Hello, Awesome

This is my dream staircase. One day, when I own a home, it will contain one of these bookstaircases. And you will be jealous.

Honk-U

Once upon a time, I thought Stacey had the worst road rage. This was before I was a regular driver in the greater Boston area. Now, I too, am faced with battling the long and short term effects of road rage every time I get in my car.

Here's why:

• Greater Boston area drivers think the blinker is optional. It is not. Get with the program people! If you are going to turn, switch lanes, or cut someone off, please do the courteous thing and signal. The lack of using the turn signal is the number one reason why the nickname 'Masshole' exists.
  

• Drivers 'round here have no idea which lane to be in. Now, part of this is the fault of the incredibly stupid roads and the lack of signage. However, sometimes it is quite clear what lane you should be in and yet the drivers still don't get it. Example: if there are two left turning lanes, and you look ahead and see the road you are turning left onto immediately forks, choose the left turning lane that is on the side of the road you will need to be when it splits up ahead. Don't get in the wrong one and assume the person next to you is going to let you in when you come to the realization you are an idiot.

• My other favorite are the people who straddle two lanes. Get a clue, Mass driver. There are two or three lanes for reasons. They all serve a purpose. Some are turning lanes, some are passing lanes, some are for going straight. You can't have be in all of them because that annoys me.

• Honking (this is a two-parter):

• In Driver's Ed close to 10 years ago, I learned that honking was a tool you could use to alert someone of something that can be prevented. For instance, if someone is pulling out and you can stop them from hitting you by honking, knock yourself out. It is not meant to say "Hey, I hate you!" or "I am in a hurry, here!" (Unless of course, you have a car sitting idly in the middle of the road. In this case, honk away my friends, honk your little heart out.)

• It is not okay to honk at someone who is trying to turn left into traffic and can't because cars are coming or if the light just turned green and they aren't going fast enough for you. That's just rude. We all know everyone is in a hurry; honking doesn't help. In those cases, I really wish I had a rear honk. A noise that came out of the back of the car to respond to unacceptable honkers behind you. Then, maybe impatient drivers would hold their honks. Or, more realistically, the world will become a louder place.

To combat the crippling effects of road rage, I have heard that poetry helps:

Hey! You cut me off!
Do you know how to use your
turn signal, dummy?

You might have plates from
another state but that does
not mean you hog lanes

Honk at me from the
behind and I will get you
back when it is time

Katherine Elisabeth

I an officially an aunt to the world's cutest baby. She has Stacey's long toes and we can only wait to see if she will have long monkey arms, too. Katie, don't worry if you do. It is not a bad thing. Many, many times a day I wish I had monkey arms. They would save me the trouble of climbing on chairs and counter tops to get things. We are so happy to have Katie in our family now! (I, for one, can't wait to spoil her with girly things. No more gender neutral clothing and accessories!)

Here she is:

I'm funnier than you

Have you ever been talking to someone and you see his/her eyes glaze over and you know that person is not listening to you anymore but simply nodding and smiling along with your story, laughing at the right moments and trying so hard to look engaged? Recently, I've been doing that a lot to others. I just can't seem to listen to anyone's stories besides my own. Obviously, I feel really guilty about this because I am known for my ridiculously long stories that no one can follow and have no point. So I should probably try to listen when other people are basically doing what I do to them. But no, instead I wait until that perfect moment to share my funnier, smarter, better story.

It is like I am constantly trying to one-up everyone all of the time.

Oh, you slipped on the ice and got laughed at by a woman crossing the street?

Me, I slipped on the ice, fell into a puddle, and while still flat on my back in the middle of the road I got beeped at by a car that was trying to pass.

See how my story was better?

Your roommates are weird? Mine are weirder. And I will tell you why with the help of a power point presentation and pictures posted on Facebook.

I don't know what has gotten into me. I have turned into a completely ego-centric person. Probably when my sister has her baby, I will write a blog about my adventure getting home or how I won the baby pool... twice. (February 2nd suckers!)

Hopefully I will get over this phase soon. I don't really like being so self absorbed, but I can't seem to control it. I caught myself describing my favorite commercial in detail to a couple of colleagues the other day. (It is a really funny commercial. It is for the new AT&T and it has this tall blond man named Sven in it, and he wakes up the family, sets up their schedule, keeps everyone informed of their missed calls and emails, and at the end hands out giant sweaters like the one he is wearing and tells them to 'bundle up.' Every time i see it, I backwards bloop bloop on TiVo just so I can get a second showing. I am addicted to Sven.) But the point is--- it is a TV advertisement, not breaking news about Jamie Lynn's pregnancy or the score of whatever important football game was on on Sunday. There is no need for me to share it with co-workers over the water cooler. It's like I need a slap on the face that says "Get a life, Jenn." I bet Sven would do that for me. Seriously. See how helpful he would be in my life? He could say things like "You have been speaking for 42 minutes" or "Your friend wants to talk now" to keep me on track. (I told you I was obsessed).

Since there is no chance that Sven will show up on my doorstep to keep me in line, I will have to do it myself. This has got to stop. I am not going to add it to my list, but I will try very very hard anyway.

Vegetarian Attempt

While I am writing this, I am eating a cobb salad. With Chicken. So I think you know where this blog is going.

I did indeed make my attempt at being a Vegetarian. I didn't eat meat all week, even when I went to the Cheesecake Factory and all of the things I love were either burgers, chicken, or meatloaf. I got Evelyn's favorite pasta, and it was actually quite yummy and healthy, although the eggplant chunks were a little large.

But then, I started thinking to myself, why am I doing this? The reason why I wanted to stop eating meat was because every time I am in CT with the fam, we eat meat every night and by the end of my stay, I feel bad for the cows that we have eaten. I am not sure why I feel bad for the cow, but once you feel bad for the cow, you can't eat the cow and really enjoy it. Then, I thought, if I feel bad for the cow, why don't I feel bad for the chicken or the pig? Since I am not discriminatory of animals, I felt like I should feel guilty about eating all living things. So that's when I thought I should be a vegetarian.

Well, you know what? Sometimes, I feel like eating meat. And I am going to eat it. Instead of being a vegetarian, I am going to eat less meat, and only when it is really delicious. This way, I don't waste meat eating on non-delicious meat. I might go straight-up vegetarian later this year, but for now, that is my meat eating policy.

Meanwhile, today I was making my healthy menu for the week, and here is what it is:

Breakfast: every other day, grapenuts hot. On the other days, a Turkish breakfast of: yogurt with honey, pomegranate (and grapenuts, they aren't Turkish, but I love them), Orange wedges and olives on the side OR ricotta with tomatoes.

Lunch: Roasted veggie pitas with hummus or salad. Sides of string cheese or laughing cow, sugar free/fat free pudding or jello, Fruit.

Dinners: Chickpea stew, Ribollita, or Salad (depending on the lunch). (I usually only make a big batch of something, and then repeat during the week). Pasta will probably happen one night. Maybe pizza.

So, yeah, that's a vegetarian menu. I guess I don't know what I am planning to be anymore. I am going to make like a Calvin Klein ad and just be.

Updates

Yikes, 2007 is almost over and so now it is time to evaluate the end of the year and look forward to the next one. There were a lot of things I didn't do, so this year, the To-Do List is going to have a deadline. I am going to try to achieve all of the things on The List by the end of the year. Yup, that's right. Before 2009. See the new list to the right and wish me luck!

(In other news, the car search is over! I found and bought a used 1999 Jetta. After a 5 minute tutorial on how to drive stick, many attempts out on the road by myself, and quite a few scary moments, I now consider myself an expert driver of the vehicle and I love it. Hooray!)

Survey

I'd say the number one response I have gotten from the previous post is everyone I know laughing at the words "junking out." I was told that "pigging out" is more common in American slang. This was interesting to me, because I am pretty sure I have used "junking out", "junked out", and "junk out" to express the concept of over-eating junk food my entire life. So, I ran a completely unscientific poll of my friends and random people I work with to determine what they thought on the matter.


Only 2 out of 7 people expressed that they had never heard of the terms junking out unprompted
The other 5 people did not question the term junking out until the topic was raised by the surveyer.
7 out of 7 people eventually expressed that junking out is not a common phrase in the English language.
1 out of 7 people surveyed say things like "Hog Heaven" in daily conversation.

I felt like the results to this survey were inconclusive, so I then researched it on the internet. Wikipedia has no entry for this combination of the words "junk" and "out". Urban Dictionary also does not have an entry. After striking out on those two sources, I gave up.

Turns out, junking out must only be something my family uses/does. I find it more PC than pigging out-- I wouldn't want the local swine to get a complex regarding their consumption habits, would you?

In other news, I left my computer power cord at my parents house, so my novel will have to be finished in December. Also, it has been determined that the internet on my computer is indeed different than the internet on the computer I am using right now. I am serious. It really really is.