Land’s End, Eddie Bauer, LL Bean– I can’t tell them apart. Very much like the names Glen, Neil and Wayne. It’s the same name to me even thought there’s really no similarity. Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Def Leopard are the same group to me. I have given personalities and traits to certain parts of my anatomy. My belly button reminds me of an owl and my right ring finger with the nail facing is Bill Cosby circa Picture Pages. My right big toe is jolly whereas my left big toe is very serious. My left pinky is the baby of my left ring finger. Single digit numbers have gender and color. When I am plagued by restlessness and can’t sleep, I imagine I am in I Dream of Jeannie’s bottle and I almost always fall immediately asleep. I believe I was a gazelle in a past life. If it was more fashionably acceptable, I would wear the wooden clogs I bought in Germany to work.

I rear-ended a car this morning. The driver got out of the other car and believe it or not, he was a dwarf!
He looked up at me and said, “I am NOT happy”.
“Well, which one ARE you then?” I said.
🙂

I thought the whole idea of providing online payment options is 24/7 convenience and ease. This is not true for New Jersey Courts. I am trying to pay a parking ticket at 5:45am and it’s telling me I am outside their online hours!

Online Payment Hours
Payments can be made on this website during the following hours:

Mon – Thurs
7:30AM – 11:45PM (EST)
Fri
7:30AM – 10:45PM (EST)
Sat
7:30AM – 3:45PM (EST)
Sun
1:00PM – 11:45PM (EST)

This is insane! I can’t for the life of me figure why they would limit it! They’d do betting opening up a Paypal account! And can we talk about the fee? I was 15 minutes late getting back to my car to pump it with more quarters– 15 minutes which when you are waiting by a meter to put a ticket on a person’s car might seem like a lot of time but when you are active and doing things, 15 minutes is a tiny blip. $48.00 that little mistake cost me. Robbery, I tell you.

And to top it all off, I got another parking ticket Monday in Allentown. At least their fee is reasonable. It’s 10.00 if I pay within 10 days, 25.00 if I wait over 10 days. I can deal with 10.00 because that’s what parking lots charge for a day. That is parking lots outside of Philadelphia– the Philly parking lots take your first born child and one of your ribs.

Don’t get the impression I am flaunting the law. I try to stay within the limits! I don’t leave the meter untouched– I put in money, it’s just not always easy getting back to refill it. It’s not always easy having enough coins to fill it a second time and I have to go hunting for a store to get change.

OH, talking about other ways people have been extracting money from me— Because I was on vacation, I didn’t get a September Rail pass. So I boarded the train yesterday and because there is no ticket machine at my station, I had to buy a ticket from the conductor.
“7.00 little missy!” he said. $7.00! That Septa price hike really was steep! So I paid the 7.00 which seemed extremely high to me but I didn’t grumble. Later in my office, I checked their Web site to see he charged me a 2.00 surcharge for purchasing tickets on the train! BUT MY STATION DOESN’T HAVE A TICKET BOOTH OR MACHINE! How else would I get a ticket if not from the conductor? I can’t believe they’d charge me 2.00 for buying the ticket in the train.

This has got to end. I am tired of fees. No more fees! No more tickets!

It’s 6am. I’ve been up for an hour. This is the earliest I’ve been awake in quite sometime. I awoke at 5 without much incident. All I need to do is lock up and drive to work. The amount of email I surely have in my inbox is frightening me. Gotta face it. All will be fine.

Rob left yesterday evening. As he was leaving I said to him, “Do you realize this is the longest period we have been together? And we did really well; there were only maybe two times when I wanted to kill you.” I wish I could go back and restart the vacation again. All good things come to an end. Off I go to work.

Tomorrow I go back to work. I had such a deliciously long vacation- 9 days! As much as I enjoyed playing, I know it’s time to get back to the old grind. I feel relaxed and ready to face the work week. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to win the lottery and drop out. It’s a shame I don’t have any truly marketable skills. I wish I could write romance novels or come up with interesting names for products. Things that in my mind don’t equal 9-5 soul numbing work but I am sure I am incorrect and romance writers and product namers still have to deal with crap. Rob told me yesterday I should look into working at Ikea since I love looking though their catalog. I asked if Ikea would keep me in the style to which I am accustomed to living. Rob said I could sell everything and move into one of their showrooms. That doesn’t seem to be a good solution to me.

Look what I found!

The video for Beautiful Love by the Jeremy Days on YouTube! The video gives me a headache but I do love the song.

Monday night, Suzette called me. She and Matts were nearby at Tyler State Park. I invited them over for dinner. Rob’s friend Tom was also coming over and so it worked perfectly. After dinner, Caren and Steve dropped by and before I knew it, I had a bunch of guests and we talked and laughed for hours. It was so nice although I wish I knew ahead of time so I could have invited more people!

The next day Rob and I went to Belmar. I hadn’t been to the shore once this summer! My preference is to go after Labor Day because that’s when the crowds and heat die down. It was relaxing sitting on the sand and listening to the waves. Rob and I decided that rather than going somewhere specific for our vacation we would stick around home and take day trips. We live in an area where we are close to a lot of places yet we rarely take advantage of any of it.

Wednesday we caught the train to New York City. We didn’t really have any ideas as to what to do other than I wanted to shop at Uniqlo. In Penn Station, Rob saw a brochure for the Broadway musical, Jersey Boys. It’s the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. He called the box office but was told they are SOLD OUT! Regardless, we decided we would concentrate on getting tickets. We took the subway to Ground Zero. Rob hadn’t been there before and we walked around looking at the progress. A man with a microphone came up to us and asked us questions as to our thoughts on the construction. The sign on his microphone said WINS 1010. I had the feeling he wanted us to say something negative by the way he phrased his questions. Both Rob and I said we felt the job they were doing was great and we were amazed at the progress. I doubt we made it on the radio but who knows. I looked around their web site and they do have quite a bit on the 9/11 anniversary but I didn’t find anything that seemed to include us.

From Ground Zero we went to Uniqlo and I bought a cute sweater and Rob bought a dress shirt. I wish a Uniqlo would open near me. I would buy all my clothes there. It was getting late and we were getting hungry so we went to my favorite NY pizza joint, Arturo’s. We got half-meatball and half-eggplant pizzaq. As I ate, I kept the thought of getting tickets to the Jersey Boys in my head. I could see us sitting there in the audience. I knew we would get tickets.

We grabbed a taxi to the Jersey Boys Theater near Times Square. Standing in front of the theater talking to a woman was the comedian, Jeffrey Ross. He’s one of those guys who does the Celebrity Roasts and the Countdown shows. We went to the box office and asked for tickets. We were told to just stay put and they would call us if they had any cancellations. Rob walked around the front of the theater looking for scalpers but he could only find a woman who was selling one ticket. After maybe 15 minutes, a man from the box office told us that he didn’t have any cancellations but he could sell us tickets from a group that bought too many tickets. Ka-CHING! Next thing I know we are in the audience– SECOND ROW, BABY!!!!

The play was FANTASTIC! Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons really don’t get the respect they deserve. Those guys had so many hits. I predict they will be turning this play into a movie sometime soon.

We were pretty tired the next day. Eventually we drove to Point Pleasant Beach. The day was perfect and it was such a joy being at the shore. The day ended on a sour note when I got a parking ticket. Rob said that the parking ticket cinched it– he hated New Jersey and would boycot if for three years. I hope he wasn’t serious it.

Yesterday we woke up early and took off for Jim Thorpe where we would go whitewater rafting. The drive was only an hour and a half from Rob’s house. We arrived around 9:45, just in time for the 10:00 rafting expedition. There was a corporate team building event taking place. All the people wore shirts and t-shirts while Rob and I stood there in our bathing suits. I felt weird being the only one in a bikini. Four other people arrived that weren’t from the corporate group so we teamed up in the same raft together.

Rafting was a lot harder than I expected. There was a lot of rowing involved. We also had a small issue where one of our raft teamates was so massively fat, he weighed the boat down and we kept getting caught on rocks. One of the methods we employed to extracate the raft from the rocks was to bounce up and down. The thing was, the big guy (everyone called him Tiny) also bounced up and down and the boat shook so violently that I actually BOUNCED OUT OF THE BOAT and landed on my back on rocks. My doopie is black and blue! This only happened once because each time after that I grabbed onto the raft and held on for dear life. Later, on the last section of rapids, our raft somehow wrapped itself around a large boulder. We were very close to fixing it until another raft hit right into us— RIGHT WHERE I WAS SITTING and I got rammed! I flew backwards right into Tiny. What luck because otherwise I might have been thrown right into the rapids. One of our rafting scouts had to canoe over to us and help us get our raft untangled. Everything was fine and we all survived. Even though I am black and blue and my muscles ache, I had a great time and would do it again in an instant.

Only today and tomorrow left and then I am back to work. I so enjoy not working. Maybe I should start playing the lottery?

Caren and I went to Rice’s Market this morning. I ran out of money at the fifth stand. I don’t know what came over me. I spent 30 bucks on a fake Dolce and Gabbana striped velor bag. Then I spent 20.00 on 400 thread count Egyptian cotton light purple sheets. Four dollars went to a pair of oversized sunglasses. 1.50 for a Snapple. Boom! Done! Finished! I really wanted to get a new pashmina but I didn’t see any that I liked. I also wanted to pick up a pair of aviator sunglasses for Rob but I didn’t feel safe buying a pair without him around to try them on. I like men in aviator glasses. I think it’s because the man who drove my school bus back when I was in second grade wore aviator sunglasses– he chewed gum and called me his sweetheart. The feelings are still there, baby! That and Graham Bonnet wore aviator sunglasses.

Now I am home, recovering from the intense heat and trying to convince myself to write some proposals that I should have done on Friday but never got around to finishing.

Yesterday, Rob and I went to my parents’ house. My cousin Sharon, her husband Rob and their two kids were visiting from Chicago. My Aunt Helen, cousin Leeann and her son Tyler also dropped by. My dad made hamburgers and my mom served potato salad and fruit salad and other stuff. After we ate, my sister came out with a cake and everyone sang Happy Birthday to me. I got some lovely gifts. My sister got me a yellow bag with a Andy Warhol silkscreen print of Elvis on it. She also got me three mugs emblazoned with Elvis’s face. My mom got me nippits, earrings and an Ann Taylor Loft gift certificate. Rob got me a picture of Audrey Hepburn. What loot! I am very happy and it makes turning 33 bearable!

I really should either do those proposals or my expenses. Preferably both.

I am 33 years old.

At age 33:

English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft wrote “Vindication of the Rights of Women”

Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic alone.

Jesus of Nazareth, a moral teacher and faith healer, was executed and eventually became the most renowned religious figure in history.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote his essay, “Nature,” encouraging readers to see the miraculous in the common.

Vijay-Kumar Solanki realized that he was not a human being having spiritual experiences, but a spiritual being having human experiences, a realization that he says “changed his life forever”.

The bread is delish, absolutely delish!