the little bro is a college graduate!

It seems like just yesterday that little Marc Lonett was moving into Ikenberry Hall as a freshman at JMU. The past 4 years having my little brother in Harrisonburg have been wonderful. I have so many great memories including too many late night Taco Bell trips to count, winning intramural championships, and being an obnoxious older sister driving through campus and yelling out my window at him when he was a freshman.

Everybody wants to be a Lonett and here is some photographic evidence.

warped tour.

those are high school musical dog tags for an army themed party.

road trip to psu.

thanksgiving food coma.

dhall crew.

jmu playoff football.

hannah montana & oliver oken <3

lumberjack slam jam. ps did you know we were born in canada?

let's go pens.

walt disney world!

heading south on 81.

1787.

looking classy.

super sweet 16. plus six or seven.

standard.

wilson steps.

does this count as annoying?

homecoming.

merry christmas from the lonett sibs.

Now he's a big bad college graduate!

The thing I love most about the time I've shared with my little brother in Harrisonburg over the years is getting to see him transform into this amazing person. He is doing such great things and is always an inspiration to me. I'm glad I have at least one more year of living in the same town. Around this time next year look out for a "Marc Lonett Become a Townie" petition. I have the best little brother ever. I love you.

i'm currently obsessed with...

here are a few things i am currently a bit obsessed with.

1) guacamole and/or avocados. anytime i am at a restaurant and they have an item on the menu that involves one of these things it's pretty much a 100% guarantee that i will order it. i made some guac tonight and it is such a wonderful way to enjoy a monday evening. want some? (i'm only offering because you aren't here and actually can't have it.)

2) Pinterest. it's a site that you can use as a virtual cork board/inspiration board/place to find the cutest things ever. i enjoy finding craft projects (that i don't have time to do), interior design stuff (for an apt that i'm not living in yet), and tropical escapes (that i don't have $$ to go on). so basically it's a good place to day dream and find inspiration for stuff you may actually be able to do one day. i also found this matching couple tattoo, gag a little but refer to #1

3)

this wine found here. i know pretty much nothing about wine and make purchases based only on physical appearance of the bottle. i first found this wine at Downtown Wines & Gourmet. i felt a little classy. later i saw that they were selling it at sheetz. i felt two things, sad because i wasn't as classy as i had originally thought, and excited that it was easier to obtain. i don't know who i was fooling, it has a screw off top how classy did i really think i was?

4) this:

ok so maybe i'm a little biased, but i love, love, love this song. i don't mind being serenaded by andrew with it every now and then.

OH! also andrew just released his debut ep, a little less rough last week. you can listen and download for free here! his little sis and i designed the cover art:

5) i am obsessed with spring and it cannot get here and stay here fast enough. i painted my nails "mellow yellow" today in the spring spirit. see photo from #1.

what are your current obsessions?

merch table masterpiece...

Here's a little peak at the super-cool-DIY-merch-table-light-up-sign that I made for Andrew's show at Jammin' Java yesterday!

Here is the before, it was the box my roller derby skates came in!

The next thing I did was print out his name in the same fonts I had used for andrewrohlk.com and his stickers. I'm such a font whore this was a crucial step for me.

Then I cut out and traced his name onto the box using the print outs as stencils and carefully cut the lettering with a box cutter.

Almost done:

Add some white lights and you've got a finished product:

Check out the set up the day of the show:

We thought about painting the outside of the box black. it looks so cool in low lighting with out it, but as you can see here in a venue that isn't as dimly lit it looks a little silly with the skate logo on it. We're probably going to tweak the design a bit for the next show.

If you'd like to see a little day before the show performance check out this adorable sing-a-long!

Part of this idea was inspired by this project:

Let me know if you have any suggestions for improving the super-cool-DIY-merch-table-light-up-sign.

rad things i've been doing...

So I've been pretty busy lately! Yikes! Here's a little peek at some of the exciting things that have been keeping me occupied!

I now have all of my very own roller derby gear!! Which i've been using three nights a week at practice! If you missed my post on joining the Rocktown Rollers check it out here. Speaking of the Rocktown Rollers, our first home bout is coming up on March 27th! Let me know if you want tickets because I have some. If you're in Harrisonburg you definitely don't want to miss this!

I saw Hellogoodbye in concert. Before you [completely] judge me check out one of their new songs here. Their sound has changed and matured so much since "Here in Your Arms"... in a very, very good way. Forrest (lead singer) is super adorable. How can you not love them?

I got locked in my apartment. Yes you read that right. LOCKED IN. The roomies and I were late to work and had to exit through the secret upstairs of Jack Browns! Kinda cool, plus all my co-workers found it extremely entertaining.

I bought new heels and have been working on being a better girl by wearing them at least once a week to work! Ohh look at me go! It's on my 24 Things to do while I'm 24 list! Thanks to McKinzie for walking a bit slower with me on my first day out in them ;)

I went to my first Pens game in the new Consol Energy Center! It was also Andrew's first professional sporting event ever! So what the Pens lost, we got to see a couple awesome fights at our end of the rink. Plus here we are hanging out with Geno & Sid!

So there it is. Some exciting updates in the life of Jess Lonett. Expect more excitement soon!

miss america 2011!!!!

Saturday (1/15) was the Miss America Pageant. One of my favorite days of the year! My love for Miss America goes back to an old family tradition where my extended family would hold their own Miss America Pageant each year and the winner had to wear her crown to every family event after, or she would lose the crown to the runner up. It was pretty intense. There have been jokes made at funerals when the family's Miss America shows up not wearing the crown. I was never old enough to compete while this family tradition existed, so now I've started my own.

This year decorations included a patriotic back drop for head shots and posters with all the contestants' official head shots and the state they represented. We all picked random states from a bowl and competed along with the pageant.

Some of the talents were a little more than tragic. I'm looking at you Miss Delaware! We had our own talent portion during commercial breaks involving pageant talents in the form of charades. Some real gems were ballet in a fat suit and naked guitar playing.

The entire room was rooting for Miss Virginia since she's from JMU. She made it to the top ten, but didn't make it into the final five. The 2011 Miss America is Miss Nebraska, Teresa Scanlan. We all thought she had a major stink eye, but I learned from the What the Buck Show, that it was just a false eye lash gone wrong.

(source)

In our own version of Miss America we awarded the top 5 with gold medals and Diane was the lucky one to have Miss Nebraska and she, too, got to be Miss America for the night.

"I think my reign is off to a great start." - Text from Diane the day after she was crowned Miss America. I agree completely. I can also check off number 9 from this list! I will leave you with our fantastic head shots. Tootles!

did i just join the roller derby?

Last Tuesday I went to Fresh Meat Try Outs for the Rocktown Rollers, Harrisonburg's roller derby team! If this sounds crazy to you and you never in a million years could see me joining the roller derby you need to catch up a little on my life and read this. It's been almost a year of fascination with roller derby and the day had finally come to see if my roller derby dream would become a reality.

I had no idea what to expect going into Fresh Meat Try Outs. The main information I had gathered was to wear something comfortable and to bring water.

I walked in the door of Funky's Skate rink and looked like a little lost puppy. I had no idea where to go and all the derby girls were putting their gear on. I was more than a little bit intimidated. I was introduced to Mama Meat who helped me gather up the gear I would need: knee pads, elbow pads, wrist guards, a helmet, and skates. I had to sign a form and then after some figuring out the proper way to wear the pads I was ready to go.

Four Fresh Meat were there for the try outs including myself. To start everyone was sitting in a circle on the track doing some stretches, one of which they referred to as the stripper and I found that amusing. While we were warming up they had everyone go around the circle for introductions- Bam Bam Brawler, Betty Crasher, Knasty Knitter, Jess. That last one just doesn't sound as badass.

After warm ups we skated around the track and were taught the official derby stance. I was struggling with all the effort in my tiny little body not to fall down and be the worst skater in the history of the roller derby. A girl in yellow and black striped tights skated up beside me and gave me some pointers. One of the girls even said I looked like a derby girl, but my skating gave away my secret that I was not.

I survived the skating with out breaking anything and then we moved onto some drills across the track. We had to step side to side, forward and backwards with out sliding on our wheels. We did lunges and then spider crawls back. We learned how to do proper single and double knee falls.

Following the drills the freshies all got to watch the vets scrimmage and learn a little more about how derby works. I knew the general gist going into this, but there is so much skill and strategy involved! It's exciting to learn more about the world of derby. I was surprised by what I was able to do or at least attempted with out even thinking twice about. "Skate and then fall and get right back up and keep skating? OK." I did it. Not well but I did it.

After the practice I joined some of the vets at the Dodger for drinks. I sat outside at a table with Brawlin Chain (the girl in the yellow and black tights), Snake Legs, and Blue Steele. I learned more about derby and it was nice to just meet people, which is hard to do while you're trying to avoid falling on skates. I also chatted with Jana-cide and Troch who are the ones who started the Rocktown Rollers 3 years ago.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how my roller derby career progresses. If nothing else at least I can cross off #3 from this list. I'll keep you updated on my progress and I'll leave you with something Jana-cide told me - "there's nothing better than looking over your shoulder and seeing a girl down on the ground because you put her there." We'll see if I ever make it to that point.

my twenty-ten.

It has been exactly 365 days since my first blog post. You can find it here. It was one of my New Year's resolutions for 2010. I know I didn't run a 5-k or use my snooze button less. Some of my other resolutions I can't remember if I did - how am I supposed to remember if I ate breakfast or kept my room cleaner? I'm assuming no on that last one. Writing a blog is the only resolution I kept for 2010 and I am content with that.

A lot has happened in the last year and I'd like to share a bit of that with you. There's going to be a lot of pictures and other gems. [Which means a lot of scrolling.] If you've got cooler things to do and just want to get to the juicy deets you can skip down to the bottom for my 2011 resolutions, but I'm just saying all the other stuff is probably cooler then what you'll find there. Here goes...

Things I did...

I won an intramural championship (or 2 or 3).

I got a new tattoo.

I snagged a super cute boyfriend.

I played tambourine at open mic night.

I graduated.

I went to my first homecoming as a JMU alum.

Here's some more stuff I did that I don't have photos of...

I streaked the quad, I cried at Toys Story 3 (all three times i saw it), I went skinny dipping, I got my first job and my first big girl apartment.

Trips I took...

I took some JMU friends to Pittsburgh. (photos taken here.)

I road some roller coasters at Cedar Point.

I went to Tulls Bay with my MGL loves.

I went to Richmond & got an official tour from Emza.

I went to Busch Gardens with O-team kiddies.

I had a romantic weekend with Steve... I mean I went to Deep Creek with my home pals.

I went apple picking.

Bands I saw...

(click on the band name for either a video/song I like from them & if they're on the same line it was one show.)

Spoon

Fun. | Relient K | Paramore | Bonus video of all three together!

Parachute

Butch Walker | Train | Bonus Butch Walker for you T. Swift fans!

Beach House | Vampire Weekend (This show was my favorite of the year!)

Jamie Lidell

Miniature Tigers | Freelance Whales (we didn't make it to DC in time for Mini Tiges, but the video is too good not to post.)

Morning Benders

Sara Bareilles

Steel Train | Fun. (I'm glad i saw fun. twice because both those videos are rad)

Looking back I had a ton of adventures in 2010! Not only did I do a lot I had amazing people by my side while I did it all. Even though a lot of it was great, I'm glad 2010 is over and I'm ready for 2011. I don't really have a list of resolutions this year like stop biting my nails or become a vegan. I already have this 24 things to do while i'm 24 list so adding more things to do seems silly. My resolution is to figure out how to be Jess Lonett in the grown up world.