Not quite Betty Crocker, more like Betty Crock

Not surprisingly I have come across another job that I am in no way cut out for... Chef. I can reheat, I can boil water, and okay I’m being a little bit too hard on myself here... For the most part, I can follow an easy recipe. For the most part. Well... Except for the time my friends Leah, Meredith, and I decided to have girls’ night and cook dinner. I somehow got stuck (ha, I probably volunteered) making the risotto and just assumed that I was supposed to put in the whole box of rice. Needless to say I couldn’t understand why there wasn’t enough liquid, so I just kept adding more water and my risotto end result was more like clumpy rice paste, which wouldn’t have been an issue if I was serving it to preschoolers who actually don’t mind eating paste.

This is exactly why, as a person who lives alone, I choose to avoid cooking. Why make elaborate meals for myself when I could just as easily make something that doesn’t have any more complicated instructions besides remove plastic, microwave on high for 3-4 minutes? To this end, I was really intimidated when my team decided to do a Thanksgiving pot luck lunch at work. My old job had Thanksgiving pot lucks every year and I brought forks. What was I going to bring to this one from my vast cooking repertoire? Cheese and macaroni from the blue box? At first I decided to make guacamole, but that really needs to be made fresh right before serving, so I opted out. My boss suggested I could make crescent rolls. Everyone loves crescent rolls. Oh I can definitely do that! Pop them out of the tube and stick them in the oven, which I was excited to find out turned on this morning, since I’ve maybe used it 3 times before. My co-worker asked me if I had to take the sweaters out of it before I turned it on, right after another co-worker asked me if I made the rolls from scratch. Yes I made them from scratch. I spent hours upon hours coming up with the perfect recipe to get them to taste IDENTICAL to Pillsbury rolls... I am a culinary genius...

The Unbitch Chronicles

I have been trying to turn over a new leaf and be more nice. Therefore not be a bitch or think bitchy thoughts. It was going great until...

... The idiot next to me on the spin bike this morning was watching SportsCenter and kept cheering and saying “go, go, go!, score a touchdown”... Which may have been fine except these were highlights of games THAT ALREADY HAPPENED. It’s not a live game you dumbass. They already said who won! Who gets that pumped about a highlights reel? I hate him. Ugh, I’m a bitch...

Pot Luck

I am bringing crescent rolls to the holiday pot luck tomorrow, Andrei is bringing meat balls...

Jess: how cute is that little dough guy when u push in his belly button...
Andrei: you mean the pillsbury dough boy?
Jess: yes him
Jess: he is making my crescent rolls later
Andrei: if you buy his product, I heard he actually shows up to help you
Jess: YEA
Jess: that's what i'm talkin bout
Andrei: does he know how to make meatballs?
Jess: hahahaha i'm not really sure... i think he just does baked goods, I’ll ask him
Andrei: I want the doughboy
Jess: I NEED HIM
Jess: otherwise my crescent rolls will be shit
Jess: do i have to make them pretty on a serving plate? cuz i was like gonna bring them in a zip lock bag!
Andrei: well the meatballs are arriving in a plastic bag.
Andrei: or a Patsy's bag
Andrei: depending how tonight goes
Jess: ha!!! cheater
Jess: wait, do they have rolls at patsys???
Andrei: I'll get you some if the doughboy doesn't hop off that box and make them for you
Jess: ha i doubt i can find anyone i can con into doing this for me
Jess: anyone who wants to let me call them doughboy
Jess: while they're doing it
Andrei: I'd like you to come over in a chef's hat and make me some crescent rolls
Andrei: yeah, I'll poke you and call you doughboy if you want
Jess: hahahahah sadly someone might like that

Death of a saleswoman

There are some jobs that I am definitely not cut out for. I could never be anyone’s assistant. I have no interest in picking up my own dry cleaning or kissing my own ass, let alone someone else’s. Nor could I ever be a waitress. Seriously, could you imagine me as your waitress? My mouth would very quickly run out of spit and I would easily set the world record for person who made the least amount of tips. Unfortunately it seems that I am not destined to be a salesperson either. A friend of mine recently started consulting part-time for a company so I volunteered to do a “book show” and try to help her sell some of the product. How hard could this be? I’m charming... Sometimes. It wasn't like the product was knives or some kind of useless voodoo organic herbal cold remedy, it was jewelry. What female person doesn't like jewelry? Basically this shit should sell itself. I most likely need to put in zero effort. Should be a breeze!

Uh... Only I could screw up a sure thing like this. I'd probably have an easier time selling girl scout cookies or tupperware. I've done everything possible, most likely alienating all of my co-workers along the way, to try and sell this jewelry... Stopping just short of simply buying it all myself. What am I doing wrong? I have had over a month to do this. I’ve sent out a couple emails, I’ve talked it up to people, I’ve brought in the jewelry for people to touch, I’ve smiled, I’ve modeled the pieces, I’ve offered to personally gift wrap any holiday purchases, I’ve even cornered them and tried the poor me I suck at this please make a purchase out of sincere sympathy for my patheticness as a saleswoman. Nothing has worked. I do not understand! How could I possibly be a failure at selling jewelry to a bunch of girls?...at holiday time!? Hate to see how I’d perform at taking candy from a baby...

Leaner Cuisine

If you saw my shopping cart any given week, you would be quite perplexed. Some cottage cheese, some brown rice, a couple Lean Cuisine meals, diet orange soda, and Pop Secret Butter microwave popcorn. I am like a shopping schizo. Might as well eat a low calorie frozen meal before you indulge in an entire bag of greasily delicious microwave popcorn, then get up at 5:30am the next morning and run 5 miles. Seems to make the most sense. Although I do have to say, the Lean Cuisine frozen meals aren’t really all that terrible. Besides being ridiculously high in sodium and barely enough food for a small child, they are ready in less than 5 minutes, have under 500 calories total, and happen to be one of the most efficient ways to never have to wash dishes. Fantastic! I’m hooked! Well until I saw an article today on MSNBC stating that some of the chicken dinners are being recalled. Lead paint? E.coli? Thankfully no. Meals may contain “foreign materials.” Foreign? So chicken from another country? Cats? Again, no and no. The foreign materials in question are apparently “pieces of hard plastic.” Perfect! Yummy! Wait, how many calories are in plastic?...

What the Pf*ck?

Seriously. What the Pf*ck? What came first the moron or the egg? About a week ago, I blogged about the salad idiot downstairs who insists on including the yolks in my salad when I specifically ask for egg WHITES. It consistently makes me crazy. However today, he outdid himself. Today, after I once again ordered the same salad and clearly said the words egg whites, he plopped an entire hard boiled egg into my salad WHOLE and left it there. What the PF*CK? How in the hell does that make any sense at all? Following that logic, when I ask for grilled chicken, I obviously want an entire chicken thrown in there. It can almost make one yearn for the days of the yolk lumps. Bet you can't explain your way outta this one Nancy Pfotenhauer...

He is special

I love Keith.



(p.s. it seems mirror blog for Facebook doesn't support the video links, if you can't see the video in the post, to watch the clip visit my blog at http://rtweb.blogspot.com/ or click the link at the top of this page...)

A Penny for my thoughts?

In certain situations,
“They” always say, be the bigger person.
What if I don’t want to be the bigger person?
What if I want to be a small, petty person every once in a while?
Why should I be the bigger person?
What do I get for being the bigger person?
That my person is just bigger?
Somehow I should be comforted that I took the high road when I was made to feel badly?
I’m sick of being the bigger person.
Maybe the other person should be the bigger person, if being the bigger person is so wonderfully fulfilling.
I am the bigger person so often that I honestly must be the most ginormous person on the planet.

We can, We did, now what?

We did it. Ba-riggidy-rack-ed the vote. What do we talk about now?! I do not have much to say about the "runner up" as they called him last night... wow how um, PC. Try loser, and I don't mean that in a mean way... but "runner up"? This isn't Miss USA (insert Palin joke here). McCain doesn't get the crown if Obama poses nude for a fraternity calendar.

I watched the returns at my friend Marisa's apartment. The same apartment that I sat in exactly 4 years ago when our country decided to... well we all know what happened. This time I brought Apple Pie and Beer, because nothing is more American. Well nothing besides ignorance. How can you go to an election party and not know what the electoral college is? Really? Really. Are you new to the country? Did you just get off the ferry from Ellis Island? Because that is really the only excuse. Although I can say in defense of stupidity, I had no idea that the big rectangle state was Wyoming... but at least I knew there is no state named East Virginia...

What the Pf*ck?

I am christening a new segment to the blog aptly named 'What the Pf*ck?' as my man Jon Stewart coined after the lunacy that is one of the McCain Stepford Spokeswomen Nancy Pfotenhauer.

Seriously. What the Pf*ck? Everyday I get the same salad at one of two places. Literally the same salad. Mixed greens, grilled chicken, tomatoes, cucumbers, fresh mozzerella, and egg whites. Not egg, egg whites. The purpose of specifying by adding on the word whites, is because I do not want the yolks. Not that I want them separated from the whites and tossed in, I do not want them AT ALL. I really thought that was a pretty obvious concept. However recently I've been finding lumps of yolk in my salad. What the Pf*ck? Clearly the moron at the salad place is in fact a moron.

Posting from the RTW archives

This is the second year that I've lived on the ING NYC Marathon course. As the runners pass up 1st avenue, it reminded me of this...

Volume CCL - Run, Squirrel, Run

When I was in high school I was on the track team for 4 days. Ok, maybe that's a slight exaggeration... it was more like 2 days. Which, incidentally, was just long enough to weasle my Dad into buying me a new pair of running sneakers in anticipation of his soon to be track and field star offspring Jessica Joyner Kersee. I wanted to be a sprinter. Or more accurately I just wanted a cool varsity jacket, sprinting was simply the means to achieve that dream. Ya know, run 100 meters as fast as you can and be done. Easy as pie. That's most likely the longest I could run before getting blinding side cramps and falling over, so it seemed like a winner of an idea. How hard could this be, right? However, during our first practice, the coaches instructed us to run all the way to the park and back. Say what?! I thought I was a sprinter? I am not a distance runner! Needless to say, that was when I realized the track team was not for me. Hence when I went to watch part of the New York City Marathon, I was in complete awe. It's like watching 85,000 crazy lunatics. Those people are nuts. Absolutely nuts. Could you imagine me running 26.2 miles? Do I look Kenyan to you? I don't even think I'd make it across the Verrazanno Bridge without asking God to kill me about a hundred times. But hey, at least I'd have an excuse to wear those cute little running undies that somehow seem to pass as shorts...
I went with my friends Nicole and Sari to watch at the 22 mile marker in Harlem. Yes, you read that correctly, I went to Harlem. It was at about the 4 hour point, which means the super-human winners who finished in 2 hours already had their award ceremonies and were at home showering. These were the regular people who finish in a more average time. I wonder how long it would literally take me to finish. 4 days? You think I'm kidding. The only people to cheer me on would be commuters going to work on Wednesday morning. At what point do you just call it quits? When you are face first on the pavement with a mouth full of gravel? Do you think there are marathon officials whose job it is to tell you at 9:00 PM that maybe you should just take a cab to the finish line before they start tearing it down? How embarrassing! I would definitely come in last. If there are 85,000 entrants, I would probably come in 85,050th, beaten even by stray dogs and random pedestrians. By the fifth hour, even we were tired... simply from cheering. Sari was losing her voice. I had miraculously mastered the mysterious art of clapping but not making a sound. There were people running by in costumes. At one point Nicole screamed "go bear... or squirrel... go squirrel!" How do you run in a full body squirrel costume? These were clearly not the serious athletes. Not like I have any right to talk. When the track coach told us to run to the park, I ran to TCBY and had some fro yo...

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