You Can Call Me Whatever You Like

You know that TI Song? "Whatever You Like" I think a modification of this song very well applies to my life.....at work when it comes to bosses, client personnel, anyone that I am "below," etc....pretty much anything goes when it comes to my name. I have a pretty common name (Jennifer), but it is apparently very confusing to people that I go by a shorter version of it (Jen)....so I respond to any variation when I think they might be referring to me. So folks, at work "you can call me whatever you like."

Advice to the Dudes: Places You Should Not Try To Pick Up a Girl (If you are looking for your future wife)

I felt called to write on this topic as I walked the hallways of the scary deserted dungeon that is the parking garage in my office building tonight. This evening my fear of the dark shadows of this parking garage after hours reminded me of so many encounters I have had with males whose welcoming intentions only caused me to walk faster in the opposite direction in terror.

Here is a list of places you should not even think to or try to pick up a respectable girl at:

- Parking garages, parking lots, and while driving on the road: Trust me, any girl with a head on her shoulder is going to think you are about to mug her, no matter how good looking you are. She probably has her fingers wrapped around her can of mase as you approach her.
Side note story: Once while driving from college to my home town, I was stuck in a traffic jam that was not moving. A guy in a tall truck inched towards my car...I could see his driver window creeping up on my passenger window. Then he unrolled his window and was trying to talk to me. I mean, come on.....I'm not your soul mate, please don't make this any more awkward because I have no where else to go!!! I'm stuck here!

- In the bathroom area of a bar when the bathrooms are unisex or if you just caught her leaving the men's restroom because she was that desperate to pee. Trust me....this is just WAY too awkward.

- While in her apartment (lets say you are visiting her roommate) and she is inside her room with the door shut. Trust me, talking about me while you know I am in my room is not going to make me come out any faster and throw myself in your arms. Once again, don't hit on girls when they have nowhere to escape.

- On Facebook, if you have friended her and you have never even met one another. Your odds here are extremely low. It's not going to work unless you are extremely hot and have multiple pictures to prove it.

- In her apartment, if you are the maintenance guy.....this goes back to the whole lack of escape option for the girl and also the fact that you probably have a key to her apartment.

- At the dry cleaners, if you are the dry cleaner employee and you are making suggestive comments about her clothing


Well these are all the ones I can think of right now. I feel like I am missing a few. I might have to do an additional post to this one.

Here's one last gem of information that I can share with you: Whistling or yelling at a girl as she walks across the street is also not going to get you anywhere with any girl you would want to call your wife some day. What kind of reaction do you expect to get from a girl after you yell at her? I'm an intelligent person, and I just don't get it. How is she supposed to respond? Is she supposed to turn around, drop at her feet, and beg for you to take her out because you so impressively WHISTLED at her?? Please, if you have something of value to add to this.... please do!

"you're going to make some man very happy some day"

Preface: this is a very sarcastic comment from a coworker.

Why?

Well, I possess a lethal combination of traits, a condition I have named MADS (Morning person with Ambition but also Deep Sleeper). Let me describe the typical behavior of a MADS person, how they get to this point, and what you should look for. MADS people are very very chipper and excited to be awake in the mornings. Once they are awake they love their time in the morning, are very social, and this is the most exciting part of their day. They are even energetic enough to work out in full force. Please note the key to knowing if you are MADS is the phrase once awake. You see someone with MADS is such a deep sleeper that it takes them quite a while not to wake up but to actually HEAR the alarm go off. I believe the deep sleeping and the ambition components of MADS are mutually exclusive. You see MADS people are so ambitious, always trying to fit more things in the day, that they don't budget enough time for sleeping which means they are severely sleep deprived and sleep quite heavily through the night.

Why is MADS such a tricky condition to live with? Well, being such deep sleepers MADS people often are not even aware of their alarm going off because they have trained themselves to shut them off and continue into their deep sleep. In fact, because of this most people with MADS have to set multiple alarms. As a MADS individual myself, I set around 7-9 each night. These are often set up in different categories of 15 min intervals, listed below:

• Ambition time alarms: the time I wish to wake up in enough time to go to gym
• Contingency time alarms: set for the time frame I would need to wake up, shower, and show up presentable to work without working out
• Oh Shit time alarms: last minute alarms for in case the first two sets failed I would have enough time to throw on clothes, brush my teeth, and be a little late to work

To make matters worse, I have unintentionally trained myself to just completely shut off alarms and not even give snooze a chance. At certain points in my life I have had to set multiple physical alarms in several different areas of my room (and sometimes inside the closet) to where I would have to walk up and turn the alarm off. Even then not all of those alarms would wake me up. My mom frequently would have to give me wake up calls in college because I was the queen of cramming for tests up until the last minute and attempting all nighters. (There is the ambition part again....I used to think that I needed to spend every waking minute studying for upcoming tests.) Also, at one point when I was attempting to make it to a 5:30am spin class three times a week, I hit some record highs (or you might classify them as lows depending on your outlook) and snoozed at times through 2 hours of alarms going off every 15 min.

So, there you have it. I am about to go to bed and I have just set my usual alarms on my iphone. The times I have been setting this week are 5:45, 6, 6:10, 6:15, 7, 7:10, 7:15, and 7:30am on my iphone and then I also set up a back up mechanical alarm for 5:55am (still wanting to get that gym time in). This morning I slept through all of them up until 7:15. This condition usually only lasts on the weekdays. On the weekends I voluntarily get up quite early in a hyper state ready for an exciting day ahead!! Sorry future hubby :)

Fun Bobby Addictions

I have an addictive personality, if you haven't noticed. I like to think of it as a strength most of the time though. See, I don't just halfway do things. Once I'm in, I'm all in. I'm fully committed and devoted to the things in my life that I chose to love. During the week since I'm a responsible job holding citizen, I can't be addicted to the bar scene. So, instead I have chosen coffee to be addicted to M-F.

Coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee. I love it! I think about it all day long. I only limit myself to not having more than one cup a day, and actually some days I don't even have a single cup. But, you can be sure that I'm thinking about it all day long. Mmmmm.

Here is a little background on my coffee history. I never touched a single cup of coffee until I was 20 years old. I remember the moment vividly. Until then, I had been saving myself for a moment of desperation. You see, I like to think that I have a lot of natural energy and stamina for making it through the day and night without the help of external stimulants. I never grew up drinking sodas or coffee and had pulled many all nighters in my student career without it. I knew that once that sweet dark brew would touch my lips, my natural stamina would slowly decline due to the dependency on the bean. So, I had to play it cautiously because like I said, I go hard or I go home. Once I was dedicated to coffee, there would be no turning back....and who knows how dark that path could get.

So what was the moment that made me give in 20 years of self control and will power? What was this pivotal event? Well, in college I was the treasurer of my sorority, and ladies and gentlemen this was no joke of a job. They sent me to Columbus Ohio for a three day convention, including 2 full days devoted JUST to the accounting software they use. Accounting + Software for 16 hours!!!! Yeah, I was desperate. It was terrible, I had to get some help from a higher power.

So there it began. To tell you the truth I didn't become all out addicted until I started my second full year in the accounting business and had to go through another mind numbing busy season. I also had been tragically afraid of how to make coffee and use coffee machines. I used to say I would really suck as an intern because I can't even make coffee for my bosses. Once I learned the ropes, I became a full out addict.

Have any of you ever seen the movie Kicking and Screaming with Will Ferrell? In the movie he tastes his first cup of coffee and becomes maddeningly obsessed with it....to the point of drinking so much his personality completely changes and he's extremely high strung. He just couldn't hold his java. I sometimes chuckle that I could potentially end up on the deep end like that too.

While we are on the subject, this also reminds me of a hilarious story that one of my favorite professors in college, Dr. Brederson, told me one time. Dr. Brederson was my business law professor, and having gone to law school, was sharing one of his experiences with our class. Apparently during one of his legal classes a guest speaker was going to come who specialized in lie detector machines. The guest speaker challenged the class that if anyone can beat the machine, they will win something (I forget what). My professor was determined to win this challenge and so he researched how to beat lie detector machines and found out that the machines mainly work by finding a spike in your nervous system. His plan was for him to start out the test already in a state of being extremely high strung so that if he lied, the machine wouldn't be able to detect a difference in his lying. The morning of the test, he drank as many cups of coffee as he could to be sure he was extremely wired. On top of that, 5 minutes before the class he called a girl he had been wanting to ask out and asked her out. Hahaha. Once he got to class extremely hyped up, he was disappointed to find that the guest speaker wasn't able to make it that day due to something else that had come up.

Coffee coffee coffee coffee!! Coffee is on my brain, I have a dirty mind - there are no coffee filters on this mocha flavored mind!

Going Green Stage 1: The Vino

I figure wine has got to be pretty green since its been around since Biblical times. Okay, okay, I know that there are many other factors that determine how green something is....but I figure starting out with things that people hundreds or thousands of years ago recognize is a good start. Plus, I think wine making hasn't changed too much in the past few hundreds of years....the bottles might be an issue. Now comes the hard part of researching the vino :)

Resolutions

A new year. A new decade. Out with the old, in with the new. I love beginnings, they bring with it so much hope....hence why everyone in the world makes grand resoultions in January. Does anyone have some funny resolutions to share? Time to think about how crummy I've been and come up with ways of improving my otherwise perfect self, without the help of a little merlot.

Normally every year I roll forward the same resolutions from the prior year (due to not fulfilling them). See, I don't like to give up on old dreams. I also don't like to face reality. I feel like this is an ordinary practice any accountant would follow. Since I have been rolling forward the same resolutions since 2007, I decided to find some new additions with hope that I will be more motivated to check all of these things off my list by the end of this year (or maybe....this decade?) The logic makes total sense- add more to my plate and it will definitely all get done since apparently I didn't have enough to do to motivate me to get any of it done- Sounds like a good plan right? 2010, you obviously have brought a lot of HOPE to me!


Old rollover resolutions:

• Be in the best shape of my life (carryforward notes: when I made this resolution, I was already in the best shape of my life....and ironically when I biked 100 miles in 2009 I was in the worst shape of my life. so now I have to reverse what I have done. go figure.)

• Meet Prince William (carryforward notes: I keep missing the boat on this one, but it WILL happen! pun intended)

New resolutions added in 2010:

• Live in a place of love (I feel like I lived 2009 in a place of bitterness, time to make peace with the world and all of its forces)

• Be more patient (If I succeed, this will be a lifetime accomplishment)

• Be more green (I am starting out with some of these tips that I found from last year's Bon Appetit magazine http://www.bonappetit.com/magazine/2009/02/fifty_easy_ways_to_eat_green?currentPage=1 There are even tips for drinking. I am very excited about this! Note: being green does not apply to my job as an accountant.....I'll never make up for the carbon footprint this job creates!)

That's all for now, we will revisit this quarterly (like a good accountant) and at the EOY.

xoxo, Fun Bobby

"I don't think you're ready for this Bobby"....and other tributes to Beyonce

I must proudly confess that I am obsessed with Beyonce!! In case you didn't know, I wish that I could reincarnate and become her! She is my biggest idol from our generation. Why? Well, because she's got an amazing voice, lots of great style with lots of bling, she's got lots of sass and attitude, her music is strong but feminine, she's classy and never in the tabloids, she's got good values (she is a Southern girl from TX as well), an innovative entrepreneur, and she's a strong independent woman.....and she does it all while looking gorgeous and always makes the time for hair and makeup (refer to my fourth blog post ever "the New America").

This new years eve I received one of the greatest compliments of my life. While one of my home girl's songs "All the Single Ladies" came on at the NYE party we were at, I hit the dance floor, decked out in my Beyonce-like bling and started moving those hips and arms. Luckily earlier that night, while waiting for our phantom cabs to come pick us up to take us to the NYE party, my girlfriends and I had watched the glee episode where Kurt dances to this very same song. It is an epic song in Beyonce's repitoire that every Beyonce worshipper should know. Like Kanye said, "Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time. Of all time." May his words reign on through eternity (but not his d-bag moves).

Thank you Kurt for preparing me for this moment.

Anyway, back at the dance floor 1 hour into the new year. I'm doing my thang, dancing to All the Single Ladies the way Beyonce intended all her home girls to, when some snippity girl taps me on the shoulder. She says to me "Did you practice this dance or something?" I know you all weren't there, but trust me, she meant it in a rude, condescending way. But you know what? Her malicious intention was completely lost on me. I REJOICED!! Someone thought that I was dancing to this song so well and enthusiastically that she had to burst my bubble and make a rude remark just because she was jealous!! Well thank you stranger biatch because you totally made my year (so far)!! She obviously was jealous of the connection that I had with Beyonce.

Me with the girls on NYE 12.31.2009

Beyonce.....you had me at Hello (check out that song, it's GOOD)