Below is my most favorite-est mug in the whole, wide world in a photo I snapped earlier this month while testing my new shock-proof, water-proof, gravity-proof, Jennette-proof camera. (Thanks, Dad!) I love this mug so much for reasons I don’t quite understand. Perhaps it is the translucent coating that makes it seem blue and purple at the same time. Perhaps it is the smartly curved lip and the easy to hold handle. Perhaps it is the weight and the size and some undefinable quality of love injected into it by its creator. But let it be known, I do love this mug.

And here is my mug as of this morning:

If my little Java Bean were not a total cuddle monkey, I would have to get rid of him. Sometimes I suspect he is a sociopath who quietly manipulates me with snuggles and nose lickings only so he can systematically break every piece of china and glassware I own without fear of reproof. My Beanie Baby is a total mischief-maker, but he also cuddles my face and sleeps on my pillow at night, so he gets away with it. I guess I love my kitty more than I love my mug, but damn, I really did love that mug.

I just wanted everyone to know that as of this second, Officer Krupke is on the MSNBC home page.

As I have mentioned, Krupke lost a bit of weight a few years ago, but it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It’s hard to get girls when you’re neutered.

Oh, and they also interviewed me and the awesome Jen Larsen. (Hey, publishing bigwigs! She has a book proposal! You should snatch it up!) You can read the article here.

If the Radiolab podcast were a boy, I’d be doodling its name in my notebook with little hearts around it, and whenever it spoke to me I’d break out into a frenzy of nervous giggles. I totally crush on it.

For those of you who do not know the love of my life, Radiolab is a science podcast that explores the mysteries of nature. The latest episode might be of particular interest to anyone who’s run a marathon or has felt like they’ve run a marathon when they only signed up for a 5K. It covered human limits, and the first segment in particular explored the limits of our bodies. First, it told the story of an Ironman competitor who was so determined to finish, even though her body was shutting down, that she literally crawled across the finish line. She also pooped her pants on national TV. (The way to fame can be messy.) The video is below.

They also covered The Race Across America, in which competitors bike across the country over the course of several days, only stopping for one or two hours of sleep a night. Unsurprisingly, they start to hallucinate after several days and lots of them are done in by the awful monotony of the Kansas skyline.

These stories explore the idea that your brain has an “energy governor,” a little switch in your brain that sends out pain signals to your body when you start to run low on energy. It does this so you’ll always have a reserve and never totally run out of energy a.k.a. DIE. Evidently, the energy governor is very conservative, and will tell you to stop long before you are actually out of energy.

However, there are ways to trick the governor. If you simply swish an energy drink in your mouth without swallowing it, your body notices that you’ve been given sugar. It then lets you use more energy because it can tell you’re about to get more energy. Also, if your body thinks you’re about to die, it will let you use energy to help you escape death. This was particularly helpful to one of the bicycle race participants who started hallucinating that terrorists were after him, which gave him a surge of energy during the last half of the race.

The show is fascinating and well-produced, so if you have a moment, or if you don’t have a moment but don’t want to do what you’re supposed to be doing (you slacker), you can listen to it here.

You’d expect the photo above to be in black and white with tattered edges, because that phone is ANCIENT. The Mayans had cell phones like that. Sadly, I also have a cell phone like that. Oh, my poor little cell phone! Once it was the shiniest, coolest gadget on the block. Then two minutes later it was complaining about arthritis and napping in the early afternoon.

I may work in information technology, but I am not a gadget person. My philosophy towards electronics is to keep it until it breaks. The Kindle and the iPad look nifty and all, but I feel no need to buy either one. However, iPads and Kindles are still rather rare, whereas smartphones have recently hit a saturation point. It seems like everyone has one. My friends are always whipping out their phones to check Twitter or Facebook or send messages on their QWERTY keyboards or to run the latest app or Google the answer to a question that has come up over dinner or to show me video of them drinking on a party bus on St. Patrick’s Day. They’re everywhere! Everyone has one but me! I’m feeling less like a less-than-gadgety girl and more like a citizen of the 18th century gawking at the future.

So why haven’t I bought an iPhone or a Droid phone or any phone made this century? The phones are nifty, but the plans are so damn expensive when you ad data transfer and texting. It seems superfluous too when you consider that I spend almost $50 a month on my home Internet service. I don’t use the phone that much. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a quiet person. I don’t chat. I email and Twitter and IM, but I don’t have many phone conversations. Right now, I use a pay-as-you-go plan which I determined was the cheapest plan for me.

But…I feel like I need to get a better phone, one that can access the Internet and lets me text faster. It would also be good to have for when I’m traveling and don’t have access to wifi. I don’t think my pay-as-you-go plan can handle that. I’m going to have to look at my budget and see if I can figure something out. I’m particularly watchful of my expenses now that I work for myself and my income varies from month to month. It just doesn’t make sense to spend a shitload of money on a phone I wouldn’t use that much, yet I know I’m going to have to upgrade soon or be caught in the past.

Roni just posted the first video from the FitBloggin’ 10 conference, and as luck would have it (good luck or bad luck, I dunno) it’s of my panel, Beyond the Blog: Getting Published. As I’ve mentioned before, I cringe at watching myself on video. This reaction used to be because I couldn’t believe how fat I’d gotten, but now it’s more because I wonder, “Do I really talk like that? Are those really my mannerisms? I don’t come across the way I thought I did at all!” The Jennette in my head is not exactly the same as the Jennette on tape. Regardless, I’ve embedded the video below, so if you couldn’t make it out to DC you can now relive the magic in 500×330 pixels.

Ok, I tried embedding the video here, but Vimeo won’t have any of that. It’s something to do with permissions, yadda, yadda, yadda, pay us money. So you’ll just have to pop on over to the Fitbloggin’ site to see it or click on the screenshot below.