still here

I've been in the SFO area since Sunday afternoon. I leave Friday morning for Seattle. I'm back home Monday evening.

Seeing friends, attending a conference, that's what this trip is all about, kidz. Not much else to report.

How are you?

Posted by jennj at 11:08 PM | Comments (1)

get ready to mourn morn's

We took our out of town guest to Morn's Thai tonight. That's when we discovered that they are closing shop May 2009. Apparently the owners of the building are bulldozing it down to put in a CVS. They will not be relocating. This makes me sad. We will have to go there a lot over the next eight or so months. *sigh* Wonder if they'd tell me their recipe for their peanut sauce.....

Posted by jennj at 08:27 PM | Comments (5)

new york was a blast (except for two bad, bad things)

We (Nbh, Bridget and myself) headed down to New Jersey/New York to help celebrate our awesome friend Elke's 40th Birthday. Elke arranged to do a scavenger hunt through Grand Central Station. We arrived Friday evening in time to have dinner with Elke and crash at her place. Elke had flown in on Thursday from Basel and still was willing to let us stay at her house and have dinner with us (delivery) despite wacky jet lag. We adjourned for the night early.

We had originally talked about driving to Hoboken, catching the PATH into the city and then going to see Burn After Reading before meeting up with folks at 4. But we woke up to a beautiful day and decided that walking/wandering through Central Park was the way to go. I was the DD so that Elke could drink to her hearts desire. On our way into the city we stopped off at a bakery to pick up some mini-stuffed cupcakes. We decided to try one of the larger stuffed cupcakes and have a cup of coffee. The girl came over, put the coffee cup in front of me. When I reached for it I promptly knocked it onto my jeans (also managed to get some on the nbh). That coffee was HOT. HOT. And because I only brought one pair of jeans the choices were: let it dry and smell like coffee, buy a new pair of jeans or head back to the apartment, wash out what we could and throw in the dryer. Everyone was very kind and was OK with us returning to the apartment. Although, I would have been up for shopping…;-) I did not have any burns, so that turned out well.

While we waited for the jeans to dry it became clear that taking PATH into the city was no longer an option. So we decided to drive in, park at the port authority and take public transit to Grand Central. After we hit mucho traffic at the Lincoln Tunnel, the plan changed to drive straight to Grand Central and park. We got to the rendezvous point with 20 minutes to spare. Whew. I was worried we'd make the birthday girl late for her own event, but at least that part worked as planned. As did the rest of the evening (well, except for one thing I'll get to later).

The scavenger hunt was AWESOME. There were two teams of five and one team of four. We wandered (worked off the cupcakes) all through grand central and some nearby buildings finding clues and learning a bit of history. We had to answer 26 out of 32 questions (no extra points beyond the 26). Some of them were hard and so we'd skip if it became apparent that we were wasting time. Nbh and I were on the birthday girl's team and we kicked booty. But we didn't win. In order to break a tie a team could win an extra point if they came up with a cool name. We tied with the winning team but apparently our team name (Grand Central Intelligency Agency) was not as funny as "Could you please leave the building?" Since you had to go into some other buildings to look for clues the security guards were um, surly. And apparently one team got asked to leave. Nbh won a free public scavenger hunt and the winning team won free team's on a public scavenger hunt. They have them up in Boston……hmmm…….

Dinner was at Hill Country BBQ. Iwan, ChrisM, Joe and I drunk texted across the tables. We also faced-booked with Poz. Word to your mother, dudes. And thanks to ChrisM: "Moist is the new black."

Our final stop was at a friend of a friend's joint called Sweet Revenge. We headed home around 12:30ish.

We got home around 4p.m. on Sunday and chillaxed for the evening.

It was a great weekend and it was great seeing everyone. Elke sure knows how to throw a good time and now I've got to figure out what I'm doing for my fortieth…..

Other really bad thing (besides the coffee spill) that happened: I left our $$$$ camera in a taxi. This is the one nbh bought for our NZ trip. The good news is that NYC's cabs all belong to the same organization and so you can call and report something missing and it's connected to every cab in NYC. The bad news is that it's a sweet camera and unless there's a good samaritan who got into the car after us we probably won't see it again. We didn't lose any photos (except the few taken earlier in the day), but it was expensive. Nbh took it in stride. I think I have been more upset about it than him. I'm mostly OK now.

Posted by jennj at 11:03 AM | Comments (4)

social networking sites

I am the worst social networking site person on the planet. I'll get these invites to facebook, myspace or whatever, set up the account so I can accept the invite and then only use the site to check on the person who originally sent it to me. I may end up with other people linked to me, but it's because _they_ initiated the contact, not me. I'm so lazy. Most people would send invites to their friends or look for friends who may have existing accounts. Not me.

And I think the main reason is that I get tired of updating my profile on each and every one of the damn sites. If there was ONE program out there that I could use to update all profiles at once that would rock. Got a job title change? Go to "OpenID", change the title, click on "update x, y, z social networking sites" and voila! they all get updated. Alas, that isn't going to happen.

In the meantime, if you want me to social network with you, you'll have to send an invite.

Posted by jennj at 02:28 PM | Comments (5)

didn't read that right

Our good friends the K's sent us a flyer for a Halloween event their daughters A and C are participating in. They wanted to know if we'd like to attend and support (4H fundraiser). Anyway, the font on the flyer is kind of hard to read. Instead of reading "Mummy Mania", I read it as "Mummy Mia".

HAHA.

Posted by jennj at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)

is it just me?

When I saw this on the front page of cnn.com, I actually did a double take as I first thought he was peeing on the ATM. Showing his displeasure at the bailout bill.

Posted by jennj at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)

banks may not use the bailout?

Yup, still the greediest.

"But Wall Street analysts, believe the addition of so many terms to the bill might deter potential participants.

One of the least attractive elements is a section designed to curb executive pay at banks that participate in the bail-out package. These include limiting stock-related pay and banning 'golden parachutes' for executives.

'I think this hodge-podge of regulations and rules will be enough to put many [chief executives] off participating,' Caldwell said."

Posted by jennj at 07:11 PM | Comments (5)

a fun entry

I was driving to work the other day on mem drive. The guy in front of me kept slowing down, and would act like he was turning left, but then change his mind and speed up to the next opportunity, slow down again, etc. And then I saw it. He had one of those circle bumper stickers with a white background and black trim and it said: Lost

Posted by jennj at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)