apparently denture cream and depends are just around the corner

as I was celebrating my cousin's kid's 8-year-old birthday with family in virginia this past wknd (what does that make her, btw? my cousin? my second cousin? my cousin once removed? does anyone know?), I spent some time catching up with my uncle. he's gotten somewhat sentimental in his old age (I think he's 70+ and thankfully very healthy and strong), and I make it a point to spend at least a few minutes chatting with him at every family gathering. he's known me since I was born (obviously), and he and my aunt were pretty much my surrogate grandparents while I was growing up (since I never really knew either of my grandfathers and both of my grandmothers still live in Korea)... you know, the usual stuff... we would have to do whatever he said, they would spoil us rotten at Christmas, they liked listening to me play piano during family events, etc...

so we chatted about my job, about my potential interest in grad school, about my current clients, yadda yadda yadda. and next, in what's starting to become a tradition at every family gathering, he began lecturing me on how I should find a nice man and get married soon. I politely laughed it off and told him that while I am open to the idea, it's not likely going to happen any time soon, that I'm only 26 and have plenty of time (this is quickly becoming my stock response, along with a quick retort that he should be talking to my brother, who is three years older than me... but you know, the whole Asian family / he's a boy thing... etc.).

he agreed that "my generation" was doing things differently but then told me that he wanted to see me married before I turned 30, which gives me exactly four years to get my MRS degree. no pressure or anything. when I asked him what the logic was behind that very stringent timeline, he told me that "once you hit 30, the next thing you know... you're 60!"

I know I majored in English and everything, but it seems to me that he might be missing a few decades in there, no...?

gross... but funny... but gross...

dudes. our main building has a sewage leak and it seriously smells like a fragrant combination of rotten eggs, potpourri, and ASS. yum-diddly-umcious! and do you want to know how much of a dork i am? i am such a huge dork, that my first thought upon encountering the horrific smell (aside from "HOLY CRAP!... literally, holy CRAP!") was "hmm. i bet this is what dungbombs would smell like."

(btw, for all you fellow HP lovers out there... who's excited about book seven?! i am! i am! snape is totally going to be revealed as having murdered dumbledore on dumbledore's orders. and i think harry will continue to hate him but they will manage to reconcile their differences. okay, enough HP geeking out over here.)

ahem. ignore that little aside. so yes, our office smells like complete and total ass today, and i feel awful for the people who have to sit in it and pretend like they can work while the smell of sheer nastiness fills their nostrils and seeps into their every pore... and admittedly feel a bit guilty that i am nice and safe over here in our little satellite office next door.

on an unrelated note, as i was telling my mom yesterday, i am getting old and cannot party like i used to. well, i can, but i end up paying a dear price for it the next day. this past wknd was my dear buddy paula's last wknd in austin, so we partied it up both fri and sat nights... the end result of which was me being a completely lazy waste of space on sunday afternoon. saturday i at least made it out the pool (it was mid-80s and sunny on both days this wknd) and out for a few quick errands, but sunday was spent lying on my couch, alternately popping advil and orange gatorade (nectar of the hungover gods) and watching drumline on tbs ("one band! one sound!").

MOST IMPORTANTLY, i must tell you all that i had my first sonic experience this past wknd, and oh my dear lord, it is just as good as i knew it would be. i mean come on! it's a drive-in! where you order from your car, pay with your card right at the little menu screen, and they bring your food to you! they serve breakfast all day and over a thousand drink combinations (i had peach iced tea, paula had cherry limeade... or was it strawberry?), and you can order tater tots instead of fries! plus they give you mints and bring extra condiments out on a "smile tray!" i'm telling you, all you DC people who see the commercials on TV but don't get to experience the magic that is sonic's drive-in, i feel your pain because i was once one of you... but not anymore, suckers, because i totally had a foot-long coney with tots on saturday and relished every second of it! we enjoyed our food with the sunroof open and all the windows down with motown music blaring out of the speakers.

good times, good times...

monday, bloody monday

(in full disclosure, the title of this post was stolen from an instant messenger away-message that my good buddy amber used to use back in college. what up ambular! go MD!)

despite a full nine hours' sleep last night, i am totally dragging ass at the office today. and there is no time for dragging asses. there is work to be done! clients to be serviced (that sounds so wrong)! brands to pick apart! etc.

as soon as i get my act together, i am going to write a nice long juicy update, but for now, here is a preview of all things JMWT:

• i went to a country western bar this wknd where i was the only minority and i felt like it was 1965. everyone was texas two-steppin' and country swing-dancin' and wearing cowboy boots, and it was insanely awesome. they were such good dancers! we were too intimidated to join in but were perfectly happy just sitting at the side tables, drinking some shiners and watching the crowds. yee-haw bitches.
• i ate chicken-fried steak for the first time. verdict: f'ing disgusting, and extremely unhealthy to boot. i'll stick with "rabbit food" (as the waitress called our salads, which we had polished off), thankyouverymuch. oh, and for the unaware: chicken-fried steak is steak meat (but not nice fork-and-knife steakhouse steak, and not ground chuck either... somewhere in btwn. sirloin, maybe?) that is battered (like fried chicken) and then fried and served with about an inch-deep covering of thick white gravy. excuse while i go barf in the corner. bleh.
• i am an official (gulp) texas resident, with texas license plates and cowboy boots and everything. JMWT? more like Texas Messes With Jen. (yes, i bought some cowboy boots. they were hella expensive but i love them. don't laugh if i wear them back in DC, okay?)
• we had some adventures out in texas hill country, including a visit to the beautiful hamilton pool and some family-style all you can eat BBQ at my beloved salt lick bbq... ahh, texas.

more to follow (including pics!) when i have some more time. in the meantime, if anyone can answer the following question for me, i'd be much obliged:

what the hell should i do next?

(with my life, that is, not with bbq or cowboy boots or country western dancing...)

all hail the allergy queen

this morning i went to the allergy doctor to see if i too had fallen victim to austin's claim to fame as the "allergy capital of the world" (you thought it was all about the live music - ha! you were wrong, friend, it's all about the cedar trees and juniper count down here). i was told to expect a fairly lengthy visit and instructed to wear short sleeves, because they were going to do a skin test.

you guys. have you ever done an allergy skin test before? it is simultaneously FASCINATING and comPLETEly freaky. basically they inject your skin with a million different types of substances that people in this area are allergic to, set the timer for 15 long, excruciating minutes, and then come back to see which injections have turned into angry little welts. i mean, doesn't that sound like fun? who wouldn't want to be subjected to such torture on a brilliantly sunny 80-degree day?

the procedure itself is two-part deal. they start on your back, so you basically lie on your stomach while the nurse takes a pen, marks the injection sites all over your back (so she knows which substance was injected where), pricks you ten million times with ten million different things, and then leaves you there to suffer for 15 minutes before coming back in to see which ones caused a reaction (she rates the bumps based on their size, and the higher the number, the stronger your allergy to that substance). rub entire back off with alcohol to remove ink and then move to part two: arms. they use a higher dose on your arms, so things that cause a reaction on your back are severe allergies whereas reactions to arm injections are more moderate.

i watched the entire arm procedure in complete awe. she had a tray of bottles with the various injections, a tray of needles, and was incredibly efficient. once she had written all the different numbers on my arms to mark the injection sites, she would deftly insert the needle into the bottle, suction up the mold/pollen/grass/tree/dust/dander solution, poke my arm and then inject the liquid until it caused a little white puddle beneath my skin. she was also very nice, and apologized over and over again for causing me pain/discomfort (the needles didn't hurt much but the puddling part was an incredibly bizarre feeling of wtf? and ouch!) while trying to make small talk to distract me from the million needles (when i told her i worked in advertising for a living, she asked me if i was a model in commercials. awwwwww. i felt bad when i had to tell her that actually no, i'm just another working stiff behind a desk). when she finally came back to assess the damage, what with all the numbers up and down my arms and the various little lumps i swear i looked like i had elevator buttons on my skin.

anyway, so it turns out that i am allergic to everything! (did i mention that i'm writing this blog entry in my newfound home of a plastic, hypo-allergenic dust-free bubble?) i have a severe allergy to cedar/juniper trees and a mild allergy to just about everything else you can think of. cats, dogs, cockroaches (oh darn, there goes that cockroach farm i had been planning on starting), all kinds of molds, tree pollens, grass pollens and weed pollens. the good news is that he said mild allergies really aren't that big of a deal (meaning that my dreams of someday owning a dog aren't completely dead! hurray) and won't cause many problems in my everyday life. the bad news is that i feel like a dork. allergies are so not cool. nasal sprays are not bad ass. clarinex does not a sexy party drug make.

oh well. good thing i'm such a natural beauty that people mistake me for a model instead of your average corporate whore. maybe i should pull an izzy stephens and become a model to fund my next academic adventure.

although i somehow doubt that the somewhat dubious title of "allergy dork" would do much for my career as supermodel extraordinaire.

alas.