{crazyjen}

Road Trip - Polaroid-style

I took a trip to Wisconsin this weekend and snapped some shots of the scenic route along the way. No that doesn't mean I got lost. I never get lost. Seriously, I don't. I always figure out where I'm going, occassionally I take a wrong turn or something but I figure it out right away. I'm not bragging just stating a fact. That's my dad in me. Boys eat your heart out. I always say my sister and I should go on that Amazing race show. We'd kick some serious butt. I mean Michelle not Kim. Kimmie has problems with directions. :) (hee hee haa haa Kimmie!)

Anyway, that's beside the point.

Here are some of my favorite pages that I did. I used a 7 gypsies album. I cut my pictures down to a 3x3 size and mounted them like a polaroid image. I think it looks cool. It only took me a couple hours to do. It isn't that exciting but I had fun doing it.

minnesota to wisconsin.

 

this is me int he rear view mirror

DQ...need I say more? I didn't stop though. I was in a hurry.

A picture of my car's shadow. So, by looking at this picture can you tell which direction I was going?

i just like the paper i used, the letter stickers from american crafts and the journalling pieces in the corners from making memories.

Okay, here's the album so you can see all of them. Road Trip - Polaroid Style

Blizzard

This is what a MN blizzard looks like.

Leaving Montgomery, MN

Driving into Owatonna.

Very windy, blowing snow causing white-out conditions. Basically I couldn't see more than 1 telephone pole in front of my car. Lovely. Very lovely considering I had my 4 month-old niece and two sisters in the car.

Oh, you'll like this. We were just leaving Montgomery after our Daughter's of the Union Veterans meeting (that's Civil War) and had just realized how bad it was outside. So here's a para-phrased conversation that we had.

Michelle: We don't even have any blankets in the car.

Jen: I'm sorry. That's my fault.

M: Well, do we have any food?

Kim: I've got a brownie.

J: Me too and this crystal container full of M&M's. They say you can survive up to 30 days on chocolate. So we should be good there.

M: I've got breast milk but none of us but Gracie can have that. Do we have any water?

J: I've got a bottle right here and some frozen ones we could defrost in the trunk.

M: You know the real problem would be keeping Gracie warm. One of us would have to take her out of the car-seat and stuff her under our shirt and coat to keep her warm. Direct body-heat.

J: Yup.

K: You know if we called Guy he'd come and save us.

J: Unless he went into a ditch or got into an accident.

this is what I was thinking but didn't say.

He'd come and save you guys then murder me for getting into trouble in this cold blizzard weather and endangering the lives of his wife and child.

conversation ensues

J: Michelle, am I driving okay?

M: You drive like an old lady.

J: Well, I can't see and I don't worry so much about me but I do worry about that car whose 200 yards in front of us or any nut-bag hot-shot punk-a$$ driver behind me who could at any time hit me because they are stupid.

M: Well, it's your car.

J: Yeah, holding my niece and two sisters.

Anyways, I liked this conversation because a. it was funny and b. because we are funny in that we immediately start thinking of what we would have to do if we got into trouble. When in reality I should have thought of this before-hand. Like putting a blanket in the car, having some extra food and water, some candles or heat source. Stupid. You'd think I just moved to MN or something.

Monster Snow-Drift

Hey Dad! Check out this monster snowdrift in the yard!

The drift. Starting from the house to the pasture fence getting only bigger as it reaches the fence. I know, not really good perspective but check this out.

Here's a close-up of my snowman measuring stick next to the fence. So the first rung is about 2 feet tall. Now look at the above picture again. The top of the snowdrift reaches the second rung. So let's just say, on an estimate that the drift is about 2.5' tall.

The beginning of the drift. As you can see it is 15" tall in the middle. Notice my footprint on the bottom? I only sunk in about 3-4 inches which means the snow is hard-packed. The wind blowing the snow was so friggin' cold. It's below zero again. The bridge of my classes froze which made my nose hurt. I felt like a boxer sitting down after a round all hot and sweaty only to have some doctor take a hunk of metal that's been in the deep freeze and stick it to my face. Almost gave me a headache.

Here's a close-up of the snowman. I love how the snowdrift has layers. Reminds me a bit of how the grand canyon looks. A little.

Fortune 400

I decided to pick mail today and what I found was an issue of the Fortune 400 Richest people. Not my magazine but my Dad's or one of my brother's, I'm not really sure, don't really care. It's not the point. Anyway...I got to thinking. All the magazine does is post their name, how much they are worth, where they live, if they are married/divorced/widowed/twice divorced/thrice divorced and how many kids they've got. There is also a short itty bitty paragraph about how they became wealthy.

The only thing that kept running through my mind was it doesn't say if they are happy. Money doesn't buy happiness. Now how could I say that when I've never had money, well, think about it logically. It can solve your debt problems currently but if you can't manage money, you'll spend it all and end up broke like most lottery winners. Once you're wealthy you can never go back to being poor. I can say that because it would be hard for me to live on a $10/hour job like I did in college. I'm used to my lifestyle now and I am not wealthy by any means but it sure is a step up from $10/hour. So you have to work very hard to keep your money and grow your business.

I guess I could list a hundred different reasons why money doesn't buy happiness but I won't. What I'm guess my point is instead of listing how much money they have and how they got it they should list out how many hours were spent away from their families to make the money, how much time they spend away from home and how hard they work to keep that money. (I guess the people who inherited their money don't count then.)

9.11.07

Today is the day, a day of remembrance, a reminder of the day that will live in infamy for this generation. The day that started a war between our nation and Iraq. I never really thought of it that way before but that's what happened. Osama is to the Twin Towers as Japan was to Hawaii. Well, in case Osama missed it, we won that one. Apparently he's not a student of history. :)

When I think of today and what has transpired since that fateful day I am astonished. I think of my life and the lives of others and of this country. I started by first job when that plane hit the towers. I wasn't yet married. I was in shock. I almost had a panic attack because one of my girlfriends worked down there and I couldn't get ahold of her. My brother wasn't in the National Guard and didn't have to have a kevlar vest on or wear a 9mm on his thigh. My little sister and two brothers weren't engaged. We weren't heading for a recession. We had houses that appreciated not went to to the collection agency. Ipods weren't a big deal yet and neither was HDTV. My nephew wasn't born or even thought of, well, he might have been a twinkle in my sister's eye. The 35W bridge hadn't collapsed and freaked me out because I drove over it at least twice a day.

Deep down I wish this never would have happened but nobody can ever remove all of the radicals from the world. It isn't possible so something like this will always happen. There will always be a silent and small majority that wants to ruin people's lives. That's a sorry statement to make but it's true.

Well, that's about all I have to say. I know I will remember the day until I die and I'm sure my grandchildren will ask about it one day, I hope they will anyway. It's funny to think that I've been a part of history. Usually you thinkof history as stuff you read in your books in high school and college, not something that you were a part of. Crazy, isn't it?

Birthday Dinner at Applebee's

For my birthday Mom, Michelle, Guy, Jack, Kimmie, Gwinnie and Nicky ate dinner at Applebee's. So here are some pictures from the day.

well, not really birthday related but aren't the puppies cute? "hey blondie, eat the food not gretchen's ear!"

"Hey Bernie!" Well, I call the one on the left Bernie because he looks like a St. Bernard. Yeah I know it's real original.

"Hey Cleo, you're my favorite puppy on the planet!"

jack porking down on lemonade. actually it's more like inhaling.

Jack and me puttering our lips. well, I can't really describe it but making a noise like...our lips are vibrating.

"jack? you havin' fun?"

look it's grumpy and happy from snow white and the seven dwarfs. :)

This was the funniest part of the evening. Jack grabbed my "froosers" aka french fries and started feeding them to Thomas. It was too funny.

he got a little mixed up this time. he was going to feed Thomas but ate it himself.

I think in this one he ate half of it and gave the other half to Thomas.

me being embarrassed because the employees of Applebee's were singing to me.

Birthday Girl

I turned 29 on Monday, August 27th. Not really anything special other than I am one year closer to 30. Lovely. Feels like I'm reaching a milestone and am having a mid-life crisis of some sort. Probably better to get it out of the way now, huh? :) So here's a picture of me and what I see in it.

• dark brown hair that used to be flat as a board and super shiny, now dull and wavy.
• thick glasses which are actually my favorite style ever.
• stubby little nose, not big like some of my Czech relatives. (dad)
• high protruding cheek bones, apparently some people would kill for them.
• chubby cheeks that don't yet hide my cheekbones
• breezy blowing hair, carefree and cooling
• shy
• my favorite brown shirt at the moment, bohemian style
• content, at the moment
• wondering what the next year will hold
• last year of being a 20-something then I have to grow up.
• fuzzy brown eyebrows.
• slight mona lisa smirk...do you know what it means?
• taking a picture of myself, all alone on my birthday. well, I took the day off so that's all my fault.
• right before I left to eat dinner at Applebee's with my family.
• doggies around me trying to get me to pet them and trying to knock my camera over.

Good news!

So...the good news is that I have regular internet access at home now which means that I'll be able to post pictures regularly without having to go over to one or more of my family members' households to use their computer and internet. Friggin' sweet, ain't it. :) No more going over and trying to load pictuers and carry on a conversation. No more feeling guilty because I'm not over there just to see, talk and hang out with them but to nazify their computer. I think that'll knock off about a half dozen episodes of unexplained heartburn. :)

Second, I hung out with the hubby and my in-laws over the weekend. Sweetness batman! They live in a peaceful house out in the valley of middle Wisconsin. Prime deer-hunting country, amish inhabit the area and people generally wave at you as you drive by. Kind of like the farm country of where I live in MN.  Here are some pics of their house and their pond and swamp area. (not really a swamp but pretty spongy complete with sink-holes.

the house from the driveway

the landscaping right before the house. new pine trees as a storm a few years ago wiped out the older distinguished trees. Nancy was sad about that.

the newly redone pond. the pond is spring fed. When my husband and his brother were little they would swim and fish down there but after a family of muskrats wrecked the pond there was no water in it. the dnr came out and fixed it so now the pond is completely filled. sweet huh? spring fed, crystal clear.

the deck of the house,extends around on two sides complete with wooden, comfy furniture even if it doesn't look it.

ahh, the money shot, me and the hubby after a couple days of canoodling. :) if you look closely he's actually happy but doesn't show it well, he prefers the strong mean-looking type.

The MN State Fair

The Minnesota State Fair starts tomorrow. I should go after work, just because but that would be a little impulsive wouldn't it? Yeah, I suppose...like I've never done anything impulsive before. ha :)

I'm so excited this year. For one I work about 15 minutes away so I could go after work, no problem. It's not like I'd be making a special trip either. Number 2 the people I work with are just as excited as I am. Why? Well, because they live in MN and know how exciting and awesome it is. I could never get any excitement from the Wisconsin-ites I worked with. They just aren't excited about fairs like I am. Probably because there's aren't that good, which is truly a shame.

I'm going to go with my brothers and sisters minus Michelle, Guy and Jack I think. Too hard to tool around with a toddler and a pregnant woman. I think Michelle is sad, maybe I can talk her into going. eh?

Anywho...just wanted to post about my excitement and say I almost have the remaining picture posts from the SCFF. Should be tonight or tomorrow. It takes a bit of time to get through all of the images, edit them and decide which ones I want to put out there.

So there's no movie chat, profound speak or wisdom from me today. Although maybe I ought to finish this post by saying...enjoy your life, don't let the hustle and bustle overwhelm you and destroy your happiness.

How's that?

Kids these days...

are so desensitized by movies and television and I suspect adults as well. All we see on tv is sex, murder, destruction and American Idol. Quite the combination, isn't it. Maybe I should say reality tv instead of AI. :)

TV and movie producers are constantly looking for the next thing to wow us. Something bigger, badder and better than before. I suppose that is the cause for everything being CG dowadays. Remember when Star Wars: The New Hope came out and we thought that was pretty neat? Now we have movies like Transformers that's seemingly mostly CG (Computer Graphics for all you non-electronics geeks) and that is the big thing. Oh and not to mention the sex scenes are becoming more graphic and more nudity goes on in movies. I'll bet that there are more R-rated movies now than back in the 1950's. Kids have seen more naked women and men by the age of 16 than I did by the age of 21 I'll bet. When will it be enough? Why must we always try harder and harder to impress and shock? When sometimes simple is better.

So you're probably asking yourself at this point why am I bringing this up, well, this might seem a bit conviluted but it stemed from watching Becoming Jane at the movie theatre yesterday. Watching a period movie with no sex, barely any touching or kissing is different from what I'm used to. I had more anticipation and more excitement surrounding the big kiss with Jane and Mr. LeFroy than I ever did with any r-rated movie. Why I asked. Well, the answer is simple. Revealing less is more provocative than revealing it all. There's no sublety or waiting or hesitation in putting it all out there. It's just out there and that's it. Because Jane and Mr. LeFroy didn't touch nor did they kiss until that moment halfway through the movie, it was more passionate and real than if they just jumped in the sack. Maybe kids today should see more of this so they can learn that not everything is available immediately, you have to "earn" (for lack of a better word) things instead of getting them right away. Sometimes a kiss is better if there's hesitation instead of unheeded groping.

Now it sounds like I'm promoting kissing and the like but I'm not. I'm just making an observation. I enjoy movies with less sex and more intimate moments that involve, maybe passionate kiss, hand-holding, hugging, etc. Could that possibly be because I'm a chick? Maybe or it could be because it actually means something. p.s. I mentioned action and CG because generally it goes hand in hand with sex.

Well, there's my diatribe for the day. :)