Okay some people have asked about seeing a bit of when I did extra work. Here is one from Hulu… Roswell, episode called Tess, Lies, and Videotape at the 7.23-ish mark. If you watch the episode… yes that is Claire from Lost. She was very sweet.

Click on the thumbnail for a larger image.

Hey everyone! Dont forget to order your Girls Night In podcast swag. I am getting a tee that is huge for me to sleep in, and also a ladies one to wear out in public! I can’t wait to see them in person. I have been debating about getting an animal, but I think I will save the meese for you all! ERR… I mean the moose… mooses? At any rate, don’t forget!

Also FYI Office Space swingline is back in stock over at thinkgeek. I am getting one for my new cubicle as well as some other fun cube goodies. This will be my first cubicle so I gotta do it up right.

Hope to see you all Wednesday at the Name that Song version of GNI. I can’t wait to hear what songs my Rachel, Kim, and Maggie pick! For the listeners I wanna know “What is a song that reminds you of your childhood” and “What song most makes you want to go postal”. Email us or leave a voicemail with your answers. I am hosting again so it ought to be the usual chaos!

So those of you who follow me on twitter know that I am going to the doctor tomorrow. I am seeing a throat and neck surgeon. I have had a lump along my collar bone for over a year. I had an appointment to have it biopsied in November of 2006. I did not go. I forgot about it, subconsciously or not. I should have taken care of it then but I ignored it. Then it started to hurt, then it got bigger. When I noticed that I had just started my new job and my health insurance had yet to kick in. I was forced to try to forget it. I got my insurance in November but made an appointment and canceled it at the last minute. I chickened out. See, my family has bad history with cancer. My mom died of it three and a half years ago, my aunt died of it two years ago, my other aunt beat it, and my grandmother died of it as well. All different types were represented, bone, lung, brain, breast. It was wrong of me to put it off, it is different when you have a child. I have a responsibility and a duty to her to take care of myself. I went to the general practitioner a few weeks ago. She had blood work done and my platelet count is outta whack. That could mean any number of things. It could mean nothing. My gut feeling is that this is just a cyst. I think that if it were anything more, I would be sick by now for sure. It is more the reminder that I have a monkey on my back at all times. My medical history makes me something of a ticking time bomb in some respects. I have tried to do what I can. I now work out, am trying to eat better, and attempting to avoid stress. I have pledged to myself and to Aly that I will do all I can to make it past her 25th birthday. When I think of all my mom has missed out on, it makes me so sad for her, for me as well. So while I am sure there is nothing to this at all, it is weighing more heavy on my mind than I thought possible. Tomorrow I will be meeting with the man who will biopsy both the lump on my collar bone and also another lump in my neck that was found on an xray. I am sure that is a lymh node… it has been there for years so if THAT was serious, I dare say I would not be writing this. I am not sure if he will even do anything then or if I will have to come back. It has been hard to get information about it.

I am not writing this for sympathy, jI don’t want sympathy. I wrote this just because I have been reminded of my mother several times tonight in different ways and I just felt like I should set my feelings out there. I feel stronger already, having just typed it out. K.I.T.T from Knight Ryder said last night that he has heard that it helps to talk about things. who knew a talking car in a lame movie would say something I would remember?

See you all at the next GNI, by then this will hopefully be over.

Jme

Hello everyone. I am hoping that everyone is having a great holiday season. I am using this forum to write my Christmas letter. I love Christmas, but I have never written a Christmas letter before. I think that I am supposed to tell everyone all about my year and yet write it so that everything sounds better than it actually was. I am going to spare you, and myself, that part. I will just tell it like it was.

Before I do that though, I want to give a preview of the show coming out next week. One topic we discuss is Christmas memories. I saved this one for the blog. I am hoping that this will also help you all understand why we chose to adopt a family for Christmas. I grew up with a single mom. My dad was never really in the picture for me. We lived in California and he lived in Illinois. My mom worked more than 40 hour work weeks as an OR nurse. In addition to the 40 hours she often took call on nights as weekends. When she got called in, which was often, she would pull 12-14 hour days or work 6 days straight. She did all of that to provide for us and yet times were often tight. I remember going without things a lot, but it never really occurred to me to mind. I think it was because we had so much fun anyway. By the time I was in high school my brother and sister had moved out and I got to spend a ton of time with her. Christmas was the one time of year that I can say without a doubt that I wanted for nothing. I cannot remember a single thing that I really wanted that was not given to me at Christmas. It was the one time of year that she let herself spoil us. As a mom now, I can only imagine how hard it must have been to say no at other times. It was always a magical time for us. My mom acted more like a child than any of us during this season. I loved seeing her so happy. When I was in junior high she started a tradition with me that I hold dear. We went to the mall to shop and we saw a tree covered in hand made ornaments. When we looked closer we realized that it each ornament had been made by a child who would not be getting any gifts without help from others. We quickly struck a deal that I would give up a gift of mine so that we could buy one of these kids a toy. The kids had said what they wished for. We found a child asking for a watch. Such a simple thing, it touched us. We went into the Disney Store and bought a Mickey Mouse watch and brought it back to the tree. We were given the ornament that the child had made. We treasured it. Every year after that we found a tree and did the same. For a while we found them easily, children in need often asked for the simplest things… one year it was school supplies (we provided those and added a Barbie as well). For whatever reason, since my mom died three years ago… I have not been able to find one of those trees full of wishes. Perhaps it was something just meant for us to do together. Now that she is gone, memories of Christmas and the joy that we found together in giving to others lives brightly in my heart. I hope to be as wonderful and as inspiring to my daughter as my mom was to me. She truly was an angel in blue jeans. I am doing what I can this year to make Christmas special for a family that finds itself in situation so familiar to me. I know how hard it was for my mom to make Christmas happen every year and yet I was never one time disappointed. Please help me, and the other girls, and donate what you can to help make a very merry Christmas for a single mom and her kids.

Okay if you are still with me after that, here is my letter. The year started off hard for me. I went through a re-structuring at work that had consultants marching around making people feel insecure in their jobs and unsure of their future in the company. I worked a lot. I would be at work by 6:30 and leave at 4:30. I had to drive an hour each way to get there and I still had to bring work home. Even with all of that work, the people I worked with and for treated the employees like they were disposable. I hated every minute that I was there. I had to enforce policy I did not believe it, get yelled at, and was overall feeling very unappreciated. When a co-worker of mine whom I received a lot of support for quit and I got screamed at quite literally by a manager in front of others… I decided to look for another job. I updated my resume that night and looked at monster.com. I saw a job that looked like a perfect fit for me. I applied there and figured I would see what happened. I had been at my job so long that part of me felt like I would NEVER escape. A week later I got a call from the company I had applied to. I went in for an interview later that week. I was hired on the spot. I gave my two weeks notice that day and have never looked back. I have no job stress anymore. I have things that bother me, but it is more about personality quirks, like those you read about here. Really, after the environment I worked in before… these mostly just make me laugh or roll my eyes. It hit me a few days ago that I am happy at work. Usually tired, always wishing I could get up and leave.. but hey it is called going to WORK, not to play. The people there are just NICE. I can’t put into words how much of a difference this has made in my life. I work less hours, commute less, have a better work environment, and I get paid more with better benefits. Pinch me please.

Aly is getting so big. I am sure you have heard her in the podcasts lately. She is a spitfire and so funny. I love being a mom. I try to make our time together as good as it can be. We do a lot of different things, like the zoo, the aquarium, fun things that we can just enjoy together. She talks non-stop and now knows all of her colors and is working on numbers and letters. She is obsessed with princesses and spends a lot of time making me take off their dresses and changing their clothes. Being a mom is more than I ever knew. I love it.

The podcast of course is wonderful. I feel so lucky that I have gotten to know not just my three great co-hosts and friends, but the listeners as well. You all are awesome and I have made some really special friends from this. Thank you all.

I guess that is it for me. Thank you for sticking with me and reading all of this. I hope you all have a wonderful season and enjoy whatever holiday you spend. Please remember to give what you can, I learned from my mom that you can often times give more than you ever knew and you can make a difference with even a small gesture. Thinking about that watch still makes my heart swell.

Merry Christmas to you all. Mom, I love you and I know that where ever you are… the brightest Christmas lights, the loudest jingle bell, the sweetest memories, they are all gifts from you.

Hello everyone. *GASP* I just noticed that I have completely been neglecting the blogosphere. I won’t bore you with tales of woe and sickness (SICK TWICE IN ONE MONTH???). Let’s just say it has been an icky month since we last talked. I thought I would tell you a little bit more about something totally random. I have a flipper. No, seriously. See… on the back of my foot, above my heel, I have a protruding bone. There should be no bone there. Most people don’t have a protruding bone there. It is nothing normal like a bone spur, nope had it since I was born. My sister has it too. We call it our flippers. We figure that we are just not as evolved as the average bird. According to some evolutionary texts, we have all evolved from sea organisms and eventually lost our flippers… we just are not as evolved as the average joe. In further support of this issue is that I had an abnormally long appendix when it was taken out. Monkey also have long appendixes. I guess I should be starring on the show cavemen as their slightly less evolved cousin.
Wow, that was some random info about me if ever there was any. Let’s see what other random things I can tell you about. I am addicted to Coke Zero and live in fear that it will go the way New Coke. I hate lettuce. I find it to be a crunchy mass of watery yuckiness. It just ruins all of the food they try to stick it in… like a perfectly good taco. I am a HUGE fan of Olivia Newton John. I used to watch Olivia Live on video (yes VHS) everyday when I got home from school, starting at about age six. I have seen her in concert 4 times. I am a dork like that. It takes me 7 minutes from the time my feet hit the floor in the morning until the time that I start my car. I am low maintenance like that. I snore when I am really tired. When I was twelve I tried to cut my own bangs and they were uneven so I chopped them off at the root (not suggested). I still hate pants. I live in flip flops. I hate heels. Wint-O-Green lifesavers are the best.
I am really tired and it is only 9:15. I should stop babbling now.

Jaime

PS The above evolutionary facts are LOOSELY based on facts that I hardly remember. Don’t even think about using this post as a source for your next science report unless it is about what sleep deprivation and too many Dora videos does to grown women!

Random listener shout out to KIM who called in to Manic Mommies for us. That rocked. It was like rock stars dedicating a song to us.

Anyone else watching Dancing with the stars notice that watching Jane Seymore tackle latin dances is much like drinking moonshine out of a tea set? Just does not match.

Okay I have to write this one! So a few weeks back I spent about 3 days working on a checklist that would cross reference all of the items in our catalogue. I gave it to Mr. Moranis, and he said “I don’t think that this will work”. He gave no reason, just left it at that. HE then spent a week handwriting the same list, in a different order, to give to me so I could type it up and then write the name of each item on the top of a sheet of paper. You may ask why the person USING the form could not just write the name of the item they were working on when they were filling out the rest of the form… I know I asked. “It is just easier this way”. Okay, easier for WHOM??? I have been working on this for 5 days! My arm hurts and my hand randomly cramps even when I am NOT writing. I have gone through THREE REAMS of paper and I am not even close to being done! Okay hissy fit done… or not. See… yesterday I get summoned to his lair where he asks me “What is this? Did you do it?” as he holds up my checklist from weeks back. When I looked at him incredulously and stammered that I did, he said “Oh, this is really good. I wish you had shown it to me before I did mine”. AHHHHHHH are you serious? Yes, yes he was. He asked when I had done it, “A few weeks ago” and why had I not shown it to him “I did, and we even talked about it” and then gave me a blank stare and walked away. Sigh.

So I was late today. I fell back to sleep after my alarm went off and had a scrumptious dream… sort of. I was dreaming that I was at a beach club and made an utterly charming remark when I looked up and did the intense eye contact-connection to the soul thing with none other than Harrison Ford… when he was young like I like him best… and then someone make a remark about the business across the street where those Moranis’ work… and then my REAL boss (Mr. Moranis is one of the owners, but his niece is technically my real boss and I actually love her) came up to the beach stand looking impossible regal decked out in an Audrey Hepburn/ Breakfast at Tiffany’s black sheath and Jackie O glasses. I whispered to the person making the remark that she was one of the Moranis’, but the nicest one of all… and then as dreams do, it faded into a new scene where I was sitting by the high dive with Harry, watching divers do tricks and we were doing that lay down, propped on your elbows, making incrediable conversation while gazing into one another’s eyes when who walks into my dream COMPLETELY uninvited? Mr. Moranis… wearing a plaid pair of trunks circa 1962 and a white tank top with Zinc Oxide on his nose. I woke up, looked at the clock and jumped outta bed. What a way to start a day.

Love ya peeps, drop me a line so I feel the love too.

Jme

PS Random listener shout out goes to Amy Pearson, she is so much fun to follow on twitter… but her voice is one of the ones who sounds wrong to me. Sigh. Back to work.

Okay, I know I just blogged about this… but here is part two of my office stories. Remember Mr. Moranis? Well, here is what I have noticed this week. He wears two watches. At the same time. On the same arm. They both function and there seems to be no reason for this at all. These are not Rolexes or any other kind of watch that you would think MAY have sentimental value. Oh no. One looks like the classic dork wrist adornment of the 80’s, complete with calculator. The other one looks like it stood next to a nice gold watch and tried to dress and act like it, but as with all imposters, imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery… but it is still imitation. I however, wear no watches, so maybe this is something time knowers of the world understand while those of us who believe the party starts when we get there will never get… seriously. Two?

I also found out a bit of inflammatory gooze (yes, new word alert). He left his wife for the nanny, whom he affectionately refers to as bossy. Yes, he calls her bossy instead of a name. I have no idea what her name actually is as no one has ever heard her referred to as anything other than bossy. Maybe the two watches is because if he is late bossy gets mad?

In addition to Mr. Moranis, I want to introduce you to another person in my office. We shall call her Ms. (never Miss or Mrs.) Talbots. She is stick thin, but always on a diet, wears her hair in a perfect wedge, and ALWAYS dresses like she stepped out of a catalogue circa 1984. She is full of pleasantries, such as her favorite way to greet me on her way out of the lunchroom on my way in… “Don’t eat too much”. She first said this time me the very first time I spoke to her. She has ice water pumping from her heart and a sacchrin smile. Artificially sweet and completely unsatisfying, it leaves you craving the real thing. Sort of the way new coke made you wish you had coke classic. More on her later…

Yours,

JME

PS Random listener this blog… is you. Whoever you are… you rock.

Hello everyone. I know I have been mysteriously absent from the world of blog as of late… but I have not had anything to say. All right, pick yourself up off the floor while I explain. I like to write about things I love and hate and since I decided to have that be my topic for next weeks show… well, what am I to blog about??

I decided to write about the thing which I should be doing now… work. For those of you who don’t know, I started a new job 3 months ago. I think I am just now starting to settle in, be comfortable, and even not hate being here ALL the time.

That being said, let me tell you about my boss. Picture for me Rick Moranis, now add about 15 years from the last time you saw him in a movie because I dont know about you, but I skipped “Honey I blew up the kid”. I am more of a “My Blue Heaven” kind of girl, but I digress. Now that you have your mental pic, let me tell you some stories about him. He broke his toe a month ago and rather than buy an orthopedic shoe… he lopped off the top of a pair of tennis shoes and wore that instead. Keep in mind this man is rich and CAN afford proper medical care, he just prefers to invent things himself. During the middle of a heat wave, he came in to the lunchroom and said “wow, it sure is hot.. let me fix that. He popped in a second later and said “I am such a nice guy, I turned the AC down a degree”. A degree, as in ONE. Whoo… we are talking 88 to 87. Let me tell you about the icy cool relief we all felt.

Last week on the show you heard my delirium after being cooped up all day sorting papers. What I did not mention is that those papers started out as a pile about 3 feet tall. I got, kid you not, THREE sets of instructions on how to sort these papers into piles. Because I am that stupid. AFTER (he insires all kinds of caps) I was done, I went to file these nicely sorted papers and lo and behold, there was a pile about a foot tall that he forgot to give me. Maybe he was focusing on the instructions he needed to give me?

Mr. Moranis brings in bagels every Monday. This is nice. He does not however bring in enough for everyone. He writes names on all but 2 of them and the 10 people without a labeled bagel actually get to fistfight for their share of the remaining 2. Once, he brought in donuts and when someone ate one that was not labeled for them, he hunted them down and asked them in front of everyone else if they had eaten it… more fun stories to come, this was just the appetizer. Do you have any fun boss stories to share? Comment and let me know.

Back to my regularly scheduled Monday.

Laters,

Jme

PS Random listener shoutout goes to… drum roll please… My friend Krissy in the “IT” department, my new friend on facebook whose emails never fail to crack me up, even when I read them right. Funny how she did not take me up on my offer to go to Sephora for her.

Here I am again. I am writing this blog because Kim told me to. No, really… she told me to. Of course she told me to because I was whining about being bored at work again and she said a blog would be the perfect cheese to go with my whine. In fact as you read this imagine that there are tiny violins playing, because really, they are playing for me in my head.

Okay, enough scenery. I have decided to write about things that make me happy for no real deep reason. I figure I complain enough about what annoys me, so here are some things I like.

I like the fact that the woman who shares my office space is sixty years old and she still wastes time when the boss is not around. I now know we never outgrow our ability to take advantage of opportune situations. I like paradise tea although I dislike the fact that quiznos no longer carries it. I like rain, it is currently 107 out. I really like the idea of rain at this point. I like the fact that infomercials never waste a chance to say “But wait, there’s more”. There really should always BE more. More is more. I like popping my gum, I like that it annoys people even more. I like the movie girls just wanna have fun. I like that my favorite take out place has coke zero on tap even though it is take out and I don’t order drinks there. It just gives me hope. I like pens, I mean I REALLY like pens. The make me happy in ways I cant explain, so I wont. I like blogs about nothing. I like ballet flats even though they make my feet stink. I like to burp. I like tacos, esp when I make em. I like a clean kitchen. I do not like making a clean kitchen. I like a full gas tank. I like my Murphy brown tee shirt although it is causing me grief as it is getting holes in it and it is so shear I think I may have to wear a tank top under it. I like cold when I sleep. I like chinchillas.

I think that last one was random enough. I like you, you rule. Unless I don’t like you, then why are you reading this you jerkoid? I like ending words in oid.

Catch the show next Wed. I like the show.

Jme

Oh yea, I like my random listener shout-out. Here it is. Listener of the blog is…. Sharon. I dont know if she reads these, but she is a cool girl who started coming to gspn about the same time as me. Hi Sharon! Hope your mom is doing better!

Hey Guys,

It has been a while since my last blog. I wish I had some dramatic and life altering reason for my lapse in writing… alas, I am just lazy. Seriously though, there has been a whole lotta nothing interesting going on. If anyone was wondering where my extensive rant on facebook versus twitter is… it is not coming. I think I made myself clear on where I stand and so as not to be a hypocrite, I followed my own advice and removed those people whose tweets were getting under my skin.

I did win a radio contest last week. I had to be a certain number caller and then compete against another caller in a trivia battle with the first to three winning. I was asked, 1. What country would you have to visit to see the Mona Lisa 2. What is a number that is only divisible by itself and one called and 3. What fast food chain wants you to have it your way right away? I answered all three right and the other guy never got to answer any of them. Ha ha, I mean…er… too bad for him. I won two tickets to movie premiere (I am not going, it is tonight), a $50 gift card to a grocery store (already spent), and four tickets to Go Diego Go. Now that last one really gets me because Aly seriously hearts Diego. I mean her tiny little two year heart beats for that cartoon saver of wild animals that sounds suspiciously like his female cousin Dora. I am taking her and a friend of mine this Wednesday. I will miss the show this week. I mean that quite literally. I will miss recording, I really enjoy it. If it were anything other than my girls true love, I would not be missing it but who am I to interfere with true cartoon boy to toddler girl love?

I saw a really good movie this weekend called Fracture. Totally suggest it if anyone is looking for a suspense film. I also saw Zodiac which was good, but made me scared to go to sleep which in turn made me irrationally angry. Being tired often makes me irrationally angry. You know what else makes me angry… no, no… not gonna go there.

Okay, better wrap this up and get some more work done. Talk to you all later and come by talk shoe Wednesday at 9/8/6 PM whichever time zone you happen to be in and show the girls some love for me. Wallace and Grommit, Curse of the WereRabbitt. Rachel is hosting and it is gonna be great.

Love ya all.
Jme

Random listener shout out today goes to … drumroll please… BETH. Simply because that girl excels at giving us all way too much information and we heart her for it, it makes Rachel turn funny shades of pink to red to purple depending on the topic. Thanks for the support Beth!