Pain, Ink, and Inspiration (Or “Jeannie Gets a Tattoo and Lives to Tell About It”)

So, I got a tattoo today. Really, nbd. Just kidding, it’s a HUGE deal! 


I’ve been thinking about getting one for the last 20 years or so but was never certain about what I’d get or where I’d get it. I’m really glad I waited because if I had gotten one at 19 I’d be stuck with a floral tramp stamp, I’m almost sure of it. So I approached getting a tattoo much like I approach most things, I wanted something that made me happy and something I could look at every day and be proud of. Basically, I just wanted to really feel like getting this would make it a part of who I am and what’s important to me. What’s important to me? My family, my kids, especially, books, the written word, creativity and fun. I wanted never to lose myself in what society thinks of me, whether it’s a career path I’ve taken or whether someone has labelled me “Mom” or “wife” or “geek,” I want a reflection of who I am to be evident in everything I do, essentially, make my life an inspiration of things that are important to me. I want to inspire. Inspire my kids to be good, kind sould, I want to inspire strangers to be courteous and thoughtful and I want to inspire... SHUT UP JEANNIE.

Really, people just want to know one thing: HOW BAD DID IT HURT?!

Daily "Squeeee!"

Today, I got a letter from New York. Seeing that I life in Germany I don't usually get mail from New York so I was of course curious to see what it was.


Inside was this: 

A letter with the Penguin Group header, "signed" by Dutton Books and a signed bookplate from John Green!!!


You probably wonder now how I came to get this so below is what happened.

The backstory: 
Back in June 2011, John Green announced that he would sign every copy of the first print of his new book The Fault In Our Stars (which is supermegafoxawesome and Jeannie will actually write a real review about it now that she FINALLY read the damn book). (See video here) This means about 150,000 books to be signed until November. So of course everyone went and preordered and anxiously waited for the book release in early January of this year.


As a big John Green fan I, of course, went a head and preordered the book. Sadly, my copy arrived unsigned, as did a lot of other copies order from Amazon UK and Amazon DE. John Green did something amazing tho. After signing all the books he went ahead and send out signed bookplates for everyone that preordered but didn't get his signature.

So this is the very much uninteresting tale of how I came to get a letter from Dutton Books. If you have NOT read The Fault In Our Stars yet (or any other John Green book) WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? In case you are still not sure if you want to read it, here is a video of John Green reading the first chapter and also the second chapter.

Hello! Hallo! Ciao! Salut!

Where do we start? So there’s the two of us. And we are friends. Not just regular pals but we’re besties of the best kind. Kindred souls. Same Brain Theory, it’s all very scientific and kismet-y. But before we bore you with the tale of our girlmance (we totally just made that up!) we think the only relevant thing you need to know is that we have a lot of things we find funny, interesting, touching, disgusting, and incredible we’d like to share and because really, it’s just too good to keep to ourselves. Most of what we will share will come in the form of book reviews, television show recaps and/or reaction posts, fashion reviews of stuff we like (we are by no means experts but we know what we like), and at times we may even fangirl (Fangirling will only commence after proper and adequate warning is issued so as not to offend).  

A few ground rules: we will always keep things SFW and PG, because honestly, we have kids! (ok, only Jeannie does at the time of this writing and even though they are not old enough to surf the web yet, it’s only a matter of time before they uncover all our internet follies and we’d like for them to NOT know everything we do *eyebrow waggle* ifyouknowhatImean...) PG technically means “with Parental Guidance” which means there may or may not include mention of Jeremy Renner’s butt, but no naked pictures of such (we just lost all our followers!). Also, we don’t do hate here, so if you want to hate on something we post we will delete your rude and hateful comment. You know a blogger loses his wings every time a comment is deleted so lets all be respectful here, ok? And that’s it! We’ll keep it simple, keep you entertained (hopefully) and keep the bar open until 10pm. What? Nevermind.