Deep In The Forrest

This is a very strange planet, and awfully odd universe we have created for ourselves, am I right? But we may as well appreciate all of the crazy things that make it home while we're here... That includes, for me, never growing up (as I've mentioned before). I told you that this past Friday , Mr. J and I took our tent down to Mom-n-Dad's house to "test" it out. This means fixing up a test campground, which we ended up making right behind the house, not far from the extension cord, and not too far from civilization. We're silly, pansy idiots, I know. But even so, we still had fun, sweated to death and I made it through the whole night without even one mosquito bite. That in itself is a miracle! I thought I would entertain you with one of my infamous captioned slide shows. These are a few shots I captured on the way. To start, I really overdid it with the sunsets, but I just couldn't keep my eyes off the gorgeous sky. Hope you get a kick out of them. No matt...

The heat, for one thing... this Memphis heat is eating away at my soul. It's too hot to move. In fact, most of the time I don't want to move a muscle. Oh and first off, since I went through a bit of a "blogging hiatus" through the weekend's events, I would like to rewind really quick and state that partly, the reason for our trip to Hot Springs was that June 1st was Mr. J's Birthday... He was a big 3-2. YEAH!!! Rock On Richie! He's my nerdy bad ass... and I'm privileged to be on his inside track. ;) [Love You Bear]. I peeled myself out of bed this morning, took a nice hot bath in "green tea" bath salts. Threw myself together and trudged down the road to begin the day. At lunchtime, we walked down Main Street, they were doing karaoke by the park, which drew quite a crowd. I spied a couple of Council members performing a rendition of "My Girl". They didn't sound half bad. However, upon returning from the heat, I had to shed my ov...

Whewwww!! I tell ya, a little vacation does a lot of good sometimes, even if it is just a few days. I'm around, but playing catch up and trying to get things back to normal at the House of AJ. It's not an easy task to get back in the swing. The slight vacation from the blogging left me refreshed. But now I'm back! Hot Springs was great fun, we all got along well... better than expected, I didn't have to strangle anyone, the kids had a good time. I actually got to have my Thermal Mineral bath and Massage this time, and the weather held out nicely. I will catch you all up on the events of the weekend between now and Tomorrow or so. I'll let you in on all the cool details... if you promise to come back and visit me! :) Don't be such a stranger y'all! Moving along, let's get to this week's Weekly Words Challenge (WWC), brought to us by the ever-rockin Tink of Pickled Beef . This week's words are "Heavy" and "Light". I almost took ...

Not only am I trying to battle "mid-week", I am playing catch-up from having been on vacation, this being my first day back to the grind. My morning began less-than-delightful with a power outage on my entire block, so I was late, as well as attempted to get beautified by the soft glow of candlelight (this was not a successful venture). So scarecrow me, has finally added the remainder of the photos to my Hot Springs 2007 gallery... Here for your review... Hope you're all liking them (there are a good many photos here, and some of them may be repeats at this point so my apologies). Just Click To Play The post from yesterday was quite long, as Blu pointed out, but it details our trip mostly, so if you feel like the read, then catch up... If not, you can view the trip in pictures, which always speak for themselves! :) XOXO --> AJ

Hot Springs Trip, October 2007 ...And, we're back! The trip was a success, with a few small pitfalls, we had a great time. We packed it all up and headed out Friday, listened to Dan Brown's "Digital Fortress" on audio CD on the way... and arrived at our destination sometime around 4 PM... Checked in and got comfy. Took in the scenery, and took a few photos of the lake upon our arrival. As you view the web gallery, you will see the views of the lake which is the view that we had when we walked out onto the deck surrounding our little bungalow. Great in the morning, and great at night when the lights of the bridge appeared. After breathing in our surroundings, it was time to think of dinner. We chose to go to a favorite little "down home" Italian restaurant off Central near downtown called "Facci's Italian Restaurant". This place is "home"... the people are super-nice, and the food is fantastico! We made the mistake of having an appeti...

We arrived home yesterday from our 3 night stay in Hot Springs. Everything was nice, I'll detail the story shortly. I've had tons of photos to filter through, and I'm trying desperately to get them ready to present to you guys so you can enjoy a glance at our trip. I'd like the photos to accompany my little rundown of our weekend's events, so that it can bring it to life for you all. So come back soon and see that--I may have it up before the day is over, if not first thing in the morning. Meanwhile, I'm running late on the day (as I took today as an extra day off), and haven't even posted my WWC for this week (brought to us, as always by the sparkly and magical Tink of Pickled Beef . This week's words are "Disguise" and "Reflection" . "Mr. J (Richie) posing here with Sophia Loren" For my official "entry", I am incorporating both into one photo... the photo is just a bit fuzzy, but it illustrates what I want. Whil...

Well, something like that! I'm hurriedly making my preparations for this weekend's big Hot Springs trip. If you weren't around last year when Mr. J and I went but want to see, you can Catch Up Here . Feeling the pressure of last-minute details, I have to get the car serviced and ready, pack, make preparations for my animal-children (Sal and Rodney), and get our road music and audio prepared. Last year, we listened to a very cool Book on audio by the author, Dan Brown... it was entitled "Angels and Demons" . This time, we have on hand "Digital Fortress". Dan Brown's material is quite engaging, and he always has some little technological twist in his books (so far). These are the only two I've ever read or listened to, if you will. So that's fun. Of course, I also have my very ecclectic collection of music... anything you can imagine from "Yaz", to "The Ramones", to NOLA's "Down" and "Morbid Angel" (j...

I trust you're all having a pleasant Monday. 'Pleasant Monday', you say? 'Is there such a thing?' Well, Mondays (or your equivalent first day of any given work week) can always be trying, but it's all what you make it... like anything else in life. We have to stop and remind ourselves, possibly daily, to take it just one step at a time and enjoy each and every moment. I've decided that we're going to have a Pop Quiz. That's right, it's Monday and I'm giving you a Pop quiz. Aren't you glad I wasn't your teacher? :) So take out your pencils (in this case your pencils are your computer's "mouse" devices), so that you can answer today's Monday Test. Once you've gotten your results, come back and tell me how you did. Go Here for Monday's Test In other news... Mr. J and I have planned our 2nd Annual October Trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas. This upcoming weekend. This time, I will be armed with my Nikon, so no worries...