My Tragic Flaw

In all tragedies the hero has a tragic flaw that ultimately leads to his downfall. Luckily (or unluckily) I know what my tragic flaw is...snide and otherwise sarcastic remarks. I have this censor in my head that prevents all the really inappropriate comments that fly through it from reaching my mouth. I realize that at some point this censor is going to become broken down and retire/die/just refuse to do his job and that's going to be bad (but extremely humorous for everyone around me).

For example, today I had my Disney interview and the interviewer asked "Do you have any visible tattoos?" and within 2 milliseconds the following things flew through my head.

"Define 'visible'"
"Do prison tattoos count?"
"well, i have a Minnie Mouse on my neck."
"I prefer the term 'body art'"
"Yes, 32"

Luckily, the censor was on the job and filtered all those comments and turned them into "no". Censor in my head, thanks for all you do. That job must suck. You get shitty pay and have to deal with all my crap. I'm on spring break right now, so why don't you take a little vacation. (Wouldn't that be ridiculous if I spent a whole week saying all the crazy shit that comes into my head?)

Things that Annoy Me

For any of you that don't know, I really like to make cookies. I have a recipe book (that I actually have yet to use) called 1001 cookie recipes. However, the last two requests I've gotten for cookies to make are not in here. Really? There's 14 types of apricot cookies in there but no chocolate chocolate chip? Ugh. Thank God there's Internet.

Two Phone Conversations

Yes, I'm blogging in class. I've stooped to a new all time low. I've recently had two phone conversations with people that perfectly summarize either the person or my relationship with them. I was going to post them separately, but why should I do a silly thing like that.

The first is with my mom, and it was in regards to my need for a new mixer. For those of you that don't know, my mom is the bargain shopping guru. There's been several times when she's actually bought something and gotten store credit because after they tally all her discounts and coupons and whatever, they realize that they owe her money. So I thought I'd ask her to keep an eye out for a new mixer for me.

Me: Hey, I really want a kitchenaid artisan mixer, preferably in a color that goes along with my kitchen stuff. Can you watch for one on sale for me?
My mom: why?
Me: well, I really hate mine and so I talked to some people, and they recommended the kitchenaid one.
My mom: I know everyone has one, but why do you need one? what's wrong with your current mixer?
Me: (I outline all the reasons previously posted about my hatred for my mixer including that it smells like it's burning sometimes)
My mom: All mixers do that.

This is my typical mom. Just hating something is not a good reason to buy a new one. It has to physically not work before you can spend money on another one and even sometimes when it doesn't work as long as it works "good enough" you still don't need a new one. Looks like I'm on my own for a new mixer.

The next conversation is with Danielle and was part of our almost daily "i'm driving home from work and know you are a student and have nothing to do, so I'll call you" conversation.

Danielle: I just got your...birthday present in the mail. I almost just accidentally told you what it was. (yes, my birthday is in December, but she had to buy something and will hopefully not forget she has it, unlike my pins that she got me at the Rose Bowl a year ago and still has)
Later in the conversation....
Danielle: I got my mom something from Lenox too, but it's on back order.
Me: My birthday present is from Lenox?
Danielle: Whore.
I laugh hysterically.
Danielle: I didn't tell you I got your present from Lenox (at this point, she's trying, not very well, to cover up her mistake.)
Me: No, but you just got my birthday present in the mail and then you said "too".
Danielle: Why do you have to be such a f***ing bitch?

And that's my friendship with danielle, though I have to say the "oatmeal conversation" summarizes it even better.

Handbell Bitterness

When I lived in Indiana, I was in my church's handbell choir. I loved it and don't mind saying was freakin' awesome at it. They gave me the toughest bells they had (A flat, A, B flat, B just above middle C), and I kicked major ass. Then I moved to PA and boo, no handbells. My church in North Carolina just decided to restart their handbell choir, and I was totally psyched. I signed up and even ditched bidding on my friend at the school's "date" auction to go to the first rehearsal (because you can only miss on rehearsal per season...yes, handbells have seasons.)

But God screwed me over. (hi. one way ticket to hell please. Yes, I'm the girl that said God screwed me on my blog.) I show up and apparently because I have played flute and am considered a "temporary" ringer (though I would argue I'm as temporary as some of the elder members of the choir) they gave me the highest bells they have. Even after I told them I could handle twice as many bells as the other members, I honestly play like four notes for an entire song. There is actually a song where I don't play at all. I spent the entire practice turning pages and telling the woman beside me when to play. Because, did I mention, she doesn't read music? (is that the C? No, that's A. Do I play A? No, you play C and B.) Really? You gave her better bells than me? Really? Anyway, I'm really bitter. Joy thinks there's probably some bribery taking place under the table, so we'll see if I can move up the bell choir hierarchy.

The Princess and the Mixer

Once upon a time, in a land far away there lived a beautiful princess. This beautiful (and also witty, intelligent, and humble) princess loved to make magical cookies for all of her subjects. When the princess was just fair maiden, her thoughtful (and somewhat thrifty) mother the queen had given her a mixer from the land of Sunbeam so that she could make lots of magical cookies for everyone (and also as a sign for the princess to get out of the queen's castle and find a kingdom of her own).

The princess was very appreciative, but could not have known that the mixer had been cursed and an evil plot was at foot to take down the awesome princess. Whenever the princess would try to use her mixer it would refuse to mix (thus substantially increasing mixing time). It also had stupid crevices in the beaters which would get magical cookie dough stuck in them and be a pain in the royal ass when the princess tried to wash them. The mixer also would scare the princess when it would sound/smell like it was going to explode/catch on fire. Sometimes the mixer would even become possessed and though it normally spun counter clockwise would all of the sudden decide it would spin ridiculously fast the other way. Just in general it was a shitty mixer.

However, the princess was torn. Her royal treasury was somewhat depleted from general upkeep of her castle (and a somewhat moderate shoe addiction), and knows that a mixer truly worthy of gracing her castle would cost a hefty sum. She loves to grace her subjects with magic cookies, but her accursed mixer (along with her tiny and finicky oven) is making her want to lose her royal mind.

How can this beautiful/funny/smart/caring/creative princess break free from the evil mixer? To be continued...

Letter from the Hell Hole

At Joy's request (the first official b-school person to explore my blog), I'm posting this in the little break between my interview and the wine tasting Happy Hour.

"Well, I'm back in the hell hole (Harrisburg or prison? jk Harrisburg people). I got denied the SIP program because the fight i was in (shocking) which is ridiculous (is it? is it really that ridiculous that you got kicked out of your treatment program for fighting?) but oh well everything happens for a reason. I really didn't want to do that program. (that's what losers say when they don't get something they really want. 'I really wouldn't have known what to do with a million dollars anyway.')

I hope you can figure out where to go for spring break (thinking warm...thinking warm). you should go to Mexico, its pretty cheap there! (so...if you ever go on the run, I'm thinking they should get a notice out to the border patrol?) I want to go to cancun for springbreak sometime so I can be on MTV and meet some rappers. (in the words of my mom 'you have to actually have a springbreak to go on springbreak).

How much is a normal gym membership? when I come home I want to join a gym with tanning beds so I can shape up and tan. (really? your big concern when you get out of jail is getting a tan? Someone's been watching too much Jersey Shore. GTL, baby. GTL.) I've been in jail for 14 months now (14 months of fantastic letters). I'm going crazy. If you have ever have a chance and you take some pictures of the campus and your apartment and send em to me (so I can case the joint and rob you when I get out)? Well I guess I'm gonna go. Miss you."

Fun times... fun times.

Things That Annoy Me

I purchased my own jingly hip scarf. I just got it in the mail today. Also today, I found out my gym took belly dancing off the calendar. GRRR

The Giant Check

This weekend is the Wake Forest marketing summit...which is AWESOME. I was on the kickoff committee. Kickoff is the first event of the weekend. When they were cleaning up after, they asked if anyone would be going to the school the next day to take the trophy and giant prize check. I said I would (and they thought I was actually a responsible person), so they gave them to me. It then rained the whole day, so I was driving around with a giant check in my backseat for a whole day ala Happy Gilmore because I didn't want it to get wet. I really wanted to go in a store and ask if they took checks. Plop it down on the counter and ask if they could break $50,000...I didn't though.

Tonight's the last event of the marketing summit. I'm exhausted and my feet hurt, but I can't wait for next year! (Stay tuned because I just got a letter in the mail from you know who.)

Snow

It snowed in Winston-Salem last night (and most of North Carolina for that matter). They're claiming we got 8 inches though looking outside I think it's 3 maybe 4. I told my dad this, and his response was "well, 3 is the new 8." It made me reflect on the various places I've lived and how they respond to snow.

Winston-Salem, NC: Like I said we got maybe 4 inches. The forecast was for anywhere between 3-11 and people were freaking out! Part of me is thinking that four inches is nothing, and I should go to the gym and grocery store and otherwise go about my life. However, I just spoke to my friend Huls who ventured out, and he said the roads are terrible. They must have like one plow. The other weird thing is that they are recommending people stay inside and people actually are. They showed a clip of the highway, and it was absolutely deserted. It's not even snowing anymore. But that's also partially why the roads are so bad. No one is driving on them in their four wheel drive to make at least ruts in the road that you can follow in. UGH! Four inches is keeping me inside and closing down the city. At least there's good basketball on. It was weird. I was going to go to the gym last night but it had started snowing, and I thought "well, I better stay in." What? Why? It's just a little snow.

Harrisburg, PA: In Harrisburg, people really still overreact to a forecast of snow. They go to the grocery store and stock up and school's announce closings the night before when there's not even a flake on the ground. Generally, once it starts snowing (if it even does), it's no big deal. You come home from work, it snows overnight. By the next morning when it's time to go to work again, the major roads are plowed, so as long as you can make it out of your neighborhood you're ok. The news people say to stay inside, but no one really listens to them. Schools sometimes close and government offices, but a lot of times there's just a delay. Unless of course there's three feet of snow or freezing rain.

South Bend, IN: Most of the snow doesn't really count because it's "lake effect." I'm not sure why lake effect doesn't count because it's still white and cold and you still have to shovel it, but if you say "we're supposed to get a lot of snow tonight" someone will respond "yeah, but it's just lake effect." WTF? Nothing ever closes unless they actually declare a "state of emergency" and actually close the roads. I specifically remember one time that we had gotten 15 inches of snow. They hadn't plowed the cul de sac where I lived, so I had to call the Hall of Fame to tell them I wasn't going to make it in until they plowed. My boss was all huffy because I wasn't coming. Look, my car will physically not go in that much snow...what do you want from me?

I'm also currently having a love/hate relationship with snow. The five year old in me loves snow (because I'm thinking that my friends will call me to go sledding and maybe school will get cancelled) and the 29 year old in me hates it (because I'm going to eventually have to clear off my car and possibly shovel...if i can figure out where I put my shovel.)

Boiled In Oil--A Psychotic Thought of the Day

No, that's not a cutesy play on words or something. This post really is about boiling people in oil. I thought I'd just be up front about it so that you can choose whether this subject will disturb you or not. But come on, I know you can't resist seeing what I could possibly have to say about boiling people in oil. All my links included will be safe, I'm not going to link to any really disturbing boiling in oil informational sites.

I've been watching the old episodes of the Tudors because Season 4 starts sometime soon (I think...I can't believe this is the final season. There were more Tudors after Henry. Granted Edward didn't do a whole lot. He was only 9 but Mary went crazy and burned a bunch of people and then there was Elizabeth. That could be some good TV, right?), and I need to be reminded of who's still alive and dead and married and not and in favor and not in favor. What church is everybody supposed to believe in at this point? Because it is about Henry VIII, and he was kinda fickle. We haven't even begun season 4 yet and we're already done with 4 wives. Good gracious! (I'd also like to take this point to thank the producers or whoever for straying from historical accuracy and deciding to just put really big costumes on Jonathan Rhys Meyers instead of making him get fat and gross looking.)

Anyway, what was this post about? Oh yes, boiling in oil. Every time I turn on another episode I'm scared it's going to be the one that still disturbs me where a person gets boiled in oil for poisoning a bunch of people. Because it was so disturbing, I continued to think about it. And as i thought about it, I wondered if this was really more trouble than it's worth. It takes forever just to boil a big pot of water to make lasagna noodles in. Can you imagine how long it would take to heat a thing of oil big enough to put a person in? And where would you get a pot big enough? Plus it would be spitting everywhere and heaven forbid a grease fire start. Half of London would be burnt down before you could get enough baking soda to put it out. Let's say it goes ok. You get it all heated up and stick the poor person in. Then what? You have a big pot of oil with a fried person inside. You can't just pour that shit in the Thames. It's not that simple of a thing to dispose of. Unlike burning at the stake where there's just some ashes leftover that you wash off with a hose...errr bucket of water....I'm a sick sick person.

Greetings from Jail

I have to admit that this isn't the greatest letter from jail because it doesn't reference shanks or being thrown in the hole or prison tattoos, so I guess I'll try to make up for that with my own comments. Fingers crossed.

"Well gramma must of got them note cards for everyone since you all write me and mom (actually my mom and I just write you...your mom writes us when she wants money) cause nan got them too. (yes, my gramma got note cards for all the females for Christmas that had our names on them. Except Aubrey and Sierra who got blank ones and Sandi who got Sandy ones...oops) Thats pretty cool (no, it's really not) I wonder where gramma got them made? (uh...it's called a store...you go and buy things at it...it's like a commissary, but not in jail). I want to get some when I come home too! (I think you give up your right to personalized note cards when you're in jail. Plus we wouldn't know whether to put your real name or whatever your alias may be. What do you think her alias is? Hmmm...)"

"I hate to waste money (hahahaha...oh really? you hate to waste money? did you or did you not take all your Christmas presents one year and throw them into the snow in gramma's front yard? I guess that was just presents though and not money, right?) even if its $5 and I don't like to waste food either that's why I'm fat (that's not about not wanting to waste food...it's about not being on crack anymore...it's called hunger....though by all accounts she's currently about a size 6). I want to go to a spa after I get out of jail (I'm sorry...you were saying something about money earlier?) you can't take care of yourself in here right and somethings always sore! (I'm really not going to put the inappropriate comment that came into my mind when I read this because I'm ashamed). I just want to be pampered! (poor baby)."

"Why do they do a red rose in Lancaster? (Do=raise for New Year's) I can imagine how cold it was cause its always snowing up here. Does it snow a lot in NC? I've been craving Aunt Jans cookies (aka weed) so bad and some snickerdoodles (aka heroin). I miss cookies (aka drugs) so much....what kinda cookies (aka drugs) do you like to make (aka buy) and eat (aka do)? (I sometimes feel bad about turning all of her most innocent comments into drug references but then I remember that she tried to smoke weed in the bathroom at the magistrates office and think it's fitting.)"

"Oh...you know you can e-mail me right? (why no, I didn't) Just go to inmate e-mail link on the department of corrections.com...but i can't e-mail you back but that would still be cool sometimes to drop a line or two. (I went to this just to see what it is...and it's 60 cents to send an e-mail. RIP OFF!) Well I guess I'm gonna go. Love you."

I can't decide whether I'm going to be happy when she gets out though because no more letters from prison, but most likely real life debauchery instead.

The New Gym

After going to my old gym in PA over Christmas break, I knew that I could no longer put up with the undergrads at the campus gym and had to join a real gym. I came back and joined the Gold's that's down the block from my apartment. I like going to the classes and have already been to a few that are definitely interesting. I thought I'd fill you in on them.

Zumba: I love Zumba at my old gym, and also love it at the new gym. It's taught by this sweet woman with a cute southern accent who talks really fast. She goes through the moves for each song quickly before starting the music, but has funny names for all the moves so it sounds something like this. "It starts with gangster for 8, then sugar cake right, sugar cake left. Drive your Indy car and take the corner. Ride it in a circle, then reverse. There's some Big Birds followed by Supermans and we end with maracas. Ok, let's do it." Excuse me?

Body Pump: Body pump is pretty much the same down here except that they don't have enough equipment or space for everyone that wants to take it, so you have to get there really early to get a pass for the class. All the equipment is old and kinda ghetto. They have metal clips to keep the weights on the bar, and they're really hard to get on and off when you're sweaty. I totally outlifted this guy beside me and made him look like a pansy. It was great.

Yoga: They have a separate yoga room that totally rocks! It has a waterfall thingy and dimmers on the lights and a big ohm symbol painted on the wall. Love it!

Belly Dancing: They don't have urban striptease :-( But they have Belly Dancing :-() I wasn't sure about this class, but I actually really like it. Especially since you get to wear one of those skirts with the jingly coin things on it. The teacher gave me her business card (she belly dances professionally) and she looks like a total porn star on it. I'm also now a star student after one class because I'm coordinated, not 60, and not 7 months pregnant. Go me!

Hula Hooping: Yes, there's a class for Hula Hooping. I had to try it once. The teacher told me not to worry that the hoops they use are bigger and thicker than the ones kids use, so it's easier. I SUCK! I couldn't hula hoop to save my life. Plus then you were expected to speed up and slow down, move around, and do things with your hands. YEAH RIGHT! Then I got home and found that I was bruised all around my middle from the stupid hoop. Don't think I'll be doing that class again.

Still so many more classes that I've yet to try. I'll keep you posted.

Random Observation

The movie theater down here sells pickles. Candy, Nachos, Popcorn and Pickles. Because I know I've always wished that I could sit down to a movie and nosh on a big ol' pickle.

Weird Dreams

Ever since I've gotten back to "The Dash" after break, I've had really weird dreams every night. At first, I just thought it was because I was sick, but I'm not really sick anymore, and I'm still having them. I have no idea what any of them mean, so if anyone has any ideas let me know. Here are just four of my favorite ones...I swear these are all true because when you're reading them your first thought is going to be "who dreams messed up shit like this?" Me, that's who.

The Bath Tub of Gummy Bears: This dream was pretty boring. I was sitting in a bath tub FULL of gummy bears. I was picking out the clear ones around me and eating them ,and I remember thinking in the dream "Is this sanitary?"

The Two Headed Cow: We were over at my cousin's house...though it really wasn't my cousin's house in real life...My whole family was there and we looked out the window and there was a two headed cow out in the field. Only the heads weren't like when you see pictures of two headed creatures and the one head is next to the other one. Instead one head was below the other one like coming out of the cow's neck. While the first head was looking up, the second head was eating grass. Anyway, my grandma went out to the two headed cow. The cow ran away and my grandma started chasing it.

Goodfellas: I was in the movie Goodfellas, only of course it wasn't a movie, it was real life, but Ray Liotta and all the other people from the movie were there. Gangsters were chasing me (not like gangstas, TuPac and Biggie gangstas, but gangsters like mafia gangsters). I went to hide in a hotel and for some reason the concierge at the hotel was helping me. I wanted to hide in the elevator shaft, but he wouldn't let me, so he convinced me to hide in the restaurant. I went and sat in the restaurant, but my mom led the bad gangsters to me (that bitch!), and I got all shot up with a machine gun. As I was being shot, I remember thinking "this doesn't hurt as much as I thought it would."

Saurs of Fire: This dream started off at a picnic ,and they were having a competition to see how many spoons you could hang on your face (I don't know why there was this competition or who would have a competition like this.) Anyway, I got totally ripped off because they gave me really deep measuring spoons that wouldn't hang on my chin and everyone else had regular spoons. I got really pissed off (nah, me? getting heated in a competition? NEVER!) Then I got an invitation for some reunion. I'm not really sure what this reunion was for because it was hosted by random people that I went to high school with that really don't seem to have any common link as far as age or club or anything like that. The theme of the reunion was "Saurs of Fire" and the reunion featured dinosaur shaped funnel cakes....weird....Amanda 1, I think I have a theme for your wedding!!! Saurs of fire!!

Loving Father/Daughter E-mails

I know that I JUST posted about Christmas, but I have this funny post too and didn't want to forget about it. Below is a transcript of e-mails between my dad and I...just a brief glimpse into our loving relationship.

My Dad: Look at me talking to ND students. (This was attached to a forwarded e-mail from an ND music prof asking my dad if he would be a guest speaker in his class to talk about musical instrument manufacturing).
Me: Wow! That place has really gone downhill since I left.
My Dad: Butt Head.

HA

X-mas Low Points

As I was at the gym today, preparing to blog about this, I realized that there were some low points that were so low that I couldn't possibly in good conscience blog about them. Surprising, I know....I usually will blog about anything.

1) Being perpetually cold. I was absolutely cold for the entire time I was in Indiana. I would sit in my parent's hot tub for hours at a time to try to warm up with no success. I think I forgot just how cold, South Bend cold was.

2) I went to help volunteer with my mom at the "Christmas shop" at the women's day center where she helps out every Monday. Women can go to the Christmas shop pick out gifts for themselves and their kids. All the gifts were sorted by age and gender, but it was a little pathetic at the things that were sorted as "teenage gifts"...really Pickup Sticks? You think a teenager will like pickup sticks? I ended up moving everything around.

3) The guy at the sno-cone stand at the basketball games recognized me and asked why I haven't been around for a while...BURNED.

4) I was scheduled to be on a 5:30am flight out of South Bend (which could've been a low light in itself), but instead got a phone call the night before telling me it was cancelled...so I got to DRIVE to Pennsylvania with my parents.

5) Because they weren't expecting me to be along and had already packed the car, whenever we turned into a rest area things fell on me in the backseat.

6) The thermostat in my grandmother's house said it was 78 degrees...I'm not exaggerating.

7) I slept on the sofa rather than bother with putting up and taking down the air mattress every day.

8) Urban Meyer....I think I'll quit...no...maybe not...maybe I'll just miss recruiting time and spring practice, cause that time kinda sucks.....I have health problem so I probably shouldn't be coaching...never mind, not that big of a deal..............Well, thank you for just reinforcing my hatred of you Coach Meyer.

9) The unveiling of the Kelly "K" for the 1812 overture...if you missed my facebook post, make an "L" with your thumb and forefinger and then put up your middle finger as well...Voila! K...not only is it awkward, but it doesn't look like a K.

10) My mom demonstrated the Bob Davie "b" and "d", but I guess has never really done it correctly and flicked off the entire basketball arena multiple times while I was trying to pull her hands down. "What? I'm just doing Bob Davie?" My dad's comment "well, no wonder he did so poorly. He had some old lady giving him the middle finger in the stands."

11) I borrowed my mom's UGGS for New Year's Eve...let me repeat that...I borrowed MY MOM'S UGGS for New Year's Eve. I'm not sure what makes this point lower: that I was wearing UGGS or that they were my mom's.

12) My dad slept walked into the bathroom off the family room where I was sleeping and scared the shit out of me. Imagine waking up at 4am with your back to the room and hearing someone come out of your bathroom. Holy Shit!

13) The Santa Clause massacre. My grandmother has a loft above her living room and hangs all the kids stockings off of its balcony. While one child (who will remain nameless), went to get her stocking it slipped and plummeted 12 feet onto a table of Santa Clauses (and about 6 inches from an antique lamp). Luckily my grandmother was out of the room at the time or would've died of a heart attack. One Santa ended up with a fractured leg.

15) This many people at Christmas dinner.

16) My cousin Aubrey pouting during a family picture because someone said her feet smelled (they did smell).

17) I made peanut butter meltaways for my family for Christmas. I had to make two batches because of how many people there was. My mom helped me and in between batches I turned to find her with the entire mixing spoon in her mouth. "Well, I guess I'll have to get another spoon for the second batch." "Oops, sorry." (the oops sorry was said while she still had the whole spoon in her mouth)

18) I dropped one of the tins of meltaways and some of the candy fell out onto the snowy driveway. As I was about to throw them in the trash, two family members (who will remain nameless) snatched them out of my hand, rinsed them off and ate them.

19) Danielle swearing on the phone to me during the end of the PSU game...though that may also be a highlight....the field during that game was also a lowpoint. That field crew should've been embarrassed

20) Amanda 2 and I went to Zimmerman's candy store....it was closed.
21) There was a fire at my grandpa's nursing home while we were there. Employees were running around, alarms were going off, and smoke was filling the hallway. "Abraham Lincoln to Room 354...Abraham Lincoln to 354." All the old people were totally oblivious.

22) My cousin Patrick repeatedly trying to tie my shoelaces together during the Steeler's game.

23) Amanda 1's GPS going off at EVERY EXIT because I was going a different way back to Winston-Salem. The GPS was on Amanda 1's lap and she was asleep.

24) Lack of decent internet

25) Amanda 1 making inappropriate comments to the group of teenagers in front of us at the Sword Swallower Show on New Years Eve...we had to say "Swallow, Damion, swallow" before every trick...you get the idea.

Well, that's Winter Break in a nutshell. Classes begin back on Wednesday. My New Year's resolution is to be more creative so hopefully bloggage will pick up.

Wine + Free T-shirt = Happy JSto

I know this was supposed to be the low lights from Christmas (and trust me they are coming and they are low), but Amanda 1 (who will for the remainder of this post be addressed simply as Amanda) and I did something today that is preempting that. Today was Vineyard Visiting. Yes, North Carolina has vineyards...quite a few in fact....around 90 or so to be specific. I had asked my friend Fuller to recommend some wineries that had either good wines or nice tasting rooms. He gave me a list and after doing some research on where they were located and their hours, etc, we narrowed it down to three (hahaha).

First thing in the morning, Amanda made a yummy breakfast with stuffed French toast, bacon, and potatoes. We figured we should have some food in our tummies before drinking lots of wine. We left and made our way to the first winery on our list:

West Bend winery---we arrived at West Bend and were the only people there. It was quaint and cute looking like a vineyard should be. The person in the tasting room seemed a little surprised to see us when we walked in. Amanda and I split the tasting (I wanted to start off slow), and bought a bottle of wine. Onto the second winery:

Raylen---Raylen was nice. However, let me mention this was the only winery where we did not get a free glass. A tasting was of 6 wines. I only wanted to try three of them, so he gave it to me for free. Nice. Amanda bought the tasting, but we realized afterward that he only let her taste 5 wines. Not Nice. He also gave us a little card that showed that if we visited 5 wineries and bought bottles of wine, we could get a free T-shirt. Game on! He also stamped West Bend since we had told him we had visited. Amanda bought two bottles of wine (one was actually my birthday present). Onto the biggest winery we visited:

Childress--On the way to Childress (or as Amanda once called it: Child Less) we came upon a sign that said "Caution: Line Painting Ahead." We weren't expecting two men with pieces of cardboard hand painting lines on the road. Childress was big and nice. They had a very large shop area and a restaurant (we didn't eat there, we had packed lunch to eat along the way). We both did the "sweet" tasting. Another bottle of wine was purchased. Those three were actually the vineyards we had planned to visit, but it was only 2pm and we only needed two more for the free T-shirt...so we plugged them into Amanda's GPS and were on our way to:

Allison Oaks-- We knew when we were getting close to the other vineyards because there were suddenly grape vines all over the place. This one we were in the middle of a town and before we knew it the jackass GPS guy had told us that we had gone to0 far and that it was "recalculating." Apparently the tasting room is about a mile from the actual vineyard. The tasting room is in like a strip mall. We walked in and interrupted a man typing away at a computer. We were the only people to be there all day, and he actually had to go to the cellar to get wines for us to taste. I wasn't impressed with his tasting room, and his wines were my least favorite, but he did have foods for us to taste the wines with (wasabi almonds, chocolate almonds, dark chocolate, etc.). Of course we bought a bottle, cause that's what we do....just one winery left and we get a T-shirt. Onto:

Rag Apple Lassie (or Rag Time as Amanda called it)---cool because it has cows on the bottle and also because we passed "A Storehouse for Jesus" on the way there. What exactly would Jesus have in his storehouse? A storehouse for JSto would have gummy bears, martinis, and fuzzy socks, but I think Jesus might be a little different. Also on the way to Rag Apple Lassie, I had my first inclination of the day to throw Amanda's GPS out the window (which is good since I normally want to throw GPS's out the window from the start.) It took us past the vineyard, then past some sketchy dirt road that I was apparently supposed to turn onto to get back to the vineyard. You know what GPS guy?...you think you are sooo smart....you think you know everything and that I'm the stupid one when I purposely ignore your directions, but guess what...you're not...you make mistakes too you jackass. Anyway, this place was a little weird because you enter through their tank room (I'm not sure if that's what it's really called) and think you have entered into somewhere that you shouldn't be, but you haven't. We both did a tasting (I mostly did it because I wanted to glass with the cow on it and might as well have some wine to go with it.) While all the cute cow themed wine stuff made me want to buy it...I didn't, i just bought the final bottle of wine and some coconut chocolate to go with it. And that means we got.....FREE T-SHIRTS!!! WOOHOO!! I'm not sure why this seems like such an accomplishment since we basically drank and spent money, but it does. In the parking lot, we were laughing, and some mean lady told Amanda that she was cut off from any more wine tastings....really we were just admiring our take for the day on the backseat floor of my car.

Highlights From Break

So instead of going through my every move over Christmas break, I thought that I'd do something different. I'm going to go over the highlights and lowlights of break. I figured I'd start out with the highlights because obviously the lowlights are going to be more entertaining. Now, I actually have a week left of break so this is only up till today.

1) Baking cookies with my mom. Yes, I know this sounds cliche and that I should also say something about loving the magic and spirit of Christmas, but it's true. I get to put the colored sugar on!
2)Having coffee with my peeps from the Hall of Fame, and being thankful that I'm no longer there. They found out via a google news e-mail that the Hall of Fame was moving to Atlanta. That's some bad human resources there!

3) Helping my mom's school with their auction. They earn fake money for doing good things and then get to spend it at a silent auction. A snow globe went for 400 dollars!

4) Dinner with Eli at the Vine (including a half price bottle of wine) and cookies back at her house...the last time we went to see her house she didn't have keys to get in so I could only see the outside.

5) WE WANT BIG MAC!! At ND women's basketball games, when the women score 88 points, everyone gets a coupon for a free Big Mac. While I was there, ND beat Charlotte 90-31...it was almost painful to watch.

6) 2 Notre Dame basketball games. My dad talking trash about one of the ND players only to have him named player of the game..bahahhaha

7) There's a three year old girl that sits a few rows behind my parents at basketball. She sang the entire fight song, and can't pronounce R's...it was ridiculously cute. "Cheew Cheew fow ole Notwe Dame."

8) Ridiculously good shopping at Michigan City.

9) Surprising Nancie (awesome yoga genius) at body pump.

10) 49 cents shoes...nuff said

11) Really great present from Amanda 2!

12) BIRTHDAY CHEESESTEAK!13) BIRTHDAY FONDUE!!

14) BIRTHDAY MASSAGE!!

15) My dad singing "My Girl" with falsetto in the car on my birthday.

16) My grandpa telling everyone in his entire retirement community that I want to be a professor.

17) My dad telling me to pick out anything I want out of the Coach outlet...Am I dreaming?

18) My dad giving up his crackberry...Am I dreaming?

19) Three free coffees on New Years Eve.

20) This guy on New Years Eve.

21) Sneaking Amanda 2 into a Wake Forest basketball game and having it go into DOUBLE OVERTIME!

22) My dad got a Disney animator to draw an Alice in Wonderland picture for my hand. I LOVE IT...and am spoiled.

23) X-mas text from John Fred...why can't I text things like "Be safe, God Bless, and Rock on!" and have it be cool?

24) A brief highway relationship with some guys from Texas on 81 that we kept passing and being passed by...sigh...the memories

25) Having it snow 5 inches in Winston-Salem (and only about 3 in South Bend) and having all the people still in W-S freak out.

This Isn't Christmas Dinner

Sorry it's been so long since blogging. I'm finally back in North Carolina with my own computer and own my own wireless high speed internet. YAHOO!!

So the first thing I want to blog about is Christmas dinner at my Uncle Bill's. We usually have ham and turkey, and I'm all for change, but there's certain things that just should or should not be in Christmas dinner. Here's the menu and my thoughts.

Beef: I'm ok with beef. It was actually pretty yummy however, it was obvious that the kids didn't have experience with beef when they asked which was the light meat and dark meat. Seriously? You've never had beef before?
Gravy: Again, the kids were like "what's that?" "Gravy." "It doesn't look like gravy." "Cause its beef gravy" "well, what do you do with it?"
Stuffing: I love stuffing but we had beef. When we have stuffing with turkey there are two types at the table "in the bird" and "out of the bird". Jokingly I asked "is this in the cow or out of the cow?" No one got the joke and the answer I got was "you'll have to ask Uncle Bill." Also, the stuffing was all cut into hunks. My cousin Patrick asked if I would like a hunk of stuffing and someone thought he said "hug of stuffing" so the rest of dinner they asked to pass the hugs of stuffing.
Mashed Potatoes: Good...except a little too much butter for me, but I'm ok with that.
Corn: No issue with corn. Fine
Cranberry jello stuff: It was weird. It was like cherry jello with cranberries in it. Bizarre.
Asparagus Salad: What? What is this shit? It was some sort of pickled asparagus or something. This isn't Christmas dinner.
Lemony Broccoli: Where's the freakin green bean casserole? What's this fru fru veggie shit? Plus broccoli should not taste like lemon.
Rolls: Fine
Red Beet Eggs: We always have these. I hate them, but my mom kept trying to pimp them out to everyone. "Do you want red beet eggs?" "Here have some red beet eggs." "Do they have red beet eggs down there?" Seriously, you'd have thought she was getting commission off of the red beet eggs.
Raw Carrots And Celery: If you don't know how I feel about this, see my blog about Thanksgiving.
Cheesecake: WTF...it's Christmas! Where's the cookies? I'd even take some sort of pie. But a store bought cheesecake?!?! Talk about half assed.

I guess I shouldn't complain so much since I ate all of it (except the red beet eggs...blech). Stayed tuned more about Christmas later...Including the excellent Christmas gift I got from Amanda 2!

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!

Signs That You're Studying Too Much

I have my Ipod on while I'm studying for accounting. The song U+Me = Us (Calculus) by 2ge+her came on and I thought "if U was equity and Me was liabilities then Us would be assets"....ugh...Thanksgiving break, I need you!

My Parents Leave for Australia

This is going to be a serious post for once. I apologize for my readers who only want the funny, ridiculous posts. This is more of a post to just inform everyone of what's going on in my life. Over Thanksgiving my parents are going to Australia for two weeks for a wedding of my dad's Southeast Asia Sales Director (or some such person). When I first heard this news, it really really upset me. As an only child, I really saw it as my dad picking his work over me (whether that is really fair to him or not). There's been a fairly long history of his work coming first is my life and this was just one big final blow. It's Thanksgiving!

Anyway, it is what it is. I'm going to make the best of it and go back to PA which should lead to lots to post about. It may or may not include: my cousin getting out of prison, a visit to the Girl Scout office, going to Chuck E Cheese with Stefanie and her kids, 21 people at Thanksgiving dinner, 5 am black Friday Wal-mart shopping, wedding planning with Amanda and last but certainly not least my 10 year high school reunion. Unfortunately I'll be staying with my grandma who does not have internet, so most of this will probably have to wait until I get back to be blogged about. I'll take good notes though and try to throw in some pictures.

My Fashion Czar

A couple of weeks ago I went to a guest speaker that talked about the importance of having a mentor. She actually suggested that you should have a "round table" of mentors. (eg: an industry mentor, a personal life mentor, a career mentor, etc.) I've decided that I'm naming czars instead of mentors because any word with a "z" is infinitely cool.

One of the czars that I've gotten the most use out of is my "fashion czar" Marcia. Marcia has been my go to fashion consultant since we roomed together in college, now she just has a cool title to go along with it. I pretty much listen to whatever she says (though some ideas I understand but totally veto...aka leggings as pants). Recently we had an e-mail correspondence regarding my attire for my upcoming high school reunion:

Me: Ok, fashion czar....I have my 10 year high school reunion in 2 weeks. What do I wear? Please keep in mind that this is in Middletown, PA at a bar and that the invitation actually had written on it "please no hats or sneakers." ha
Marcia: some sort of business-casual dress. That's my first reaction. Hold, pls, and I will find some photographic evidence.
Marcia: are you a member of ruelala.com?
Me:No, I'm not...what is it?
Marcia: oh good god.

And that's why I need a fashion czar...especially a fashion czar that lives in NYC. I'm in Winston-Salem, not exactly a fashion mecca. Today I ordered a dress online for $14.99...let's just hope it comes in time, fits, and is not totally ugly....my mom on the other hand told me to wear nothing to my reunion. "It just says no hats or sneakers. It doesn't say you have to wear clothes." Funny, mom, funny.

Things That Annoy Me

The Wake Forest Demon Deacon...Done...End Post

Ok, not really. I actually kinda like the Demon Deacon (he looks kinda stoned...so that's fun). I mean he's no leprechaun, but really who is? But what bothers me about the Demon Deacon is his costume. His bowtie is actually attached to the head part of the costume rather than the outfit part of the costume. So when he looks right or left or up or down the bowtie moves with his head since its attached to the chin. That's just stupid. Just attach it to the costume...problem solved.

Danielle's Visit: Days 2 & 3

I should probably be ironing my clothes or something else more productive, but I'm not. I'm blogging before I lose my motivation.

On Danielle's 2nd day of visiting, nothing really happened. I woke up at 12:45 and discovered that she had fallen asleep with the TV on so I snuck out to turn it off. Then at 5:50 my power went out and was off for about ten minutes, so I got up, located my cell phone and set my alarm....anyway, i didn't sleep very well.

I went to class...yadda yadda yadda...I came home and Danielle and I went to dinner and then to Wal-mart so that she could get an REO Speedwagon CD for her boss. Really the only thing of note that happened was Danielle started to say something about rednecks and then was like "nevermind...I forgot where I was."

Day 3 was of course the big day. Again, I went to class, and I had a review session for my quant class. I began to regret making the decision to go to the concert, but then I resolved to stick with my "less Type A Jen" and not worry so much for about it. (My quant exam is tomorrow...so we'll see how that works out). There were supposed to be four of us going to the concert: me, Danielle and two of my Wake friends, but they freaked out about work (like I was tempted to do) and didn't go.

We went to the box office and at first they told us that the band's list wasn't in yet (Ugh...this again?), but they decided to check my name anyway and surprise surprise the tickets were there. Along with the backstage passes.


It looks fake, doesn't they. I think I bought something like that at a Backstreet Boys concert once. We also got the sticker passes like I'm used to.
We also got instructions on where to go after REO's set. We were slightly confused because we thought REO was headlining, but it turns out that them and Styx switch every night. That's weird. Our seats were 10th row center on the floor (apparently this is where all the band's free tickets are because if you remember for the BSC concert we were in about the same place). Night Ranger opened...for those of you that don't know who Night Ranger is think "Sister Christian." Danielle fell in love with their keyboard player, and they were also interesting because their drummer is their lead singer which is a little unusual. They were pretty good. Next was REO. They were also really good. Afterwards we went back the little hallway and were herded into a "media room" with about 20 other people including a group of ridiculously drunk women who were threatened to be kicked out. Then an official manager type guy made us all be quiet and pay attention and gave us the rules...woah! This is intense!

1) Know how to use your camera
2) The guitar players hands are very sensitive so no hard handshakes.
3) Stay spread out. They will come to you.
4) The flu is going around so keep your bodily fluids to yourself
5) Don't start any sentence with "do you remember when..." because they don't.

So he left and Danielle and I stayed as far away from the drunk ridiculous girls so that everyone was well aware that we were not part of that. The manager guy came back in and came over to me and said that Bryan (the drummer that I knew) was really sick and wouldn't be coming in, but wanted to say hi and that he hopes we enjoyed the concert. All the other band members then came in and we got autographs and stuff. We knew we were missing the first part of Styx's set, but didn't really care.

We went back out to the arena and saw Styx, but honestly I was a little disappointed (and also a little scared because I think I kinda like Tommy Shaw and that's just weird and icky.) But I befriended the drunk guy next to me so that was really fun and entertaining. Concert ended, I was home by 11:15...the end.

Danielle's Visit, Day One

Danielle arrived for her visit today. Though I'm not sure how much of this visit is about seeing me, and how much is about not being around her mom/not working and getting free REO Speedwagon tickets. This is kind of a stressful week for me, so it's good to have a friend here and balance that out for me. (We'll see how it all works out.)

I had an info session this afternoon and expected Danielle to arrive during that, so I told her how to get into my apartment. I arrived home though to find no Danielle. A little later I got an "I'm lost...mapquet/Garmin is telling me to go into a gated community" phone call from her. I think I've previously mentioned my hatred for her Garmin...it continues. Luckily, she wasn't that far away so I was able to talk her back to my apartment. When she arrived I discovered that she had forgotten the two things that I had requested from PA (Gazebo dressing and Reese's Peanut Butter) that I can't find in NC, but I decided to let her in anyway instead of sending her 7 hours back to PA to pick it up.

Then Danielle, Andy and I went to Ichiban where we dined on a platter of sushi (which I'm now regretting not taking a picture of). Danielle revealed some of the dirt she has on me (and she was sober) which is never a good thing...but I'm sure extremely entertaining for anyone that is not me.

The only thing I have yet to figure out is how I'm going to get some work done while she's here....oh well.

My Parents are Weird

Every Sunday I call my parents are around 10:30 or 11 in the morning. This morning I called my parent's house and no one answered, so I called my dad's crackberry. Below is a portion of the conversation that followed:

Me: Where are you guys?
Dad: In the car
Me: Where you going?
Dad: No where
Me: So you're just sitting in the car not going anywhere?
Dad: We sitting in the car in the garage making out.

Gross.

My Speech of Conviction

The final speech due for my communications course was a "speech of conviction." It was "our chance to share the passion we feel about a controversial topic." I must be the least convicted person I know because I'm am generally neutral on any controversial topic. After muling it over for a while, I was inspired by the show Whale Wars and decided my topic would be on whaling. My professor surprisingly loved the idea.

Around school we would discuss how preparing for the speech was going and when asked what my topic was, I would say "whaling." To which nearly every time someone would respond (either seriously or jokingly) "oh, are you for whaling?" Yes, I am for whaling, you jackass. Whales just take up too much space in the ocean and whale meat is delish. I think I'm going to go club some seals now for sport.

I did my speech taking the anti-Japanese whaling position (since that's mostly where the problem is). I think it went pretty well (I get my grade tomorrow). That evening I received an e-mail from my friend Andy that said "I think the Japanese have got a “giant creatures” phobia after the whole Godzilla thing, and now they’re therapeutically taking it out on the cetaceans." I thought this was hysterical.

So if you ever want to hear about why Japanese whaling is wrong and stupid, lemme know. Anyway I'm just glad that pointless class is over, but now I actually have to do real work. ::sigh::

Someone Talk Me Out of It

Dear God, I'm contemplating doing the 3-day again next year. Am I losing my mind? Probably. I feel this is somehow like childbirth (or so I hear) like after a few years or so you think about how magical and beautiful it was and forget how much it sucked while you were doing it and are like "I think I want to do that again." The other thing is I had PERFECT weather for my first 3-day experience and I know that I won't get lucky twice in a row.

So Good and Yet So Bad

At Wal-mart the other day, I discovered Molli Coolz Shakers. The concept is basically add milk, shake and voila instand milkshake...and who doesn't love milkshakes. So I thought to myself, can it really be this simple? Could this possible work? YES! Oh my gosh! It is FABULOUS! I wish I had bought like 7 of them...but then I realized how bad it would be to have milkshakes at my grasp 24-7...uh-oh

This Better Be A Sitcom

Well, I'm tired and pissed out so it must be time to blog. I swear that sometimes my life has to be a sitcom because things like this just don't happen in real life. So today I called my esthetician to make and appointment to get my eye brows done. She asked if i would mind if she called back in a little bit. I said no and gave her my home number (it's local). I waited and waited and no call so I called back. They said they tried to call me but it was a wrong number...weird...i didn't really think anything of it other than they copied the number down wrong. After a while I started thinking about other people I had given that number to and hadn't heard from. I decided to call "my" number myself and was shocked when a man who was obviously not me and not in my apartment answered. I verified the number and hung up. I pulled out the information the phone people had given me and verified the number they had given me. I also realized that when I got my new cell i called "my" home number as my test call and got my answering machine. I call Time Warner (who sucks apparently) and am like...what the hell? I had a phone number and now I don't. Well, they had no f***ing clue what happened as the number they gave me isn't even their number to give out and the "owner" has had it since 2000. WTF? I asked if there was anything they could do about it...uh...give you your actual number....thanks, you shit heads. So now I'm freaking out because "my" phone number is everywhere...including a bunch of job applications and Disney as of this afternoon....AHHHHHHH

North Carolina's New Law

As of October 1st, it is officially illegal to throw away plastic bottles (aka not recycle) in North Carolina. I'm all for recycling, but I'm not sure making a law is really going to do anything. Most of the articles I've seen on this issue basically say it's a law, but we're not really going to enforce it...huh? What's the point of having a law if you're not going to enforce it? Well, theoretically waste disposal companies can refuse your trash if it has illegal plastic bottles in it. Really? Do we really think garbage men are going to look in a trash can, open the trash bag in the can, see a plastic bottle and then leave it at the curb? I think not. I really can't decide how I feel about this new law because recycling is good...obviously, but is it me or does this just seem like we're living in a land of make believe and passing laws just because we can?