T-minus 1 day...

I just have to get through what will most likely be an extremely busy day at work....and then OFF TO YOSEMITE!!!!! I'm so excited, but feel a bit unprepared. Eh, I'm sure it'll be fine.....as long as we can find our way up there....here's a pict of the house we've rented:



fingers crossed it actually looks like that.

and this is where Indy will be staying:




pictures to come....


ok. time to buckle down....

UBS....similiar to restless leg?

Unnecessary Braking Syndrome is a tragic illness that affects millions of drivers in the United States every year. The numbers are growing each year with hope for a cure dwindling each and every day. That is why we have created "TFFUB" (The Foundation For Unnecessary Braking). This organization's goals are to increase awareness of Unnecessary Braking Syndrome (UBS), to improve treatments, and through research, to find a cure.


UBS appears to affect drivers 16 years of age and older although is primarily seen in adults over the age of 35. Individuals living in large cities such as Los Angeles seem to be more predisposed to developing UBS than those living in smaller cities or rural towns. Scientists are unsure whether UBS is a genetic disorder, but they have not ruled out the possibility that it is caused by a defective chromosome. If that is proven to be the case doctors may one day be able to detect a fetus carrying the defect and possibly even cure the disease before the child is born. Unnecessary Braking Syndrome has a gradual onset and most sufferers of UBS are unaware they even have the disease. It is very apparent to outside observers, especially those following in cars directly behind, that an individual has UBS.

Symptoms of UBS include:
- Putting an unnecessary amount of space between your car and the car in front of you (especially in high traffic)
- Braking spontaneously without cause (the car in front of you did not break and there are no obstructions on road) in what seems to be an effort to annoy the person behind you.
- Sudden varying of driving speed from 10-15 miles below the speed limit to 10-15 miles above.

Those with UBS may also experience:
- Slow drifting from side to side within a lane and possibly drifting into other lanes
- Changing lanes without signaling
- Leaving turn signal on without changing lanes




Sufferers of UBS are advised to not talk on the phone while driving. Even handsfree handsets can create problems for UBS sufferers. Eat while driving or apply makeup also increases your risk of Unnecessary Braking Syndrome and should be avoided.

If you think you or someone you love may have UBS please seek help. While there currently is no cure doctors are working everyday on potential treatments that may may UBS manageable. Treatment is still in the experimental phases of research. Side effects have shown to be nausea, diarrhea, upset stomach, headaches and more unnecessary braking.



If you would like to help TFFUB in the fight against UBS we will be holding our first annual "Drive For the Cure" event Saturday October 6, 2007. TFFUB is currently accepting donations to continue research and treatment.

Mail donations to:

TFFUB
Yarmouth Ave.
Reseda, CA
make checks payable to "Jessica Lee"
All donation amounts acceptable.

Thank you. Let's work together to fight Unnecessary Braking Syndrome. Together we can make traffic better...and Jess less pissed off.

Just. Plain. Sick.

There are a few things that I find REALLY, truly and genuinely disgusting.

Office kitchens, for example, are one of the most foul places on the planet. -I'm writing this blog after standing in my office kitchen waiting for my hot water in the microwave.- Everything in our office kitchen seems dirty. It seems....used. The coffee pot that someone once pulled out of the box and admired as brand new, sits completely unused, covered in brown stains and calcium deposits. The white plastic has faded to a dingy yellow and no one seems to care. The toaster oven, which OBVIOUSLY has seen a lot of use, sits so covered in bagel crumbs and grime that no one will touch it even to clean it. An old bag of peanuts (shells on) sits opened on the counter as though it had just been brought in as an office treat...i'm sad to admit when desperate hunger and boredom hits me at 4:00pm I've been known to sneak a few of these...I'm not dead yet, so the peanuts are really the least of the worries. There is a wicker basket full of styrofoam cups holding utensils and random packets of tea and opened/half eaten instant oatmeal. The biggest conundrum of it all are the office kitchen mugs. Who do these mysterious mugs belong to? I'm starting to believe they were here long before we arrived in this office. They sit strewn about, sometimes with coffee or tea stains in them. They come and go...it's obvious people are using them. Due to a serious lack of styrofoam cups (not that i approve of styrofoam) I have resorted to drinking my Ginger Tea this morning out of a Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. mug with a smiley face on it that says "stupid is as stupid does". I feel like it's talking to me...I've washed it thoroughly. It still feels dirty.



Along the same lines of the office kitchen filth...I also find the following incredibly disgusting:

1.) Toilet lids being left up (not just the seat, but the whole lid...you know feces can spray up to five feet when you flush. now think about where you put your toothbrush).

2.) Men and women with long toenails who insist on wearing sandals (Birkenstocks? add 5 points).
2.a) Men with long fingernails. ew.

3.) People who walk the streets of LA barefoot...especially celebrities.

4.) People who publicly snort their snot. Especially next to me in a quiet movie theatre.
4.a) Men who spit.

5.) Black hair in the corner of people's bathrooms...i'm not sure why, but black hair is way more nasty looking once it's detached from the head. I apologize if you're offended. deal with it. my blog. get your own.

6.) The white goo that collects around the corner of someone's mouth when they're talking too much and getting dry mouth. Especially when they refuse to take a sip of water.


But I digress....

There are just some things in the world I will just not understand...like why some people wear Crocs.

Happy New Year!

The following occurred to me a little while ago and I still haven't been able to shake my anxiety.

In three months, it will be Christmas.


Let that sink in. It's almost 2008.

Doesn't that wig you out????

If not, congratulations. You've got a sensible grasp on the passage of time and are in no way freaked out by how quickly the year has gone by and how few of your goals for this year you've actually accomplished. Or maybe you're like me and haven't even gotten around to making your 2007 list of "goals to accomplish this year". I thought I had more time! In my mind it's still March. Which made me realize another shocker. In 6 months I'll be 26. This is bringing me way more anxiety than the whole "christmas" thing. Years are just slipping by at an alarming rate. I can handle being 25. I'm in my mid 20's. At 25 you can even pass for early 20's. Once you turn 26 it's just a downward spiral to 30 and what will I have accomplished????

I'll take a break from my quarter life crisis to mention to all my fellow 20 somethings that this whole 26 is basically 30 thing really only applies to me. If you're 26, 27 or 28 don't worry, you're not almost 30. You've still got time. You've got your whole life ahead of you! You're just a baby!!! If you're 29, there's nothing I can do...you're basically 30.

So back to me.

It's the little things that make me feel old- like starting a 401K. Yes, it's very smart of me to be planning for my retirement, but nothing makes you realize you're gonna die soon (and pennyless) like a 401K. Teenagers make me feel old. The discussion of High School Musical 3 makes me feel old. 15 year old runway models make me feel old (and fat). Pregnant friends make me feel old. Married friends talking about getting pregnant makes me feel old. Let's just slow this whole thing down!!!! Or maybe I just need to hurry up and get my act together. Some of my friends even have CAREERS! Yikes!!!

Now, you can all post comments saying how young I am and how I have my entire life ahead of me and to just settle down. Yes. My rational brain realizes that in a cosmic sense my 25 years on this planet are but a tiny pore on the face of time, but that doesn't stop me from feeling startled by how long ago it seems that I was a freshman in High School or even graduating college. I've been out of school for 4 years now and feel no better prepared to face adulthood than I was as a freshman in college. Except that now I know how to pay my bills online. Too bad I have twice as many to pay.

The brightside to a swift move into 2008 is the upcoming Presidential election. Oh thank the lord that man will finally go away.

Britney Spears Brings Me Joy...for once.

First of all....what is up with Weekends....seriously. Why is it that Monday-Friday at 7/7:30am I cannot seem to DRAG my butt out of bed...and could sleep for HOURS AND HOURS...and so could the dog! Yet come Saturday and Sunday morning, Indy is whining at 6:30 and I can't seem to sleep anymore!! What is up with that!??! Can't a girl sleep in??? I mean...for realzies.

Now...onto the more important stuff.

Let me preface this next stream of consciousness blurb by saying...I do not buy into celebrity gossip. I do not regularly troll sites like perezhilton.com or thesuperficial.com (although I have recently discovered www.wwttd.com- genius.). I have never bought a copy of People, US Weekly, or any other celebrity tabloid (although I will peruse them at the dentist office). I do not talk about celebrities as though I know them or discuss who is dating who and who divorced who as though these people matter to me or..you know...the world.

Now, that said, let's discuss the awesome genius that is Britney Spears and why the fact that her heroically bad VMA performance brings me so much joy.

I'm not sure what it is about Ms. Spears that makes me despise her so much. It could be that she is a no-talent ass hat that has led a charmed life of fame and success despite everyone (even her fans) admitting that she is just a performing monkey. Or maybe it's that no matter how awful her performances are night after night and year after year she continues to have fans...as in...people who will pay ridiculous amounts of money to watch her LIP SYNCH for 15 minutes in a slutty outfit. It could be that she is straight up trailer park trash and the worst excuse for a mother EVER (asking her kids to fetch her cigarettes or "Mamma's Lollipops" as she calls them). You know it's bad when you can make Kevin Federline look like father of the year. Whatever it is, the very sight of her performing makes me want to light myself on fire and jump off a tall building. I admit that she had some catchy singles back in the day. Songs that, when you find yourself in a club after a couple rum and diet cokes, make you want to shake what your mommma gave you, but that's not hard to do- just ask Justin Timberlake or Beyonce. All this hoopla about her big "comeback" at the VMAs was making me sick to my stomach and to hear this morning that she royally and most excellently F-ed it up BIG TIME brings a silly wave of giddiness over me. I actually trolled the internet this morning digging up dirt about her VMA performance last night. The best commentary was from www.wwtdd.com:

"I think maybe people are being a little too harsh. They say her performance was stiff, but in her defense, she's a tubby piece of shit. Let's see you eat two dozen doughnuts and then dance around. That's what I thought. They say she was lip synching, but if her mic was on, all you would have heard was her gasping for air and clutching her heart, so I think this was much better. Speaking of things you hear, here's my impression of those dudes whose arms she fell into, "oh jesus christ, my knees are about to explode!"




I'm sorry, but that's funny.

And while I'm on my rant about prissy pop princesses....let me share with you part of an interview with Avril Lavigne-someone who actually has talent and looks, but ruins it with arrogance and comments like the following:

"I am a very giving person. When the hurricane thing happened, I went to my closet, filled six boxes of stuff and said to my assistant, 'Take it to Katrina!' I also like to give stuff to people who are my 'workers,' especially if they don't make much money."

"People love me and people hate me, but I'm comfortable in my own skin and that's what counts. And anyway if you do hate me, you're the loser, not me."

Um......ok....where to start. We'll just side step the part where she dismisses a massive national tragedy as "the hurricane thing" and move on to my favorite part where she likes to give stuff to her workers cuz they don't make that much. Or you could just pay them more. Cheap spoiled brat. I can guarantee you that my "workers" will make plenty of money and won't need me to "give them stuff" when I'm rich and famous. You have that in writing.

Ok. I think I might be done for the day. I can only handle so much celebritivity (that's negativity and celebrity combined) in one day.

For Dog Owners...

I recently was introduced to a website that I think any and all dog owners need to at least peruse at some point. It's called www.dogfoodanalysis.com. It's a website dedicated to analyzing the ingredients of various dog foods and rating them on a six star scale (with 6 stars being the highest). They give you the ingredients and then a review analyzing whether the food is nutrionally sound.

Indy started having some...shall we say....digestive problems recently and I started to suspect the food we were feeding him. I'm not sure why, but having read about this site I thought I'd check it out. We had been feeding him Natural Balance, which was recommended by the people we adopted him from. Turns out the main ingredient in this food is grain (which also turns out is not part of a dog's natural diet) despite the first ingredient on the list being meat. We have since switched his food to one recommended by the site (I believe it's a 5 star food) called Canidae and not only does he OBVIOUSLY like it more, but no more digestive issues and he seems to have tons more energy (just what he needed!).

Anyway, if you own a dog or are thinking about getting a dog...check out the site. A friend of mine, who's dog hated her food and was having allergies, found out the food she was feeding her was pretty bad and switched to a 6 star variety....her dog gobbles up the food now and seems to be doing so much better. Yay! One doggie at a time!

We also mix in plain nonfat yogurt with Indy's food (for the toots) and Missing Link (a really awesome supplement with Omega-3)

Labor Day Fun!

Well it was back to work today after the nice long holiday weekend....The only escape from the blistering heat in the Valley was to visit our friends in their new house...with their new pool....


Saturday we went over to Dustin and Bill's and introduced Indy to the pool for the first time. He waded on the first step and stomped in the water at first...


Indy made it into the water...with a little help from Bill.


"Secret Lovers" was playing in the background...


After all the pool fun we had to play a little guitar hero. The look of sheer concentration on Chris' face is genius.



On Monday we headed back over for more BBQ and funinthesun. This time Indy was more brave.

With a little help from Chris and Dustin...Indy learned to surf!









And here are a few of the awesome canonball picts courtesy of Sam.... :)

The trouble with landlords....

Life has gotten a bit hectic and stressful in the last few weeks. Being an adult can really suck sometimes. This past week Chris and I found ourselves in a heated battle with our management company and landlord over Indy. We had told them we were going to get a dog and had gotten verbal permission and now that we were asking to have something fixed we were being told we needed to pay dog rent- an extra $50 a month on our already outrageous rent. What they did I'm pretty sure is illegal and above all else unethical, but when they threatened us with eviction and served us with a 3 day "get the dog off the property or get out notice" we had no choice but to surrender and agree to the extra rent. It's hard being the little guy with no lawyer on tap, no endless pool of financial resources and at the mercy of those we somehow own property.

The entire experience was an opportunity to learn some valuable lessons: 1.) Always get things in writing. 2.) Don't trust people who have the ability to make you homeless. 3.) As long as you're in a financially vulnerable situation there is always someone who will try to take advantage of you. 4.) I love my boyfriend for being the very calm and level headed yin to my outspoken and passionate yang. Aside from being out a few more bucks a month, everything turned out fine. We still have a roof over our heads and the cutest doggy ever.

We also found time before all this happened to paint our living room last weekend.

Note the really awesome peach walls...especially the orange in the entry way.


And after- Birchwood. ahhhhh sooothing.



Kickball has been plugging along. After a particularly devastating loss we turned it around last week in a riveting game that involved us coming from behind with a 4 run grand slam!!!! Some picts from earlier in the season.



I'll narrate this picture for you.
Chris: "Indy....Indy....sit....sit...seriously...SIT!"
Indy: "Play? Food? Trash? Play? What? What'd you say dad?"
Travis: "Gee! I love kickball! And ice cream! And puppy dogs!"
Dustin: "Mumble...mumble...do you know the way to the weight room....mumble grumble...when i was in the marines....".



Indy is an excellent coach...maybe next time he'll bring orange slices and capri suns.....if only he had opposable thumbs!!! damn these paws!!!



"I've got my seatbelt on and I'm ready for a car ride!!"


well...it's been in the triple digits here in SoCal. 109 in the valley yesterday....that's 109 DEGREES!! I think we'll go abuse our friend's pool today. There may be some badass pictures of cannonballs for you later. :) If you're lucky.