Deep In The Forrest

Maybe I had a better night's sleep, despite the bad dream but I feel a little more energy today. The heat of summer seems to take most of my extra energy away. Fall and winter are just my cup of tea, although early spring will do nicely. No, I've never been a fan of the dog days of summer... especially not around Memphis. Just gotta sweat it out. I'm craving warm, flaky biscuits and gravy... I wish I had gone to Mom's last night and I could have eaten that for breakfast this morning. As it stands now, I haven't eaten anything yet, and I should... I've waited too long since awakening. Today I have plans to have coffee with Kim, and I know what you're thinking, 'You just finished bitching about how hot it was and how miserable you were with summer heat, but yet you will go for a coffee date?' Well, the answer is yes... Coffee does nicely any time of the year, it can cool you in the summer and warm you in winter. I got this from my Mother, and it rings...

Even when I ramble on, I guess it's just a bunch of "Malarkey" as my Dad always called it. So many zany and interesting thoughts pass through my skull on a daily basis, and I forget to write all of them down. Maybe I should start to carry that little digital recorder around with me everywhere so I can capture each and every little and genius and amazing notion. But now I will just ramble a bit and see what comes. My kickboxing class fell through today since the teacher wasn't feeling that well and the other ladies in class had things going on. I was the only one who showed up today, and since it seems like we all had a rough go starting the week, I bowed out and gave Mrs. F an R&R day. I figured I could use the extra day to recharge my batteries too. I think we'll all feel a little better Friday, and maybe everyone will be there. So I went back home, and Richie (who is slightly ailing from an Arm Bar by his instructor), and I went to our favorite little Mexic...

How about a few 'down to earth' type updates, just the daily 411. The changes in the weather seem to have taken their toll on my sinuses today, I've been trying to keep it clear to no avail. Hopefully that's all it is, a few minor sinus problems rearing their ugly heads :) Other than that, I've just been really busy at work and trying to stay afloat in the other areas of my life, trying to stay motivated enough to maintain some semblance of a workout schedule. Then of course Taxes have been a major pain again this year, but hopefully that will resolve o.k. Just gotta do what we gotta do sometimes. I still try to find a few minutes each day to enjoy some relaxing quiet time, to stay grounded and relieve some of the stress. Last night we made eggplant Parmesan (healthy version). What I mean by that is that we try to put better ingredients in it and watch the sodium content. You have to look for hidden evils in the stupid ingredient lists sometimes on food, like "...

Time for a Tea Break, what do you think? The rain has been pouring off and on all week around here. I enjoy the calming effects of the rain, but I am kind of ready for some sunshine. So, it has a somewhat gloomy week. There have been quite a few thoughts floating around in my head as well, so I thought I would try to pin some of these down here if I can manage. First of all, today's the anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's Death. Most of you who know me, know that Jimi Hendrix is a very favorite guitarist and writer of mine. I admire his music not only for the emotion he put into his songs, but for his ability to express things in color and words too. It's just special to me, and I love everything about his music, not to mention the personal significance of it in my life (like for me and Mr. J, etc). I liked him so much of course, you should also know that my motorcycle is named after him. But anyway, nothing much else can be said about the man that hasn't already. He made a...

I had a quick moment at the end of a busy work afternoon to stop and toss together a blurb or two. So, here I am. Today has been another rainy day in the River City, and while I enjoy rain, I am pretty ready for some nice weather so I can of course do some motorcycle cruising. I get antsy if I go too long without a ride. I cranked Jimi the other day just to test and juice the battery. All was well with Jimi. T.V. is in transition right now, and although I don't feel that I "overwatch" television, I do enjoy a few shows. My True Blood season 2 has ended. The finale was OK with me, the major part happened about half way through, so it left for some downtime in which we weren't sure what would happen, but it was still quite good. I enjoyed... the cliffhanger was mostly to be expected, but I was left with an overall feeling of satisfaction. We have books to tide us over until the new season anyroad. With the finales of some shows, other shows are bringin in their fall se...

The Bible gets a fish miracle story, and then here I am with my seemingly limitless supply of snot. Where the hell does it all come from? I think if I could harness the power of lugees then I would be able to take over the world, maybe even become dark overlord of the universe. I know, that's nasty. No nastier than this week in news, and I have grown so bored with it. OK, so I was interested about the Kanye West topic from the MTV VMA awards on Sunday night, so yes admittedly I looked up the trending topics and tried to see what happened after the fact. I read about his apology to Taylor Swift and peeked in on Leno last night just to see what he'd say. I bought into it and took my place among the sheep... Yes, I am ashamed. The fact of the matter is, I am not taking sides for either West or Swift. I like all types of music, am not a racist and am sick and tired of everyone who IS twittering, blogging and yapping about this whole incident saying it is about race. He should not ...

Friday, August 14, 2009 @ 4:30 p.m. It's Friday and I can't be glad enough. Earlier I had ideas that I wanted to blog about so maybe I should have waited until later in the evening to sit down to this so I could concentrate and really think more about the points I want to get across. I'm sure I have a cool post in here somewhere. [Pause] Sunday, August 16, 2009 @ 8:00 p.m. Wow, ok I have certainly blog-slacked again, as I started this post Friday and the weekend hit and I just did not stop really until now. I never had enough time since Friday's beginnings to stop and finish it up, so I will just do that dramatic time lapse thingy and you will enjoy it hehe. Ok, so what happened between "Somewhere", the [Pause] and now? Let's see, where do I start? It's not that interesting at all really. Friday when I got off work, I guess first we went to grab something to eat, and Mr. J drank about half a bottle of Gentleman Jack, and we stayed up way too late . I w...

Yeah yeah yeah, I have felt down about family stuff, worries about my Mother and just life in general all weekend long. But when that happens, something usually makes me laugh and gives me a reason to go on. No matter how weird I feel I look, or how much of a misfit I think I am, there is always someone out there who has it worse than me. Case in point... That's all for the moment, they've got me workin big time today, so I'll be in touch, I promise. It's been busier than ever the last few days. I'll report soon!

Feels like a good day to do some "thinking". I've been kind of mulling a lot of things over, so I thought I would officially just brainstorm it on out in this blog entry. I do not know what is going to come out yet, but here goes. No illustrations or pics, just a bunch of words. ;) Some things that I'm liking on: Sleeping late (any chance I get). Watching True Blood Playing World of Warcraft Playing around on Facebook Watching favorite movies I have seen a million times Annoying people with endless quotes from said movies Days that are cooler than 80 degrees Listening to music Finding quiet time where nobody is bugging me Taking hot baths in some kind of bath salts or oil Some things I hate on: The Daily Grind (a.k.a. S.S.D.D.) Not Winning The Lottery (guess I should actually buy a lottery ticket) Rude People At Drive-Thru Windows Attempts to Manipulate Me By Preying On My Emotions Sink Full Of Dirty Dishes Husband Leaving Unrinsed Dishes To Sour And Stink Finding Sai...

We're officially half way through the year I guess you could say. I made it through the June NaBloPoMo Daily Posting by the skin of my teeth (whatever that means). Now I'm dumb enough to commit myself to trying July. The July theme is "Routine". I guess that can be anything we do daily, or whatever creative way I can use "routines". We'll see how I do. I think I did pretty well with June's "Hero" theme. It isn't required to use the theme daily, although I can. The only thing I am supposed to do while participating in 'NBPM' is to post daily. That's it. July has 31 days so here we go. Anyroad! lolcat that has nothing to do with anything but lol That's it for my first July post... I promise to gather my thoughts and spout something meaningful very soon!

The year is halfway faded, some has been ill-fated but now on we roll. Most of June has passed, nothing lovely ever lasts, now all the birthday kids are grown... on we roll. That's my poetic way of beginning the post. ;) In fact, there have been a lot of spring and early summer birthdays we have gotten through, and as stated before the difficult firsts of all the holidays of the year without my father... and on we have to roll. We have no other choice. No matter what life tosses us, we have to dodge, or catch it with full-on force and keep moving on towards the goal line. It's hard sometimes, I know. Our difficult days and our dark and violent storms are what carries us through to the most beautiful days ever so I'm glad for them all... I know things will get better. Here are the only things I have to show for my birthday this past Monday (6/22). First and foremost, my beautiful Mother gave me this birthday card with lunch money in it... It's a lovely card and a lovely ...

Gonna make one of those 'who knows what' type of posts, with a lot of randomness to it today I guess. I'm late even thinking about writing because I've been busy, but here I am. I've done a couple of adjustments to my blog, you may or may not have noticed. Edited my profile "blurb", and I adjusted the post amenities I guess, changed the verbiage back to "Alms for the poor" for comments, so spare a few for poor ol' Auntie J will ya?? Robin Hood would approve. As well, I added the "Reactions" do-hickey, so gimme some feedback and see how that works too. Then I put my playlist back on the bottom of my sidebar. It's not on 'autoplay', but you can always peek and see what I am listening to and get an idea of my music tastes, which I have said before are quite eclectic. I've noticed not many people have responded to "Uncle Richie Is A Wicked Wizard" story. Was it anti-entertaining? Just wondered... because I thou...

Future Real American Hero ! I Believe The Children Are Our Future... lol My little nephew Blade is quite a kid, he's only 2 yrs old but he already tries to drive everything, and there isn't anything that he doesn't think he can tackle (and he tries!) The photo above was taken at 'home' when I visited Mom the other day. My niece and her husband were there, he was helping do some yard stuff for Mom, and Brandy had the baby there. So of course he was a handful and needed close observation. If nothing else, so that he wouldn't run out and try to follow his dad on the tractor while he was trying to do the bushhogging. That would've been a nice disaster to start the week off right. However, once his dad finished up, he did give him a ride on the tractor, which seemed to make him happy enough for the moment. Please note that he got up on this piece of machinery all by himself, no lie. He also attempted to crank it, but his efforts were thwarted by his dad very qui...

Officially, I'll start the "Ask AJ" section this Thursday. So go ahead and submit to me anything you would like more information about, that means stories, places of interest or just things you wanna know, and I will address these on Thursdays as promised. Come on, it'll be fun! Just quickly since I haven't had time to post, I'm giving the Tater Reds info... Tater Reds boasts that they are 'your one stop voodoo shop. "It's a Blues shop . . . with an attitude!" Open 7 days a week 12 pm - till we've had enough'. Tater has had this shop open for about 15 years here in Memphis down on Beale St., and it's a very popular point of interest in the historic Beale district. There you will find novelties, voodoo items, as well as Memphis and blues souvenirs and interesting character to say the least. It's a must see if you are ever here for a visit. The sign, as you have all pointed out of course, is the coolest! 901-578-7234 ...

April 20 is the 110th day of the year (111th in leap years ) in the Gregorian calendar . There are 255 days remaining until the end of the year. Geez... can you believe it?? Notes from the week leading up to 4/20/09 (or general disturbances and rants of mine). There is a baby bird that has been incessantly chirping out my bedroom window at all hours of the night, which only accompanies my husband's snoring. It's a wonder I get any sleep at all. In a rush last week, I ran by Backyard Burger for lunch. I was listening to the almost creepy "Auto" greetings of the Stepford workers... Every time the door opened, one of them would ring out, "Welcome to Backyard!" and as people left, they would chime out, "Have a great day, it's been my pleasure!"... It's really surreal though, it's like they've been programmed... one girl in particular who kept checking on me a little too much to see "if everything was ok", had a bit of a glaz...

So the weekend was o.k., and of course not long enough. Friday night, we had birthday stuff to do, met up with my drummer, his birthday was April 9th, and then a friend of Richie's had a birthday coming up (today actually), so we made an appearance at their birthday celebrations as well. I weathered the crowd well enough, even though I don't usually like crowds with many people that I don't know, it makes me uncomfortable, but I was o.k. Speaking of birthdays, I was just peeking at the April 13 date on Wikipedia , just out of curiosity and saw these notable April 13th Birthdays: Peabo Bryson, Rick Schroeder, and Al Green Peabo , of course everyone should know, if not for romantic nights spent with his albums, then quite a number of songs from the Disney classics such as "Beauty and The Beast", and "Whole New World" from Aladdin. He's done duets with the likes of Roberta Flack, and others. Rick Schroder , who hasn't sang anything that I know of bu...

Semi-quick little weekend update(s): Saturday night's gig went off without a hitch on our part, and it was nice to get out for a change and hang at the Stage Stop , and hear some other bands too. As I may or may not have said, I elected to do a keyboardless set due to our time constraints and just to see how much more "relaxed" I could be and I really have to say that I enjoyed it immensely, so I might make some permanent changes. Of course not to leave keyboards out totally, but I might set-up next time where I can run over and play a song on the keys, and then have some where I just sing at the mic and can go back and forth instead of feeling awkward behind the keyhboard during a song where I don't play. So it was quite a late night, as it always tends to be when we gig, but I'm glad this week will be sort of a let up from last week's hectic schedule in preparation for the gig. I can take a deep breath and feel a little lighter (mentally speaking). Other tha...

A couple of weeks ago, I made a very half-hearted attempt at reanimating my Strength Training routine... I lifted weights one night, and then let nearly another two weeks follow without so much as a bicep curl. So last night, I got Mr. J to write up another routine for me to try and I began again. I started out with Chest Press, followed by Bench Rows, Pull-Overs and finally Military Press. Most of these were 5 sets of 5 reps each (give or take). I am slightly sore today but for the most part, I usually get most sore the 2nd day after for some reason. However, I did drink Surge by 'Biotest' (not Surge the soft drink) afterward. That is a product that has protein as well as BCAA's (Branched Chain Amino Acids) , and the right type of sugars necessary for fast muscle recovery. Good product, if you are into strength training, lifting, body building, or whatever, I highly suggest trying any of the Biotest Laboratories products. Not to make this a total lesson in muscle and st...

This week begins with me staring through the barrel of such a hot pistol of a week. I shudder to think on it really, and I know that I'll get through it somehow, but there's just too much on my plate for comfort. For starters, band practice not one night, or two but three whole nights this week just to CRAM and get ready for the gig on Saturday night. That means tons of extra miserable driving around for me, late nights, exhausting early mornings and then to top that off I am trying to finalize my tax junk so I can try to file asap. Yeah I know, I have been saying that for a while, I had trouble with some of the forms from my company, and I DID in fact get those all resolved, but It doesn't make things easier to file unfortunately this time. I may owe, and I want to double check that with a good source before sending it off so I can be sure. I know it will all work out, and I shouldn't sweat it, but I am just at the beginning of the trail and just need to take a deep br...

Yeah it's a long title, and I have a slight OCD-type obsession with making sure that my titles are neat and tidy... what's that all about?? But I forfeited that for you guys today. Well a few people have expressed that they were looking forward to my thoughts and couldn't wait to see my junk. That's quite interesting, and could be construed as dirty, but I'll let it pass without giving you guys a hard [time]. The days continue to fly by and the time continues to slip through our fingers like monkey grease. So completely unorganized, busy and random (just like my brain), I will spill my thoughts out today as I go until I am ready to put these up for human eyes. Speaking of Grease, "Monkey Grease" I thought was what it was called... When my Dad used to work on automotive stuff, and I was hanging around him, he had this canister of really green looking "grease", and I thought I remembered him calling it Monkey Grease, but it might have been som...