In detail...

Okay, so as cliche as this might sound at first, you'll be happy to find out that it's mostly a lot of TMI statements on my behalf. But, I will be using this published journal as a way to keep myself accountable for the list below. Feel free to call me out in November when none of this has happened.


My new year resolutions in detail....in seriously no particular order (mostly it's in the order in which it came to my head)


1. Take better care of my feet. I wear a lot of heels. I wear sandals in the summer. I dance ballet. I walk around barefoot. I forget to moisturize my feet on a regular basis. While I do frequent the nail salon for a pedicure, it's not enough. I really need to take better care of my feet! They are begging for it and it is time.


2. Wash my face EVERY night.  I do wash my face at night. I do. But there is the occasional night or two during the week that I opt for going straight to bed. Big mistake. Just ONE slip up causes damage to my already sensitive skin. I must stick to this one. I am NOT getting any younger. :)


3. Clean my purse out at LEAST every couple of weeks. It's a purse. I use it every day. Stuff gets thrown in it. Stuff gets forgotten in it. Stuff gets LOST in it. Ugh. Seriously need to clean this thing out more often.


4. Dust more often.  I have allergies. This should be a no brainer, but I always put it off. Better for my breathing! Do it, Jen.


5. Can the meat. Not literally - more like figuratively. As in "give up the meat." Yup, that's right - I am giving up meat. No more chicken, turkey, beef, pork, lamb, etc etc etc. I will be keeping fish in my diet. But, the rest of it is gone. I have started to realize that my body does not respond well to these things, so this is a larger picture experiment to see if by cutting it out, I will feel better. Fingers crossed that I figure this out.


6. Juice at LEAST once a day. After trying a juice cleanse last year, I am hooked. Make all the "that's so LA" jokes you want, it wont phase me. I am going to get juiced. (any recipes are totally welcome!)


7. Fit back into my clothes. Last year was amazing and wild and adventurous. That also means that it entailed a lot of what I like to call "adventurous eating." I ate so many things I would never normally eat. My body rebelled by gaining weight. I have lost most of it, but I am not quite back to normal. Working on it.


8. Strength Training. I read an article that small "petite" women need to be doing strength training more than cardio in order to achieve successful weight lose and body tone-age. Well, after being a spinner (cardio) for so long, I have decided to back off on the spinning (not cutting it out completely) and focus more on pilates/strength training exercise regimens.


9. Philanthropist at heart. Aside from my work with the National Model UN, I need to add more philanthropy into my life. I need to return to 826 LA for some tutoring and find other volunteer opportunities.


10. Spend more time with my Grandma. Self explanatory - just gotta do it.


11. Apprenez à parler français. Translation needed? Well soon enough I will be speaking so much French, that you might have to learn it yourself. That's right....French conversation. Let's see if I can dig up any of my high school French and become a little "fluent" :)


12. Book clubbing it up. Keeping our book club alive is REALLY important to me. I really hope we are able to keep it thriving and growing and maturing. It really is my intellectual touchstone once a month. 12 books in one  year is impressive....I want to be able to say that come New Year's Eve 2012.


13. CGM. The Curly Girl Method. I told myself I would give this a try. It involves getting rid of all sulfates and silicones in my hair products - chemicals that are said to be killing my natural curls. Now while my hair is not "curly" per se - it is definitely REALLY wavy and at times unruly like curly hair. I really love curly hair and want my curls to thrive and live up to their potential. So we'll see....hopefully consistent CGM will show me that I actually DO have curly hair. 


14. Roughing It.  I have not been camping in a while. I love camping. The hippie in me enjoys the dirt and the idea of being kind of dirty for a few days. Beach camping is my favorite, but I am down for anywhere! 


15. Closet cleansing. Some people collect porcelain dolls. Others collect limited press quarters. Me, I collect clothes. I love clothes. I have a lot of clothes. I have too many clothes. I really should do a tri-yearly cleansing of my closet. I have a trip to Crossroads/Buffalo Exchange in mind. And after that, I think I will set up shop in my apartment like I did last year and invite my family over to pick through things that I don't need anymore. I feel better already having said it! 


16. Re-Elect the President. November 6th is just around the political corner. There is a lot of work to be done and I am in it to win it. I am so proud of the little team of volunteers my friend Andi and I have harvested. We will do good things together and get President Obama re-elected. Can't wait. 


17. Cook more. Duh. Easy goal to set. Easy one to fail at. So for the 10th time it is on my list. Ho hum. 


18. Parking tickets NO MORE. Truly it is one of my goals to not get parking tickets. Read the signs, Jen!


19. Be easier on myself. I am the worst when it comes to self battery. I beat myself up over EVERYTHING. I need to be more forgiving of my flaws and mistakes. In general, love myself more and not be so hard on myself if something doesn't work out the way I hope. This is probably the hardest one on the list. Merp.


20. Overbooked dot com. I need to be better at saying "no." "No, I cannot make it to your party." "No I cannot start work today without any notice." "No, I cannot make it to the Jiffy Lube during my lunch break." I always try to do sooo much in very little time. I am the girl that has 4 parties to get to in one Saturday night. I am always overbooked! I just need to be better at spreading it all out and taking time to smell the roses. 


Bonus! 21. Bloggy McBloggerton. As mentioned in my previous post....I am promising myself that I will blog more. For one thing, I hope to blog about my resolution successes. Or, if everything goes to shit, my resolution failures. Either way... I am excited to really turn this into something great. 


Anybody interested in sharing their resolutions? Tips on keeping mine? Help! 


Okay. So that is a hefty list. Read, set, go? Eek....
xo
jen

A comment on 2012

Totally excited for the new year. Convinced it will bring great things. Resolutions in place. Positive outlook in check. Yadda Yadda Yadda. Blah blah blah. All of that and more. Etc etc etc.

On to more honest stuff... I honestly despise the month of January and looking forward to March/April. I feel like the year doesn't really begin until then. No offense to any of you who have a birthday or anniversary or anything like that before March/April. It's nothing against your special day. It's just that for me personally... The beginning of the year is always slow to start, boring and has no real rhythm. You know?
That being said. Expect more from me on the bloggy blog. Now that I have it on my phone...the excuse train stops here.
More sarcasm, opinions, photos and punnies for 2012. How is that for a resolution?

In other news... Excellent weather for this time of year, ay?

I suck. I know. Let's forgive and forget, shall we?

I know its been a while. Life took over, big time. I know everyone says that, but it totally happens and I promise to try and be better. That's all I really can do.

So I wanted to share with you something that I did this past weekend that really gave me some perspective on who I am, who I was and who I want to be. 

Some friends and I made 'dream boards' on Saturday. In short - we took 8/11 boards and cut out pictures/words in magazines and glue-sticked them to the board. Arts and Crafts 101.The longer version of the story is a little more deep - so bare with me. It's really awesome, I promise.

The idea behind the dream board was to channel things you want in your life and put them on this board so that you can see them every time you look at the board and also so that you have put them out of your head and out into the universe. 


For those of you who are still with me...let me give you an example. Say I really wanted to be rich and famous...I would cut out pictures of money, words like success and fortune and maybe some photos of glamorous movie stars on the red carpet or something. That's an easy example. But I want to talk about what I really did put on my dream board.
Here goes - a list of some of the words and images I glue-sticked to my board.


Ahem:
The words "Live Beautiful"
A field of flowers was the backdrop
A cut out of the words "Los Angeles"
A woman dancing
A pregnant woman's belly
The word "Baby"
The word "patience"
Two people about to kiss
The words "j'adore" (clearly taken from a perfume ad)
A cut out of the mid section of a girl who is in shape with some weights next to her
A white horse
A woman standing with only a towel on
A couple in a paddle boat on a lake
A guitar
A beautiful dress with the word "Style" on top of it
A camera
A globe
A row of international flags
A jet with a Red Cross emblem on it
The Obamas
The word "Theater"
The word "War" covered by the word "Peace"
And probably a few things I am forgetting at the moment. (Probably would have been easier to post a picture...so I'll try to do that ...)


All of these words and images come together in a collage type arrangement and represent things I want in my life. Maybe not things I want this very second, but things I hope for and wish for my future. 
I could go on to explain each image/word ...but maybe I'll let you guess what they mean. Some are pretty obvious and others might be a little more obscure. Either way, this activity has been pretty inspiring to me for the last few days. There is definitely something to be said about actually SEEING your thoughts instead of locking them away in the back of your mind where they can be ignored.

This is a tangible representation of some of the goals in my life. The beauty of it is that I can change it or add to it and literally visualize my life. We decided to put our boards in our bathrooms so that when we are sitting and have nothing to do but think, we can take a look and remind ourselves of the things we need to be working on or hoping for.


I'll take a picture and post it so you can see what I mean. You should try it, it was super therapeutic and even kind of emotional. Why emotional you might ask? 
Well something that you "want" may not always be something tangible - like a lot of money or something. It might be a change in your life. A change in your mindset. A change in your attitude. Something like that. So admitting that there is something personal you need to work on by putting it on a board can be kind of emotional. 


Anyway....I've rambled enough. When I post the picture, you'll get a better picture of what I mean. And I hope that maybe some of you try this. 


xo
Jen

Auschwitz

Barbed wire in and around the camp.

Today I had one of the most profound experiences of my life. A three hour bus ride from the Czech Republic to Poland landed me at Auschwitz - the largest concentration/extermination camp during the Nazi regime in Germany. Here is my experience.

Today was a cold, cutting and eerie day in Poland and when we arrived at Auschwitz, me and about 100 others did not know what to expect from a museum that commemorates an ugly and disturbing chapter in world history.

Gypsies.

As we broke into smaller groups, our tour guide - a Polish woman who spoke English very well - took us to the start of the tour, which is the main gate at Auschwitz. The gate reads: "Arbeit macht frei" - which in German means, "work will make you free." She explained that when the Jews, Russians, Gypsies and Poles were brought to Auschwitz, it was under the auspices of working for a new life. They were told that they were being  relocated - they were lied to.

One of the cell blocks.

As we were led through the different 'blocks,' you could feel a presence in the buildings. Something big happened here. Something that lingers and even smells. People were passed through these buildings, tortured and killed. There were moments when I couldn't hold back tears and there were other moments when I could feel nothing but shock - all of my senses numb.

Human hair.

Moments that were especially difficult were the moments I was not expecting. We walked into a room with a huge glass casing of human hair. I'm not kidding when I say this thing was huge. Prisoners of the camp were shaved of all hair. And those who were executed in the gas chambers right away were shaved post death. They would process the hair and send it back to Germany to use for textiles. A lot of hair was still at Auschwitz at the time of liberation and the historians preserved it for the museum. It was really one of the most intense sights of the day for me. Hard to explain why, but I guess it is just as simple as realizing that the hair belonged to someone - a person, a human being.

A child's toy.

Another moment that was particularly intense was the sight of baby clothes, shoes and toys. Senseless murder of children. Babies were not useful, so they were killed. I think our tour guide said that out of the 7,000 children that came to Auschwitz only 600 survived. Seeing their clothes and shoes and broken belongings was an emotion so strong, I could not hold back.

A baby's shoe.

A prosthetic leg. These were also collected in abundance.

A woman's shoe.

Shoes of men and women.

Again, I must reiterate the cold today. The kind of cold that hurts. The Polish sky was vast, haunting and really beautiful. All of the trees have lost their leaves and there is just this calm, dead sense in the air. Fitting for a place such as Auschwitz.

The barbed wire fences were highly charged.

Gas chamber.

As we rounded up the end of the tour of the main Auschwitz camp, we made a stop at the only gas chamber/crematorium in Auschwitz (there were four at the other part of Auschwitz called Birkenau). They actually let us walk inside the gas chamber. I was not expecting that at all. We walked in and its a cold dark room - similar to an old cellar. Brick and stone everywhere and random holes in the ceiling - for where the gas pellets were dropped. The next room was the crematorium. This was another one of those moments that grabbed me. There were ovens in this room and they were used to burn the bodies that had just been killed in the gas chamber. Ovens for human bodies.

Crematorium.

Empty cans of Cyclone B. The gas used to kill prisoners.

It was a really intense way to end that portion of the tour. But it didn't end there. We took a short bus ride to the other section of Auschwitz called Auschwitz II Birkenau. The facilities at Birkenau were even more grotesque - if thats at all possible. Wooden shacks filled with bunks - 8 people to a bunk. Wooden shacks with stone made "toilets". Prisoners were only allowed to use the bathroom twice a day and many suffered from diarrhea and dysentery. We learned that at Birkenau, many of the gas chambers and structures were hastily destroyed by the Germans before liberation - as a way to hide evidence. Even still there were structures left behind and plenty of evidence found.

The final moments of our tour led us to the end of a train track that ran through the middle of the camp. It was at this point that prisoners exited cattle carts from the train and their fate was decided. A Nazi shoulder divided the prisoners into two lines - men on one side and women & children on the other side. And one by one the Nazi decided - just by looking at them - if they were fit to work or if they were "useless" and were to be executed on the spot. Those were could work were robbed of their possessions and sent one way to the camp. Those who were to be executed were immediately escorted to the gas chamber. In one glance, their fate was determined. Those who were put to work were 'exterminated' slowly - by starvation, disease, abuse and torture.

Prisoners were shipped in on these tracks.

It had gotten dark by the time we stood by those train tracks and our tour guide wrapped up the day. The last thing she said was another one of those moments when I could not hold back. She said - "Please remember, we cannot be bystanders. Genocide is something that still occurs in the world today and we cannot be bystanders and let it happen. We do have the power to do something about it. Please remember that always."

She died within a few months.

That moment was really rough on me. The entire time I was at Auschwitz, I thought about my personal perspective and the knowledge that genocide for race, religion, creed, class happens every day in this world. World War II is a gross and epic example of it. I think it is important to remember moments in history that changed people - and this was one of those. My personal perspective is confused. I get confused when I try to understand how something this violating and wrong can happen. But I stop myself and realize that no one understands it.

I am grateful for my life - a healthy, bountiful and meaningful life. I will remember the faces I saw on those walls forever. The memories of those who died there are in every square inch of Auschwitz. They have a voice at Auschwitz and their stories are remembered. I don't even know if any of this is the right thing to say. Is there a right thing to say? Who knows. I just wanted to get some of these emotions out. And I look forward to seeing my family and friends and telling them how much I love them.

San Francisco

I know its been a while.... busy doesn't even cover it all. My life is just crazy - in a nutshell, it is absolutely nuts. No rhyme or reason - just busy and nuts. But I love it and wouldn't have it any other way.

Anyway...I want to share my mini vacation with you. I wanted to squeeze in a tiny get-away in between jobs. So, I took a road trip up to San Francisco. For about 2 days. Believe it or not, I have NEVER been to San Francisco. Crazy. I know. I have lived in California my entire life and have never been to this great city. Sometimes this fact about myself is embarrassing. But whatever - its not like I don't do any traveling, I just haven't made it to the Bay Area yet - until now.

I absolutely fell in love with San Francisco. It felt like the perfect balance between NYC and LA. Let me explain: All of the great things about NYC and LA come together in SF. In a nutshell - a metropolitan feel with the easiness of California. Obsessed.

I had so many great meals in SF too! Boy oh boy. That city has got the food scene down. All I wanted to do was eat! I seriously had one of the best meals of my entire life up there. It was this cute restaurant called Starbelly in the Castro district. Quality, quality, quality. And not expensive at all - well at least by NYC/LA standards. I had the spaghetti. It was amazing. AMAZING. Warm spicy olives, mushroom soup with duck stock and rice pudding like you've never had before. Oy.....I want that meal again, RIGHT NOW!

It was overall just a great time - short but sweet. And now that I know how easy it is to head up to the Bay, I will definitely be heading back sooner than later.

What a gem that city is!!!!!!!!!

Photos to come.....(I have not had time to download them off my camera yet. Hehe.)

Love you!
Jen

I blew it....

....So, I promised to blog more and I didn't. I am going to try really hard this week to get some posts up. I've had a lot to say this week too, just need to take the time to commit it to html.

Not to make excuses, but I get so busy during the week - what with work, play, life. And the weekends? Impossible. It's crazy how I am quickly realizing how busy October is! October is the new August. It seems that every week/weekend, I have something booked. Not a bad thing - just a crazy thing. I am blessed to have so many things to do, but it does make it a little tougher to have a blogging relationship.

Just last week I had two big events at the Hollywood Bowl. I had Sonic Youth/Pavement on Thursday. Sonic Youth blew me away - as per usual. No two shows by that band are ever the same. The never disappoint and I love them.
And on Friday - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. What an amazing show. Now, I'm not gonna lie. It was a major cluster fuck to get to The Bowl on Friday night. I've never seen so many out-of-towners at The Bowl! And since it was a lease event, you couldn't pack a picnic - hence the ridiculously long lines to get a beer.  All that said, the show was still amazing. TP&THB's played everything you'd want to hear at a TP&THB's show and then some. The new album, "Mojo" is great too! They played a few tracks off that album.
I've seen Sonic Youth play a dozen times...and I knew it was going to be good. Tom Petty? I had never seen him or his Heartbreakers and I had such a good time. Dancing, singing along and enjoying his stoney banter. I think my favorite performance of the night was, "Don't come around here no more." What a great song to see live.

I am a lucky girl because I live in a city where I get to see Sonic Youth and Tom Petty one weekend and next weekend I get to see Arcade Fire. Blessed!

Anyway....I double promise to be better and you have my word that you will hear from me.
peace and love,
jen

I need to blog more....

....whenever I do, I feel like I have lifted some weight off of my shoulders. So from now on, I promise at least 2 posts a week. Sounds ambitious, I know. But I always have things to say. So even if they are shorties - like this one - I will up the ante here and blog more. Blog. Blog. Blog. Blog. Blog. Blog. And more blog.

So for now, I leave you with these photos. Some beautiful inspiration from Alice & Olivia's spring 2011 collection. (I know Fall just started, but designers start early....)

xoxo
Jen