From the i-Pod

"Not in Love" ~ Crystal Castles feat. Robert Smith of the Cure

Just when I think I will never have new music from the amazing Robert Smith, he manages to pop up on someone's tribute song!

"If I Never See Your Face Again" ~ Maroon 5 with Rihanna

Okay, not the best subject to sing about, but I love how smooth these two sound together.

"Love is Noise" ~ The Verve

I never get tired of The Verve.... and Richard Ashcroft brings it every time whether its with the band or on his own. I don't know what it is, but his voice is just like buttah....

Nostalgia

image borrowed from Flickr

Anyone around here old enough to remember The Pop Shoppe? It was a wonderful slice of my childhood.... I would remember walking with mom and my brother into a store that was nothing but bottles of liquid goodness. You would pick up a 24 slot plastic tray at the front of the store, and then my brother and I would carefully select the flavors that were our allotted portion. Flavors were weighed and discarded.... lime? cream soda? root beer? ooh, maybe grape or orange or black cherry..... the rainbow colors of the sodas enticed and promised sweet and refreshing moments in our summer to come. With 30 flavors to pick from, the possibilities seemed endless......

We had to keep in mind that whatever we picked, there was no suddenly changing your mind and walking down the street to pick up a new flavor.... if you took a chance on a soda and didn't like it you were stuck with it.... not that I remember ever finding a "bad" flavor! The reason for this was that it was a good hour-and-a-half drive to Spokane, where the Pop Shoppe was located, and I admit that going to the "Big City" was a thrill in and of itself.

The Pop Shoppe was a Canadian based company that had its heyday in the 1970's, before closing up their shops in 1983, thanks mostly to Pepsi and Coca~Cola who were beginning to hit their stride.

When The Pop Shoppe went out of business it was a sad moment....

Why do I bring this up? Well, someone started it up again.... sorta. The flavors are limited, but are now available (in the same glass bottle, but you don't get to bring these ones back for a credit against your next purchase) at your local grocery. I was looking around the cold soda and bottled waters the other day, when I spotted the familiar bottles, looking a little out of place amongst the plastic bottles of Dr Pepper and Sprite. A wave of nostalgia came over me and I found myself tucking a Lime Rickey and Cream Soda into my cart. (Funny, but I don't remember the cream soda being cherry red, but a little online snooping confirms that yes, the original was a bright red....)

I admit that when I got to the cash register and discovered those little bottles were $1.19 each (ouch!) I had to firmly remind myself that it was a cheap price to pay for a moment of my childhood back. I took the bottles home and tucked them into the fridge for later (later turned out to be nearly 2 weeks later as they somehow were shifted behind the milk and I forgot all about them!)

I pulled out first one and then the other, debating on who I should drink first. Cream soda drew the short straw and while I managed to make it last by taking small sips I was surprised at just how delicious that soda was. The Lime Rickey turned out to be very good as well, but it was the cream soda that had me remembering long summer days, kicked out of doors by a mom who insisted that my all-day reading-in-the-house habit needed a break for fresh air and sunshine. (By the way mom..... I forgive you!) I would sit outside, breathing my prescribed dose of "country air" and enjoy my soda (this being the days where a soda was a rare treat.... not a daily requirement that my adult addictions have thrust upon me!)

So would I buy another? Maybe.... if I was feeling especially nostalgic. It was good enough for it... but glass bottles are a bit delicate to be lugging around in my lunchbox! There's a website for The Pop Shoppe in case you are interested... you can find it here.... it gives you a listing of where you can find their soda in your area!

I wish my keyboard came with one of these....

Ever wish you had a reset button for your life? Well worry no more, because one has finally been created.

Don't believe me? It can be found right here

Go on and push it.... you know you want to!

I love this song!

This was performed last night on "So You Think You Can Dance" and I just fell in love. I seriously must have spent an hour trying to find this song all over the place, before finally finding it on myspace... which linked me over to the proper file on youtube. The album doesn't come out until the end of August, but I really look forward to it if its anything like this one song... below is the full version. It is "Skin and Bones" by David J. Boch... and the dance routine is lovely too! This is sooooooo going on my iPod as soon as it is available.



Sorry for the inclusion of two musical posts this week!

Brackenridge Sunken Gardens

Well its been so long since I talked about my Texas trip that I have decided not to talk about it...

Instead, I have simply decided to share some of the photos I took at the Brackenridge Sunken Gardens where Richard had originally planned to propose to me. The sunken gardens are in San Antonio, in a horseshoe shaped limestone quarry... you can find a history on it here...

From the iPod

Completely different music styles today....


Florence and the Machine "Cosmic Love"... warning, while I love this woman's voice, the video is odd...watching some of their other stuff confirms it.... this is an odd band, but it doesn't make me like this song any less


WPA (Works Progress Administration) which is Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket, Sean Watkins of Nickel Creek and Luke Bulla performing "Solar Flare"


I love it when this song starts playing... Gary Jules "Barstool" (you may know his remake of Tears for Fears' "Mad World" from the Donnie Darko soundtrack)

Other People's Houses

Stumbled across this gallery showing for "Other People's Houses" a photographic essay by a series of photographers about what our homes say about us as individuals....

Here is just a few of the amazing images:


Kate Miss



Victoria Hannan







Kris Atomic



Brian W Ferry










Anabela Carneiro


Hilda Grahnat







Pia Jane Bijkerk


Michelle Gow








Ebony Bizys


Jacinta Moore










What a beautiful idea... and a gorgeous collection of images. It leaves me wanting to do a photo essay of my own... of course this is something that would be added to over the years, but then I think most photographers have those little images lying around that portray their own idea of the world.

I highly recommend you take a stroll through these talented artists' pages.... not all of it may be my style, but there is no denying the talent behind the lens at this site.

The day the music died....

I take a lot for granted these days from my technology.

Cell phones should always have coverage (yeah, right.... every single time I head for Washington and Idaho I lose coverage big time). My bluray player should always remember where I stopped that movie I was watching (sometimes, amazingly, it does.... but I think this little miracle only happens in order to lull me into a false sense of confidence before it begins "forgetting" again!) Laptops should always be able to find the WiFi service I want to use (not always reliable... but then, I do ask it to remember a lot of different networks). Last, but certainly not least, all electrical units should maintain an infinite battery life, whether or not I remember to charge them (okay,even I recognize that this last one is wishful thinking....)

A typical day in the office will find me bee-bopping at my desk with my iPod playing its iTunes; its become a habit every morning to plug my player into the computer and just let it run all day.... this way it keeps a charge for use in the car and whatever other demands I make on it (like an Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja attack late in the evening)

Yesterday I noticed I didn't have my cord at my desk. Hmmmm..... I must have taken it home the other day for one reason or another. Oh well.... I hooked my player up to my computer speakers and start bopping. I forgot to look for the cord last night, so I hooked my player up to my speakers again today without thinking much of it. By the time I headed out to the warehouse to ship some product it was afternoon and my player had been flashing a low battery warning at me for the last few hours. I left it running anyway and headed out to the warehouse for an hour or two before coming back to my desk to do additional paperwork.

Something was out-of-kilter... something I couldn't quite put my finger on......

Telling myself I was nothing, I got back to work and managed to while away a half hour or so before I realized just what was wrong....

My iPod had died.

No music issued forth from my speakers.... music I was so used to hearing on a daily basis. I rarely go without music playing quietly at my desk, so it was a strange sensation indeed.

Luckily, I knew just how to rectify the situation.... Hell-o Pandora!

However, I will have to suffer the 5-minute drive home tonight without tunes, unless I want to sit through the radios annoying commercials and DJs....

Guess this will teach me not to forget to feed my electronic gadgets, won't it?

Wait.... yes! I have a couple songs installed on my cell phone! Hooray, I am saved!

...this girl doesn't do music-less moments unless absolutely forced to

. . .

From the iPod

I am a fickle audience... well, forgetful anyway.

I'll hear a song that I love and then wind up playing it over and over until I literally become tired of it. There are songs that I have known about for years only to suddenly "rediscover"and fall in love with over again.

Here are two songs that are in, shall we say, "heavy rotation" this week.....

A bit of humor

I don't know where my roommate found this guy, but she was watching these today and after a couple of routines, I found myself watching alongside of her. He is clean humor, and you can find him on youtube and on his site timhawkins.net Here's just a couple of the items that I loved....









Hope you got as much of a kick out of it as I did. He does a lot of routines without the guitar... but the song parodies were too funny to pass up.

Ode to a glass of frozen lemonade on a freaking hot day....

Image shamelessly borrowed from myrecipes.com

Thank you, lemon, thank you
For this sweet slice of refreshment:
condensation to cool my forehead
and tart that makes my lips pucker...yet still want more

Now if I could only find out who set the weekend thermostat to broil!

I love crafting blogs..

...and I just found a new one. Check out PurlBee for fun projects on sewing, crocheting, knitting... best of all its free! free! free!

I think these felt citrus coasters will be my next project....

...aren't they adorable? You can find the pattern here

Whoops! Just stumbled across this pattern...I actually follow this gal's blog (Resurrection Fern) and I've favorited a few stones in her Etsy shop

Oh yeah... these are definitely my first project from this site.... you can find the pattern for these here. Amazingly enough, I already have a bunch of the pearle cotton embroidery thread balls lying around and goodness knows I always have a rock or two handy!

Oh man, check out how cute these quilted pincushions are!

If you are remotely into the crafty ... you will have a lot of fun just looking around this site!

Happy creating gals.... you can hate me later for hooking you onto this site!