Hello. Jennifer can't come to the computer right now to write a proper entry due to her current obsession with Soul Calibur 2. (Spawn!) If you'd like to leave a message for her, press one. Otherwise, please come back later when hopefully she'll have detached herself from the Xbox.

You know you're talking to an engineering major when in your conversation (which has nothing to do with engineering) she begins going into job parameters and the structural integrety of boxes. When we're face to face, she sees my smile and exclaims, "I can't help it!" But on the phone I can smile to myself while listening to her go into all the technicalities of everyday life.

I have a lot of unused web bookmarks, either because I don't have a use for that information anymore or that I've lost interest in the subject. But for the life of me I don't know why I have a bookmark for Extreme Ironing. "The sport that is 'extreme ironing' is an outdoor activity that combines the danger and excitement of an 'extreme' sport with the satisfaction of a well pressed shirt." I didn't even know such a thing existed until I was cleaning out my own bookmark folder.

Here in the apartment of Matt and Jenn, we have a lot of boxes of cereal. Both opened and unopened, fourteen was the last count. Matt rearranged them and put the expiration dates on the side of the boxes in bold black ink, so we eat them in order. (He's organized like that.) I dubbed him the Cereal Captain and answered him with "Aye Captain!" upon the issue of the consumption of cereal according to date edict. He wasn't as amused as I was.

Thanks for the mouse name suggestions. So far I'm leaning towards Pepper and Brock. Darrett's joking suggestion that I name one of them Death flashed me back to high school and I thought this little tidbit of my past would make for an interesting entry especially since my life has been less than interesting lately.

Back in high school, my nickname was "Death." I was one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. War ended up being my roommate for four years in college and she was my maid of honor at my wedding. The last I heard from Famine she was engaged and spending a lot of time in Germany, her fiance's home country. Pestilence fell off the map a couple of years after high school.

Currently the closest thing I have to a nickname is variations of my given name: Jennifer, Jenny, Jenn. Most people who know me call me Jenn. I don't tell people to call me that, the shortening of my name just seems to naturally happen over time. Very few people call me Jenny, but these people are or were closer to me than most. I internally cringe when someone I've just met asks if they can call me Jenny because for me that version of my name is more intimate and affectionate simply out of my own personal history. (Matt seems to be the exception since he calls me Jennifer.)

When something breaks my first response is to exclaim "No!" at it, as if I can verbally convince a piece of machinery to unbreak itself. This may or may not be followed by pleadings of "Please... Please work." while fiddling around with said machinery. At this moment my recently broken sewing machine and I are no longer on speaking terms.

My favorite interview question to date: Do you balance your checkbook? That one was a new one tossed into the standard gamut of questions.

I still haven't named all of my mice. Other than Cinnamon and Alex (the two mommas), I've given names to Alice, Astrid, Zoey, Spike, and Giovanni (my favorite). Two of the male mice have yet to be named: one is black with white spots and the other is a dull grey with white spots. Feel free to offer up suggestions in the comments.

his
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empty aquarium
bag of oreos
chocolate poptarts
everything in its place
mountain dew
lots of pillows
balanced checkbook
movie collection
order

hers
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two tanks of mice
bag of wilted lettuce
strawberry poptarts
it's around here somewhere
diet coke
lots of bags
sort of balanced checkbook
postcard collection
disorder