One more

I just needed to share with you that I have currently been sitting on the couch, not moving, besides typing and changing channels for the last THREE hours. DESPITE the fact that I have had to pee for the last hour and a half or so. I should probably fix that.

Borders Bullshit

So I had a great idea while at work today. I can get a very low wireless signal at work and it is unsecured, and therefore free. Some might say that I am stealing it but those people are dumb. Anyway, the connection is iffy at best, so it gets annoying when the computer disconnects and reconnects all the time. You know, causing me to wait to waste time buying stuff and reading blogs when I am being paid for doing other things. Yes, I know I shouldn’t complain. I figured I would leave at 2 and go to Borders, get some coffee and check my email uninterrupted for a few minutes on my way to my next job. Come to find out, Borders charges you to use their internet. Of course I found this out after I paid for coffee. So I am writing this on Word. Cause I am WAY too cheap to pay $6 to use the internet for 20 minutes when I came in thinking it would be free. I already pay for the internet at home (sure it’s only $10 a month, including cable….living with people rocks sometimes). What difference does it make anyway? This will be posted, but maybe not for 4 hours or so. Nobody cares that much to make waiting a few hours a big deal.

I wasn’t even planning on blogging, so everyone should be happy that this happened and that they now get to read about my complaining. Lucky you.

Last night my dad and I went out to eat at the Ocean Grill, on MLK ave, right by the Monona Terrace. We got there a little before 5, which was when our reservation was for, so we sat at the bar and had a couple of drinks. I had champagne flavored with a raspberry syrup. It was delish. Dad had a ‘perfectly made’ brandy old-fashioned sweet. Later I ordered Calamari appetizer, a chicken breast entre over pureed squash and couscous, and a French white wine cake with fruit reduction and homemade whipped cream. It was great. My dad can be quoted as saying, ‘I think this is the best meal that I have ever had in my life’.

Awake!

Today, I woke up very awake. I had energy, I wanted to see the sun. I didn't know that I hadn't been feeling that way for at least a month or so. But today was different.

I went to bed around 2 this morning and woke up at 9 on my own. My first thought was: I have just enough time to get ready and try out the church that's two blocks away. So that's what I did. I merrily walked to the church and really liked what they had to offer.

First, it is a Methodist church. I was actually baptized in a Methodist church (!) and my dad's side still attends regularly. The pastor is a woman in her early thirties. That scores points just for being rare, but she seems to be pretty progressive as well. She is rumored to have stood on her head during a children's sermon once too. Which, I can't do...so-more props. The church is around 115 years old, and tiny. Was a 'country church'....which is about a mile or so from the capitol. It's also small in terms of members, maybe around 150. And so far, I have met around 20 of these people and they have all been very wonderful and welcoming. Just... nice. I attended a fellowship meeting afterwards (!!) and joined a small class that will teach me what united methodist really means and how it compares to other denominations. I have actually wanted to learn about the differences between denominations for quite a while, so it's exciting.

It feels good to be awake. I couldn't recommend it more. Eat salad.

New Ideas

I almost just wrote that it isn't Friday, but I am not a liar. I am just kind of slow. This week went excellently, I might report.

1. I ate two salads. It's a start
2. I am in the middle of getting in contact with a guy I met at Delta Lodge, a cute smarty. Facebook, come through for me man! I am also going out tomorrow night with friends who, apparently, are on a mission to find me a 'love connection'. This happened without my begging.
3. I am really considering teaching English overseas for a year. Specifically, I am looking at Korea though this website.
4. I talked to someone today who knows someone looking for piano students.


Many changes just beyond the horizon hopefully. All of this in a four day week, plus being sick the whole time. What am I doing right?!

This ain't no disco.

I am home from a very full weekend of skiing in northern hickville, er... Wisconsin. We left Thursday, at the crack of midmorning. It snowed and blow-ed and knocked about 50 cars off the road between here and Delta, but we were resilient and made it up there unscathed. Everyone up there had dinner at the Scenic Drive Bar, the highlight for me being the jalapeño cheese curds. Back up at Cliffside (the cabin that I stayed in, with 8 of my closest Hoofer friends) the fire was roaring, and my loft bedroom was about 85 degrees. A little too warm...

Friday we made a pilgrimage to Iron River, WI to ski at 'After Hours'. I did about 6k, ate and did another two or so. That was more than enough. When we got back to cliffside, I talked to the owner of Delta Lodge about how hot our cabin was, and we got a lecture about the mechanics of heating a cabin in such cold weather (read: negative teens). The lecture began with, "Listen, this ain't no disco, it's northern Wisconsin." No shit. I obviously was not going to argue about it, I have no choice but to believe someone when they open with a line like that. Friday night we ate a dish with noodles. spinach and pasta sauce, bsed a little around the fire and went to sleep in a much more appropriately heated cabin.


Saturday we went to Vallhalla ski area, which was beautiful and had freshly fallen snow. Of course, there has to be SOME downside, and that was the extreme cold temperatures. The high for that day was around -4 w/o windchill. I only went about 4k, spent the rest of the time playing Blokus by the fire in the chalet. Saturday night was lasagna and game night, neither of which were all that exciting.

Sunday was spent at Ashwabay, and the best stories originate there, for me. Ashwabay is both a downhill and x-country ski resort, so they have a T-Bar lift to the top of the hill for both kinds of trails. But, apparently I am not smart enough for the lift. My roommate and I were going to be partners on the lift. As we got in position the ski patrol guy loudly said, "DO NOT SIT'. So, what did I do when the bar comes around? I sat, naturally. This caused both of us to fall. But we were not giving up that quickly. We got in position again. I was determined not to sit, and I didn't sit. But we got about 20 feet up the hill and my roommate started worrying out loud about how she couldn't keep her skis straight. And then she fell, and I fell. I fell right on the wooden bar that normally would be on your butt, pulling you up. The rope from the top extends so the bar actually reaches the ground easily. That hurt so badly. I couldn't hardly stand up or breathe. I actually almost cried. They had to stop the lift because it took us so long to stand up and get out of the way. After that, there was no way I was trying a third time. I mean, what if that happened 3/4 of the way up? I would have been screwed! Anyway, after that I was so frustrated. I tried the bunny hill twice. First time went pretty fine, I didn't fall, but I wasn't really in control either. Second time, I ended up taking my skis off half way down and crying in the middle of the hill. Yes, I am that girl. L and I made our way UP the hill via trails and then s.l.o.w.l.y. came down one of the downhill trails before heading home. Went to the bar again to watch the packers lose, sadly. Back to Delta Lodge and basically straight to bed.

Came home today to snow and blowing winds. Gotta end like it started I guess. If you want to see pictures from this weekend, including one of the result of my two falls, click here.

Presenting: Seacow Roadtrip

So, I believe this is an appropriate follow up to my last post. The 'Seacow' was something that was started by my friends in early high school. It's basically a notebook of ridiculous quotes or stupid happenings that we wanted to share with our friends. Of course, on the EPIC ROADTRIP we had some funny things to say. And document. I found this artifact today in my car. What follows is confidential, so only first initials shall be used for the quoted.

J - "Oh my god, I thought I was going to drown" (After swallowing too much soda)
-awkward pause-
L - "Where's the seacow?"
K-"If I could live in any other time I would to be in the wild wild west."
J- "Walk up Syndrome? OH! Skydome.
Unknown, L perhaps - "Cute! It's a dust storm!"
Again unknown, K? - "Reduce speed my asshole!"
C - "What's a Buckeye?" L - "IT'S A POISONOUS NUT!'

ok, break. Quotes without citations will be denoted with a U from now on. There seems to be a lot of them. Slackers.

U - "We need Tupperware to steal crustaceans"
K - "I encourage shanking"
J - "Lia, SHUT UP!... Please be nice to me"
K- "Can you hold this? I dropped the cap in my crotch"
K- "What is this?! Some kind of semi (truck) circus?"
C - "I miss your face"
U - "Ahhhhhh! I got beef on me!"
L- "Taco coffee burps are not tasty"
K - "Dinosaurs and vaginas. That's all we're talking about!"
J - "If I tried to fart now, I would pee all over the seat"
L - "___________, the world needs to see you with balls in your face"
U -"wow.... slugs like it rough"
U- "Oh! Butt sex! Super!
L- "My mouth's on fuego"
L, when confused by the highway direction - "They wouldn't make me jerk off like that would they?"

And then there was the list of the Dumbest Town Names in the Country.

Pulltight, AL
Manly Hot Springs, AK
Bald Knob, AR
Smut Eye, AL
Yankton, SD
Magic City, ID
Megargle, AL
Swaildale, IA
Packwood, IA
Grundy Center, IA

And now you know.

he he

I am so drunk. seeing double. I love you.

Jen

DUAL POST

First of all, my baby blog is 100 posts old now! Happy Birthday blog!

Second of all, it's Friday, so I must say how I am going about accomplishing my goals.

It's been a rough week kiddies.

• I started my new job, and that in itself has been stressful, so I haven't wanted to do much afterwards. But it is working toward getting out of dodge.
  
• Eating... welll... it got better throughout the week. Now if I can only make it through the weekend without overdoing it.
• I MIGHT be getting a digital SLR this weekend. Dad is coming down and we are going Christmas shopping. I am not getting my hopes up, but this would count as starting to learn something new. If I get one, I plan on taking a mini class through the Union.
• I had a rough week. Cut me some slack. I know I am. Which brings me to 'going easier on myself'. Sucka!
  

I had a bad day, blah blahblah blah

Why today kind of sucked:

• I was late to work at James J
• I got yelled at by boss #1
• Was TWENTY minutes late for Job #2
• Missed my father's phone calls 3 times, and got yelled at by him via voicemail
• Realized that I was placed in a late-leaving vehicle for a trip that I requested off extra days for
• Realize now that I have to get up early to pick my dad up at the airport, when he was supposed to come in tonight. He missed his flight out of New York. Sigh

Here's to hoping tomorrow is better!

come on life!

So, I am not sure why, but it seems as though my life has been sucking lately. Well.. ok, fine. Just today sucked. All I did was, get up, go to work #1, work, travel to work #2 whilst eating lunch, work, come home, ate crappy soup, frosting out of the can and chips and salsa, and watched a football game that I didn't care about.

Job #2 is not so much fun, but at least I am not eating chocolate. Count the number of times you have seen that written before. Within 5 minutes of my being there, I had a kid sitting on my feet with his arms around my legs. So that seems like a good sign, and I think I did well on my first day. Mondays are 5 hours long, whereas tues-friday it is only 3 hours. Now that I know the basics - how to get in to the building, what my supervisor looks like, how many kids to expect, etc. Things should go easier. Don't ask me HOW I am going to learn 50 kids' names, like, ever.

The good ol' days:One more for good measure:

Toughen

Have you seen 'P.S. I love you'? I saw it today, and it made me sad.

I think I have a fear of abandonment. I am so sentimental (see a couple of posts ago) I fear losing things for the rest of my life. There are a lot of things to lose, and if I get so very upset every time a friend goes home, someone moves away or Christmas ends, forheavenssake, I am in a world of hurt. Which, I guess the world does hurt. I just feel pins as butcher knives.

I need to toughen up, but I don't really want to. Does that make me masochistic or crazy? (also, I am a little frightened that I spelled masochistic right on the first try)

The First Day and then some

Today was my first day at my new job, technically. I don't really remember why everyone and their grandma knows this, but I got a lot of questions about how it went and so forth. Let me tell you, it was boring, slightly humiliating, and eased my fear about the upcoming job. Boring, because it was generally a three hour lecture about the rules and regs of the job, complete with about a hour's worth of paper work. Embarrassing because I forgot EVERY item that I needed to bring with me, ID, Social Security Card, Transcript. That will be taken care of tomorrow. But the detail that the orientation went into gave me a brighter and clearer picture of what can be expected and what I can expect in the upcoming weeks.

I have decided that I am serious about my resolutions this year. Fridays I would like to reflect on what I have done to make my goals come true, just to keep me on track. Of course, every week I might not get something done on EVERY goal, but this is just to keep my focused.

This week

• I have drastically cut down on the number of times I have chewed my cheeks out of nervous habit. I know that is contributing to my skin problems and it just looks weird.
  
• I went snowshoeing, which was a ton of exercise, but followed it up by a cheeseburger and fries... I will have to work on that. But I am taking steps, such as trying to cut down on portion sizes and leaving food on my plate (especially at restaurants).
• I count snowshoeing as guy hunting as well, because if I don't count things like this, I won't have anything to report on
• Getting this job is a step in getting my own place, because hopefully it will lead to a better paying job than the one I already had at the Chocolate Shop. The only pitfall I can see is that if I actually LIKE this job, the feelings will conflict with my desire to move out of Madison soon.
  

There's the update. I will try to stay on task and have exciting developments for you next week!

Thoughts

"Happy New Year" is the longest duration of happiness one wishes upon someone else that isn't said with sarcasm. At least most of the time... I can think of times when someone is on their death bed and wishes someone a good life, or when someone meets a baby. 'course, I can think of a lot of weird things someone might say on their death bed.

2008

Some things I thought of that I want to do:

• Learn something new (like how to work a Digital SLR? Piano lessons? Computer skills?)
• Lose weight (no really?!)
• Devise a plan to get out of this hell hole some call a house
• Stop biting my cheeks... it just looks weird and can't be healthy
• GET A DOG
• FIND A BOY
• Go easier on myself and others

A short list is easier accomplished than a long one. Happy New Year all!