Snowpocolypse or Snowmageddon. Whichever you prefer

So today, Chicago is supposed to be hit by one of the most horrific blizzards in the city's history. Yesterday's Tribune called it "Life Threatening", and there have been reports of what may be 2-4 inches of snowfall per hour, and 24 inches in the next 24 hours.

The blizzard has begun.

It has the potential to shut down Lake Shore Drive as the waves from the lake may be 15-18ft tall, and crash onto the road and turn to ice. Schools and offices have closed early today and plan to stay shut till Thursday. Of course my office, much like my university, is a firm believer of "the show must go on" and has a slim chance of closing, but my team knows better and plans to work from home (thank goodness).

As I sit on the 125 Water Tower Express in route to Union Station, I've started to think about people. Not all the stupid ones that make things more difficult or stressful than necessary, but all the nice and friendly "extras" that accompany the life of a city dweller, or city commuter.

Especially in a time of danger, threat, or crisis, people find a way to bring out the good in others (except for the token asshole who causes problems then eventually finds out he's in the wrong-at lease that's how the movies do it). And when we feel that something out of the ordinary may be happening we as people find a way to bond and take care of one another.

Right now as the snow accumulates and the traction on the roads becomes less and less, I think of my fellow bus travelers not as strangers, but almost as stage extras in this dramatic snowy scene. Instead of men and women on a bus, its the guy with the blue duffle bag, and the working woman playing games on her phone. There's a construction worker with a red cooler, and the girl with the striped backpack. The packers fan (as seen by his hat) and the young girl with headphones in.

When things stop going our way, we start to think of our lives, and other's lives, as something more treasured and precious. We realize that things are out of our control, but that we have the tools and resources to make the most of it.

I'm so glad I left the office at 3, and I hope I make the 3:50 express. But something tells me that this commute home will feel a bit different than how it is every other day of the week.

Be safe everyone! Stay warm, leave early, and hip hip hooray for a city wide snow day.

~Jenna
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Oh Blog, How I've Missed You

I realized that its been quite some time since I've made an entry. My apologies for that. Especially those who enjoy month stories and random adventures, secretly hoping you cam tag along someday.

A typical evening conversation witn my boyfriend has the usual "how was year you days" and "I miss yous" but lately its had an increasingly larger amount of me complaining about how "boring" my life has become. I mean, I did go from a whirlwind college career into a globe trotting summer only to reduce my schedule to work, working out, and sleep.

How am I supposed to conquer the world when I spend almost 20% of each day getting myself to and from work? Not to mention get any of the regular life to do stuff done.

At any rate, today I took the time to compile the info of my travel plans between now and Jan 3rd, as I currently have only 1 weekend between now and then with nothing planned.

So, I'm going to start re-capping my weekend travels. And use them as a pick me up on the wednesdays and thursdays when friday night seems so far away.

Backtracking I have a trip to Ann Arbor, Dom's visit for Halloween, and a weekend at Marquette.

Like the new bud light - here we go!

~Jenna
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Road Adventures

I'm going to Ann Arbor for recent grad weekend, and driving up this morning with two of my friends from the bschool.

We left the apartment on lake shore shortly after 8, sharing stories and getting excited about out return "debuts" to Campus. Stopped for McDonald's breakfast, then after just a few minutes of driving come to a complete halt. All of the cars in front of us were stopped and we could see police cars in the distance up ahead. Wonderful, we thought.

An hour later, we were still sitting there. One of my friends starts complaining that she has to pee. There was grass on one side (it looked like a drop off though) and a construction site on the other. We were trying to get her to go in the construction site, but she thought everyone would see her - despite the cement barriers.

Then we looked at the cars around us and noticed people getting out to stretch, walk around, and let their dogs out. That's when someone said "Maybe the RV has a bathroom" I then realized that it was a charter bus. After a minute's hesitation two of us got out of the car and went over to the bus.

We knocked on the door, the driver opened it and we asked if she could use the bathroom.

Driver: Well, I don't know . . . What do you think guys? (to the passengers on the bus).
Me: Its just one of us, can she go?
Driver: How much should we charge her? (To my friend) do you have $10?
Friend: I actually have $10 that I will give you to use your bathroom
Driver: haha, go ahead

She walked to the back of the bus, and I stayed in the front talking to the driver. As I waited, another lady came up to the door asking if she too could use the bathroom. The driver said - as long as its okay with my passengers and we don't end up with a line. . .

That's when we noticed the cars ahead starting to move.

The lady said, thanks but returned to her car, and I looked back to see that my friend was still in the bathroom. I wasn't going to abandon her so I sat down in the front and motioned my friend in the car to just drive.

Making small talk with the driver, my friend came back, a little frantic that the bus was moving, and not knowing whether I left her or not. She made her way to the front and we waited for a good point to stop and get back to the car.

We went to call her, only to realize that both of us left our phones in the car. The driver offered us his, but neither of us knew her number. She was driving right in front of us and kept slowing down, but we motioned her forward, rather than stopping to make the exchange in the middle of the highway.

It was quite a comical scene, with us in the bus and her in the car. The bus happened to be going to Michigan too, and everyone was really nice about us being there too.

We finally found a shoulder and pulled over. We thanked the driver and made our way back to the car.

Needless to say, we had some good laughs for the next portion of the drive.

Still a few hours outside of A2 now, but that adventure made sitting in traffic not so bad after all.

~Jenna
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Project Follow Up. . .

In reference to my previous post about starting up an experiment where I ask the people I sit by during various stages of my commute, I've now thought about it from the other side.

Lately, when I'm on the bus after work, I seem to stand or sit by the overly friendly local, or the sleazy guy who insists on asking me why I'm so attractive. Why does it matter what book I'm reading, if I'm a student or not. What makes them ask the ever popular question "are you married?", and the always over eager follow up "oh! Are you single?" (I think 5 guys have paired those questions to me in the past month)

Over explanation: (In a backwards kind of way, being hit on should be a compliment I guess, but sometimes its totally unsolicited and from the wrong type of source - my mom got hit on by a homeless man who asked to borrow a pen, then wrote his name and number on a business card, and handed it to her. I mean, my mom is gorgeous, but don't guys understand the concept "out of your league"?)

I've realized that I like the anonymity of being a commuter. Sort of like the feeling of living in a city, or attending a large university. (Only difference being that with commuting there's no need to work to make friends or make a name for yourself). Here you just go with the physical flow of people. You're a part of the mix. One of the pack. A pawn in the system of public transit. Its a chance to zone out, sleep, stare into space, an daydream. A chance to ponder, to plan, and to figure out just what I want to do next-or just beat the high score in solitaire. I like this time to myself. This feeling of being "alone" even though I'm surrounded by 25-250 people at any given time.

Yesterday a guy insisted on making conversation with me for the 25min bus ride, despite the fact that I was fiddling with my headphones and really engrossed in playing line up 2 on my iPod. He asked things like my name, what I did that day, what I thought of the city, and if I thought it was going to rain. While I'm all for the polite acknowledgment of people when they enter your personal space on a crowded bus, I realized that its so annoying when people try to engage you when you're not in the mood, or they don't get the hint as you put headphones in.

- if you want to be left alone, always wear headphones. It makes you look busy/occupied, and even if someone says something to you, you can always play it off like you didn't hear them because, you had headphones in. Once you take them out (or in the moments before you put them in) you are at risk for unsolicited engagement!

Joking aside - my social experiment would have been much less intrusive as it would be short and concise (3-5 questions) and be introduced as a project. People would feel a part of it, rather than just being questioned by some random girl on the bus.

For now I've decided not to ask people the thoughts of my curious mind - where are you going, if you could do any job it would it be- but maybe I'll bring it back in the spring when people tend to be just a bit more smiley as they go about their day.

~Jenna
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Note to Self . . .

It is always colder in the city.

Boo summer, why do you have to go?
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Destination: South Bend

On Thursday, I was talking to one of my friends about the weekend and his plans for the Michigan vs. Notre Dame game. After a bit of pondering he said - Why don't we just go to it? It'll be an adventure!

Fast forward to Saturday morning and I'm on the train to Chicago, getting pumped about our road trip to South Bend, Indiana. We left the city around 12 with the 2 hour drive ahead of us. We crossed from central to eastern time, getting there about an hour before kickoff.

We used the drive over to catch up on each other's lives and reminisce about college and our experiences at the Big House. Talked about the work life, the "real world", and the great city of Chicago. He just moved downtown three days ago so there was a lot about the city to share.

When we got there we saw a guy selling tickets, and we asked him the offer and pondered our chances. Its always a bit risky to go with your first possible sale, so we went to park and saw him on our way to the stadium. We got them at 10 below his offer, 20 above face, and started on our journey through campus.

After a few minutes we were really happy with our decision as not only were they good seats - he was the only guy we saw selling tickets all day. This was just a continuation of our good luck as the rainy weather held off and only allowed a spritz on the crowd, and the game was definitely one worth watching.

Our timing on everything couldn't have been better. We walked into section 5 just as the national anthem was playing, and the flag was being raised, then lowered down to half mass. There were tons of people continuing to flow in to the already sold out game. We made it up to our row and were delighted to be seated next to some fellow michigan fans - sophomore students who made the 2.5 hour drive down that morning.

In a nutshell, this game was exciting - an emotional roller coaster that had me cheering, cringing, trembling, and screaming for the boys in maize and blue.

Things started out quick in the first quarter, foreshadowing what was looking to be a great game. The, the ND quarterback got hurt and taken out of the game. (He got hit in the face and couldn't see out of his right eye). It was as if someone poked a hole into the balloon of the stadium as you could feel the energy just deflate out of the ND fans, and their interest almost decrease entirely.

I didn't drive 2 hrs and pay 100 to watch a blow out game . . .

Luckily, after some amazing plays and an epic run by Denard Robinson, the Michigan spirits were back up as we were leading, and would continue to do so for the majority of the game. Going into halftime, there was still no word on the ND quarterback.

The Michigan band played a collection of Lady Gaga songs- Bad Romance, Poker Face/Papparazzi, and Just Dance. The flags and dancers were dressed in black leotards and blonde wigs with bright pink bows in their hair. It was a pretty good performance, entertaining to say the least. The ND band started off with some rhapsody in blue, continued with some other jazzy tunes, then finished with a rendition of "America the Beautiful" while in a formation that outlined the United States and said "USA". I've always been a fan of the halftime shows, but never wanted to make the time commitment to be in the marching band.

Back to football, the 3rd quarter brought the stadium back to life as their starting quarterback ran onto the field. Everyone had the feeling of "alright! Now we're gonna see a game" and see a game we did with several close goals on both sides, and an incredible 95yard run on the ND side. Once that happened I was just in shock. No one saw it coming, and no one could believe that it actually happened.

Nothing much happened the rest of the third quarter, as all the major excitement happened in the last 5 minutes of the game. We were 8 points ahead, and seemingly doing anything we could to just hand them the game. Luckily they didn't want it bad enough - throwing us 2 (maybe 3) interceptions which could have lead to major plays. Even though their major run had me shaking with nerves, I knew our guys would be able to answer the call and give us a win. After too many close calls and wringing my hands with worry, it happened- we scored!!! It was such a great feeling to deflate the ND spirit with only seconds left on the clock and come through with victory.

I WAS SO EXCITED!!!

The stadium, well 75% of it was speechless. You could feel it in the air. Previously the sun came out to try and lift their spirits, but once we scored it went back to hide behind the clouds. Stunned, the ND fans all stayed as the teams left the field and their band took formation to play their alma mater. It was quite epic to sing "Hail to the Victors" in south bend, in the ND stadium.

We were all smiles, saying GO BLUE! And high fiving anyone wearing the coveted maize and blue gear. Walking back to the car we paused to take pictures with Touchdown Jesus and soak in the feeling of victory.

Although the spirit of away games is nothing like winning at home, there's something fun and addictive about following your team and cheering them on.

Bowling Green, and potentially Michigan State, Indiana, and Purdue are in my future travel plans for the upcoming weeks, and I hope our team can deliver as exciting a performance.

One thing though, we may want to look into a new kicker. Or just assign that guy more drills at practice.

~Jenna

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The Spam Mail: cont

I totally forgot!

Part of what started the whole conversation with the guy was him asking me about my accent when I asked him what station he was looking for.

I said that my mom was from Barbados, so maybe that's what he was hearing, but he insisted it was something else - yet very distinct.

I guess I say certain things with a british caribbean flare sometimes :)

~Jenna
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