Jenna's House of Idiosyncrasies Version 10.0 [Focus.]

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 »

Looking back, and forward. Read More »

The Indian's kid sister: “Did y'all mean to match?”

The Indian (nonchalantly): “No, she's just in my brain a lot.”

Today at about noon, there was a woman walking down Clayton towards College Avenue. She was carrying a bottle of Powerade and looking uneasy. She walked very delicately.

At the corner, she suddenly stopped short. Her eyes got wide, and she put her hand to her mouth. It was a futile gesture; she vomited on the sidewalk, in full view of anyone near that intersection.

She turned her head away, wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her jean jacket, straightened herself, and kept walking as if nothing had happened.

Oh, I forgot to mention one thing. 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 »

New insanely addicting site: Make a Flake

New thing that irritates me although I can do nothing about it: sites without syndicated feeds

Favorite Song (this week): The Black Keys - 10 A.M. Automatic

Number of times I've heard 10 A.M. Automatic, according to iTunes: 21

Movie I'm addicted to of late: Donnie Darko

Song that stays stuck in my head always now, featured in the first DD school scene: Head Over Heels, Tears for Fears

Crush: still going strong

Cigarettes I will smoke today (estimate): 7

Drinks I will consume at The Company Xmas party this evening (estimate): 6

Month that I want to be over already: December

Fun post ideas stolen: 1

“I use big words because I'm trying to sound smart. You use big words because you are smart.”

Jen (8:50:35 PM): [context is, Paris Hilton was picked as one of Barbara Walter's 10 most fascinating people of 2004, this is priceless, however]
Jen (8:50:38 PM): "When the list was announced, there was a media outcry at Walters' choice of the hotel heiress and reality-TV star, fresh from receiving her VH1 award for "Catchphrase of the Year": "That's hot." (Here's my new "catchphrase" for '05: "Good morning.")"
Jen (8:51:26 PM): PARIS HILTON IS CLAIMING THE PHRASE, "That's hot." and to that I say, WTF?
Melissa (8:52:12 PM): haha
Melissa (8:52:16 PM): that is funny
Melissa (8:52:26 PM): oo! i claim that
Melissa (8:52:31 PM): "that is funny"
Jen (8:52:35 PM): HAHAHAHA
Melissa (8:52:48 PM): everyone who says that will now owe me royalties

The Indian's thoughts on my crush:

“I think he thinks he can be that way with you, I think lots of people think they can be that way with you, because they see what we have, you and I, and they want that. They are trying to figure out that connection and how to get it for themselves. But we're unique, and it can't be duplicated.

“With you, [this dude] wants to have his cake and eat it too, but he can't. It's my fucking cake.”

Jen (12:29:37 AM): I like your font because it's like, so you, and when you type I can totally hear you voice saying like, "hmm ok"
Deedsy (12:29:45 AM): hhahah
Deedsy (12:29:55 AM): so i'm a courier new kind of a guy eh?
Deedsy (12:31:23 AM): it's kind of cool actually, it's like having theme font, like theme music for the world of instant messaging where everyone is hearing impaired