quizzes, they really never end, do they?

I started my annual Christmas letter today; well, I started draft 2 today. And I was going to mention something about the kind of flower that represents us and then put an online quiz for readers to try. So, I go online and google: What flower am I quiz. You can find anything online :)

I take the first one and am enjoying myself during each question. I love answering the questions, like what would you do on your day off? what word best describes you? it's fun and introspective. then, I pressed submit. The flower that best represents me is... a snapdragon! ugh. I don't like snapdragons. Not what I wanted so I go and try the next quiz.

I enjoy the 2nd quiz too actually. I submit my answers to this one. This time, I am a... CARNATION. double ugh. The description was very fun, but if you know anything about flowers, you know carnations can live out of water for days and in water for weeks and therefore considered the cheapest flower at a flower shop. They don't have great representations. Carnations in a flower shop are the hohos in a dessert shop.

Of course what do I do? I go back and take another quiz, in search of a good result. I take the 3rd, glad it is a quick one because I am anxious to get to the end. I submit my answers, and I am a lily. Now, this may be good for some, but I am notorious for not like lilies. Yes, the daylilies smell nice, but they are called daylilies because they only last a DAY. And lilies in general are the most masculine looking plant out there. Once again, I am definitely not happy about the result. Of all of the flowers out there, can't I get ONE that I like?!

4th quiz. 4th attempt. And believe me, I will take quizzes or at least go back and change my answers to be a different person until I am a flower I like.

Finally, this quiz told me I was a sunflower. After the 90s and wearing my sunflower dress from express with my matching sunflower hat a little too much, i took a decade and a half break from sunflowers. But just this year I became obsessed with sunflowers. If I made an arrangement this summer, it most likely had sunflowers with a black gingham bow on the tie.

Thank you brainfall website for giving me the sunflower: You are a Sunflower. You are spirited and vivacious. Willing to do anything to help others be happy, and ask nothing in return. You always see the bright side of any situation and are the life of the party. It is impossible to feel down when you are around.

http://www.brainfall.com/quizzes/what-flower-are-you/

Try out the website. Good luck on getting the flower you want, but you also may not be as opinionated on flowers as I am.

yesterday's adrenaline rush

Yesterday was an adrenaline rush for sure. I worked at the flower shop yesterday to help with a massive wedding. The setup was to be fast, efficient, and had to end perfectly all in 3 hours. At the end of the day, even though it was long, and hard work, I loved it, and I realized that was mostly due to the adrenaline rush we all had. I miss that feeling. That feeling is what you get/got when you play(ed) sports. But only when the win actually matters and it is a physical sport where your body gears up and makes the win happen for you. Once you are an adult that rush is a rare feeling. Yes I play sports, and yes you want to win, but it's just not the same. Noone keeps track of your wins so the win doesn't really matter. I'm actually not big on adrenaline rushes when I'm doing something scary or dangerous, too out-of-control for me. You also get that rush when you are playing a fast card game and you are about to be out, and you play your last card, bam, you yell, "I'm out!!!" you smile, not really because it mattered that you won, but the game's quick pace makes your heart beat a little faster and the heart likes that and when your heart is happy, you are happy.

I just looked it up the difinition of adrenaline and it takes you to the word, epinephrine... never heard of that word. Definition of that word was "A hormone that is secreted by the adrenal gland in response to physical or mental stress, as from fear, and is regulated by the autonomic nervous system. The release of epinephrine causes an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory rate. Epinephrine aslo raises glucose levels in the blood for use as fuel when more alertness or greater physical effort is needed. Also called adrenaline. Chemical formula: C9H13NO3.

perfect definition.

I even said today, "I want to do it all over again!" Yes, I do, but maybe not anytime soon.

We'll see when that next rush comes. Here's to finding our next adrenaline rush!

The 12South stop sign

It was around 4:30 am last night/this morning, Eden and I were driving home from the flower shop, you know the usual time people get off work. We were driving down 12th ave, and I saw a stop sign and stopped. We both looked at each other and said, "Wait. We've never stopped here before." So we look at the stop sign and it was leaning on a tree and it was upright making it look like it was a real stop sign. We laughed about it and just wondered if someone was video camering the stop sign to see how many people would stop for the fake stop sign.

I quickly forgot about it until I was driving home today from a friend's house and stopped at the corner of Sweetbriar and 12th. The exact corner from last night/earlier that morning. I was at the other corner of the street waiting to turn on 12South and I noticed the other car on 12th was waiting for me because they had a "stop sign." So I looked behind me after I turned on this new fake 3 way stop and I noticed the next car did not stop but the one behind it did and then the next car kind of just yielded and the next car stopped completely.

I like how much power a stop sign has even if it's leaning on a tree. Speed limits are white, unnoticed sometimes and almost seem like a suggestion. But stop signs are red, bold and cause immediate action when seen. We'll see how long it leans. Maybe it will become permanent. It makes me think where else we can lean stop signs around Nashville.

Did you just call me LAME?

My biggest pet peeve is when people assume something about you when they just met you. try to analyze you, call you out, or solve your problems. I don't know why it irritates me.

This past Saturday was the day before Halloween. So I get off of work around 8:30, get my Brazilian soccer outfit on and head to a house party where my friends are. Lovely time of dancing, and of course we have a neighbor knock on the door and inform us that the stomping and jumping and music is too loud for them. Does this only happen wherever I go, or is this common for other people? I like to dance and jump around and if it's before 10 pm, I don't think you should be allowed to complain!

anyways, that's off topic. We leave the party, I drive a bunch of us to Demonbreum, get out, and find out there are no more tickets. I decide to tell this guy that was with our group that I'm going to head home. It was almost midnight, I had had a late night on Friday night and I had a fun time already, and I had to get up for Sunday school in the morning and all of those sorts of things were running through my head.
here's our dialogue on the street:
him: So I tell a couple people in the group I'm going to head home and the guy I don't know says, "You're being lame!"
me: I looked at him, and said, "Did you just call me lame?!" (Did someone who doesn't know me at all just call me lame?) "Do you think that's going to change my mind and decide to stay a couple more hours?"
him: "Well, that would deter most people's decisions."
me: "Well, that's not going to work with me."
him: "Do you have a boyfriend?"
me: "No, are you saying I shouldn't go home because I might meet my next boyfriend in the next hour or so on the streets of Demonbreum on Halloween Eve?"
him: He replies with, "What kind of guy are you looking for?"
me: (Oh please...is what i think) but I go ahead and answer him.
So it ends with me being I guess "lame" by going home at midnight. May I add that I had a very fun night at the house party and went to bed very happy with my night thank you very much mr. strange man who's calling me names.

water with ice, no without ice, with a lemon, no without a lemon, no with 3 lemons! ahh!!!!

I'm no longer working at Crows Nest, but in honor of servers, here's a little something I wrote down one night.

short story, but these are the kinds of things that happen every shift and are why I dont' necessarily like serving for people. i like to laugh but not when I'm fake smiling and laughing. It feels too odd.

I ask these girls what they would like to drink.
first girl says, "Water, no ice, with lemon."
2nd girl says, "Water, with ice, no lemon."
I ask the 3rd girl and she says, "Water with ice, and lemon."
and the last girl says, "Water, with ice, 3 lemons."

You can't blame them for liking their water all a certain way, but that's crazy. Despite the odd orders, I am still a pleaser and you better believe they had their waters, with ice or no ice, with lemons or with 3 lemons right in front of them with a lovely smile plastered on my face, ready to take their order and all of their requests.

where are the beans?!

I love me some bean soup. At Crows Nest, I would always get the bean soup if they made it that day. I also love TJ Maxx. So when I was in the food aisle at TJ Maxx I saw they had a box of gourmet bean soup, and I obviously got excited about that and made my purchase.

I finally got around to making it last night. All it needed was 8 cups of boiling water, then I pour in the bag of beans and spices. Easy, right?!

Well, when I got around to pouring in the mix, there was a bag full of spices and powder mix but I just didn't see any beans. I saw a couple, but I was thinking, where are the beans for this soup? I go ahead and cook it hoping for a miracle and maybe the beans would grow out of nowhere.

I pour myself a big bowl of soup and put my spoon through it and maybe if I'm being optimistic there was 5 beans in the whole cup. I go back and search for more beans in my huge pot of broth and a lot of effort brought forth a couple more beans to add to my bowl. it was sad. my halloween night dinner was going to be so delicious and now it was a bowl of broth. I drank the broth and packed my lunch for the next day, which was supposed to be a yummy gourmet bowl of bean soup and now consisted of leaf greens, a couple cherry tomatoes on it, balsamic vinegarette, and an apple.

i decided to fix my soup problem and bought 3 cans of black beans to put in the soup. Now it looks like black bean soup.

I just want to go back to making my trusty cabbage soup and chili, but i've been trying to be more of an adventurous cook. I think i'll go back to the cabbage soup next week.

Two Timers

Check out my good friend, Mary Margaret's music video on country magazine website...
"Country Girl Diva" by the Two Timers :)
http://www.todayscountrymag.com/videos.html

how did our grandparents survive without North Faces!

My friend at work had a little trouble getting out of his apartment complex to get to work the other weekend. He starts walking down the hills to get out of his complex and to the main road of Old Hickory. When he got to work he was trying to describe how horrible and cold the walk was. Someone said, probably sarcastically, "You're life will never be the same after today." He said, "Now, I know what my grandpa felt like walking to work everyday! But he didn't even have a North Face." He thought about that, and then said, "Wow, that must have sucked."

Oh, the people with North Faces can't imagine life without it.

my niece abby!

Check out this video of my niece abby :) She is 9 months and already starting to walk. Aunt Jodi is proud of her !!
http://babyredoutey.blogspot.com/

leaf cutter ants

This was just a peculiar, funny moment my friend Alan and I had while we were hiking a few weeks ago. We were walking along, talking about animals that we were seeing at Radnor Lake and all of a sudden my mind goes off thinking about something else and I say, "You know what's weird?" And if you know me, what I think is weird at that moment could be ANYTHING. Then when Alan replied he actually guessed what I was thinking about!!!!!!!! He said, "leaf cutter ants." I didn't know the name of these ants, but I knew those were what the ants I was thinking about were called because that's why I thought they were weird because they cut leaves. I of course freaked out and couldn't believe he randomly guessed that because I think these ants are only in Brazil or South America.

I'll actually tell you about these weird little ants. They are so cool! Sparky and I went to the Botanical Garden in Rio de Janeiro. When we were walking along we noticed a looong line of ants, I wanted to stop and look at them so we sat down and watched them. It was amazing. They were in a single file line and each ant was carrying a tiny triangle of a leaf. The line of ants was climbing up this tree and dropping it off and then the line would go back down and go the other direction. We watched them do this for a while and then we looked back and noticed they were coming from a long way down the path. So we walk along the trail of ants and saw that they were going up another tree. This tree is where they were getting the snippets of leaves and then sending it back to the other tree one by one. Here's a wikipedia site on them if you want to check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leafcutter_ant

and a national geographic kids video on them: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/kids/animals-pets-kids/bugs-kids/leafcutter-ant-kids.html

The picture above is the one I took when we were watching them!

judi chop

I like nicknames. It's funny how you can be Jodi one day and a totally different name the next. You become a new name without even noticing it. As long as you answer by the name, it sticks. I was thinking about that at work the other day because I have a new name at work, "Chop". I didn't even faze me that I was answering to it until one day at work someone comes in the kitchen and says, "Hey Chop, give me a hand." I casually answered, "sure!" Well, our manager just started dying laughing and thought it was so funny that I was actually answering to this name and he didn't even know where it came from.

It started back in August during my first week at Crow's Nest when another server there named Allen, called me Judy. I kept correcting him, but I think he just liked calling me Judy to bother me. So I started answering to it because I couldn't stop it anyways.

Several of the guys like to watch funny videos on youtube in the office at work and there is this one particular video they love! It's called the redneck ninja, I don't think it's as funny as they do, but you'll still have to watch it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1Ry3BB5cQM
After that video, they started calling me Judy Chop! Then of course it sometimes gets shortened to Chop.

That is my story on why I answer when people yell, "Hey Judy Chop!"