Thursday, December 20, 2007

It's Snowing, It's Snowing!!

Hello children,

It's snowing, and instead of like, doing something constructive; shoveling, moving my car, changing out of my pajamas...I'm just chilling, watching it fall and writing this message.

So, when I'm home, I feel like I shouldn't spend money going out and eating, but right now all I want is some soup from Panera, it's soup day babies!!! cream of chicken and wild rice, the perfect treat for snow. But I had the best treat for snow last night; Cheers New England clam chowder. The first really good clam chowder I've had in forever, because I keep testing chowders in Virginia and they just don't compare. Whenever I'd have a clam chowder I'd describe them as "subtle interpretations" because I'm generally a New England snob.

I just sneezed twice. Good for me.

So this past weekend I got to spend a lot of time with my Loni! We were roommates last year and then she had to GRADUATE. sigh. But she's one of my closest friends ever and I've missed her a lot. It was great, Friday we spent the day together, and then had a ladies night, and then went out with our friend Gray and the rest of the weekend, until I left Sunday night, we just hung out and watched TV and like, organized her new apartment. I drew a picture! It may be hanging in the Metropolitan museum of Art soon, so let's cross our fingers :-)

So Tuesday I drove home to Boston and the drive took 13 and a half hours and it usually takes 12...but it was even longer because usually I stop for lunch but this time I picked up some Taco Bell to eat on the road because I knew Connecticut people would be like, Hey let's stop and make traffic. Sigh. And then after much confusion I was eating with my dear Homies Ange and Amanda, and I met their friend , the incredible waiter Steve. It was a very good night, and I've missed my Homies dearly. I'll be seeing them tomorrow for lunch if not before.

there is a sale at New York and Company and I hear it calling my name! Fo sho!

Anyway, my friend from school Sarah is here, she's spending a few days in Boston and she's really digging the snow. Not literally, but that will be me soon, because I'll be needing to shovel soon, but I just want to look at it. But I must go and get going and stuff. There are things to be done!

toodle-oo.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

This post is completely dedicated to coffee.

Hey guys,

I hope I haven't scared you off. Anyway, I'm going to chat about coffee for a while, the best coffees, the worst, etc. Come join me.

1. Dunkin Donuts Iced French Vanilla with Milk and Sugar - This tops the list of love. It is everything you could ever want in a coffee, if you get it from the right Dunkin Donuts. Of course it was much better before, when Dunkin Donuts brewed French Vanilla coffee, now it's just regular coffee with French Vanilla flavoring and it's not the same. Still, it's a lovely treat and I love it.

2. Starbucks Iced Nonfat Peppermint Mocha, no whipped cream - Now, if Dunkin Donuts ever found out I was having a love affair, it would kick my butt. Still, this holiday coffee is so good, I feel like i almost deserve it. What is best is that, since there's no fat, you can really taste the mocha and it's like, an almost grainy cocoa drink, and I love texture. still, it doesn't have the same caffeine rush of the Dunkin donut's iced, but it's a flavorful delight for my mouth anyway.

3. Wawa Iced Peppermint Mocha - Totally a glorified chocolate milk, but I actually enjoy it anyway. It hits the spot, and it has peppermint and I love that so yeah, I totally can enjoy this beverage.

4. Mc Donalds Iced Coffee - It's not available everywhere, and they decide how much milk and sugar you want, and it's a lot, but stil, the French Vanilla is similar to Dunkin's , the only difference is the flavor of the coffee.

BTW I've been talking about iced coffees and never gave an actual favorite coffee, it's Dunkin donuts. Like, just the flavor of the coffee alone is so scrumptuous and yummy. It's rich, but it's nowhere near as rich (bitter) as Starbucks. Dunkin Donuts, man.

5. Burger King Iced Coffee - This sucks. It's totally chocolate milk and I felt like I gained five pounds just drinking it.

6. Dunkin Donuts Vanilla Chai Tea - Yes, it's not coffee but it's excellent, its a vanillay, cinnamony blend with tea and milk and they don't advertise it anymore, but it tastes ,"like Christmas", according to me.

Anyway, there you go, a little guide to coffees I enjoy. Most are iced, but where there is the iced, there is a hot equivalent that I would choose if I was in a hot coffee mood.

Peace

Thursday, November 29, 2007

It's about time

It just occurred to me that the pink totally wasn't my style. But this works!

Monday, November 26, 2007

On behalf of The Santa Claus, I'm dreaming of a White Christmas!

Hey All,

I'm going to tell you guys in this entry about BLACK FRIDAY, the best shopping day of the year. MUHAHAHAHA!

So my friends Ange and Amanda and I set a plan in motion, stay up all night and go to Kohls for the 4am opening, Modells, a sporting goods store for their 5am opening, and 6am for the Target opening.

Andrea decided to join in the fun, she goes shopping usually too.

So after a delicious yummy Thanksgiving dinner prepared by Mom - a dinner of Italian favorites, stuffed shells, meatballs and sausage, and traditional favorites of turkey, stuffing (bread and meat), potatoes, corn, mmmm yummy and don't even mention the pies - after that , that night I went to Ange and Amanda's apartment down the street from me, and we, with Alpo and Ange's family, watched Elf. My first viewing of Elf this season, and I've already seen it again, gotta love Elf. Then it was time to put up decorations. Including my best friend, the Snowman with low batteries so it sings Frosty like this, "MEH MEH MEHMEHMEH..."

So great.

Then we hung out and ate pancakes and I taught Ange how to brew coffee. After an explosion. Heh.

Then after all our talking about staying up all night we all agreed to take an hour nap at 2. And then we woke up at 3AM ready to hit the stores, or hit ourselves for waking up so early.

We get Andrea, and Andrea and I share the backseat of Amanda's car with a questionable cooler, which I joked with Andrea and told her it had food but it didn't and it was too early for jokes.

So we get to Kohls at 3:30A, and there were people starting to form lines in front of the store. In front of Kohls. Seriously people, it's cold, let's wait for the doors to open and rush in!! I spent the next twenty seven minutes putting words in people's mouths, people who were in line, employees who were entering the store. According to Julio, one of the workers, there was a big sale on hoses.

The last two sentences were random but I was tired and i'm random normally. So at 3:57 they open the doors and we rush in, and we get some things, they had lots of sales on clothes and some random GPS devices and lots of housewares. But yeah I didn't find anything but you know what, it's about the fun! The fun! So we get out at 4:30 and the lines for the registers weren't bad. My mom left Kohls at 5 and the lines were around the corner of the store. Crazy.

Next we went to Modells, a sporting goods store and my friends all had things to buy but I didn't so I kind of wandered the store. But the best part of that store was Andrea seeing all these boxes and going, "Oh, they have ripsticks." and if they weren't so much, she'd buy one for her cousin. So we're all like, "what's a ripstick?" ok we probably said, "What the hell.." or worse!! Anyway, it's a weird skateboard...it looks like this:

www.ripstickusa.com

I can't do anything right, just see that link and see the wonder of Ripstick.

So, we took a detour because we thought we could walk right into Staples and get these super Garmin GPS's, but we were oh so wrong. But Andrea got her pencil sharpener, so we all took a sigh of relief. :-)

Then to Target. BADA! I heart Target. I bought a few things there ---for myself. Ooops. But I spent most of the time talking to people I worked with at times long ago. And I decided there should be no carts. NO CARTS. OH, and I talked to a random girl that was wearing the same shirt as Amanda. And I said weird things to her, thinking she was amanda and she seemed pretty scared.

So we left Target and we're so tired. And there haven't been GREAT sales, BTW. So Andrea says "Can we go to (name of store removed , just in case someone reads this) - to buy something" So we go to the mall and we get the thing and then Andrea is like, can we go to Victoria's secret - -so the three of us decide to go to breakfast in the mall - the Dunkin Donuts, while she goes to Vickie's.

And by then we thought of the Ripstick theme song - it starts -

RIPSTICK - BA NA NA NA! YOU CAN DO ANYTHING ON YOUR RIP STICK!

And then we sang all the functions of the ripstick we remembered. I got a chocolate chip muffin and amanda was hungry for food food so she got that at Burger King. Hey, to us, it was kind of dinner.

Finally we head home at 8am, and by then we're all overtired, so we're all singing the ripstick song, and Ange sang the song to random people from the car as we drove out of the mall.

Then I went home and went to sleep.

It was good shopping!!

Love yas!

Jen

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

My Defense

Hello World!

So today was a good day for the most part.

My portfolio defense was at 2pm, so I woke up at ten am so I could make notes, since I had to pitch my story to my committee, which was made up of my professors Doug and Dennis. I worked until 11am and watched Weird Al music videos and then British Sarah came by to tell me she signed her lease and will be my neighbor soon. I made her some tea and we chatted and then she took off and I got dressed all nice to have lunch at Regent and then go to my defense.

Before I left, I got encouraging messages from friends. My friend John called me not soon after I woke up to tell me that it was going to go really well, and my friend Maria texted me to let me know she'd be praying for me. My friend Loni texted too, and reminded me to breathe. It was really nice to be thought of, and it made me feel better. When I squeezed the tube of toothpaste, I felt my hand shake. I let Loni know that and she told me it would be fine.

So I went to eat and my friend April joined me and listened to my pitch and she liked the show. So that made me feel better. Then I went upstairs to wait for my committee. We all finally got together and I had to pitch my idea and it went well, they asked some questions and I had some new direction for where I'm going. It took about an hour, but I was so happy because they really liked everything and some things I was unsure of.

Then I left, and I bumped into my friend Maria and she took me out and bought me a coffee because I passed. That was fun, we had a good talk. Then I went home and went back to school, and then John and I took a walk and went to IHOP. And it was good but sad because it was our last dinner for a while. John is going to pursue his career in Hollywood and I'm so proud of him for doing so. I'm going to miss him a great deal though, he's really been a great friend to me.

After I got home I needed some comfort so luckily Maria came over for a few minutes and that was good. And then I downloaded some songs and updated my Ipod and took a little walk, and now I'm watching Friends and it's good.

Tomorrow I fly home to spend the holidays with my family and I'm really looking forward to it.

So it was a good day and now I'm excited to start writing my television episodes.

Stay classy, San Diego!

Friday, October 26, 2007

Liz Lemon

Hey guys,

Anyway, this is what's on my mind right now. 30 Rock. Which is a show I love, and one of the reasons I love it is because it's an edgy comedy, that breaks molds and was created by a talented comedian who is a woman. I'm a woman so right there, connection. Not to say that just because we're women, instant connection, but who wouldn't want to be good friends with Tina Fey?

Anyways, her character Liz Lemon is the head writer for the fake variety show, "TGS" (The Girlie Show), and she leads a room of men. They have to listen to her. She's pretty big news. But here is the thing; her life is all about her constantly being single, she fears dying in her apartment because of choking on a TV dinner, she doesn't have a savings account, and she doesn't have much of a life outside the job. And it leaves me thinking, "Is this the life I'm doomed to repeat?"

And here is the pathetic truth, audience. I feel like living that life is a privilege. Because in spite of the fact that she seems doomed to have many cats, and lots of problems for a shrink to handle, she is talented and she is living a dream I'd love to aspire to. Does that make me sad?

No.

The truth of the matter is this; in spite of everything, in spite of sometimes FEARING where my career will take me, seeing Liz Lemon's plights, I would be loving it, if I got to have that in my life. Sitting in a room for 12 hours with funny men and women as we try to find funny stories so people will watch and laugh. That is the dream.

Also, the real Tina Fey, as I've been assured, is married and has a child and a successful home life, as well as a kickin career, which is another reason I idolize her. I feel, at the very least, I'll go out to LA and have a bunch of close friends to call my family, and I know that someday I"m going to find the guy I'm going to marry and it will all be good.

Question, do you guys feel like there were two rival Jen's arguing back and forth? I did... :-P

Thursday, October 25, 2007

My Meandering Has Taken Me Home

http://www.eyewitnessnewstv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7247374

The last girl, laughing and shouting, is my Angela. I am very proud.

I am at a place in my life where I feel like so much is gone. And I'm literally here with my computer, not doing my huge paper that should be my focus today and every day but I'm content to procrastinate.

Hand me a diploma. Any diploma, yo. It's all good in the hood, baby.

I had a dream last night and it featured a lovely friend of mine, Genevieve, and I had finally arrived in Los Angeles. And it's funny because I remember in the dream there was something wrong, and I bet what was wrong was that I hadn't finished this portfolio. Sitting, writing, trying to sound smart about television, trying to be in depth and concise and long but not drawn out, all at once. And I hate writing papers. And I have 19 pages done, that's like, 2/3rds. The rest will be as easy as squeezing water out of a stone.

I just found out , just now, that my walk in closet has roof access to my building. That's hot. What isn't hot is that it was discovered because my roof is leaking. Yay.

Ugh.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Cumulus Again

Hey Guys,

It's Thursday around 7pm, and I just got back from another day of the film, Cumulus. We've hit a groove, and I think things are progressing quite nicely on set. Today I got to take a little break and watch one of the actor's babies. He was an adorable kid, and my friend and I took him for a walk. It was a nice time, considering we'd all been holed up in one little apartment and had to turn off the air conditioner because of its sound.

I need to do laundry tomorrow, desperately. I need more pajamas. That's an odd thing to say, but it's true. also, it wouldnt be beyond me to be lazy and buy more pajamas to avoid going to the laundry tomorrow. I'll tell you guys the truth, I always forget what temperature goes with color and what goes with whites; my only saving grace and perhaps the reason i keep making the mistake, is that our washers don't go by temperature, they go by color, so I don't have to remember. Which just goes to show how technology stilts intelligence, or something.

I had a thought but lost it. It might come back to me later. So perhaps I'll come back and finish.

JenGia

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Cumulus - Part One of Some, I'm Sure

Hello out there!

Right now I'm resting a few hours before Richmond's film shoot. He's making this film, "Cumulus". It's about, well, it's about a whole lot of people and how all the stories interact with each other. It's a neat concept and I'm glad I can be here to be a part of it. I'm script supervisor for the film. For those of you who don't know, script supervisors have to watch for continiuty, like, if someone wears a hat in one shot, they should wear a hat in the rest of the scene. also I have to make sure that all the lines are said correctly, and that movements in the same scene match. It requires a lot of concentration when the cameras are rolling but when they aren't, all i can do it make my notes all neat and stuff. People always pigeonhole writers as script supervisors....perhaps because both involve scripts. I do like it, however, I mean, it's something I can do and I'm good at. I could never do anything super technical, involving lighting or cameras. I like the more produce-y side of film, script supervising or assistant directing, or even production design when the production design requires a lot of creativity on my part.

So I'm going to be in Los Angeles this summer, I got into this writing program, Act One. I'll be there for a month, putting in 40+ hours of class a week. Hopefully I'll get into the television program, which will require more time in and out of the classroom. I love writing television and eventually I'd like to produce a television show myself. I get discouraged sometime because I know how hard it will be to actually get to where I want to be. I read a book where it said wanting to be a television writer is like wanting to be a professional sports player. The only thing that makes me feel better about that is that I feel like I'm at least at the level where wanting to do it seems to make sense, like, I have the talent, and i'm in grad school AND wanting to learn more about writing for a month this summer, so I have the drive. I think God has things in store for me and I'm excited to find out what they are. At the same time, I'm nervous about going because of course I won't know anyone and I'll be in a new city and I'll be in a place where everyone is as dedicated to writing as I am. I still need to do my homework for the course, but I think once I sit down and do it, it should only take me a couple of nights to have it completed.

I also have other homework but I'm going to have to put that on hold; I need a first draft of a screenplay by August 20th. I really want to get it done beforre I go to Los Angeles because when I get back to Boston I want to seriously do stuff pertaining to my portfolio. For that I'm writing a few episodes of a show that I'm currently creating. Once it comes together it's going to be really funny. And I don't have to shoot it but I hope there's a way that a little bit of it can be shot. I'd like to shoot a few teasers from the script, if the script will enable that, and there's a shootable location. I'd produce it but I probably wouldn't direct it; even though I'd probably get attached to it after I write it. That's what happens when you write something but then again I have to learn how to give things up to a director...

Wow, I just wrote all that and i don't know who's going to care. :)

Monday, June 11, 2007

My Return to Blogs

Hey,

This blog will be short, but (hopefully seemingly?) sweet. I'm going to start blogging because I used to do it all the time, and I feel like there's a lot of interesting things that I do, and rarely do I get to tell stories about them.

My life these days is focused on film shoots and writing deadlines. And it's wonderful. I'm in this great time in my life, and, since moving to Virginia, have made some wonderful friendships. So why not document it?

I especially want to start a blog because so many people are leaving and this could be a good way to keep people I might not talk to often, in the loop of my life. And this goes to my awesome peeps back in the 'Gus.

I know me. I'll start this all ambitious like and then drop it, so if there is something you find interesting, be sure to leave me comments.

I guess that's about all I have to say in this post.

~JenGia