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!"

that verklempt feeling

I hate-love coming across words I don't know. I hate it because it's frusturating to be reading along and then walah there's a foreign word you have absolutely no idea what it is and why you have never seen it before. I love seeing these words because I usually look it up and then I feel that much smarter :)

My word I saw today I actually saw TWICE. I love this new word, it's a nice adjective. This is where I found it, "Every time I left the ALAG space for the day, I noticed a certain thickness rising in my throat, that verklempt feeling I always get at the end of It's a Wonderful Life and whenever I see young girls as happy and carefree as they deserve to be." Then I saw it used later in this sentence, "I smiled at their frenetic raindance, an expression of sheer, youthful joy, and fell back to sleep. A rather verklempt sleep, I should add."

Looked up my new unknown word, verklempt, and it means "overcome with emotion". I usually cry when I am verklempt. I picture the heart overflowing with emotions and that is directly connected to the eyes and therefore tears come pouring out because your heart pushed it out. That's my only explanation of why people cry when they are happy.

I hope you have verklempt feelings this week during the Christmas season.

next wednesday

I forgot to add,
The real question is... Should we dare go next week? Will any of those 5o people staring at us remember the exact same outfits.

I say we'll be going again. What do you guess?

"Girls, the Christmas party is next week."

If any of you know Jess, she likes to be early to any event. And if she is not early, at least be right on time. Last night she took being early a little too far :)

On Tuesday Jess gets Aris and I all pumped for Tin Roof's Christmas Tacky Party on Wednesday night. She tells her new guy friend to come, she tells a couple of our other friends to meet us there.

After I go hiking I go and shop for a tacky something to wear to this shindig. Finally find something that wasn't $40. After going to a movie with my roommate, I get home and change into my outfit, put some makeup on, and poof and hairspray my hair. Jess and Aris pull up and off we go. Even the ride over was pretty eventful since another car was one inch from colliding into us on demonbreum. We scream and give the other car glare looks then park.

We get out with Jess in her tree skirt acting as her skirt for the night, a sequined Christmas vest and reindeer ears; Aris holding a box of playdoh and wearing a santa hat, turtleneck, big green necklace, and red corduroy dress; Me, holding a 4 square foot box of play food, wore a Santa shirt that said "I Believe" and red earrings. We come in and the people by the door all laughed at Jess's outfit and loved it. Then we walk one more step and another guy yelled at us, "Girls, you know the Christmas party is next week!" Jess of course was smart and said, "Oh, we just came from a Christmas party." We looked around and absolutely no one was even in red or green, let alone tacky Christmas apparel. Aris whispered, "We must leave now." We just nodded in agreement. So we grabbed our gifts, ran across the street, stepped in dog poop, and laughed for a good 10 minutes and more while we scraped poop off our feet.