Best way to break up the monotomy at a Global Sales Meeting? Joss Stone performing 3 songs. Best roommate to have when your cold develps i

I am sick

YUCK!

OCD?

If you can identify why this drives me batty, you might be OCD too. This is actually worse than the two rugs that my cleaning lady switched by the stairs and garage. I love her though!

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I have a 7 AM flight to Vegas Monday morning for our Global Sales Meeting. (Why they fly us to Vegas to keep us in meetings/functions for 13 hours a day is beyond me.) I also have to study for/take a test for my Anatomy class (which is the hardest class I've ever taken because the instructor requires you to know every little detail). I'm going to need to "make up" the test on Thursday and/or Friday depending on my luck going on stand-by with Southwest to get home in time to take the take with my instructor's Thursday class. If I have to take it on Friday I'll be sitting in a room by myself...not that that would be stressful or anything. I'm off on Friday, but my boss doesn't want me to take the day off because we have a meeting (that he missed last month, not that I'm bitter).

I woke up this morning with the early warning signs of a stuffy nose and sore throat. I've taken Airborne and a super dose of vitamins. Wish me luck - this is NOT the week to get the super yucky cold/flu that everyone else keeps getting.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Crap Day!

After it was suggested that we have a "national HCBC Crap Day", I figured no day was better than today.

My mom recently cleaned out her garage, which means I inherited a bunch of mementos that I'd somehow "forgot" when I moved out. :) After allowing my lifelong accumulation of "crap" to take up space in my living room for a few weeks, I finally decided to put it away. Oh all right, I had to put it away since my cleaning lady is coming tomorrow. :)

Thus came the hunt for a trunk...I found it at Cost Plus!

I found this warning rather amusing...

Which gave me an idea...


Isn't he a good sport? The hubby is too :)

Further Proof That I Have a Big Brain

Thanks KT!

Say a little prayer for Oma

My hubby's grandmother (his mom's mom) has been in the hospital since Sunday. She's as stubborn as they come, but a few prayers probably couldn't hurt.

Is Chipotle worth a line this long?

Business Idea

My sister (lildahl) and I were conversing today:

LD: We should start our own business.

JA: Come up with a concept and I'm game!

LD: Right, because I'm the smart one...

JA: You're also the left handed creative individual. Think about what we're all good at and come up with something!

LD: What we are good at:
1. drinking alcohol
2. unnecessary purchasing at rite aid
3. loving oskar
4. feeding our fat marsh (translation: fat stomachs - marsh refers to marshmallow)
5. you=blogging; me=commenting
6. making fun of people that shouldn't wear certain clothes
the end.

If you can come up with a business that involves all of those, we'll let you be a partner!

Kokopelli Returns

Where can I get one of these?

Today's blog brought to you by...

Oskar!

(I swear this was not staged. And that pile of crap on my nightstand...yeah, it's a pile of crap.) :)

Happy Easter!

Oh Alright...

Happy Birthday Queen B!!!



In honor of your birthday, here's a list of 22 reasons that you're cool:

1) Your birthday falls in a great month!
2) You regularly blog Monday through Friday early in the morning so that I have something to look forward to when I get to work.
3) You assist me in being "productive" at work.
4) Regardless of whether you're in CA or TX, you're just a text message away.
5) You are also addicted to reality TV.
6) You consider crossing one thing off your to-do list each day to be an accomplishment.
7) You believe pets are like children.
8) You have fun with post-its.
9) You also want to be like KT/The Champ when you grow up.
10) You make up catchy new words/names like mobiley and Kim1Bump.
11) You have a strange affinity for staples.
12) You teach us cool stuff like how to make hearts.
13) You also have a friend named Margo.
14) Your love of Chuck Norris is rivaled only by my hubby's love for him.
15) You understand that the world quite possibly revolves around TiVo...after blogging of course. (Let's not forget this one.)
16) When TiVo fails to properly record AI, we find a work around.
17) You understand OCD and sometimes take it to a whole new level.
18) Your middle name is not Ann.
19) Something only you will understand :)
20) Gobble, gobble
21) We're possibly long lost twins
22) We both dedicated our 322nd posts to each other on our respective birthdays :)

To everyone that tolerated my somewhat excessive and random/pointless posts over the last week or so...please know that it was all done in an effort to make Queen B's birthday post my 322nd post! Thank you for your support!

Today is a very important day!

Get involved!

Kinda Nutty

Today's Required Reading can be found here.

Seriously? Discovery News is now comparing squirrel behavior to Facebook behavior? Do they give each other gifts too?

Slippery Sister

While visiting the California Science Center last weekend we had some time to kill before our designated time to enter the Body Worlds Exhibit (it's totally cool and you should definitely see it if you have the chance). My sister sat in a carved out rock and said that it was very slippery. The hubby and I both tried it out and we discovered the problem...she's vertically challenged :)

Older Sister Advantages

The advantages of being the older sister:

You take out your to-do list to tear off a piece of paper for your sister to stick her gum on...and she slaps it in the middle of your list.

Cute Old Couple

I hope the hubby and I are this cute in 50 years!

When Baby Talk Goes Too Far

You're going to need to click on this to read it...



The license plate frame says "Happiness is being (insert child's name here - I can't see it or remember it)'s Amma Gramma."

Justice is Served

In the days of celebrities getting away with murder, it's nice to see justice being served. One of the hubby's friends was murdered in 2001 and on Tuesday, finally, a jury convicted the scumbag that killed her. The full story can be found here.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

It's there, can you see it?

For the Fe-Fe

This will also double as the story of how my pets were named.

A few months after the hubby and I got married we decided to get a miniature dachshund aka a wiener dog. It seemed fitting (and yes, uncreative) to name him Oskar (the k makes it German).

A year and a half later, we added a kitty to the family. I knew the owner of a cat that had just had a litter of kittens and requested a girl kitty. We got what we thought was an all black female and named "her" Dee Dee, which was short for Ding Dong, since mama cat is named Twinkie. It turned out that Dee Dee was a he and needed a new name.

My father-in-law suggested Felix which was a perfect fit! Not only was he all black, but Oskar and Felix are the names of The Odd Couple, and they are quite the odd couple!

Wii Exercise

Who's that with the Wii Bowling high score? Me! I beat the hubby!!!!



What's this? Proof that Wii can cause you to break a sweat AND punishment for my mother who said to me this morning, "You haven't really been blogging much lately." Love you Mom!

Highly Recommended

I keep it on my desk :)

Calling All Cows

Since we sprung forward last week, the hubby and I have been taking the dog for a walk each night now that it's still light outside when we get home from work. We've been varying our route a bit so that we don't get bored and the other night we decided to walk down the street near a dairy.

We were across the street from the cows when we noticed that two babies had recently been born. We stopped to watch the mother cow licking the baby and the cows close to the calf started watching us. As we watching another cow came over to the fence near us to watch us.

The next thing we knew, all of the cows in that particular pen had gathered together around the calves and stood watching us. My theory is that they were protecting the calves that couldn't even stand on their own yet. The hubby theorizes that they saw humans and thought that it was feeding time. I'll let you decide.

The Pickle Returns

The Pickle is back in blogging action tomorrow!!!

Please try to contain your excitement :)

Lost

Reasons my sister will be getting a navigation system for her birthday:
1) Last November I vowed to get her a navi for Christmas and instead got her the Coach ring she wanted

2) La Palma? A few months ago (sometime in between the November incident and this last Friday, my sister and I had this conversation:
Sister (while driving to work in Laguna): Sister, where do you work?
Me: La Palma
Sister: Oh, I'm by your work.
Me: Huh? (thinking quickly, trying to translate the latest sisterism) No you aren't dork.
Sister: Yes I am!
Me: The street La Palma is in Yorba Linda you dork. The city of La Palma is by Knotts Berry Farm.
Sister: Oh

3) On Friday we headed off to South Coast Metro to the Orange County Performing Arts Center to see the Alvin Ailey dance concert. Our plan was dinner at Red Robin and then to head over to the OCPAC. We both drove separately since we were coming from work. Let's just say that my sister ended up losing me in a very short drive and parking in an entirely different parking structure, then blamed me for losing her, and made me responsible for getting her "unlost". And she had printed directions.

Tell me she doesn't need a navigation system...

Science Lesson of the Day

I showed called the hubby over to my laptop to show him the picture of the twin yolks that Jane discovered.

That led us to a debate that is perfectly illustrated by this.

Who knew?

Can I borrow your kids?

Is it weird that I want to go here and see the exhibits despite the fact that I don't have kids of my own?

Things You Don't See Every Day 2

Is it weird that I want one?

Hanging by a Mom

My XM song titles only fit a maximum of 16 characters. I found this amusing:

How I Met Your Mother

Does anyone else see the irony in Britney Spears being on a show called How I Met Your Mother?

I LOVE this show and I'm torn that Britney is going to be on the first episode after it comes back post-writer's strike. I've anxiously been awaiting the return of all of my shows, but don't want to watch Britney. Then again, it's sorta like a car accident...I can't help but look!

There's a LAKE in Salt Lake City

A few weeks ago when I flew to Salt Lake City for work, I was peering out the window and realized...

There's actually a LAKE in Salt Lake City.

Feel free to laugh. :)

Chuck Norris Approved

I've had this in queue for a few weeks since I bought this shirt for the hubby. Today's post at Queen B made me do this:

You know you want one...

(Yes, we literally saw this guy riding down the street.)

Oskar Makes Himself Comfortable

This was not staged. Luckily the hubby was close by and is well trained in the importance of capturing blog worthy photos. (I was lying in bed watching tv and apparently my chest/armpit looked cozy.)

Water or Billiards?

You're gonna need to click on the picture to read the license plate, otherwise you'll think I've lost it.

A Trip to Rite Aid

Last night the hubby and I went to my Aunt and Uncle's house to play cards and Wii. My sister brought a bottle of the Rose Spumante we purchased last weekend for us to share. The only problem? She finished it before I got there! This resulted in a trip to Rite Aid inspired by Queen B's success at CVS.

Here's what was purchased by my drunk sister:


I use the word purchased very loosely as I actually paid for her drunken finds.

Another Saucy Policy

Seriously, what is this world coming to? Let me enjoy my BBQ sauce! I thought this was exclusive to McD's but apparently it's spreading. And I want my extra sauce for 10 cents please! Doesn't the lower price always prevail?

I like Thai food!

I don't actually, but tonight (after enjoying several root beer floats of the adult beverage variety), one of my family members (who shall remain nameless to protect the blondeness) said "I like Thai food!"

Why I am I blogging about this? Because we were talking about my Uncle's girlfriend who is "Taiwan".

Unnamed person then proceeded to beg me NOT to blog about this incident. Seriously, how could I not? At least I didn't name names :)

Please note: Adult Root Beer Floats contain root beer and vanilla vodka. This drink brought to us by Rachel :)

Birthday Extravaganza - (last) Saturday

Please note: This will be long as I need to catch up - sorry Kim :)

On the agenda:
Wine Tasting

I went wine tasting in Temecula with my mom, aunt, mother-in-law, sister, Rachel, Pickle, KFuj, and a previously unmentioned co-worker we'll call not-Jan (only Rach and Pickle will truly understand the humor in naming not-Jan - sorry). We visited South Coast Winery and Ponte Winery. Ponte was my favorite and I'd highly recommend it!

It was my first time wine tasting and Pickle did a TREMENDOUS job coordinating and selecting the two wineries that we went to. Thanks Pickle!

We had a picnic snack of cheese and crackers, sandwiches, and grapes in between wineries and one of the Ritz crackers ended up on the ground in the middle of the parking lot. My mom didn't want the little birdie that would surely claim it to risk becoming road kill, so she placed it safely in the branch of a nearby tree.

Poker chips? Nope! Each chip represents a taste of wine...somehow my chips kept multiplying!

We couldn't remember the name of this wine and could barely pronounce it, but we all generally liked it. We began calling it Gewurzt-Janiner or Janiner for short.

It was Rachel's first time wine tasting too...she was less of a fan than I was, but she gave it a valiant effort!

When Pickle couldn't decide, she opted for a glass for each hand!

KFuj and Pickle with a bottle of the Janiner. I should have kept track of the number of bottles purchased...I'm estimating somewhere around 10?


All of the really good group pictures are on my sister's or Kfuj's camera (you think I was going to put my precious camera in jeopardy with tipsy Jenn?) and I have yet to receive them. I'll cut Kfuj some slack as she was buying a house and packing for a cruise since then, but my sister? Not so much. I'll steal them today when I see her and hopefully post them tonight.

Birthday Extravaganza - Monday

In honor of my birthday, I took the day off of work on Monday. My only plans were Burke Williams (ahhhh) and class.

As previously mentioned, I ended up with a visually impaired massage therapist for my 85 minute swedish/shiatsu combo. I'm generally not too picky about who does the massage as long as it's nice and relaxing. I made a few conclusions this go around that will forever change my preferences.

I've had dozens of massages (most were out of necessity, now it's just for want). I've had 4 male therapists and it was only on Monday that I realized why I will now have a female preference. It has nothing to do with modesty. Somewhat surprisingly, I concluded that it was the MALE therapists that seem more compelled to chat throughout the massage.

I enjoy the peace and quiet and falling into semi-slumber without the obligation of conversation. That's the whole point of a relaxing massage - that and relaxing my poor tense muscles.

The other practical purpose of a massage that I learned on Monday is that it helps me with my Anatomy class. As I felt each part get massaged I played "Name that Bone" (we'd been studying the skeletal system in class). Of course I used this fact to "convince" the hubby that I needed another massage before my test on the muscle system to help me "study". :)

Open open OPEN

Starbucks at LAX does not open until 5. That really stinks when it is 4:45 AM and your flight is not until 6. Total time from bed to gate - 50 minutes! Thanks Bill and Eva! Literally got the third parking spot by the elevator on the third floor of the 30 dollar a day lot - thank you corporate AMEX - and walked right up to security. Granted it is far too early to be awake, but this was easier than Ontario!

Birthday Extravaganza - Sunday

I've been having quite the celebratory extravaganza for my 27th birthday. Sunday night was dinner at The Melting Pot with the family. We sit down with our rather rambunctious party of 8 and my Uncle begins to heckle the server. My sister and I at the other end of the table immediately think that we both know her from somewhere. We think high school, but that doesn't seem quite right.

Dinner progresses and we still can't quite figure it out. The server mentions she's been married about a year. My mother and in-laws are deep in conversation naming our as-yet-unconceived children (father-in-law wants a granddaughter and mother wants a grandson). They are throwing around both girl and boy names and are trying to come up with "cool" initials (i.e. I'm JAK). They ask the server her initials - DLS, for Dustin Leigh.

BINGO! How many girls are named Dustin in California? (One of you nutty HCBC girls will Google that, so I'll just continue). I instantly know that she's one of the "Beauty Queens" aka "Blondies" from the Amazing Race. I tell the fam when she runs off for our next course and then make my father-in-law confirm that she is in fact who I think she is.

The family then hits her up with a bunch of questions and I request a picture with her - hey, it WAS my "birthday"! About this time I've texted the Champ and Rach (huge Amazing Race fans - sorry Jane, I didn't have your cell until today), and Kim of course replies that I must get a picture for the blog...here you go:


And thus, this is why we need to go back to The Melting Pot in Brea on the last Tuesday of the month for Girls Night Out. That way we can stalk poor Dustin and make her an honorary member of the HCBC!

BTW - while I am not a small girl, Dustin is itty bitty of Rachel proportions.

Mobiley Blogging

Ever had a visually impaired massage therapist? Yes I am blogging from Burke Williams!

Girls Night Out

More to come on my dinner at The Melting Pot last night, but first...

HCBC Members: Mark your calendars for the last Tuesday of the month. The Melting Pot offers a Ladies Night for $28! It's March 25th (if Kim1Bump isn't making her debut) in Brea. And if we're lucky, one of our favorite reality TV stars just might be our server...more to come on that too!

Happy Birthday to ME!

Thanks to everyone for their birthday wishes! Also, thanks to my mom and aunt for allowing me to regularly post "terrible" pictures of them in conjunction with baby pictures of me :) Thanks for putting up with me for 27 years!

Celebrate With Some Bunny Special

The Bunny was not pleased to take this picture:

Birthday Flowers from the Bunny

Why my sister ROCKS!

Not a surprise that I'm addicted to chocolate covered fruit. Since I'm taking my birthday off of work (and going to Burke Williams!) my sister and hubby sent their "work gifts" to me on Friday.

My sister sent me this Edible Arrangement along with a box full of the chocolate covered bananas which are my absolute FAVORITES! YUMMY!

THANK YOU SISTOR!!!

I'm waiting for the flowers from the hubby to open all the way before I take a picture :)

It's gonna be a great month!

While at Panera Bread for my birthday lunch with my team on Friday, my number was 3!