Revelation

The other day my mom and I were discussing which cartoons I liked when I was little and suddenly I remember Jem. I seriously don't know how I had forgotten about Jem. I mean I even had the Jem doll. I was explaining to my dad who Jem was when I had a revelation. OMG, Jem is Hannah Montana. Normal person by day...rockstar by night. Only Jem transformed to Jem by touching her earrings and getting Synergy to change her. (Did you know Jem's alter ego was named Jerrica? Why aren't there more Jerrica's running around?) Jem was also cooler than Hannah Montana because she had cool punk rock hair and facepaint.

When I explained this big discovery to my mom she responded with "I think the whole thing is stupid. Like no one realizes she disappears when Hannah Montana is around. Duh!" ha

Nice Try

Last night at the Notre Dame basketball game:

Me: What is up with that lady's hair?
My Dad: I don't know. She has a huge tattoo on her lower back too.
Me: Nice.
My Dad: What's that called? A trash stash?
Me: Uh...a tramp stamp?
My Dad: oh yeah...that's it.

He tries so hard to be one of the cool kids. I've also taught him to do the fist bump with the explode out that "all the kids are doing now," so he's really excited.

Sky Mall

This post is going to be shorter than I originally anticipated. I thought that I'd have lots of extra time to blog about things while I was at my parents, but I was wrong for a few reasons. 1) I forgot that my parents still have dial up and it takes about 15 minutes to load any web page during which time I want to scratch my eyes out. 2) I forgot how tired I was from a rigorous semester at B-school...(I slept for 11 hours two days in a row without waking up.) 3) I have been perpetually cold since arriving in South Bend and have spent most of my "spare" time wrapped up in blankets.

On my flight in, I was enjoying a SkyMall and all the bizarre oddities it has to offer and wondering "who buys this crap?" I found one thing that I just HAD to blog about. I also had several more weird items that I thought I'd add to lengthen the blog, but due to my time constraints those will be omitted. The one that you HAVE to check out is the "Telekinetic Obstacle Course". I honestly can not decide whether this is the coolest or the stupidest thing I have ever seen. I mean really! You can move the ball through the obstacle course with your brain! That's freakin' awesome....but at the same time stupid, right? I also like that fact that you can interchange the the obstacles to make it different each time. I showed this to my mom and her comment was "what if you spend the $100 and then find out you're too stupid to do it." I think that's funny.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and hopefully I become funnier in the New Year!

House

So I was hoping that there would be something good on TV tonight since I've been watching crap all day (like three episodes of Cash In the Attic on BBC America...I also watched the season finale of Dexter that I had tivo'd. Holy crap!), but alas there's not. There's a repeat of House on though. I used to like House until I realized that every episode was the same. Here's my new house script.

Patient: Oh no! I'm sick and no one knows what's wrong.
House: I'm a jackass but you have to put up with me because I'm the only person that may possibly be able to fix you.
Patient: You're a jerk, but oh well
Minion 1: Maybe he has blah
House: No. Because if he had blah then there would be blah symptoms
Minion 2: Maybe he has yadda
House: No Because if he had yadda then there would be yadda symptoms...he must have doodle...so we need to give him doodle medicine.
Minion 1: But if he doesn't have doodle then doodle medicine will kill him.
House: Oh well...that's why I'm House and you're not
Cuddy: Did I just hear you're giving your patient doodle medicine? That could kill him!
House: If we don't give him doodle medicine then he'll be dead anyway.
::They give the patient Doodle medicine::
Minion 2: Don't worry. This will make you all better.
Patient: Oh no! Now I'm even sicker.
House: well, guess it's not doodle
At this point they go through the whole blah, yadda, doodle conversation again except with other diseases until the patient says or does some random thing and then it all suddenly clicks for House.
House: He must have jibber. Do the jibber procedure on him?
Minions 2&3: Of course, jibber would make total sense though we didn't see it at first because he was doing something that counteracted the jibber symptoms.
They do the random procedure/give the random medicine.
Patient: Hooray! I'm all fixed.
House: I don't really care that I just saved you from a horrible painful demise because I'm screwed up in the head and have pain/relationship issues.

I get impatient with a lot of TV shows that are the same thing over and over again, so I may have to write my takes on those shows as well...should be fun.

I AM SOOO BORED

I am really really bored. I've cleaned my apartment and done all my shopping and wrapping and packed and everything. Normally this would be the perfect blogging time, but my life is currently so boring that I have nothing funny to say at all. A shame really. I actually thought about going to the mall/Wal-mart today just to see stupid people doing stupid things so that I could blog about it, but I'm also not really in a mood to deal with stupid people so I didn't. No worries though I'm going to be in South Bend for a week followed by Pennsylvania for a week followed by a week back in W-S with Amanda 1....sure to have something interesting happen...I hope.

Letters from Prison

Today is my first day of winter break. So after taking a shower, I put my pajamas on and climbed back in bed.....yeah! Rest! But I thought I'd at least blog so that I felt like something productive was happening (not that watching Matlock isn't productive). I received this letter actually before Thanksgiving, but then all that Thanksgiving stuff happened and well...what can I say...it got pushed aside. But now...it's time.

"Hey, how are you doing? I hope you made out ok with all the work you had and didn't get to overwelmed...Oh i just want to apologize about my spelling thur-out all my letter cause spelling is one of my sore spots!! (no kidding, it only took you this long to figure it out.) You've prolly had some laughs though. (oh, you have nooo idea!) Well my mom went upstate on the 3rd (i still don't know where upstate PA is.) She'll be there for a couple months then whens she done getting evaluated she come back here and been sentenced! (no apologies for grammer? just spelling? really?)

"I can't believe how big everyone is getting. Its so crazy (i don't know where this came from. I didn't send her pictures or anything). Did you dress up as anything on Halloween? Nan and Kathy are going to Phg. (That's her abbreviation for Pittsburgh...yeah, i don't get it either) for the ND game. Nans is oppsessed (oh, honey, this is just sad. she originally wrote oppessed and crossed it out and wrote oppsessed) with ND now haha. I liked it there I one time I visited it seem like a fun place and historical. (is she even reading this as she's writing? and I'm not really sure ND looks either fun or historical though it is kinda both...i guess). "

" so on the card where is the garden from? Nevermind I just read the back of the card and found out haha. (hahahahahaha) Well Im very glad that you are still make time to write me back. im really greatful for that. talk 2 you soon."

So I haven't written back lately because my grandma keeps telling me she's supposed to be moved somewhere, so I odn't want to waste a letter that she's not going to get. Oh well.

ALBATROSS!

Saturday: the last day of my trip. I got up and went to Body Pump which kicked my ass even though I made sure to lift lighter than I had back in July. I was seriously sore till Tuesday though. Good sore. I went to Panera (still gross from the gym, but oh well) and tried to do some homework, only to be repeatedly called/texted by my cousin Aubrey reminding me that I had promised to take them to see New Moon.

So after showering and changing, I picked up Aubrey and her sister Molly and went to the movie. I also realized I can start getting in for the student rate again! WOOHOO! (even though some of us never stopped ::cough Danielle cough::). I hadn't seen the first movie or read any of the books or anything, but New Moon was ok. It made me kinda mad for some reason and I'm really not sure why. Maybe the over dramatic nature of the whole thing and everyone in it falling into a suicidal depression over losing their high school boy/girlfriend...color me jaded.

Then I dropped them off (even though Aubrey kept hinting that she wanted to go to dinner) because I had to get ready for my ten year high school reunion. I picked up Danielle at her house ...and she bitched about going some more and we came up with our "let's blow this joint" code word "Albatross." Within five minutes of arriving at the Appalachian Brewing company she began yelling "Albatross! Albatross!" I thought the reunion was pretty good. No one that we really hung out with in high school was there, but that was ok because there was plenty of people who were willing to pretend that they were your best friend in high school. They all pretty much married each other and still live within 10 miles of where we grew up and all work for the State of Pennsylvania. The bad part is that they didn't have name tags or anything so there were lots of people that I had no idea what their name was. I knew they were in homeroom with me or whatever, but as far as name...total blanko. The other weird thing is that all the girl's voices seemed to be an octave higher than they used to be. One of our classmate's band played and I felt bad because they were pretty good but were really loud so everyone was out in the bar area talking. So I had some food and beer, did shots with the randomest bunch of girls from high school ever, watched part of the Notre Dame/Stanford game on the TV by the bar (the part where they were winning...ps since he was punched I've started using "Jimmy Clausen" as an action...."Don't make me Jimmy Clausen your ass.") and then left. I took Danielle home and she insisted that I come in and explain to her mom why she was so drunk.

Sunday I drove back to NC. Got stuck in stop and go traffic for most of Virginia and realized that Danielle never gave me the Gazebo Room dressing she had bought me...oh well.

Hmmm...I've had a letter from prison sitting around...maybe I'll blog it...maybe I won't

Target, 4am

Black Friday. The first Black Friday in a long time that my dad and I wouldn't be going to a mall somewhere to watch crazy people and buy things for ourselves. Amanda invited me to go with her bright and early to get a vacuum. Why not? Haven't you always wondered what happens at 4am on Black Friday. My alarm went off at 3am...GROAN...I can't honestly remember the last time I saw 3am....it's been a while. I met Amanda (and her fiance's 17? year old brother Josh) at her house. We stopped at Sheetz for coffee and breakfast. (Believe it or not Sheetz was actually having Black Friday sales on windshield wiper fluid...who knew?) Then we went to Target and got in line. We listened to crazy stories about previous Black Friday sales from the people standing around us. I also thought about sneaking in with an employee, but didn't. There was also this:

A scary person dressed up as a barber pole handing out free haircut coupons...creepy. Target employees came by and gave us maps of where all the specials were in the store. Unfortunately, the vacuum wasn't on it, so we made plans to split up and find the vacuum. The doors opened at 5am, and everything was rather orderly except the people walking over from the parking lot and trying to jump in line. Amanda had sent me towards the area where the TV's that were on special were. Thanks a lot! There was lots of ruckus and whatnot....no trampling though and also no vacuums. Amanda finally found her vacuum and all was well.

From there we went to Best Buy. Nothing really exciting happened there except that the line was super long and wound pretty much the whole way around the store.

After Best Buy we headed to Five Below because I had promised my grandma that I'd help her get stocking stuffers for the kids. There I got possibly the best buy of the day. This:

Isn't it hysterical looking? It's called a Gulper and the tag says "Danger: Do not stick your finger all the way in your Gulper and pull on its tail." There's no other real instructions so of course the first thing you want to do is stick your finger in and pull on the tail, but your also a little nervous to do so in the store should anything go awry and the thing gets stuck. So we bought it. Also pretty funny is the fact that's it's name is "Sucky" and "Sucky has a good appetite but a bad attitude." At one point in the store, Josh had taken it from me and I very loudly yelled "Give me sucky!" Well, that didn't really come out right. It turns out sucky has like a Chinese finger trap thing in its mouth that "sucks" on your finger when you stick it in. I also enjoy that the tag says "US and International patents pending." Really? This is patented?

From there we went to Bed, Bath and Beyond...not really for any purpose except that we were close to it. Then off to Wal-mart because we felt like we needed to go to Wal-mart on Black Friday and were hoping to get into some fights...we didn't though... :-(

After eating cereal at Amanda's house, and then going for Chinese food, we went to the Harrisburg mall to see Santa's sand sculpture thing ...why a mall in Harrisburg has a giant sand sculpture I'll never get (so glad that there's pictures on the web so I could share though). Then I went back to my grandma's (it was still only like 1pm) and slept for two hours and then did homework the rest of the night....exciting!

Thank You, Feet

Isn't it weird how since my b-school work has gone down my creative juices have suddenly spiked which leads to blogging (I actually have a running list of things I want to blog about). My feet are still killing me from the shoes I wore to the B-school Christmas party on Friday (and I kinda can't feel the toe next to my baby toe...which might be bad). I think maybe they're pissed at me for not giving them the proper recognition for all that I put them through. Since part of my Organizational Behavior talent management project is on the power of Thank You, I thought that I'd try to appease my feet by thanking them for the great work they've done throughout my life.

Thank You, feet:

• For not going to pieces when I pulled a filing cabinet on you when I was four
• For not becoming one big callous even though I spend half of my life barefoot
• For not being ashamed when I let my cousins paint your nails glo in the dark orange
• For not being self conscious when my dad says you look like baby feet (or when I refer to your toes as snausages)
• For not being a complete bitch when I took pointe in high school. I know it was a difficult time for both of us and you'd sometimes bleed through the toe padding or have blisters that would then be excruciating in the shower, but you're not completely deformed from the experience and so I give that a plus
• For staying strong even when I do stupid things like drop a jar of banana peppers on you
• For putting up with me when I try to cram you into shoes a size too small because they are cute and purple
• For not breaking off when I walked to college dances with open toe shoes in a foot of snow (or last year when my mom made me attend the ND soccer game in November and you went completely numb)
• For not freaking out during the 60 mile walk of the 3-day last year. You actually rocked it. No blisters just a little soreness...I'll take it
• For still walking me around a large art show on Sunday after being in uncomfortable (yet cute) shoes for three days during Hall of Fame Enshrinement
• For not breaking in half when my crazy yoga teacher made me do downward dog on the tops of you

I know you've gotten complements before like when the lady at the dance store told you that you were beautiful ballet feet, and the lady at the grocery store gave me root beer barrels because you rocked those wedge heels, but I know that I don't say it enough, so thank you, feet, for putting up with all my crap. (Let's hope that works)

Thanksgiving Day

I woke up and watched the Macy's parade on TV which was nice. When I was little, we traveled a lot over Thanksgiving, and my dad NEVER let me watch the parades...boo on him. Instead we used to go to theme parks with all the non-American/non-English speaking tourists...good memories. But I have to say that parade coverage is not as good as it was when I was little. There's too much fluff (dancing, singing, interviews, etc.). I also remember there being one network that carried like four parades and would jump to different areas of the country to cover like the Chicago Parade and Disneyworld/land parade and one that was on boats or something. Whatever happened to that? Do we really need two networks covering the Macy's parade?

My uncle Bill cooked Thanksgiving dinner so we drove over to his place. My grandma always wants me to drive her car and looks at me weird when I say "no, that's ok, I prefer taking mine." She also gets annoyed that I take the highway. Food is always really good (we have both ham and turkey) though there are some things that when I "grow up" (yeah, like that'll happen) won't be a part of my traditional Thanksgiving. 1) Crudites (why won't blogger do an accent egu? That's croo-dee-tays...but without the egu ...aka that slanty line over the e...it looks like croo-dites) Anyway, there is no need for raw veggies on a Thanksgiving table. No one eats them. No one likes them. They're just filler. 2) Plain green beans...I want my green bean casserole damn it. 3) in bird and out of bird stuffing If you don't like the stuffing that was in the bird, then you're not eating stuffing. 4) Chicken nuggets. If you are a spoiled kid, you are not getting chicken nuggets. You are going to find something on the table and eat it just like everyone else. End of story.

No real drama. My trouble maker cousins are still in jail. Though my cousin Aubrey did storm away from the table during dinner because she felt that her mom was "judging her friends." Gotta love teenage angst.

After dinner my uncle made everyone go for a walk around the block. Adults were exempt from the mandatory walk, though everyone went except myself and my cousin Heidi. I figured this would be a good time to catch up on reading my marketing case for Monday's class. I was wrong though as Heidi talked my ear off the entire time. My parents called from Australia while everyone was out walking which was very lucky for them because there was no one else that insisted on talking to them.

Everyone came back from the walk and the kids took shifts doing the dishes. There seemed to be a lot of dropping of silverware going on though. My cousin Sierra did my hair (which is a lot less painful now that I have short hair...Not long enough for tying knots in or getting hairbands completely tangled.) She also gave me two "foot" massages. One foot massage was the traditional type with her actually massaging my feet (kinda nice), but the other one was her massaging my shoulders WITH her feet (not my favorite). Hmmm....I think that's about it. I went home and tried to go to bed fairly early so that I wasn't a complete walking zombie for Black Friday shopping.

Up next: what does happen at Target at 4am on Black Friday?

It's Confirmed

I just got home from the B-school X-mas party, and I can't sleep, so I'm blogging. My academic team decided to go out to dinner before the party. I was sitting at the table next to Salem, one of my team member's girlfriends. Dress for the party was "cocktail" attire and I wore my kick ass Ralph Lauren dress that I had worn to the black tie wedding in May. Salem had on a similar strapless dress. All of the sudden a man appeared beside us holding an approximately 4 year old girl.

"I'm sorry to interrupt your dinner," he said. "But she wanted to come over and see the princesses."

Awww...how cute. The girl was really shy and just buried her head in the man's shoulder. Then when we left, the girl and her family was leaving as well. "Here's the princesses you were telling us about...say goodbye to them." Too adorable!

Well, now that's it been officially confirmed that I am a princess (as I've always suspected) I expect to be treated as one.

Almost Back from Australia

My dad e-mailed me to say that they were on the way to the airport to fly back to the US.

Me: When's my koala being shipped?
Dad: You mean koala steaks.

Terrible.

Thanksgiving "Break"

On Wednesday of my break, I started the morning off with Zumba at my old gym....oh, how I've missed you, Zumba....let me count the ways. (Incidentally I've also really missed the Gold's Gym in Harrisburg too more than I ever knew) The awesomest Zumba/yoga/body pump/urban striptease instructor in the world, Nancie left me a guest pass for the week. (did I mention how awesome she is? Cause she's awesome).

After that I went to the candy store by the Girl Scout office...oh Zimmerman's candy store...how I've missed you. I bought some gummy aqualife (of course), Zimmerman's peanut butter, and licorice for my dad for Christmas. Then I met Carmen for lunch and we went to Las Delicias for lunch (I've missed you too, Las Delicias). I got all the dirt going on in GSHPA (and believe you me there is dirt!) And Carmen had gotten me SALSA MIX!!! from fall product sale. Good thing they didn't get rid of it like we thought they were. Of course I had to actually go into the office and say hi to everyone and act like I was SOOO glad to see them.

After that I went to find free wifi so that I could do homework. That's why I put break in quotes. Because very little actual breaking was done. I decided to go to Isaac's. The waitress there gave me dirty looks, but it was 3pm, there was only one other table with people at it, and I had ordered pie and milk, so I'm not really sure what she wanted from me. I worked on some homework (and checked my e-mail, facebook, etc.)

Grandma had made me spaghetti, salad and then of course forced me to eat more ice cream. ::sigh:: After that I went to Amanda 1's house and she made me go on a little scavenger hunt to find something that was for me. After picking up 10 random things and saying "is this it?" "Is this it?" "Is this it?" , I finally picked up the Reese's peanut butter (that I knew had to be for me because I've only been complaining for months that I can't find it in North Carolina). Yes, I got two different types of PB...Zimmerman's PB is no sugar added so I eat that on apples and crackers and stuff and Reese's PB rocks, so I use that for baking all my yummy treats.

Up next....Thanksgiving Day.

The Long Road Home

Yes, I just referred to PA as home. Amanda 1, doesn't that make you pleased? Tuesday before Thanksgiving I had a finance midterm in the morning and then was planning on driving back to PA after that. I had packed over the weekend so all I needed to do was load stuff in my car and go. The exam was pretty much the ass kicking that I expected and even though I was prepared for it, felt completely brain drained afterwards. I loaded up my car, packed a lunch, and drove glossy eyed through most of North Carolina. The weather was kind of annoying as it was partly cloudy and so would go from dark to bright and I kept having to put my sunglasses on and off. My mom had also given me a book on CD (or book on DVD as she calls them) to listen to on my drive...which I enjoy much more than actual books....but the voice of the reader kinda annoyed me and the plot was slightly ridiculous. I still listened to pretty much of it and would switch to music when I realized I was spacing out.

Mapquest told me it would take 7 hours and 14 minutes to get to my grandma's, but JSto time says roughly 6 1/2 hours....that's including stopping at Dairy Queen for a blizzard...mmmm...icecream and potty break. I also made it the whole way to PA on one tank of gas which for some reason made me extremely excited. Surprisingly, a 6 1/2 hour drive is like nothing to me since I'm used to doing 9 hours from PA to South Bend...weird. So I got to my grandma's house and she fed me more icecream even though I told her multiple times that I had already had ice cream..."well, there's always room for ice cream...just have a little...it's chocolate." As if chocolate somehow is less filling/fattening/gluttonous. Then we watched the Dancing With the Stars finale because my grandma is a DWTS addict. I spent most of the time explaining who the various stars were though. (What's she do? Singer. What's he do? Singer What's she do? well...her dad's ozzy osborne.)

I was going to blog about Wednesday right now too, but facebook keeps distracting me, so this will have to do for now.

In an unrelated rant, tonight at yoga I got a cramp in my calf and it was really hard to not scream obscenities.

Sometimes B-school Can Be Fun

I know I still have to blog about my Thanksgiving break. I haven't forgotten, but also I haven't really been motivated either.

Today was our last OB (Organizational Behavior) class. As a "fun" review, we split up into groups, and each group picked an OB concept and a mode of presentation out of a hat. So for example, my group picked Onboarding and Tragedy. (Onboarding is the process of getting new people up to speed and acclimated with the organization...for anyone that didn't know.) Other modes were rap, country song, poetry, etc.

For our tragedy we decided that pretty much everyone in the skit had to kill themselves. My friend Ahkesha was our "new hire". She came in addressed her "supervisor" Ben and asked where she should go. (PS this was all done in British accents because tragedy is just better with British accents). Ben said he didn't have time for her and told her to go ask around. She proceeded to walk around to various audience members and ask them if they knew where she should go, which of course they didn't. She found an empty desk and with nothing to do proceeded to fall asleep.

Enter me, playing the IT person. I was bringing in her computer so that she could actually do work. Seeing that she was asleep, but assuming she had killed herself (because that's what happens in tragedies), I blame myself for not having her computer to her on time and proceed to hang myself with the computer power cord. (which of course was met with raucous laughter).

Enter Manibou, playing the HR person with a stack of HR paperwork for Ahkesha to fill out. Again thinking that Ahkesha is dead and that he should've been there to greet her is guilt ridden and paper cuts his wrists and bleeds to death. (again raucous laughter. I also couldn't help but laughing as I lay "dead" on the floor)

Ben enters (as the supervisor) blames himself...blah blah blah...staple to the heart. End of Ben.

Ahkesha wakes up, sees the death that she has caused. Spouts a line from Julius Ceasar and flings herself out a window. (not really....in reality she pushed the white board up, said her line, jumped, and did a trailing off "ahhhhhhhh").

Pretty grim, but also hysterical. The other methods of death that did not make it into our play (because we didn't have enough people) were a paper clip in the electrical socket and bludgeoning oneself with a heavy paperweight (we didn't have a heavy paperweight to use as a prop). Fun class!