Soft Clothes

Today at work all I could think about was going home and putting some on some soft clothes and just relaxing. I am really stressed at work. It is a huge business that apparently has never been caught up as far as their billing goes. I started there 3 months ago and finally got it caught up within a month. Last month we acquired a bunch of crackhead patients from another pain doctor that lost his license. These patients are so drugged up on pain medications that they have no idea what insurance they have and the pain clinic staff doesn't seem to mind that the patients give them half of their demographic information, which makes my job a nightmare. I really could go on forever because there are so many issues. I guess when I complained that I was bored at my last job, the Gods/Goddesses were listening and smacked me upside the head with the complete opposite!

For the last few days my neck and shoulders have been killing me. I have a hard time turning my head and have a lot of spasms radiating to my shoulder blades. At first I thought I might have slept wrong, but I really do think it is stress induced. At work I really have to concentrate on what I am doing because of all the rules that go along with each department and doctor numbers so I usually put on my earphones and tune everyone out. Today, in the middle of keying I realized how tense my body was. I started questioning if I was always like that or was it just the music I was listening to? I think that I get so involved with what I am doing that I don't really relax. I need to pay more attention to that!

This past week has been very hectic! I saw a lot of Justin, which was nice. Hopefully he's not tired of looking at my face since he saw me four days in a row! I think that is a record for us. I know that we have done 3 days in a row, but I'm not too sure about 4. You might think that is a weird thing to think about, but considering that we live an hour away from each other it really is hard to arrange time to see each other. With his work, my work and his school we are lucky to have 2 days a week.... so, 4 was nice!

Wednesday night we went to see the True Colors Tour in Columbus. It was also the 10 month anniversary of my first date with Justin that only I find important, but I digress...

The concert tickets were an outrageous $72 and we found out that ONLY $1 goes to HRC and the Matthew Shepard Foundation. That is insane! They only used half of the coliseum and that wasn't even sold out. I really think that they should have used the entire coliseum and lowered ticket prices AND donated more than a damn dollar to the causes. I know that a couple of my friends didn't go because the tickets were so damn expensive.

Justin had been reading reviews about the first couple of dates and he told me that Debbie Harry was getting really bad reviews. She wasn't playing any Blondie songs (perhaps royalty issues?) and one of the dates she was MIA! How can she just not show up?? Also, she didn't do the meet and greets like everyone else did after their performances and she didn't join the rest of the acts for the finale of Cyndi Laupers song "True Colors". What a diva! I was pretty disgusted by all of this before we even went to the concert.

When we arrived we walked into the coliseum and heard The Dresden Dolls. I really thought the other bands would have still been on! We quickly found our seats and watched the rest of their set. Luckily enough we didn't miss much and we got to see them perform all of our favorite songs. By the way, can Amanda Palmer be any hotter???

After Dresden Dolls finished their set, Margaret Cho came onstage and said that they would be signing autographs by the merchandise tables during Debbie Harry's set. Justin looked and me and I think we both questioned what we had just heard! I was pretty much like "screw Debbie Harry... I want to meet the Dresden Dolls!" So off we went. The line was long and I think I was the oldest person in the line... well, maybe one or two people were older than me. I did go back in the coliseum to watch Debbie for a few minutes so I can at least say I saw her perform. I had met her years before so I really didn't care so much, especially since her attitude about the tour was a little snatchy.

After waiting for what seemed like forever we finally had out turn with Brian and Amanda. Justin asked both of them to marry him. I'm not sure what to think about that... Brian said they would all have to move to L.A. so I guess I will be single again whenever the tour ends :) They were both accomodating and fabulous and well worth missing Debbie Harry for!!!

When we headed back to our seats we ran into Jeffrey, whom we met at the Johnette Napolitano show a couple of weeks ago. He wore his special yellow jumpsuit just for me! Turns out that his seat was near ours... not that he sat in it. He pretty much danced through the show in his yellow jumpsuit in the area where no one was sitting. People kept taking pictures of him because, really... who wears a yellow jumpsuit to a concert?

Erasure played the next set after Debbie. Who knew that the homosexuals loved their Erasure so much?! There were actually several people that left after their set. Why would you pay that much money and skip seeing Cyndi Lauper?? That's crazy. Speaking of Cyndi. She was phenomenal! She put on an amazing show! I have always loved her, but I really do have a whole new respect for her.

Work the next day was not fun. I decided I am way too old to be going out on school nights! That night Justin was in town so we met for dinner.

On Friday Justin's tarot guild was having an open night so all of us Muggles could go and see what exactly they are up to. It was a session on the Akashic Record, which I think it really interesting. We had to do this exercise on free-form writng and I just couldn't do it. I was alone, sitting in a quiet area, trying to concentrate and I felt like if I started to write, I would start cyring. I'm glad I wasn't on my period or we would have ALL been in trouble! I chose to write nothing. I just didn't want to expose myself like that, even though I knew that no one would ever see what I wrote. I felt like the flood gates would open and I try so hard to keep them in check... ya know?

So... Saturday was our second White Trash night... or "WT Night" as we so lovingly call it. Last week Justin and Becky came over and we made Chef Boyardee pizza's that come in a box. None of us had them since we were kids so we bought a couple and hung out. We were going to make beautiful jewelry, but sadly, my supplies hadn't arrived yet! This past Saturday night it was only Justin and I since Becky was out of town. We decided to make Manwiches and tater tots. I mean, really... you can't get much more WT than that! It actually was really good if I do say so myself! I am quite the WT chef!

Our original plan was to eat our WT cuisine, make some fabulous jewelry (since I had received all of my lovely supplies!) and watch "The Queen", which we have been wanting to see. Turns out that we only had time to eat dinner and make some jewelry. Turns out that I am not only the Jackson Pollack of house painting, but also of jewelry making! The soldering iron is incredibly hot and I am sure am am bound to melt some metal onto my skin eventually. Justin said I get "easily frustrated"... I might be easily frustrated, BUT I am, without a doubt, the Queen of Patience!

Sunday Becky and I had made plans to find a place to go swimming. If you are not aware, Ohio is quite possibly the world worst place to go swimming. The lakes are dirty and filled with oil and gas from the boats and jet ski's. We decided to go to the water park to float on the lazy river and dodge children running around out of control. Sounds fun, huh? Well, we get to the park at 11:30 and the damn thing doesn't open until 1pm. What kind of a water park opens up at 1pm on a weekend? That's crazy. I told Becky I felt like the Griswolds pulling up to Wally World when we pulled in and saw no cars! Oh well! On to plan B.

We went to Caesars Creek (which I am re-naming "Petrol Lake") and put our blanket down in a nice open spot. As our luck would have it, whenever someone came they would put their blanket right next to ours even though there were several wide open spaces. Can someone tell me why this happens?? We proceeded to take off our shorts and shirts and examined our not-ready-for-bathing-suit bodies. For the next couple of minutes we pointed out (literally) all of our flawed and unhappily fat areas of our bodies. My bathing suit is in serious need of retirement. It's too big and the butt just doesn't fit anymore. I have this major sag when I come out of the water, which isn't fun, really. I have to constantly pull the ass up since it's so big.

When we arrived I, of course, did the beach check of seeing if there was anyone with less of a tan or scarier in a bathing suit than me... and thankfully there was, so all was good. What wasn't good was when the extremely hot group of girls sat right next to us. Don't they know that they are breaking the most sacred beach rule? When you are hot, you sit with the other hot people and leave us mediocre people to be miserable on the beach in our too-big bathing suits and extremely white bodies! Ugh! The girls were foreign and spoke a language we couldn't place. I took turns between cursing them silently for sitting next to us with their perfect butts (and they were perfect!) and then wondering if the Dairy Corner would be open when we left for ice cream.

Yes... it's been a hard week. Thank God for soft clothes!

Decorum

Today, in the funeral procession for Justin's father, we were the second car behind the hearse. The ride to the cemetery was on a long and winding country road with lots of hills and incredibly green farmland. It's quite beautiful out there, really.

You would really have to love the quiet of the country to enjoy living out as far out as this was. The houses are few and far between with your closest neighbor a quarter of a mile away. The lawns, for the most part, are neatly mowed and beautifully manicured. This is the kind of town where everyone knows everyone and it seems that no one is a stranger, which is very refreshing.

During our drive from the funeral home to the cemetery I noticed a man standing on his lawn tending to his flowers. Just as we were about to pass he turned around and saw the hearse with it's stream of following cars. In an instant, and without thought, he took off his hat and held it over his heart and stood silently as we passed.

It was one of the most touching and beautiful things I have ever witnessed and I don't think I will ever forget the quiet sorrow of that moment for as long as I live.

Soldering Blues

In case you were wondering... yes! It is hard being a future fabulous jewelry designer!

I regularly read the LiveJournal blog of this girl that lives in Texas. I think I found her after she posted a mix on Art of the Mix - one of my favorite websites. The other day she posted a blog about this piece of jewelry that she bought on my current favorite website Etsy. I have seen this type of jewelry before but I suppose I just never paid attention. After looking endlessly online at all of the pendants that the designers made, I thought to myself that I could do that just as well as they could! I soon became obsessed with the idea of creating my own wonderful masterpieces!

Today, after work, I went to find the supplies that I needed to make my lovely little pieces of art. I bought a tutorial from one of the jewelry makers on Etsy which is very detailed and informative. I started out at Home Depot and left empty handed. I couldn't find anything that I needed with the exception of the lead free soldering wire. From there I went to Hobby Lobby, Michaels, Wal-mart, Lowe's Sears and Radio Shack. Not one of those bastards had my supplies! I actually went to the mall... that's how bad it was! Apparently no one in Dayton carries a 100 watt soldering iron and gel flux!

So... what's a girl to do? I now have to order my supplies online instead of having what pleases me most = instant gratification!

I have said it before and I will say it again...

In other news... for those of you that have asked (and don't act like you didn't!) my sidewalk soap is no more :( It finally disappeared about two weeks ago. I came home from work one day and it was just gone. It was there that morning and then vanished into thin air. I am thinking that the guy who mows my lawn threw it away. He's quite handy with getting rid of all the trash that mysteriously ends up in my yard and no one else's! He probably wasn't aware that the soap was beloved by so many people! I was sad to see it go. The only thing that is left is the small spot of sidewalk with soapy residue on Xenia Avenue.

sigh.

Fruit & Underwear

I miss buying fruit in the South. I miss driving down Highway 17 after a day at the beach and seeing the farmers with their trucks on the side of the road selling their fresh vegetables and fruit. I miss being able to buy a half bushel of peaches or nectarines for a couple of bucks and enjoying them for the rest of the drive... wind-blown hair, salt on our skin and peach juice dripping down our chins. Yep, I miss that.

Today I was at Wal-Mart and saw that watermelon's were on "sale" for $3.00. Normally they are about $4.99 throughout the summer so I usually go without, even though I love watermelon (actually that goes for most fruit in Ohio!) I decided to be adventurous and bought one for myself. I worked in the grocery store business for 7 (long!) years so I pretty much know how to tell if fruit is ripe or not. After checking out the melons I picked one and tried to be optimistic about it being a good one. After a couple of hours chilling the fridge I cut it open and it was just mediocre. I just give up. I had the same problem when I lived in Illinois - the fruit was ridiculously expensive and never REALLY good.

I hate to be snatchy about fruit but I'm having a moment.

After my Wal-Mart excursion I was taking out my trash and to do so I have to walk out my kitchen door, then through the back door, across the back yard and into the garage to the back alley. When I walked out into the backyard I noticed something colorful on the ground. It was a pair of my underwear. They were flattened and quite dirty. I picked them up and they were as stiff as a board (not by my doing, mind you!) How odd is that?! The only time I go in the backyard (aka "poopville" thanks to my landlord and his two dogs) is to take out the trash. I parked in the garage a couple of times this past winter but that's about it.

How did my underwear end up in the back yard? It's just weird.

Mixed Berries

I love festivals. I really do. Ohio has A LOT of festivals for many things and I was thinking today about how odd it is that South Carolina doesn't really have a lot of festivals. We had The Grits Festival in St. George. I don't like grits, but I would always go since it was the only festival around. I always wanted to and enter the "Rolling in the Grits" contest. Basically you get weighed before the event. Then you roll around in a huge pool of grits and the person who has the most grits stuck to them wins. My thought was bigger body = more grits. However, I just didn't like the idea of getting weighed in front of hundreds of people.

Then, we had The Chitlin Strut in Salley, SC. I never went to this festival because ... well, it scared me a little. I have had people tell me that this is, by far, the smelliest festival they have ever attended. Ugh.

My favorite festival in South Carolina was the Gullah Festival. I noticed on their website that they actually moved it from St. Helena Island to Beaufort, which I think is tragic since St. Helena Island is much more a part of the Gullah culture than Beaufort. They are also now charging $20 to attend on some days - WOW! When I went years ago it was a small festival for FREE. I mean, who pays to go to a festival? That's just crazy.

We had other festivals in S.C.... really small ones like the Greek Fest and really large ones like the week long Spoleto Festival and Piccolo Spoleto, but these are nothing like the festivals here.

People in Ohio are serious about their festivals and I appreciate that.

Today Justin and I went to the Strawberry Festival in Troy. I was dreading the amount of people that were going to be there, but I like to go to festivals and I like strawberries so off we were. When we got there we met up with Andy, Dawn and their cute fairy baby (Tyler) and walked through the main drag of the festival. Andy and Dawn had been there for a while so they headed out and Justin and I walked back through to look at all the vendors.

The sky was starting to get really dark and we felt a couple of rain drops. The temperature dropped and it was actually quite comfortable compared to the scorching heat earlier in the day. We made it through half of the festival and it started pouring rain. At first it wasn't so bad but then the downpour came. Justin wanted to look at a particular vendors jewelry so we made it to their tent. There were a ton of people in there hiding out from the rain. We stayed there for a bit because it was really coming down. Soon we heard a HUGE clap of thunder which scared pretty much everyone in the tent since it was very loud and very close.

The wind picked up and we all started holding on to the tent so it wouldn't blow away. We could see across the way that other tents were bending in the wind and threatening to fall over. It was quite surreal. I told Justin that I had an image of when the rain stops that we would all creep out like the Munchkins did when the house fell on the Wicked Witch. It was quite a strong little storm.

When we finally did leave the tent we saw an ambulance coming down the main drag of the festival. Most people had run for their cars but there were a couple hundred of us fools that stuck around. They kept making announcements to get out from under the trees because the lightning will stike there. They said that several times but there were still several people who didn't listen.

We decided to get ourselves chocolate covered strawberries and go back to the car. On the way out they made the announcement that the festival was closing and for everyone to leave. The rain had let up so we thought that was kind of odd. They weren't very nice about it either. It was pretty much like "Get out!!" on the PA system.

People were still coming to the festival so we kept telling them that they had closed down so they wouldn't waste their time. The mass exit made traffic a nightmare. When we got home we found out that when we heard the loud clap of thunder it was when a bolt of lightning struck a tree. The ambulance was for a father and his two children who were under the tree when it struck. The news tonight said their condition was unknown. I really hope they are okay. I think that would traumatize me enough to never want another strawberry in my life and how sad would that be?

Blog Stalking

So here's a strange story.

Remember my mentioning that there was a girl in Texas whose blog I read regularly? Well, today I decided to finally come out as her official stalker, which was warmly received by her, being that she is somewhat of a blog stalker herself.

I suppose that I shouldn't really call her a "girl" since she's only a year younger than I am and we all know that I'm no spring chicken.

Anyway...

Courtney introduced me to the band "Stars" whom I LOVE and she introduced me to found.com and she also got me started on my fabulous new jewelry making hobby... all without knowing that she had even done so!

AND...

remember me mentioning that I REALLY wanted a skeleton key tattoo and that I had found the style of what I wanted on a MySpace photo? I searched and searched (for hours!) for the picture (because I didn't bookmark it!) and some of you were nice enough to harrass your friends into searching the profiles of their friends to find the elusive photo for me... well, the photo I had seen wasn't on a MySpace profile at all... it was on Courtney's Flickr account (oops!)

How serendipitous!

Go Ninja, Go!

Last night at the Vanilla Ice concert I think I might have caught some horrifying evidence of celebrity stalking on camera that I should turn over to police...

It seems that there was a very scary drag queen with hideous red fingernails that was trying to attack Vanilla Ice while he was performing! What's even more frightening was that I must have been standing right next to "her" when this was happening! As you can see by my after-concert photo-op below that Vanilla Ice remained unscathed... Lucky for him, since those fingernails look like they could really wound someone!

By the way, let me just mention that this was the most bizarre concert that I have ever been to... and I have been to A LOT of concerts.

First of all, it was in Franklin, Ohio. Never heard of it? Well, there's a reason for that! There's not much to see or do in Franklin. Even more bizarre than the concert being in Franklin, was that the concert was at a bowling alley. Wait! It gets better! The bowling alley is pretty nice as far as bowling alley's go. I had never been there before so I was assuming that the show was going to be in some part of the bar or something. I was sadly mistaken. We followed the crowd outside and as we stood on the deck I looked around in disbelief. There was a sea of sand before my eyes and no ocean in sight. It was a sand volleyball court. Everyone in the crowd had to stand in sand. Apparently Justin knew about all of this but failed to mention it to me. Luckily I wasn't wearing stiletto's or anything!

We walked down the steps and I felt like I couldn't even think because I was still trying to absorb that we had to stand in sand during the concert. This wasn't a small volleyball court, either. It was actually about 3 or 4 full size courts in all. There were chairs set up toward the back and there was a huge open area in front of the stage for the sand/mosh pit I am assuming. We finally found a piece of a wall to lean against while waiting for the show to start.

The opening band was pretty good as far as cover bands go. They finished their second set with "More Human Than Human" by Rob Zombie, which I really enjoyed. The best part of the whole concert was the people watching. It was bountiful! It was a much older crowd than I had expected. I enjoyed watching all of the woman in cocktail dresses and spiked heels struggle and stumble across the sand.

It was a boring and horribly long wait after the opening band until Vanilla Ice came on. I think that they were having technical difficulties or something. When he finally came on it was already 11pm. I wanted to get some pictures so I left the safety of our wall and walked to the front of the stage. It was then that it was confirmed how stupid and obnoxious drunk people are. I know that I was like that once and I wholeheartedly apologize to the world.

My observations about Vanilla Ice's performance are:

1. He sings with a really harsh Muppet-like voice. I am not sure which Muppet it is, really. I want to say the Cookie Monster, but more like the Cookie Monster after having chewed glass.

2. Vanilla Ice really like to spray water from bottles on the audience. He did this with at least 10 water bottles. He would shake it all over everyone and then throw the bottle into the audience. I'm not sure what that is all about.

3. He likes to say "Holy Shit" after every song. It's like Vanilla punctuation.

4. He must like the marijuana since it is the subject of all of his songs.

5. He's faithful and that is endearing. Justin witnessed a girl putting her hand on Vanilla Ice's crotch and he said "I'm not like that" on the mic to her. I heard that part but sadly missed the crotch grabbing.

In the middle of his performance he played "Ice Ice Baby" and invited the hoochie mama's onstage with him. First it was a couple, then it was to the point where it was like playing "Where's Waldo". I kept looking at Justin and saying "where is he??" So, there are all of the bimbo's onstage and we can't even see him and the really bad thing is that the bimbo's were there until the end of the show. At one point I looked at Justin and said again "where is he" and Justin said "he left the stage... the show is over!" I consider myself to be a pretty intelligent person, but I never heard the music stop and I never heard him say an official goodbye to the crowd. It was just weird how the show ended. The girls were still on the stage dancing and I just assumed that he was lost up there... Waldo style.

We decided to wait for our photo-op and the crowd slowly started disappearing. The sand pit was a disgusting mess. Justin asked a couple of people where Vanilla Ice would be coming out and they pointed to the VIP area. There were staff members guarding the VIP entrances so we had to come up with a plan to meet Vanilla Ice. We were talking to some people across the wall, who were sitting in the VIP section and one guy told us that we should just go up there since half the people up there didn't have VIP bracelets on. We decided to go to the guard and ask to be let in. He told Justin no and that only VIP members could go in. Well, right afterward, RIGHT IN FRONT OF US, he let several hoochie's in! I could not believe that he did that right in front of us!

I asked the guard how their red bracelets were different than OUR red bracelets and he said that they were with someone in the VIP section. Justin told him we were with them too! Well, that didn't work so I said "So, we have to be "with" someone in the VIP section to get in??" and the guard said "If you are with someone I will let you in" Well, at this point I wanted to kick him. I walked back to the VIP table that we were talking to before and told them our situation and the guy said "Tell him that you are with me! I will wave at him" I asked for his name and he said "Mike Mills" I walked back to the guard and said "We are with the Mills party back there in VIP" and I looked over and Mike was standing up and waving. The guard said "Now that wasn't so hard, now was it?" What a prick.

The "line" to meet Vanilla Ice was VERY disorganized. I just wanted to get in and get out. People are so obnoxious when they get around celebrities. I just don't understand it. We got our pictures and Justin bonded with his ninja buddy, which is good (brotha!)

On the way out we had to walk past the prick of a guard and I tried to not make eye contact with him. When we passed him he said "sorry" and I kept walking. He yelled at me "you're not going to accept my apology?" Give me a break. What an ass. I just gave him one of my looks of death. I was perfectly satisfied since I got the photo I wanted and I left knowing that he was going to have to get over what he deemed a high-profile security position and had to clean the nasty pit that resembled a volleyball court. I secretly hoped that he accidentally touched some DNA while cleaning.

Word to your Motha!