The Consummate Planner

Me: Hello. My name is Jennifer and I am a consummate planner.
Everyone else in my imaginary room: Hello, Jennifer. Welcome.

Yes, I am a planner. I like to plan ahead - I think it's part of the need to "be in the know" and not be left completely in the dark. The more I can plan ahead, the better I feel and can move onto other tasks that need my planning or attention.

For vacations and trips, I like to plan out each day's agenda...what to do, what to see, where to go, where to stay...if there are restaurant recommendations, I like to throw them into the plans as well. The only things I don't seem to plan are breakfasts and bathroom breaks (I'm not a control freak!). This works out well between me and my husband because he's not a planner. He's very laid back...some have called him the most laid back guy they've ever met. If I have it planned, that's one more thing he doesn't have to worry about. In all, I'd say he has a pretty care-free life. (That's until I get all postal on his ass for not doing anything but that's another post for another day....) I like to say that my husband is on a 'need to know' basis. If for some reason we have to be separated, I will tell him where he needs to be and what time he needs to be there. This is just the way we work.

On my most recent trip, my friend Becky and I went to London and had a great time. The weeks leading up to the trip were fun with the planning of hotels, side trip to Ireland, figuring out what we could do and see while we were in each city, etc. Becky told me that I shouldn't try to plan everything - so I REALLY tried not planning each day. I only had a few requirements - I needed to go to Bath, the Tower of London, the British Museum and the Guinness Factory. The rest of the time, we just did what came our way. It was fun - I had a great time and I'm going back in November to do/see more stuff that I missed, and for a friend's wedding.

I plan dinners for the week - every Saturday night or Sunday, before I hit the grocery store, I break out the recipes and cookbooks and figure out what I'll be making for dinner each night and make out my list. Every Monday morning, I plan out my lunches for the week. Our cafeteria has a week-at-a-glance menu to tell me what the specials are, including the three soups and stews that will be available on each day. (I purposely do not bring in my lunch on days of seafood chowder, chicken chili and clam chowder. I LOVE soup!) I also just picked up a menu from Panera that tells me their five soups for each day of the week. The girl was nice enough to tell me that for the most part, the menu was correct but if ever I want to verify what the soup choices were for the day, I could call to verify...how thoughtful.

There are many other aspects in my life that I plan out - I don't go all out and have a five-year plan or anything but I just like to know what I will be doing or what I need to be doing, maybe, one week in advance. It's probably becauseI don't like surprises....maybe I just like to be prepared. Either way, I'd feel like my life was missing something if I didn't have anything to plan. It's because of all this planning I do that I feel like I'm now a pretty good planner. Extraordinaire? Oh, no. Novice? Of course not. Expert? Perhaps. But I wonder what I could accomplish if I concentrated all my planning energy to something bigger...like world domination!

Overrated

In light of the University of Michigan's recent plummet in the college football rankings (yay!), I thought we could talk a little bit about being overrated. Michigan has been overrated for what seems like forever to me. If they have two losses in their record, for instance, they will still be the highest ranked team with two losses. You would think, being from Michigan, that I might be a fan. Not so. OVERRATED!

Here is a list of some other things that are overrated (in my own personal opinion, of course).


1. Mischa Barton. Who decided this girl was good looking? I mean, she's okay, I guess. But the hotness? I just don't get it. Overrated.

2. Dave Matthews Band. I realize this may not be a popular point of view, but I have never understood the broad appeal of the Dave Matthews Band. They're passable, I suppose, but would I pay hundreds of dollars and brave the crowds of '90s college grads to go see DMB? Don't think so. I hear "Satellite" enough on the radio, thank you.

3. Chipotle. If your diet calls for 1,000 plus calories in one sitting, Chipotle is the way to go. If your diet calls for taste, forget it. This is the blandest Tex-Mex I have ever tasted. Who puts white rice in a burrito? If you really want a tasty giant burrito, try Freebird's in Texas - then Chipotle will be dead to you, as it is to me.

4. Paper clips. Always hated them. Always will.

My secretary has a note to herself at her desk: "Amanda does NOT like paper clips." Just when you start to trust them, they fly off your document as you flip the page, leaving you with a jumbled mess. I'll take a staple any day of the week.

5. Mongolian Barbeque. If I wanted to be my own chef, why would I bother going out to dinner? Here's an idea: you pick the spices, you prepare it, you serve it to me. I can buy raw meat in the grocery store.

YAYE Football!

It's the start of football season...quite possibly my favorite time of year. College football officially began this past weekend. My beloved Purdue Boilermakers squashed Toledo in their opening season game. I hope they can keep up the momentum throughout the season....the toughest part of our schedule occurs at the end of September through October with back-to-back-to-back-to-back games against Notre Dame, Ohio State, Michigan and Iowa. However, it's not looking too bad with two of these four teams losing their opening season games...tee hee, both Notre Dame and Michigan lost. I'm not quite sure which is worse...Notre Dame getting absolutely killed and only scoring three points in their game against Georgia Tech or Michigan losing to a I-AA school, Appalachian State...the first time in NCAA history that a Div I-AA school has beaten a top ranking Div I-A school. Either way, this just goes to show that football is unpredictable and that's what makes it so exciting.

The NFL opens up their season this weekend and there we have my other favorite football team, the Dallas Cowboys. The legend goes that if the Cowboys do poorly in their pre-season games, they tend to do really well during the regular season, almost always making it to the playoffs. But if they do really well in the pre-season, they are looking at a bumpy road ahead. Well, they went 2-2 in the pre-season...I really don't know what that tells me except that I need to stay tuned in.

I decided to pass on the fantasy football leagues this year, although I finally had a team name I could be proud of....the Ding Dang Ping Pongs....that's from Beerfest, in case anyone was wondering. The league I was going to join, through a coworker, never made if off the ground. The office coworkers have shifted quite a bit in the past two years that the people I normally play with in the office isn't enough to form another league...oh well, I guess I'll just be the reigning champion of the first ever office fantasy football league.

Yes, this is my favorite time of year. Unfortunately for everyone else in my life, this is also the time of year they take a backseat to football. I try to plan my schedule around game times. My Dad asked me to come up to NJ in September to take care of some family business. I had to look at the football schedule to see which weekends were best for me - I figured the Minnesota game, on the 22nd of September would be okay since it's a night game and I can watch it from my sister's place....all other weekends in September were not do-able. My sister asked what would be good weekends to come down to visit, without the kids. Again, I needed to consult the football schedule. I told her the last weekend would be the best cause that's when we're playing Northwestern and they're not good - so that should be a 'W' for Purdue. All other weekends, she needs to come with me to the football game viewing...I don't think she was too interested. She went to Rutgers...who, by the way, are ranked WAY high this year and still, no spirit coming out of her.

So - be on the lookout for my football updates...(the outcomes of both the Purdue and Cowboys games almost always dictate my mood on Monday mornings)...are you ready for some football?!

An Unhealthy Obsession?

So my nephews were in town this past weekend - they are six and three. The three year old pretty much kept himself occupied in front of the 61-inch TV watching Sprout...the six year old is more into playing games on the computer.

Kevin, the older one, brought with him his new pet, Lucky. Lucky is a stuffed, baby Dalmatian. He is the product of this group of animals called Webkinz. For a good part of the weekend, Kevin, his mother (my sister) and I were on the Webkinz website trying to earn money for Lucky to buy him food and furnishings for his apartment. Confused? Let me explain.

Apparently, you buy this Webkinz plush toy and each comes with a code. You go home, log into Webkinz.com and your toy comes to life on the internet. You can play games to make money, buy it food, check on it's health, put it to bed, buy it toys, etc. It's almost like the Cabbage Patch Kids of our generation except they took it one step further by putting it on the internet. It's actually a good idea - the games are innocent enough and some are even educational. And then it really teaches the kids to take care of something, as if they had a real pet.

In an effort to help Kevin make money so that he could feed Lucky and buy him a bathtub for his sparse bathroom, Amy and I spent countless hours on the internet playing this one word game...it was like scrabble except the letters were not very favorable. It was set up in a five-by-five square - there were about 25 tiles of letters. And in all the tiles, you could have three Gs, a V, a Z, two Ds, etc, and only two vowels - A and I....again, not too favorable. Amy and I were wracking our brains trying to come up with words with good values. Not only that, if you could end your word with the letter in the center square, that was worth even more. So here we are, two thirty-somethings, playing on a kids' website, coming up with large words that no six-year old would ever use, on a late Saturday night. We had to reach the goal number in order to move onto the next round - and you could only submit ten words - and in each round, the goal became larger...so for instance, in the first round, your goal is to get 100 points over ten words. In round two, your goal would be to get 120 points over ten words, etc. We got to round eight - I think it was 300 points over ten words. I had the notepad out to take stock in possible words and their point values, and a calculator to make sure we were on track with our averages. Amy thought I was taking it too seriously. Me? I play to win!

Needless to say, after 1.5 hours and eight rounds, we were tired. We had to stop and put Lucky into his virtual bed. But now, I'm a little obsessed. I was thinking of going to "adopt" a Webkinz pet of my own just so I can play the games. Better yet, I can log in as Kevin, since he was so trusting with his login and password, and play for him. Unfortunately, I would get caught in no time because you're only allowed to login and earn money every eight hours or so after your last session....I don't want to take away Kevin's chances of earning money for his pet. My other thought was getting a Webkinz pet for my other nephew, Toph. He's only three but he could be my "mask" - my mask of shame at wanting to play on a kids' website!

The Non-Conformist

As part of my own personal soundtrack at Barnes & Noble last week, I got sucked into the "Now Playing" CD of "A Fine Frenzy." I had never heard of this artist before, but somewhere between the cookbooks and the Sudoku compilations, I was cast under the spell of the singer's ethereal voice. It was part Sarah McLaughlin, part Tori Amos, part Cranberries. And it was catchy – in exactly that kind of thought-provoking way you would expect a bookstore accompaniment should be. I dropped my “Writing for Dummies” reference book and made a bee line for the music section.

I was ready to fork over my $18 for the “A Fine Frenzy” debut album when I saw a pleasant surprise at the counter: Barnes & Noble offered a free DVD sample of “A Fine Frenzy” with any purchase.

Excited by my stroke of luck, I inserted the DVD into my computer as soon as I returned to the office. Watching the introduction, I learned that the singer’s name is “Allison Sudol” and “A Fine Frenzy” is the name of her “Project.” And I have this bit of advice to offer Ms. Sudol: less talking, more singing. In between the four tracks, this girl would talk about her inspiration for the songs, where she was headed with her “Project,” blah blah blah. She took herself way too seriously. And she sounded like an imbecile, frankly. Granted, she is only 22, but still.

The best part was how she went on about how, since she was “young,” she has had a “different” style of dressing and how it may have been a challenge then, but now it is cool, or something like that. It was like so many artists I’ve heard go out of their way to point out how “different” they are than the rest of “society” or whatever. And I have to say, hey – I think it’s great that people are different. I can’t imagine how boring our world would be if we all had the same tastes in clothes, love interests, music, etc. I thoroughly enjoy our melting pot, and there’s nothing better than a good old “Fashion Police” report. But if you have to tell me how different you are, you’ve lost all of that credibility you thought you were getting by just being so.

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Incidentally, when I was checking out the debut album (before I saw the free sample), I was struck by how adorable her red plaid coat in the album cover was. I would have been much more impressed had I not heard her "style of dress" narrative.

All's Quiet

This is probably the first Labor Day, in my 31 years of life that I am at home. My sister and her family decided to come down to DC to visit and do various activities. I'm glad they did because there was a lot I got done around the house. I felt like a regular old housewife minus the big hair, nice dress and pearl necklace. I think I understand why many homeowners now stay home during the holidays - it's to get the extra stuff done.

Let's see - I was able to buy three picture frames for two paintings my Mom did and a Pike Place Market print that I've had for about two years now. I'm hoping the FiOS is now fixed - the maintenance guy has made two trips to the house this weekend - let's hope this will be the last time I need to lodge a complaint (fingers crossed). I was able to get the groceries for the week, going to both Wegmans and the Asian Market - so the fridge is now stocked. And I mowed the lawn. Yes, my husband lucked out this time around because he is in Chicago for a bachelor party. (I don't even think they got to see any strippers - what kind of bachelor party is that?! But it's only fair that he got to go this year cause I was at Amanda's bachelorette party in Vegas last Labor Day - fun, fun. ) I even got to go to the mall and pick up some hand therapy lotion from Crabtree & Evelyn (that's the good stuff, as Brett likes to call it) and I got some new candles at Yankee Candle - you can spend a small fortune in there without even knowing it. Before I knew it, I was bamboozled into purchasing $40 worth of candles (it's only two medium jars) and a decorative glass plate to hold the jars! I usually don't buy candles at Yankee Candle - only like once a year do I step in that store cause that's how long it takes me to burn those candles. Besides the fact that there are just so many scents to choose from, I often feel overwhelmed. I'm just bummed that Bath & Body works isn't selling the Bendel candles anymore.

So that frees me up to do not much of anything tomorrow. I still have to make a trip to Target and then I'm going to go workout at the gym I just signed up at - the first time in like three weeks - I feel like a heffer! Eventhough I've been moving and cleaning for the past four weeks, I just feel huge - so I'm putting myself on a strict workout schedule (now that it's Back to School season) to get myself in shape and feeling good for my trip to London during Thanksgiving. And being that we get the shaft for having Monday night hip-hop, that doesn't start for another week so I need to get a routine down for this new fall season.

Hope Everyone is having a great Labor Day Weekend!
"See you" on Tuesday!