Pack pack pack!

Peetie is here and I'm sick of packing for my trip. My family is going to Connecticut for a fourth of July family reunion. Then I plan to go the the NYC area to see Rina and Jackie.

I am NOT looking forward to getting myself back to Boston next Wednesday. I'm taking this 4 1/2 hour Chinatown bus from NYC to Boston then I have to take the L to the airport and then sit on a plane for 5 hours. Good thing Peetie and I went to the library the other day. I got myself Dave Barry's second novel Tricky Business. I hear it isn't as good as his first, but Big Trouble was so good I don't think it can be topped anyway.

I've been on a swimming kick. Swim, swim, swim. I'm getting a lot better. I think when I get back I'll try to do an entire lap of butterfly. I don't have the patience to do any one type of exercise for very long so it works running on a treadmill for a while, then swimming. I'm thinking of seeing if I can drop into a Stanford adult gymnastics class. I'd love to get some skills back and the Ford Center is so awesome.

Getting up tomorrow for an 8:20am flight is going to be painful. I usually can't fall asleep until 3. I better not have a middle seat.

Baby cow and bitter chocolate

My dad just got back from Italy and he brought me home some Dutch chocolate. YUM.

Speaking of Italy, my mom and I went to a yummy Italian restaurant on California Ave last night. I had this amazing ravioli type pasta stuffed with chicken and veal. Mmmm...baby cow... :)

Michelle and I went swimming today at the Y. My endurance is pathetic. I tried a lap of butterfly and after 5 strokes I gave up. I've always had pretty good swimming form, but I just don't have the endurance to swim lap after lap. I'll probably try again though.

Gymnastics Olympic trials are on in half an hour. I am super-duper excited!

Blech! I just tried this 100% cocoa chocolate my dad got in Italy. It was pretty much like baker's chocolate, but marketed as a candy bar. I think I'm gonna be tasting that for a while.

Color Changes

I just got back from Peetie's where we fooled around with some things on my blog as you can probably tell. It was so much fun! I got to use more html :) We spent so much time trying out different colors and getting rid of the stupid "I power blogger" thingy on the side bar. This probably won't be the end of changes...

We also went to Border's this evening to look at some Dummies books for computer stuff. There are SO MANY dummies books now. I looked online and there's even "Breastfeeding for dummies" and "Beekeeping for dummies". I have a $30 gift card there that I got for graduation from my neighbor/former piano teacher who is old and fairly proper. What I really want to get is the new Dave Barry book called "Boogers are my Beat", but I feel bad using the gift for a book with a title like that. It would be a pretty awkward thank you note... I still haven't decided what I'm going to get with it so if anyone has any appropriate suggestions, let me know!



I spell checked this entry and finally forced it to learn "Peetie", "blog" and also "boogers".

Daily Doings

-I signed up for an online HTML class! I'm way excited :) I've spent so much time looking for jobs and many of them want people who know HTML so I thought I'd learn it. I had to get a geocities account for it so once I'm a little farther along in the class I'll give you the address. So far all it says is "BODY BODY BODY".

-I went to Peetie's today and made baked alaska with her and her sister and a few of her friends. I ate so much cookie batter in the baking process that I was too full to eat any of the finished product.

-I was still too sore today to go to the gym. Tomorrow for sure.

-Peetie has a blog!

Wushu me!

I Wushued today! Wushu is a Chinese martial art. Kinda like graceful karate. Peetie and her sister have been taking a class at Stanford for a few quarters so I joined them today to give it a try. I am going to hurt A LOT tomorrow.

I baked again the other day! Peetie, Sandra and Nancy came over and we made yummy brownies from scratch. We even made them mint, my favorite! But unfortunately we forgot to put salt in. Oh well...the batter was still really good.

My family finally has tickets to go back east for the family reunion over 4th of July weekend. I'm hoping to figure out to get myself to the NYC area so I can see Rina and Jackie. If you're in the city, let me know! I plan to be there on Monday and/or Tuesday the 5th and 6th.


Quotes:
Peetie (looking at a picture of me when I was about 7): For some reason you remind me of Marilyn Monroe in that picture. No wait....Shirley Temple.

Peetie (after I've asked how she would describe my sister): Metrosexual.

Being a housedaughter

Observation of the day: I saw a car at the gym today with a license plate that said "FATNIKI". There were also a bunch a bumper stickers saying things like "Peace is possible" and "Be green". Very cute.

I successfully cooked dinner!! I made chicken and potatoes. The chicken was a little dry, but I'll do better next time. This is a big accomplishment for me. All I've ever really cooked before are Toll House cookies and these brownies that I must say are quite amazing. But I usually end up eating most of the batter.

Can't think of a title

My mom and I went to midtown video the other night to see what they have left and ran into my faaaaaaaaavorite person.....Scott. For those of you who aren't aware, Scott is this guy that my sister went out with for a year. He's majoring in underwater fisheries at Humboldt State which is basically a school where every smokes pot. He had dreads for a while and is a total tree-hugger. My mom being the nice and overly accepting person she is had to engage in conversation with him. I was standing there listening and could barely contain myself. I was eating ice cream and kept looking into the cup to keep from laughing. He gave way more details than anyone would care to hear about vertabrates and studying fetal pigs. He even mentioned wanting to find an extracurricular activity having to do with watershed maintenance. All this along with his nervous speaking just making him totally laughable. (You might think that I'm being a little hard on the kid, but he is not a good person. He's completely relationship needy, and broke up with my sister on her birthday. Once he stole $200 from his boss to buy pot. He comes off as polite and friendly, but really is only thinking of himself and is incredibly insecure.)



I can't decide what to do with myself for this year. I don't know whether I should keep looking for nonprofit jobs or find something related to stats which I don't know how to go about. Everytime I surf the web, I'll find a lead that just turns into a dead end 2 mintues later. Now back to eating ice cream and watching TV...

Wacky plum picking

Michelle and I went to Stanford graduation today to cheer on some of our highschool friends. Unfortunately we couldn't find any of them during the wacky walk. Of what I did see, my favorites were the people who did Palm drive and the ones who ran around with pac man cut-outs.

Then we sat through the big ceremony part and listened to Sandra Day O'Connor who I thought was pretty good. After her speech, the president mentioned a woman wrote him a letter saying Sandra Day O'Connor spoke at her graduation at Stanford back in 1982 when she received her Doctorate and was pregnant with her daughter who is now graduating today. Michelle and I thought that was cool in itself and then we found out it was Alisa they were referring to! Craziness.

I don't think I'm going to enjoy this picking plum job. I went out there today and used the long stick thingy with a little cage at the top to shake the ripe ones into it. But I end up shaking the whole tree so other ones fall around me and almost on top of me. Meanwhile, nothing ends up in the cage. GRRR! I don't even like plums that much. I wish we had a peach tree.

I just spell checked this entry to and it didn't recognize the name "Michelle". But it did give me random names to replace it with like Miguel, Michel, Mikhail and Macaulay. WTF???

Pickiness

I went to buy a new pair of athletic shoes and because of my rolling in, the guy told me to try shoes under "stability". So I tried 3 pairs and they were all really comfortable....which is really bad for my indecisiveness. So I tried each pair on at least twice, decided against one, then for the last two tried one on one foot and the other on the other, then switched and focused on every little detail. One pair was way cuter, but since they're athletic shoes I went with the pair that was just slightly more comfortable...I don't know if it even mattered though. Ok, this is why I called my blog Jane's ramblings...

My friend Bridget from abroad once told me about this exercise where you make a list of 10 things you absolutely have to have in a guy/girl and ten things you absolutely can't have. I've never really spent the time thinking out my lists, but I thought of one today...He has to not mind carpet in the house as opposed to hard wood floors. Carpet is more homey and you can sit on it.

I just spell checked this entry and I spelled indecisiveness right! Strangely it doesn't recognize the word "blog" or the name "Jane".

Ants on my tongue!! ACK!

Peetie came over today to help me pick plums from the tree. I can't believe how many plums there are...the branches are getting weighed down. If anybody in the area wants plums, let me know.

After only about 15 minutes, I was plummed out. A piece of stem fell in my eye and I couldn't get it out so I just let it be. It dissolved into my eyeball eventually I guess. Then I felt something fall on my tongue as I was looking up to pick some plums up high. I turned my head and sorta spit on my sleeve and out came two ants....UGH! Even my own backyard is too naturey for me.

I'm on a peach kick. Piazza's has these amazing California yellow peaches that are kinda pricey but totally worth it. I recommend checking them out. I bought 8 today and I don't expect them to last more than a few days.

I'm also on a big band kick. I'm trying to make a playlist of good big band songs so if anyone has any suggestions let me know.

I told you I can't come up with titles

I have applied to one job so far...go me! It's a nonprofit in DC and I BETTER hear from them. Omg, I'm so annoyed with not hearing back from places. Just tell me one way or the other!

Peetie came over yesterday and we hung out all afternoon and evening. I love being unproductive with other people. We did mail Rina and Mordy's gift to them. Then we bought strawberries and chocolate chips and made chocolate covered strawberries cuz I'm obsessed with them. I saw this cool random fact in a friend's profile:

"Chocolate contains phenyl ethylamine (PEA), a natural substance that is reputed to stimulate the same reaction in the body as falling in love."

And people say I'm missing out....HA! And at least I know I'll never act dumb if I'm in love since I've never done anything stupid when eating chocolate.

Tomorrow is Annie's graduation and it's supposed to rain and be cold. I will have to keep myself sane by remembering my graduation 4 years ago when it was 107 degrees and we had emergency crews on the side....

Too much food

For the second night in a row we went out to eat at a nice place and ate fancy food. Unfortunately I had ice cream in the afternoon not realizing how early dinner was going to be so I wasn't hungry again. Oh well. I was hungry enough for dessert.

Stupid Tivo didn't record the finals of the US gymnastics championships. We so had a season pass set for anything with gymnastics! ARGH!!! Oh well we know someone who has it taped.

My mom was in the Palo Alto Daily today! She and my sister got stopped on the street downtown yesterday and was asked about what she thought of Reagan. Here's the quote:

"I appreciate him more now than I did then because I'm more conservative now than I was in the 80s. I was just talking with my daughter about his death, and she was saying her econ teacher thought he was the worst president ever for economics. Now that I think of it, was it worth going into debt for what he accomplished? We saw the end of the cold war."

My sister is in the other room with two of her friends going through their yearbook and listing all the ugliest people in the class. And I thought I was mean....

I'm not going to be very good at coming up with good titles

Yesterday and today I got to watch some of the Stanford product design major's projects. It was interesting. One girl made this thing to help girls learn to use tampons. A lot of other people made things to help the elderly. And of course Peetie and the arch supports that I tested at Rina's wedding :) The first girl I watched yesterday I went to middle school with and was a SPAJ member...haha. I wonder if she recognized me.

Afterwards Peetie and I walked around campus and I ordered some food. While I was waiting for it my dad called to inform me we had reservations at a steak place so I two dinners for me!

Summer update

Here's what my summer has consisted of so far:

-4 trips to an airport (hitting san jose, SFO AND oakland)

-Rina's wedding which was one of the most fun and interesting things I have ever experienced. I hope it's not my last Jewish orthodox wedding (hint hint Sarita).

-Researching jobs. I'd really like to move back east since I'm sick of living at home or at least will be soon and I know so many people back there.

The next step now is to actually APPLY to jobs (cross fingers).

Janie's got a blog....

Ok, I'm giving this whole blog thing a try. I tend to enjoy reading other people's blogs so hopefully others care enough to read mine :)