Oh man. I am all kinds of grumpy today. I think I've got a little wedding/work stress. It's time to make a to-do list so I can calm the heck down. Chris usually sends me to bed when I'm in this kind of mood. It's really best for both of us if I go to sleep.

But first - Arlene was not happy with my posts about celebrities and I guess it is kind of boring - so instead here is the finished minisweater- AKA boob holder...

I wore it to work today and everyone liked it. It's the first object that I've made that I can wear, that actually kind of fits! Yay! (Scarves don't count)

It's made of Plymouth Yarn: Encore ColorSpun; Knitting Worsted Weight; Acrylic/Wool; in Red/Yellow Print. I love this pattern. I'm soooo gonna make another one. I already bought the yarn. It went really fast. I reccomend it!

Oh and here's another favorite thing that I've been using since I hurt my neck mysteriously in my sleep:

My mom used to get these from the Philippines, I think. But I've seen them in stores in the US. I think I got the box I have from a store in the US. I'll probably get tons of spam for this now - but they work and smell like canadian mints. They're these thin patches you put on your muscles when they hurt. I think they deliver liquid crack to your aches and pains.

Posted by jen at 10:21 PM |Comments (15)

Our dislike for Billy Joel is what brought Chris and I together. No offense to Billy Joel fans.

He's FIRED! I wish.

For a while you'd see Moby on all those MTV or VH1 TV shows representing the 20-somethings of America, or Gen X or Gen Y or whatever. And he really really irritates me, so it's even more irritating that he represents "me" and "my opinions" to others.

Even though I enjoyed eating at Nola, I still would've been obligated to trip him if he walked through.

Do I even have to comment on this one?

Posted by jen at 08:34 AM |Comments (4)

I forgot to post my picture of my new haircut.

I tried out a new salon last Thursday. I was testing the waters to see if they would be good for the bridal party. Despite the fact that my hairdresser had the technicolor hair of dreams, she did a good job. It's a little shorter and back to it's original color. Yay hair.

I also worked a little more on the minisweater and am almost done. I would be done by now if I didn't start reading the DaVinci Code this weekend.

We got a new vaccum on Saturday and I was ridiculously happy to use it yesterday. I think I actually hurt myself vacuuming. How pathetic is that? Today I can't move my head to the left. I have the worst stiff neck ever. I am going to have to carry around my cell phone between my shoulder and my ear so that at least it looks like there's a reason why my head is bent to the side. Gawd.

Posted by jen at 07:57 AM |Comments (7)

The latest blogging trend? The interview. Ok - Here's an interview from Stacy to me.

If you want me to ask you five insightful questions as well so you can blog about them - just leave the request in my comments and I'll interview you - then you interview someone else, etc. etc.

#1 How are wedding plans going? Any major stressors? Have you decided on a first dance song?Are you going on a honeymoon?Where??

Whoa, whoa, whoa - those are technically 4 questions! But that's fine. The wedding plans are going fine. I'm starting to have minor panic attacks before bed thinking that there's no way we're all going to fit in the lobby of the Inn we're getting married in for the cocktail hour, where will we get pictures taken if it rains, etc. No real major stressors, just a bunch of really tiny ones. I feel like I mostly have it under control - but as the date approaches I am freaking out, just a little. We have decided on a first dance song, but I have mixed emotions about reavealing it on here - I feel like it's a jinx to publish it to the world - but maybe i'll email you and tell you what it is. We are going on a honeymoon and I tried to do a separate post about it, but it vaporized into thin air! But we're going to Napa Valley and San Francisco. Also apparently I am very secretive about the wedding and some of my family wants to know what the hell is going on...so there may be more updates.

Continue reading "The Latest Blogging Phenomenon - The Interview"

Posted by jen at 02:49 PM |Comments (6)

Okay, I really wrote an entry last night and it vaporized into cyberspace. How strange.

Anyway - I forgot to blog about how when we were at Jay's wedding last weekend we went to a bar after the rehearsal dinner. Mike proceeded to get a little wrecked and then decided that he wanted to wear some guy's cowboy hat.

This man was sitting at the bar with a friend, drinking Budweiser. He was minding his own business and we all tried to talk Mike out of going up to him.

Well Mike was determined and later did wear Diego's hat:

And later so did I:

These pics were taken with our friend Shawn's cameraphone, so they're a little crappy.

Anyway - turns out Diego was happy to lend us his hat and spoke very little English. I did make out that he came on a plane from Texas.

And apparently he kept telling Mike "Women are GOOD! Women are GOOD!"

Posted by jen at 01:51 PM |Comments (2)

We spent this weekend at Chris' friend Jay's wedding. We actually were there when they met for the first time. When Chris found out that Jay and Erin were dating he told me they'd get married and I guess he was right!

Here they are having their first dance:

Half of this happy couple is drunk. Can you guess which half?

A good time was had by all. The food was AMAZING! Have I ever disclosed my love for appetizers? Oh man, do I love me some appetizers. In fact I'm requesting for our wedding that they just feed me appetizers instead of dinner. Yum.

Half of this couple is drunk as well:

At the end of the night, I decided that I was going to take the centerpiece from our table. At other weddings I've been to, you were free to take the centerpiece if no one else at your table wanted it. Sometimes the DJ would play a game with the guest and you'd "win" the center piece. Well I noticed that people were leaving them all over the place - no one was taking them. Then I noticed one leave with someone and I thought - hey - I'll take ours. So I took it. I'm not sure if this was incredibly rude, or what? Who knows. Oh well - guess people might have been talking about me after that...

Anyway there was a shuttle from the wedding to the hotel - thank god. On the bus there was big talk from the men of going to Philly for an after party. Some of the other guests did go, but when we got back Chris passed out and Shawn locked himself in the bathroom.

Posted by jen at 11:00 PM |Comments (6)

Yay for Friday.

I get weighed for WW today and I am feeling rather fat today after eating my face off for the past two days at work and then last night at dinner, so good thing I got that slimming $9 dress at Burlington Coat Factory last night. That way I won't look like a sweedish meatball at the wedding on Saturday.

Did I mention that when I have a ton to do, I'll procrastinate and do anything else instead of it? That may be why I'm posting right now. It may have something to do with the to-do list on my computer screen that's really long. Maybe next I'll read your blogs so I can procrastinate some more.

For randomness' sake, here's a list of some of my bad habits:

• I leave my shoes all over the house
• I have a tendency to leave things out in the kitchen after I've eaten them - like leaving the peanut butter out after making a sandwich, or leaving the bread out
• If you are my friend I make fun of you all the time, but really I mean well and if it gets annoying, you can tell me
• I chew gum and carrots really, really, loudly
• I horde magazines. I cannot bring myself to throw them out after I've read them. My favorite magazine is Star.
• I post to my blog and read yours when I should be working
• I have a problem leaving tissues in pockets
• When I'm in the store and I have something in my cart I don't want, I'll put it on a random shelf instead of putting it back.

Posted by jen at 10:08 AM |Comments (5)

I was supposed to get my haircut tonight, but it turns out the girl who was supposed to cut my hair was sick. This was very disappointing for me because I'm supposed to be testing the salon out for the wedding.

So to make up for it I went shopping for a dress for the wedding we have to go on Saturday. I discovered many bargains and even bought some $12 shoes. Classy. I'll take some pictures this weekend and post them up after the wedding.

Had my meetup last night. I can't really call it a meetup any more because we've defected from meetup.com because they've started charging. I would've put in cash for it, but basically we ended up deciding to defect. Oh well. Anyway - I started to knit a boobholder last night. I can't tell what the heck is going on with it, but I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that it fits.

Here's me and Christina at knitting last night:

I'll be off at the wedding starting tomorrow night, so there may be no weekend posts, but I'll be back on Sunday.

Posted by jen at 07:58 PM |Comments (5)

Chris works on his bike.

He needs some help from this book.

We let Mark and Heather's dogs out, Anna...

and Sadie.

We also watched Chris' nephew Alex break some boards.

I finished working on this baby sweater.

Posted by jen at 09:29 PM |Comments (6)

I actually took pictures this weekend so that I could have a little gallery here, but I didn't get a chance to upload them yet, so I'll describe what I did and you can see the pictures later.

We were off on Friday in order to deal with the fiasco that is getting a new drivers license and registering your car in Pennsylvania. The one major difference between the DMV in Jersey and the DMV in Pensy is that the people in PA are way way nicer and more pleasant. Though the guy that took my DL photo was wearing an ecxessive amount of turquoise jewelry.

We also watched our friends' Mark and Heather's dogs. We let them out, and fed them.*

Saturday we spent the day watching Chris' nephew in a karate tournament. We got to see him break boards with his feet.*

Saturday night I got incredibly drunk on accident on this stuff. Whew. Those Belgians sure can make a beer. The night ended with me telling Chris that all the boys in the bar were looking at me because my boobs looked big in my sweater. Not one of my finer moments.

And last night we just had dinner with our friends and watched the Top 100 Most Metal Moments on VH1. Yay for hair bands. And I finished the baby sweater I was making.*

All in all a fun filled weekend. Lesson learned: do not drink three belgian ales after 2 glasses of wine and after only eating popcorn for dinner.

*Pictures to come

Posted by jen at 08:42 AM |Comments (6)

I was just talking with my friend about how daylight savings time has totally thrown us off this week. It's one measly hour that I lost on Sunday night and I'm telling you, I'm completely screwed up.

I usually go to bed early like an old lady, but since my body thinks it's an hour earlier than it really is, I've been going to bed really late (for me). Last night I wasn't in bed til 12:30 which is really late by my bedtime standards. So in the morning I can't get up! I hit snooze 12 times.

I'm usally a pretty chipper "morning person" as well, but not this week. Why stop at setting back an hour? Why not set back a full day? That way we could all get more done for just one week out of the year. That one day a year, you could do whatever you wanted and it wouldn't count. You could speed and get a ticket and it wouldn't matter because that day wouldn't exist. It's madness!

I am, however, happy that daylight savings time gives me more, uh, daylight. It meant that I could practice day two of week one of my 8 weeks of yoga with Rodney Yee. Yeah, it's taken me two weeks to get from day one, to day two, but I had a cold! I can now almost get all the way into Triangle pose. Good for me.

That's my 500 words on daylight savings time.

Posted by jen at 08:48 AM |Comments (3)

Not only can Chris design websites, but he can also hang shelves!

Oh yeah, Pottery Barn shelves. I coveted these along with those bookshelves that I still haven't gotten. I'm happy with the way they turned out. They'll look even better when they have curtains next to them. I think they look just like a catalog with the matching picture frames on them.

I wanted to go to bed early last night, but I mistakenly turned on the TV and got sucked into this Intervention show on A&E. Man the one gambling guy had a SERIOUS problem. He seemed really looney tunes. It's a shame, really. I've never had to stage an intervention with anyone. I can't imagine the drama that would ensue.

I also stayed up researching the whole wine country vacation. I'm a nut when it comes to vacation. I think I try to overplan. It usually turns out okay, but it seems like there's so many options with this one. I want us to end up staying somewhere like a B&B, but where we don't have to interact too much with the owners or the other guests. Sometimes that creeps me out. One time we stayed at a B&B in Cape May and when we woke up in the morning we were forced to have breakfast (not so tasty by the way- and filled with cheese, not so good with my dairy problems) with other couples. The conversation was so forced and there was no good time to get up from the table. It was very uncomfortable. I definitely want to avoid that.

Posted by jen at 08:13 AM |Comments (5)

While I am ecstatic about the arrival of spring and daylight savings time, the one bad thing is that the river flooded yesterday. We live far enough away from the river that we weren't affected. But I feel bad for everyone that was. This news station has great video of the river.

Our wedding reception place did get flooded. It looked on the news like it didn't flood all the way up to the ballroom, but the lower level did get some water. Let's hope they dry out by September.

Anyway - I'm celebrating the arrival of spring because I was SO over winter. We decided on our honeymoon spot - California Wine Country, with maybe a side trip to San Francisco, depending on how much time we have off for the honeymoon. I'm super excited.

Posted by jen at 08:51 AM |Comments (4)

Now I thought that I only had to worry about avoiding ex-boyfriends, or past due creditors on the phone (just kidding, I have stunning credit) but now there is the ex-landlord. Let me explain that we were really fed up living where we lived and when we moved out we maybe weren't as dilligent as we could have been cleaning up. We did go back and throw out all the garbage and wipe the walls down, vaccum, clean the bathroom etc.

Today I finally bit the bullet and called the ex-landlord to give them our new information. I wasn't looking forward to the call. These people were fine, I guess they did what they had to do to keep the place up, but they mostly were a pain every time something went wrong. We'd end up with ridiculous situations. Just take my word for it that there were good reasons why we didn't kill ourselves cleaning up before we turned in the keys. I actually thought we did MORE than we should of.

So the landlord yelled at me for about 45 minutes - seriously -because of the following: we didn't clean the oven, we didn't scrub the outside of the wood cabinets, we didn't soak the oven hood filter in bleach, we didn't dust the ceiling fans, we didn't pay anyone to shampoo the carpets, we didn't scrub BEHIND THE TOILET, we repainted the kitchen, but we didnt' paint BEHIND THE APPLIANCES, we never told them a window was broken, we turned off the heat because we moved out, we didn't remind them repeatedlly to fix things that were broken, and we didn't tell them a ceiling tile was discolored.

After all the shit we did to improve that house that is in the worst neighborhood I ever lived in, she yells at me for not cleaning behind the toilet. She basically acused us of being dirty dirty people with no morals. Dirty, filthy people who don't move gas ovens to paint behind them. Heathens who don't clean their ceiling fans.

Oh and our seemingly innocent neighbor who used to wave hi to us told her we never shoveled the sidewalk during the snowstorms which is (pardon my french) a goddamn lie! I shoveled that shit. You saw my post!

WHATEVER!

I can't believe I had to deal with crazy ladies yelling at me for 45 minutes on the phone on a Saturday when I have a mild (improving) case of malaria.

GAWD!!

Posted by jen at 11:24 PM |Comments (4)

Did you see "Before Sunset?" If not, the following may be a spoiler for you. Warning! Warning! I'm gonna talk about what happened!!

So, if you did, do you think he missed the plane? Before Sunrise and Before Sunset were both great movies. And I felt while watching both like I was in the relationship with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. I wasn't disappointed in this sequel. I thought it was a satisfying followup.

I felt sad for Ethan Hawke's character that he went to the train station to meet Julie Delpy after their first meeting and she wasn't there then he ended up in a loveless marriage. I liked that both movies had ambiguous endings, but I am not sure if they were trying to say he was going to miss his plane. I'm pretty much thinking he does. It's a sweet story. I think it's interesting to think about how your life could be different if one incident had taken a turn.

Okay - end of movie spoiler.

When I worked at my last job, a lot of the men I worked with used to tell me that I was stupid for getting married. I don't know if they thought that I could be single and get a lot of ass, or what, but they often told me I was making a mistake. I didn't listen to any of them and I am getting married, but I do wonder what the hell happened in their marriages to make them so bitter. Man they could talk forever about that and about how if they would do it over again, they would wait to get married. In fact, one man told me that the perfect age for a man to get married was 68.

Posted by jen at 11:09 PM |Comments (0)