Jessica. I don't like the name "Jessie". It's not short for Jessica, though many people have assumed it is. Jessica is a much more feminine name, and sounds better with a wider variety of last names.

Either Jessica, or Mary, which is my baptismal name.

Yeah, that's right. Shampoo hasn't touched my locks in two years... maybe longer. I *do* wash my hair, but I only use conditioner. Yes, it gets my hair clean. No, my hair doesn't smell. No, my hair is not oily. I also only wash my hair about 3 times a week.

Americans shampoo their hair more than twice as often as people in other countries.... which is *way too much*. Every time you shampoo your hair, your natural oils are stripped away. Over-shampooing (which the majority of Americans are guilty of) gets rid not only of "dirt", but also the natural oils your hair needs to be healthy, and can be very damaging.

This is a link to a story on NPR this morning. Dermatologists recommend shampooing ones' hair NO MORE than two or three times a week: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102062969

If you're saying "my hair gets greasy/oily if I don't shampoo every day"... well, IT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE SHAMPOOING EVERY DAY. When you strip away your hair's natural oils it just makes a whole bunch more oil to compensate. I used to have an oily scalp and dry, frizzy ends... but since I switched to conditioner only I've found my scalp doesn't get oily and my ends are much less frizzy. My hair is shinier, softer, and I get fewer split ends.

I use Suave conditioners to cleanse my hair (the Coconut and "Daily Clarifying" kinds). There are other, much more expensive brands that are marketed as special "cleansing conditioners", but Suave works just fine... and at $2 a bottle you can't beat the price.

Alright, rant over. I have no idea why I felt such a strong urge to write this... I guess it's something I really believe in heh

This is my morning routine for the days I work:

Wake up at 6 am
Pee
Wash my face
Apply moisturizer
Get dressed
Brush my teeth
Do makeup
Do hair
Put on watch
Spritz perfume
Pick out shoes
Leave apartment no later than 6:45
Drive to my sister's
Arrive at Jen's no later than 7:05

Very exciting.

A real post is coming soon. I swear.

Yay Dana!


( Who comments the most on this journal? )

Ireland. I want to go there more than anywhere else.

"hibiscus"

I've thought it was a delicious word ever since I saw a giant tortoise eating one on Reading Rainbow.

There are so many times I wish I could do this...

TTFN!

I'm surprised how many people don't know what this means or claim to have never heard it. It means "ta ta for now"

From Wikipedia:

TTFN is an initialism for a colloquial valediction, 'ta ta for now', based on 'ta ta', an informal 'goodbye', approximately equivalent to 'bye bye', 'see ya' or 'laters'. The expression came to prominence in the UK during the Second World War.

TTFN originates from Morse code^{[citation needed]} (and is still used occasionally in ham radio) as an ending to a transmission but was brought into popular use in the UK in 1941 in the weekly radio comedy ITMA by the character Mrs Mopp. From 1939, initialisms, previously rarely used except by the military, were heard more frequently by the British public. ITMA satirized them by coining TTFN, a "pointless" initialism (no easier to say than the phrase on which it was based) and using it as a catchphrase.^{[citation needed]}

'Ta ta for now' caught on with the British public, so much so that it was often uttered by dying people as their last words.^[1]

Thirty years later, Paul Winchell, following the suggestion of his British third wife^{[citation needed]}, Jean Freeman, improvised the redundant phrase "TTFN, ta ta for now!" as a signature phrase for the (originally British) character Tigger in the Disney films based on A. A. Milne's book The House at Pooh Corner. This, in a world now accustomed to them, popularised worldwide a word originally coined to make fun of initialisms.

I wrecked my car. Or rather, a bad driver made a left turn in front of me and caused me to wreck. He was at fault... thank goodness. I'm okay. My car is not okay. I'm supposed to be moving tomorrow, but won't have a rental car until Monday. Apparently insurance companies don't "help" people on weekends.

Things are insane right now. I'll post details and such as soon as things settle down a bit.

Will you marry me?

Articulate
Bored
Compassionate
Dreamer
Empathetic
Friendly
Geek
Horny
Indecisive
Jealous
Kid-at-heart
Loving
Moody
Naughty
Open
Punctual
Quirky
Random
Sensitive
Tall
Unconventional
Voluptuous
Warm
X-citable :-P
Young
Zany

I really hope that isn't the case, because I spent my first day of 2009 sleeping, scrounging for food, and taking down Christmas decorations. Does this mean my year is doomed to be full of exhaustion, lacking in nutrition, and lots more of waiting-until-the-last-minute?

Before I embark on hours and hours of reading in my sociology textbook...

Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don't change your clothes. Don't fix your hair. Just take a picture.
Post that picture with no editing.
Post these instructions with your picture.

Blah, I have so much to write about. I promise I will later... but for now, I leave you with this:


more animals

I HAVE A DATE TONIGHT!

WITH SOMEONE WHO SEEMS TOTALLY AWESOME!

WISH ME LUCK!

I'll update with details upon my return <3

I only wish I was as pretty as this chick... whoever she is. I'm flattered that MyHeritage.com thinks so.

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebrities

( Now this is even weirder... )

Yesterday was... odd.

It started off normal enough. I hung out at my parents' house, stopped at the store, then headed home. After I was done carrying my stuff up to our apartment Haley went back down to close my trunk and didn't come back... It took me awhile to notice she was gone, and I sort of paniced. She has bad ear infections in both ears, so I was worried she had passed out or fallen down the steps or something. When I stepped outside I saw she was talking to our new downstairs neighbor, and thought nothing of it.

After awhile I began to wonder what was up, because they were talking for a long time. I stepped out again and Haley looked very concerned and distressed. She told our neighbor lady bye and came upstairs saying "WE NEED TO MOVE." o.O

Apparently our new neighbor, Josie, claims some Hispanic dude and his girlfriend are stalking her, regularly hiding outside OUR front door, and spraying her with acid. Yeah. What the fuck? I knew we needed to go downstairs and talk to this lady and get more details... so we did. She claims he's been doing this for awhile. Josie and her 80-something husband moved in about a month ago, and she says this guy (I think his name is Julio) has stalked her when she lived in Tucson, Glendale, and now Tempe.

She claims he and his girlfriend hide in some attic or crawl space above her apartment and spray her with "acid" when she takes a shower. She also says that he hides out in front of my door... I'm not sure what for.

She did seem very distressed, and Haley said she was crying when they first spoke, but there's something not quite right. Her story is very detailed, but some things are just too strange or don't make sense. She showed us a picture of him and his girlfriend, as well as the restraining order she has against him, which makes me believe she does/did have a stalker... but the details are what make her story sort of fishy...

- How are he and his girlfriend gaining access to this crawl space/attic above her apartment? How do they know when she's going to take a shower? Doesn't it get unbearably hot in there? Do they lay in there all day waiting for her to shower? She says when it happens she yells "STOP SPRAYING ME JULIO!" Wtf? Why doesn't she run to the phone and dial 911??

- She claims he and his girlfriend hide out upstairs, in front of my apartment. She mentioned that he's there "almost every day" usually very late at night or really early in the morning. If it's during those times, how does she know they're there? And what's the point of them hiding there during times when no one is around? I've never heard or seen anything suspicious. Do they sit/stand outside my door in total silence?

- She said that when he and his girlfriend are hiding by my apartment, my car isn't there. I KNOW she's mistaken about this, because since she moved in my car has been parked in front of my apartment every night. There have been a few times I've come back very late (between 1 and 3 am) and no one was around.

- I don't get why she hasn't called the police. If he's within 200 feet of her then he's violating the restraining order, and she should call the cops. What's stopping her?

- She kept emphasizing that he's "very good at what he does", as if calling the police would be pointless, since he'd be gone before the time they got here.

SO YEAH... All around a fishy situation. Very WTF.

UPDATE: Finally got in touch with my dad. My mom did have the procedure done and everything looked good. The doctors figure it was just another one of her weird "spasms." She'll probably be back at home tonight or tomorrow and my sis and I will go visit her then :-)

Yeah, my mom is in the hospital.

She's been plagued with various health problems for years and a lot of them have really gone unsolved. I feel she belongs on an episode of "Mystery Diagnosis." One of the more recent ones has been in her chest, or specifically with her heart. She says she has "attacks" of pain - not heart burn - more like a pressure on her chest. She's seen a cardiologist and had a battery of tests run, but everything has come back normal or *better* than normal. The only exception was while she was wearing a heart monitor for a few days they noticed her heart skipped a beat... which is weird, but they couldn't tell why. Recently she started having weird headaches and just hasn't been feeling right. She *knows* something is wrong but is clueless as to what, and so are her doctors.

Well, yesterday I got a call from my dad. I knew immediately something was wrong, just by the way he said "Jessie?" when I answered. My mom had one of her "attacks" yesterday morning while she was riding her bike (she rides several miles every day) and apparently it was a pretty bad one. She had a nitro-glycerin tablet with her (which dialates the blood vessels to hopefully let more blood in to the heart) so she took that and headed back home. Fortunately she was only a mile away from home. She laid down when she got home and then called my dad to tell him what happened. He decided to come home and take her to the hospital. By the time they got there she was feeling fine, but they gave her more nitro-glycerin and admitted her at the urging of her cardiologist. He thinks they need to find out what's going on once and for all, so he wants to perform a Cardiac Catheterization on her. They make a small incision in your groin and put a really thing tube up in to your heart so they can get a better look at what's going on. She was supposed to have the procedure today at 1:30, but told her is could possibly pushed back if someone comes in to the hospital with a heart attack or something.

I've tried to get ahold of my dad on his cell, at his desk, and at home with no luck. Since his cell is off (he always has it on) it makes me think he's probably visiting my mom at the hospital. After typing this I think I'll call and find out what room she's in.

That's really all I know right now. I'd appreciate if you keep her in your thoughts and prayers! Thanks for listening :-)

Here are some pics of my new kitty, Benji, or Benjamin for short hehe Click to see them bigger, obviously.