it just gets old sometimes

grr. so I know I have a common name. I think at last count I could name at least five people who shared my not-so-original moniker. one or two of those people even had the same middle initial (J, in case you're wondering).

so it should come as no surprise when I meet another Jennifer Kim. or people mention that they know someone with my name. or people confuse me with another Jennifer Kim they've met at some point in their lives.

for some reason, though, since I've moved to Austin, there are two things that irritate the fucking hell out of me:

1. there is a woman on Austin's City Council that shares my name. I know nothing about this woman, but I think her one claim to fame is that she passed some ordinance making it okay for dogs to hang out in outdoor areas of restaurants (or something like that). you can read more about her here. the ultimate insult, though, was when someone mistook me for her (after he heard me say my name to another person, he interruped me to tell me his name and where he had met me). I (obviously) set him straight and set off fuming b/c! bitch please! woman isn't even cute! *huff*
2. there is a woman in my company's Chicago office that is named Jennie Kim. that's her official name, that's her email address, that's how she's listed in the system. but I get calls and emails for her CONSTANTLY. and people always laugh when I respond with forced politeness that they must have me mixed up with Jennie Kim, I don't work in media, and I don't work in the Chicago office. I think the extra insult here is that I've never liked the name Jennie (or Jenny, for that matter). now Jen is fine, you can call me that until the proverbial cows come home. but Jenny? hell f'ing no. sorry. no dice. and no, I don't have the details on the WSRX-JLA buy or the schedule of spots in the Spokane market from last week. GO AWAY AND DON'T COME BACK.

phew. that felt good. now back to work (three posts in one day, can you tell that someone's procrastinating?)...

comic relief

so I'll leave client names out of this b/c I am professional like that, but I've had some changes at work and am working on some new accounts...

...and although it is bittersweet in certain ways, you have to admit that there is nothing funnier than receiving a legitimate piece of business e-mail with a subject line that reads "Input for Toilet Project."

...you couldn't make this shit up if you tried, dude (pun intended).

is my career going down the drain?

am i flushing away my future?

should i start praying to the porcelain god?

oh man, the bad jokes just keep on a-comin'...

you mean i actually have to go back to work?

thanksgiving was a gloriously long and sumptuous break from reality, filled with family, old friends, and delicious food (the three F's that i treasure most). it felt like a legitimate vacation, a true escape from my daily routine here in the ATX, and now that i am back and facing a towering pile of work i feel my brain has gotten rusty in the past several days -- instead of writing a POV and wondering about target audiences, can't i just worry about whether the sweet potatoes are whipped enough? no? alas. it was worth a shot.

a few highlights from the wknd:

first and foremost, the delicious thanksgiving dinner. my parents hosted thanksgiving this year (for the first time ever), and my mom cooked her inaugural turkey (affectionately dubbed theodore, or teddy for short). we smothered olive oil, we sprinkled spices, we stuffed cavities, we hovered by the oven, we worried... and the result was delicious. roasted turkey, mashed sweet potatoes, green beans sauteed with slivered almonds and wild mushrooms and some shallots, corn muffins, two kinds of stuffing, fresh cranberry sauce, an apple tart and pumpkin pie, vanilla ice cream, a few token korean dishes (heh), etc etc etc... yum.

then there was brunch with my high school buddies at a place called "eggspectation" (dare i say that the food was speggtacular?), girls i've known and loved for over a decade. at one point i looked around the table and felt impressively inadequate. i was surrounded by one soon-to-be-JD from upenn that will clerk for a judge trying terrorism cases, one masters-of-education girl that is saving the world one naughty kid at a time (man those naughty kids make me laugh), and three (three!) future MDs that will dole out meds to psychiatric patients, deal with infectious diseases and handle emergencies. and then there was me. with my bachelor of arts in english. that works for the man and makes ads for a living. sigh. stupid magnet high school with its overachieving dorks.

and of course i can't forget the wedding of a family friend, in which i managed to sing a song that is actually a duet and half of which is sung in italian. i know! didn't you know that i'm italian and can split my voice in two? well clearly you don't know me very well. i am an italian-singing, two parts managing wedding singing beast. in that vein, i also came up with a brilliant business plan... i am going to open a half-half consulting practice, half of which will be all things wedding (i can bridesmaid, i can sing, i can play piano, i can coordinate, i can plan, i can sorta-kinda do calligraphy... i've got to get SOMEthing out of all the weddings i've done) and half of which will be getting people into grad school (so far i've got a 3 for 3 success ratio). it will be called "dreamz r us" to help people realiZe their dreamZ whether those dreamZ are weddingZ or buZiness school.

...not a good idea? maybe i'll stick with working for the man for now while i finaliZe my plan.

i will end this post with a shout-out to my awesome cowboy, who managed to survive my week-long absence without dying. i walked in the door yesterday fully expecting to see a floating fish body and steeling myself for the inevitable fishy funeral... but no! he was still alive and kicking! swimming around his bowl with a vengeance, showing me his fins and darting away every time i came too close to the bowl surface. well played, cowboy. well played indeed.

home sweet home

excuse the lack of posts while i bask in the glory that is visiting home, eating my mom's food, feeling a real winter, seeing old friends, and enjoying the trytophan-filled goodness that is thanksgiving turkey.

hope everyone has a good holiday.

dreams really do come true!!!

i got to clean my bathtub this wknd. it was everything i'd hoped for, and then some (especially inhaling the noxious fumes of my hard-core cleansing products).

to continue the boring theme that i've established (hi, welcome to my blog. sit back and let me bore your pants off), i'm here to talk about the weather (no, wait! don't click away! come back!).

ok, kidding. well, sort of. i'm just intrigued in this whole texas winter thing. it's chilly in the morning (40s), chilly enough to warrant a light coat, but then it warms up and hits high 60s/70 during the day, and what with the sun is doing its bright/warm thing, you feel rather sheepish carrying a coat around and end up schlepping it all over the place instead... which, overall, is a very bizarre and disorienting situation to someone that is more used to the ass-cold that one associates with the winter season.

what's an east coast girl to do?

this wknd i did a lot of sleeping, a lot of laundry, a lot of errand-running and a lot of jogging outside to take in the golden rays of the texas sun. is it true, then? have i truly succumbed to the religion of boredom? (our mantra: your god can beat up my god? that's nothing, mine can put you to sleep. who's your daddy now?!) the most thrills i got this wknd were when i slept all day on saturday (it's like our version of church) and when i went out for a bit on sat night (when i felt like a boring old curmudgeon again b/c the party i was with was all up in arms about some drama or another i was all "hi, i'm not interested in your stupid immature drama, let's just have a drink and have fun and stay away from the drama that threatens to overtake this otherwise lovely evening").

oh, and i also learned that i am a bad painter. in a stroke of design genius (inspired by an old episode of "queer eye for the straight eye," if truth be told), i decided that instead of painting a wall i would do a triptych of solid-colored canvases. oh the bold strokes of red! oh the splashes of color! it will be simple but brilliant!

...but apparently painting three canvases red requires more skill than i require. canvases #2 and #3 don't look too bad because i had sort of got the hang of things by then but #1 is definitely a bit strug(gling). you know you're lame when you can't even paint a blank canvas one solid color.

perhaps this blog should be re-named "jen sleeps in texas?"

totally worth the click

posting twice in one day to bring you this fantastic website:

http://settleforbrian.com/

you have to give the man some credit for the refreshing honesty.

holy lame-o batman

sorry i haven't been posting much. you would have cried fat tears of boredom if i had indeed decided to post everyday, b/c you'd have been reading entries like "hi. today i went to work. i was really tired from all the travel, so i cleaned email and did timesheets all day. then i went home and cooked dinner" or "hi. today i went to work. i had a lot of meetings, and then i almost killed a few people and jumped off a tall building, but aside from that no new news. cheerio!" or "hi. today i went to work. then i came home and cleaned my fish bowl and it smelled like rancid ass. i was sad. but i bought some new bowl cleaner and am hopeful it will mitigate the issue of the rancid ass odor. wahoo wa!"

boring, right?

oh but it gets better.

so the entry for yesterday would have started off on a very similar boring note. hi. today i went to work. i had a few big meetings and some stressful things but otherwise it was fun. i had some delicious vegetable lasagna for lunch. then i went to watch a movie with some friends. it was cold outside. [insert typical joke about texans not being able to handle the cold here] then i went home and watched the DVR'ed grey's anatomy [insert sandra oh joke here].

still bored, right?

prepared to get even bored-er.

because last night? whilst snuggled up in the loving embrace of my wonderful bed? i had this dream?

WHERE I WAS CLEANING MY BATHTUB.

holy crap. it doesn't get any lamer than that, does it? fast times over here in ATX, people. aren't you sad you're missing out?

in lieu of a real post

i present you with a random assortment of pics from my latest biz trip:















sailing out of NYC at dusk
















gastronomic happines, bahamian style

















boats at rest

day off

today was our first real "day off" on this cruise, since every other day has had at least a few meetings or business meals to handle. my co-worker actually had to leave the cruise this morning to attend to some other business back in NYC, so I was on my own for most of the day -- which was actually a welcome respite, since we've had to share a room and spend nearly every waking hour together. I had stayed out late the night before partying with the crew in the local bar (we docked in Nassau, Bahamas overnight last night) and managed to sleep in a bit this morning, which was delicious (if there was a World Championship for Sleeping, I think I could be a serious contender). after we parted ways at the Nassau pier, I hopped in a taxi and headed over to the beach. two hours disappeared as I dozed on a cushiony lounge chair in the soft white sand, listening to the rhythmic lapping of the aquamarine water and distant sounds of kids playing.

at this point I was RAVENOUSLY hungry ("lay off me I'M STARVING" -- for all you SNL fans out there) and decided to scope out some delicious seafood (which is exciting enough for a foodie like me but even more exciting given the fact that my client is vegetarian and I would have felt bad suggesting a seafood place had she still been there). I talked to a couple of the locals (more support for my theory that being relatively young, female, bikini-clad and alone tends to improve the service you get, regardless of what country you're in) and heard about an area called the "fish fry" where they have a handful of restaurants with all the freshest seafood.

I ended up at a place called the "seafood haven" with a booth all to myself on their upstairs back deck. their motto was "it's so fresh that to get any fresher you'd have to go deep down and spear it yourself" (or something along those lines) and let me tell you, it did not disappoint. I started with an ice-cold Bahamian beer and a cup of fresh conch chowder. the entree itself was a huge platter of fresh grilled grouper with onions and bell peppers, a pile of rice and beans and a few plaintains. seriously? freaking delicious. the grouper was so fresh it was practically still swimming on my plate, and they gave me several wedges of lime to squeeze onto everything (as well as some hot sauce). I was in seafood heaven and would have eaten every single morsel had it been humanly possible (it wasn't -- trust me). the whole area was just charming -- lots of shacks selling fresh conch, seafood, drinks, the whole deal... all with a cool breeze blowing through and the warm sun shining down (it was about 80 degrees today -- warm but not too hot).

I took a long walk along the shore back to the downtown Nassau area and poked around the shops for a bit (best part was this market where practically everything was knock-off Gucci/LV bags -- felt like I was in georgetown or NYC) before getting back on the ship. now it's catch up on email time and go to the gym time before probably doing some work tonight.

oh, and one more edict for the future of the American people before I forget -- white people? please? STOP GETTING YOUR HAIR BRAIDED. DO NOT LET YOUR DAUGHTERS GO THROUGH WITH THIS TRAVESTY. you look RIDICULOUS. and by ridiculous I mean STUPID AND UGLY.

thank you, that is all. oh, one more thing -- thank God scary Rumsfeld is out (although did Bush really HAVE to make his nepotism so blatantly obvious by picking another TX buddy?). and thank God Bush's people are starting to lose control in the Congress -- seems like some of our fellow Americans have actually started to pay attention to what's going on in the world around them and finally decided to do something about it.

... said the girl who's on a cruise ship all week and therefore did not vote. d'oh.

whilst sailing to the bahamas...

a few thoughts on the future of america:

• if our people don't lose some serious weight and continue to look like beached whales while they sit out by the pool, then i should not have to look at them. not that i am some swimsuit model, but seriously? put that shit away. it's nasty. i'm not talking about a bit of cellulite here or a bit of a bulge there, i am talking about out-and-out, body parts that are so big that you can barely walk, who-knows-you-could-be-hiding-chicken-legs-in-those-rolls-of-fat type of fat. gross. and PLEASE, i bet of you, stop taking the bloody elevator to go up or down one deck. it's called the stairs. they're good for you, i promise.
• if our children don't stop being ridiculously obnoxious and irritating, i may not ever have any. so seriously. stop being unforgivably bratty and start behaving. apparently this week is teacher-week for the state of new jersey, and it seems like the entire under-16 population of the great state of new jersey has decided to sail with us this week and make it their sole purpose in life to irritate the hell out of me.
• if you've smoked to the point where your voice sounds like sandpaper and you can't complete an entire sentence without hacking a lung, you MIGHT want to think about that cigarette before you light up for the umpteenth time in one hour. i'm just sayin'. listening to you speak should not make me fear that your lungs are going to end up on the conference room table.

a positive note: you'll never guess who i encountered yesterday as we were leaving a work function in the pan-asian restaurant on-board. i had heard rumors that he was on this ship but had yet to see him, so i wasn't sure if the rumor held any truth. but yesterday, leaving the teppenyaki grill room in a blue track suit, i saw none other than the man in charge of "run's house," the reverend himself of run DMC fame. and when i said "hi, reverend" and gave him a tentative smile he nodded at me and said "bless you, child."

i've been blessed! by reverend run simmons himself!

and thus, my business trip becomes complete.

halloween shenanigans

I make a very convincing Cristina Yang, no? with the curly hair (well, "curly" is a relative term when you have hair like mine... might have to settle for "wavy" instead)? and the ... asian-ness? and the scrubs and nametag? wouldn't you trust me to operate on you? to do a running whipstitch, perhaps? to save my injured-hot-surgeon-boyfriend and to make Izzy realize that she still wants to be a surgeon?




















[surgery, anyone?]

some drunk girl on 6th street took a look at me and said "OMG! you look JUST like her!"

....

right, because I'm such a dead ringer for the lovely Sandra Oh:









here's one of the whole team. bring on the medical emergencies and the soap opera-esque drama, stat!















[from L to R: Meredith, Izzy, McDreamy, Cristina]

hope everyone had a happy Halloween.

BREAKING NEWS

we have major developments over here in austin today, people. brace yourselves. are you ready? okay, here is the big news:

today is the first day that i am wearing REAL SHOES (boots, in case you were wondering, although sadly not of the cowboy persuasion) with REAL SOCKS and a REAL SWEATER.

that's right, people, you heard it here first. as the guy on NPR said this morning, summer in texas is officially over and we are heading into a stretch of cold weather where temperatures might get as low as the low 50s (the horror!) and possibly even the HIGH 40s (say it ain't so!).

now that thanksgiving is practically around the corner, i have to put away my tank tops and flip flops and start wearing clothes with actual sleeves and shoes that actually zip shut instead of shoes that just slide on and can show off my pedicured toes.

... but not for long, though, b/c within a few days i'll be on another business trip that will involve cruising around in the crystal-blue waters of the bahamas... which means, then, that the tank tops and flip flops and pedicured toes don't have to be retired completely -- they just need to be relocated to the side of the closet for the time being until i need to retrieve them for my business travels.

heh.