Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Cutest Dog Ever

I signed my dog up for a Cutest Dog contest online, but it's for $1 million. Even if Freddie just wins for the week he gets $500 and when I say "he" I mean ME. People stop me ALL THE TIME telling me how cute he is, so I might as well make some money off him haha. I don't think we'll win for this week because his picture isn't approved yet, it takes 24 hours and the voting week runs Sun-Sat (I signed him up today). We shall see though. If you have a blog please add this link to your site http://tinyurl.com/yaphtsz

Oh and I heard about this contest thanks to the dog Stpehen Colbert el dos and his story on CNN.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/09/28/colbert.dog.wins.contest/index.html

Freddie is way cuter!!

Friday, September 25, 2009

Party Barn

Tuesday night I went to my first Presidential shindig. I was invited to a Student Leader Reception since SO many of our students were being honored. I've only seen President Gogue from afar so I was pretty excited to be invited. So we arrive at the President's mansion and get to parking in their huge horseshoe driveway. We get greeted by the President and his wife at once we walk in. The mansion was beautifully decorated. We also walked through the mansion to their new reception area that is just outside...aka a party barn. We were like one of the first groups in there, they had not even completely finished landscaping. My goodness the party barn was beautiful! It was great to see so many students that have come through our office in leadership positions being recognized. I'd say about 60 students were there and about half of them had worked in our office at one point or another.The food was yummy and they served soda in little glass bottles - it so cute. The President said as few words as well as our new Vice President for Student Affairs. It was a very classy event and I know the students felt really honored. I'm really happy President Gogue held this event and I also felt pretty special since I got to go as well!

I got a group shot of 2009-2010 FYE Student Staff with the President.

The President told Rachel to stand in front of his to "hide his pot belly." - too funny!

This also led to like a 10 minute photoshoot with people with the President in smaller groups. Oh how I wish I had a picture with Quinnipiac's President Lahey - maybe at Alumni Weekend this year!

Thursday, September 24, 2009

I Don't Remember Growing Older

I often find myself thinking the the song "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler on the Roof when I think about aging. Those of you unfamiliar here is a excerpt:

Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?

I don't remember growing older
When did they?

When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he grow to be so tall?

Wasn't it yesterday
When they were small?

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze

Seriously. I taught my freshmen seminar class this morning and I still pinch myself that I'm old enough to teach. Actually on this week's How I Met Your Mother...it's Ted's first day teaching at Columbia and he debates about he wants to introduce himself to the class as "cool young Ted" or as "Stuffy Professor Mosby." Check out the first minute of this clip about a nightmate he has about the first day



It's crazy to think that I'm about the same age as the characters of How I Met Your Mother or Friends when the shows were in it's early seasons. They all seem like such grown ups...while I do not.

I swear I think I have a quarterlife catharsis weekly if not daily.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Photo Op





The black cloud of doom 30min before scheduled kickoff


Sheets of rain


Alexander Skarsgard. Why? Because why, not. I saw it come up on twitter and really I'm posting it here for my enjoyment rather than yours

Sunday, September 20, 2009

TiVo and TV

So I FINALLY subscribed to TiVo this weekend. I had my dad's old TV box and once looked into setting it up, but there was some drama so I waited. Well now with the new TV season in full swing I decided I no longer want to be a slave to television schedules. It took some time and a lot of cursing on my part, but I got it set up Friday. So far so good.

I am currently watching the Emmy's (yes live, I am recording it too, but improv was cancelled so I got to watch it). NPH or Neil Patrick Harris is hosting. He opened with a fab song and I'm looking forward to the rumored Dr. Horrible skit. Sadly NPH didn't win best supporting actor for a comedy, but he's fabulous and he knows it.

Tomorrow I fully plan on blogging about the insane AU v. WV game and how ridiculous it is they didn't get ranked.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Kelly's Visit

Better late than never right? I am currently typing along to Muse's new record that came out yesterday (it streaming for free on their website - glorious).

Let's travel back to Friday September 4. We had an awesome work tailgate that afternoon which was fun and kept me distracted enough from my overwhelming excitement to see Kelly. At like 4:40 (5 minutes early) I leave work jet to my car, run home real quick to walk Freddie and then head off the Atlanta Airport. It is about 90 minutes to the airport from Auburn so I was going to get to the airport at the perfect time. Kelly's flight was coming in at 7:30 eastern/6:30 central (I really loathe the time zone changes). I stopped in Newnan, GA for Dunkin Donuts Iced Coffee - I actually held off drinking anything in the car until then. Well Newnan is like 25 minutes from the airport. I drive a few more miles and then I see brake lights, lots of brake lights. SERIOUSLY. For the sake of me getting re-frustrated I will say that due to an apparent accident I sat in traffic for an HOUR. At one point I had the car off and was standing next to my car. Aggravated! Needless to say about an hour and 20 minutes later than I had hoped I made it to the Airport and picked up Kelly!

We stopped and got a bite to eat in Newnan on the way back because I was hungry, had to pee and was sick of the car. Let's just say that was a crazy random dinner and I like barely ate because I was too busy talking.

We FINALLY get to Auburn at like 10:30pm central. Kelly FINALLY got to meet Freddie and it was love at first sight. Gave her the apartment tour and we were both awake and up for a mini Auburn tour and beverage. I showed her some of the tailgating fields and we drove past all the fraternity houses (and hundreds of drunk students). Then we went to Momma G's for a pitcher of their crack beer. Lots of fun people watching, except we had 2 creeks from California who were like posing as southerns be rude to us because we were from the north. Kelly was shocked to be discriminated against. They were ugly jerks, but it's funny in hindsight. We went to bed at like 3am after giggling and slumber party like chatting in bed.

Well the excitement of football season caused me to wake up at 7:30am!?!?! Really?!?! I know crazy, but I was too excited to sleep. We had breakfast at home, hung around got ready (aka decked Kelly out is tons of orange stuff), went to McAllisters for lunch and then headed to campus. Oh the sea of orange. I loved watching Kelly's reaction to game day in Auburn. We tailgated hopped for a bit, went to tiger walk, drank beer out of the bottle in public thanks to no drinking rules on gameday (Kelly especially loved that...as do I). Before the game we got some Chick-Fil-A, Kelly's first time having it, we drank our beers and ate our chicken it was magical.

So 30 minutes before the game we head to the Stadium (I love have tickets, no need to get to the game hours before it starts for seats!). Umm my seats are KICKASS. Endzone 20 rows up and have a great angle of the field. The eagle, the band, aubie, 87,000 people in orange and an Auburn victory it was awesome! Sadly we didn't get on the jumbotron - HOWEVER at this past week's game I was on it TWICE thanks for my friend Michelle's awesome 1st row endzone seats! I kept getting texts from people who saw me. The first time I was on it was super up close and I even looked up to the jumbotron and saw me on it..creepy, but cool.

So we won and went to Roll Toomer's Corner good times. We headed home to shower and relax for a bit. Then we headed back out on the town...mainly for the people watching. Again I love watching my other Yankee friends observe southerners - especially their fashion. Sadly we didn't make it to Supper Club, but good times none the less.

Sunday we slept in a bit before having breakfast and getting sucked into a SVU marathon. We made it out to the pool for a few hours then got ready and I gave Kelly the grand tour of Auburn's campus and she took pictures of various things mainly because of how redonk they are (the fraternity houses, poultry science building etc). Then we headed to Niffers for dinner and their infamous corn nuggets which Kelly loved (I'm not gonna lie I do judge the people who don't love them ahemCaitlynahem). I even saw the fabulous Ms. Codi and Jim out with her parents are Niffers. I like seeing people out that I know. Then we went to the movies to see 500 Days of Summer. I'm not a huge movie goer, but I really wanted to see it - I had heard such great things about it. At the movies I actually ran into like 6 people I knew. As I'm sure you read from an earlier blog we LOVED the movie. We seriously went to Starbucks after the movie to like "process" it. I had the pleasure of getting a pumpkin spice latte served by one of my students I teach actually and miraculously I knew her name (on my 2nd try). Again somehow we were up til like 2am that night giggling over dumb things on the internet oh and me forcing her to watching David Cook's SNL performances.

Monday we were up bright and early because her flight was at 1:30pm eastern which somehow meant we had to be on the road at 9am with all the time changes and getting to the aiport early. Since I was going to be in Atlanta so early I made a day of it. My friend Michelle came with us so her and I could go shopping after. Before we headed out of town I had to take Kelly to her first Sonic. Then we were on the road - I've said it before, but it's amazing how fast a car ride can go with passengers. Clearly I stopped in Newnan for DD coffee. We dropped Kelly off which was sad, but we had good times and I'm planning on visiting her and the Amish in the Spring. Michelle and I headed to IKEA which was magical. I had not been to the one in Atlanta and it was bumpin. Luckily I got everything I wanted and spent under $200 which was my "budget." Then we went to some outdoor shopping place nextdoor which was cool. We had a yummy lunch at Doc Greens and did some shopping. I got 2 pairs of sandals. Then we lot hella lost getting to the Lenox Mall. Serious it was like 5 minutes from where we were, but we took the wrong highway and went like 30 min out of the way. Sadly the mall didn't have a NY & Co which I thought it did, but goodtimes nonetheless. Lastly we went to Traders Joes and got some yummys (including 2 buck chuck aka cheap wine). Someone it was like 7pm and we headed home again with a DD stop. I was BEYOND exhausted after a marathon shopping day and action packed weekend overall. All of last week I was a zombie, but it was worth it!

Kelly I hope this blog did your trip justice...feel free to comment is you have anything to add!

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

DC's my TWEETheart

I still need to blog about Kelly's visit...hopefully tomorrow, but while I'm still in ecstasy I need to blog about what just happened an hour ago. David Cook joined twitter like a month ago and since then he's had like 2 Twitter Q&A's (not parties because parties have punch and this does not - his words not mine) anyway I've submitted questions to him via twitter and he never got to them which was sad, but at the same time it was exciting to be on twitter whilst he was on twitter. So today I was hope at lunch and logged on twitter to see he was in the middle of a twitter Q&A he only does them for like 20-30min at a time. I've submitted a wide range of questions, but the first one that came to mind was "@thedavidcook have a new tattoo planned?" and then I submitted two others. Well I go and look on his twitter page and right at the top only moments after I submitted my question I see:

RT jjenniac@thedavidcook have a new tattoo planned? I've got like four planned.

RT = Re Tweet aka he copied and pasted my question and then just answered his. I've learned so much twitter lingo in the past 2 months.

Umm I love that he has four planned because I have two planned. He's totally a planner, not someone who just decides to get a tattoo. I've had tattoos (both my future ones and his current ones).

Actually his answer was vI've got like four planned. A TYPO. He rarely has typos. Maybe my little pic was so beautiful that it distracted him. Regardless still magical and I've "edited" his typo in all my many repostings, but it's nice to know he isn't perfect. I love his imperfection actually. Agh and I heard a really cute radio interview with him today from last week. Like NO JOKE him and I would really be compatible. Yes, I lust after him, but I would settle for being his friend because I know we'd be awesome friends.

Regardless today is the beginning. Contact has been made. I'm seeing him in concert in a little over a month at the Georgia State Fair. The possibilities are endless. I may have to delete this blog if I ever have the pleasure of knowing him - too much evidence of my obsession.

~JJ

Friday, September 11, 2009

Courageous Despite Fear

Every year I get sucked into September 11th news coverage. I still can't believe it happened and the fact that somehow New York bounced back. On days like today I am so proud to be a New Yorker and it makes my heart hurt a little bit that I've never spent a September 11th in NYC since it happened.

God bless those who lost their lives and those who gave their lives that day.

I'll leave you with this picture I found a few years ago online and have made my profile picture every year since '07.



Never Forget.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

500 Days of Summer

This weekend was FANTASTIC and I promise to blog all about it later this week since I am super busy at work. HOWEVER I do want to share this with you. Do yourself a favor and click on "Videos" to see the trailor.









We saw 500 Days of Summer on Sunday and LOVED it. I loved how real this movie was - it's not your typical romantic comedy. It was so different and fresh and original. No wonder there was so much buzz about it at the Sundance film festival.I already bought the soundtrack and have been quoting it nonstop (i.e. Just because she's likes the same bizzaro crap you do doesn't mean she's your soul mate). Plus it had a dance sequence to Hall and Oates "You Make My Dreams Come True" - see video at bottom. I have a new found love for Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Here are some more favorite quotes:

Tom: What happens when you fall in love?
Summer: You believe in that?
Tom: It's love, it's not Santa Claus.

Tom: People don't realize this, but loneliness is underrated

Tom: Darling...I don't know how to tell you this, but... there's a Chinese family in our bathroom.

Summer: I woke up one morning and I just knew.
Tom: Knew what?
Summer: What I was never sure of with you.

Tom: She took a giant shit on my face. Literally.
Alison: Literally?
Tom: Well, no, not literally. That's disgusting.

Rachel: Better that you find this out now before you come home and find her in bed with Lars from Norway.
Tom: Who's Lars from Norway?
Rachel: He's some guy she met at the gym with Brad Pitt's face and Jesus' abs.

Tom: Paul, seriously...
Paul: Did you bang her?
Tom: No!
Paul: Blow job?
Tom: No!
Paul: Hand job?
Tom: No, Paul, no jobs. I'm still unemployed. We just kissed.

You Make My Dreams Come True Scene (After Tom sleeps with Summer)

Friday, September 4, 2009

Friday, Friends & Football

As I am typing this post I am listened to Hootie and the Blowfish on Grooveshark. Oh Hootie I enjoyed your tunes and maybe explore your new country stuff...maybe. Speaking of country I heart Carrie Underwood's new single. I might be hooked. I like some of her songs and LOVED her "Go Your Own Way" Fleetwood Mac duet with David Cook, so we shall see.

But let's get down to business.

It's Friday. It's Friday before Auburn's first home football game of the season. It's the Friday of a 3 day weekend. It's Friday and Kelly flies in this afternoon!

I really think it was April when my friend Kelly (avid blog reader and commentor) booked her flight to come down. I always tell my friends I would love to have them down, especially during football season. However I know very well how much plane tickets cost and have exhausting traveling can be so I am always THRILLED when people decide to come. I always like to show folks a great time when they are in town (and I've always been success...well except when Caitlyn came in January mid-week). Plus Kelly just wrapped up Fall Orientation (yes a majority of my besties work in higher ed) which is her busiest time of the year so I know she's looking forward to lots of fun and blowing off steam. I haven't seen Kelly since November when we were at a Conference in Boston. Trust me we had a damn good time, but nearly 10 months is too long. As soon as I leave work I'm headed to Atlanta to pick her up (and Dunkin Donuts Iced coffee or two along the way).

We have lots to do while she is here. The highlight of the weekend is Auburn Football's home opener. Everyone here keeps comparing today to Christmas Eve. Jordan Hare is going to be BURSTING with energy tomorrow. I'm excited for me because I love to rush of being at games, but I am also excited to see Kelly witness all of this. The history, the traditions, all the ORANGE!!! I'll also take her to some choice food and adult beverage establishments in town that are uniquely Auburn. Plus the weather is supposed to be glorious this weekend so I am pumped.

War Damn Gameday!

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Wink

Apparently this blog is taking a rant detour as of lately, but I hope you all enjoy the ride regardless. Has annyone one else noticed the REDONK amount of text/im/email smiley faces guys write - especially when they are "trying" to flirt. It's toooo much.
Bad :)
Worse ;)
TERRIBLE ;O)
Devil? - does anyone do this anymore...I vaguely remember it from back in THE DAY ;O)~>

I was recently looking through a text "convo" with someone and I did a count of smileys...out of control.

And it's not only the 20something guys...my friend has been emailing with a 30something guy and same thing smileys out the whoo-haa.

A smiley here and there is fine...but 2 per text or something calm down. Use your words or better yet ACTIONS to flirt. Good Lord. Relationships and technology are going to be the death of me.

P.S. they really need to create a sarcasm font...I'm on board for that!