Jenna's House of Idiosyncrasies Version 9.0 // Critical Darling, Commercial Flop

Singing the Beatles' “Blackbird” to myself softly in the Sam Deeds arranged style; going through old parts of my flickr for no reason and remembering things I had forgotten; Sarah Tollerson's solo performance giving me goosebumps; hanging out with Maggs, who comes to my bar just to see me; Happy Hour with Matt and Chris, who throw things a lot; Happy Hour with Ripley, who can pop it with the best of em, and who queued up my song without me asking; hanging out with Zach, who I've missed dearly; making a Happy Birthday video to send to Abie; all of Brett's damn enthusiasm; Stephanie adjusting my shirt to show more of my breasts, despite my insistence that maybe that button should stay buttoned; finding out I can go a damn long time without eating a thing as long as I keep drinking and smoking (breakfast of champions!)

Jack and Diet Cokes; Union Bombs; the whimsical speak of the shights; letting drunk friends crash on my floor; drinking to forget; lots and lots of flirting; my new camera

My sister, the rock star, is in the red and black today. Read it and revel in her awesomeness.

Things have been mostly good, even if there has been almost nothing to write about. Work, school, work, school, the routine only sometimes punctuated with sleep, hanging out in bars, or watching The Sopranos on DVD. I am the busiest I have ever been, with three fifths of my weekdays beginning at 8 in the morning and ending at 8 in the evening. I feel myself aging at a rate much more rapid than just a couple of years ago, burning the candle at both ends, as it were. But rather than shrink back from the challenge I find myself stepping up, charging at the obstacle that can, at times, seem like a brick wall. (Going full speed all the time causes many periods of accidental and unplanned unconsciousness, a factor that sunk me last week, academia-wise.)

Sometimes I wonder if I've taken on too much, gotten in over my head, a thought hastened by the naysayers (I shall not name names) who insist I can't keep up this speed for 3 to 4 more years, who grimace and give me looks and tones that say what the hell have you done? I smile sweetly I say that I'm certain that I can handle it, and privately I regard the whole situation as a trial by fire or a rite of passage, ultimately a pathway to some semblance of self-respect.

I also try to constantly remind myself that I could be working much, much harder with the payoff being much, much less.

In the meantime, I (usually) have weekends as a reprieve from all the madness. This weekend I saw a lot of people and consumed a whole lot of whiskey. Friday night found me drinking with my co-workers, which, besides yielding many free drinks also ended with me walking home with two roses purchased for me (from the “rose lady” that most Athenians are familiar with) by two of the aforementioned co-workers.

Saturday night I went to Sarah's show at DT's. A coworker of Sarah's was sitting with my parents, and just before introducing himself (Chris, a lovely doctoral student who was pleasantly fresh with me throughout the evening) gave up his own seat for me. As we shook hands, leaning in to hear names over the music, he looked at me agape and exclaimed, “You smell—You smell AWESOME.” I grinned and blushed like a schoolgirl. That was possibly the highlight of my interactions that evening, excepting my phone conversation with HGB, which is always a pleasure all it's own.

To party with the people you work with is actually way more fun than it sounds. I'm too tired and a little too boozed up to be writing this, but I am. I won't remember these fine details tomorrow.

My first favorite quote of the night, delivered in a steady, calm deadpan, “You know you like them. They're the motherfuckin Beatles, for chrissake.”

My second favorite quote of the night, delivered by a raving drunk. “I'm Robin Williams!”

“Are you?”

(Forlorn.) “No, actually, Nicole's Robin Williams. I wish I was Robin Williams.”

But by far, my absolute favorite, unmatched highlights went something like this:

“Neil loves you! He talks about you all the time. He thinks you're magnificent.”

“Really, you think that?” I said to him.

“Of course. Because you are.”

...

“Jenna, promise me you'll graduate.”

“Neil, I promise you I will graduate someday. Before I'm thirty, at least.”

“That's not good enough. It needs to be sooner.”

“How soon?”

“You just need to finish, soon.”

“Why?”

“Because you deserve it.”

...

“Travis, would you describe me as magnificent?”

“Jenna, you are so much more than that.”

...

The theme, at times, seemed to be ‘Jenna Lovefest 2005’.

Neil: “Jenna has the most amazing vocabulary of anyone I know.”

Jenna: “It's just because I read voraciously as a child.”

Katie: “What does voraciously mean?”

Yes folks, that's exactly how it happened.

I have the best super power ever.

And I have the best friends ever. And I do rash things like buy them very expensive bottles of tequila just so they won't forget me.

I'm such a glutton for love.

Due to some uncharacteristic nervousness about making my flight, about being on time, I arrived at my gate more than 2 hours early, with nothing but time to kill. I sat and played Lemonade Tycoon on my cell phone and did some people watching.

There's a metrosexual young man seated on the other side of my duffle bag, talking on his cell phone. He has gelled hair that has been professionally colored and highlighted, shined shoes and and outfit that is entirely black—black tailored pants, black button-down shirt, black footwear. His streamlined outfit bothers me, like he's making the rest of us—the people with outfits for traveling in comfort rather than style—look mussed and ragged by comparison. He's wearing a ring that is a king's crown wrapped around one finger, and he uses his other hand to thump an empty Dansani bottle against his knee as he talks. I feel the tinge of class warfare come over me as I watch him, resentful.

I shouldn't be so judgemental, I think. I'm the one drinking Perrier.

His ease, treating air travel as such a non-event, is a sharp contrast to the young woman seated across from me with her mother. Her dress and manner could easily make her a native of Winder or a similar town. She wears an oversized sweatshirt, tight leggings and sneakers. The whole getup makes her like a shapeless blob perched atop two legs. I conjecture she's actually much thinner under her sweatshirt tent, even if she is carrying one of Dr. Phil's weight loss books in her purse. She dresses, sits and speaks as if she doesn't travel into the city often, as if she simply doesn't notice how outlandish she seems against the backdrop of business travelers and suburban parents.

Being from such a small town myself, it's a quality I've come to recognize easily, largely so I may fight such characteristics from coming out in my own behavior and appearance.

The young woman keeps proclaiming loudly to someone on her cell phone that she's never flow before. She stresses over and over how nervous she is. I can see the cold sweat across her forehead. Her mother keeps chanting to her, like a mantra: “You're going to have fun. You're going to have fun. You're going to have fun.”

The woman takes deep breaths and complains that the Dramamine she took is making her drowsy. As high strung as she is, however, I think it may be best if she can sleep through her first venture into air travel.

The metrosexual and the young woman and her mother board the flight before mine and depart for Pheonix. The chairs around me empty and suddenly, I'm all alone. The air is cooler and I worry less about the metrosexual glancing over and somehow reading the less than flattering description I've scrawled in my notebook.

I mean, he's probably just a person like everyone else.

I sit and play more cell phone games, and then get up and go to the rest room. When I come out, I realize I've been here for quite a while. I check the time.

6:20. I'm scheduled to depart at 6:40, but there is no significant number of people sitting at my gate, and more importantly, no one at the counter. Looking in that direction I realize the information above the counter says that the next flight is going to San Francisco at 7:20.

What. The. Fuck.

I recheck my boarding pass, put it away, and then take it out and check it again. Everytime I check it, it still reads gate A21. I'm at A21. Something has been switched up on me, and I have 20 minutes to figure out where I'm actually supposed to be.

I haven't panicked, but it's going in that direction for sure. I look up at the various, essentially useless “information screens” mounted above the fray in the terminal. Nothing. I decide I need help. Needing help irritates me, as I like being self-reliant, but I decide I have no choice. No matter, I was made to feel like a fool no matter how self-reliant I wished to be.

I walk across to A19, where there are Delta employees at the counter who do not look extremely busy but somehow still manage to look extremely put out when I politely ask them for their help.

“Could you please help me figure out where I'm supposed to be?”

“Where are you going?”

“Seattle.”

“What does your boarding pass say?”

“My boarding pass says A21,” I counter, “but A21 is not going to Seattle. I am going to Seattle.”

He asks for the flight number and I provide it for him without looking at the pass, as I have closely examined all text on the pass over and over in near panic.

He types briefly and reading off the screen he says, “197 is now boarding at A25.”

“A25?”

He looks up at me like I'm being completely unreasonable, like needing one additional verbal confirmation after the mixup makes me into some kind of detail-obsessed savant, and he is amazed I was able to get this close to my flight by myself. “Yes, A25.”

I say my thanks and rush off, arriving at my gate just as they are boarding my “zone”. I settle in to my seat, and when we are up in the air, I spike my ginger ale with Jack Daniels. I've earned it.

This is what happens when you can't sleep.

You sit at your desk reading about TSA regulations and procedures and lusting after kitschy personal care kits, all in hasty preparation for a brief trip that is still 6 weeks, two tests, one project and one birthday away.

You now know that if you were so compelled, you could bring five liters of whiskey onto a plane. If you had that need.

You again inspect the beautiful locket that you would love to receive from someone and imagine dreamily what that would be like. To actually have a Valentine on Valentine's Day, or on any day. You decide you like the idea of receiving the locket even more than the locket itself, and somehow simultaneously applaud yourself for being so unattached to material things while using the same attachment to overshadow the issue at hand. You use them to cancel each other out.

A certain part of you feels hollow.

the encyclopedia of productivity that is Lifehacker, looking in the mirror and noticing that I actually am losing weight, the comfort of knowing that Jack can fly with me, having conversations at work about how “Jenna's website is finally NSFW”, random and timely massages from the gentleman formerly known as HGB, fetishizing air travel, the sublime hits-way-too-close-to-home writing of Stephanie Klein at Greek Tragedy

Christmas Eve dinner at the Tollerson house was a low-key affair. My father had purchased one of those cooked rotisserie chickens, and the side dish was apples. Not baked, not fried, just whole apples sitting next to the chicken on a paper plate.

Such is the level of cuisine on this very special occasion from my normally culinarily triumphant father. Without anyone to impress, however (my mother was absent from the holiday, staying at her mother's house in California), he seemed to be off his game.

Early on in the night, I presented both Dad and Sarah with the Christmas mix (cover, liner notes, back) I made as stocking stuffers for a dozen or so people, and my father liked it so much that it was played about 27 times over the course of the next 48 hours. I was flattered. I also can't listen to it again for at least another year.

When not listening to Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight)—also referred to at HQ in Winder as “The Tollerson Christmas Theme”—we intermittedly switched around channels in on the tele, me periodically harassing my father to stop on TBS's 24 hour marathon of A Christmas Story. He keeps asking us to watch Dawn of the Dead with him. Sarah and I repeatedly refuse, retorting that it's not very Christmasy.

No tree, no stockings, no lights, and we had the audacity to claim that Dawn of the Dead wouldn't be Christmasy enough. But it worked.

At about 10:15 pm, Sarah suddenly shouts, without provocation, completely from nowhere,

“Eggnog!”

“What?” My father and I were appropriately dumbfounded.

“We forgot eggnog. We need eggnog!”

I agree. “Dad, let's go.”

“Well if we are going to get eggnog, we need booze. Let's go to a liquor store.”

What must be noted is that my ‘deddy’ is not really a big boozer, so his declaration of buying liquor, and furthermore, once we were in the store, insisting on whiskey, was foreign to me, in a hilarious way. I was delighted.

We were in our first liquor store, one of six stops, less than 5 minutes after Sarah made her initial random interjection. When it comes to partying, Tollersons are apparently your go-to guys.

We picked out a whiskey, and then inquired at the counter about eggnog. The cheerful family working pointed us to Old St. Nicks Alcoholic Eggnog in a Noel-decked bottle. My father bought the whiskey and the eggnog while ignoring my suggestions to add on a bottle of Jager. Then we were off to search other locales for a non-alcoholic version of holiday cheer to... add alcohol to.

We are a strange lot. Read More »

I had a blast at The Company's Xmas party. I took the Indian as my date, and at 6:00 pm we got on the bus that would take most of the Athens attendees to the party in Gwinnett. The thing that is both cool and dangerous about taking a bus to this party is the drinking begins the moment you get on the bus. So, my estimate was totally off. Drinks included:

• Something Neil handed to me on the ride down, ordering me to “Drink this!” Even though it was pretty weak the Indian determined for me that it contained bourbon.
• three vodkas on the rocks from the bar at the party (where I had this classic exchange with the bartender):
  

  “Vodka on ice, please.”
  (Incredulous.) “Vodka on ice?”
  “Yessir.”
  (Smiling.) “I like it when people say that.”

• Something an unnamed manager came up and offered. Possibly gin with sprite.
• All of what was in my flask. (5-6 oz. vodka)
• About half of the whiskey in Neil's flask.
• and several hits off of Neil's bottle of Gentleman Jack.

An aside: while making this list, I have determined I owe Neil a bottle of something in the near future.

The party had a casino theme, and while I didn't gamble, I did stand at the end of the craps table for a little while, cheering and blowing on dice. I felt like an archetypal Vegas blonde and I loved it. I stayed off the dance floor but shook my hips to the music anyway. CB and I rapped along to Missy Elliot while Neil gave us his best faux look of stern dissapproval in our musical tastes. I didn't express it but I couldn't get over how hot everyone looked. We clean up very nicely, part timers especially.

Silliness abounded, which as it turns out, was only a precursor to the drunken melodrama that followed on the ride home. Read More »

Start with two Irish Carbombs. Add two overpriced cigarettes and and two Smoked Porter brews from Copper Creek. Mix well until there is a pleasant, steady buzz. Laugh loud at the Brit and smoke another cigarette on the way home.

Arrive home before midnight. Change into pajamas, slam two huge glasses of water. Climb into bed at 12:03 am, excited about the long night of rest that lies ahead (a whole nine hours!). Fall asleep painlessly and instantly.

Your phone will ring at 12:57 am, waking you, but don't answer it. Instead, inspect the time, decide that it is one in the afternoon, that you overslept, and are now late for work. Begin formulating excuses for your boss.

30 seconds after the ring, the mind cloud lifts, it's one am again. Go back to sleep without trouble or incident.

At 3:45 am, wake up suddenly and completely, without cause, and stone sober to boot.

[It should be noted here that there are two main kinds of insomnia: the people who can't get to sleep and the people who can't stay asleep. I have always been one of the former. I am not too keen on becoming one of the latter.]

Lay in bed, still dead tired but now unable to sleep, for two hours. Get up and write, believing it will help. It won't. Get back in bed until 7:00, and then give up and get in the shower.

After getting all fresh and clean, go the kitchen to make breakfast. Knock a box full of pasta off it's shelf. When you go to pick it up in your groggy state, the box will be upside-down. The top will come completely undone, and you will have ruined dry pasta all over the floor.

Sit on the floor in your bathrobe, heave a big sigh, and clean it up.

After breakfast head to Starbucks to kill time before work. Listen to lavishly and obnoxiously arranged version of “O Holy Night”. Note that Christmas music before Thanksgiving is part of what is wrong with the world, and is certainly a sign of the rapture.

Move quickly (trying to outrun the music) out of the coffee shop. Mix well with one overpriced but delicious eggnog latte, charged to a credit card, and send to work for 6 ½ hours.

Serves no one. And everyone.

It's been a long day.