I Dreamed a Dream

So, it's Thursday, which means it's jury duty day. So, as you can imagine, I'm not in the best of moods. The day didn't start out right, with some BS I had to deal with all before 8:00 AM. I won't go into it, but I basically think some people in this world just don't give a rat's behind about how they treat people. Needless to say, I was on the receiving end of someone's lack of compassion.

Then I spend a glorious day in jury duty hearing about all the wonderful residents of Montgomery County. I mean, really. We have some real prize citizens here. UGH.

When I'm done today, I drown my sorrows at DSW. Yes, I know, it's not the healthiest of things to do. But I did pick up some cute Spring/Summer shoes! I do feel a little better. :)

I also wanted to share this lovely video. Last night we saw this video of Susan Boyle, who competed in Britain's Most Talented show. She walks onstage to laughs and snickers. The audience thinks she's a joke. And then she sings. Oh man. I cried like a baby. This woman epitomizes the notion of never giving up your dream. Just stick with it, stay positive, and someday you will have your moment. And a moment she had. So, please watch this video and believe that you can have all you want in life too.

Here's the link

Baby Got Back

Whew. Home from a great weekend in NY. We didn't do a darn thing other than hang out with my family, eat a lot, and watch movies. It was wonderful.

Friday we colored Easter eggs, which was lots of fun. Keller and my dad did most of the coloring. Saturday it rained most of the day, so we weren't able to go to the Easter egg hunt in the park we were planning on attending. We had our own egg hunt Sunday morning. In fact, we had about 20 of them. And we continue to have them at home. It's Keller's new favorite past time. You can see all of our Easter weekend pictures here.

Sunday was nice. All the rain stopped, so after our egg hunts and Easter morning bread, we flew our kite. It gets crazy windy behind my parents' house, so it's a prime kite flying area. Keller was having some trouble keeping the kite in the air, but he loved the loops it would do. After that, we had a great meal with family we hadn't seen in a while. We left to come home at about 7:00 PM, which was the time most people decided to go wherever they were going. It took us about 3 hours to get to New Jersey, which is normally an hour and a half drive. It was miserable. The only bright spot was this billboard we saw a couple of times as we were leaving Brooklyn, before the Verrazano bridge. It said "Got Hemorrhoids?" And underneath this was the name of the clinic: the Proctology Clinic. And while this isn't especially funny, the second 'O' in Proctology was a butt. A big old butt. It's hilarious. See here:

We saw these particular billboards on the BQE. However, there is another one we see on the Belt Parkway. It doesn't have the butt-as-an-'O' but it does still have the butt. Here's this one:

I have to say, that's pretty effective advertising. I wonder who's butt it is?

Bullet the Blue Sky

I was on the way to work yesterday morning and the car in front of my had those little bullet hole stickers all over the back. You know, those stickers that make the car look like it's been riddled with bullets. Why would one put those idiotic things on their car? What does it really say? That you're a bad ass? Because, to me, it just says that you're an ass.

Because I'm deep in a rant, when did Easter become so commercialized? I know it's always been an opportunity to sell candies and stuffed bunnies, but it's getting out of hand. I was at Target and it was a little overwhelming. All the different types of Easter baskets, toys, clothes, candy, decorations, etc. I mean, we give Keller an Easter basket and do the egg coloring and hunting, but it's not like it's prime present opening time. It's ridiculous.

Now I feel better.

Killing Me Softly

I think that, by being on the grand jury, I am dying a slow and painful death. It is excrutiating. And I'm not talking boring. It's literally painful to go there.

We're now in our second month of service and we're all becoming disgustingly jaded. We sit there and listen to maybe 15-20 cases each day and it's just horrible. I obviously can't go into exactly what we hear but it's just case after case of crimes. Some of the crimes are not so bad and they usually involve an extremely stupid person committing the crime. Sometimes we even chuckle at the stupidity. But then there are cases we hear that bring us to tears.

I honestly don't know if I'm going to make it through the rest of my service. John and I were talking about it this morning and we're interested in knowing if there have been any studies on grand jury members before and after their terms of service. Are they dead inside after they finish their terms. Because I can definitely see myself heading in that direction.

Maybe it's the weather that is making me feel this way. Or at least contribute. I cannot wait for this weekend. It's supposed to be gorgeous weather-wise and we have some fun plans. Tomorrow morning we're walking in the Race for Lung Life 5K, which is a race honoring the founder of my company who died of lung cancer last year. Then tomorrow evening we're going to Susan's 30th birthday party (Hi Susan! Happy early b-day!). Then Sunday is the Cherry Blossom 10-miler. I'm excited about it because it's truly my favorite DC race. I would love to do well, but I'm not so sure how it's going to go. It took me a lot longer to come back after I broke my toe than I thought it would. I guess because it was a break and dislocation, it was more traumatic. I still have pain every now and then. Between that and all the stuff that's been going on for the past few months, I haven't been able to train as well as I'd hoped. And to top it all off, I've been sick all week! I guess we'll see how things go on Sunday.

Well, this was a cheery post. Hopefully after a fun weekend, I'll be in a better mood on Monday. :)

Best Friend

As many of you know, I am a person of obsessions. I glom onto something and literally become obsessed with it and think, eat, sleep, dream about this one particular thing. I have written about my various obsessions before. They are numerous and varied, encompassing many ranges of interests. Just thinking about them all makes me laugh.

Anyway, my current obsession is Twitter. I have been a Tweeter or a Tweep for a long time. I have two personas: Coach_Jenn which is generally where I discuss running-related issues and promote my articles and other items of interest to other runners and endurance athletes. For those of you that go to my actual blog page (jennifergill.blogspot.com), you can read my Coach_Jenn tweets. My other persona is simply JennGill where I'm, well, me. I haven't tweeted (i.e. posted) in a while as JennGill because I always was Coach_Jenn. And it's confusing. But over the weekend, I was sick with a yucky stomach ailment (to be polite) and I went to my JennGill page on Twitter to see what was going on. I decided to follow all celebrities using my JennGill persona. You'd be amazed at how many celebrities there are on Twitter. I now know a lot of what these famous people are doing throughout the day and I have to say it's quite fascinating. For example:

• Mark Hoppas (Blink-182 band member) does not sleep well and wakes up very early in the morning.
• Margaret Cho (comedian) really really loves animals and has a dog named Ralph whom she took to the vet this morning to have a lump looked at (it's nothing).
• Soleil Moon Frye (Punky Brewster) had a business meeting this morning and asked what to wear: jeans or a dress (I responded to her and told her to wear a nice, but not-too-nice, dress).
• MC Hammer (sort of rapper, wearer of very baggy pants) had a birthday yesterday.
• Perez Hilton (gossip monger) loves Cadbury Eggs (as do I).
• Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore are currently in the South of France (how horrible for them).
• P.Diddy calls himself Ptwitty (ha!).
• Snoop Dog only "tweezles" after 11 AM.
• Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office) thinks he's developing man boobs. And they are an A cup.

You get the idea. I also follow Lance Armstrong who tweets A LOT. He's more obsessed with it than anyone, and clearly admits it. For instance, he just tweeted that he's picking up his kids from school at the moment. Such regular people!!

I highly recommend you get on the Twitter bandwagon. It's so much fun. If you do, be sure to follow me (JennGill for randomness and Coach_Jenn for running stuff)!

By the way, today's song title chosen for my blog post title is by a band named Tweet. Get the connection? Good...

Happy Twittering!