I’m hoping with all hope in the world that I’m not the only one who does things like this, but here are a few of the better ones that have happened recently.

You know you’ve “pulled a Jenn” when you:

1. Attempt to go DOWN the UP escalator. You’re in such a daze trying to get to the train platform you just casually drift over to the escalator, step on, and are immediately returned to where you started. Then you sheepishly look around and cross your fingers that NO ONE SAW PLEASE DO NOT LET ANYONE SEE only to find some guy staring at you which is embarrassing because you clearly just made an ass out of yourself. And then he tries to make you feel better by directing you in the appropriate direction to which you respond, “MORE IMPORTANTLY — I just tried to go DOWN the UP escalator” to which he says “It happens to the best of us” except you know that it doesn’t. It just happens to you.
2. Get dressed for a meet-and-greet reception and make it halfway there before you realize that you’re a day early and the event is actually tomorrow at the same time you’ve agreed to meet someone for drinks, on the opposite side of town of course. So then you have to be THAT GIRL who reschedules a first drink date and you try to be all convenient and have this date meet you at the meet and greet a couple hours later and OF COURSE he shows up right as you’re involved in a fascinating flirty conversation with a very attractive man and your date isn’t half as cute or nearly as interesting and all you can think about is how you hope the flirty cute guy follows you back on Twitter so you can make up for bailing.
3. Waste an hour and a half doing nothing in the library and then realize 5 minutes before class starts that today is the last day to hand in a form that you need your advisor to sign so that you can take that math class you need so you can graduate. Except that your advisor already left for the day so you find another professor who happens to hate you because you forgot to pay attention in his class last semester and you have to convince him to pretend to be your advisor and sign the form so you can graduate. And then you rush to the administrative building before it closes and hand in this form only to have the kid behind the desk tell you that the date listed online was wrong and really you didn’t have to hand this form in today, or rather, at all.
4. Send an extraordinarily explicit text to an attractive out-of-state man friend and are pretty proud of your quick and witty response until you collapse onto the floor in a ball of panic when you realize that in reality you didn’t send it to said attractive out-of-state man friend but rather to a guy YOU JUST MET THAT DAY. At which point you start hyperventilating and scare the bejeezus out of your roommate as you run around the house and try to do some damage control. Meanwhile the boy who received the text is all “whaaa?” and you’re all “OMGOMGOMG that was my roommate’s boyfriend and I’m so sorry and please don’t hate me because I’ve never said anything like that before in my life” which is obviously a BLATANT LIE but you need to keep the crazy under wraps for a bit longer so you just go with that whole “I’m super innocent” thing. And then you e-mail the story to your favorite women in the entire world and start a massive Gmail Reply All thread that ultimately makes your life.**

Please tell me I’m not the only one who does stupid things like this. PLEASE.

**And then you have to confess your lie to the person who accidentally received the wholly inappropriate text because he reads this blog and would figure out what really happened but the story is JUST TOO GOOD not to share with the world.

Every once in a while, though, I impress myself. Turns out, it’s usually in regards to cooking, so I’m going to call that my “thing” now. Cooking is my thing.

The other day, while grocery shopping, I bought a bunch of random fresh ingredients. While Bee was busy buying Lean Cuisines and 100-Calorie packs, I bought veggies and potatoes and started plotting.

When I got back home and finally made dinner for myself at 11pm, I had an idea in my head about how this all would turn out and I just went with it. It was delicious so I made it again tonight. (I’m easy like that.)

The hardest thing about cooking is the fact that I cook for just one person. It’s tempting to just have a bowl of cereal or make some mac and cheese because really? I’ll eat anything. But now I’ll never have to do that again because all it takes is a couple of ingredients and a stove top and all of a sudden I’m a freaking Top Chef contestant.

Since I was so impressed with myself, I thought I’d share.

Recipe for Jenn’s Made Up Miscellaneous Vegetable Concoction:

Ingredients

• EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil)
• Fresh spinach leaves
• Portobello mushrooms
• Cherry tomatoes
• Red potato
• Fresh shredded parmesan cheese
• Rosemary
• Garlic salt

Process

• Dice a red potato and get that going in a skillet with some EVOO. I have no idea if you are supposed to cook potatoes on a stove but it takes a little while to soften them up so start there.
• As they’re cooking, add a little bit of rosemary and a dash of table salt.

• In another pan skillet thing, add some EVOO and a handful of spinach. It might look like a lot at first, but it shrinks when it’s cooked. (TWSS.)

• Add the mushrooms and tomatoes to the spinach. Tomatoes don’t take long to cook at all so if you’re cooking on a high setting, add those last.

• Throw in some garlic salt to the spinach/mushroom/tomato mixture. If you’re like me and think that garlic salt is the greatest invention ever, you CANNOT OVERDO THIS.
• Once everything is sufficiently sauteed and cooked and all that jazz (I do not know culinary lingo so we’re just going to go with JAZZ), add the potatoes to everything else. Put it all on your plate, top it off with some parmesan cheese, and you’re good to go!

]]> http://youllgrowtoloveme.com/2010/02/03/just-call-me-rachael-freaking-ray/feed/ 53 http://youllgrowtoloveme.com/2010/02/03/just-call-me-rachael-freaking-ray/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youllgrowtoloveme/~3/8rvxQCPDn1Y/ http://youllgrowtoloveme.com/2010/02/01/so-it-turns-out-dating-is-hard-yo/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:13:49 +0000 jenniferalaine http://youllgrowtoloveme.com/?p=1380 I decided to stop whining about this whole “I’m bored and lonely and I hate college boys because all they want to do is waste 5 minutes of my time trying to unhook my bra and make me all exasperated and infuriated” thing and do something about it.

So I joined OkCupid. (Whatever, don’t judge me.)

In theory, dating sounded AWESOME. Trying new places? Exploring the city? Meeting fun people? Talking about myself for hours and hours? Sign me up!

In reality? SHIT IS HARD.

I find myself completely fascinating and love talking about myself as much as the next narcissist, but when you do it for hours on end? It gets old. You know what’s even worse? When the other person doesn’t have ANYTHING REMOTELY INTERESTING TO SAY. Which basically makes me want to scratch my nails down a chalkboard in the hopes that it will 1) take my mind off of the excruciating pain I am currently in or 2) distract them long enough for me to teleport to another planet to escape or 3) cause them to spontaneously combust, ultimately ending my misery and saving all women everywhere from ever having to hear them drone on about the joys of leather paper weights and the whether or not the new jacket they just bought on sale at Men’s Wearhouse was a sports coat or a half of an actual suit and what’s the difference between the two and OH MY GOD I DO NOT CARE.

(Seriously. I wish I was kidding. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I wanted to.)

But really men — it’s not that hard. All you have to do is BE INTERESTING. If you can keep me entertained by feeding me alcohol or dancing with me or giving me riddles to figure out, YOU’RE IN. (Not LIT-RALLY IN, IN, but you know what I mean. Pervs.) If you’re interesting, I will like you. If you’re interesting and cute, I will want to make out with you (because let’s face it, I never pretended I wasn’t shallow.)

NOW IS THAT SO DIFFICULT?

While I do enjoy a good rant, I can’t complain that this was entirely negative. I learned a lot about what I don’t want, and about where I draw boundaries and all that personal growth jazz. (Yeah, I figured it all out in a week, so what? I’m good like that.) And there could be a small chance I might be interested in maybe potentially hypothetically speaking seeing if one sticks around for a bit, but that’s yet to be determined.

In the meantime, however, I need to stop coping with this nonsense by consuming exorbitant amounts of sushi and sake bombs and remind myself I’ve got this whole school thing to do. (Gross.)

Someone please tell me they did something fun/relaxing/sexy this weekend. I WANT TO KNOW NOW.

_______________________________________________________________

Back in 2006 when I was just a little baby freshman in college, my girlfriends and I had a little tradition: on Thursday nights we would head to Bertucci’s to stuff our faces with their delicious rolls, then we would race back to campus just in time to watch Grey’s Anatomy in silence.

On one fateful Thursday, Roomie and I decided to split a bottle of white wine while we watched. Turns out Roomie didn’t hold up her end of the bargain because she had something lame to do like homework and I ended up finishing the entire bottle myself. When a friend from high school texted to see if I wanted to come play in Boston, I dragged E out of bed and hopped on the T.

The trip on the red line was uneventful, but the green line is always troublesome. My epic lightweightness and my complete addiction to wine was hitting me hard, and as I sat down in the only empty seat I noticed this man next to me:

Clearly we became BFFs. I mean, hello – SANTA!

Now it gets a little fuzzy. I remember being in Boston and in a cab with some blonde guy. I remember sprawling out in the middle of the sidewalk and accosting strangers. I even remember skipping down the sidewalk on Comm Ave.

And thanks to the magic of digital cameras and my best friend E, I will ALWAYS REMEMBER the time I kissed a homeless man on the T.

Told you I was classy.

When I was younger, my dad used to tell my sister and I that back when he was a kid, there was no color. Not that there was no color TV, but no color in life. It was his little variation on the whole “When I was your age, we had to walk 5 miles to school, barefoot, uphill both ways” and always elicited a laugh from me.

In my photography class yesterday, the professor lectured a bit about the merits of black and white photography, and how it captures a moment in time differently than color photography. Color photography more closely mimics how we view the world. It’s more vibrant and energetic and vivid. It reminded me of the Wizard of Oz.

You know that part in the Wizard of Oz after Dorothy and Toto run into the house and the twister comes and they land in Oz? And that moment when the screen, filled with the graytones of the house, is suddenly overcome by a burst of color when Dorothy opens the door to and steps out into Munchkinland?

I WANT TO LIVE MY LIFE LIKE THAT.

I can only imagine the thrill that moviegoers got back 1939 when their standard black and white movie erupted in vivid color right before their eyes. The unadulterated excitement and awe and gasp that must have filled those theaters… I want that kind of excitement every day.

It’s like that line in Knocked Up where Paul Rudd says “I wish I loved anything as much as my kids love bubbles.”

I want find the joy in the little things. I want to disconnect from technology every once in a while and appreciate a fresh snowfall or a cool breeze or the comfort of sipping a latte while doing homework in the library. I want to soak it all up and spit it back out and absorb the colors all around me and radiate them out to people around me. It’s what I’m here to do.

How do you live your life in color?

Two Weekends Ago Recap

• Ashley came to visit and we said goodbye to Derek. There might have been tears and there was definitely some McDonalds breakfast sandwiches (Note to self: when you want a Sausage McMuffin with Egg, don’t forget to say WITH EGG)
• My favorite Chicago blogger ladies all got together for a Glee party at Erin’s house and to record the epic Love Harder video for Brandy
• Ashley and I spent Sunday brunching with Jamie and being touristy in the city

This Weekend Update

• On Thursday I had a date. And it was great. And I would say more but he reads this so we’ll leave it at that.
• On Friday I had dinner with the ex-boyfriend, which could have gone disasterously wrong but ended up okay. And we saw In The Heights which was absolutely incredible.
• On Saturday this kid took me to the Boston Wine Expo. And it was fun. And we dressed up like idiots, courtesy of The Second Glass

• Sunday was spent brunching and getting some work done (while watching an exorbitant amount of Ally McBeal. Robert Downey Jr? Call me. Seriously.) and I even made my dad a blog. Yep, my dad is a blogger. Awesome.

Now it’s time to get serious and start class. Here we go.

The quandry: We feel terrible. Just horrible. And oh so helpless… if only there was something we could DO for them.

The answer: Ummmm. Did you forget that WE ARE THE INTERNET?!?!!??! And also, Yes We Can!!!

The result: Brandy and your Hot Awesome Dude… this one’s for you. Love, The Internet.

Our Plea

Our friend Brandy is a brilliant writer, a wonderful teacher, and a generous friend.  And she is in love with a man who has just been diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

We are raising money for the Multiple Myeloma Research Fund in his name.  For the price of a cinnamon dolce latte, half-caf, hold the whip, you can be part of an effort to cure a disease that affects approximately 750,000 people worldwide.

http://www.loveharder.org

Every dollar brings us a dollar closer to a cure.  And every donation brings a sliver of hope to a girl who needs all the hope she can get.

Love Harder,
Jenn

What You Can Do

• Give. Be part of a worldwide effort to cure a disease that affects approximately 750,000 people worldwide.  Every dollar helps.
• Pass it on. Forward this story to five people.  Share this blog post.  Become our fan on Facebook.
• Love harder. Life is short, love is unbending, and no one knows what could happen next. Tell someone you love them today.

Where Your Money Goes

• The American Institute of Philanthropy recently named The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation one of the best organizations to give to in terms of their accountability and use of resources.
• By working closely with researchers, clinicians and partners in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry, the MMRF has helped bring multiple myeloma patients four new treatments that are extending lives around the globe.
• The MMRF has advanced twenty Phase I and Phase II clinical trials. They need your support to advance these clinical research programs and accelerate the development ofbetter, more effective treatments.
• The MMRF’s Multiple Myeloma Genomics Initiative recently became the first to sequence the multiple myeloma whole genome in its entirety.
• A whopping 98% of your donation to the MMRF will be used immediately to supporthigh-priority multiple myeloma research.
• With diminishing funding for early stage drug development and the next myeloma treatments not expected to be approved until 2011, the MMRF desperately needs your help.

Brandy’s story can be found HERE.

So in the middle of all of the horrible things that are happening in the world (umm the pictures of Haiti actually make me cry) I’ve been given the opportunity to be part of something GOOD.

The Generation Project, a nonprofit that empowers donors to harness their creativity when donating to support projects for low-income students, is in the finals of a competition with Chase Community Giving and Facebook to win $1 million.

(If we’re Facebook friends, you probably already heard this info so bear with me!)

The Generation Project is up against some pretty stiff competition, but we’ve got a great grassroots campaign at work. How great would it be to see the power of social media win $1 million bucks for a deserving organization?!

So I’m sure you’re asking how you can help, right? RIGHT. I have prepared these four easy steps for your convenience.

1. Go to http://www.tinyurl.com/genpro
2. Click “Allow”
3. Click “Become a Fan”
4. Click “VOTE”

It really is that easy. It takes 3o seconds, and doesn’t require any money from you (that should totally go to Haiti).

If you would like to get more involved, repost this info on your blog, tweet about it, join my Facebook event and invite your friends, and tell your friends and family about it! Voting ends next Friday, January 22 so vote now!

If we win, I WILL KISS EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU. (Well, that might be hard… but perhaps there will be an encore performance of my broadway debut…)

Happy Friday my lovelies! Hope you all have an awesome weekend. I know my sleepover with Ashley will be oodles of fun :)

Back in early December, there was a week where I felt trapped. Trapped by my location, by my wants and needs and loves and hates. All around me on the internet, people were doing amazing things. Starting life adventures, moving to new states, getting engaged or married or falling in love or starting a new job. And there I was — trapped.

My first response was jealousy. I want to be doing fun things too! I want to have the freedom and the resources and the time to carry out my heart’s every little whim! I want to pick up on a moment’s notice and take an impromptu road trip. I want to take a risk, jump without looking, and do something exhilarating.

But I can’t. I am stuck on this stupid hill on this stupid campus taking stupid classes. I have to sit back and go through the motions for one more semester before I graduate, a semester I doubt will make me drastically more qualified to say that I have my Bachelor’s degree than I already am at this very moment.

And that feeling? That feeling is utterly frustrating.

I felt stuck, and I felt like I everyone I looked up to and respected and adored was embarking on a new chapter and I was left behind, and while I was ecstatically happy for everyone, I was incredibly sad for myself.

It took a little while, a couple days of isolation and reflection (and a beach vacation didn’t hurt) but I finally moved past that feeling. Because one day? One day it will be my turn.

I forget sometimes that I’m 22. TWENTY-TWO. I may feel like an old woman sometimes, but I’m a child. I have all the time in the world to 25, 28, 30… But I only have 9 months left to be 22. More importantly, I only have 4 months left in my college career. My life will never be like this again, and instead of yearning for what the future has in store, I need to appreciate what the present is right now, and live in each moment.

I have a lot to be thankful for, and in this moment I am most thankful for the fact that I have friends that do amazing things with their lives and take chances and jump without looking and believe in themselves and INSPIRE ME to do the same.

So 2010 — you and I have 354 more days together. Let’s make them good ones.

Aside from running my sister’s errands, changing four lightbulbs in her house so we didn’t have to live in the dark, and forcing her to clean her dirty toilet (ew), we managed to have some fun too.

We went out with her friends to some frat parties and such (what? she’s 19. FRATS ARE COOL) on Monday and Tuesday night. It was pretty standard as far as college parties go — shitty beer, drunk girls, and an iPod with ADD.

However, one thing was completely off and out of the ordinary. I couldn’t get over HOW TALL I WAS. Or rather, how short everyone around me was. I felt like a giant. The girls looked like toddlers and the boys came up to my shoulder. Now, I’m 5′6″, 5′7″ on a good day, and I was wearing some great heels, but I was towering over these kids.

It made such an impression on me that I put my artistic talent to good use and drew you an illustration.

I was a female Willy Wonka in a land of Oompa Loompas. Oompa Loompas dressed in Ralph Lauren popped collars and Sperrys.

I mentioned my observation about the lack of height to my sister’s friend Greg, who reminded me of a miniature version of David Archuleta. Greg also happened to be vertically challenged, and he enlightened me to the perks of hooking up with tall girls. I believe the direct quote was, “It’s like climbing Mount Everest!”

Talk about uncomfortable.