jozjozjoz.com

So is it bad that three different people sent this story to my inbox today?!

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On and on and on the job
Long workweeks, short vacations putting Americans in a health squeeze

Mariko Thompson
Los Angeles Daily News
Sept. 16, 2003 12:00 AM

The Japanese have a term for being worked to death - karoshi. Americans might not know the term but ought to be familiar with the concept. Surveys have found Americans are working long hours and taking little leisure time, a stressful state of affairs that could have profound effects on health and well-being.
Continue reading ‘Karoshi!? Who me?!’

A while back, I mentioned that I worked at the auction selling Seabiscuit Memorabilia.

Well, I am working at that auction house today (yes, I am working on Sunday. I work pretty much all the time) & before things get rolling, I thought I’d resurrect some really funny IMs professoreric sent me a while back.

8/29/2003
professoreric (5:12:40 PM): oh joz, [my friend] is angry at me now
him (5:13:16 PM): she asked me if i heard anything about [the movie] Seabiscuit, and i made up a stupid story.
him (5:13:24 PM): and then she told me to shut up.
him (5:13:49 PM): here is what i said: rumor has it that Tobey Maguire plays a gay talking horse in that film, teaching kids to be open to the idea of homosexual livestock. people liked it but thought that the singing horse scenes were a bit much. it is the scene where Seabiscuit (voice by Tobey) is being hit on by a beautiful palomino wearing a sequin lounge dress and pink pumps. he obviously has no interest in here, and she tries harder by singing an erotic horse song. it is not mocking, it is the plot of the movie. people really like the scene where they are all in the shower after gym class and seabiscuit notices just how hung the other male horses are (yes, hung like a horse) and is very turned on and has to hide behind the saddle pile. luckily no one notices, except of course, Charles, the aristocrat gay horse, who is a bit on the flaming side. well, Charles trots up to him and makes some rude comment, some sort of disgusting come on line, and seabiscuit freaks out and runs away. in the end there is a great scene where he comes out to the stable, and they all learn a lot about accepting horses, no matter who they are. oh, and to end the plot, gross Charles, dies in a horrible church fire.
him (5:13:57 PM): she wont talk to me for a while now…
joz (5:14:07 PM): hahahahahahaha

So I will say that on this wonderful Friday night in Los Angeles, I am shall be partying my ass off* until 2am**.

I will be drinking*** enough to make my bladder whimper.

Party on, dudes!!!

*partying my ass off = data entry
**will be at Office #2 until 2am
***Another 52 oz. Diet Coke

Yes, I’m still up.

Yes, I did drink the entire 52 oz.

Yes, I did have to go to the bathroom about 10932423409817 times overnight.

Hooray.

And I still have more work to do! It never ends!

Yippee!

[/misguided glee from exhaustion]

My friend Kristina Wong (aka Kristina Sheryl Wong & BigBadChineseMama) just called me at work. She is stranded somewhere in West LA right now because her car broke down. She needed the phone number for the car repair place I had referred her to (oops, I guess they didn’t do such a good job!).

Anyway, as we were wrapping up the call, she asked me if I had seen her pictures from Burning Man, to which I said “Not yet!” She told me she had fulfilled my request of having something jozjozjoz.com related burned at Burning Man, so of course, I had to go check it out right away!

So, courtesy of THE Kristina Wong, Hello from Burning Man 2003!

Kristina says:
“My friend Jocelyn who is a blogging whore made me write this and take a picture of it. This sign was part of a bigger art installation that was burned at the end of the week.”

Since it was very cool of her to do this, I will pretend she did not just call me a “blogging whore” on her site.

When it comes to things like clothes, hair, & make-up, I am a total fashion dunce.

I am always picking out clothes that are comfortable but not at all flattering… putting my hair in a simple headband or ponytail… unskillfully slapping on some eyeliner & lipstick and running out the door in my ugly, sloppy clothes. (Please don’t nominate me for “What Not to Wear.”)

When I found out I was going to the Emmys, I knew that I needed help in a big way.

My fashion angel came to me in the form of Genevieve Gallen, who out of the kindness of her heart, offered to help me pick an outfit & do my hair and make-up for this event. How cool is it that I had my own Emmy stylist?!?! Even though we missed out on the opportunity to go clothes shopping on Thursday night (because I was a dumbass and left my wallet at home), Genevieve updated a black velvet dress I already owned and made it seem like a brand new one.

On Saturday, in a race against time, we went shopping for the accessories that really pulled my outfit together. Because Genevieve is such a great customer, the lady gave me a 20% discount on the black pashmina I wore & Genevieve found the perfect handbag, bracelet, and brooch to go with some existing jewelry I had. It kind of felt like I was on one of those make-over shows, but without the annoying cameras.

The best part though, was getting my hair and make-up done. It turns out that Genevieve always does her own make-up in all her photo shoots. She’s also done make-up for other models and she used her experience studying under “Make-up maven/mogul/maestro” Francois Nars to make even an ugly duckling like me feel like a swan. And I should also add that Genevieve worked really well under pressure. We were strapped for time & she did my hair and make up in record time!

Most of the time, when I see a picture of myself, I have to suppress the urge to jab my eyes out with sharp-pointy objects. I am very, very picky about photographs of myself… even more so when it comes to *showing other people* pictures of myself. So you have to know that when I put up the picture of myself holding the Emmy, I was really, really thrilled with the photo.

Here is a photo Genevieve took of me right before I walked out the door to leave for the Emmys. I except for the fact that I am not holding an Emmy, I actually like this photo of myself better than the other one because I am not all washed out by the flash & you can actually see how glamorous Genevieve made me look.

I got lots and lots of compliments at the Emmys (especially from people at work who see my normal frumpy self) and even had a guy roll down his window and whistle at me as I was on my way home!

Thank you again to my fashion angel & Emmy Stylist Genevieve, who made me look & feel so great!!!

As I am getting my Honorary Maid of Honor outfit ready for my friend’s wedding (the same one who had the bachelorette party last weekend), I thought I’d pop in & make a quick list of some of the stuff that happened yesterday surrounding my night at the LA Area Emmys:

-BOUGHT A DIGITAL CAMERA! Finally! (Still need another memory card)
-Went shopping at Century City with Genevieve Gallen, my Emmy Stylist, for some accessories to go with my outfit she helped me put together. (Thank you sooooooo much for taking time out of your busy day to help me get ready!!! You have no idea how much it meant to me and how much I appreciated it! And I felt so good after I saw how great the pictures turned out!)
-Back home for Genevieve to “primp” me for the night (that’s primp, not pimp!).
-Took a couple of quick pictures, rushed off to pick up my friend/co-worker who invited me.
-Drove like a crazed wombat to get to there before it started.
-At the Emmys… our show won another Emmy! Whoo hoo!
-Took pictures with my co-workers and friends. I got to take a picture with an Emmy even though I didn’t earn it!

There was more that happened, but I don’t have the energy to write it right now. I had much, much fun even though I wasn’t out that late. However, I did not get to bed until 4am. The last two hours of the night were spent playing with my new digital camera and figuring how to transfer the photos to my computer.

Ok, I’ve already been yelled at by my mom this morning (my phone shut itself off last night & I didn’t know she’d been calling me since 8am) so I sure as heck better not be late to the wedding. I am hoping that I don’t have to wear a hat this time.

More later, but for now, here is Joz holding the Emmy!

PS- Thanks to everyone who invited me to parties and events for Saturday night… I am really sorry I couldn’t make everything! Thanks to Shelli for letting me cancel on our evening together that we’d been planning for so long.

Thank you also to the person who dissinvited me in the first place to the party I wouldn’t have been able to go to in the first place. After I got dissinvited, I got invited to the Emmys & some other parties, too. I am sure that getting invited to all these other exciting things was karma for the dissinvite. So to that person I say, diss away!

So within 30 minutes of me posting the latest Terra story, one of our landlords called me at my office from Hawaii.

He NEVER calls me at work. And they’ve been gone a entire freakin’ week & have only called me once (in the evening when we were at home).

No, he didn’t read my blog (thank goodness!), but was just calling to see how things were going.

I simultaneously wanted to burst out laughing, tell him the story to embarass him, jump up and down doing the Ew-ew-ew! Dance™, and throw up the popcorn I had just eaten for lunch (shush about my popcorn meals. Today was the last of them, I mean it.).

But I just smiled sweetly and said everything and everyone was fine.

But Michael was convinced that they got wind of my blog. (And for the record, I said no such things about my pussy. Michael, you are a very bad, bad boy!)

I was supposed to go shopping for something to wear to the LA Area Emmys (this Saturday night) with a friend after work today, but I did a typical-Joz thing… I left my wallet at home.

Instead, I ended up at Office #2, working until now (10:15pm). I came directly from Office #1 & since I didn’t have money for food, I haven’t eaten since my extraordinarily-healthy pizza & popcorn lunch at 1pm today.

So, I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t buy clothes today. If I keep up my wonderful nutrition habits, I wouldn’t be able to fit into anything new anyway.

Besides, I just spent $350 on my subscription to the LA Opera, not to mention another $200 for my subscription to GMCLA, and the upcoming $150 I will spend for my subscription to Vox Femina Los Angeles. I also spent almost $200 for tickets to Cirque du Soliel’s Varekai later this month. And I have not even blogged about the 80 hour Series2 TiVo I bought for Yoshi last week.

Oh, and that digital camera I so desperately want/need? Still shopping for it.

And I thought my credit card bills were high last month…

(sigh)

I’ll give you a hint, you hold him close to your heart, and his name rhymes with Peric… Got it yet? Yup, it’s Eric (the professor). So Lela and I have made it all the way here to fucking Texas. This morning (Wednesday), we left Holbrook, Arizona (east of Flagstaff. By the border.) We saw the painted desert and the petrified forest (which didn’t look that frightened…) and they were both beautiful. When I have DSL, and not dial up. I might consider sending some pics. There was a great moment today in the car where Lela and I made the same gay joke with out any prompt, at the same time it was funny. The punchline was “Honey, Chad and Jeremy are coming over.”

We drove through (yes in Texas) a town called Bushland. Yuck. We stopped at the world’s least-friendly, most-filthy gas station, even though for about 100 miles it was advertised on billboards as being the opposite. We ate fairly vegetarian, at this buffet here in Amarillo, cause that’s where we ended up. There was meat in everything, even when we went to the vegetable table there was meat on it. It was one of those buffets where even though you know you are a good eater and that you can eat your moneys worth, the locals have their plates stacked in the dozens, piled high with the bones and drippings of a thousand head of livestock. Some of these people were very American (large!)… now we are lounging in our hotel room at the “Fifth Seasons” where our room number is 187 (police code for murder.) I used the metal part of a pen cap (left my Swiss army knife at home) to make sure all of the screws in the dead bolt were in as far as they could go. I won’t even tell you what we had to do to get online. It was like an ‘I Love Lucy’ skit.

And yesterday (Tuesday) we left L.A. even though it seems like a month ago. There were many adventures that we had yesterday. I will tell them in a random order as we try and remember: there was a crazy house that was for sale on the side of the highway, it looked like the Swiss family Robinson tree house, made out of UFOs and odd lawn ornaments. Oh, when we were in Arizona we saw the signs for Winslow, and knew we needed to get off and drive down a street there and get a picture of both of us “standing in a corner in Winslow, Arizona.” We got the pictures but while taking the last one a little boy (12 years old?) yells out the window of his father pickup “wrong corner!” We thought that was hilarious. Ok, can’t think of anything else right now, but when we get our pictures together I am sure I will remember more. Just wanted to let you all know we got somewhere safe, even if it turned out to be here in Amarillo. Oh well. We will be in Wichita by tomorrow. Woo hoo! Any questions?

-professoreric

Note: This was written by professoreric on the night of Wednesday, 9/3/03 & posted by jozjozjoz the next morning. Lela is Eric’s friend who is driving out to Kansas with him. I feel like I’ve been replaced by a new carpool buddy. Sob! Take good care of The Professor, Lela!

…where all you want to do is break things?