garden_state76

That is all

Hooray! After two months of back and forth she finally confirmed and we are listed on the tour section of her web-site:http://www.rihannanow.com/

Rihanna is playing Brookdale Community College in lovely Lincroft, NJ on October 13, woo-hoo!

So Wayne Scot Lukas came into the store today. I really don't normally go ga ga over famouspeople but he has chopped off the horrible long hair (it's now a nice shoulder length), has let it go natural gray, was wearing casual beach wear (shorts, flip flops and unzipped hoodie) was sporting some scruff on his face and I wanted to jump him in the paperchase section. No, seriously, the man called me "young man" when I called him sir while showing him where the fashion book section was. I'm sure it was a sarcastic come back, but I'd be his young man any time of day.

Later on we got him a bag to help him shop and he said he always loved our store. He bought choclate for the cashier and spent over $400 in the store. Super dreamy, nice to store employess and he helped us make our day, what's not to love?

So this weekend was Road Trip 6 in Asbury Park, an opportunity to market Monmouth County's favorite gay neighborhood to the BENNY crowd: http://www.roadtripasburypark.com/

Two of my students who intern at a store on Cookman Ave presented their fashion designs as part of the festivities. My office co-sponored, underwriting the cost of DJ, and backstage stuff (food for models etc.)

I must admit as some of the designs went down the runway I was formulating a response to the Board of Trustees in my mind about academic freedom and artistic expression. Haven't heard any complaints yet, so keep your fingers crossed.

( Fashion? )

How can Geri go back to the Girls? Ginger had a funeral.

Ya know, I read the zombie survival guide and everything, so I'm a bit disappointed in my score

56%

Mingle² - Free Online Dating

Ever feel that your timing is off? I feel like for the last seven years I've been "off", like right decisions wrong time.

I deferred a year to go to NYU for grad school and in that time a new director for the student personel program came in, turned everything around, leading me to leave a year into the program, with no degree. I meet a great person who decides he's straight and wants to go back to his girlfriend and child, I meet another person who seems great and then come to find he's a rapid cycling bi-polar mess (a loveable mess, but still a mess).

I leave a job I invested five years in because of the school's hardening anti-gay stance, and then the v.p. of ministry who was a hard core homophobe gets transferred and suddenly the student GLBT group I've advocated for gets approved and wonder of wonders the HR department okays partner benifits.

I feel like I've been in a bad Alanis song. It's like meeting the man of your dreams and then meeting his beautiful husband. BLEAH :-P

The boyfriend takes out his cell-phone and decides to take pictures at pizza hut. I give him a questioning look to say, why are you taking pictures in pizza hut, do I really need proof that we eat at pizza hut? He says resulting picture make me look like a cartoon character, I say it makes for a good user pic.

I think Dwayne having his 30th birthday on Friday the 13th caused a rip in the time space continuum that just added lots and lots of crappy bad luck on us

On Thursday, the day before his birthday, he was laid off from his job at Vonage
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6897

On Saturday we were in a car accident in New York City, where a pick-up truck backed into us, causing severe bumper damage

On Sunday, after most of my family had left (thank God) three people where shot at my nephew’s christening party http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070417/NEWS/704170308/1004/NEWS01

And on Sunday night the Nor-easter dropped enough rain that combined with the high tide on the river to flood our apartment http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070417/NEWS01/704170342/1004/SHORE

Today Dwayne left his keys in his car running and I had to go rescue him and I did my taxes and for the first time owed the government money, $613 to Uncle Sam

On the plus side in all these adventures everyone I care about is safe

But I still think I’m going to get some smudge sticks and clean our apartment of foul spirits

So I had to do a myers brigs thingie for a SALI (Student Ambassador LEadership Institute) workshop I'm running, and of course when it offered the opportunity to receive the results in LiveJournal format I remebered that I actually have an account and should post.

Crazy busy, in the midst of buying a house and working two jobs and new and exciting stuff at work. But still trying to find time to enjoy things, like cats and ice flows passing by on the river.

Hope all is well Livejournal folks. My personality type is below.

You Are An ENFP

The Inspirer You love being around people, and you are deeply committed to your friends. You are also unconventional, irreverant, and unimpressed by authority and rules. Incredibly perceptive, you can usually sense if someone has hidden motives. You use lots of colorful language and expressions. You're qutie the storyteller! You would make an excellent entrepreneur, politician, or journalist.

Okay, so you know you are living in an emotionally closed state when you cry at a friggin episode of Ugly Betty. I think that I need to take a break this weekend and do something for me, no family engagements, work craziness, etc. Maybe just kidnap the boy and go on a roadtrip.

So it's a new year and I went back to work at Brookdale after a very nice break and felt Blah. Many people where out, but my staff where all there and it just felt blah. So to get back some holiday spirit here are some photos of my family from Christmas Eve. I brought over a Gingerbread House.

( Christmas Goodness )

Two full days off...what the? I earned it though after a 9 hour day at the bookstore yesterday. Last minute shoppers are never pretty, last minute shoippers who have no clue what they're looking for are worse (Umm I'm looking for that book on losing weight, I think the cover's blue...or red)

Right now I have coconuts baking in the oven for coquito.http://www.marthastewart.com/page.jhtml?type=content&id=recipe3460148&dp=false&layout=Print&styleType=martha_tv&site=&prevLink=true&site=&prevLink=true&site= The coquito needs to sit overnight so the flavors can meld. Tonight it's off to my sisters for Christmas eve fun and tomorrow it's christmas with the rest of the fam at mom and dad's. We are bringing coquito and empanadas, my mom is making roast pork and beans and rice. Should be a fun Puerto Rican Christmas.

So last night I tried to finish up Christmas shopping and spent a good 45 minutes trying to decide if my 4 year old nephew would rather enjoy the ceiling solar system model (it glows in the dark!) or the justice league action figures boxed set (all together for the first time!). In my mind I was balancing edu-tainment fun (he really likes the stars) vs. snotty Rumson kids making fun of the lack of action figure toys James has. Of course I got him the boxed set (No one makes fun of my nephews).

When you calculate that I now have 9 nieces and nephews (What can I say we're Catholic) you can see that I did not finish shopping last night. I felt like Wembly from fraggle rock. Not fun.

There is a special place reserved in hell for any boyfriend who would drag their partner to a friggin Rachel Ray meet n' great. I'm listening to a crappy cover band in ceasers palace angry, not sure if the anger should be directed towards Dwayne for turning my day off day trip to AC into something he wanted to do or myself for letting his sorry ass get away with it.

Either way bad cover bands suck.

Went to see Martin Short in "Fame Becomes Me" last night. The play is funny as hell, and Capathia Jenkins is my new hero. "If you want to end with a bang have a big black woman end your show". But truley the funniest part was watching David Hasselhoff and Ron Howard try to out bid each other for a fundraiser the cast was doing for Broadway Cares. When Mr. Howard went up to $3000 an audience member shouted, "Yeah Opie!" the price of admission was worth it to see the icy stare he threw at the audience member.

"All persons are by nature free and independent, and have certain unalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending liberty, of acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and of pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness" Article 1, Paragraph 1, New Jersey State Constituition 1947

"There is no rational basis for, on the one hand, giving gays and lesbians full civil rights in their status as individuals and, on the other, giving them an incomplete set of rights when they follow the inclination of their sexual orientation and enter into committed same-sex relationships" Justice Barry Albin, NJ Supreme Court 2006

I don't get to say this too often but HOORAY New Jersey.

I am really celebrating Halloween this year. Last week I led a group of Criminal Justice Students on a trip to Terror Behind the Walls at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philly(Hey it was educational)http://www.easternstate.org/halloween/ Then on Saturday I babysat the nephews and we made pumpkin pie, carved Jack-o-lanterns and watched the Garfield Halloween Special (Candy! Candy! Candy!) and now tonight we are having friends over for a horror film fest. I want something 70's creeptacular, like the Original Fog, but I'm thinking I will be outvoted for the original Nightmare on Elm Street.

Okay so I have never been a fan of boss' day...having not celebrated it since 1999 when as a part of the grad staff at Rutgers I chipped in for lunch for the boss. Now I feel a bit guilty about ignoring this hallmark holiday as my staff just got me a card and rather expensive box of Chocolate from Red Bank Chocolate Shop. Mmmm chocolate.

Of course this guilt did nothing to move me towards getting something for my boss.

So since I close the Student Life Center on Thursday nights I get to go in work late. Did Rob use this opportunity to catch up on much needed sleep? Of course not. After work at Borders on Wed night I went to Asbury Lanes to bowl and drink bad beer (Hooray Pabst!) They had a stage set up in the middle of the lanes with a rather good punk band from PA playing while silent horror films played in the background. The bar in the bowling alley looks like something from Beetlejuice. The staff where super nice and a good time was had by all. Bonus in that some of the underage Borders folks could tag along.

While it was fun the next day my knees hurt, either from jumping up and down to music while wearing bowling shoes or some other un-known exertion I blocked out in a Pabst induced haze. Moral being bowling and drinking are fun, but avoid the drunk bowling, that's never a good idea.