Um, oh yeah.

So, I got a job. This is a weird and random way to update, I know, but it all happened really quickly and I've been busy ever since, so this is what you get :). It's an internship with a strategic consulting firm that does a lot of stuff with the EPA. I'm pretty excited about the people I'll be working with, and the work seems interesting. They pay me, so I'll shut up about it if not. Note to employers: I can be bought. They hired me Monday and I started yesterday... see, quick? I like to withhold information, it makes me feel powerful.

Things definitely feel back at a frantic pace, but it was what I kept complaining about before where I didn't have enough to do. It should be good experience, and you never know who'll hire me when I have my MS!!!

But, oh blog, I will not neglect thee. Really, this time I mean it.

P is for Perfect waste of time :)

So, I've been tagged - thanks Katie! The game is coming up w/ 10 things that start w/ that letter. I have homework to do, and will probably just be lazy & have leftovers tonight, but this is fun so I'm doing it. :)

10 Random things that start w/ P...

1. PhD. I'm married to one.
2. President - I have now shaken TWO president's hands - Obama & Clinton (today!) I shook Kerry's too, but we all know what became of him.
3. Pain in the butt... That's what I think of grocery shopping.
4. Privilege. I'm a little introspective today, after Clinton's speech yesterday about "the world today" and just how many people don't have food and other basic needs. It's making me be extra grateful that I have so much respective to so many in the world.
5. Pei Wei. I had lunch there yesterday w/ my dad, and the chick brought Dad the wrong food. She brought Kung Pao shrimp instead of chicken for my dad, and just threw away the shrimp they made. See #4, and understand why it upset me. 35 million people go to bed hungry, chickie, and we're throwing away perfectly good kung pao shrimp??
6. Philly - we're going to Philly (and the Dirty Jerz - for Ginty's wedding!) the first weekend in May and I'm already excited. I want to go see the Liberty Bell & Independence Hall, because even though I'm a Pennsylvanian by birth, I don't think I've ever seen these things.
7. Pansy. I am one, bc even though it's not *that* cold out, I think I'm going to cop out on running this afernoon.
8. Poor. Bc we're trying to buy a house. Which will be cool... but for now no $$ spending allowed.
9. Posting on my blog. I need to keep up w/ that more. I love reading blogs, so it's only fair that I contribute.
10. Punctuation. I'm reading Eats, Shoots & Leaves right now and it's a surprisingly funny book about commas, apostrophes and other misused and misunderstood punctuation. I know that sounds dorky, it is. But it's funny. (it's=it is. See? I'm learning)

Now to keep the game going I'm tagging Jackie with N , Heather with B and K-Fud with F(if she still does her blog! Ohhh, burn.) And I also won't be at all offended if they don't do it. I do feel powerful (P!) choosing everyone's letters though...

Blogs

So, at the moment I'm quite excited about blogs. I'm reading The Huffington Post's Complete Guide to Blogging and it's really, really interesting. It is a medium that has totally revolutionized the way we read, get news and the way traditional media has to cover news. In my opinion, for the better, as stories that traditional media might have let fall through the cracks get caught by bloggers and forced into the public discourse. Blogs give so many more people a pulpit and a voice - the natural order of certain voices having more power than others has been flattened (to throw in concepts from another book I'm reading - The World Is Flat). They throw around the term "democratizing technology," which though it sounds all uppity and high brow, actually kind of fits. The book lays out a lot of best practices for current bloggers and how to's for new bloggers... Though HuffPost is political in nature, the book isn't over the top w/ the lefty views.

If you can't tell by the way I'm talking about this, I'm quite taken with blogs and their power. And in today's technological climate (which is only getting moreso), it's almost an essential tool and skill for businesses to have to connect with their constituents. I'm not exactly sure the form it'll take just yet, but seeing as I'm about half way through my masters program and have a large capstone project looming next year, I'm thinking it'll have to do with blogs in some way. And perhaps even my life's work will have to do with blogs... wouldn't that be cool!

This is objectively awesome!

To quote Jack Donaghy from 30 Rock, one of my favorite characters.

Here's a story about how one Democrat and one Republican pulled together to help Jamie meet the former President...
First up - Casey the Dem! Woot woot! I'm volunteering at a fundraiser pre-speech and I have the very exciting job of manning the Photo Room. He was sweet enough to say I'm "helping him out," which is pretty funny bc this "favor" pretty much makes my year. I'm hoping there's time for a Jamie & Bill photo in there. I'm going to try to play it cool. You know. And not tip my hand that I never really was all that into a Hillary Clinton presidency and that I was in 5th grade when he got inaugurated. I will not say any of those things. Probably not.

Then, thanks to my awesome Republican dad I have 2 VIP tickets to the speech (did you ever think I'd put awesome and republican beside each other, without not preceeding awesome??? hahahahah, me neither...) My friend Kathleen was a doll and picked them up today and we're gonna be hooked up on Monday! And she's pregnant so $20 we get to go to the front of the VIP line. (haha, except maybe really!)

I am so psyched, I have the best guys looking out for me! I get to meet Bill Clinton on Monday!! Picture coming soon...

OH - and I have a student General Admission ticket printed. I'm willing to donate it to anyone who wants it, along with the borrowing of my student ID so you can pass as Jamie... Just email me.

A bulleted list of things that are going on...

I feel like I've been a bad blogger the past few days, so here's the rundown:

• School started. I'm reading a lot of boring stuff all the time now.
• Tomorrow's a big day here in NC! They're calling for some snow, and if it materializes the forecast is for it to stay below freezing, so... it'll stay! We might get a snow day for Inauguration!!
• I finished Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and I hearted it... I'd read it a googloplex times.
• We met w/ a realtor, we're looking at houses Sunday. Hi, American Dream? Yeah, it's us. Oh, and Economy? Thanks for screwing a bunch of homeowners to make it cheap for us! (thumbs up!)
  
• Because of the prior bullet (and just our general attitudes), we keep the heat low, so it's generally cold in our house. I have resurrected the big fat Irish sweater I got abroad back in the day and wear it pretty much every day. It's about as flattering as it sounds, but sooo warm. I must say, if Stacy and Clinton from What Not to Wear showed up, I wouldn't really be surprised. (Please don't submit me...)
  
• I'm back into running - working toward a definite maybe participation in the Raleigh Rocks 1/2 Marathon March 28th. I have donated the Nike+ to the Ashley Foundation (aka Sister) and am now rocking with my sweet Garmin Forerunner 350. GPS>Nike+. I'm also on board for the Philly Broad Street again (we got our tickets already), and I got a definite maybe (could have been just to shut me up) from Scott too.
• Friday Night Lights is back! We've been catching up, rewatching the first and second seasons on Netflix online... it's humorous to me because Scott has played it all like "That's YOUR show, I'm not all that into it" and I was like "Oh... ok, well if you want to watch it we can... I thought you liked it". BUT when the episode is over, who says "You wanna watch another one??" Oh yeah, that's Scott. He's back on the FNL train, woot woot!
  
• Due to the low temp in the house, Smarty is extra cuddly.
  

That's all I've got...

2 books to kick off 09

Welp, school started up Thursday... so my reading vacation is officially over. I'm quite happy w/ the amount I was able to cram in, and with any luck I'll be able to keep some of it up throughout the semester this year. Right now I'm reading The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman and it's really good, but almost too "like school" for me right now, so I think I might dive into a fiction book today. You know, while I still have free time and no homework.


The first of my 2009 reads is Black & White, by Lewis Shiner. I recommend this book for a bunch of reasons. Firstly because I feel cool bc I know the author, and worked with him at IBM this summer. He's a cool guy. And secondly, it takes place in Durham, and I would even call Durham a character in the book, as it plays a very key role in the plot. It's about some "urban renewal" that went on in the late 60's and early 70's in which a prosperous and vibrant black community in Durham, Hayti, was basically destroyed to build what is now the Durham Freeway. I found it interesting since I live so close to it, and most of those parts of the book were accurate. And it's pretty appalling what was allowed to go on in Durham, and in many cities across the country at that time. I didn't realize the building of the Durham freeway was so closely tied to the establishment of RTP and all the businesses that moved there, ultimately making this area grow and thrive.

Besides the historical aspect, the basic synopsis of the book is this: A guy (Michael) who grew up in Texas comes back to Durham as his father is dying. His father was a highway engineer in the late 60's and played a key role in the destruction of Hayti and never really talked about it. The book follows Michael's investigation and revelations as to what really went on. At times it read like a Dan Brown book, but so much more substantial! I'll loan it out to anyone who wants it.

If you're into multi-media - here's the audio of when Lew was on the local NPR show talking about the book.

And the second book I read this week (I'm a MACHINE!!) was also kind of depressing but SOOO good. It's called A Long Way Gone, a Memiors of a Boy Soldier, by Ishmael Beah. I gave it 5 stars on my shelfari shelf, it was an amazing book. I came close to putting it down bc I wasn't "in the mood" for a depressing read, but it kind of grabbed me by the brain and I couldn't put it down. The most poignant detail in my mind the whole time was that this isn't some ancient history - this boy is my age. MY AGE. (Well, actually he's a year older, but you know... close enough). And his life was so different - while I was at middle school dances he was trying not to get killed in the forests of Africa. While I was whining about one thing or another in high school he was a freaking boy soldier and addicted to drugs and brainwashed into indiscriminate killing and violence.

It's just an amazing story of redemption and (as corny as this sounds) triumph of the human spirit. I can't imagine going through what he went through... and it's sad to me to think that people ARE still going through what he went through. It definitely put some perspective on the life I live. It changes the way I look at news coming out of Africa. A GREAT book.

Happy 2009!!

Omg, 2009... wow! 2008 was a great year, in our opinion. Scott and I were doing a recap of all of the wonderful things we did and changes that happened and we feel it was maybe our best year yet! So, in honor of that revelation, I did NOT eat pork and saurkraut (well, not the kraut, I did eat the pork), which is a PA tradition for good luck on New Years. Maybe I've suffered through sticking one nasty strand of saurkraut in my food for no good reason all these years! I definitely didn't do it to ring in 2008, since we were in NC last year. So, now that's my superstition :)

While I don't really have any resolutions this year, I can say there are a few things I'd kind of gotten less dedicated to or completely stopped doing at the end of last year. And with the craziness of the holidays over, I'm even more excited to dive back in and rededicate myself to the things that keep me centered: reading good books, cooking good healthy food (and trying new things), and running. Cheers to a healthy and happy 2009!