Yummy-yum-yum

For my friendlies who like to drink up on those holidays, I give you:
A recipe for disaster....wait, wrong holiday....

A Recipe for Happy Holidays

What you'll need:
sugar
water
lemons or limes (big ones)
oranges
cloves
nutmeg (optional)
cinnamon sticks
red or white wine of your choice (I recommend pinot noir)

To make:
Add 1 cup water and 1 cup sugar to pot.
Cut up 2-3 unpeeled oranges into large sections and throw into sugarwater. For extra fun, peel the oranges and put the rinds in the sugar water.
Add 1/2 cup lemon or lime juice to sugarwater.
Add cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon sticks to sugar water.
Bring to a boil.
Let boil for 5 minutes. (liquid will reduce slightly)

In another pot:
Put 1-2 bottles of wine into pot. Keep heat on very low.
Strain the sugar-water fruit spice mixture into the wine.
Add 2-4 cinnamon sticks into the wine.

Drink up.

Note: If you make more than one batch, you can reuse the fruit and spices from the sugar water a few times, although you made want to add a little more fresh ingredients.

Oh! Bonus. After you strain the sugar-water mixture into the wine, you can eat the chunks of the orange peel. They taste like candy after boiling in that sugar water. So delicious.

Sick Day.

I woke up feeling not horrible, but not awesome this morning. I went about my morning as usual, breakfast, energy drink, mug of tea...until it all went terribly wrong.

So I vommed at work, which has to be up there on the list of humiliating and humbling experiences one can have at work (see also: singing banana man birthday telegrams). They sent me home by 11am with a bottle of elderberry potion and some other really terrible tasting drops I'm apparently supposed to put forty-five (forty-five!) drops of on my tongue 2-3 times a day. They are all about the voodoo healing around here. But I've been following the instructions...the bitter tasting stuff and then the sweet sweet elderberry potion. (Its really syrup-ish in texture, but potion is so much more Harry Potter like, don't you agree?)

So I'm laying here in my spacerocket jammies watching the epic fifth season of the Simpsons, napping, sweating out this fever I've acquired, and drinking potions. Trying to get better. Because I have to get better before I fly home on Wednesday. If I'm feeling up to it, I may try to hit up a sweaty Bikram yoga class tonight and try to sweat all the toxins out in 90 intense yoga-rific minutes.

How I actually look:


How I actually feel:



What are your remedies when you're getting sick/are sick?

I will probably never say this again.

I'm feeling frustrated with my Mac.

My new Blackberry's syncronizing software only works with Windows. Okay, I get that the majority of users who own Blackberries are very important business minded types who probably love their Dilbert screensaver on their Windows desktop/laptop. But I am not one of those people. So I can't really connect my Blackberry to my laptop- only my desktop at work. How agitating.

And Blackberry, I understand you were developed for the government to keep secrets and thus cannot have Blue Tooth connectivity with laptops, but that just sucks. Seriously, super lame guys. My laptop doesn't have any government secrets on it. But it does have things that are important to me and nobody else.

I've been wanting to dig into using Macromedia's Robohelp since I think it could be incredibly useful to learn with this new project I'm heading up at work. Again, only a version for Windows is currently available.

Technology, you are supposed to help me, love me, caress me, sing to me in my sleep. But this is some serious bullplop. What's with this conspiracy against Mac users? We're nice people who only want to embrace you.

Oh my god. Singing banana man telegram. I don't want a birthday ever again.

Jeffrey: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
all-caps = all-good.
me: did you know about the singing fruit too?
Jeffrey: Adam just told me this morning. How was it???
me: oh my gawd. seriously. threw up in my mouth.
Jeffrey: hehehe
what did the fruit person sing?
me: some sort of banana man birthday song
and lots of cheezy jokes
Jeffrey: i'm throwing up a bit in my mouth.
me: and balloon hats and flowers.
Jeffrey: eek
me: and chorus kick lines. and then people from other offices started coming in to watch...
Jeffrey: hahaha
me: people who didn't know me but sang happy birthday
Jeffrey: what an awesome (read: horrifying) gift.
me: i feel very awkward right now.
Jeffrey: i'm sure!
me: i told everyone, "if any more singing fruit stops by, tell them i'm not here." and i've been hiding in my office ever since.
its a good thing adam's birthday is coming up, cause he's got it coming to him...
Jeffrey: no kidding. let me know if you need my help.
me: at the end of the banana man's song he had someone taking pictures and he said, "look into the camera and tell adam how much you love him"
and i waved my balloon sceptor and said, "i don't love you even a little bit right now"
Jeffrey: HAHA
me: and then i said, "i think i just threw up in my mouth"
All caught on digital camera which i'm hoping the banana man sends to adam.
Jeffrey: I'm glad I'm not you from earlier today. I don't think I would have handled that situation very well.
me: i'm not sure i handled it very well- i started running away
and i didn't participate very well in the kickline. in other news, the office dog gave me a sparkly unicorn figurine. until the banana man incident, i was playing with the unicorn at my desk all morning.
Jeffrey: So at that point, you're like JFK turning left by Dealey Plaza... everything's fine ("What a nice day!" and "Look at all these wonderful people!"), and then.....

tragedy.

me: i never knew what hit me. and the unicorn, like jackie o, was left to pick up the pieces of me off the floor.
Jeffrey: so sad.

The Upshot.

Last week was nonstop!

Monday and Tuesday, yoga kicked my butt. And it felt so very good.

Wednesday, I went to see the Brazilian Girls at the Fox Theatre in Boulder. The show was so utterly bizarre and amazing. I took a thousand pictures, but I'm feeling particularly lazy. Here, maybe the mental picture is better: The beautiful svelte German lead singer wore a nude body suit with silver sequins all over it and foofy white tulle covered her face and naughty bits. She asked the entire audience to come on stage and dance naked with her. Roughly fifty college kids did so (I did not). Singer lady grabbed their boobs, passed them fatty Js between singing verses and then they played 'Pussy' and my world was completely whole at that moment. See? I told you no pictures could do that justice. Okay, I lied, here they are:

This picture doesn't really do her crazy little ensemble justice. But I wasn't venturing into the naked pit.


Naked party. Briefly, The Brazilian Girls =s great party music and a great party.

Jen's Favorite Small Venues (Less than 1,000 max. capacity):
-The Fireside Bowl, Chicago
-The Century Lounge, Providence
-The Fox Theatre, Boulder
-Creepy Crawl, St. Louis

Okay, and then Thursday night. Randomly, I went to see Bonnie Raitt in concert? I couldn't tell you the name of any of her songs, but a few sounded familiar. I mean, we didn't pay for the tickets and the seats were really great, so I figured why not go check out some bluesy music at the newest venue in town....hello, for free! Pictures were NOT ALLOWED, so...


Then Friday night, we went back for more pain... HOCKEY style. First home game of the season! Apparently, we're the worst team in the league, but hey whatever, expansion team. And we did win in a sudden death shootout.

In honor of hockey, I ask you this question: which game is superior?
Blades of Steel for NES



vs. NHL '92-93 for Sega Genesis?



Personally, I'd say Blades of Steel. But that's only because the last time I tried playing Mortal Kombat 3 on a high definition tv, my head felt like it was about to asplode. No seriously, I love you Sonic the Hedgehog, but don't eff with my mind.


Other news of interest.
I let a man put a hole in my face this weekend. In my left nostril, precisely. The lasting damage:

I can't even lie, IT HURT SO BAD. Worse than my septum. Not worse than my inner conch/industrial. My favorite part was when the nice man said, "Ohhhhhhhh! Your nose just made the loudest cracking noise I've ever heard!" And indeed, it did sound like a baseball bat, friends. My nose bled a lot and tears came down my face, but I was a brave little toaster and kept my cool. My boss remarked this morning, "You have a diamond booger on your nose!" Yes, something like that, a diamond booger. For those of you keeping score at home, that's two extra holes in my nose now. My nose is too metal for my face. Oh, snap!

Hello? Is it me you're looking for? (Lionel Richie, I <3 you.)
I finally bought a new high falootin cell phone. So start calling me. Or I'll have to start sending you obnoxious text messages. And hey, if you need a reason- call me on Thursday, I'm a quarter century old (and sassier).

Jen's Tour de Farce 2006
Because a few people have asked me, here is my travel schedule for the next couple of weeks/months.
November 22 - 27, Rockford, ILL
November 27 - 30, Peoria, ILL
November 30, Rockford, ILL
December 1 - 3, New York (The City!)
December 22 - 26, Rockford, ILL
January 18ish - 23ish, New York (The City!)
January 29ish - February 2ish, Houston, TEJAS

So that's what I know for now. I will keep you posted of any new developments, dearies. If you live near any of those places and I have not yet made tenative plans with you, you jerkface, call me and let's talk about how great beer is and then let's make plans to drink some.

Its my birthday on Thursday, don't ruin our friendship by not writing Happy Birthday across your chest and sending me a picture of it. Thank you, that is all. I promise, I won't post your picture on the Internets.

w-e-e-k-e-n-d

Weekend in New York.

I love how my life comes together when I'm there. Friends from different eras of my life, enjoying each other's companies. How could you not in a place intensely exploding with life?

I took advantage of Tower Records' going out of business super discount on CDs. The newer releases were picked over, so I decided on a few solid CDs that were...not new releases. I bought:

Smoosh - She Like Electric. This album is quite different from the girls' other album, "Free to Stay". They even do a little rapping! But I really like this. Its amazing how much younger they both sound- voices and instrumentation.

Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. At some point I owned this CD, I'm not really sure where it disappeared to, but I really really really really love this album and it ellicits memories of years 19 - 20 of my life with stunning clarity.

Camera Obscura - Underachievers Please Try Harder. Camera Obscura reminds me of this girl I used to talk to at my favorite record store in Madrid. She looked like a cuter version of the singer from Camera Obscura. Which is probably why I bought this, but the music is pretty good too.

And here I sit, all scrunched up in some infamous space pyjammies, sans mustache.

Also, my hair is curly today! I usually keep my hair super straight; I guess I forgot how easy it is to let it just be....sassy. But not so much curly as... curly =s spiraly-wavy. Someone told me when my hair is like this, its my "sex hair." "Oh, like its real sexy?" I asked. "No, like you just had sex." Huh.

I promise a better update next time...no, seriously, I mean it this time.

Don't forget to flush.

I didn't realize that cats could go poo in toliets.

What I truly appreciate about this product is that so many cat owners are SO enthusiastic about this cat potty seat, is that they have sent in their own customer images.



Who does that? Who takes a picture of their cat on the crapper? A little privacy please?

And you know what's sick? I want to buy one and train my cat to use it.