The Point of No Return

Wish me luck because tomorrow I'm mailing my grad school application. I wonder how long it'll take to hear back. When I applied for undergrad it was within a week, but I doubt it'll be as fast for this. I'm pretty sure I'll get in since it's just a PA State System of Higher Education school, it's not like it's Harvard, and my undergrad GPA was good (that sounds snobby but I did undergrad at a PSSHE school so I'm allowed to say that). I'm actually more worried about what comes after I get accepted. You know, the whole coming up with thousands of dollars and doing school work thing.

I just can't stand the fact that I'm spending so much time at the front desk at work. I didn't do all I did in school to be a receptionist. It's time for a change.

Eeeeee!!!

Before Idol started, I wrote about my Idol boyfriend of '07, Tom Lowe. His audition wasn't shown in America but it was shown in the UK. Hmmm, shady. I came across his audition video and oh. my. god. he's British! I had no idea! *swoon* It's a good sign that Simon looks up while he's singing, but I like him so he won't do well. Here's his audition, blokes.

Ummm...

I made the switch and things don't look too screwed up...yet.

By the way, congrats to The Office for winning best ensemble at the SAG awards!

*Update: I want to update my template, but I'm scared. I copied it and have it saved as a text file, so I should be ok in case I royally screw up, right?

Weekend Update

I didn't do too much this weekend. In fact, after some of the TV shows I watched, I'm surprised I have enough brain cells left to type. On Friday night L. and I went out for dinner to discuss when we're flying down to see Rusty. We're flying AirTran which is officially my favorite airline because of this. Not that I had a favorite airline or ever gave any thoughts to airlines before talking about flying to see Rusty and then seeing this story.

I didn't do jack on Saturday besides clean and then after dinner I watched I Love New York on VH1. Good lord. Even I'm ashamed of myself, and I usually have no shame. I also watched some of the 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders, but that was awesome. Do you know that song 'We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off?" A man sings that! I had no idea!

It gets worse though. On Sunday I watched The Surreal Life Fame Games, My Super Sweet 16, Underage and Engaged, and 2 1/2 episodes of True Life (one was about being broke, one was about being gay, and one was about street racing.) In my defense, I was doing other things while these shows were on, like laundry, reading the paper, making lunch, etc. Who am I kidding; that doesn't make it any better. I went to Red Lobster for dinner with my parents for my dad's birthday; free meals are always good. Plus my parents were being snarky, which is always fun. It's nice not to be the only cruel bitch at the table.

Because I have absolutely nothing to write about, I leave you with The Office as a thriller.

And, since I came across this while searching for The Office as a thriller, Office Space as a thriller.

Sorry that I have to post links, my computer at work hates me and randomly decides not to let me embed YouTube into my posts.

I'm Back

Thanks, everyone, for the well wishes. Things are getting better day by day. The funeral was Saturday morning and Chris wrote a eulogy that was incredible, and I'm not just saying that because he's my boyfriend; in fact, I judge what he wrote more harshly because of that fact. It was a long, draining day for me so I can't even begin to imagine what it was like for Chris and his family.

I didn't see American Idol on Tuesday and I don't have anything to say about Wednesday's episode. I hate the audition episodes except for the Hollywood round.

I don't have much to say about The Office because I forgot to set the VCR. The dumb thing is that I was home by about 8:33 but I didn't watch too much because I just figured I'd watch the tape later. D'oh! I did have it on in the background though, and I did see Jim admit he has feelings for Pam. Maybe I'll just buy it from iTunes, although what I saw didn't look that funny.

*Update - I watched the producer's cut on NBC.com. I don't know how different it was from what aired, but it was a pretty meh episode besides Jim admitting he has feelings for Pam and Ryan's lemon(with a tilde)ade(with an accent) and his little shrug to the camera afterwards.

The Scrubs musical was freaking hilarious and I want this shirt that Turk was wearing.

Last night I made two things I've never made for dinner before: Cornish game hens and brussels sprouts. I felt sort of bad because the hens were cute.

Today was back to the daily grind with one minor problem. It took me 4 HOURS to get to work this morning. 4 HOURS!!! I left my house at 7:45 (yeah, a little bit of oversleepage there) and I pulled into the work parking lot at 11:48, starving as hell and about to piss my pants. It took 2 hours to go about 4 miles on the interstate. When I got off I thought about turning around and just taking the day off but I changed my mind because I didn't realize it would take 2 more hours to travel the 4 miles to the next exit where we could get back on. The interstate still wasn't open when I went home so I had a co-worker tell me an alternate route which took about an hour and 15 minutes. It was actually a pretty interesting drive because it was through an now-depressed steel-mining town with a bunch of defunct factories. Today I spent more time on the road than working. It was kind of cool besides the morning commute.

I'm tired as hell and I need to go to bed early because I have to open the office tomorrow and I heard the roads are going to be bad again. This morning I spent about 10 minutes chiseling the ice off the car. I hope everyone had a good weekend!

Hiatus

Chris's mom died yesterday afternoon so I'm going to be taking a brief hiatus from blogging. She was sick but it was pretty unexpected. The only solace is that she's not suffering anymore, but I know that's not exactly comforting to Chris and his family. This month has been a complete clusterfuck, even before this happened. This was the icing on the cake of suckitude. Yesterday was also Chris's older sister's birthday. His younger sister is in the Navy and was on a destroyer in the waters around some god-forsaken country. Her flight should be arriving right about now and Chris, his dad, and his sister are at the airport picking her up. I'll catch up with you guys next week.

TV Musings Part II

January 4: This episode was just average.

Nice beads, Michael

Yay, Hannah quit!

Toby the skeevy little perv.

Yay! Darryl! What the hell was he holding up and cheering about though?

Pam crying broke my heart and I was kind of hoping Jim would see her. Dwight comforting her was so sweet and of course he would attribute it to PMS.

I thought the warehouse people work for Bob Vance now.

January 11: This episode was season 2 caliber!

"“Me love you long tim."

I guess Dwight's coming back. I haven't heard anything about Rainn leaving.

I loved Michael this episode. Usually I think he's too over the top, but I liked seeing him be competent.

"Why did he leave he was such a nice guy? No he was not he was such a douche."

I think Phyllis knew exactly what she was doing.

Ryan with the black guys and Stanley laughing at him had me cracking up.

I loved Dwight pumping himself up for the sale, the slap, the phone trick, and Jim hanging up on Kelly.

Uh oh, the seed of doubt has been planted in Karen's head, just in time for it to start to bloom for sweeps week.

Guilty Pleasure Saturday #9

John Denver "Annie's Song"



I realize this song is cheesy, but I also think it's one of the sweetest love songs ever written. I can be a sap sometimes.

Brace Yourselves...

...it's going to be a bumpy season.

The always-awesome March beat me to it, but I'm still going to post it.

TV Musings

My Office musings will be posted as soon as I get around to re-watching the shows. Sorry this post is lame; work is kicking my ass.

January 4:

I had read spoilers that Carrie was leaving but I didn't realize it would be so abrupt! Not too many have people have been on the show longer than she has. I'm not too broken up about this though. I was pretty meh about Weaver.

Pratt has royally screwed up again. It seems like people are either screwing up at county general or being "superdoctor."

Shut up Sam and Sam's grandmother and Alex.

I guess Sam's new beau has some drug issues. I caught that he had the key to the drug lock-up right before that guy spewed his stomach blood all over the place.

Uncle Jesse's girlfriend is a psycho.

That's all I can remember from last week.

January 18:

Ames is back! That "Call your husband" thing was creepy. I swear to god though, if they have Abby's dad burst in the door to save them, I will track down the writers.
Alex is such a douche. As I was telling March, my parents would have kicked my ass from here to India if I had acted like that.

Sam's a hobag.

Ray, I've asked you once already; please shave the weasel 'stache.

I'm tired of the pissiness between Luka and Abby.

I read spoilers that that was Abby's dad but I guess that would have been a big holy shit moment if I hadn't.

Hopefully soon Ray and Gates will realize that the feeling they have are for each other and not Neela. And what the hell was with Ray "thanking" Pratt for his advice? I must have totally missed when Ray and Pratt ever had a conversation that didn't revolve around Pratt's ego and need to assert himself as the boss or Ray's ego and his delusion that he's a RAWKER.

We mustn't let an episode go by without mentioning Carter.

Confession

I'm not a top 40 fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I can't get enough of Nelly Furtado's song, "Say it Right."



It's so smooth and new-wavey! I think Nelly has a grating voice, but it doesn't bother me in this song. Upon researching it, I see I'm not too far off with the new-wavey thing. Apparently the song was inspired by "Here Comes the Rain Again" by the Eurythmics, which is in my top 100 favorite songs of all time. Get a better vocalist, take out the all the superfluous "heys," and rewrite some of the lyrics (by the way, I think the line in the last verse should be "another bridge that I laid," not brick) and you have an excellent song on your hands.

*Note* Chris just came downstairs and asked what the hell I'm listening to. He clearly has no taste.

New Year's Resolutions

How did I do on my resolutions from last year?

1. Quit smoking for real. - Oops.

2. Eat healthier (to me this means eating less processed food, i.e. giving up those evil Lean Cuisines that I don't really like anyway, not buying white bread anymore (even if it's X-treme), etc.) - I actually did ok on this one, but I could do better. And I did give up Lean Cuisines. Man, those things are fucking nasty.

3. Read more - Again, I did ok but I could have done better. I read 15 books: The World According to Garp, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Bastard Out of Carolina, The Glass Castle: A Memoir, Kitchen Confidential, Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, The 158-Pound Marriage, The Hours, The Corrections, Ten Big Ones, The Pelican Brief, The Chimney Sweeper's Boy, The Da Vinci Code, and Drunk With Love

4. Continue working on my cognitive-behavioral issues. - I don't think I did well with this. I'm still messed up.

5. Exercise more - Rusty and I actually went hiking a bunch of times till she moved and I did some walking on my own. I could have done a lot more though.

6. Working on easing up on some of my OCD tendencies - Nope

Now for 2007's resolutions:

1. Continue to eat better - I've cut out a lot of processed foods and I'm working on cutting out more. I also have to cut down on the fried food I eat. I only eat that shit when I eat out (which is rare for me), but I need to work on making healthier choices when I do eat out. Luckily the deli one block away from works makes awesome grilled chicken sandwiches and when I ate there last week I chose chicken corn soup over fries. Now I have to work on stopping my habit of getting grease-laden chicken wings and fries from the Chinese place when I have my period.

2. Exercise more - I need to start taking more walks and I want to work up to being able to run again. I need to do this even if I don't have anyone to do it with me.

3. Quit being so stagnant - One of my coworkers said they were talking about me at staff meeting (Greeeeat) and she pointed out that I was too smart to stay in my position for any length of time. I thought about it and she's right, hence the grad school research. I'm talking to my dad about money this weekend and I hope to apply by the middle of February at the latest. I have a tendency to stay in comfortable situations that aren't that good for me and that needs to end.

4. Stop giving a shit - I don't need to go to extremes and be like Peter in Office Space, but I really need to work on this. I'm actually pretty proud of what I have done so far. I used to get so stressed out at work because I'm a perfectionist. One of my co-workers has been out sick and a while and will probably out for a good while, leaving me bent over my desk giving work full access to fuck me up the ass. I'm now doing the work or 2 1/2 people. I just found out that my supervisor can hire someone to help alleviate some of my work, but she won't. So now I've resolved to stop giving a rat's rectum if my work isn't perfect. I don't give a shit if I'm late. I don't give a shit if I piss someone off. What the hell are they going to do, fire me? It's spreading to other parts of my life too. J. would be proud to know that I no longer have massive bouts of road rage on my way to work. High-strung Jen is about to become laid-back Jen.

Cuatro

Katie of Seldom Nice Nowadays tagged me.

FOUR jobs I have had:

Dietary aide at a hospital
Personal care assistant at a nursing home
Bank teller
Family advocate

FOUR movies I could watch over and over:

Pulp Fiction
Say Anything
The Princess Bride
Wayne's World


FOUR places I have lived apart from where I live now:

Dorm at college
Apartment at college
My parents' house
Ghetto apartment in York

FOUR TV shows that I love:

The Office
The Simpsons
Freaks and Geeks
Good Eats

FOUR places I have been on holiday:

Myrtle Beach, SC
New York City
Washington, DC
Niagara Falls

FOUR websites I visit daily:

The Weather Channel
Bloglines
Television Without Pity
the website I use for work

FOUR favorite foods:

anything with crab
filet mignon
cheese fries
mussles


FOUR places I would rather be right now:

London
New York
DC
Boston

FOUR books I enjoy reading over and over again:

I don't usually read books more than once, but if I did:
1984 by George Orwell
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb
The World According to Garp by John Irving

FOUR CDs that never leave my regular rotation:

The Cure Disintegration
Depeche Mode Songs of Faith and Devotion
Styx Greatest Hits
Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon

Less Talk, More Action

Ok, I've finally decided. I'm going to go for my MS in Library Science at Clarion University. I chose Clarion because MSLS programs are few and far between. The only schools in PA are Clarion, Drexel, and Pitt, none of which are within driving distance. Drexel's program isn't what I want and Pitt doesn't have an online program. The University of Maryland also has a program, and it's within driving distance from York (which doesn't help as I'm working in Harrisburg), but the school itself is more expensive and it'll be even more since I'm out of state. Clarion has an online program and a satellite campus in Harrisburg.

I think I might start in the spring of '08. I could do fall '07 but I have to look into grants and loans and taking the GRE if I need to (and thankfully I don't think I do). I don't have the first clue about how to pay for school since my parents paid for my undergrad, for which I am eternally thankful. I'm not looking forward to having student loans, but I only have about $200 on my credit cards and the only other debt I have is an interest-free car loan from my dad. When I go to work tomorrow I have to talk to my supervisor about the possibility of having evening classes and not being able to work at night. Obviously I have no idea what night my classes would be, but I'd rather take care of that now than have to panic because the class I need is only on a Thursday evening.

My goal is to do more research on the school and degree requirements by the middle of this month and to know what to do about the financial aspect and have my application ready to go by the end of this month, and if it's ready by then I might as well go for the soonest semester possible. The only possible roadblock is that if I want to do 100% online (which I would prefer), it's a cohort program, and I think it's full till '08, but that's where the research comes in. Wish me luck as I prepare to embark on my journey as a coffee- and cigarette-fueled grad student.