buddies or red wine circles on boobs...vote!

Argh, every time i watch The Lives of Others I fall in love with it again. It moved me to tears, good tears, even before my surgery, and now of course it's twice as moving in my new emotional state. actually a lot of things move me to tears now: The liberty mutual commercials with terrible music where the people all "do the right thing" by looking out for their neighbors. also spontaneously moving are performances by gymnasts, dancers, and any athlete who does better than they thought or looks shocked when they've done something extraordinary. at this rate the olympics will be like a 3 kleenex box affair, a real blubberfest. might as well watch An affair to remember and get it over with. or life is beautiful, which has the record of the longest cry ever for the julie--i cried sporadically for a full 8 hours after that movie. oh and recently i cried at august rush which i am positive would have been far too cheesy and contrived to induce tears pre-surgery. but anyway, there's something so calming and refreshing about simple, quality movies. i watch so much trash that i forget what it's like to watch something really good.
oh, but in all seriousness, does anyone medical know if having someone cut into your ovaries makes you more emotional...or like, does surgery make people more emotional, some post anesthesia effect?

the job is going well, and i am so grateful, thanks to everyone who's asked. what we do is really socially beneficial. and my long awaited counterpart with whom i share an office is totally smart and hilarious. and she keeps me on track with training being possibly more..diligent than myself. :)

the ice skating is going...fiiine. i feel about as graceful as the stay puffed marshmallow man, and there is one move where we do backward swizzles and i am positive that our coach does it out of sheer cruelty so that the people watching their kids' lessons can feel good about themselves as we adults slowly wiggle our (enormous) asses awkwardly and very slowly backwards. i need to relax. thus far i am so terrified of falling that every muscle in my body is tense and i am totally sore the day after lessons. having medical insurance would likely add to that sense of relaxation. come august first i will be a terror!

so karina and i are definitely doing the 3 day walk for breast cancer. 60 miles in 3 days. the biggest task we have now is choosing which team to join (we definitely want some training buddies and some fundraising help). we have two teams we've narrowed it to. one is the team of a local radio station--8's buddies for life. the other is a group called Walk Now WIne Later. the number one major attraction of this group is that on their t shirt they have red wine circles over their boobs. this is, however, also their major detractor, because i have so many evangelical friends who are wine phobes that it might offend a major fundraising group in my life. as the chinese would say "how to do?". and i don't know that gently pointing out that Jesus' first miracle was to make some super-duper-vintage-kickass-wine will lessen said stigma. of course nearly all 3 day team names are scandalous. samples: my two breast friends, 4 boobs and 2 nuts, twin peaks, our cups runneth over, etc. so funny.

have a great weekend! we're going to the del mar fair. but the newsboys won't be there of course--they are visiting amy.

it's hot out here kids.

sometimes i have bad ideas. like my idea to walk during my lunch break--which is technically 30 minutes--too short to do anything but eat and take a 10 minute walk. and then i remembered i no longer work on the coast, but rather in scorching el cajon. i get outside and desert heat attacks me. i'm like, hmm...maybe i'll go to starbucks instead. that was definitely the right call for my sanity. there will be no walking in el cajon until the month of october.

speaking of el cajon though, can i spread some love to a new find in my underestimated hood? so they have renovated downtown el cajon, which was formerly a total beige cesspool so lame that not even criminals visited--everything was just sort of boarded up, and mom and i went there a few days ago to a place called the New York Bakery. (in el cajon, i know, i know, hilarious). but anyway, it was *REALLY* good. they have this one thing that is basically a piece of soft focaccia with ricotta and mozzarella on it, like a cheese pizza with no tomato sauce...only sooooo much better. it was like a piece of puffy buttery cheese and even a little crisp on the edge. totally mouthwatering. karina can attest to its amazingness; she ended up eating like half of the piece i had when she was already full. also purchased and eaten on a different occasion was a sfogliatelle (pronounced: sofol-j'ah-TEL-e). it is a flaky shell pastry with a sweet ricotta/semolina filling that has some hints of orange rind or lemon rind. mamma mia! with coffee it was perfecto. and in el cajon no less. blissful. soon i will not need to leave a 5 mile radius and my 180 degree transformation from world traveler to modern hermit will be complete.

I have had to impose a moratorium on looking at houses. there are just some truly amazing deals right now, and i get all anxious that by the time i am ready to get into the market, they will be gone. i am convinced that everyone else on earth wants the same houses i do.

50, 50 years old.

Happy 50th Birthday to my Mom today. The youngest and fairest of all mothers of 29 year olds ;) Lots of goods and wellwishes are in store for her, but i won't spoil it just in case she reads this before she leaves work. anyway, now she can do that molly shannon imitation with pride.

So this year's So You Think You Can Dance has started out *awesome*. the dancers are great. we wanted to vote for almost all couples, except ironically for the tango couple who nigel or mary said was the couple to beat. hmm. the couples seem to be arranged by height, which is a good thing because most good dancers are really really short and the two amazons got paired together, lucky them. but i cry if the guy gets kicked off and some 5'5" guy has to partner the 5'9" girl.

anyway, speaking of girlie things, you can go to the NBC olympics site and see all of the crucial highlights from the US National Gymnastics championships. lots of great routines. i feel bad for nastia liukin, mostly because her name is NASTIA. crazy russianamericans. but since she, the number 2, ironically has all the endorsement deals, she will cry in a pile of money. charity and karina were surprised that i keep up with gymnastics. but there are a lot of things you don't know about me. things even less scandalous than my secret love for gymnastics. ;)

Sometimes people aren't good.

Story about people getting arrested for feeding the homeless in a park in Orlando.
Not the happiest place on earth after all.

This reminds me (in yet more 401k news, i know, you snore) of how i had to vote a few weeks ago on a fund for my previous 401k and the board or whatever for the fund had a recommended vote AGAINST scrutinizing funds to see if they contributed to genocide. assholes. and they default those votes to their recommendation, so anyone going through the motions has just voted to turn a blind eye to sudan investment. heinous. so make sure you look at what you are voting for!

in what i hope is better news, i went at lunch and signed up for my awkward adult ice skating lessons. in fact, i could go ice skating right now. i don't because i am wearing short sleeves and a dress. but i could, because i get free public skating. i'm glad i am finally doing this. they say that if you write down your goals you are like 90% more likely to achieve them. i also read about a foundation that fulfills the dreams of people in nursing homes and that a lot of times those dreams cost less than 50 bucks to fulfill, and voila suddenly granny isn't so cranky. i'm trying to fulfill as many of mine as possible. either so i will be a content old person, or so that fulfilling my dreams will be really really expensive.

that last paragraph reminded me of one of my favorite typos: public without the L.
bwahahahaha.

P.S. Nomes, that umbrella song is totally addictive. as far as the postcard...i'm amazing, right?! last week i mailed one to my sister lauren that i found going through stuff in storage as i prepare to move into my new place...it was from when i was in college. it was a free postcard from a cafe in boston. totally written, but not sent. i also once mailed a package 4 years after someone gave it to me to send. i need to work on my reliability. the only thing i have going for me is that i DO eventually get it done.the WHEN is just a sort of magical undetermined thing. hope you won pub trivia!

vanguard how i love thee.

can i disseminate my love for Vanguard, new holder of my 401k? yes, i can. so i am all about divesting in sudan, you know this. and so i'm like, "great, i have to freaking pick around and see which funds have divested, again." and with fidelity it was a real pain in my ass. i was about to go to my sudan divestment site which i love but which is not actually that easy to use. blargh. so i decide i should at least call to see if they have any idea of which funds have divested and which ones havent. a year ago the people at fidelity had *no idea* what i was talking about. anyway, the dude at vanguard is like "yep, there's only one fund, the energy fund, the rest are clear." sweet relief. it took 1 minute. i'm so lazy, i think i overappreciate when people make things easy for me. i'm like, please don't make me put any effort into my activism. anyway, i can now happily invest in their 2045 fund for people retiring in roughly...2045 (why do all the years in the millenium seem very far and futuristic? i'm like "2045--when we will all be driving spaceships?!") anyway. yes. 2045. the aggressive fund. be aggressive, be be aggressive.

so yesterday i used my two hours to take a 6 mile walk "around" lake murray. and i do love lake murray, though i must concur with a woman in my bunco group who said there isn't enough shade and it sure would be nice to be able to walk AROUND the lake. for every step you take on the lake murray path you have to know that you are committed to taking it OUT as well. because when you get to mile 3 you run into a sweet chain link protected dead end. i cry for anyone who doesnt know that. anyway, i listened to viva la vida for the first 3 miles. yes, almost an hour. maybe you think that is excessive or obsessive. you probably think that having seen casino royale 10 times is a bit much too, but i posit that it is not!

i just realized that i had a tomato on my sandwich today. and there is a huuuge tomato e coli scare going on. apaprently the office park deli hasnt savvied up to this. luckily i can still elect cobra before i die.

kung fu new job

First week at new job report: Things look promising. we haven't gotten into full gear because we are waiting for my fearless counterpart to arrive to start training in tandem. apparently the training process takes a full 8 months or so, though we start with certain classes after about 3 months. i love the activist sort of feel thus far--emails are going around about housing lawsuits and new regulations and news among the 3000 PHAs (public housing authorities) we work with. petitions to senators for more funding, etc. and, my commute and daily schedule are everything i dreamed they would be. we get off at 430, so i am generally home by 4:50. yes. the 4 o clock hour. i am dazzled by the prospects for my newfound hours. i'm thinking of trying to learn to ice skate. not that i want to be a star or anything, but it's getting hot outside and ice rinks are cool, and there is one about 15 minutes away. and i've always wanted to learn how to skate backwards. that's my goal. i have another goal which is, by the end of the year, to be able to bike to work. that is a much more ambitious goal actually. not because it is so far, but because i am not great on a bicycle and am terrified of traffic, going over cracks, bumps, passing people, trying to stop, etc. yes, virtually everything.

so, like the rest of the nation, apparently, i am addicted to the new coldplay song viva la vida. it does speak to that part of me that has been crushed and humbled, but in a rather orchestral hopeful sort of way.

so the other day i went to a birthday party and my friend's cousin was there and she is tall and incredibly thin. and she doesnt even have the decency to be awkward about it. she fully struts it like a model. she's very sweet and friendly and adorable. and this is my problem, God. if people are allowed to be that skinny shouldnt it be because they eat so little that they cant even really function? i want developmental disability and cognitive malfunction. men will still drool on them. i want them to be like "i am so hungry that my synapses cant fire." i do not want to be able to see them eat cake and talk. it's cruel. there's my disenfranchised woman complaint of the day.

we took owen to see kung fu panda yesterday, and he loved it. he started doing his 3 year old approximation of kung fu moves right after we left the theater. i highly recommend it if you have a toddler to bring. he also yelled at the screen at various points. like "stop hitting him!" when the villain was fighting the panda, Po. not as witty as a pixar movie, but definitely entertaining enough.

geeking out for the first day.

so tomorrow is my first day at work. i am pretty excited/nervous. feels like the first day of school again. i ran a bunch of errands, planned an outfit, got a french manicure. tried to upgrade my laptop and discovered that the reason my laptop is so light and small is because the ram is built in and therefore has no slot to be upgraded...this discovery had me spending some quality time, seriously--i bought flight of the conchords and lock stock and two smoking barrels while waiting, with the geek squad at the santee best buy, who were totally adorable and talked a lot of amusing trash about the el cajon best buy. the geek squad uniform of white shirt with thin black tie and black dickies is totally nerd hot, btw. i also bought some stuff at the huge bath and body works sale. do i want to smell like tuberose, magnolia, or citrus on my first day?

apparently one of my most challenging new tasks will be juggling all of my lunch dates with friends and family in the area. i have at least 6 potential daily lunch dates. not to mention, i could meet my father at subway every day (today, btw, i met my mom and some of her coworkers for lunch at our ghetto fabulous local cocos and some ladies waiting to be seated looked at my mother and said "i can't believe you arent at subway!") yes, my father is a local legend, and he has dragged my poor mother into it. he could probably run for local office as the guy who always eats at the los coches subway and talks about running marathons...for a while he had a scheme that subway should replace jarod with himself. seeing as he is an el cajon celebrity, this may be less farfetched than i once thought, but only very marginally so.

other incredibly ambitious and exciting news is that i am thinking of saving up to buy a condo or house in a year or so. obviously it's a long way off, but i had to totally restructure my budget starting now to make it a possibility. it's probably just because i want to do everything charity does, and seeing as she is a new homeowner, i'm like "i want to be a new homeowner too, daddy...NOOOOOOWWWWW!!"

yes, of course i have been watching So You Think You Can Dance. but i cant wait for it to get out of this mass tryout phase. you can only see so many really delusional people get berated by the judges and see so many petite, flexible blondes get told "you just have this amazing quality about you...you bring joy to people" much like i exoect pamela anderson brings joy. as jessie said, "that amazing quality is hair dye".

more news after the first day. wish me luck!