This would be more interesting if I had the time.

This stuff:

- working a new temp job until my 12 month gig begins. the boss is demanding and yells a lot and i sorta don't mind. the hours are 8-6. it's brutal to wake up that early every day, as the morning and i are not close friends, but who cares. money train.

- my momma's in town this weekend! with my aunt lisa! very cool. haven't seen them since christmas. they'll see the show, we'll shop around, they'll hang with the HST, and they'll meet Kev. grin grin.

- i'm working on a better body image relationship. it's an uphill battle.

- all i want in the world right now is to reclaim the path to financial wellness. and i will do it, dammit.

- next week: EXERCISE. i have not been doing enough of it. but eating healthy is going pretty well. someday it will all line up exactly as i imagine it should. and naturally, i'm aware of my body even more right now because my mom is in town. ladies, you know what i mean.

- i love cats. so what.

And coming up next....!

I got home from Brooklyn around noon this morning and have been doing verrrry little all day long. In fact, aside from exercising for an hour and a half around 8:30 this evening, I have done nothing but sit on my butt and watch delicious television all day long. I've watched three different hour long episodes of The First 48, which rivals only the various SWAT shows (e.g. Dallas SWAT, Kansas City SWAT, Detroit SWAT) in terms of exciting true-crime docu-dramas. Frankly I wish I had three more of those puppies tivo'd. Then I watched a new show called Confessions of a Matchmaker, which was a delight. That woman tells it like it is. She even outted some 41 year old guy who didn't even know he was gay until she set him up with a dude! (He didn't know he was gay, though? Come on.) I most recently just finished an inspired episode of The Best of Bridezillas. O.M.G. Those bitches is crAAAzy. You kinda wonder if the show purposely causes stressful things to happen on these people's wedding days because it's almost too convenient that in every segment, someone's florist just doesn't show up, or someone's mother-in-law is 90 minutes late to the ceremony. Regardless of whether or not these "disasters" are fabricated, the psycho control freak brides flip OUT, big time, and without fail. It's pretty uncomfortable and hideous. If I ever get married and behave even a fraction that crazy, I hope someone would have the good sense to just put me out of my misery right there. Aside from all the miserable female bridezillas, the show featured one male bridezilla, who was marrying his partner. Oh man, that dude had a screw loose. At one point, after deciding that everyone had betrayed him and was trying to steal his spotlight, he was caught wandering from room to room in his apartment yelling "It's MY DAY. This is MY DAY. IT'S NOT MY FAULT. IT'S NOT MY FAULT," over and over. Lord have mercy on us all.

I'm not a big tv watcher. Rarely home, and never home during the good tv hours. But I think I reached my quota for the month today. I've still got three Gene Simmons: Family Jewels tivo'd that I haven't watched yet, and two movies at my beck and call should I so choose. Also, I'm saving that Bridezillas show for Daniel. That gay needs to see it.

>runs back to indented spot on couch, returns remote to gentle resting place in right hand<

This weekend I'll

go to a bar to watch the Mets game with Chris, Rebe, and Kev
go to see Knocked Up, where Fanny and David will join us. yaaaay.
exercise
clean some areas of my house
rehearse
do a show
watch Kevin's show
hang out with my old friend Steve
relax

and it will probably be in that very order.

It's been a strange week that ended roughly. But I booked that freelance gig I was talking about, so that's nice. It should begin July 1. I'm broke until then, but it can only get better from here.

not working today...

Does anyone else feel uncomfortable with the relationship between Montel Williams and his psychic ghost-reader mistress Sylvia Browne? I mean, I guess I understand the intrigue, but what about her finger nails?

par

for the course.

I'm feeling crappy. After all those good times and joyful feelings, today I feel crappy. I'm tired because I've been staying up late and sleeping in really late and everything feels outta whack, I don't have a new temp job yet, and everything just feels useless today. I have to clean my room, go to the grocery store, workout, and run two errands. These all sound like things that I am NOT interested in doing. And I'm feeling bummed and blue about it and fighting every possible urge in existence to keep myself from just snuggling back into bed and doing nothing productive all day long. But I know that will make me feel even worse when all is said and done.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

And now for a public service announcement.

My new "step-sister" (my father is married to his fourth wife she has two kids) Anna is in her early teens, or maybe she's just twelve. She has a myspace page and she's pretty active on it. She's been posting her phone number for her friends and asking them to post theirs, and they do. I'm fairly disturbed by this and find myself making promises to myself about my own eventual parenting. Weird.

Adam's on his way over with a brownie and a diet snapple. Holla.

We're back!

Yo, that festival was a smash HIT. We had a blast, we got so tan, we vacationed like rock stars, and best of all, we had five packed houses, five hit shows, and we got some really stellar reviews.

Kevin came with us, the darling, and we were so glad he was there. <3 And besides being a general joy to have around, he took some really great photos of our tech rehearsal on the first day.



Charleston is a beautiful city with a lot of culture and wonderful people. The Charleston City Paper, who scored each show at the festival on a regular grading scale, gave us the only A+ rewarded to any performance. And said, "Saturday night live wishes it was as funny as the Havard Sailing Team." Here's the rest of that article...awesome:

Charleston City Paper

And this reviewer loved us too, calling our show, "just as good as you've heard it is" and our sketches as "deeply creative vignettes that are as often self-referencing (i.e. about the Harvard Sailing Team) as they are reflective of pop culture stalwarts" (and I'm one of the puppets in that marionettes sketch he praises ;).

Plus we were on the morning news program, "Low Country Live" which was one of the single most hilarious experiences of my young life.

We got to see some great comedy while we were there, too, and I even ran into my old friend Jeff Gandy who happened to be in Charleston with his really delightful show "The Fowler Family Radio Hour" which stars a bunch of Chicago improvisors who I happen to know sort of sideways-style way through the blogging community and Arnie (who I actually don't know at all, but I read his blog religiously, okay??)

Oh Charleston, how I miss thee. I loved that trip. Best trip in a long long time. Ding!

I have to get ready for rehearsal now. We're playing On the Jitney tonight at the PIT and I think there'll be an energy in the air; right back into it. And then it's Steve's b-day at the TC. And tomorrow I rest. :)

WHEEEEE!

I already love this day. Sometimes I feel anxious about loving days like today to the extent that I want to love them, because how disappointing when other days aren't like today, but who cares. I love today.

I took a nice shower this morning, my hair's all wet and curly q right now, I'm wearing something super summery with exposed upper arms(!) and short pants for summer fun. Even better, though, is that I didn't have to be here until 10am and I get to leave at 3pm. And it's sooo warm out and I really enjoy working at this job and when I leave here I've got some errands to run and laundry to finish and I'm gonna squeeze a workout in, I think. And then tonight it's shows, drinks, birthday boys, and summer fun.

I can't imagine I'll have much chance to blog while we're away. So I'll leave you with this, which is just as good as being there:

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhyessssss...

She's talkative today...

The food at those deli buffets is always slightly less edible than you want it to be. It terms of inedibility, however, nothing quite rivals the egg sandwich I got from europa this morning which was not egg whites, like I paid for, and did not have cheese in it, like I paid for, but did have an egg shell in it, which I did not pay for. I decided not to call back and complain, though. Which felt nice and relaxing.

I'm finally out of that awful Hotel Death job. I had really resigned myself to the oppression that was that experience when I was in it, but now that I'm out of it, oh MAAAAAN, FUCK you, Hotel Death. FUCK you. Life outside of you is humane. So much so that I woke up slightly hungover this morning with maybe four hours of sleep under my belt to go to fill in at my old law firm job for a couple days and actually said aloud, "I'm so excited to be going to work right now." Whhhuut. What world is this. Yesterday I was wearing corporate attire and heels, clicking a mouse a for hours and hours while not being allowed to traverse the blessed interweb. Today I'm wearing jeans, a cotton summer dress and flip flops, being paid to surf the net, work on HST bizz, and generally do whatever the eff I please, while occasionally doing some "job" related tasks that I don't remotely remind doing at all because hello, it's fun. And I didn't have to be here until 10. And it's not Hotel Death. And this chair isn't stained with something brown. Get it?

We leave for Charleston verrrrry soon! Tonight I must pack and clean and do laundry and tomorrow night I'll run some errands, go see some shows, and go to a partaaaay for some awesome dudes I know before retiring reasonably early sos I can get into that damn van at 6am on Saturday morning. Oh baby baby it's gonna be fun. And Kev's coming with us down south. That makes me pretty happy. Pretty pretty happy.

I'm so looking forward to chilling out at home tonight. I'll be there alone with my sweet kitten and it's so nice outside and there's watchable tv on and I can putter around and get mah shit done. I love nights like this.

Oh impending vacation, you make everything taste so good.

Another one!

Today is my last day at miserable temp job 2007, which, incidentally, has taken place at one of New York's fanciest hotels. If I were a better planner-ahead, and if I hadn't lost the cord that connects the camera to the computer, I would have taken some sneaky photos of the place for blog'ssake. Like, maybe I'd take a photo of one of the restaurant receipts where a glass of orange juice is six dollars and a bowl of special K is nine dollars and a cup of coffee is four dollars and a full meal can run you upwards of $1000. And, uh, I've seen the kitchen where they're preparing these things. Go to another restaurant, I beg you.

Instead, here's this photo:



I'm presently eating oatmeal.

I woke up at 5am. Daniel: "Jen. Jen. The door is open and the cat is missing." What. "We've got to go get him." By 'we' he meant 'me' because when I (not he) opened the back door, where was the cat but relaxing in his back yard garden looking like he was about to have a go down the child-size slide. Crisis averted. Or, crisis never existed. Scary, though, is that the back door was wide open. He pushed it open. The cat. Pushed the door open. Which I apparently neglected to lock when I went outside around 11pm. Details details. Can't be bothered.

My wallet's gone again also. (Ohhh, details, okay...I get it.) This time it's for real, I'm certain. I think someone slipped it out of my bag on the subway. That's never happened to me in nine years of living in New York. First I had it, then I didn't. I had a rough afternoon yesterday.

I'm thinking I need to find something. Else. Like...to....grab onto...believe in....reach back for...when...whatever...you know? Anyone follow? I don't do organized religion, so that won't work, but...something. Something.

It will be a life saving moment when I walk out of these doors tonight at 5:01pm and never return. I've hated this gig, it's hated me, and I can't wait to find some other way to spend my weekdays.

update this, keith

temp job, sketch group, improv, gym, therapy, home playing with cat, at kevin's playing with cat - that's been the bulk of it...

I saw Ricky Gervais do standup this past weekend, which was a lifetime highlight. And we performed at a bar mitzvah, another highlight.

On Saturday morning at 6am HST leaves for Charleston for one week. We'll drive the 15 hours down in a fifteen passenger van and perform seven lives shows, two radio shows, and make an appearance on the local morning news. This. Is hilarious to me. And wonderful. It will be fun. Then we come back to New York and do Sketch Fest the following Thursday. It's a busy time. I'm enjoying it.

I wish I had some other insight to share relating to anything. My brain feels like mush; perhaps this office job has been the true brain drain I anticipated it would be. I know entire days have passed that I can't account for.

Truth be told, I've felt off kilter for a few days. Something felt eerie today. That's the right word for it. I haven't had my phone for three days, I left it at Billy's, and you'd think this would be maddening, and it is, but it's also just. fine.

These guys :)

INTERNEEEEEEEEEET!!

Hi! Hi Internet! Hi! >pants, looks around< It's nice to be here.

Soooooooo, after my really confident, capable-sounding post about my wonderful new career as a temporpary office employee I landed an AWFUL temp job.

It's fine.

I can deal with it.

It's only for eight more days.

Pardon all the italics. Apparently I've been feeling stifled.

So, I can't use the internet at the new job (!), and I sit in a big room with lots of computers in it, and stained chairs, and whoa, this blows, all alone, no windows, and no talks to me or knows my name and I complete the same series of seven clicks of the mouse - over and over and over and over ad infinitum for approximately six hours long each day. The same seven clicks. Do you understand? So it's a little maddening.

And I schedule my bathroom breaks and look forward to the next song on the ipod shuffle like I'm a dog and it's Pavlov.

I'm getting through it, tho. But it's making me bonkers. I'll be going running tonight. You couldn't pay me not to.

Tick tick.

(re)arrangements...

I'm a temp now. That's my job. That's my lifestyle. I'm temping. It's officially official. I've had back to back gigs since I started temping in December. That's four jobs in a row. This is no longer a stopgap thing until I find something better. It's working out pretty well, and although the two temp agencies I'm signed up with are calling me pretty regularly with positions, two of these jobs I've had in the last few months were actually gigs I landed myself - a friend needed a favor in one situation, and in the other, I was referred to the position (by a sweet lamb) and just happened to follow-up at the right time, it seems. There's something nice about feeling in control of my destiny in that way.

I was musing a month or two ago about whether or not I could actually make this temp lifestyle work long-term in the way I need it to, as opposed to just using it as a stopgap between more career-path-oriented day jobs. I do NOT want to have a career-path-oriented day job, I never have. It's one thing to know that about myself, but it's another thing to finally accept it and quit judging myself for it. But I'm doing it - it's certainly taking some adjustment, but it's working out better than I anticipated and I'm doing it. Frankly, it feels really "right" to honor the creative-career life I've been slowly building for myself for the last couple years. And I'm now officially working a day job for no other reason than to afford my after-hours lifestyle, which involves, among other endeavors, putting in a ton of hours with HST. Things are going swimmingly for us, as usual (we're some lucky jerks), and a more permanent day job arrangement would not, in fact, be worthwhile for me right now. Strange that that's what's real, but it is. I have to take too many days/weeks off for travel with the team to commit to a permanent employer.



(photo by: The Man)

There are lots of perks to this temp set-up: varied work environments; days, even weeks, off at a time when I need to; I don't have to "invest" in some organziation I'm supposed to pretend to really believe in (which was always the most miserable part of the permanent office job experience for me - faking it); new people and situations all the time.

There are also, I'm discovering, some....not-perks: you never really get to know anyone you're working with, nor they you; you never know what to expect, so some jobs you take suck; the pay and the hours can vary a lot; the job I'm currently on sucks huge youknowwhats and I want to poke my eyes out over it. I'm not being dramatic, it bloughs. BUT GUESS WHAT. IT'S ONLY FOR THREE WEEKS! I've had annoying jobs before and I can do anything for three weeks. Best of all, they don't have to like me, and I already know I don't like them. Sweet.




p.s. I just now realized that when you update this ticker thing, it automatically updates itself in all the places you've posted it previously too. I'm not sure I care for that, but I'm not sure how to change it. I'm also not sure anyone but me would even notice/care...No wait, I am sure - no one but me will notice/care. :)

Monday.

I have the day off today. I've needed this. I slept til 12:17pm today (thanks you, Kev) and now I'm going to get breakfast. :) I'm gonna workout, do a little laundry, and exercise. Tonight I have therapy and improv practice.

We filmed on Long Island all day yesterday. It was a really long day but we got a lot done and I was pretty lucky to get to sit around and relax for a lot of the day. Other people were working the entire time.

We opened our new show on Saturday night. It went super well. More on that later.

I need this day off. I have tomorrow off too, most likely. I need that day off too. I need to be completely alone for at least a few hours. I can't remember the last time................

boring exercise content. avoid like the plague if you know what's good for you.

Alright, okay, so here's the thing. I used to have this weight loss blog, right? Some of you who read this blog might have originally read that blog and navigated here from there. Others of you, thank god, will never read that blog. It served its purpose during the time I wrote it, but there came a time when I needed to stop putting so much daily, written focus on my weight loss effort. So I retired the ol' gal and I'm glad I did. Blogging about whateverthehell suits me better now.

That said, when I had that blog it was sometimes helpful when achieving certain goals to be accountable each day to the almighty internet. And as we enter into May, I've given myself a goal of 5 workouts per week for the month. That translates to 22 workouts, some of which will be cardio, some of which will be a mix of - eh, you get the idea, you don't need the details. Anyway, my friend Jess, whose weight-loss related blog I've read almost since she began writing it, has inspired me to use the almighty internet to my advantage once again by tracking my exercise efforts here. Jess uses her blog much to her advantage in that respect, and I stole the ticker idea from her, and I admire the time she takes to keep track of these things for herself, so I'm gonna take a page out of her book (blog) and give it a go...

Since I started losing weight (I lost 100 pounds between approximately 2002 and 2004), exercise has been enjoyable for me for the most part. I started out walking and hiking and then, after a few years, I slowly graduated to long distance runs and regular weight lifting with some pilates thrown in for good measure. It worked. And after getting to a weight that made me comfortable and ultimately attempting to shift my focus from losing weight to just living a regular life, my exercise stayed pretty strong for quite some time. However, it has become less of a priority in the last few months - as I become a famous comedy celebrity. ;) Kidding. Anyway, the POINT IS, I'm gettin back in the game this month because even if one isn't trying to lose 100 pounds, one still needs to maintain one's girlish figure. Plus, it feels oh so very good to be fit and two or three workouts a week, or sometimes one or none (!) is not enough for a bathing suit.

Rain

That's Clayton and me.

My dear friend Randy fixed my computer. I'm sitting in my own bedroom typing on my own computer. I have unlimited access to my itunes, my email, my photos, my everything else and hallelujah. I owe him a six pack, for sure.

My sweet kitten is sleeping peacefully on my bed. And I'm feeling better than I was this afternoon. Some exercise did the trick. And two posts in one day! What's this?

Something that's really quite lovely, I realized on my run in the rain tonight, is that I'm genuinely pretty happy lately. I still get down and blue and I'm still a little bit of a wackadoo, but I've been sort of at peace in this nice way, lately. The lows haven't gotten low in a while. This is progress, of some sort. And I will take it.

Grouch

I lost my wallet.

And she finally deleted me as her myspace friend today, which is sad in a way I didn't expect it to be.

I finished my serial killer book.

I feel grouchy and there's not a good reason for it.

Randy might fix my computer tonight. If he does, I'll charge my ipod and go workout. Even if he doesn't, I'll go workout. This idea does not stimulate me.

I feel kinda brain dead and there's not a good reason for it.

I've been doing data entry this afternoon that makes my mind numb.

Sometimes I get really sick and tired of watching what I eat.

I'm not looking forward to my show tomorrow night. I feel like I've run out of good ideas.

I LOST MY WALLET waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. I think someone slipped it out of my bag on the subway. waaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

(update: I found my wallet.)

up to speed...

Wednesday night Kevin had a show and we all went out afterwards.
Thursday night I saw a show Daniel directed and then went to Unos Pizzeria and overate.
Friday morning I got up at 6am to drive to Vermont with HST where we did a show, ate, drank, were merry, and slept in hotel beds.
Saturday, after shopping and brunching and ordering a Vermonster at Ben & Jerrys of which I only had four bites because I have to put on a bathing suit in a month, damnyou, we drove the seven hours home and played many car games on the way.
Sunday I lounged around at Kevin's house and read 200 pages of a book I bought about a serial killer.
Today I'm working at my old music law firm job.
I have a pesky cough that makes my chest hurt and reading about killers is a good way to lose sleep.
I love cats. All cats. Name a cat, I love it. Please do not ever harm cats. Like this serial killer did.

FAME AND FORTUNE

Harvard Sailing Team has discovered that TWO of our new videos were put up on the myspace home page in the last couple weeks. This is very exciting. You know those random four videos on www.myspace.com that show up even before you login to your own profile - they change every day and they're always little shorts that myspace has randomly pulled off people's profiles? Yup. Last week Clayton and Sara's Closet Light sketch got 75,000 views! And they put another HST video up there today, except this time I'M in it!! It's called Kickball. Go watch it. Then send me checks. I'll clear out some room in my bank account for the windfall I'm expecting. ;)

(I realize that in the grand scheme of things this is not that big of a deal, but just let me have my moment. I'll be over it by noon.)

it's 12:27 of the midnight hour

Daniel and I are sitting on the couch harmonizing and he's flossing his teeth. The cat is sitting in the window and looking out, presumably, for his white cat friend. They had a row Saturday night, Floyd and the white cat, and it was drama. Floyd's a man of the evening. I respect that.

I had a show tonight, it was fun. I worked out today, it was excellent. I plan to do it again tomorrow, it will be good. It's been really warm out, I love that. I saw some radical and famous improv tonight and it was hilarious and I'm a lucky girl that I live in this town and get to see and do shit like that. Magic. I plan to go to sleep momentarily, and that will be really nice. I had a pretty good day at work today too.

My allergies are acting up big time. Everything's itchy and irritated. I can't wait to take these contacts out. Night.