Smooth Operator

I'm going to hit you with a completely obvious statement: Smoothies are awesome.

 

I never used to have them that often, simply because the only place around me that made them was this tiny stand at a mall, and heading there was a bit too much effort to satisfy a random smoothie craving. It really only worked out when I started jonesin' for a smoothie at the same time I "needed" some new clothes from The Gap (let's be real, how often do you actually need something from The Gap?) .

 

The clear question is, why didn't I just make them myself? Well, first off, I was never quite sure where my parents kept their blender. I knew they owned one, but its location was a mystery. Additionally, for some reason, I always thought smoothies were much more complicated that people made them seem. I was worried I'd somehow select the wrong combo of ingredients and waste all those yummy fruits and vegetables on some disgusting-tasting slop. I don't like wasting money or food, so that concern also kept me from giving it a shot.

 

After cleaning out one of my parents' kitchen cabinets one day (seriously, how do these people not understand how to properly store and organize Tupperware?!), I found their long-lost blender, crammed in the back of a shelf beneath our counter. Apparently while I was trying to dig it up, my parents were trying to forget they had it by means of "out of sight, out of mind." Not long after that, I stumbled upon some smoothie recipes (thank you, oh wise and time-sucking Pinterest!) that made me start salivating. Not only that, but I had a lot of the ingredients mentioned in some of those recipes--I could make this happen!

 

To the kitchen I went. Ingredients gathered, I loaded them into the blender, and let 'er rip!

 

Oh. Mah. Gawd. That smoothie was legit.

 

And that was it. Ever since that first attempt, I have this crazy addiction to making smoothies. I have one for breakfast pretty much every single day now.

 

I actually killed my parents' infamous blender in the midst of this new obsession. In all fairness, it was a bit outdated...

 

 

 

They apparently received it as a wedding gift. Back in the '70s. As if you couldn't tell.

 

I was a little sad to see the thing putter out. Yes, it was old, and didn't really do it's job too well, but it was quite retro-cool. Unfortunately, it was time to say goodbye, so I picked up this guy at Target:

 

 

 

It's pretty good! It gets those air pockets around the blades fairly often, but that's probably more of an operator error than a testament to the functionality...

 

I'm planning on sharing recipes on here in case anyone else out there has the same crazy obsession with smoothies and is looking for a few new ideas to mix it up (pun totallyyyy intended). However, I don't have any recipes together right now - I've been having such a great time playing around with all the different flavor combinations, I don't think I've made the same smoothie twice! Once I start writing down some solid recipes, I'll start posting them, and hopefully someone will be able to enjoy them as well!

 

Anybody else out there caught up in this smoothie movement like I am?

Bump, Set, Spike

When I was in my senior year of high school, I broke my left pinkie while playing volleyball in gym class. You know how coaches tell you not to lace your fingers when going to bump the ball, or else you might break a finger? They're right.

 

This impressive display of raw sportiness earned me a foam brace for the next three weeks. It rested under my pinkie, and was held in place by a few bands of medical tape. As you can imagine, it greatly restricted the types of hand signs I could make (thank heavens my gang career hadn't taken off by that point!). I could never give someone a thumbs up, but I could tell them to hang loose like a true surf-bro. The Dr. Evil jokes from my friends were unending, which made sense because Mike Myers still retained a bit of relevancy at that point.

 

This incident pretty much sums up my skill level while playing team sports. I might not be a total disaster, but I'm far from MVP. After that injury, I shied away from any sort of team sport, vocalizing how certain I was that nobody would want me--a pinkie-breaking, high-school-gym-class failure--on the roster.

 

That all changed this past February. My boyfriend, always one for a good time with friends, started gathering team members for a local co-ed intramural volleyball league. As the roster began to flesh out, with friends and coworkers-of-friends agreeing to join up, he was met with a bit of a problem: The team would need at least two women on the court at all times, and they had only one female signed up. This put me in a bit of a predicament. I knew how much my boyfriend wanted to register a team (as he had done the previous 2 years), yet the thought of playing a sport stirred up some residual anxiety. Ever the supportive partner, I told him I would sign up....if no other women wanted to join. Really, give everyone else a shot first, I'll just be the back-up plan. Seriously. Don't let me stand in anyone's way.

 

After a friend's birthday party (read: one too many beers) less than a week before the roster was due, I caved. I was more nervous than an adult should be about an intramural sport played in a middle school auditorium, but I ponied up and agreed to enlist.

 

I have to admit, after two or three weeks (we played three games in a row each week), it actually became kinda fun. Maybe it was because we had just the right combination of seasoned vets and eager novices, or maybe it was because we all more or less looked at this like a social event and not a serious competition (unlike some other far-too-intense teams we faced on the court). Whatever it was, my nerves calmed down, and I started having a great time on the court. We got comfortable enough with each other to really enjoy game nights - we joked around, gave each other ridiculous nicknames, all that fun team bonding stuff. Not only that, but I began actually playing well! I'm still no Misty May-Treanor, but I did some work, y'all.

 

Eventually, our rag-tag group of underdogs started winning games, and even our losses were less devastating. When it came time for the play-offs, we showed up for the first round, raring to go...

 

And still got knocked out. Seriously, some of those other teams are nasty.

 

But we do all have the first game of the summer league penciled into our planners.

Time for Introductions

OK, so I have no clue how to start this off. Maybe there's some sort of How To manual out there detailing how to approach your first blog post. If so, unfortunately for you, nobody tipped me off to it, so I gotta go free-form with this.

 

This is my blog. It will be about whatever topic strikes me as interesting that day, because it's about my (hopefully fairly interesting) life. This is going to be about as random and self-indulgent as you can get.

 

I know what you're thinking: This sounds amazing! Why, thank you for your compliment!

 

Here's a few brief tidbits about who I am, so you can get your footing before we dive on in: I'm a born-and-raised Jersey girl, and I'm obnoxiously proud of it. I'm an only child, and although I do my best to not act in a way that perpetuates the stereotype, sometimes sharing is a wee bit difficult. Even though I've held down steady "big girl" work for about 5 years now, after a couple of years living on my own, I'm back at home with my parents and our awesome dog who stretches the limits of laziness on a daily basis (she's a trail-blazer). Within the past year I began working in the publishing department for a large company, and while I'm thrilled to finally be in a field I'm interested in, I'm still debating how exactly I want my professional life to pan out. All in all, I feel like I'm a pretty stereotypical millennial, trying to reconcile the fact that I'm on the verge of true "adulthood" with my desire to drink cheap beer and play board games at 3 a.m. with my college friends. It's can be a weird head space to be in, and I want to take y'all along in the journey.

 

I have to be honest: I'm not entirely sure I want to merge my "virtual" life with my real life, which seems a bit silly, since these things are normally started with the whole "Market yourself!!!" goal in mind. However, I'd prefer to go the Batman route, and keep these two lives separate (at least for the time being). Hey, if it's good enough for a crime-fighting, cape-wearing billionaire, then it's good enough for me, damnit! So, until I grow the cajones to take off the bat mask, I'll be going by Jae.

 

Nice to meet you! Now, let's get this rolling, shall we?