My Blog

Finally I bought some new sneakers. My feet have been falling asleep while excercising, figured that wasn’t the best thing to have happen. I intended to buy gloves for the rowing machine so I don’t get any more blisters, but Bob’s Stores didn’t sell them.

The weekend was great! Just what I needed after being on my own in Norwalk for two weeks. Teegan’s wedding was perfect, and I got to see people I hadn’t in a while. I had brunch with my mom and ex-housemate Cindy at the Rue (mainly for their soy cappocinos). And a cookout at Eric’s just before getting back on the road for my….three and a half hour ride home! Ah! Thank goodness I took some fried banana’s for the road. Got to talk to Brian and catch up with each other’s lives while driving 35 miles an hour on 95. That was one possitive thing I got out of beign stuuck in traffic.

This guy in the IT department (the guy from Holland) wear’s the same shirt for an entire week. Yellow was first, then grey, now red. This is his last week, so I’ll never know what color comes next.

Watched Sex and the City while eating my dinner of meatless chicken nuggets from Trader Joe’s, and some chips and salsa. Now I’m having my nightly peppermint tea. I’ve set aside Middlesex so I can read Harry Potter. I sat in my car during lunch to read today. I know that this weekend is going to be non-stop reading. I’m gonna find a coffee shop in Sono I’ve been told about called ‘Caffiene’. Maybe I’ll go to the Maritime Aquarium and see the Albino Aligator. I really want to get into the city soon. But I do’t know when that will happen.

The two guys who are more or less ‘in charge’ of our department will be out for the rest of the week. But I still have a lot of work to get done. It will, however, be more relaxed around the office.

I found out that they are taking down the scary heart wallpaper in the kitchen in my ’soon to be new apartment’, thank god. This is happening along with new tile floor in the kitchen, new carpets, and fresh paint. Having this apartment guarantees that I am staying at my job for at least a year so that I can afford to pay rent!

Time to read and sleep. The guy Adam from the YJP group called my hotel room again. He wants to get together for coffee…could it be for just being friends? I really have no interest in his romantically what-so-ever (hope he’s not on friendster), but he is a nice guy. I don’t want to give any mixed messages. Also, the married guy from my old work emailed me. He had asked me out twice before I found out he was married! And it wasn’t that he just wanted to be friends…he asked my co-worker if I had a boyfriend, and asked me out for dinner on a friday night. I don’t think you can misinterpret that, although I keep wondering if I did. He also has two kids! Ugh. I didn’t write back.

I have phone calls I need to make, but I never seem to have time! I must do it during lunch. Especially to the dry cleaners who still haven’t returned my clothes despite the one day gauruntee that they advertise. I spoke to them already, and they claimed my clothes would be drpped off Sat. morning. Well, it’s Tues., and it’s two of my favorite pieces of clothing. Maybe someone from the place wanted to wear one of them, and now it has to be cleaned again. Please let them NOT be lost.

Goodnight!

And it’s Paul Newman’s brand popcorn! And he’s my neighbor now..sort of.

Last night was the happy hour at Splash with the YJP people. It was alright. The group of people were nice. The bar was gorgeous. It is located in a country club, on the water in Westport. The sun was setting, there was live music.

Tomorrow I have to drive home to Providence, hopefully to go out for a little while, and then the wedding the next day!

Nothing more to say at this point. I feel like I’ve lived here for a very long time, not simply a week and a half.

I still haven’t gotten around to doing laundry. I’m going to bring it home with me as if I were still in college.

Hoping I have some more interesting things to say after this weekend.

I am very tired…long day. It was a bad night of sleep last night. I should go to bed now, but I want to read! I didn’t eat dinner until 10pm : ( Today was work, gym, and Marshall’s for wedding outfit accessories. Tomorrow is work, gym, laundry. Then Wed. is Work, and Happy Hour at Splash in Wesport with the YJP people (http://www.decarorestaurantgroup.com/splash/home.html). Thursday is work, gym, print cards. And Friday is work and…..drive to RI! Marta just called, yay! Gonna go chat and go to bed, read, sleep. I must plan a trip to go see Avenue Q!!!!!! See-ya! Night, night!

I finally had a good night’s sleep at this Homestead place last night. I attribute that mostly to the new sheets and blanket I got at IKEA yesterday. I threw off the cotten/polyester hotel sheets and blankets, now in a pile on the floor. I also found the cutest fleece blanket that has a lion head and paws at one end, and a tail and rear paws at the other, that’s also on the bed. Today was the first day since I’ve been here that I didn’t have to get up to an alarm.

I went out around 11:30 to find Trader Joe’s in Westport, also home to Martha Stewart and Paul Newman. I wondered if maybe I’d spot Martha or Paul wile buying my frozen meals and breakfast cereal, but it wasn’t my lucky day. The Trader Joe’s in Westport is about the third the size of the one in Coolidge Corner, but they had a deccent amount. Compared to Wild Oats and Stop & Shop, it was the best deal on food (unfortunately they don’t have a lot of more common items, and hardly any produce).

Then I wanted to find a place for coffee and maybe some breakfast. I ended up at Borders in Fairfield for a soy latte, a bit of drooling over the new Harry Potter book (getting mine this weekend), and I sat in their cafe reading my book, Middlesex (I need to finish it by the weekend to make room for Potter in my schedule).

I drove down the road a bit more until I hit Black Rock (part of Bridgeport), and turned around. I found the “artsy” movie house (like the Avon), and a whole bunch of neat looking stores and restaurants. The general feeling I got from the area was similar to driving down Mass. Ave from Porter Square to Arlington. I went from Norwalk, to Westport, to Southport, to Fairfield, to Bridgeport, on the same road.

Last night was fun. I met Andy’s friends for dinner and bowling. He lives in Greenwhich (sp?), in a very nice neighborhood. His apartment is above an old movie house. It’s super tiny and he shares it with two other people. His rent is about half of what I’ll be paying! He used to live in SoNo and paid double what he pays now. It was black light bowling, people really get into here. People were all dancing and singing. When I got home I read some more of Middlesex which left me having weird dreams about breastfeeding.

I’m going to read, go see Rona, do laundry, and do some brainstorming for a project and catching up on organizing some papers.

Thanks for reading this far as I continue to babble on about my new Norwalk life. Mabey I’ll make up some stories to make it more interesting: “Don’t miss my next post where I’ll decribe in detail how I run into Martha Stewart in Victoria’s Secret where we discover we have the same bra size! Then I help her to pick out a nice negligé for her new girlfriend she met while in prison! Stay tuned for this revealing encounter.” (Ha, revealing…)

(I have put up a few quick pictures of my room in my “Photo Album”. I’ll put up some more interesting pictures soon.)

So I went to the gym that’s located directly under my work. It was very nice, they have TV monitors on almost all of the machines! Except for the rowing machine which sits dusty, poor, and neglected in a corner with it’s buddy the other dusty rowing machine. It faces a huge mirror so I get to see myself sweat and make weird excercise faces, and watch the rest of the gym in reverse. I did the elliptical machine first, while watching Gilmore Girls (actually one I hadn’t seen!), and Jeopardy (one of the contestants spoke about how she had to bite the head off of a live eel to impress some Japanese clients on a trip to their country!). Now I am eating tortilla chips due to the lack of anything else I have to eat. I suppose I should go out and pick up some dinner.

I was supposed to meet up with co-workers again tonight, but the plans where cancelled due to tiredness and people having to get up early in the am. Tomorrow, however, I was invited to go to another co-workers, Friend’s b-day party. The co-worker’s name is Andy, he’s engaged, and he went to Brown and studied computer science. Now he’s a designer at the company. I asked if he he’d ever met Loring, but he couldn’t remember, but he knows his boss, Andy VanDam (sp?), and talked about “The Cave”. The party is going to be pizza and…bowling! I’ll be an expert bowler pretty soon at this rate.

I told Rona I’d stop by her restaraunt/bar on Sunday. Is it weird to bring a book out to dinner with you? Not sure if I’ll find anyone to go with me. I suppose I can just hang out at he bar for a drink and chat with Rona when she’s not busy.

So IKEA tomorrow where I’ll meet up with my mom for a few hours.

Oh the project I wanted to have sent out tonight…will have to goout on Monday! Monday is totally fine, they had said that before, but I really really wanted it done by tonight : ( It’s at a point, though, where monday morning it just has to be looked over by one more person, and once approved it’s sent out. SO one step left!!! I was given a new project to work on which I have complete creative reign over! I asked what the time frame was for getting it done, and the creative director says, “there is no time frame here.” Cool. You are just expected to work hard and get things done at a reasonable pace, but do the job well. You can’t really spend “forever” on something, but thing aren’t due, like, “yesterday”. So far I like everyone that I’ve met there. Myself and two other new people got to watch a video of the last company meeting which gave a lot of background and philosophy of the company. I am too tired to get into it all know, but maybe another time.

Time to go shower and get some real food.

Here’s a challenge: I’m sure there are plenty of spelling mistakes in this blog posting. I will not proofread it. If you find a spelling mistake, I will send you a prize in the mail (please include your address with reply, thank you.) The more mistakes you find….the better you are at spelling then me! (I just re-read it, and found one mistake…)
Good luck.

Have a great weekend!

Mmmm….I am eating some Lactaid Cottage Cheese after a nice bowl of cereal for dinner. I just don’t feel like eating anything else but breakfast food. Except fondue, always in he mood for warm cheese and bread.

So last night was fun. We went to some brewery in SoNo (that’s the cute name thaey came up with for South Norwalk). I had a salad that was made up of fresh mozzarella, tomato, spinach, and portabella mushrooms, very good! Then we went bowling at this huge bowling alley. I think I came in third, the only strike I scored was for the last round. I still don’t think I’m used to big balls, you know what I mean (get your mind out of the gutter! Ha! That was clever…”gutter”, like “gutter ball”). Anyways, I think I’m stuck in the world of Duckpin and elementary school birthday parties.

The co-workers I went out with were fun to hang out with. They gave me some of the inside scoop. One of them went to RISD with my friend and one time co-worker, Oskar (the Swedish one). He agrees that Oskar is great, and that he has a passion for IKEA.

Speaking of IKEA, I’m planning on taking a trip to the one in New Haven on Sat. to scope out some potential furniture. I plan on making a few trips before I move into my new place (if anyone is interested in joining me sometime…). I want to visit the place Rona (realtor/new friend) works still, but feel kinda weird going to a bar alone on a weekend night. Maybe I’ll go Sun. afternoon. I have some card business work to organize too. Sunday might be good for exploring the area and finding shortcuts. Or buying a little cheap DVD player for my hotel room so I can watch The OC and Scrubs, and rent movies while I’m here.

I stayed at work until 6:45 tonight. This project is going on forever. Everytime I think I’m done, something changes. The art director (newly apointed on Tuesday) is very “persnickity” (that’s how he describes himself). He has a good eye for design, but changing a little bit at a time over a week can get frustrating. It’s supposed to go out for print tomorrow, but can wait till Monday if needed. I’ll do what I can to get it done so I don’t have to meet it again on Monday Morning!

I tried to see if I could get a Harry Potter book this Sat. from the nearest Borders, but they don’t have any left. I pre-ordered one from the Borders at Providence Place, but I won’t be around to pick it up. If anyone want a Harry Potter book for 40% off, go to Border’s and use my name to get it until July, 17th. I’ll be borrowing my mom’s book that she ordered from Amazon anyways.

Ah, the weekend. Looking forward to it. Hope it’s good for all of you who are reading this (an those who aren’t too)! I could go to bed now…

Something really cute happened th other day when I was buying my over priced groceries at Stop & Shop. This older, long grey haired man with some strange foreign accent stopped to talk to me as I was picking up lemon juice. He said something I couldn’t quite make out, so I say “yes they didn’t have any real lemons, so I have to buy this”, not knowing if that was at all relevant to what he had said. Then he tells me about a “fantastic tea” that he makes with Lemon, honey, and rasberry syrup. “If you were my neighbor,” he said “I’d invite you over for some.” Then he smiles and tells me to have a good night, and walks away. May not sound that exciting, but it was very cute.

Oh, and the art director guy knocked a big pile of puzzles off my desk a couple days ago. One of the company owners, Doug, got on the PA and said: “This is what you get for your second day, Jenna, we destroy your desk. Good job Bob (the Art Director).” That was funny too.

Okay, gotta go and sleep, or read, or watch a repeat of The OC that just came on. Hopefully I can get some pictures on this blog sometime soon.

Goodnight!

Went to dinner and then bowling with co-workers tonight. Now it’s time for bed!
The day was fine, I’m really looking forward to the weekend! More to write tomorrow, goodnight.

Half of the day was spent listening to the IT guys (who sit behind me) trying to figure out where a mysterious high pitched beep was coming from. One of them is Canadian, another from Holland, and another from Ireland (just to guve you an idea of what it might have sounded like), another is also a boyscout leader and just got back from Yawgoog, sound familiar? At one point, one of them was half under my desk thinking it was coming form me(or my computer equipment that is)….and it was! The crisis was over.

The day was good, and went by faster then yesterday. Started with a product development meeting, more graphic work, “happy family” lunch with the other product development people, more graphic work, helping someone with a photo they were taking by sticking a couple puppets on my hands, more graphic work, and home!

I also found out that the owners of the company are Jewish (as well as many of the employees), yet we don’t get the Jewish holidays off. Ah well! Apparently anyone who needs to uses their vacation days for the holidays. I have 7 vacation days to use before the end of the year, then I have 15 more after New year’s, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

Maybe I’ll try to see Batman again tomorrow night, or visit Rona (my realtor) where she bartends, or the gym…now I’m on the phone with my ex-co-worker, the new guy who I only worked with for about 2.5 weeks, getting the update on my old job. Well! Sounds like not much has changed there. I think I’ll try to find Border’s again, I need to go out!

Why did an flood warning for Orange County just appear on the tv? mmmmm….The OC….I miss you….

First day complete! Time to scratch the first mark into the wall.

Oh my god, groceries are so expensive here. I ‘m considering going back onto a hommus and carrott diet like the good old days in college. If I’m orange the next time you see me, you’ll know it’s the vitamin A at work.

The day was fine. Very long. Everyone is nice. They have my favorite tea. I did some graphic work, digital photos, reading over paperwork, and forgetting people’s names. I guess I’m still digesting everything, or I haven’t been there long enough to have a well rounded view of the place. I have a few complaints: the three people who sit closest to me are all recovering from some sort of cold (hence my purchase of echinacea and vitamin C) , the air is dry and makes my eyes dry and sore (bought some eyedrops), and did I mention that groceries are really expensive (yes, that’s still bugging me). Everyone jokes around a lot, and really seems to enjoy what they do. A bunch of them went to a Yankees game together on Sunday, and seem to like to do things together outside of work. I sit next to a girl who’s three walls are plastered with Yankees poster’s, a Yankees calender, and stuffed animals with little Yankees shirts sitting on her desk. What’s in my space? Just me and my gorilla (”Mr. Bobbles”).

I walked into my room at Homestead, put all my bags down, and then the phone rang. It was a guy I had met at he YJP meeting on Sunday. I hadn’t given anyone my number at the hotel, guess he just called Homestead and asked for me…hmmm. He wanted to know if I wanted a ride to the happy hour next Wed., or if I wanted to get together before then. Totaly took me off gaurd. Nice guy, not anyone who I’d be interested in date-wise (and much to old for me too), but he lives in the condo complex I’m moving to and maybe could be a friend. I told him I wanted to drive myself to the happy hour in case I want to leave early, but maybe I’d follow him there.

I feel like this whole thing is temporary and I’m coming home in a couple weeks for good. Speaking of a couple weeks, I can’t wait for Teegan’s wedding! What am I going to wear? It’s yet to be determined.

I can’t believe it’s 8:30pm!!!! I have the Law & Order 24/7 channel on, wearing scrub bottoms and eating day old popcorn, mmmm…..this is the life!

Goodnight,
Jenna

(DISCLAIMER: I am beginning what may turn out to be a futile attempt at blogging. This is more or less an online journal, and I have never been able to keep a journal in my life. Here’s to new beginnings! I do not take responsibility for boring, rambling, redundant, or spelling errors in any postings. Please contact headquarters with complaints, and a customer service rep. will be happy to assist you.)

Hello Norwalk Connecticut!

Yesterday I finally got on the road after a goodbye to my housemate, Cindy, breakfast with mom at Ruffles (where I’ve been eating the same thing off the menu since birth), a stop at the hair salon for some “product” from Paul the “hair stylist”, and then a visit with my dad in South County to drop of his b-day gift.

It took about 2 hrs and 20 min. to get here (not including the stops mentioned earlier). I am staying at a place called Homestead Suites for five weeks until my apartment is available, it’s basically a hotel. The only difference being that I have a kitchenette. This place has the feel of a grander/adult hostel, with everyone being in transition in their lives, or maybe just on business. I had weird dreams last night, that I missed my appointment to sign my lease because I had class. My bag fell of a shelf during the night, and I woke up thinking someone was in my room. Not fun.

This morning I went to Stamford and attended a meeting of the Young Jewish Professionals. I have finally gotten over my resistance to groups like these (no offense to anyone in Perspectives!). Much of this resistance came about from my grandmother harassing me to join Perspectives in Providence, or a similar group in Boston, since I graduated from high school. Now that I’m somewhere where I know nobody, I’m glad that there is such a thing nearby. Haven’t told grandma yet. The JCC in Stamford was amazing! They had a pond, beautiful tennis courts, and softball field. Really pretty.

After the YJP meeting, I went to meet my realtor and sign the lease for my new place. I have to watch myself around her, or else I start talking in a Nebraskan accent. I’ll come home to RI sounding like a Nebraskan/New Yorker. She’s gonna lend me her pool key for next weekend, very nice!

Then I attempted to go see Batman (a movie theater would have been a welcome escape from the today’s heat, blech!), but I was 2hrs too early for the next show…what else could I do next but go to Stew Leonards, the largest dairy store in probably the world (I’m not joking. They are in Ripley’s Believe it or Not). I doubt I will be there very often, it’s a freak’n zoo! Speaking of zoos, they have a petting zoo out front. All sorts of animatronic creatures sing to you as you walk by inside. Yikes! I bought some paper towels….edamame…and a greek salad, which I had for dinner, minus the paper towels of course, I’ll save them for another day.

My first full day in Norwalk is coming to and end. I begin my new job tomorrow at Melissa & Doug as a toy designer. I’ve been warned that in the beginning, as with many new jobs, I’ll be doing A LOT of grunt work before actually doing my own designing. That’s okay, I need to learn a lot about the business anyways, before I feel comfortable. I have my gorilla bobble head from the Louisville Zoo to put on my new desk, what else do I need? I think a bobble head gorilla is a fine way to kick of my new job, or just about anything new really. You should give it a try. Going to a new restaraunt for dinner? Bobbly head gorilla. Got a new hairstyle? Bobble head gorilla. Never fails.

Later,
Jenna
(not sure if I needed to “sign” the end, but it needed some closure.)