as much as i hate to be at work when no one else is, i am experiencing now something i haven’t experienced in quite some time during the weekday hours of 8 to 5 (or 6 or 7 or whatever, you know. it’s work.)

some free time.

so, what to do w/ a couple hours of free time when nearly everyone else is on vacation?  blog surf.

i found one blog that i very much appreciated, and i’d like to share.

it’s called “welcome home- a guide to modern living” and it can be located here: heartanddesign.blogspot.com

at first it appeared to be a pretty standard “inspiring design” compilation blog.  i can appreciate those.  and i do. but every now and then, i like to see them mix it up.

example?

there is a whole post highlighting the shenanigans of this shark. how can one not enjoy that?

misplaced as it may seem in a design blog, i find it wholly acceptable and even necessary.

additionally, i saw this quote:

I heard the other day you can tell a lot about a person’s personality in how they handle three situations:
1. Lost luggage
2. Getting caught in the rain
3. Untangling Christmas lights

and i thought, this is very true, i will judge people based on these standards from now on.

last thing: giant underwear.  for those not aware, my sisters and i, at one point in time, had a pair of giant underwear.  yes, giant (okay, bigger than normal…big enough to fit 3 young adults).  perfect for photo ops and awkward family reunions, they were never far from the three of us when we were united.  sadly, i have no idea where they have wandered off to, but today i saw this picture and was reminded of fond memories.

check it:

oh, and i feel i must mention, there are tons of sweet decor photos.  which is exactly what i came for.
-jessica

all I want is your eyes
in the morning
as we wake for a short while

bowerbirds ~ northern lights

which is why my company, Switch, has decided to give away all the stuff in my boss’ office this holiday season.

we’re giving away a ton of sweet stuff, including the massage chair that i love sooooo very much :/
from hockey sticks to a computer to a bass guitar, the items are definitely grab-worthy.

check it out and pass it along if you like it!

-jess

until recently, i didn’t know how many or how often people were visiting my blog.  little did i know, quite a few folks are stopping by (despite my low comment count..i’d love to hear from you, by the way)

google analytics has shed much light on the traffic to my happy little blog.

my favorite part is about organic search results (or basically, what they typed in google that led them to me)

i wanted to share a few of the more interesting ones with you:

• i just like cows
• being productive at mcdonalds
• little pubes
• hot librarian pictures
• john mayer pubes
• thug life tattoos
• pube pictures

(apparently if you write just one post about pubes you will generate some traffic…maybe not the kind you wanted, though…)

-jess

(inspired by kelly c)

 

I found it strange that while surfing for cow pictures, most of the cows I enjoyed were brown, rather than black and white.  It seems to me that the cow you picture in your mind when cows happen to be brought up in conversation is black and white.  Are brown cows more prevalent than black and white cows?  Do they simply tend to pose more? Or perhaps they are just more adorable, and thus, more photogenic.

 

Not sure.  But i do like the way they moooooo.

 

-jessica

 

 

I’ll stand out here all night
Here on your front porch
You Holy Cow

snow patrol ~ holy cow

*i stole these cows images.  because i am a cow image stealer.  if they are yours, i am sorry.  you take great cow pictures, and i am jealous.

check out this children’s book.

funny funny funny :) whhhhhhhat was Disney thinking when they named this book??

you can purchase it here

so, regretfully, i will probably not be posting many more pictures of myself/mylife/myfamily on here anymore. why, you may ask?

because people cannot be trusted.

see, i figured that sharing normal non-embarrassing everyday photos of myself and those i love would be perfectly acceptable. i , however, was sorely mistaken.

i have somehow acquired a creepy creeper identity stealer/stalker.

yes that’s right. some lame, creepy 38 year old pathetic dude stole my photos, my friends photos, and my songs and created a profile for himself on a gaming website.

there he proceeded to make up stories about “jessi” and share my photos and songs. he did all of this through myspace. now my myspace is private. luckily none of my personal info is really on there, and there aren’t THAT many photos of me on myspace–but there were enough.

they’re still up, and i’m not sure if i can get them taken down, i guess it’s not a HUGE deal, but the whole thing is pretty unsettling.

i guess you can’t share your life for your friends and family without having to worry about creepy creepers going to town.

he did it to another girl too–she is in high school.

so yes, i made the things private that i can make private, and unfortunately, i cannot make rockjessie.com private without also blocking all of you…so pictures, probably not as much. i’ll continue to update, though!

-jess

Believe me that your standin on the edge of somethin good.
And its the hardest thing you ever had to do.
Truth be told your beggin on your knees
Singin please dont let it, please dont let it be.

the alternate routes ~ please don’t let it be

so the other day while a co-worker and i were enjoying our lunch at Jefferson’s, we noticed a table of people, approximately my age causing a lot of commotion. the good kind, of course.

they didn’t look like belleville kids because, for the most part, people in belleville are old, or in high school. you don’t really see the college age crowd so much. probably because they don’t exist here.

but anyway, they are taking lots of photos and, eventually, the newspaper shows up. my curiousity got the best of me. i had to see what they were doing here.

after some detective work (i asked), i discovered that they were on a mission to visit all 5 jefferson’s across the country in just 5 days. they are pretty spread out, so i would imagine it was quite the task. anyway–they have a blog about their journey.

http://www.quest4jeffersons.com/

the best part is that i’m in the blog. yep. i made it in there. a picture! and though i was clearly wearing my regions bank name tag, they decided i was a librarian.

i’m thinking of switching careers, anyway.

but check out the site, see the silly antics of the 7 crazy college kids, and have a nice evening!

-jess

through this journey
we can see all the trees
their changing leaves
this safe place where we can hide away

the album leaf ~ writings on the wall

in the past few days as i haven’t watched tv, a couple of things have happened.

a.) my room is still really clean (for my room)

b.) i have listened to so much music i’m sick of everything on my computer

c.) i keep thinking of dumb things to write about on here

• usually i don’t actually do it, but here goes!

so i was thinking last night about some of the older computer games i miss. mostly the ones with shoddy graphics and midi music in the background that could be located on a massive floppy disk, or 12 of these disks because you had to change them ALL the time. a few more developed with more impressive images, real music, and maybe even on CD will also be discussed.

my favorite first computer game definitely had to be oregon trail. EVERYONE remembers oregon trail. it was educational AND it kept 8 year olds preoccupied for hours.

i used to try to ford every river to save money and like…half the time i ended up losing all my supplies (and my brother). then someone would die of cholera. and then i would shoot a buffalo for dinner. and i loved this.

around this same time frame, i also remember occasionally playing a game called Mystery House. it’s much less popular,and for obvious reasons. with simple graphics and sound, but a much more confusing interface, this game shied in comparison to oregon trail. additionally, there wasn’t much educational value here.

i never could seem to get out of the first few steps, and honestly, i’m not sure i ever found out what the “mystery” actually was..

i just walked around typing random prompts like “go door” or “look table” or “steal lamp” (the last one never seemed to work, not sure why they didn’t program that one in there, clearly appropriate)

i vaguely remember dead people involved, and being slightly terrified of entering certain rooms, which may have been why i never moved past a certain point in the game….

another oldie but goody was Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. you’re probably singing that song in your head now..i know i am. i used to love that tv show. it was on PBS (great television viewing), but the creators went one step further and decided a computer game would be great for the kids.

still pretty simple and played on those first bulky apple machines, this game was a bit more flashy but still educational! basically in this game you play a detective who is trying to catch a criminal and retrieve some priceless treasure which has turned up missing. you follow clues and interview witnesses and chase this thief around the world. the criminals had names like Dazzle Annie Nonker and Ihor Ihorovitch, and you had to catch them to ultimately get to carmen. and along the way you had to answer questions and write down clues.

it wasn’t a bad game, and there were like 30 cities and a million people to meet so it had a lot more to offer than the previous two games, i think. i really learned my geography.

so at some point right around third grade we traded our apple for a real pc. it was pretty top of the line at the time. had windows. we dialed up to prodigy net in texas (resulting in masssssive phone bills and 1-hour-a-week time limits for each kid) and soon i was chatting it up with random strangers in chat rooms called “kids 9-12″ and “girls under 13 only”

as it turns out it wasn’t just girls under 13. there apparently weren’t that many girls under 13 on the internet anyway.

okay, back to the games. in the 90s it just got better. it’s like all the sudden the programmers just crossed this major hump and created some amazing games with very crisp clear graphics. or maybe it was just because we tossed that bulky gray machine for something a little more sleek that had a cd drive. always a plus. and no more of those crazy floppy disks. we switched to the smaller hard ones. which always seemed to have an error (probably because i had a bad habit of sliding the little metal door back and forth out of boredom), but anyway…

the first game we really bought was myst. ahhhhh myst. i spent so many hours playing that silly game. and honestly i never beat it. i was like…10. it was apparently above me.

okay, myst had great graphics and sound effects. you’d be walking along the shore and you could hear the sound of the water lapping against the land and birds in the distance and some eerie, but calming music was also present. the one thing it was missing was people. i guess that was the point of the game though. it was just sort of weird walking around this peaceful world void of people. very lonely and unsettling.

you had to solve puzzles to get to different “ages” to ultimately solve the mystery (which i mentioned i never solved…)

one thing that was nice about it was that you never died. you couldn’t die. you couldn’t jump off a ledge or get shot or run out of food. you just didn’t die. you could lose, but no fear, you will not die. i like that feature in a game because for some reason as a child dying in a game really terrified me. i really didn’t want my character to die. i’m a little more accustomed to death now as the majority of computer games seems to be shoot-uhm-up games and we do see quite a lot of it on tv (did you see the kid that got eaten by a Siberian tiger in california??!). my parents kept me pretty sheltered those days, though.

so myst…i just walked around. and sometimes i solved some puzzles, usually not. i sat in the dentist chair. i’m pretty sure it was never a dentist chair, that’s just really what it looked like to me and what i’m now associating with it. i traveled up the tree to get to the channelwood age (i think). but i never won. the brothers are bogus, by the way. if you do get to the end don’t give either of them the final page.

 

another one that was big–civilization. i, however, never experienced the joys of civilization, and skipped straight to 2. i appreciated this game a lot. strategy is a lot of fun. controlling little lives. people love that stuff. you couldn’t consult the high council in the first, anyway, and that’s a pretty important feature. they’re great until they get into an argument and ultimately declare anarchy. it’s never good.

unlike some of the other games i played back in the day, i was actually able to beat this one. that’s right, i got my spaceship to alpha centauri. it’s okay to be jealous.

i didn’t much like going to war with the other civilizations, though i realize it was a necessary evil since we were all vying for the same land. i am a pretty peaceful world leader. a “lion-hearted” world leader, i might add.

 

okay, one more. though there are a million to choose from. i was quite the little computer game junkie once upon a time.

so, while i did enjoy every sim game that was ever created (and i must admit, from time to time i still play the Sims 2, this is not something i am proud of, but don’t knock it til you try it!), the first one that i ever got to play was simtown. shortly after i discovered simcity, but i definitely enjoyed simtown more. it was geared at kids (which i was–a happy little tech savvy 4th grader). i loved how i could name the people walking around and look into their houses, a feature which does not exist in simcity. all you could see was a faroff view of some apartment buildings which ALWAYS turned into dumps because i always forgot to get pipes going to the place so no one ever wanted to live there.

simtown was less complicated. and it was happy. theburger joint was shaped like a burger. the pizza place had a large pizza slapped on the front, and the library was a row of *shocker* large books. nothing difficult to figure out there…

and, what would a game be without a few good easter eggs. a nifty little thing, if there was a pig on the screen and you typed bacon, it would fly away. need to get rid of those trailer homes? just type toast and they’re gone.

they must have had a thing for breakfast food.

so there you have it. a perfectly good waste of my sunday afternoon. time to hit the gym. maybe i’ll come back and download simtown because after writing about it i kind of miss it a lot.

well, have a good day and a happy new year. resolutions will follow shortly.

-jessica

Maybe it’s the ticket talking,
If you notice anything out of the dirty windows.
Maybe you’ll have a good time,
Maybe you’ll have a great time.
Falling asleep on the shoulder of a stranger,
I don’t know where you’re going.

snailhouse ~ have a good time