The time has come to define the new year, and although I'm still working on my official 2009 theme, I think I've decided on my personal sponsor and spirit guide. In years past, I've chosen Ann Margret and Willona Woods for their spirit and energy to lead the way, but this year I'm going a little grittier. 2008 was one hell of a year, so I think 2009 is going to need someone with more of an edge. I've spent a lot of time debating this decision, going over the pros and cons of all the candidates, trying not to be swayed by the lobbyists... and I'm excited to announce that my spirit guide for 2009 is the inimitable Patti Smith.

Why Patti Smith? So many reasons, but to name a few:

• She's 62 (today, as a matter of fact) and still totally rocks
  
• I always wished I was even just a little bit punk rock
  
• Patti is a singer, poet, painter, photographer, activist
  
• And even better than all that? She's a blogger
  
• She did a cover of When Doves Cry and I love anyone who can do a good Prince cover (See also: The Be Good Tanyas)
  
• Put simply, Patti Smith is a badass
  

I look forward to a punk rockier 2009.

*** Updated to add this video, sent to me by my friend Seamus. It's especially awesome because in 2nd grade, I learned how to perform this song in sign language. True story. ***

Posted at: 12:07 AM | Comments (15)

All I want for Christmas is a photo booth and a green screen. Thanks!

- Jenny

PS - I finally got a scanner, so you can take that off my list now.

Posted at: 06:55 AM | Comments (13)

It's hard to have so many unfulfilled dreams, because sometimes, when you're all alone and rooting around in the dark, you trip over all the skeletons. Although, maybe that's the wrong metaphor, because skeleton implies something that once was alive, but is now long since dead. And if these dreams are unfulfilled, they never really came to life in the first place, did they? So maybe I'm tripping over zygotes. Little piles of dried up fertilized eggs. Yeah, plus I think that's way more dramatic.

Anyway, the zygote I kicked the other day was the result of a discussion I had with my friend Dr. Greene several years ago. I'm sure the idea came to us over a phone conversation during the America's Next Top Model commercial breaks. It was at the height of the LOLCats craze, and I remember us talking about how we needed to take that concept to the next level. A fiercer level.

Before Tyra had even revealed which of the girls before her was still in the running toward becoming America's Next Top Model, the seed had germinated: we would create LOLGreedo. We'd set up a website and soon thereafter, Star Wars geeks everywhere would be sending in their own homemade LOLGreedos, and then we'd sell ad revenue, and get to meet Harrison Ford, and then we could buy more Greedo action figures, and make more LOLGreedos, and move to a chateau in the south of France, and then stop doing LOLGreedo because it would be way over by then, and give me a break, like they even know who Greedo is in France.

So anyway. I didn't have a white board back then, so that's partly why the idea never took off. But we did manage to make a few prototypes that I recently stumbled across in my "Unfulfilled Dreams: 1998-2006" folder:

If only I'd had that white board back then... I'd be all, "Au revoir, suckers! Moi, je suis riche!"

Posted at: 08:52 PM | Comments (14)

For the past couple weeks, I've been conducting customer research interviews which I'm recording and then transcribing for further analysis. I'm amazed at all the important findings I've discovered throughout this process, like industry trends, market needs, competitive intelligence, and oh my effing god, when were any of you going to tell me that I laugh like a goddamn horse?

I mean seriously - was this all some big joke to you? "Hey kids! Let's just hang out with Jenny and never tell that she sounds like uh huck uh huck uh huck and by the way she's had spinach in her front teeth for the past 24 years."

There's no way I would've done that to you. No way would I have let you reach the ripe age of 37 - LONG past the point where you could actually take steps to correct this behavior - without pulling you aside and gently calling your attention to the beastly braying that escapes from your gullet whenever you are amused. I just wouldn't have done that to you.

I didn't even recognize it as my own voice when I first heard it. What the-? Was that the customer? My account manager? A foghorn from a passing ship? I had to rewind the tape about five times before I finally realized that it was me.

And it doesn't even sound like a genuine laugh. It sounds like an interpretation of a human laugh done by an alien who is trying not to be discovered. But we're on to you, Klaatu! For we shall recognize you by your baboonish guffaw!

Guess I learned a little more than I bargained for with this study. I learned that my only true friend is a Sony M-200 microcassette recorder with zoom mic and Voice Activated Recording.

Posted at: 10:29 PM | Comments (14)

Nothing gets me more in the holiday spirit than walking the aisles at Target, elbowing my way past hordes of people rifling through clearance nutcrackers, and finally arriving in my most favorite of favorite departments: Pet Accessories.

As I quickly snatched one of the last available Christmas themed cat costumes, I heard a young woman say to her boyfriend as she pointed up at the display, "Ohmigod, have you ever seen anything so stupid? I'm so sure that would even last two seconds on our cats before they tore it to shreds."

The costume on the display was the exact one I held in my hands. What this naïf didn't know is that as long as you have a fast enough shutter speed, two seconds is MORE than enough time to get your money's worth out of this costume.

Behold!

Can you even handle the classic Olan Mills look-to-Jesus pose he's doing? What a pro!

Here, I will admit, he looks as though he is plotting my slow and painful death. But still, totally worth it, right?

Posted at: 03:11 PM | Comments (21)

“You know, when you throw up in the kitchen like that, it’s a really helpful reminder for me to wash the floor. It’s like I hardly even need to make to-do lists anymore – thanks!”

“You’re right – solids are out and tweed is in. These black pants look way better now that they have cat hair stuck all over them. You should get your own makeover TV show!”

“Good balance is an essential part of any successful exercise regimen, so I really appreciate you wrapping your body around my ankles as I walk through the house. Narrowly avoiding falling into that coffee table really helps build the core!”

“I really should remember to buy environmentally-friendly cotton grocery bags, and now that you’ve eaten the handles off of all these plastic ones and vomited them back up, I’ll remember to go green next time. I admire the way you care about the planet!”

“That PowerPoint presentation definitely needed some more oomph, and an entire slide with nothing but the letters SWSWSSSSWWWWSSWWWW is exactly what it needed. Thanks for keeping my laptop warm while I was in the bathroom!”

Posted at: 10:00 PM | Comments (15)

Today is Day One of my new diet. On it, I only eat things that are (or were) round and come in a box. For dinner, I had three clementines, a few handfuls of Kix cereal and two large glasses of Pinot Grigio.

So far, I'm feeling alllllright!

For dessert, I'm trying to decide between Milk Duds and Gobstoppers. Probably Milk Duds. Atkins Schmatkins!

Posted at: 08:21 PM | Comments (14)

This Thanksgiving, prior to gorging myself on delicious food and tasty wine, I spent a few frustrating hours trying to figure out how to reclaim my blog after a douchebag hacker took it over. Luckily for me, although I am 50% luddite (the rest is German and Sicilian), I have lots of tech savvy friends to be thankful for.

The first is Vahid, who initially alerted me to the hackage of my site. Next came Dave2, offering his assistance even though he was in the midst of air-travel hell. Then was my friend kris, who calmed me down and walked me through taking my site offline. And finally, the support team at my host, Laughing Squid, worked on the holiday to have my site back up and running in just hours. Thanks, gang – you are the BEST blog-pals a gal could hope for!

Seriously – if any of you are looking to switch hosting services, I HIGHLY recommend you check out Laughing Squid. Kris initially recommended them to me after her 10 years of success with them. I switched to them about three years ago and have been nothing but pleased. They’re simply awesome to work with.

And now that this incident has reminded me how sorely inept I am at managing my own site, I’ve been inspired to learn more and make this blog better* than it was before. Better, stronger, faster. We have the technology!

* Author reserves the right to get distracted from web design by other things like cheese-making, bee-keeping, playing Nintendo DS and/or drinking wine. But she will really try this time, she swears!

Posted at: 04:14 PM | Comments (11)

Cant do dinner tonite. Cheese poisoning.

That’s all Natasha’s text said, but I completely understood. Thank god, I thought, as I lay back down on the couch and unbuttoned my jeans. I wasn’t familiar with the symptoms of a calcium overdose, but I imagined my bones beginning to petrify into an adamantium-like super skeleton.

It all began with our discussions earlier this year about abandoning city life. First, Nat, Dee-Dee and I started a secret blog in which to document our progress at acquiring all the skills necessary to run a successful farm. We would need to learn to sow and reap, cook and compost, birth and slaughter.

Then, while flipping through an issue of Chicago Magazine, I read an article about a farm in northern Illinois that teaches cheese-making classes. It was clearly a sign from the agricultural gods, so I signed all three of us up for the next available class.

As we drove down the winding gravel road to the farm, we made a few requisite Children of the Corn jokes about how we have your woman, outlanders.

We hoped we’d get to see a lot of goats soon. We did.

The class was small – only six people – and we were informed that we would get to make six different cheeses that morning. I tried to play it cool as I squeezed Dee-Dee’s arm and shout-whispered, “OHMIGOD WE’RE GOING TO MAKE SIX DIFFERENT CHEESES TODAY! THIS IS THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE! I WONDER WHAT KIND WE’LL GET TO MAKE!”

I didn’t have to wonder for long.

We each got to make one of the cheeses, and the instructor stopped us at certain points along the way and brought us all around one particular cheese to demonstrate a key step in the process.

Dee-Dee chose mozzarella. Here we all are watching Dee slice into the solidified curds. This is what learning looks like.

This is someone we don’t know making ricotta. She was nice, and put butter and rosemary in the cheese before we ate it.

This is me making feta.

This is what feta would look like if it were made by the residents of a 19th century insane asylum. I need to work on my cheese cloth skills.

While we were waiting for some of the cheeses to drain, we went out to the barn to meet some goats. We learned that certain goats kind of look like greyhounds.

Then we met Cocoa. Cocoa is a big fat goat. She gets to sit around eating goat food while she waits to get milked. BY US!

Our instructor said that they can usually fill a pail of milk in about 3-4 minutes. It took six of us about 20 minutes to get three tablespoons of milk. Did you know that there’s no pulling involved in milking a goat? It’s just squeezing. In the cartoons, it always looks like pulling.

I don’t have a picture of this, but one of the women in the class told a story about how her young daughter accidentally milked a horse once. With her mouth. I just shivered again as I wrote that.

Here’s something I learned about cows. I thought only male cows had horns. WRONG! This is a female cow, and she has horns. She’s shy.

At the end of class, we filled our containers with samples of all the cheeses we had made, bought some local honey and goat milk soap as souvenirs, and said goodbye to Cocoa as we left.

It’s a small step toward our goal of living off the land, but an important one. And I’ve already signed us up for our next class: beekeeping. This could get dangerous...

Posted at: 11:21 PM | Comments (16)

I am slowly preparing myself for my inevitable rejection of society by hanging out at goat farms. So far, so good.

Goat.

Goat.

Not a goat.

Not a goat.

Goat.

Goat.

Ha! I'm totally kidding. That's not even a goat. You can't live on a farm.

Posted at: 07:28 AM | Comments (16)