who's ready for some friday fun? huh? HUH?

oh man. sometimes i am a nerd. a competitive-ass nerd who likes to try and beat my own score.

today's diversion: a typing test

my best score was 160 wpm with zero mistakes. that's right bitchessssss....!

must... stop... taking... typing... test

it's been an unproductive day anyway, so why not blog?

i've spent the past four days holed up with over 700 advertising brand planners in south beach and am surprised to report that i have returned in one piece. our industry cracks me up - bunch of self-important people that sell things for a living yet somehow manage to think they are simultaneously orchestrating world peace and shaping global pop culture with the sheer brilliance of a 30-second TV ad or a cool e-mail marketing campaign. to a certain extent, advertising does reflect certain human truths and can connect with people in a very real way, but we're still being paid by a client to try and get you to DO something or THINK something... it's not exactly something that we did for the good of humankind.

[side note: we made a trip to gloria estefan's restaurant, and while i was quite satisfied with my mojitos, i have to say that the food was underwhelming. she should stick to making rhythms that are gonna get you.]

ahem. so anyway. i am now back to my workplace of choice, eyes glazed over, staring at the screeen of my laptop and willing my brain to produce some reasonably constructive and useful thoughts during normal business hours. it's not going too well. i've managed to map out the million things i have to do before getting on the road AGAIN (and to miami again, although not south beach this time) but have only accomplished one thing so far.

instead i will share with you my long-promised second installment of Why Jennifer Is Stupid Sometimes.

[oh the joy! the sigh of relief! the releasing of bated breath!]

the caveat is that this story is not nearly as humiliating or entertaining as Why Jennifer Is Stupid Sometimes, Part I, so don't be all disappointed at the end when you're not as amused as you were last time, okay?

setting: a typical hot and sunny austin evening. i decide to be good and go for a jog after work, so i snap on my new hand-me-down silver mini ipod (a gift from me mums), lace up my sneakers and set off into the steamy evening, excited to see what gifts of musical distraction my little "shuffle songs" button will bring me tonight. first up: "crazy" by gnarls barkley. cool! i love this song! get inspired by driving beat, jog jog jog, sing along under breath. good times. next up: "crazy" by patsy cline. huh, that's funny. two "crazy" songs back-to-back, what are the odds? and this one's a bit slow to keep up the pace of the jog, but still, it's a goodie. jog jog jog, sing along under breath, etc. next: "crazy in love" by beyonce. ok really. this is getting silly. who's playing a trick on me? three crazy songs in a row?

it really took me three entire songs before i realized that my shuffle feature had been turned off and i was merely listening to the songs in alphabetical order, by song title. d'oh! i felt ridiculously stupid.

almost as stupid as this story. oh well. at least i followed through on my promise. mental note not to pursue a career in stand-up comedy.

more stupidity to follow, i'm sure...

ATX through the eyes of another

when you move to a new city, you don't realize quite how comfortable you've become until you're faced with the prospect of visitors and you're forced to play hostess in a city you thought you barely knew. but then you start showing them around, and explaining that this is the infamous 6th street where college kids and people who think they're still in college get wasted on $1 long island iced teas and roam the streets in drunken zig-zags, oh, over here is the state capital built out of rose granite and is bigger than the nation's capital b/c that is just how these crazy fucking texans do, and here is the flagship whole foods which is seriously food heaven on earth, with rows and rows of brightly-colored produce (completely organic, of course).

today i put on my best tourist hat and set out eagerly with my dear friend naomi, who is in town visiting for the wknd. after a true mexican meal last night @ the uber-laid-back guero's (complete with margaritas and chips & queso and multiple trips to the salsa bar and a flirty waiter), we woke up refreshed and excited and ready to hit the town.

first stop: jo's coffeehouse, my fave place to fuel up. it's right across the street from my yuppie apartment, and it's a VERY austin coffee shack with a patio and live music and water dishes for all the dogs that hang out there. iced coffees in hand, we rushed downtown to the visitor center to get on our duck tour with tour guide hap and harold the duck. oh yes, no need to read that sentence again - we volunTEERed to get on a cheesy-ass duck tour. and it was hilarious. decked out in our duck bill lanyards that we were encouraged to quack at every passerby, we roamed around downtown austin and saw all the sights before plunging into lake austin for a quick float. it was cheesy as all get out but actually a really fun and efficient way to check out downtown austin.

next stop: a tour of my office for nay (who thought it felt like disneyworld - more like disney hell if you work there, ok, just kidding, sort of), a tour of the aforementioned food nirvana @ whole foods and then onto the delicious z'tejas for some desperately-needed refreshments. this is one of my fave austin restaurants - service that is cheerful and friendly but still efficient, awesome, fresh food and funky art everywhere. then back to my apt to change so we could head over to barton springs pool - a spring-fed pool that is a true austin landmark. there was some GREAT people-watching there (including a topless woman, a guy clad in a tiny, tiny thong - who i think was super-gay, but he honestly had a fantastic ass, and a guy whose beard was so thick you really couldn't tell if he had a face under there).

quick stop for some amy's ice cream (another austin legend) and now we're back at my place for showers before heading out into hill country for some texas bbq (after we stop by congress bridge to see the bats). nay's out, so i gotta roll, peeps - have a great wknd.

grr

i had written this really long, really funny post about Sometimes Jennifer Is Stupid Story #2... and it seems to have poof! disappeared (like some of my friends - quick, name that tune!).

as soon as i get over my anger at having lost the post, i will do my best to re-create it.

stupid... blogger... @#*&#$!

also: kill me now.

i mean seriously. what the F is this about.

texas summer in full effect.

ATX = the new LAX?

sorry for the lack of updates, peeps. i think i'm getting sick, and of the four brain cells that seem to still be operational, two are pretending to work and two are wondering if that airborne stuff really works or if it's all just a clever marketing guise (b/c i'll be damned if i submit to the trickery of my own industry). and oh yeah, it's 11:17 a.m., i just rolled into work about 20 mins ago and am now eating oatmeal and blogging at my desk.

oh hi... you can leave my Best New Employee award over there, on the corner of the desk. thanks.

but!!! that is NO EXCUSE to leave you all in the dark about my wknd of celebrity encounters. yes, folks, all the rumors that you hear about ATX as "the third coast" and the new hot spot and the hubbub for all things creative and artistic and fantastic - it's all true!

ahem. for those of you readers (total population = 3? 4? 5 on a good day?) who suffer from ADD, the super-succinct summary (hey there S sounds - consonance? alliteration? oh man, my english degree is cringing in embarrassment. i think it's alliteration) of my wknd is that i drank a lot and saw some famous people. the end.

the slightly-longer, more drawn-out version is that i was having dinner on sat night with some co-workers at a sushi restaurant called kenichi, one of austin's "see and be seen" places... the idea of which cracks me up, but it's a nice place and their sushi is decent (albeit slightly overpriced) and they make a good french martini, so i've been there a few times. we're sitting at a booth and having a grand ole time when my co-worker nick leans over and says sotto voce, "guys, don't all stare at once, but lance armstrong just sat down at the next booth."

well this was cool, because lance armstrong is obviously a well-known celebrity and world-class athlete and charitable dude, etc etc etc, and since he lives in austin i was hoping i'd have a sighting sooner or later. he looks just like he does in the photographs - tall and wiry and all-american. was admittedly disappointed that fellow austinite matthew mcconaughey was not with him, but still, yay, woo hoo, cool.

BUT. IT GETS BETTER, OH YES IT DOES. toward the end of the meal i excused myself for a quick bathroom break. as i returned to our table from the ladies' room, i happened to take a subtle look at the armstrong booth. the guy across from lance armstrong was wearing jeans and a baseball cap, and as i was walking by, he happened to be adjusting his baseball cap. as he lifted it off his head i was hit with the sudden realization that HOLY SHIT THAT IS JAKE GYLLENHAAL people!

he is really, really cute. kinda short-looking, but totally hot in that guy-next-door-who-happens-to-be-fucking-hot kind of way.

you will be relieved (disappointed?) to know that i did not do anything embarrassing and let them finish their dinner in peace, although i was seriously tempted to reach over my head and muss jake gyllenhaal's hair (because that's how close i was to him - our backs were to each other).

ATX, man. it's where the party is. who wants to visit me NOW, bitches?!

so i'm easily amused. so kill me already.

i found this headline to be really, really amusing. what it says for the level of sophistication of my sense of humor, i have no idea (i'm guessing not much), but i totally giggled when i saw this headline.

good lord, woman, tell me the headline already! i'm dying to know!

what constitutes "news" is just such a weird phenomenon. having advice on how to clean one's grill butted up near the updates on the bombing in beirut is just such an odd thing. i guess mass media has to have lots of different ways in order to capture lots of different people (or even speak to the varied interests of one individual - hell, i clicked on both links), but when you think about it for a minute it still strikes me as strange.

in which i come clean

a new friend i made in austin told me that i come across as a very composed person -- the type of person who can always come up with some witty response and react to whatever you throw my way without losing my cool. but i am here to tell you that while yes, it is true that i am generally the shit, this is not always the case (i know, i know, try to contain your shock).

because i know you all will love me despite the stupid things i sometimes do, and because i like to entertain you -- i hereby present you with two very recent occasions in which i was not exactly the smooth operator you usually know me to be.

STORY #1: OH-SO-PROFESSIONAL
on monday i wore jeans and a white button-down shirt to work. classic, eh? i tried to make it somewhat interesting by adding a turquoise-bead necklace (totally fake plastic bead type things... what's up banana republic jewelry). i hadn't worn that particular white shirt in a while, but it was the only white button-down that was clean and relatively unwrinkled, and that's what i was in the mood to wear, damn it. it was during a small one-on-one meeting with my BMW boss that i was quickly reminded why this shirt is not in frequent rotation. i happened to look down and found that the button across my chest was completely unbuttoned and that my shirt was practically half-off... which, ok, may be a slight exaggeration, but what with the fact that i had intentionally left the top buttons undone to show off my fabulous necklace the sudden opening of that crucial breast-restraining third button was quite risque (must have been my magnanimous breasts... umm... right... i'll just keep telling myself that). he and i had been embroiled in a serious discussion about BMW's decision to bring the 1-series to the united states and how we should be preparing for the advertising campaign that will introduce it, and i'm sure i was earnestly making some point or another when i noticed Mr. Rogue Button With A Mind Of Its Own (or is it Miss Rogue Breasts With Minds Of Their Own?). i had paused in horror during the earnest speech when i noticed what had happened, so i had no choice but to quickly laugh it off with some lame joke about how that's not good protocol for a meeting, button up, and keep on talking. i think he laughed politely at my weak joke and kindly pretended it had never happened, but i was most definitely mortified.

smooth, huh?

STORY #2 will have to wait, because that story took longer than i expected to tell, and i really have to get back to work now.

oh the suspense!

RNYC 2K6

how to create a fantastically relaxing wknd away:

begin with a fabulous group of beloved old college buddies. add piles and piles of delicious home-cooked food and copious amounts of chilled alcoholic beverages. add one (1) pimped out boat and tons of good jams (note: this recipe can be customized for eco-dorks by adding in extra rotations of a certain gnarls barkley song). once these elements have been confirmed, start boozing constantly. enjoy the company of good friends while cruising around lake wylie on the aforementioned pimped-out boat or sitting around the mattingly fire pit with homemade desserts. enjoy with generous amounts of warm carolina sunshine (not to be confused with scorching texas heat) and a healthy dollop of mattingly hospitality.

bonus points for all things redneck, including, but not limited to:
1) wearing wifebeaters that come down mid-thigh
2) using beer coozies
3) listening to country music (well, as much as you can take)
4) showing up at the door draped in a confederate flag
5) drinking your beer with lots of twang (purchased by yours truly at a gas station - yee fucking haw)

combine everything, add in the 25th birthday of a very dear friend, and you have all the elements of a true Redneck Yacht Club meeting.

for those of you who try this at home - note that you will lose points for any of the following:
1) having to fly standby and turning a 3-hour journey into a 12-hour one
2) losing your wedding ring in the lake
3) being a snoring bedmate that hogs the bed
4) getting the mattingly dogs drunk by spilling wine everywhere

because they're that cute

one more pic of all the kim kids together, with a few big (and not as cute?) kim kids thrown in for good measure:










those be some good genes, dude.

(check out what i wrote on our cake)

wholesome family fun

i'm back from a whirlwind wknd in DC, most of which was spent with the fam. to the buddies i didn't get to see while i was there, my sincerest apologies, but most of my time was taken up be extremely cute and rambunctious little children. and when i say extremely cute, i mean exTREMEly cute.

to wit:











ahem:










i mean really, check out this muscle man:













i think i need to go start reproducing and populating the world with beautiful mixed-race children. anyway, it was a great long wknd, even though it felt too short. i had ended an hellishly long week with a really good fri night (miss mary lorraine decided to grace the ATX with her presence, and we all went out for mexican food and dancing) and a few major deliveries (specifically, a new sexy-ass digital camera to replace the one that got jacked in DC and a washer/dryer set) and was looking forward to the wknd with eager anticipation.

and it did not disappoint. i flew in sat night to have dinner w/the fam on our back deck, and then went out on sat night to play with some high school buddies. sun and mon were pretty much spent with the fam, although i was able to take a few breaks to enjoy some delicious indian food with the one and only katherine kim, dear buddy of nearly two decades, and then again on sun night to hang out w/more peeps at some new DC spots. tues before i left we had CRABS and corn on the cob and steamed shrimp and drank cold beer. it was pretty much heaven which meant, naturally, that i would soon be spending some time in the pits of hell shortly thereafter... hell being the tarmac of BWI airport, where i spent an ungodly 2.5 hours sitting on the runway and trying not to kill anyone.

it was a late return to austin and a rough day at work today, but it was worth it. one more day at work and then i'm off to charlotte for Redneck Yacht Club 2k6!!!!!