The Customer Adds Something Special

Here's a fun fact: apparently I don't know the difference between a Jersey Mike's chicken cheesesteak sandwich and the inside of my own face. While I was eating it for the first time, I thought it was tricky to chew and when I was finished, I had accidentally chomped a big hole in the inside of my lip.

I've been up thinking of slogans the company can use: 1. "We get the sandwich started but you make it special." 2. "What's our secret sauce? You are." 3. "We know there's something wonderful in each of our customers." 4. "Without you, our sandwiches would just be sandwiches." 5. "Lose yourself in our sandwiches."

Urine...yep, let's go there

I can't help but write about how incredible it feels to urinate after having a full bladder you've had to hold for a long time. Whether you were driving, in a class, out getting a little exercise, watching a movie in the theater, or you just can't stop watching YouTube videos for one reason or another, sometimes you have to go pee for a LONG time and you just keep holding it in!!!

There are few things in the world that feel greater than emptying your bladder after a long time. It feels INCREDIBLE! You feel so good afterward that it seems like you could do anything. Suddenly every trivial thing you do seems like a big deal. Somebody tells a joke and you realize not only can you hang around listening to it and smile, you can actually laugh in a way that shakes your whole body and no pee is going to start dribbling out. You can jump without creating a waterfall. You can sit, stand, or lay down in comfort. You can have a conversation and not only that, you can actually focus on and hear what the other person is saying! You can eat something or even take a drink now! If the "holding your urine in" was a result of one too many YouTube videos, you might realize that it might not have actually been necessary to watch a guy mostly lip sync to a strange song combination in pajamas & you can't even tell if the spots on the pajamas are for a giraffe or if they're pepperonis and he's supposed to be a slice of pizza. He never put his hoodie of the pjs on so he never gave you a chance to solve the mystery. After finally emptying your bladder and realizing how much better you feel, how much healthier, how much more energetic, you also note that it is possible that less time could have been spent analyzing whether an odd stranger is dressed like a giraffe or a slice of pizza. However, if you hadn't held in that pee for such a long time, you might not be aware of just how great you feel now!

How to Ruin Girls Camp in 10 Easy Steps

Camping always makes me laugh. Last month I attended my first Girls Camp since I was a teenager so there was plenty to laugh about. This is a light-hearted list of things that make the week extra "fun."

1. Complain about everything! They're making you walk? How miserable! You have to wash your own dishes? Ridiculous! Don't waste your time being happy about anything. 2. Ask what you'll be doing next a minimum of 12 times a day. When somebody points out that the schedule is posted, refuse to acknowledge it. 3. Say inappropriate things. Any thought that enters your mind should come out your mouth. That's what true freedom is. 4. Talk about what you'd rather be doing. When you start phrases with "I'd rather be..." and finish with some kind of modern convenience, it helps the whole group question their choice to attend.

5. Use the bathroom 10 times a day, especially if there's only one bathroom. Don't stress yourself out by hurrying. Think about your life & your choices. Primp extensively. When people wait a long time for you, they appreciate your beauty more. 6. Pack too much stuff. If you don't need it, pac, it! How can you be prepared for anything if you don't have everything? 7. Go to bed too late and get up too early and make sure to spread the wrath of your sleep deprivation. If you didn't sleep enough, everybody should pay the price. Before going to bed, it's best to make loud obnoxious sounds but if you're woken up with similar sounds, be furious about it.

8. Eat a lot in your tent and make sure to leave food open at night. Not only will this benefit each tent mate with crumbs in their clothes and sleeping bags but you can get better acquainted with adorable mountain creatures.

9. Every time an activity gets quiet, it's your job to yell. Yelling gives spiritual thoughts emphasis and breaks up that uncomfortable silence or quiet that everybody's feeling. 10. Participate in testimony meeting by organizing and carrying out a flash mob. Since most testimony meetings are held in a chapel, where it's typically frowned upon to do a flash mob, this would be your most appropriate opportunity to shine.

How to Ruin a Weekend in 10 Easy Steps

If there's something I'm an expert on, it's ruining weekends. If you are worried about another successful weekend, please rest your fears and know that I'm here to rescue you with tips I've found helpful over the years. 1. Try to accomplish on the weekend every little task you wanted to do during the week and didn't manage to accomplish. Monday never seems quite as horrifying as it does when it arrives and your life has been so hectic you've never realized any days during the last week WEREN'T Monday. Clean the house, grocery shop, do yard work, cook for large groups of people and clean it all up. Chores, chores, chores-keep 'em comin'!

2. Let guilt be your tour guide. By mid-day Friday, bring to the forefront of your mind all of your weaknesses, failures, and shortcomings. Focus on each of those items and all the ways that your personal inadequacies are holding back the people you care about.

3. Overschedule. Nothing says making the most of the weekend like trying to make more of it than you are physically, emotionally, or financially able to do. You might think, "But how will this work? We also have X, Y, & Z going on?" Just schedule anyway. Things have a way of working out, even if it means instead of relaxing for a single moment, you spend those single moments driving, crying, apologizing for being late, and screaming inside.

4. Put pressure on the people you love. Even though they didn't plan to accomplish all that you unrealistically plan to accomplish over the weekend, doesn't mean they can't be dragged into the mess somehow.

5. Get easily offended. When stress abounds, being upset and snarky is just one way to slow down the weekend.

6. Make hasty decisions because you don't feel emotionally capable of doing anything else. If you try to think about things before making a choice, what will you have to feel bad about later? This is the time to cease the moment and create a little regret to savor later.

7. ALWAYS say yes to watching other people's kids. If they need their children watched, it means they're doing something fun. Live vicariously through them. The crazier their children are, the more vicarious living you really are doing!

8. Think a lot about giving up. Fantasize about just letting the laundry and dishes go for years and never taking out the garbage. Think about the house just piling up with junk and stinking...about losing your self-respect and eventually not being able to sleep unless you make a make-shift sort of bed out of trash. It feels like the second you give up, that's what life would turn into but you might find yourself much more compassionate toward hoarders.

9. Be there but don't be there. Physically be present but always keep your mind on your problems or what else you should or could be doing. Being emotionally unavailable in the moment is a little like a vacation, right?

10.Think about how life would be if you were alone and nobody cared about you. Now think about how many people are in your life and don't care about you. Ah, that's better, right? Instead of having nobody to care about you, you have lots of people to not care about you!

PLEASE KNOW THIS IS A JOKE!!! We all get down. (Clearly I do) Let yourself feel down once in a while but don't let it stay too long!!! People really do care about you! Life is just hard sometimes. :)

Hebrew National Hot Dogs

I recently saw a disproprtionate amount of commercials for Hebrew National hot dogs. I first want to say that it would be tough to be on a hot dog marketing team. Even Ballpark franks, perhaps the best campaign for hot dogs so far, could only come up with "plumps when you cook it." Why would we want our hot dogs to do that? Back to the Hebrew franks now...the commercial ends with the slogan "a hot dog you can trust." If you are at a point in your life where you're trusting a hot dog, you took a wrong turn my friend! You took a wrong turn.

Saladmaster's Special Night In

For the last 1 ½-2 years, my brother’s been pitching me this idea: “Hey! Wouldn’t you like to have your friends over for a meal that would be free & delicious? Your only obligation would be to hear the chef give everybody the option to purchase the pans that were used to prepare the meal.” That never did sound like something I wanted but eventually he caught me on a weak day (and actually not a weekday) and I agreed. The more I thought about it, I really did want to have dinner with my friends that I didn’t have to cook. Dinner with friends usually takes 1-2 hours, is fun, and full of food people typically enjoy eating. This dinner we ended up having was not accurately marketed. If it had been a truthful pitch, my brother would have said, “Hey! Wouldn’t you like to have your friends over while a guy invades your home for 4 ½ hours? He’ll cook for you AND as a bonus, he’ll cry and talk about his personal tragedies.” I would have answered, “No! I’d rather cook and then get the rest of that from half a year’s worth of testimony meetings!” He would have bantered, “That’s not even the best part though-chances are the food will not be anybody’s favorite.

It will mostly be vegetables and everybody’s likely to leave hungry!” Because I’m an optimist, I like to look at the bright side and that is that testimony meeting is going to seem so short now! And on top of that, nobody will even be asked to try four different varieties of poisoned water and another version of water that’s just plain yucky. As for making it up to our friends, I will have to make them a vegetable and mustard-free chocolate dessert to restore their faith in why we thought we liked chocolate in the first place and we will have to do chores around their house to make up for the time they spent at our home that they will never get back.

P.S. Of course we bought pans that cost as much as a car.

We went to a parade because it's our favorite game: yell and cheer for people you don't care about so they'll throw a piece of taffy at you.