Jodi This, and Jodi That...

Some people scale great mountains or swim from Cuba to Florida.  Some people discover penicillin or the polio vaccine.  Still others, no less amazing, decide to go to college after having been a grown-up for a while.  Jodi Tocci is one of those great people.  She comes to Cedar Crest to major in Art Therapy, so she can work with Autistic children and help them express themselves through art.



Throwing a party is a tough business.  Of course, you want everything to be just right, and sometimes that means having delicious M&M chocolate candies in specific colors with words or pictures on.  If these candies are exactly what your party needs, your best bet is to call Jodi.  She works for M&M/Mars, and is the very person one speaks to when making these requests.  Only M&M candies can be personalized since they discontinued the Dove Chocolate personalization.  She tells me it's usually people's names and some sort of well-wish (Happy Anniversary!  Happy birthday!  The divorce is final!), but occasionally she gets really off-the-wall requests.  There is, apparently, an official policy prohibiting pornographic photos and blue words; the problem with the words, she says, is that it's a computer algorithm that detects the letters in the blue word letter-by-letter rather than recognizing the word.  Tatianas have a hard time getting their name on candy, it seems.  Yellow is her favorite M&M; he's "goofy and easy-going."

Jodi is originally from Fountain Hill and lives in Northampton, by way of San Diego, where she was married to a Navy serviceman.  While they're no longer married , she does have a three-year-old daughter called Layla who brightens her days and makes her laugh.  And jumps off couches.  And doesn't, as yet, know ANY Eric Clapton songs.

I'm assured Layla spends most of her days right-side-up.