The Year in Review

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Dear friends,

It has been such an exciting year! If you remember, one of my new years’ resolutions was to utilize technology more effectively. To that end, I started off the year purchasing my first smartphone, an HTC Kaiser, or AT&T Tilt. Let me tell you, that $400 was wasted, but, looking back on the year, I wasted more money on bank fees. I’m looking forward to buying an unlocked Google phone in the new year.

One technology purchase that I was happy with was the tiny 9″ ASUS laptop. It’s so cute! And wonderful for looking up recipes (from your mom in your gmail) in the kitchen without lugging in your 17″ inch Dell Vostro (5 stars).

Another one of my new years’ resolutions was to utilize the vodka martini. I performed remarkably well.

For the second year, Sue and Phoebe joined my family at Mother’s Day Brunch. The crab tasted fresher than usual. I was pleased. I am glad that Sue and Phoebe have chosen Mother’s Day Brunch with the Hellers for a holiday tradition!

Will and I got back together in March. We have been strong ever since. In May, he and I joined Sue and Phoebe for a weekend camping trip. We floated a cooler of Tecate to a secret location and Phoebe found Will’s sunglesses in the bottom of the creek

I started planning Jenfest in June this year. Planning Jenfest is always a challenge. This year was no exception. When I think of heaven, I know it will be Jenfest 07. I was sad to have to plan a party that could never compete with heaven. Jenfest wound up as a picnic in Dolores Park this year. How wonderful was it to see everyone! This year was the first year that I did not ask Alex to design the invite. She is married to Patrick now, you know, and we hardly see her. I did get to see her at Jenfest, and it was delightful! Despite it not being Jenfest 07, Jenfest 08 was truly wonderful.

The night before Jenfest, I managed to mess up my back again. The week following Jenfest I was bedridden. Finally, I had an MRI in August. The results showed that I had a disc bulging 7cm into my spinal cord! This explains my severe discomfort. I went to see a new chiropractor. He spent some time with a rubber skeleton and explained my condition. Everytime I bend or twist, the disc bulges into my spinal cord. Well, my previous chiropractor had been recommending that I do bends and twists twice a day over the course of the past two years. That was upsetting. I am happy to be getting some relief.

I am satisfied with my professional success this year. I took on the Co-op’s 75th Anniversary Gala and a new supervisory role in January. It was a challenge taking on such a large event with nine months to plan. My Virgo moon kicked right in, though, and the details were (for the most part) nailed. One detail was regretfully neglected; we did not collect the donation envelopes from the table and the servers threw them away! In general, I was unhappy with H’s Lordship’s food and service. Narsai David had graciously donated ample wine, but it was simply not served fast enough!

During my year in charge, I also revamped the Co-ops website (www.bsc.coop). The new website offers much greater information to the students. It is also easier to update. I debuted the website on August 15th. Then, in the early hours of Labor Day weekend, I received a phone call from Jordan. “Are you ready?” he asked. “TELL ME,” I ordered. “The website has been hacked.” It was true! Turkish death metal blared from my computer. However, our work was not lost, and with the help of Dave in Argentina, we had the website back up in a matter of days.

In the early part of the year, I was hired to create a website for a martial arts school in Portland. As part of the trade, I was able to attend a very cool self-defense course. If you are ever in Portland, and are female, you should definitely take this course. It is worth every penny. As part of the curriculum, you physically attack the “padded attacker” which gives you great confidence later. I was even attacking people in my dreams! The website, www.onewithheart.com, turned out well in spite of some design sacrifices. I am looking forward to including it in my portfolio at jenniferheller.com (currently under construction).

In November I decided to host a Holiday Gift Bizarre at the Cottage Table Company on Pearl Harbor Day. I called it a Gift Bizarre in hopes of suggesting that you never know what you might find there. I am pretty sure that people just thought that I didn’t know how to spell bazaar. I invited all the artists I know locally, and advertised for artists on various websites like etsy.com. I was very pleased with the selection of artists. The crowd was certainly lacking, however. I will plan further ahead next year. One problem that I ran into was an issue with the original design of the flier–I hadn’t meant to, but I had included imagery that was offensive! I am still using the offensive version of the flier as one-sided paper, and suspect that I will for the majority of 2009. Check out the inoffensive version of the flier at www.holidaygiftbizarre.com

The Guster has been well this year. As you know, I started feeding him twice a day instead of just once. We think that he has lost some weight as a result. I am thinking that his metabolism is such that he needs multiple small meals in the day, just like me. An unfortunate consequence of feeding him in the morning as well as the evening, is that he very persistently tries to wake me up in the morning. He even goes so far as to pull books out of the night stand to make noise! It is very irritating, but it is nice to wake up to the cold nose of someone you love every morning.

I do hope this letter finds you, my friends, happy and well. I am in the process of constructing a self-video-taping-camera-holding hat. My new years resolution for 2009 is to produce a video a week!

Much love,

Susie J.

so,

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I had a strange request the other day.

You ever get those strange requests? It’s like 9 a.m., and you’re checking your email with your head weight on. You know, the head weight that sets your spine for the day, and has changed your whole outlook on life. The one that your chiropractor requires you to wear for twenty minutes at the beginning and end of every day. That one.

So, you’re checking your email, and a little flustered already thinking about the day ahead. You got this promotion you didn’t really want, though you wanted it anyway, and now it’s stressing you out. Go figure.

And there it is. A long email from someone you haven’t heard from in awhile. Someone who was once very dear to you and whose absence was very much a subject for this blog. Someone who has given you years of entertaining stories, and……

You knew he was engaged. He told you over Christmas, and you weren’t surprised. It was years ago, and you’re so over it.

But then, here he is, asking you to be his maid of honor in leiu of a best man. In lieu of a best man!

What are you going to talk about?

Recount the first dinner you had together where you thought you were going to go out, and instead he said, “Well. Do you want to have what I’m having for dinner, or do you want to have something else?”

To which you responded, “Um. What are you having for dinner?”

1 can of salmon, wild.
2 apples
1 orange
16 tablespoons of peanuts
32 ounces of water

No, no that story is not appropriate. Neither is the one where you told him that you thought he’d sold your relationship short after he’d broken up with you with the line, “If you were on my maintenance crew, I’d have fired you by now.”

Cause you were always fashionably late.

Still are. It’s one of those endearing qualities that makes you so reliably unreliable.

The upshot: Come August 18th, I’ll have fashioned a speech out of none of my favorite stories, and maybe some mutual friends share.

At least I have some time. I might join Toastmasters so that I might present my speech with the greatest of ease. Not that I really have trouble with public speaking as long as I have a drink in me.

Cheers to BOOZE!! Oh, I mean, my ex-bf and his new love.

…never heard the melody, til I needed the song…

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I’ve been home sick for five days straight.

This has given me plenty of time for mulling over my recent life decisions and resolutions, new plans and old promises.

I don’t know that I’ve gotten anywhere. If I am to believe my uplifting daily quotes, there is nowhere to go.

And I’d really like to believe that.

I’m making a mix tape of my favorite Tom Waits love songs. Tom, I believe, is a man unlike the typical man, with a thorough respect and understanding of that incomprehensible mental state called love. If only he were available for marriage, I dream.

These love songs, though! They used to be laced with wrenching memories of lost love. Now they echo within almost emptily, having lost a certain poignancy.

Maybe as a reaction to heartbreak, which I wrote about here, in the early years of this blog, I began a search for hilarity in the mundane. And I found it. You always find what you’re looking for, of course. And if you keep looking, you’ll find it again. I’ve found it again. And again and again.

I wonder, though, if I’d forgotten to keep an eye out, and a healthy respect for the heartbreak that is also so beautifully ubiquitous.

Or, rather, as a corollary, perhaps I’ve neglected the naively hopeful hope that is a necessary condition for true heartbreak.

Oooh, I’ve been heartbroken. In the two years of this blog, I was definitely heartbroken to learn that the domain name tupperwaresisters.com was against the rules. I was heartbroken to take my current job and not travel the world selling the EuroSteam. I was heartbroken late last year, but I won’t speak of that here.

When my sister got married this year, I couldn’t believe that she had shaken–or rejected–the healthy cynicism that is so becoming to a woman nowadays.

I wonder, sitting here today, gray as the skies are, if her skies might be blue.

It’s been a good year so far. It keeps getting better. It’s a year of finishing projects, and not beginning new ones. It’s a year for art museums and rekindling curiosities.

And, by god, it’s a year for falling in love.

really&truly,

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I believed,

that it had been a number of years since my heart had fluttered. Since I’d caught myself happy in a moment; found myself rather completely serene.

It wasn’t a week ago that I was driving to work listening to Kfog or whatever, and I was thinking about how unfortunate it was that I had fallen so far in love so long ago, and never since.

Like so many things, perhaps a matter of interpretation?

A matter of evolution?

Delusion???

Only time will tell.

"So what’s a girl like you doing on crazyblinddate.com?"

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Good pickup line, adorable bartender. Goooood pickup line. Nice tattoos, too. I hadn’t noticed.

If you, dear reader, added my google calendar to yours, you would know right now that I was supposed to have three dates tonight. And if you were me you would know that two of them didn’t work out.

The BTSSB sent the following note:

HRHi Susie,

Unfortunately, the date that was originally scheduled between Mike and you Tuesday, Nov 13 was cancelled.

The culprit was Mike.

He apologizes thusly:

Hi susie, I am sorry but I got stuck somewhere doing something and can’t make it tonight. if you still want to get together sometime you can email me at mike@sosorry.com.

Nerve.com guy was sick or whatever. No problem. I was glad, honestly, to have only one date this evening.

After my crazyblinddate.com date #1, I was rather terrified. I couldn’t escape thoughts like…What am I doing? Why am I doing this? For a stupid blog?! For love?! How does any of this make any sense whatsover?!

As I thought these terribly irrelevant and rather unempowering thoughts, I exited my truck right then, in front of the bar, ready for crazy blind date #2.

Thankfully, the date was to take place in a bar I had never been to. In Alameda, a city I had basically never been to. I was glad, and still am. I totes <3 new bars.

I was glad, also, when I realized my blind date was completely my kinda of easy-to-talk-to-outside-the-bar-kind-of-guy that I had met last night post exiting. It was a very decent, not regrettable at all, good time (awkward rating a new low of 1/100).

The bartender, though. I’d like to address him directly. Let’s be more than friends, Mr. I-don’t know-where-you-live-but-only-that-you-were-entertained-by-my-story-and-you-let-me-pour-my own-beer-from-the-tap. Let’s talk more.

“Well…” I thought for a minute when he asked me (see above). I remembered my list of 10 things-I-should-no-matter-what-for-gods’-sakes-say and instantly discredited them all.

“I want a boyfriend.” Honesty can feel so good sometimes. I looked into his adorable eyes. Still adorable.

Sigh.

So that’s that. A nice night in a new neighborhood, priceless. An adorable, appreciative bartender, priceless+. A blind date that isn’t 2/5 awkward, priceless++.

A good night, hands down.

I used to really love to have imaginary conversations. It was a hobby.

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I’d pretend my companion was some great love, and we were meeting years later in some NYC art gallery, remembering our forgotten love and reminiscing on those good times long ago. For years my companion was my high school crush. Ooh, how I loved him, that luscious blond hair and those sparkling blue eyes.

I haven’t had many imaginary conversations lately. Other than when I’ve worked myself into a senseless rage, I tend to be pretty distracted with work and life and all that bullshit.

So, tonight I’m half-drunk…or, maybe three-quarter’s drunk…and I’m sitting here: having a conversation with a picture. A color printer printed picture. It’s taped on my wall, and quite wrinkly. And quite cute. But I’m not only conversing with that picture. No, I’m dividing my audience between the one wrinkly print out and the other framed picture from years ago. And boy am I conversing. I’m really updating these pictures on all that fucking shit that went down this week, and beyond! This conversation is really hitting that deepest note that conversations so seldomly touch.

And that’s that. A good conversation with a photo or two. Good times, yo.