sports week for me: Notre Dame won, Penn State beat Ohio State, the Eagles won, Philly won the World Series, Washington fired Ty Willingham (which sucks for him, but makes Notre Dame not look racist anymore), and Notre Dame basketball is ranked #9 in the preseason rankings. Wow! That only sets up for complete misery this weekend.

Thank you, Blackberry!

Since my dad has now discovered how to take pictures and e-mail them with his blackberry. I'm hopefully going to get a lot more of random pictures from him. Like this:

Yes, that's a statue of Bruce Lee. And this:

I'm not sure why he felt the need to send these to me, but he did. He e-mailed these pictures to his secretary as well...isn't she lucky! He's in Hong Kong...I think.

I Need A Halloween Costume

We just received an e-mail from our HR department giving us permission to dress up on Friday. But I don't have a costume and really don't want to go buy one. I want to dress up because they area allowing us to. FREEDOM YEAH!! The costume cannot be anything that is risque or deals with political or religious statement (or may otherwise offend people)...so basically dominatrix, Sarah Palin and the Pope are out for costumes. Anyone have any good/cheap/creative ideas for a costume that I would mostly already have around my house.

Pumpkin Carving

I got invited to join in lunch and pumpkin carving at my uncle's house Saturday. Since I'm somehow still in the "kid" category (I guess since I don't have kids myself yet) I got to carve a pumpkin too. Pumpkin carving had to be moved indoors because of the much publicized rain here in Pennsylvania, which other than being a mess for my uncle was not that big of a deal. I didn't realize how long it had been since I had carved a pumpkin.

I free handed an old school Jack-O-Lantern face (with Spongebob-esque teeth). I also have to say that the new pumpkin carving little saw tools work much better than a carving knife that I was forced to use when I was young. Oh, how pumpkin carving technology has improved! My cousins were a lot more creative than I was. We did have a few faces (though admittedly less traditional than mine), there was also a Nittany Lion logo, a house, and a cat which needed dowel rod support so as not to fall in. I'm now trying to decide whether I dare to put it out by my front door and risk that it be smashed by some riff raff...I just like saying riff raff.

This is an actual picture of my pumpkin (on my purple sofa), so you'll be happy to realize that I now have access to a digital camera again, so that should mean more pictures. When my dad gave me his camera and I finally got it charged, I discovered about 70 pictures from our family's trip to Hawaii a year and a half ago. When I asked if they wanted me to print them out or save them to a disk or anything, I was told to just go ahead and delete them. And why did they have a digital camera?

15 Thoughts from the 3-day

Well, the walk is finally over, so here's some deep (and not so deep thoughts) from the Philadelphia 3-day. (Side note: That fountain was in downtown Philly...can you believe how ridiculously pink it is? and how cool! It looks like a giant pond of Pepto.)

1). Blue, Red, and Purple Gatorade pretty much all taste the same. At all the pit stops, they had either Gatorade or water that you could fill your water bottle with. By the end I was just taking whatever the person closest to me had even if my bottle was already partially full of a different color.

2). Just because something is sponsored by Pepperidge Farms does not necessarily mean that there will be Goldfish available...though it should.

3). The smell of Bengay permeates EVERYTHING. My dad used pretty much an entire tube of Bengay after the first day. It was like living in a senior citizens' aromatherapy room. We were downstairs in the lobby and some lady was like "it smells like Bengay down here." I lost it. We came back to the hotel room 12 hours later and it still smelled.

4). The 3-day people are big LIARS. Every morning we would get a card that would have the mileage for all the stops on it. So you'd get to a pit sto,p be like "oh, there's only 1.3 miles till the next pit stop." Then we'd walk for like 20 minutes and hit the "1 mile till pit stop" sign. That's BULL SHIT! Just because they put "all mileage is approximate" on the card, should not give them the right to dick around with us. Also, someone had an extremely accurate pedometer that measured 25 miles on the day we only were supposed to walk 20.

5). Boobs are funny. There were funny boob related signs, shirts, team names and cheers all over. So here are my favorites: Team Hakuna Ma Ta-tas, the old guys that wore the "boobs make me smile" and "I'm here for the boobies" shirts, the little 4 year old and 6 year old chanting "breasts yes, cancer no," the girl dressed as a pirate with the "treasure your chest" sign, and finally the "save a life, grope your wife" sign.

6). I am a big sap. There was a woman walking that had a sign on her back that said "I walk...because I miss my mom" and it had a picture of her with her mom and the date her mom died in 2005...cried like a baby...little kids with a homemade sign that said "walk, mommy, walk"...cried...no reason at all when I was walking in some random park...cried.

7). Gay guys dancing with pink boas make everyone smile. We had three "support team members" that didn't walk, but just drove us around and cheered us on and brought us changes of shoes and stuff. The one guy every time we saw him cheering, he was dancing with a pink feather boa to Abba songs. It brought a smile to everyone's face.

8) Anyone who says home field advantage does not exist is a LIAR. We had these cheering sections where people would clap and high five and give you candy and cookies and whatever and no matter how tired I was after hitting one of them, I could go on forever even if it was straight up hill. My dad was also wearing a Notre Dame sweatshirt, so we got a lot of "Go Irish"'s too.

9) And speaking of hills. HILLS SUCK! Even downhills suck and when the hill is at mile 19.8 of a 20 mile walk. They suck more. If I were to do this again, I'd pick a nice flat city...like Chicago.

10) Sometimes straight guys look good in pink. It was amazing how many guys that participated actually wore pink. And along this same note, there are about 20 billion shades of pink.

11) No matter what is sore if you ignore it, it will eventually go numb. Things hurt that I didn't know existed, but if I ignored it, it would eventually go numb. Along these same lines, just because you look like you are going to die, feel like you are going to die, and think you are going to die, does not necessarily mean you will die.

12) It is possible to gain weight after walking 60 miles...I did it. Gained 5 pounds this weekend. How does this happen? Possibly because I ate pretty much anything I wanted because I was walking 60 miles.

13) It is possible to have a blister bigger than the toe it is on. My friend Becky took off her shoe and her pinkie toe was bigger than her big toe, which was weird until we realized that the entire top portion of it was a blister. She held it up to the sun and you could see through the top 2/3 of her toe. Gross! It is also possible to have a blister with a blister on it.

14). Even when it's not a race, it's a race. They had a counter at each pit stop and finish line, so every chance people would ask what number they were. At the end of the day 1 we were like 1320, which isn't bad out of 3900 people. At the end of day three, my dad and I were 508 and 509. Which was great, except it could've been better had we not waited 45 minutes at lunch for the rest of our team to catch up...GRRR...they also count all the people that were bussed back, so that's not really fair.

15) It is absolutely impossible for my dad and I to have a sentimental moment. Because he's a jerk. So we're walking down the finish line aisle thing. People cheering, his arm around my shoulders, having just walked 60 miles together and you know what he does? Hip checks me so that I fall over sideways. Ass.

The Top 10 Anti-Smoking Lyrics

Today Kate was forced to go to some anti-tobacco conference or whatever, which sucked for her, but rocked for me when she brought back the goldmine "The Prevention" which is an anti-smoking hip hop album put out by the Dauphin County Executive Commission on Drugs and Alcohol, Inc. (DCECDA). Actually in their album notes it says Alchohol, but I'm assuming they meant alcohol. We listened to it in my office and it features 6 songs: "I Cut That Smoking Out," "Blow It Up Yaw," "Think About It," "Unaddicted," "Ashes to Ashes Puff to Puff," and the ever popular "Nicotine Fit/Butt Ugly." I can't make this stuff up folks. So here are my top ten lyrics from the album.

10) "So stay away from nicotine; Before it stunts your growth"
9) "Plus your breath smellin funny; and your teeth turning brown"
8) "And what you'll have to show fo ryour life; Are tar filled lung sacs."
7) "But you got more folks coughing; than an outbreak of SARS"
6) "No help wit the candles; better scramble like Randle"
5) "The advanced aging wrinkles; and how they came to be."
4) "You got more air in your lungs; Than these rafts out there floating."
3) "Lungs collapse; Cancer attacks your body; Rigor mortis sets in hospital lobbies"
2) "Breathing kind of hard, kicking; Teeth looking sickening; No way you getting a chicken; Unless you mean finger licking."
1) "Couldn't stay on top of the log; You fell off like them frogs; Trying to kick the habit; Cause Trix are for the rabbit."

Thanks Kate!

The Field Trip

My cousin, Aubrey, asked that I chaperone her 7th grade field trip to the PA Renaissance Faire last Thursday. Being a naive, childless, 27-year-old, I agreed. I walked into the LGI room and noticed the eyes of all the parents turn towards me and whispering begin. (Obviously the "how young was she when she had this kid?" chatter.) A teacher walked over to me and asked who my child was. In a voice loud enough for most to hear I answered "I'm going with my COUSIN, Aubrey." She hands me an envelope that has 5 names on it (2 girls and 3 boys) and scribbles about a bee sting allergy and someone having to meet the team for football early. Don't they know I'm a field trip rookie?

I find that the three boys were supposed to be in another group, but their chaperone's son was sick and didn't come to school, so neither did that chaperone. I also find out that my cousin doesn't even know who they are but her friend says they are "assholes." Great! The bus ride is full of immature giggle fests (like fart jokes and just general obnoxiousness) and I'm already wondering what I had gotten myself into and wondering if somehow I can run away.

We arrive and I get the group to go to the "Mud Pit" first. For those of you that have never been to a mud pit, picture a Shakesperean play (dumbed down for 7th graders) but with a giant pit of mud in the middle. (I really wish my digital camera was working.) Anyway, we get there a little late and the only real seats available are in the first couple rows, which the kids start to head for. I stop them short (being the Ren Faire veteran that I am) and explain that the reason those seats are still open is because you will get slung with mud. We opt instead for standing positions on the side. In the middle of Antony and Cleo (ala mud), mud flies all over the first row of prissy girls that had taken the empty seats. They jump up and are shrieking "Oh My God...look at my Abercrombie jeans. I just got them last night." Everyone is laughing hysterically and then the girls start yelling "It's not funny. These clothes are ruined." Which of course makes everyone laugh even more. And if you still can't picture, the mud pit...lucky for you, that's why they invented You Tube.



(It was the alligator's death roll that got them.)

The rest of the trip went really well. The boys and girls actually managed to get along well. They were very considerate of taking turns letting each other pick what to do next. I found out that the highlight for them, though, was the sword swallower that stuck the handle of a spoon up his nose, which was both impressive and disturbing. I turned to my group and said "that's why you need to stay in school." I was hoping to find this on You Tube as well, but unfortunately all the clips they had of him was actually swallowing swords. Bummer!

I Was Almost a Fall Person

Spring had always been my favorite season (well, for at least as long as I can remember having a favorite season.) I like how the sun is warm, but the breeze is cool. I like the chirping birds and new spring flowers blooming. I like wearing short sleeves and flip flops when its actually probably too cold to, but because you've been in an Arctic hell the past three months, you don't care.

That almost changed though. Autumn came on this year very abruptly. One day it was summer and then all of the sudden it was cold and the leaves were orange and it left people wondering "when did that happen?" But I kinda liked it. I got to put my flannel sheets on my bed and drink hot chocolate (I swear by Hershey's Goodnight Kisses) and watch football all weekend. Plus all the houses are going all out for Halloween which is nice. So I thought to myself "Self, I really kinda like fall. Maybe it should be my favorite holiday now." (Because I always have to debate the status of my favorites.) "I wonder why I didn't like it before." Then yesterday I woke up and there was frost on my windshield and I remembered.

What Happened to My HR Department?

I'm sure that all of you remember my rant about how my company's employee handbook requires the wearing of hosiery. Well, last week we received an e-mail with a few changes to our dress code. Starting today (October 1st) Mondays are now "blues Mondays" so we are allowed to wear jeans and sneakers and play blues music...CRAZY TIMES! Thursdays are "team Thursdays" we can wear jeans, sneakers, and a shirt, T-shirt or sweatshirt of our favorite team. It is also recommended that we bring food to share on Thursdays. It's kind of weird that we can dress down on Mondays and Thursdays and then have to dress back up for Fridays, but I guess I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Guess what else? The hosiery law has been lifted. WOOHOO. So of course today I wore my cutest, open toed heels and painted my toe nails red. My department is already trying to push the envelope...no KISS is not a team.

Bad Car-ma

Yes, I know that's not how you spell kharma. It's a play on words. Anyway, ever since I had my fender bender and then the guy died, my car has been a nightmare. One randomly annoying, but not life threatening thing after the other. I think the dead guy cursed my car for his "probably unrelated" death.

First, my cd player broke. I'd hit the CD button and nothing would happen. Nothing at all. It doesn't bother me as much that I can't use the CD player as that I have 6 cds stuck in there that I can't use. (And, yes, it's a 6 disc changer. I didn't just shove 6 cds in there because that obviously would be the problem.) I called my garage just to feel out how much it would cost to get fixed because for all I know it could just be a cd jammed in there. And the garage guy says "Uh...we don't do that...I'd just buy a new cd player at Circuit City." What the hell do you mean you don't do that? You're a garage and its in my car. Fix it! So I'm not going to have a cd player for a while because I don't have the money to fix it right now.

Then my heat/air conditioning stopped working. I'd turn the fan dial and nothing would blow at all. I took that in to be fixed and $250 later got it back fully functional. I also had the windshield wiper motor that was recalled replaced for free. I'm driving back to the office after picking my car up and notice a small crack on the bottom of my windshield. It was a very inconspicuous location, and normally I would've doubted whether it had been there before and I just didn't notice it. Luckily, my friendly state representative had fliered my apartment complex that morning, so I knew there had not been a crack on my windshield when I removed the flyer.

I looked at my receipt and on the bottom was typed "small crack driver's side windshield" and thought they were going to try to say it was already there. I called the garage, and they said I had to take the car back. Drove back on my lunch break. The guy looks at it and says "yeah, we probably did that. I guess we owe you a new windshield. We'll send people over to your office tomorrow to fix it."

The next day, I'm on my way to work and the crack begins to grow as I'm driving so now it reaches the majority of the way across the windshield. I was paranoid that the windshield somehow going to implode on me. They come and fix my windshield and say "just take it by the garage to have new inspection stickers placed on." So what's the point of you coming to my office, if I have to go to the garage for new stickers anyway? "I put your old sticker on the middle console in case you get pulled over by the cops before you get to the garage." I don't know what I was expecting but it was not a rectangular piece of glass cut out with my inspection stickers on it. (i'd have posted a picture except that my camera is broken and my dad sent his that he never uses but no charger for the battery, which is dead.)

This morning I take it to have new inspection stickers put on and it takes AN HOUR! I used to do a lot of stickering when I was little and NEVER did it take an hour to put on two stickers. So Mr. Deadguy that hit my car, if your ghost happens to read my blog, please leave my car along.

Holy Crap! The 3-Day is like a month away.

Ok, it just really hit me how completely crazy this is. In less than a month, I'm supposed to walk 60 miles? Um...wait. what? (Note to close friends: why didn't any of you smack me upside the head?) Yes, I watched the safety video. I've found shoes and socks that don't give me blisters. My feet are sufficiently calloused (I'm scheduling a pedi for the week after the walk). We've reserved our hotel rooms (because there is no way that I'm staying in a tent after walking 26 miles.) i've been doing practice walks, but I'm a little nervous because I haven't really responded that well to any of my longer practice walks. One time (before the new shoes) I got blisters all over my heels. One time I became extremely sick the following day. One time I woke up the next day and my left foot felt all crunchy and weird inside of it. Not good. Granted, I was probably walking faster and not taking as many breaks/stretching/eating/drinking enough because walking bores me and I just wanted to get them over. However, I feel I'm better off than some of my teammates. My dad, for one, is running a marathon the weekend before the 3-day and has yet to do actually any walking. Many of my other teammates have less that $10 of their $2200 minimum raised. This could be a disaster. AHHHH!!

I still also have yet to meet my $2200 minimum, so if you are one of those people that have been planning to sponsor me, please do so soon so that I'm assured the donation can be registered in time for the walk. There's a couple ways to give. 1) Go to this link and give online using a credit card. 2) Go to the same link, print off a form and mail it in (this is the slowest way, so if you're planning on doing this. Do it soon.) 3) if you see me on a regular basis and want to just pass me some cash, I've been taking up a collection, which I will then turn in right before the walk. Thanks again for all your support!!

10 Fun Facts About Poop

Yes, you read that correctly. I never claimed to have a classy blog. In our office we had a "library" with various weird/interesting books. When someone gets really pissed off at something, we pull out a book and have an inspirational reading. Our favorite book had been "Is It Time to Make a Change?" because we can normally find a poem in this book that is sarcastically appropriate. Today Stefanie brought her own book in "The Truth About Poop." So I'm going to enlighten you with my top ten list of fun poop facts direct from the book, with of course my snide remarks in parenthesis because what would this blog be without snide remarks.

10. The poop produced while people are fasting has little to no smell. (Who actually smelled a fasting person's poop to discover this?)
9. English King Henry the Eighth had a toileting stool covered with black velvet and studded with 2000 gold nails. (The nails on my velvet toileting stool are platinum! Why haven't I seen this on the Tudors?)
8. When they are upset, chimps who have been taught sign language indicate their frustration by making the sign for poop. (Kinda like when I express my frustrations by yelling "this is crap!")
7. Eating red meat will make your poop turn darker. Eating beets will make it red. Milk gives it a yellowish tinge, and blackberries can turn it green. (A virtual rainbow of poop)
6. The navy suggests that people who are stranded at sea should store their poop in the life raft. Sharks can smell their prey's poop over a mile away. (If you are ever stranded in a life raft and don't get eaten by a shark, I expect some thanks.)
5. Geese poop, on average, once every 12 minutes. Sloths poop only once a week. (No wonder there's always geese poop and not sloth poop everywhere!)
4. While their hibernating, bears don't poop at all. (There's more detail into the how and why of this, but it's better that I don't get into it.)
3. When wolverines are done feeding on a dead animal, they save the rest for later by pooping all over it. (Insert your own University of Michigan joke here.)
2. There is a Moose Dropping Festival in Talkeetna, Alaska. There people buy numbered moose nuggets that are carried up 1000 feet by weather balloon. A cord is pulled and it rains moose poop. The owner of the nugget that falls closest to the X drawn on the ground wins $1000. (Because what else is there to do in Alaska.)
1. Pooping in a space toiled it complicated. Astronauts must swing bars across their legs to stay put. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. (You know you've always wondered!)

The Check Out Nightmare

Here's how traumatic my grocery experience just was. I got home and poured myself a glass of wine. Never before have groceries driven me to drink.

So tonight, I had a meeting and afterwards I had planned to stop at the grocery store. I needed some milk and a few other things. The meeting got down a little later than expected, I was tired, and the Eagles were on, but I convinced myself to stop. "It's practically on the way home, and I'll be really pissed when I don't have milk for on my cereal tomorrow, so I'll just run in real quick and I'll probably just miss the first couple of plays."

I got all the stuff I wanted and then went to check out. I didn't do the self check out because I had coupons and they usually don't work so well at the self check out. I saw a lane that had one girl with a small cart and all her stuff was already on the conveyor belt so I chose that one. The first problem thing I noticed was that she hadn't weighed any of her produce (which was most of what she had), but also none of it was bagged, so I figured that she was trying to help the environment, and I can respect that. The cashier rings up her cucumber.

Customer: That's supposed to be $1.89.
Cashier: Well, it rang up at 99 cents.
Customer: But the sign said they were supposed to be $1.89.
Cashier: But 99 cents is cheaper...so is that ok?
Customer: Oh yeah...I guess so

Then she rings up her apples.
Customer: Those were 99 cents a pound
Cashier: You have the organic apples. Those are more expensive.
Customer: No, I don't. There's a sign. Come, I'll show you.

Both the cashier and the customer walk over to the produce department. I'm standing there with all my groceries on the belt trying to decide whether I should try to move to another line. Guess what...they were organic apples. They were more expensive.

Cashier: Your total is $35.89.
Customer swipes her card. It doesn't go through. She swipes it again. Doesn't go through again. At this point I'm trying to figure out if I can gouge my eyes out with a twix bar.
Customer: That's ok I have cash
She digs around in her purse and comes up empty handed.
Customer: Is there a phone I can use?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!
Cashier: I think they'll let you use the one over at customer service.
Customer walks over to customer service and calls someone. Cashier is trying to figure out what to do with all her groceries and stuff. Finally, she calls over her manager who suspends the transaction, moves all the other girl's groceries and FINALLY (about a half hour later) they can begin to ring me up. I pay and leave and the other girl is still on the phone trying to figure out how to pay for her groceries. AHHHHHH!

I Demand the Return of My Video

Today I wanted to watch the movie The Fugitive because I haven't seen it in a while (longer than I realized apparently). I pop the tape in without really looking at it and am shocked when I see some Fox reality show when I hit play. I get really pissed thinking that myself or someone else inadvertantly tape over my movie. I eject the tape and on it is a blue label with a gold monogram ND and the words "QB's Weekly Scouting Tape Holiday".

Explanation of what happened. When I was in college, we had a LOT of videos. So many that we created a sign out sheet for people to check them out like a library, and then they would mark them when they were returned. We didn't really check the videos though, obviously. Apparently my friend Aileen had borrow The Fugitive and got it mixed up with her boyfriend's QB tape that they had been using to tape various TV shows. Like I said, I haven't watched the movie in a LONG time.

The Last Post

I figure I better post tonight since this may be the last post. In case you haven't heard some scientists tomorrow are doing an experiment which may cause the earth to be swallowed in a black hole. Though considering the meeting I have tomorrow, being swallowed by a black hole might be preferable. Unfortunately nothing really happened today, so I'll just give you a random synopsis of my day.

1) I wake up and have cereal.
2) I go to work and spend most of the morning answering e-mail and voice mails.
3) I got to a meeting regarding our new health insurance which means I will have switched health insurances 6 times since graduating college 5 years ago. Luckily, I don't have to switch doctors (seems doctor #4 is the charm!). I also got to bitch to the head insurance chick about how I think my optometrist's office is ripping me off by not submitting my claim correctly to the insurance. She seemed to agree, but will "check on it."
4) At lunch, we discussed how obnoxious some vegans can be. (this was spawned by my comment that I had eaten vegetarian the past two days without realizing it.) Although I didn't mention that Moby is a vegan and is probably a cool vegan. They also doubted that I made the yummy chocolate pecan biscotti that was on the table. (It's a recipe out of my "Friend's" cookbook). I made sure to label the biscotti so that they wouldn't be confused with really dry, crunchy, horrible brownies.
5) I made myself a cup of Tazo Passion Tea which is bright red and like to secretly pretend I'm a vampire drinking blood tea. Then I was slightly fearful that it had turned my lips bright red or given me a Kool-aid mustache, but it didn't.
6) During the afternoon, I cleaned my office, so that Charlene would get off my case (it's not done yet though) and then Kate and I spent the afternoon exploring the helpful sections in the back of my new 2009 calendar including "Helpful tips for going through customs."
7) I go to the gym and two morons go the wrong way down the parking lot which has slanted spaces and is barely wide enough for one car going the correct way let alone a car also going the wrong way. I actually scream, in my enclosed car, at the top of my lungs, "you are going the wrong f***ing way you j***a**" out of frustration. Then I felt better.
8) I went to yoga and didn't realize until I was changing that i had brought a black shirt and black pants. I looked like a yoga villain (like becoming super flexible is part of my secret plot to take over the world). I also discovered that my knee fits perfect above the bridge of my nose. AND after 6 months of no-show, yoga boy made and appearance.

So that was my not so exciting possibly last day of Earth not being in a black hole. I think now I'll go eat some ice cream and watch Murder She Wrote episodes, cause that's really how I'd like to spend my last day on Earth.

So Many Questions

When I opened the internet today and saw the story on my homepage "Elephant Cured of Heroin Addiction" I had to read it. Just how does an elephant get addicted to heroin in the first place. Apparently through bananas that his trainers laced with the stuff. I would really love to see what an elephant on heroin looks like or an elephant on heroin withdrawal looks like.

Doesn't That Look Appetizing?

My boss went around with a little basket today putting Mallow Pizza's on everyone's desk. They had little notes on them saying "Please have lunch on me. --Terry." Looking at this makes me want to vomit and the texture...ick. Yet, I'm strangely curious. It seems like the type of thing that would survive a nuclear blast. She's so weird.

I'm PSYCHIC!!

Yes! College Football season has finally started! Yesterday, I scheduled to have a Mary Kay Pedicure party for some of my friends. I knew it was the first weekend, but thought since a) Notre Dame didn't play and b) everyone usually plays warm up games (Penn State was playing Coastal Carolina for example. Their mascot is the Chanticleers...I didn't know what that was, but the announcer felt the need to say Chanticleer as every other word. It's a Rooster)

I'm watching the Michigan game with Amanda T, who brought pizza. YEAH! (Not to be confused with Amanda L who ditched us...loser). Utah is safely ahead by like 15 or so for a long time. I turned to Amanda and said "you know what's going to happen here, don't you? Michigan is going to make it a tight game and then people are going to start to come, and I'm going to have to turn off the TV and be a good hostess." Sure enough, Michigan comes back, two point game, ding dong, the doorbell rings. Luckily my anti-Michigan friend Betsy comes and as soon as I open the door she says "do you know what happened in the Michigan game?" so of course, I have to be cordial to my guest and turn the TV on. 6 seconds left...too bad Michigan. :-(

On an additional note, if I was Lou Holtz, I'd be talking some serious trash to Mark May. (oh, you think Pittsburgh is in the top 25. Bowling Green must be in the top 10 then, right? They're not? Well, then they must be in some power conference right? Mid-American? Did you see my boy take care of Virginia Tech?)

Deep Thoughts from the Membership Department

This past week we had an overnight staff meeting at camp. Our management does stupid things like this every once in a while. I think they have this rosey picture of us all sitting around a campfire, singing songs, eating smores and sharing best practices. These things usually end in debauchery and a staff wide memo. Before moving to the actually subject of this post, I must first mention the biggest waste of time of the whole ordeal. The introductions. We were supposed to stand up, say our name, our position, what we actually do, and two successes we've had over the past year. "Please take only about a minute." They had allotted about 25 minutes for introductions. There were probably over 60 people at the staff meeting...you do the math. It took about an hour and a half for introductions.

On the second day of our wonderful staff outing we played "membership jeopardy." My team won...of course...and I got a little purple purse with some things in it. One of the things was this little book. (at this point, I planned on posting a picture of the book, but I just discovered that my camera is broken...which pisses me off, since I'm currently slightly short of funds). The book says "Thoughts" on the cover. Upon seeing this (and after almost two miserable days of staff camp), my coworker Hope sarcastically said "I've got a couple of thoughts I'd like to add." And so the "thoughts" book was born. I made the mistake of leaving it with Charlene for her to add her thoughts on the 2 and a half hour ride home. I ended up with "Random Thoughts from the Ride Home" Numbered 1 - 55. I'd like to share some of my favorites.

1. Meetings are gay, you are gay, everything is gay.
5. PT cruiser - you're a loser
13. Traffic at 2:15 pm on Rt 815
21. Think Kate is behind us?? (Kate is our coworker)
24. Stef got text about poop in Hershey pool.
26. Gave to guy flagging at construction ---> (ok, now I must describe. The page opposite this comment has "call to get a date with Jsto and then little pull off tabs...like fliers in college...with my name and cell number on them.)
28. Wonder if I can fill this whole book?
29. Let's try.
30. Traffic is stopped. Maybe I get out and give Kate this book at mile marker 122.7
32. Took a break to blow nose.
41. Watching for deer.
48. Kate is putting on her makeup (it was actually chap stick)
50. Thought about cleaning shoulder of road while stuck in traffic.
54. Adult superstore -- exit 24

There is also a really cute Life is Good inspired drawing. Which I normally would've taken a picture of but since my camera is all kinds of messed up, I guess I won't.

The Controversial Shoes

Yesterday, Amanda L. and I (there's two Amandas, so I hafta differentiate and she's no longer my coworker so I can't use that) went shopping at the Tannersville outlets which may have been a little far away, but was definitely worth it. Amongst other cute yet slightly ridiculous things that I bought were a pair of purple Pumas on clearance at the Puma outlet.

I have only since found out that this model is called Zany Cat, which I think is hysterical and would like to somehow try to work into conversation, but I'm debating how exactly to use it. Anyway, these shoes have sparked serious debate at my office as to whether they are work appropriate. We are not allowed to wear sneakers. There are portions of the shoes that seem very sneakery and other parts that seem very flat-like, so we'll call them snats, but I'm waiting to see if I get called into someone's office in order to discuss my choice of footwear. Judge for yourself (click this link for other views of the shoe).

A Series of Unfortunate Events

In a weird twist to the car accident story, I've found out that the man that hit me apparently died the Monday after he rear ended me. I got a call from a different insurance guy last week and he said "I'm going to ask you some questions that you may have answered before and then I'll explain why." He asks me all sorts of stuff about what the man said and did and then said "The gentleman that hit you died Monday...we believe it to be unrelated to the accident." phew...that's a relief... "he had other issues." Um...ok. His obituary just said he died peacefully at the hospital. I already checked.

This has now caused a whole big mess though because I guess when they called him Friday after the accident, he was too shaken up to talk about it. The nice insurance people were like "ok, just give us a call Monday when you feel more up to talking." Well, then he died, so I'm basically the only person to give a statement on what happened. They're basically trying to determine whether there was a preexisting medical condition that caused the accident. It's a nightmare for me though because now I have to deal with three different insurance people calling me all the time.

The Polo Match

I have so much to blog about and have had so little motivation to do it. This is typically the conversation that happens in my head. "Hey, I have some time. I should blog about all that stuff that I've been meaning to...but wait Lithuania versus Croatia is on in Olympic water polo, I'll watch that instead." I keep making a list by my computer of things I intend to blog about and the list keeps growing. I have two days off though, so expect to be blog blasted (like e-mailing blasting but with blogging) or maybe not since I still have just as little motivation, but with more time.

A few months ago, we got a call for the MS Society that was holding a charity polo match and they wanted someone to do kids activities and hand out information. I immediately volunteered because I had never been to a polo match (horses not pool...to answer my dad's question) and who knew there was a polo field anywhere near me.

The day started off with terrier races, which was funny because some of the terriers didn't really know they were supposed to be racing, so they just stayed in their little box or went over to where their owner was standing. Then at one point, they tried to put up little jumps for the dogs to go over, but most of the dogs ended up crawling under them.

After that, it was time for the polo match: West Shore Polo Club (that would be the West Shore of the Susquehanna River in PA) vs the Maryland Polo Club. It was very interesting and the announcer did an awesome job of describing what was going on for all of us polo novices. The Maryland Polo Club had some pro polo player from Peru which kinda pissed me off. It was like bringing in a ringer. At halftime they had the stomping of the divots. Just like in Pretty Woman. I don't really get the excitement though cause most people just go out on the field and talk and drink wine (not that I'm opposed to doing either of those), but there is very little divot stomping going on. I left after the 4th chukker (there are 6 chukkers in the game..and it can also be spelled chukka) because I was hot and at that point West Shore was leading by 1, so I'm not really sure who won.

My Brilliant Idea

As many of you know because I've been picking your brains, I'm currently working on a project for my job on 18-29 year olds. Kate (my fellow 18-29 year old coworker) and I were busy reminiscing all day about my purple Lisa Frank plastic lunch box with a unicorn on it, crazy laser beams in the background of our school pictures, the Saved by the Bell episode where Jessie was on drugs ("I'm so excited! I'm so excited! I'm so...so scared!"), and when slap bracelets were banned from school because they were dangerous (not only did I have a slap bracelet, i had a neon pink New Kids on the Block Slap Bracelet.)

Somehow during this conversation we started talking about Oregon Trail. I've decided that Wii needs to produce its own version of Oregon Trail where you can actually shoot the buffalo and bears and stuff. Wouldn't that be cool! Also according to Kate, there was a version called Amazon Trail (apparently after my time) in which you could spear fish. That would be so AWESOME!! ::sigh:: I'm going to go crimp my hair, watch the Goonies and drink some Crystal Pepsi.

You Might Be a Redneck If...

There was a sticker with this joke on it stuck to the gas pump where I was pumping today, and it made me laugh out loud so I thought that made it blog worthy. "You might be a redneck if your last words before losing consciousness ever were 'Hey y'all, watch this.'"

PS Thank you Giant for my 30 cents off per gallon. I never thought that I'd think $3.29 for gas was a great deal!

Congratulations, Amanda and Brandon!

t's about time! I guess we now know that the ring was for you! Drinks are on me next Friday...you know what this means, don't you? DRESS SHOPPING!!

My First Official Car Accident

I don't count when the guy hit my car in the parking lot. Friday afternoon, I was on my way to a program. I was stopped at a red light about a block away from the highway on ramp when the guy behind me just slams into my rear bumper. I'm not sure he even slowed down or used his breaks or anything. I got out, went back and the guy seemed disoriented and incoherent, so rather than deal with that directly I called information to connect me with the police...only they connected me with the Harrisonburg Police which is just slightly different than the Harrisburg Police. After about five minutes of the police officer and I getting frustrated because he can't find what street I'm on. We figure out the mistake and I finally get Harrisburg.
When the police officer arrives, I'm trying to get the guys information, but its not working too well. The guy that hit me also has his windshield wipers on even though it is a bright sunny day and he also has a hospital bracelet as well. Next the guy's entire family shows up, so I kinda just back away, stand near my car and let the policeman deal with them. Since we were right near a red light, I also got to talk to all the people stopped in their cars, which was entertaining. Anyway, everything was cleared up, the police officer told me that I could drive home since I didn't live far, but that I should drive further than that since my muffler was dragging on the ground. I didn't realize at the time, but this would later cause major issues as to whether the vehicle was "drivable" with the insurance company.

I now I have my rental car a Nissan Altima...very nice. The rental lady was impressed that I knew how to use a push button start because I guess a lot of people try sticking their key in somewhere. My car got towed to the body shop, but because it was after business hours I don't know how long it will take to get fixed. The damage is mostly by bumper (where there is actually a hole in it), but the trunk is also damaged and there's a dent on the side somehow too. We'll see. It's actually kind of a blessing that the guy hit me first because he shouldn't have been driving and would've hit something, so glad that was a practically parked car rather than having gotten on the highway and done some real damage.

The Four Day Work Week

Today we received an e-mail from our HR department telling us they are toying with the idea of moving to a four day work week this fall and that they would like our "feedback" aka they're trying to gauge how much people will flip out if they do this. They tried to make it sound like it was our idea. "we've heard your concerns about rising electricity and travel costs."

I'm not sure how I feel about this yet, but the stupid thing is that we'd be closed Monday and work Tuesday through Friday. Doesn't it make more sense to be closed Friday? Well, whatever. I like the idea of an extra day off, but 8:30 am - 7 pm seems like such a long day when I can barely make it past 4:30 now. The other stupid thing about the e-mail was that it said in some busy times of the year it might be necessary for some departments to work 5 days a week, Tuesday - Saturday from 8:30 - 5....um...why would they work Saturday and not Monday? I don't get that at all. That just seems stupid.

Classical Music and Chocolate

So today, I took the GMATs (aka the test that graduate business schools request). I wasn't completely sure that I wanted to get my MBA, but am not really sure what I want to do, so this was my best guess. The scores are good for five years, so I figured sometime within five years, I may decide that I do want to get an MBA.

When I was in high school, I had read something about chocolate and classical music stimulating the brain (I think two separate things actually), so before I took the SAT's I ate a handful of Hershey's miniatures and put my classical piano CD in my car. Well, I'm not sure whether it worked or not, but I did really well on my SAT's.

Now came the GMAT's. From studying, I learned that I now suck at math. How this happened, I'm not really sure, but data sufficiency questions are the DEVIL. I had done two practice test and then practice tests for the two sections I struggle with two more times and scored the same thing all four times. It wasn't too bad of a score (the quantitative score was pretty embarrassing though), but it wasn't great either...let's go with satisfactory.

This morning, either because I believe it worked the first time or because I'm really superstitious, I did the chocolate and classical music thing again (this time with Dove chocolate because that was what I had on hand), and again I totally rocked the GMAT. Even though I didn't feel well, the computer was buzzing so loudly that the facilitator hit it to try and make it stop and then when it wouldn't she offered me earplugs, the room was freezing, and the guy beside me kept sighing heavily, I ROCKED IT. When they gave me my "unofficial scores", I had to do a double take.

My daddy (because all spoiled girls refer to their father as daddy) was so proud of me that he bought me a pedicure today. See. The color is "My Big Break."

At first, I was really excited for having done so well. Then I realized that I pretty much screwed myself over because now my parents are expecting me to go to a really good MBA program and actually do something with my life which with my lack of ambition right now, is just so not good.

I Have Scent Issues

Normally for my laundry I use plain no dyes/perfumes Arm and Hammer laundry detergent and the same no dyes/perfumes Downy for fabric softener. (every once in a while I spice it up with the lavender/vanilla Downy...or whatever the purple kind is). This blandness stems from my mom who is allergic to everything. Once I bought her unscented lotion, but she couldn't wear it because it "smelled unscented." Crazy lady!

Anyway, I got a free sample of Tide in the mail and since I'm all for free samples, I used it. The Tide smell on my clothes is driving me INSANE!!! I've seriously thought of rewashing my clothes just to get the smell off, but I won't for two reasons. 1) It's not "green"...aka waste of water and electricity to rewash clean clothes. 2) My clothes have already been put away...shocking...and I don't want to sniff my way through all my drawers and closet.

An Excerpt from Notre Dame the Magazine

Normally I just read the class notes and skim the rest of Notre Dame the Magazine, but in the latest edition something caught my eye. I feel I need to share this excerpt with those of you that don't receive (or do receive and just don't read) Notre Dame Magazine. My sarcastic remarks will be in parenthesis.

"Generous scoops of enthusiasm (oh, what clever wording...you'll see) contributed to what organizers claim was a record-breaking spoon train on South Quad (because North Quad was completely flooded...though I'm really shocked that Zahm didn't have some part in this) during the light last days of spring semester. Some 127 fully-clothed (don't get your plaid pants in a bunch elderly alumni) undergraduates lay on their sides front-to-back like spoons in a drawer. (I'm not sure that exactly what they had in mind, but ok) The previous mark was set by 98 human spoons according to The Observer, but no word yet on whether the Guinness World Records book (man, I used to check that book out every week from the elementary school library) has confirmed the achievement. (yeah, I'm sure they're getting right on that)"

I'm really shocked that Reslife or some 90 year old priest didn't break this up. I guess since Father Jenkins took over as president the whole campus has gone to hell. I mean first we have co-eds spooning on the quad. What's next? Co-ed dorms! ::gasp::

Hersheypark Happy

Yesterday Danielle and I decided to go to Hersheypark because we were both bored. We didn't go till 4pm, so it was only ungodly hot for about an hour or so. Even though it was a Saturday, it wasn't very crowded at all. We ended up riding only roller coasters though we hadn't planned it that way. I rode the new Fahrenheit roller coaster and was a little disappointed (especially after a long wait). The weirdest part of the ride was the lift up the hill. It goes up at 90 degrees and more swiftly than normal roller coasters. It's weird laying on your back going up and feels like you are going to be dumped out on your head.

The most entertaining part though was when we decided to wander through the water part and started to watch people on the Waverider, a body surfing type ride. It was most enjoyable to watch people completely wipe out. Then we noticed that each of the ride attendants/lifeguards had a blanket near them. Bizarre...wonder what the blanket is for. Then we saw a woman and a bikini ride and discovered what they were for. Apparently topless shows are frowned on at family friendly theme parks. The one woman who was blanketed my a lifeguard threw off the blanket and basically walked off the ride with her boob still hanging out. We also discovered that the blankets are not always needed just for women. We must have watched for at least a half hour, alternating between people getting thrown crazy by the waves and panic looks when their tops came off.

The Concert

I guess this story actually all starts back in January at the NAMM (National Association of Music Manufacturer's) in California where I befriended, John Fred Young, the drummer for Black Stone Cherry. Since then, we've been shooting e-mails back and forth and when I saw that they were doing a concert in Philly, I had to go. And so, yesterday's adventure began. I'm just bummed that there are no pictures to go with this post because cameras weren't allowed in. :-(

Danielle went with me to navigate (though that turned out to be not such a wise selection as you will see later). We took her Garmin just in case (again not such a wise selection) and set off on our adventure. Danielle was a little nervous because "she always gets lost going to Philly" and she has a moderate fear of being lost. The first problem arose when the Garmin disagreed with our printed direction and told us to get off the turnpike about 40 miles early. Upon inspecting the Garmin directions, we also saw that it told us to not only get off the turnpike, but get back on going the opposite direction (the way we had just come). We concluded that something was not right, so we turned it off and turned it back on and it told us to continue the way we were going. Then about 30 minutes later, it turned off completely which was honestly the best thing it did the whole trip. I was worried about traffic, but we only hit it at one spot where and accident seemed to have recently occurred judging by the upside down van and the police just arriving. Also, when the one lane inched around the overturned vehicle, there was still a women inside (also upside down) , blood and no ambulance in sight.

We arrived at the Electric Factory safely and appeared to not be in the ghetto as was once feared. Parking was also easy. There was already a long line, so we got in it and I called John Fred (who had told me to ring his cell when we arrived) and inadvertently interrupted sound checks...oops. I went to will call and felt slightly superior when I announced that the band had left tickets for me as loudly as tactfully possible. There was quite an eclectic group in line for the concert (which also included the bands Theory of a Deadman and Shinedown). There was everyone from older women that looked liked my childhood piano teacher, to scary pierced/tattooed/shirt with flaming skulls wearing guys to preppie guys in Callaway golf shirts.

Once inside and out of the scorching heat, we found stools up on the balcony. A little bit out of the way, but also out of scary mosh pit range which did break out during the concert. Black Stone Cherry was the first band on, and they were awesome! I loved it! Danielle was fairly low key until she learned that screwdrivers were actually cheaper than beer (and far cheaper than the $11 Long Island that she had been considering). At one point, she forgot that a concert was still going on because she was so involved in her own inebriation. She also thought it was funny to belch and then blow it in my face. The first time it was actually hysterical, the second time still drunkingly cute, by about the fifth time, I was pretty annoyed. She also befriended a scary camo wearing/possible serial killer name Gary (or possibly Darryl) who offered to give her a tour of Philly.

After the concert, we went to meet John Fred out in the lobby area at their meet and greet. We didn't talk long because of all the other people around and because of Danielle's drunken state. L In fact, her introduction went something like this.

Me: This is my friend, Danielle.
John Fred: Hi, how are you?
Danielle: Not too good. I'm drunk.
John Fred: I'm John Fred.

Luckily she did not do anything too embarrassing as she had been previously considering, such as asking to feel his hair.

We managed to make it home safely despite Danielle screaming that we were going to die as I was maneuvering my way through the parking lot, drunk texting/calling people, bitching about needing to pee/being alternating too hot or too cold while we were stuck in dead stop traffic (thank you, night time construction), and eventually falling asleep....thanks for the navigation skillz.