New photoshop

I made this blog banner for my mom. She asked me to make her one that was "beachy and vintagey." :-p I hope that this suffices!

P&P love

I have posted before about all of the wonderful things I get to do at work: read, scrapbook, watch moveis, etc. :-p Don't get me wrong, these days are long, and it gets very boring and tiring at times. However, I mostly don't mind being here (yes, I'm at work right now :-p).

One of the nice things about working long hours here is having the opportunity to watch long movies. As I'm sure everyone is aware, I'm quite enamored with all things Jane Austen, and have multiple film adaptations of every one of her novels. Each novel has at least one adaptation that's been shortened to under two hours, and then at least one that is four-plus hours. I used to watch these movies every night before I went to bed, a half-hour at a time which took at least a week or so to get through one movie. When I'm at work, I can watch an entire movie in one shift, which is very nice indeed.

So, yesterday I watched my favorite Pride & Prejudice, the A&E/BBC adaptation w/Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.



Most people I know prefer this version to any other, myself included. However, I do also love the newer version that came out in 2005 with Kiera Knightly and Matthew MacFadyen...a lot!



I don't mind that they've shortened the story a great deal or changed parts of it around. And, though I don't like her as much as Jennifer Ehle, I don't mind Kiera Knightly as Elizabeth Bennett. I do LOVE the Jane in this film, as well as the cinematography, setting, and sound track (which is to-die-for!).
I am watching this version of P&P this afternoon. :-D

When I am finished with this one, I will watch the 1980 BBC version.



This version is older, the camera work is not nearly as nice, the actors not as pretty, and the music not as good as the first two adaptations I wrote about. What I like about this version though (and all of the other BBC Jane Austen's I have) is that they stick extremely close to the novel.
I will begin watching that version either later this afternoon, or tomorrow morning I'm sure.


Once I finish with the 3 Pride & Prejudices I have (there are others as well, but I don't currently own them), I will probably go back and watch my other Jane movies. I like to watch them in alphabetical order (even though P&P comes after four of them :-p), so when I'm done w/P&P, I'll move on to my 3 Emma adaptations (and possibly Clueless, because that is a modern-day Emma and I love it!), then 3 Mansfield Parks, 2 Northanger Abby's (though I may skip these, as I really don't like them :o)), 3 Persuasions (my favorite!!!), and finally 3 Sense & Sensabilities! If that doesn't take me through the end of the summer, I'll throw in some Jane Eyre's and possible Anne of Green Gables. I love that I can watch these movies from beginning to end in a day!



Alright, I must get back to my P&P viewing. Everyone reading this probably now thinks that I am lazy and is shocked that one person could watch this much television! Trust me though, if you worked here, you'd do the same (though probably with other movies. ;o)).

Bee & Tom's wedding

Bee & Tom's wedding
Originally uploaded by jenneroni

In my quest to get caught up on scrapbooking, I made this layout today of Bee & Tom's wedding, which was over 4 years ago. That's ok though, because I'm sure if I'd scrapped it then, it wouldn't have turned out nearly as well! I must admit, I'm pretty happy with this one! I didn't think I was going to like it at first...at all. None of my colors matched and it didn't look a bit wedding-ish. However, I sanded off the brighter colors of the scalloped paper around the photos and made some other alterations, added my embellishments, then printed all of my writing (which I had originally hand-written, but hated), and here it is!

Yes, I do like this one. It's nice to like what I make for a change! :-p



I should also add these pics of the altered Altoid tin I made. It's for a swap that my mom signed me up for on flickr. I had never made one before, so I wasn't sure how they would turn out, but I didn't think I did too badly for my first time! :o)

Fabulous weekend of favorites!

Friday night after work I rushed off to Buffalo to meet some favorites. Matt, Laurel, and Rachel Moran were in town for the weekend, so I met up w/them, as well as their friend Jonathan, and our friend Emily. It was nice to hang out and catch up...when we could hear each other speaking that is. They have a new jazz combo playing there now (for a while they've had Latin Jazz on the weekends, which began after the legendary DoDo died a couple of years ago.), and lets just say that they don't hold back! Anyway, I don't think I've seen any of the Morans since Matt & Laurel's wedding a couple of summers ago, so it was especially nice to hang out with them.


Here are some pics from all of our excitement at the AB.







Last night I went to see the Music Man in Spencerport with some friends. This is the production that I was originally going to be in, but dropped out of because I couldn't afford to travel an hour each way every night of the week.
Anyway, the show was a lot better than I thought it would be! There were some really strong parts, particularly the quartet and Marcellus, as well as the Pick-a-Little Ladies. My friend Mary was one of the directors and my friends Joe and Lance were in the show, as were a number of other people I know.


Here are some pics from after the show w/Bridget, me, Mary Kate, Mary, and Joe:









I'm at work now...I haven't had a single person come in to pay today, and I've had 3 cars come through and stay since I arrived here at noon. I was going to call and see if I could leave early, but what's one more hour? I might as well just stick it out!


PS....HI LAUREL! ;o)

Amazing

I know that I just posted this morning, but I received this e-mail a little bit ago I thought that other people might like to see. It's really quite amazing:



This is the most amazing story... the perfect example of a parent's unconditional love for their child...


True story.
The son asked his father, 'Dad, will you take part in a marathon with me?'. The father who, despite having a heart condition, said 'Yes'.


They went on to complete the marathon together. Father and son went on to join other marathons, the father always saying 'Yes' to his son's request of going through the race together. One day, the son asked his father, 'Dad, let's join the Ironman together.' To which, his father said 'Yes' too.


For those who don't know, Ironman is the toughest triathlon ever.


The race encompasses three endurance events of a 2.4 mile (3.86 kilometer) ocean swim, followed by a 112 mile (180.2 kilometer) bike ride, and ending with a 26.2 mile (42.195 kilometer) marathon along the coast of the Big Island . Father and son went on to complete the race together.


View the race.....

Posting...for posting's sake

I have a very nice summer job. It doesn't pay a lot, but I don't do a lot, so I guess the trade-off is fairly even. In fact, I am at work right now typing this very blog post on my laptop. No, my place of employment doesn't have wi-fi, but the person who lives in the giant lake house next door does, so I get to "borrow" it from them. of course the signal goes in and out if I close the door to my box (booth), large trucks w/boats pull through, or it gets super windy or rainy. The house is a good distance away. I'm surprise their signal reaches this far at all!

Anyway, I work at the boat launch of a state park. I worked at this park all through college and after, every summer except for last. Why would I work such a low-paying job every summer when I could make more money doing something else? Well, basically I don't want to work during my summer. I want to enjoy it! The money is really not bad. It's well over minimum wage, so it pays a lot more than some other jobs do. And what do I do at work all day? Well, I sit here and play on my computer, I read books, I watch movies, I scrapbook, I talk on my phone, I paint my nails, I clean my car, etc, etc, etc. It's great because I have a lot of study time (for whatever I might like to study at the time), and a lot of time to do the things I would have wanted to do all summer anyway. Occasionally I do get customers...a few a day (I think yesterday I had 6...in 10 hours). It's nice to have them come through, as they break up the monotony of the day for me. ;o)

So needless to say I'm not complaining about my job! Sure I've had to work an insane amount of hours the past few days (12 on Sun, 10 yesterday and 10 today), but at least it's not hard work and generally goes by pretty quickly!


And now in closing, I will post this video of me and Joe singing "Summer Lovin'" from Grease a few months back at karaoke. We make me laugh, so I thought you might like to laugh as well! :-p And, it is summertime! :-D

Pictures and more

I realized that I had never posted any pictures from Anna's wedding like I said that I would, as well as none a while back from Stacey's or Jessica's, so here are some photo only posts.

Anna (Drake) & Alberto Ayala:







The next pics are of dinner at the Anchor Bar w/high school friends and their spouses: Jerod, Derek & his fiance Laura, Amber, me, Whitney & Jesse, and Brian (minus Stacy who couldn't come).
Then we have Stacey & Justin's wedding, followed by Jessica's wedding (I do write a lot about weddings, don't I??? :-p).

Tim & Kim's wedding page

Tim & Kim's wedding page
Originally uploaded by jenneroni

I decided yesterday that I really need to try to get caught up on at least some of my scrapbooking. I think the easiest way for me to do that is organize things by which album they'll go in and do one album project at a time. I have a bunch of different albums that have many pages that need to be made: weddings, shows, family, me, college, friends, etc.

I thought that the easiest album to start with would be the wedding one. I already have a number of pages in that one, and I love creating wedding layouts because I try to make them as beautiful as possible. I decided a while back that I would do a page/layout for every one of my friends weddings (at least the ones I attend). As of today, I'm down to 12 that I need to complete. I think I have close to that many in the album already.

This is the layout I created today. It's of my friend Tim's wedding 4 years ago. Better late than never, right? :-p I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, though the photos were taken on a fairly crappy camera from far away, so they definitely leave much to be desired, but I think the page still has the effect I wanted it to. Because I made and photographed the layout at work, it's hard to really see all of the details, so I plan to take another pic later when I can set it up on an easel and use my tripod.

why not, write?

My most typical reason for not writing/posting to this here (we)blog is time. My time is consumed with other things that I deem more important at that time. Sometimes those other things might actually be reading other blogs, but that is far more important than me taking the time to write on here myself.

Another reason I don't write though is that I write it in my head all day long. Does that sound weird? Do other people do the same? I've always been the kind of person who sort of lives in my own imagination. I practice conversations in my head over and over...never do my real life convos even remotely compare to the perfect ones I make up where I am the most witty or intellectual or eloquent. I'm a day dreamer, so I'm constantly making up stories in my head...what-ifs about other people, real or imaginary who I know or don't. I know that some people are too realistic for day dreaming. I've heard "get your head out of the clouds" more than once in my life.

Anyway, my whole point for writing all of this is that as I experience my daily life, I often "blog" in my head as I go along. I think about what I'd like to share and exactly how I'd say it. However, by the time I go to write about it (as is happening at this very moment), something gets lost in translation and what I write out doesn't compare to what I've already written in my mind. Either that, or because I already wrote it, I just don't feel like going through it again. :-p


Does that all sound really weird? I'm not even going to go through and edit this now, so hopefully it makes sense! :-p