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!!