Jen Blicharz {Tiny Gasps Of Joy}

Today I'm going to wrap up Boston with a shout out to one of my other favorite Jens, Jen Blicharz. Jen and I used to work together at a stationery store in downtown Boston. In fact she interviewed with me and I pretty much fell in love with her on the spot. An otherwise socially challenging job immediately became a joy, filled with laughs, and lots and lots of our favorite adult contemporary rock. (It's not easy being the beck and call girls of Boston's upper echelon of socialites, but we made it look easy).

At last I moved to Portland and Jen moved on to work at Soup2Nuts, the animation studio that created Dr. Katz, Home Movies, and more recently, Word Girl. She is an amazing illustrator and one of the funniest people I know. She's too much fun for words, but if you want to get a glimpse of her sense of humor, check out her blog Tiny Little Gasps Of Joy. Her first blog entry pretty much says it all.
I can't end this post without mentioning our trip to karaoke night at Charlie's Kitchen. I hadn't been there in years! If you haven't been there, Charlie's Kitchen undoubtedly has a strange mix of patrons consisting of punks, gear-heads and your typical Red Sox fans, on any given day.Lucky for us we happened upon Charlie's on karaoke night. BEST IDEA EVER! We watched a guy in a Gap V-neck sweater start us off with "Do Me Baby" by Bel Biv Devo, followed by a very shy looking bearded boy, turned mother's worst nightmare, when he sang some Limp Bizkit song, and then we were touched by a punk couple singing a lovely rendition of classic Tom Waits.

Jen Hill and Jen Blicharz enjoying the karaoke

The battle began when Blicharz begged Sasso and I to sing "Saturday in the Park" by Chicago, with her. The photo below pretty much sums up how the coaxing began. Unfortunately Sasso wouldn't budge and we felt that we really needed him on board for that one. Next time Sasso! You better learn the lyrics!!