Comcast, seriously?

I'm having issues with my one TV. There are four main issues.

1. A lot of channels have no sound
2. Some channels have sound for the TV show, but not for the commercials (not sure if this is really a problem)
3. Some channels are in Spanish...like channels that aren't supposed to be in Spanish....like Family Guy on TBS is in Spanish
4. This is my favorite. Some channels have director cues in the sound. "He reads over the letter that was just handed to him and sighs deeply."

I'm not sure how cable boxes work, but who knew this was even possible?

What if Facebook had ALWAYS Been Around?

Last night Meredith and I were talking about Tudor England (we do that quite a bit actually), and I was saying how by time news got to the far reaches of the kingdom, they were like two queens and a religion behind because you couldn't just post it on Facebook...hmmm...what if historical figures had facebook? (and maybe some literary figures as well). Sorry if the whole PhD thing has made me more academic. I'll get back to my normal mindless drivel soon.

Ben Franklin -> Tommy Jefferson: Way to rock the doc!

John Hancock likes this.

Noah: Still need 1 giraffe and 1 unicorn.

Alice is now friends with the Mad Hatter and 3 other people.

Albert Einstein is playing Farmville.

Billy the Kid-> Pat Garrett: Is that Bacon?

Pat Garrett: Yup

Bill the Kid: I'll be right out. #lovemesomebacon

Henry VIII just changed his relationship status from "married" to "it's complicated"

Henry VIII: Bitchz gotta go

Henry VIII unfriended Anne Bolelyn

John Smith: Hanging wit mah boo. ---with Pocahontas

Harry Houdini: Tied up right now. rofl

John Wilkes Booth: Shit's about to get real! @ Ford Theater

Black Beard: Long day of pillaging and plundering. Glad to be back on the ship.

Ebeneezer Scrooge: Ugh...can't sleep. txt me.

Lady Godiva was tagged in 3600 photos.

Chris Columbus: All you flat earth people can suck in @ The New World

Lizzie Borden: SOOOO Pissed.

Picasso: Headed to the docs. Ear issue. Pics to come.

William Tell: Everyone should mind their own business and stop judging my parenting style. UGH.

Nero: Fiddle music + Warm Fire = Perfect Night

Marie Antoinette: Sick of everyone bitching about not having bread. Eat some damn cake and shut up.

Facebook Posts from an Ex-con

Almost as good as letters from prison.

"still bored..bout to go get ready to go to dinner then i gotta rep my pplz still down and go out to the damn county 4 a v.i. and them mutha fucckers never even wrote me when i was down but fucck it shorty is a RIDA.."

What does that even mean?

A Love Letter to Trader Joe's

My Dearest Trader Joe's,

I don't know how I ever lived without you (if you can call what I was doing really living.). Ever since Hina and Chiraag first introduced me to you, I knew that we were destined to be together.

I love everything about you. I love that you sell pretentious foods like caviar, jalapeno cilantro hummus, soy chorizo, and meyer lemon cookie thins at unpretentious prices, so that I don't feel like a prick shopping there. I love that when I don't like something I buy at you, that you will take it back without judgment. You just accept me as I am. The person who every once in a while thinks I like oatmeal, while secretly knowing that it will just disappoint me again. But I know that you will be there to take my half eaten oatmeal, give me my money back, and send me on my way with some strawberries or something else I will like. Though the majority of your food is delicious....the garlic naan and paneer tikka masala...delicious!

Please forgive me when I go to Rainbow in order to get some of the things you don't have. You know it doesn't mean anything. Sometimes I just need things like contact solution or molasses and you just don't have it. I'm sorry.

Kisses,

JSto

Ok, so I Stole This

I just rediscovered mimi smartypants's blog. I laughed at the last two paragraphs of her most recent post that it made me think I was going to throw up and/or pee my pants and was seriously the best ab workout I've had in a long time, so I'm going to reblog it...as is...no need to mess it up with my comments.

"Maybe the chlorine also went to the brains of the water park management, for they displayed a very strange sign (I should have taken a picture but it slipped my mind, what with being all damp/terrified). The sign told water park patrons not to be alarmed if they saw a baby floating face-down in the pool, as periodically the head lifeguard tosses a baby-sized mannequin in there to keep the other lifeguards on their toes. I’m sorry, what? I absolutely will become “alarmed” at the sight of a floating dead baby, and you can’t make me stop.

Also, do we want to be purposely desensitizing people to the sight of a baby face-down in the pool? *puffs cigarette* Ahhh, fuck it. Probably a doll. I saw a sign about it once. Let’s go get nachos."

Updated Look

In case you haven't noticed, JSto's blog has a new look! (If you didn't notice, then you probably have never visited this blog before, so welcome.) Anyway, I had noticed the blog wasn't loading properly in a lot of browser's, so I finally updated my blogger interface (or whatever computer jargon they used), and this was the result. Let me know what you think.

Completely unrelated. I gave myself a disco nail yesterday....it's what all the cool kids are doing.

"You Taste Like Sunlight and Strawberry Bubble Gum"

I'm not sure what sunlight tastes like, but it sounds delicious. Don't you think sunlight and strawberry bubble gum would make a fantastic martini? Ok, this post is about some of the delicious food that I ate over holiday break. All of the pictures were taken on Smokey. That's what I've now named my digital camera which leaves off little puffs of smoke sometimes when you take a picture. That CAN'T be good.

• The majority of these cookies. I had lunch with Kate and Carmen, and Kate brought me all these cookies. My mom ate the rice crispy treats out of it though. Out of all those delicious looking cookies, who picks the rice crispy treats?


• A REAL Philly Cheese steak with sauce and whiz...the way cheese steaks are meant to be.


• A salad and half sandwich at Panera that cost -$6, yes that's negative $6. We stopped at a rest area on the way to Pennsylvania. My dad gave me his order and handed me $40 to go get food while he pumped gas. I placed the order, got change and shoved the money into my pocket. I handed it back to my dad...$46. He took the extra $20 back to the girl at Panera, but she wouldn't take it back.


• 12 courses of meatless dishes on Christmas Eve. We've been invited to this Christmas Eve gathering "for life." They serve fantastic food, but no meat, only fish. They split up families and assign everyone to different tables, so you get to meet new people every year. I almost got my ass handed to me by a state trooper who's husband had asked me to share dessert with him.


• Great sushi with Amanda 1. A fantastic Smokey Roll (no relation to my Smokey Camera) that was smoked tuna, and mango and possibly something else, but the tuna and mango were what made it awesome.


• Chocolate muffin and hot chocolate. Because what else would you have at the Hershey spa?


• A Hunka Chunka PB Fudge Lava Cake Sundae at Friendly's. I love that restaurant.


• A Reese's cupcake that Danielle got me from Chocolate world, and then spilled in her car. It look awful, but was delicious.


• A Reese's ice cream cake from Dairy Queen (I see a pattern emerging) for my birthday. I didn't like icing on cakes when I was little and so even though my birthday was in December I almost always had an ice cream cake for my birthday. AND it had purple writing on it! We had a tradition of smearing names on our cakes.



• Party cake ice cream. Amanda 1 took me to the Turkey Hill Experience on my birthday and they had free samples. I also got to create my own ice cream flavor and packaging. Josh, Amanda's brother in law that went with us, also created an ice cream flavor which the auto-namer suggest be called "African Nut Explosion." Come on. That's funny. On the way there we saw this animal. What animal is this?


• A milkshake martini at the Chocolate Avenue Grill. (yes, it came with a refill. It's like when you order a milkshake, and they give you the whole metal thing.) I actually went to this restaurant twice because I wanted a Jess's Favorite Salad in the Whole World, but didn't want to order a salad for my birthday dinner. I told my mom that it tasted just like a milkshake. Her response "Then why don't you just order a milkshake? You just want the fancy glass." Yeah, that's it. I just want the fancy glass.

Lyric is from Matt Nathanson's "Faster". I LOVE that song.

"Shuffling down the avenue, the raindrops fall like honeydew."

This one is a tough one. I had to look it up myself. This song came on my dad's radio, and we decided that we wouldn't want raindrops to fall like honeydew that that would hurt. Maybe raindrops falling like blueberries, but honeydews are big and heavy.

For those of you that don't know, about 4 months ago central Pennsylvania was hit by flooding. My gramma was flooded out of her house even though her house was like 5 feet higher than flood waters have ever reached before.


We stay at my gramma's house for Christmas, and she had just gotten new carpet (there will be a story about the carpet later in the post) and had just moved back into her house. Her house, however, was not completely finished yet by time we got there.


No sink or toilet in the one bathroom.


No kitchen counters...though we had a piece of plywood to work on.

Anyway, we spent a lot of time unpacking and rinsing out dishes that had been packed up. My mom was in charge of unpacking and drying, I rinsed, and my gramma placed. At one point we were doing a box of antiques, I was so scared of breaking something. At one point, my mom was unwrapping something in tissue paper and all the sudden we heard pieces fall to the ground. Both of our heads shot in horror over at my gramma who...didn't hear a thing. We don't think my mom broke it because all the pieces weren't there, so it was probably broken before being packed. I was also in charge of going through her spices and throwing out old ones and duplicates. I found this:

Dated 1958? Yeah, I threw that out.

Now about the carpet. My gramma had gotten new carpet at the beginning of 2011. It was a pretty green, but it bothered her that when you rubbed it one way it was one color and when you rubbed it the other it was another...like a lot of new carpet. This time she got brown carpet that she thought wouldn't do that, but it does, and it drives her NUTS. Song lyrics were: Margo Rey "Let the Rain"

"I wanna hold em like they do in Texas please. Fold em let em hit me raise it baby stay with me."

I'm going to have to wait to explain the tie in until I reveal what song this is from. But...this post is about some of the presents I received for Christmas and my birthday.

First of all, I have become really somewhat anti-knick knacks. I don't have room for them anywhere, so I tried to make it clear that I really don't want stuff that I can just sit around somewhere. I don't care if it does have Alice in Wonderland or a leprechaun on it. Luckily my mom got the message and most of my presents were stuff I actually need and can use. However, that being said, I feel like most of my gifts have helped to marginalize my gender as that they mostly have to do with cooking/cleaning. I got a purple Dyson vacuum, a roll of quarters for the washer/dryer at my apartment complex, dryer balls, an olive oil mister, and silicon baking mat. Just to name a few.

Ok, so I have to talk about the Dyson. It is amazing! I put it together last night and have vacuumed 3 times since then. I love it that much! I'm probably the one woman in America who was super psyched to have gotten a vacuum for Christmas. My old vacuum was held together with duct tape. As I said to my mom, "It's like the Kitchenaid mixer of vacuums." I love it so much that I think my mixer is actually getting jealous. I got the "animal" vacuum because apparently my mom thinks I shed a lot. I do.

I also got gifted flights to the Marketing Summit. My dad made a really cute certificate which he presented inside a purse...I think most gift cards should be presented in purses. Ok, who am I kidding. My dad's secretary made a really cute certificate. I had hinted about a million times that all I wanted was a trip to the marketing summit for Christmas. I wasn't sure this would actually happen since my mom is very anti-gift cards, etc and into tangible wrappable items, but I guess packaging it inside a new purse which can then be wrapped alleviates some of that. I was worried because I REALLY want to go to the Marketing Summit and actually get to somewhat enjoy it this year, but I REALLY don't have the money to spend on a flight to Greensboro. Now I just have to convince Andy to let me crash at his place, and I'll be all set.

The other bestest present I got was onesie cheshire cat pajamas. I thought about posting a picture of myself wearing said pajamas, but I don't trust all of you not to pilfer it and post it on facebook. There is a picture floating around that my dad took though. My parents apparently bought these pajamas at Spencer's, which is hysterical in its own right. They're pink striped fleece, and have a tail, and a hood that has the cheshire cat face embroidered on it and ears. See picture here. That is such a lame looking girl wearing them in that picture. I mean I realize I'm probably that big of a loser when I'm wearing them, but I don't want to know I'm that big of a loser. Seriously, I can just tell she sucks at life. I would live in these pajamas if it was socially acceptable. I almost wore them to Christmas at my aunt's house.

I also got a lot of things that have to do with being frigid (gloves, hat, thermal underwear, etc.) and drinking (booze, a fantastic set of Hollywood casino wine glasses...thanks, Danielle). So I'm an alcoholic that lives somewhere really cold.

Ok, if you haven't figured it out, the lyrics were from Lady Gaga "Poker Face." Because seriously, how are you supposed to look on Christmas when you unwrap a roll of quarters? (Remember when I saw Lady Gaga open up for New Kids on the Block a couple of years ago and was like Who the F*** is this weirdo? And now she's like big and stuff. Go fig.)

"Her daddy wrestles alligators, mama works on carburetors, brother is a fine mediator...for the president"

An explanation. 1) These posts will be about my Christmas vacation. 2) I have all these random lyrics that I would love to work into conversation sometime, but since that will never happen, I will use them as titles instead. 3) Amanda 2 used to send me lyrics when we worked at the Girl Scouts and have me guess what song they were from. I would usually cheat and google them, but she thought I was super smart. I will let you guess, and at the end of the post reveal the song title and artist. No, this is not a gimmick. I'm just bored with blogging. 4) All the lyrics will be in some way related to the subject of the post. This post is about my family. 5) I'm really sick of the timeline and listing format of recounting various events, so I'm going to try to tell about my Christmas break categorized by topic. (Ironic that my note about being sick of lists is in a list, isn't it?)

Ok, so my family. First of all, let's start with the immediate family. My mom and dad are crazy. At one point my dad began randomly saying "Nacho cheese" repeatedly for no reason at all except for the fact that he thought it was really funny. After about the 5th time of him saying it and laughing, my mom a la the Cheez It commercial pretended to check off a list and said "Not Ready." My dad also recently bought an Indiana Jones-esque hat which he thinks is really cool.

Now to my extended family. The most awkward moment came courtesy of my gramma. Late on Christmas morning, she asks my dad "Did you go see your dad already?" My mom, dad, and I all kinda of stare at her in awkward horror until my mom says "uh...he died in February." Painful.

The cousins. My cousin in-law Heidi decided to institute a "boob grabbing" goodbye. So after you hug to say goodbye, you then are required to grab the other person's boob. As much as I wanted to resist this new policy, after you have your breast grabbed a couple times, it's really hard not to reciprocate. Also on that side of the family is Heidi's daughter Aubrey, Aubrey was playing around with my smart phone by changing the settings and stuff. One setting she had on it, made it so that the last text message I received was extremely large on the front page. It just so happened that my last text message had been from Danielle. Yeah. Aubrey took one look at it and said "maybe we should try another setting." Aubrey's sister is Molly. Molly is 18 and brought her boyfriend, Meade, to Christmas dinner. When I asked "Mead? Like the fermented honey beverage?" No one had any clue what I was talking about. Was I the only one forced to read Beowulf in high school? DJ is Aubrey and Molly's brother. His place marker on the dinner table looked like it said "PJ" and so he was referred to as "Potty John" for the rest of the evening because that is super funny to middle school kids.

Now to the ex-con side of the family. Considering this was the first holiday in about 5 years that none of them were in jail, things were pretty uneventful. Dezerae left for most of Christmas, so we only saw her for maybe a half hour. Savon, Dezerae's half brother apparently ran away to pout just after Christmas dinner, but no one realized it for about an hour and by that time he had come back. (He's in like 6th grade, so it's not that big of a thing). Dezerae's mom felt the need to divulge odd family secrets which was also pretty awkward. And apparently at one time, according to her, I had imaginary friends named Foxy and Fancy (not that that's a family secret).

Now to the normal though abnormally large portion of the family. Patrick, the one who thought a roadtrip would be an awesome idea (please refer to THIS post), continued to make fun of the road trip idea for most of the time I saw him and even posted fake route suggestions on my facebook like this:

I appreciate that he sees the utter ridiculousness in this suggestion. We also shared the road trip thing with Molly (the previously mentioned 18 year old) who responded "Why do I feel like Dezerae would get arrested?" I'm glad to see that the utter ridiculousness of Dezerae permeates all factions and age levels of my family. We also played a game of "pass Logan". Logan is my cousin that's in 5th grade and people were basically carrying him around, and you had to pass him to someone who hadn't had him yet. I discovered that I can get out of being subjected to this game by carrying around a glass of red wine. Hmmm...which would I rather be carrying? a 10 year old child or booze...tough choice.

That's pretty much a sampling of my family in a nutshell. The lyric was from "Meet Virginia" by Train. My dad regularly tries to sing this song as "Hey Virginia" or "Oh Virginia."

Facebook Posts from the Outside

My cousin got released from jail. I know. It's sad. Meredith expressed her disappointment in this news and was trying to plot some way to get Dezerae (my cousin) to continue sending me letters. I told her not to worry because Dezerae and I are facebook friends and now we will have updates in real time. So to ring in the new year, here is the very first facebook post and comment chain from outside of jail. I've edited it down since some of the conversation is redundant, and I will leave my comments till the end though honestly it pretty much will speak for itself. This is from New Year's Eve.

Dezerae: Where's my bitchz at?
Natasha: I got ur bitch right here.
Dezerae: What u doin tonight?
Kayla: Goin to the casino wit my mom lol...she is my designated driver.
Natasha: I'm in wit the kiddies...wat bout u?
Dezerae: I'm tryin to hit this party up in the burg
Dezerae: But I need a bitch to ride out with me lol
Natasha: lol i'm on a 9pm curfew lol i aint doin dat to my self lol
Dezerae: oh yeah i am too lol
Dezerae: nevermind
Natasha: yeah...stay at the crib and get ur swirve on dez...best choice...my opinion! lol
Dezerae: u rite

Ok, now for my comments. As if they are needed. psht. 1) Can anyone be a bitch now? Is there some differentiating factor between bitches and non-bitches? Am I a bitch? And if so, is that a good thing? 2) She's been out one day and already has forgotten that she has a curfew. Yeah, this is going to last real long. 3) I don't know who this Natasha is, and other than the fact that she for some reason is one a curfew, she seems to be a reasonable person. Unless "getting ur swirve on" is REALLY bad.