I Am Not a Jedi

Considering how much I love Cat Stevens and how much I love the Flaming Lips, I would have figured that I would have heard about this sooner, especially since this happened in 2003, but, well, I was a junior in college at the time and considering my life then, I preferred to just listen to both artists incessantly, mournfully deciding that both sang the story of my life so poignantly (cue wrist-to-the-forehead-motion…now).

Anyway, all that being said, I am shocked that I didn’t make this connection between the similarity between “Fight Test” and “Father and Son” before, especially considering how much each has (and continues to) resonate with me.

go fucking figure. (more…)

Growing up, the fun fact you always hear about eskimos is that they have over a hundred words for snow. This fact travels with you throughout life–making its way to the inside of a Snapple cap, flippant water cooler conversation, and email forwards. Beyond igloos and furry parkas (both, which I admit are horrible stereotypes I probably picked up from a Chilly Willy cartoon), I don’t know much more about eskimos.

But now, after dealing with this bullshit weather the Northeast has been ever so fortunate to experience, I get their obsession with synonyms. (more…)

Click on the little guy and watch him go… This is a pic of Logan, son of Mike & Jen. If dance moves like that are wrong, I don’t want to be right…

This was initially going to be a post about how “off” and bitter I was at life today… I spent a good amount of the day sulking about things that weren’t really sulk worthy and being annoyed for no real good reason. I looked up info on grad schools and law schools and other jobs and wondered “what if…” and “what am I doing with my life?” I looked up all our credit cards and calculated how long it would take to pay them off. I looked up info on travel sites and pitied myself for knowing that credit cards cannot be paid off if trips are taken, and wondered which would be more beneficial in the long run. I read news articles about what makes people happy and what makes people sad and how whiny we’re all becoming and then I read all the whiny comments to negate or support that. I looked at people’s facebook pictures and lived vicariously through their peace corps missions and recent trips abroad or crazy fun nights out captured in 1,506 photos. I looked into writing contests and wondered if my thesis will ever get rewritten all the way. I heard another Elton John song on the ride home that made me wonder if I’ll ever be ready to have kids (“Daniel” had a really weird effect on me for a long time…). I weaved in and out of traffic and hit a couple potholes and cursed everything and prayed that this one wouldn’t be the one that would finally blow my tire out. I realized a half mile from the apartment that my gaslight would probably come on on the drive to work tomorrow and that tomorrow would be a horrible time to have to get gas because it is supposed to snow. Again. (Did I mention the significant amount of time I spent tracking the latest storm?) (more…)

Our attendance in the US v Turkey game at the Linc on May 29th is confirmed!!! I got presale info yesterday and purchased my midfield seats within 15 minutes of getting the email!! w00t w00t.

That is about the most exciting thing going on right now.

Beyond that, it’s just another rainy, miserable day in New Jersey, although I’m admittedly grateful that we’re dealing with rain and not snow (but there is talk of snow on the way… WAAAAHHHHHHH). This work week already feels long and it’s only Tuesday. I guess it’s the weather, or maybe it’s just the natural tendency for February…

I started watching Glee last night and am officially hooked. Sure, it’s cheesy and fluffy, but there’s singing and dancing and wonderful guest appearances. I think the show really took my heart when Kristin Chenoweth sang “Maybe This Time” :

and officially sealed the deal with this:

(Jen L., if you’re out there, I’m sure you’ll appreciate the 2nd clip!!)

We made a tasty dinner last night: homemade matzo ball soup and latkes, and are planning to follow it up with some butter bean burgers tonight. I just remembered about an hour ago that the Toast to George is tonight, but this rain is killing my motivation to do anything other than put on sweatpants and sing along to Glee.

Here are a couple other highlights from the day:

1. a tasty (and cheap!) fresh salad from ACME during a lunch run with some coworkers
2. another coworker’s mom made a delicious apple cake with caramel topping for us (soooo good. ate waayyy too much of it…)
3. got a call from the marketing guy at The Riversharks. I connected with them to get some comp tickets for our Hoppy Hour (which they obliged us with very quickly!!) and he was touching base to let us know about some other fundraising opportunities that we could do with them. It was nice to hear about these other options and kind of cool to hear what sounded like genuine interest in our cause.

(BTW- if you are in the NJ area and can come to our Hoppy Hour on May 1st, it would really, really mean the world to me. We’ve been really working hard to get together some great auction prizes and Shady Katie’s is a fun spot to hang out!)

Well, now all my rambling and shameless plugging is out of the way, I’m heading out to brave the terrible weather (in heels and mismatched dress socks, no less…).

After what’s felt like MONTHS being cooped up, we took advantage of the fact that the sun is out and no precipitation is falling in the southern NJ area (granted, it’s still FREEZING, but as this point that is something worth overlooking…).

So, here’s the breakdown of the weekend:

(more…)

I dare you to not dance to this song…