The importance of coffee

    I was recently watching a Jerry Seinfeld series about how he goes to have coffee with other well famous people. But one good point he made in an episode where he was chatting with Larry David "Seinfeld" creator is that coffee is short, sweet, and one is still able to socialize. Actually, for me it has been my go to thing if I am just getting to know some one. I think my rational is even if doesn't go well, then at least I can drown the day in coffee.  Actually I was hanging out with someone who I ran into a Starbucks, and got his phone number and have been friends ever since.
    I also went with him tonight to just grab some coffee at a Starbucks and catch up with one another, since both of our schedules have been well busy.  However, this hang out session tonight and the Jerry Seinfeld show I watched sort of made me have an epiphany about what a social glue coffee is. This can even be seen in television shows such as "Gilmore Girls" during the breakfast scenes they order their meals and catch up with each others lives over coffee.  This can even be seen in "Castle" because its a social connector between Castle, Beckett, Espisito and Ryan. 
  While, I think using coffee for a social lubricant is important, it could also cause strife based on how you drink your coffee. I say that because of their are those of use who prefer to add cream and sugar to our coffee. There, are also those who think an espresso is fine as it without the bells and whistles.  This debate could be further categorized by the place one is having coffee, if you go to a national corporation people might think your a lemming, while in other places it could be viewed that you are either well off, or a hipster, depending on the mood and location of the coffee house.  Who knew their could be all this debate over a cup of joe?

The many similarities and differences between Daria and Gilmore Girls

   I had been rewatching the shows Gilmore Girls and Daria for the past couple months and over this time I have learned that their are many similarities between these two shows. For instance the artistic side kicks of the main characters Jane and Lane. Well first of all the names sound similar and they are both really into music and making an impact on the world be it as an artist or musician.

http://tvquotes.net/show.php?eid=196&/show/Daria/character/Jane+Lane/episode/The+New+Kid/quote/I+told+you%2C+first+date+always+stick+with+vandalism+and+loitering.

http://www.gilmorenews.com/2010/10/01/keiko-agena-to-guest-on-house/

    
The comparisons do not end here though as the main protagonists are the two small town teenagers of Rory and Daria.  Also in both of these small towns weird things happen there. For instance in Lawndale a coffee shop was boycotted, and a football player who dies from a field goal poll.  Also in Gilmore girls their are festivals and fundraisers for a bridge that we never see,  and a bunch of weird characters like Kirk or Taylor always trying to find ways to make a buck in the town.  Actually sort of reminds me of Miss Lee from Daria given that he is a political figure of the town, who is constantly trying to maintain control over a town. While Miss Lee is always trying to have some semblance of control over her high school students. 
   Actually all the similarities between these shows made me wonder if Palladino had ever watched Daria and wanted to take a different take on a small town perspective.  I say this because the show Daria ended about the same time that the show Gilmore Girls started on ABC family.   I say this because while these shows have many similarities in their characters, they both have totally different perspectives on town life.  For instance in Gilmore girls people seem content to live their lives in Starshollow while all teenagers are dying to leave Lawndale and go off to college. 
       Also the family dynamics between both protagonists are very different. Daria is not very open with her family and tends to keep to herself and avoids town events like the plague. While, Rory is involved in all town events and is very close with all her family members.  Daria tends to be a realist, and not think highly of others while Rory seems to be the eternal optimist who thinks the best in others and gives people the benefit of doubt as shown through her relationship with Jess in season three.  So I ask you readers do you see any more similarities and difference between these shows and their significance?

The need for stuff.....

      I sadly since January have been trying to clean out my room of all the books, magazine, etc. that I have accumulate since making it through my undergraduate and graduate years. You do not  realize how much stuff you have until you spend an hour or so every week clean parts of your room for three months straight. However, my room while now stuffed with less stuff and mildly clean went through a major overhaul because it has been taken over by aunts. I even got so desperate as to move by bed and clean under there.  Sadly, I am still not done I still have to go through some things I have organized and find more things to toss, sell, or find a place for. It also has many thinking about an old Gilmore Girls episode from season four where Rory comments "Stuff! And it's your fault. You inculcated into me a tolerance for rampant consumerism".
      This sums up perfectly how I feel since it has me wonder why people, me included feel the need to accumulate so many things that they take over your room entirely. I oddly enough have picked up some of my dads minimalistic tendencies to occasionally have a clean space given that most days I am okay with working  in organized chaos.  This ritual cleaning has me think though about applying my situation to people in general who feel the need to accumulate until they have no more room to sleep in their bed, or worse turn into hoarders.
       The common factor in this scenario is items because once you have got an item you have to figure out what you are going to do with it, and what you are going to do when you are done with it be it toss it, recycle it, or give it to someone else.  I also think that their are so many options out  there for products that it easy to accumulate products whether they are cheap or expensive.  Another part is  that their are people out their who either A) like to collect items or B) discover the hard ways that they need beauty products, etc that are not expendable and help them maintain their current appearance.  My finally thought is if people buy items is it because they need them or because they want them? 

Apparently I am viewed as an easy mark....

   I have recently joined a networking club and so far I have had two experiences where two members have seemed to think I am easy mark for them to try to sell their wares.  My first experience involved me going to a local Panera only to get a thirty minute tirade on how I should spend five hundred dollars to start my own business. Soon after this experience I got out of their as quickly as I could and made a decision from that point forward to ignore the member who had suggested I join this multilevel marketing scheme.  I will be civil to this person but I do not like them since while waiting for this thirty minute introduction I learned more about them than I ever wanted to know, and that sort of jaded me from wanting to get to know them any further.
   My next experience was not as bad but  as I was trying to taking notes during a workshop one of the fellow members in the club asked me if I was open to my opportunities job wise. I was then given a business card and website to visit. I visited this website only to view a video about something was probably too good to be true and that also looked like a marketing scheme.  It is these experiences that have me wondering if I have the word rube stamped on my head and no one told me.  Also the point of the place I just joined is to network and make good contacts.
      But how do you deal with people you have figured out the hard way you do not want to network with even if you see them on a weekly to monthly basis?  I think it could be because I am one of the youngest members in the club or they figure I am desperate for money so they think I will get involved in sales to make a buck.  I am sorry to disappoint them but I would like to be able to sell myself through a resume and interview and work hard for my money through an actual job.  So this has me asking the blog-sphere have you ever had people you did not very well think you were an easy mark for some sort of marketing scheme, and if so did you ever do anything about it to show/tell them otherwise?

Defined by a relationship?

  Well, when I was been asked twenty questions by some of my students they asked if I was in a relationship?  I told them they I had a boyfriend. They looked at me like I had won the lottery. Which I guess in a sense I have I found some one who can live with my many neurosis and loves me any way.  However, for some of the teenagers it seemed like being in a relationship was a defining part of their identity.
     I guess I find this sort of clingy aspect weird because I have always viewed it that I was my own person out of said relationship.  I still like to do my own things, watch my own shows, and hell even hog the bed and still in some sense want my own space. Its not that I don't like this person in this space with me, it makes it better and its nice to have someone that banters and keeps up, if not I would be both lonely and bored, and frankly he is one of the few people I know who really gets me.  I just wonder why these teenager girls think there lives need to be defined by whether or not they have a boyfriend? I wonder why they are not focused on volunteering, going to college, or in some shape or form thinking about their future. Or at the very least if they do have a boyfriend their grades should not suffer in the process. 
       Also I think the reason this infatuation towards a guy is so foreign to me is because I have the anomaly of being in a relationship longer than most people have been married and I have an overwhelming fear of commitment and intimacy.  It took me tell about six months ago to be comfortable with the idea of being engaged.  The one good thing is my boyfriend has similar fears as I do so combined we might make a normal healthy person in a relationship.  We both have our own reasons for feeling this way but we get each other none the less.   So all this reflection has me wondering for those single and coupled up do you ever feel defined by your relationship or can you be your own person even while being in a relationship?  And is their some grey area between these two point of views?

Murder she wrote and the art of networking....

   Well along with being a total nerd I am also obsessed with most mystery shows such as "Elementary", "Sherlock", "Castle", and "Murder She Wrote".  Most nights to fall asleep rather than watching mind bending Fringe I will watch Murder she wrote because its slow paced and character driven in comparison to most other television shows.  One thing I have learned over the past couple months of watching "Murder She Wrote" is that she is an excellent at networking. She keeps in contact with her past students, publishers, and friends from high school. Please bear in mind in this fictional world she is a busy write with books tours, lecturing in colleges and high schools, and occasionally trying to take vacations when she is done with a novel.  Also no matter where she is she is always friendly to people and acts like she has known them for years even if she just met them.  I think this gregarious behavior that I have come to admire could be applicable in terms of actual networking.
    I say this because I am still working on my networking skills I have yet to be able to start random conversations with people I hardly know, truth to be told I sometimes I have a hard time carrying on a conversation with people I have known for years because their is a) nothing to talk about or b) its hard to come up a conversation topic one can debate or talk about for hours.  However, as I try to slowly increase my networking circle the introvert that I am I have learned to talk with people without interrogating them, and have even bonded with some of my CVP members this way.  I think my issue is I need to get over my hurdle of being nervous around others and make more of an effort to discover peoples interests, like, dislikes and try to find some common ground.  Furthermore I need to improve with my follow up, I do it with my friends because well I want to see them, and when you meet someone who gets you and your neurosis and is still ok with it, then you are not about to leave that.  Also with these people I can joke and laugh for hours and time seems to fly by. 
      I need to try to apply the way I act towards friends towards other people. I need to take a JB approach to network through being nice to all people I see whether I know them or not, and to keep in contact with those people who I like and have some common interest or bond with. Alright, so my question for this blog is if any of my readers have learned anything about networking from a television show, or did they pick it up through actually going to networking events, etc?

The return of the nerds and very odd references....

    Well let me preface this post by saying that I am a total nerd and our group of people as seems to be underrepresented and put down since the 1980's. Oddly enough my defense for this is most television shows such as "Family Matters", or "Saved by the Bell" was the nerd was always picked on or not seen as "cool".  I never had a problem with this I guess because these nerds were either A) full of themselves in the case of Urkel in some situations or B) did not care what others thought of them as in such cases of  "Revenge of the Nerds" in which we were able to fight back.  Also I have been a nerd, geek, whatever since junior high so I was very comfortable with my identity even other people thought I was weird it was an identity that I become accustomed too.
    However, the odd thing is that over time nerds through television and in life have become "popular".  One change we can see towards this point of view is was through a movie I was watching last night called "Can't Hardly Wait" in which the nerd becomes rich and is dating a super model.   A further indication of this can been in "Gilmore Girls" with Rory she might be a geek but she has a support system through her mother and the whole town of stars hollow. I think the nerd popularity really began to flourish through the show "The Big Bang Theory" because this showed nerds whole while they may have been picked on they were very successful and social people.
   But it was from this show and many others we discover that their are various types of nerds such as the foodies, the D and D fans, the video game nerds, manga etc. While I am sure many of us nerds and geeks have various interests that we like to stay updated on in my case it would be food, fashion, books, and most television shows.  So I guess this whole post leads me to ask you readers what type(s) of nerd are you and why?

So tell me about yourself...

   I was watching this show called "The Middle" and one of the characters Frankie was asked to tell the interview who is Frankie?  The same question has also been asked in the "Nanny Diaries" and the main character gets so freaked out by this question she runs out of the room.  Also as a job seeker this is a question that even stumps me and today as I went to my last workshop while looking for work I learned about this website called Reach 360 which is supposed to help you  figure out how you view yourself and how others view you. I think the reason this is such a tough question is because one does not want to seem like they are pandering to the interviewer while at the same trying to be their natural authentic self whoever that is.
    Their also is a philosophical outer laying to this question such as how well do we know ourselves and how well do other people know us?  I think this question of tell me about yourself just leads to other questions that some people might be too scared or in denial to answer. For me the only reason I guess this question is an issue is I keep on getting older and the world keeps on  becoming more fast paced, it becomes harder to answer this question. Also most people can find out this information through most social networking sites making it even harder for people to interact with others face to face.
       Also my last interview was a while ago so I am very rusty with giving in answer that is both authentic and some what rehearsed because I already feel like a nervous wreck. An interview seems to me to be like a first date where wants to put their best foot forward and be honest while at the same time not revealing every little detail about your personal life. Now you need to keep in mind I haven't had a first date in over a decade but my assumption is that nervousness and worry one faces during the first initial meeting of someone new has not changed since then. I think it is because of these many reason that the question tell me about yourself is such a toughie. Considering I just spent this past post giving the many reasons that people avoid this question, even me. Truth be told even after all this reflecting I am still not sure how to answer this question.