my apologies

i did not mean to offend anyone with my last post. if you experienced anything as a result of hurricane irene; whether you lost power, your basement flooded, your ceiling/roof leaked, perhaps you have a down tree somewhere or you couldn't make it in to work today. whatever the case, please accept my apology.

i was very fortunate throughout all of saturday and sunday. actually, i think much of norristown was very fortunate.

............jfk...........

silly irene

well, it's the monday after hurricane irene. i'm alive - and at work.




i'd say we were this close...




to nothing.








phew!




two thumbs up to living on top of the hills of norristown, pa.




kiss...




this, irene!




that's my update....




yikes! didn't mean to flash my cleav..... bye now!

..............jfk...........

say what?!

oh. hey! how are you today?




say what- did you just say there is a massive hurricane on its way? stop messin'!




oh. this is for real? no kidding.................................. yikes. yoswers. crap. what do we do?




quick, i better go buy eggs, milk and butter. french toast is the only thing we can eat in a crises like this...




where are all my flashlights?!




i don't have a generator - i might lose power!




i don't really care for french toast!




.......to be continued.......
.................jfk..................

jess + mike = ?

well lookie here! i found a way to kill a few minutes of down time this morning. makin' babies. no no no! not like, for real, makin' babies. more like fake makin' babies. come on people. sheesh.

check out this niffty website - www.morphthing.com

i made a lot of babies today ;-). i will show you!

i start with:


mike & jess

you have some choices that effect the outcome of the baby's appearance, like the race of the two people/parents being morphed. i think which person you choose first in the morph also effects the outcome and also whether or not you want a girl baby or a boy baby. below are my results.

------------------------
caucasian babies
------------------------

baby #1

stats:
- caucasian mike (first in the morph)
- caucasian jess (second in the morph)
- gender = boy
- all the boys looked like this one


baby #2

stats:
- caucasian mike (first in the morph)
- caucasian jess (second in the morph)
- gender = girl


baby #3
(for image, see baby #1)
stats:
- caucasian jess (first in the morph)
- caucasian mike (second in the morph)
- gender = boy


baby #4

stats:
- caucasian jess (first in the morph)
- caucasian mike (second in the morph)
- gender = girl

---------------------------
partly asian babies
---------------------------

baby #5
(for image, see baby #1)
stats:
- caucasian mike (first in the morph)
- asian jess (second in the morph)
- gender = boy


baby #6

stats:
- caucasian mike (first in the morph)
- asian jess (second in the morph)
- gender = girl


baby #7
(for image, see baby #1)
stats:
- asian jess (first in the morph)
- caucasian mike (second in the morph)
- gender = boy


baby #8

stats:
- asian jess (first in the morph)
- caucasian mike (second in the morph)
- gender = girl

----------------------------------------------

how fun! can anyone guess which is my favorite baby?? i definitely liked one, more than the others. i would think some of my close friends would know right off the bat, which is my favorite. go ahead - take a guess

......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

if you guessed baby #8, you win!

.............jfk..............

time sort of flew by...

it is 3:09 p.m. and i am hitting up the blogger.com for the first time today while at the office. hard to believe, i know. usually i hit this bad boy up right away to just scope out my stats. not today... i had a sort of fun thing to work on today at work so i had no need to be on the blogging scene. that is, until now.

i would like to blog a little about something i am looking forward to. it started this morning when i was trying to think of fun things for dinner. not for tonight though. tonight my hubby bubby and i are going to order dinner and watch the eagles play their second pre-season game against the the pittsburgh stealers while we tear apart the bedroom in preparation for our new big-people bedroom furniture... but tomorrow is a whole new day! a whole new day that we will need to eat dinner! i had a few guidelines, or things i knew i wanted tomorrow's dinner to involve:

• a pork loin - we have a nice one in the freezer that needs to be eaten that i was eying up
  
• a crock-pot - since we will more than likely still be tired from tonight and the week in general, and want something easy and still fabulous for dinner, a crock-pot is the way to go!

so this morning, while i was running around the house getting things done before getting ready to go to work, what i did was i grabbed this handy crock-pot recipe book that we bought at BJ's a little while back and started flipping through the pages. there were a handful of good pork recipes in there. one specifically was geared toward a pork loin - perfect! now i was really getting excited about tomorrow's dinner.


......click the picture if you want to see a larger image.....

looks good, yeah? i thought so. there are a few things i need to pick up at the grocery store yet... like red onions, pearl onions, cooking sherry; things i just don't have lying around my kitchen at home. easy enough though. i hope it turns out good.

.........jfk........

serving up hopes & dreams

let's see...

what do i blog about...

beats me...

i'm feeling pretty blank [ insert rude joke here ]

oh! i got a little something for you...

you know how, when you are a child, someone inevitably asks you, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" typically, this question is first thrown at you some day in elementary school, and then again later in high school. but for right now, i'm talking about that first time you get asked... way back in the day, when one of your elementary school teachers asked the entire classroom - which was full of young children who had nothing but hopes and dreams to go off of, rather than reality - what everyone wanted to be when they grew up.

well, maybe you don't remember that day - ha - i sure don't! but my mom remember's the answer i gave when i was asked that question. does anyone want to take a guess at what i said i wanted to be when i grew up?? just so you know, i wouldn't have guessed the answer i gave. that's for sure. honestly. if you were to ask me what i thought i would have said i wanted to be back then, i would have guessed a teacher or something. but my answer was............

a waitress

i was very ambitious ;-) hahaha! and wouldn't you know it; i eventually fulfilled that dream when i was in college. i suppose i'm working on another dream now.

............jfk............

breaking records

three posts in one day - watch out!

apparently, yesterday i became one of the purest and holiest people you know. just ask grand pop krumenacker! i was baptized yesterday. i tell the truth... just look!




i didn't know if it was inappropriate to wipe the dripping water
from my eyes, so i swooshed my head once or twice...


here is my baptismal candle and certificate...


it was a nice day and a special day. not only because i was baptized, but also because so were my two nieces, alexa and adalyne. and to top it off, mike and i both became god parents as well...


you get certificates for everything these days. gotta have proof!


here is a group shot - the recently baptized jfk and nieces, the moms and dads, all the god parents and a spare great grand mom and grand mom...




i know some people might not look at yesterday as a special day. they might even view it as a big ol' sham or something totally ridiculous and ludicrous. but i certainly found it to be a special day, no matter what. so, don't poo-poo on my platter. thank you.

i was even fortunate enough to receive a couple baptism gifts...





...........jfk...........

another weekend update

and to update you on what happened after friday night...

needless to say, since i didn't get much rest the night before, i was a total waste on saturday. i think i may have been a bit mentally exhausted in addition to the physical tiredness i was feeling. i literally did nothing... much like last saturday... i slept till 9ish and then i laid around on the couch... maybe did a little of this and a little of that. but for the most part, i just laid around. i took a nap around 2 o'clock, because laying around seemed to take a lot out of me. i don't know how, but i was just so tired

- oh wait -

i lied! i did do something that afternoon! mike and i did some shopping for big-people bedroom furniture. we found a set we liked and placed an order. we get it on friday. we went all out and got a bed frame with headboard, two night tables, a dresser with a sweet mirror and a big ol' chest (tall upright dresser). below is a picture that shows much of what we got...


it's pretty sweet, huh?!

when we were done shopping for bedroom stuff, then i took that nap - justified! sort of.

.............jfk...........

chilly willy!

anybody remember this cute little guy? i think he would understand what we are all going through right now...

seriously, it's chilly willy cold up in this office today. our two unfaithful temperature readouts today were at 71° and 64° this morning. no lie. we never really know which readout is more accurate. the only things we do know is that

a. when the temperature is 71° at home we don't shiver nearly as much as when it is 71° here in the office
b. wearing layers of clothes and a blanket only helps dull the frosty bite of the frigid temperatures here
c. we are just flat out freezing.

cold temperatures aside, i have some updates from the weekend. if any of you read my last blog post you might be wondering how my brutal run of the mcelroy mountain region in boyertown went. well, it didn't. here's what happened...

recently i have been in the midst of trying to gain a new client/job. said client was not pleased with his/her current designer that was working on the company's email newsletters and wanted to find someone else - someone with more talent and more reliability. so naturally, when this potential client approached me, i had to talk myself up and make myself look good. no lies were said! i'm allowed to talk myself up and make myself look good because i am good ;-) once i had the client, and the job, i continued to be pretty confident in myself and assured the client that things would go much smoother with me and that she would not be let down. but regardless of the client's trust in my confidence, there were other circumstances that i was going to be dealing with when i started actually working:

• i had never worked with this client before
• i had never worked with the program/website/tool that was being used to send out this client's email newsletters (constant contact)
• the time of the month for which these email newsletters need to go out was was fastly approaching as i waited for the content to come in (i had less than 3 days by the time it came in)
• i sort of, halfway insinuated that i would be able to have a speedy turnaround on the job in addition to having it done better than their other person
• truthfully, i had no idea how long this was actually going to take - but i had confidence on my side
  

so when the content actually came in, this job took precedence over all. my entire friday night was used to work on this job. i was up till 2 a.m. with about 7 hours of working under my belt. you know... a good bit of time was spent learning/figuring out the ins and outs of constant contact. not to mention, trying to grasp what all goes in to this company's newsletter. it was all new to me - every ounce of what i was doing that night - and it was sink or swim for jfk. you know i got it done - all of it. and the client was pleased!

and as my confidence will continue to lead me, i am certain that the next time around i will have it done even faster.

.............jfk............

bliggity bloggity

boss-man was out yesterday and is out today and will be out all next week - sweet! so why didn't i blog yesterday? i guess i managed to keep myself occupied all day here at work with things... only a couple of those things were actually work related. but that wasn't my fault. all of my projects remained in limbo with the client and no revisions came in. oh well.

so... what do blog about today...

tomorrow, i'm meeting up with my running buddy liz. we are going to run the straights and walk the narrows of the mcelroy mountain region in boyertown. that will be a brutal day, i'm sure. i will definitely post a gps map of our path! and on sunday, my nieces and i are getting baptized. so that will be cool :-) i'm sure i will have a blog about that next week.

yeah. that's all i got for now. i'm outtie for now.

.............jfk...........

i like working

i had more work to do today. it's funny, because my day started out as if i wasn't going to have much to do. another one of those... boring days of surfing the interwebs... but eventually some revisions came in for a handful of projects that a coworker of mine was working on. and unfortunately, that coworker was tied up with revisions pertaining to a different project. which meant the boss-man had to seek out someone else to get the job(s) done...

i, bored and sitting in my cubicle corner, heard all of this unfolding. anxiously, i waited for him to realize i was not busy... much to my dismay, he started to ask my cube mate lori what she was working on :-( but quickly he remembered she was tied up as well. i could tell he was beside himself - like - who's going to do these revisions if you girls are busy...? at that point i sort of rolled my eyes and shook my head as i had to interject, letting him know that i could do the revisions... it was weird and annoying. as i kindly offered up my time, there was a moment where the boss-man didn't say anything - a moment of total silence. it made me feel as if he didn't want me working on it. eventually he seemed to accept it - you know - after about two seconds of whatever he was pondering, or not pondering, he said okay. i have no idea what that moment was all about. who cares. i now had work to keep me occupied.

so, i worked on some revisions to some projects. and voila! another productive day. i didn't have as much billable time as yesterday. but something is better than nothing!

...............jfk................

you're never going to believe this!

for the first time in a long time, i had a meaningful amount of work to do at my job today. if you are wondering what i mean by a meaningful amount of work, that just means that the task i was given required more than 15 minutes of my time.

so, i now feel accomplished having finished my work today. i just wrapped up my work about 15 minutes ago. so... that's like... 5 hours, or so, of time for me - woo-hoo! though i will probably only bill for like 4.5 hours. i am sure somewhere in those 5 hours i got distracted and had to run to the potty or something. you know how it is. but that is still time billed :-)

i need more days like this - it's sort of sad how excited i am right now. you know, there used to be a time when all of my days were spent working and billing for at least 5 hours a day. look what is come to... just look at how ridiculously excited i am about this...




..........jfk.........

hoop dreams...

this just in... photos of the hoop earrings! just a warning... i did a mini photo shoot. yes, for a pair of hoop earrings. i wanted to be sure i got the best view for you to really see my new betterment.


...one hoop...



...two hoops...



...lori told me to smile...



...stop looking at my armpit - it's just a shadow! i totally shaved this morning...




...lori said this was the worst one so far...



...how about a close up? not working for you? me either...

now that you have seen the hoops, what do you think?

..........jfk........

not since 6th grade

my best friend beth wears hoop earrings. like - present day - wears hoop earrings. i haven't worn hoop earrings since 6th grade. i'm not really sure why. i guess i didn't know that they were still "in". most of the time, if i see a girl wearing hoop earrings today, she is rocking a sort of ghetto-fabulous look and i don't consider myself to be ghetto-fabulous. i'm not being rude, racist or discriminatory. i am simply making an observational statement. if you happen to be ghetto-fabulous, rock on! it's just not who i am and that is no big deal. and if you are offended, then i suggest you working on not being so sensitive.

so, anyway, it must have been a month or two ago when i noticed beth wearing her hoops. they were a modest sized hoop and they looked good on her. really good. after i saw this, i wanted to wear hoop earrings and look "good", too. so. the other day while i was out shopping for some new clothes, i bought a pair of hoop earrings! i will post a pic soon.

i would say that my new hoops fit right in with my attempts at bettering my outward appearance. surely, it goes hand-in-hand with my new haircut(s) i've been getting lately... and all the wardrobe improvements i've tried to make over the past few years and all the other "life-style" changes i made regarding my overall eating and exercise habits.

..............jfk................

the krumenacker | ford plan

while on our morning walk today, shana and i decided that we had some great ideas to help ease our country's debt crises. over time that is. nothing happens over night. i will share one with you today, here on my blog. but first, let's start with the most obvious courses of action. keep in mind that these are not shana and my ideas. they are just things we should have been doing from the get-go... the obvious...

• every us u.s. citizen should be paying their taxes. quite crying about it. if i can pay my taxes and my husband can pay his taxes and our families can pay their taxes then you should be able to as well.
  
• cut government spending.
  

that being said, i will move on with one of shana and my ideas. it is sort of unconventional. but we feel it could work. does anyone know how many people live in our country? a lot. something like 311,921,812. i found that number on the u.s. census bureau's website: http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html. now, don't you think that if each and every one of those u.s. citizens paid out a dollar or two, maybe even five or ten dollars, once a year to a fund / donation / collection / charity that was geared towards easing our country's debt that we could make some sort of progress? if every cent of that money went straight to paying off our debt, little by little... there's really nothing little about it... over 3 million times whatever donation(s) we give wouldn't exactly be little.

but for real, think about it... each year, over 3 million citizens each make at least 1 "donation" of $1–$10 towards the crises. we could get somewhere with this. especially if we all would pay our taxes and the government would cut their spending.

if you are interested, here are a few ways we could go about actually "collecting" these donations. all of which are quite conventional ways of collecting "donations":

• we could set up collections outside of grocery stores, like the red cross.
  
• we could have our local grocers ask each customer at the check-out if they, "would like to make a donation to help their countries crises." you know, they do it for other causes, why not our own debt? i'm just sayin'. it could work...
• we could do a telethon - shana and i were thinking we could be low budget and do it over our local broadcasting networks, like pbs... and have it catch on in other areas... sort of a viral effect

it would all be for the better of our country and ourselves as u.s. citizens.

..........jfk.........

ready. set. go.

i'm going to make 1–2 posts today maybe 3 if i get ambitious. i have a few things i want to blog about today. so, to keep each post short, i must break 'em in to separate posts.

first, i want to share some pictures from my mother's wedding day. i told you they would surface eventually. quick recap of that day: it was in havre de grace, maryland, on july 6th. we all met at swan harbor farm and boated out to this little island in the chesapeake bay area where there was a tent and chairs set up. the ceremony was short and sweet and we all toast with champagne afterward then headed to a local restaurant on the bay and grabbed a bite to eat...














and that was the day! i know this post doesn't look "short" but it's mostly pictures - so relax...

.............jfk...........