Category: Daily Life

Ugh, these Tuesday night practices with the cover band are killing me. We don’t meet until 7:30 p.m. (mostly because of my 6:00 p.m. vocal lesson), and practice ran until 11:30 last night. For those of you playing the home game, that’s an hour and a half past my bedtime, which doesn’t even count the drive home.

I woke up early this morning vigorously scratching my arm – something I’d deliberately avoided all the previous day because I have poison ivy from gardening last weekend. A little hydrocortisone cream dulled the itch so I could go back to bed.

Then I was awakened again by Xena attacking the drawstring on my pajama bottoms. Sigh. As it turned out, it was time for me to get up anyway.

My eyes are burning, I have a stiff neck, and there’s a crease pressed across the left side of my cheek and mouth that looks like it’s never going away. There’s the rock and roll lifestyle for you. It ain’t pretty.

For the next week or so, the original band should be doing a bunch of recording. Our guitarist has some vacation time coming and we need to get things wrapped up. That means I’ll be spending my weekend writing song lyrics and finding out if the extra practice I’ve gotten with the other band has helped me in the vocal booth. Let’s hope so.

Well, it’s off to make myself halfway presentable for work and try to find something to eat for breakfast. Have a good Wednesday…and get some sleep!

I don’t know about you, but I’d say it’s gotten ridiculously hot when the tar starts melting off utility poles and pooling on the sidewalk.

Thanks to Jeremy for the photo.

Last night I spent a couple of hours looking up song lyrics online for the cover band. Each band member came up with a list of suggested songs for us to learn and I wanted to be ready for tonight’s practice. My song selections were mainly ones I’ve done before because I still
remember the lyrics to many of the songs I sang with cover bands
in the ’80s and ’90s.

I remember having to figure out song lyrics on my own back then. You kids don’t know how good you have it with your Internet and your Google! Why, in my day we had to sit next to the turntable with a notepad and keep picking up and dropping the needle over and over until we figured out what the guy was singing. (And as it turns out, we were wrong much of the time.)

The thing is, the old method was a great way to ingrain the lyrics into your memory. By the time you’d puzzled out a phonetically plausible set of lyrics, there was really no way you were going to forget them – particularly if you printed them by hand rather than typing them up. The Google, Copy and Correct method is really not very helpful in the memorization process.

My fear is that I’ll be tethered to my notebook o’ lyrics on stage when the band performs. I’m doing my best to cram all the information into my brain, but somehow it doesn’t retain new stuff as well as it did when I was 17. Go figure.

I keep telling myself that the printed lyrics are just a crutch and that I should learn the basics of the songs and just wing it from there. I guess we’ll see what happens when the time comes. I’d feel a lot more optimistic about it if it weren’t for the fact that I can’t remember the lyrics I’ve written for my other band’s original songs. That’s not a good sign, is it?

Just for the hell of it, I’m heading downtown this morning for the taping of the CBS Early Show at the Liberty Memorial. Supposedly, Big & Rich are performing. I’m not a country music fan, but I always enjoy a live show – especially a free one. Sure, it’ll be at 6 a.m., but who’s complaining?

Thank you to A Beer Sort of Girl for telling me about it!

Update: Okay, that was kind of boring. I mostly just stood around on the hard, hard concrete for several hours. However, the people-watching alone made it worthwhile. I think I may have discovered a few  hitherto unknown mullet varieties. Then there was the pregnant woman wearing a purple, crushed-velvet top hat with "Big" printed across her belly in silver. And the old guy wearing an American flag vest (no shirt) and matching shorts. Ah, middle America!

As for Big & Rich – it turns out they’re a rock band by any reasonable definition. Apparently they just market themselves as a country band. I didn’t hear them play very much because of the whole "live TV" thing – they’d start in the middle of a song, play for a while and then stop.

I finally took off around 7:15 in plenty of time to get to my usual Friday morning coffee meet-up. Thus, it turned out to be a minor adventure, but an adventure just the same.

The downside to traveling around the country and living it up is that your creditors still expect their money on time. This morning I had to fish through the shopping bag into which I’d placed all our mail the last time I tidied up the kitchen, retrieve the outstanding household bills, and pay them.

I figured it would be nice to continue to have electricity, seeing as it’s supposed to be about 100 degrees every day for the rest of the summer, according to the weather forecasts.

The hideous weather isn’t making me use any more water than usual because I grew up in a semi-rural area and I still believe that if the grass in the yard can’t make it through the summer on its own, that’s just too bad. I’ve occasionally watered the lawn in the past at the behest of the guy who mows it, but this year even he seems to understand that it’s pointless.

As I went through my bills, I encountered a ridiculous number of gift cards and gift certificates that I’ve been hoarding for no particular reason. One of my goals is to go ahead and spend them. I have $100 in spa treatments, $100 worth of plants, and $25 worth of clothes just sitting around just daring me to lose and forget them forever. I will not!

Wow, was that trivial and rambling enough for you? I guess that’s a sign I need to get ready and get to work. Have a lovely Thursday!

(If you recognize the title reference, well, you’re old like me.)

I brought back the little sample-sized toiletries from the Hotel Roosevelt in L.A. and I am absolutely enamored of the Fresh Pomegranate Conditioner. So much so that I ordered a big bottle online, even though it cost a whopping $30 with shipping.

I don’t know how much it smells like pomegranate, but it smells good, and I can’t help noticing it all day long.

Certain expensive hotels have a way of making me want to upgrade portions of my everyday life. After I stayed at a Ritz Carlton a few years ago, I went home and bought high thread count sheets. Until then, I hadn’t realized what the big deal was.

Then there’s the W Hotel chain with its single-minded emphasis on creating a "lifestyle." Read what Suebob had to say about it – it’s hilarious.

Have you ever changed something about your life thanks to a hotel stay?

Best excuse for not going out to a jam last weekend:
"Had a run-in with a bat and I had to get rabies shots." (The guitarist from my classic rock band)

Quote that exemplifies what it’s like to work at an advertising agency:
"So will the bowl be dancing, too?"

Oddest public behavior observed yesterday evening:
An elderly gentleman drinking red wine out of a wine glass using a straw.

Persistent, heretofore unreported thoughts from last week’s L.A. trip:
Carrie Fisher is very petite. I loved that the "On the Lot" costume person was reading "Vogue" when we walked by her office. There are a bazillion rock n’ roll clothing shops on Hollywood Boulevard and I am sad that I didn’t have time to shop in any of them. I’d never really given much thought to the Escape Hybrid before, but it really does get great gas mileage. When my husband’s Honda Element finally craps out, the hybrid Escape is on the short list.

Compare and Contrast BlogHer vs. Ford Escape from Boredom:
I paid my own way to BlogHer this year and it was EXPENSIVE! Even sharing a room with Suebob, I still spent every cent I brought with me and that was with careful rationing. A Guinness at the W’s bar: $8! Don’t even ask what I paid for the steak I had one night. By the time I got to L.A. on Ford’s dime, I was feeling so frugal that I didn’t so much as order room service or even look inside the mini bar. They definitely served up red carpet treatment, but I didn’t want to overstep.

Something for which I need the help of the Internets:
Find me this t-shirt so that I may purchase one for myself!

This is "On the Lot" contestant Sam Friedlander wearing an awesome t-shirt depicting monkeys with typewriters. I asked him where it came from, but he’d gotten it from the show’s wardrobe department so he didn’t know. I must have eet!

All right, enough goofiness. Get back to your lives!

I don’t know how some people manage to travel all the time. I just took two trips in two weeks and I required many naps over the weekend to recover.

I’ve finally put all of my Ford Great Escape photos in Flickr and I’ve started posting my BlogHer 2007 photos, although there are some tourist ones that haven’t made it in yet. As I mentioned in my last post, I’m going to forego putting my photo road rally pix directly on my blog, but you’re welcome to click through to Flickr and try to figure out which blogger I am. It’s not that difficult!

Here’s a list of the bloggers who attended the Ford event:

• Irene from Bitter Tonic
• Denis from Superblog 5000
• Stefan and Alex from Elephant Larry
• Carolyn Castiglia
• Emmet from Film School Student
• Kraig from The Adventure Blog
• Megan from Divine Reality
• Brian from Welcome to Tardville
• Jennifer Dziura
• Josh and Jeremiah from Adventures in Filmmaking
• Elizabeth from juicefairy
• Carmel from Josh Spear
• Liz from Everyday Goddess
  
• Michelle Kenobi Osorio

Everyone was really cool and nice, and I got the vibe that we all felt we’d won the blogging jackpot just by being there. I’ve added all of their feeds to Bloglines, which brings my total to 431 (and that’s without any of the people I met at BlogHer this year).

I’ll be doing interviews about the Ford-sponsored trip with both Susan Getgood and Toby Bloomberg in the coming weeks, so look for more in-depth analysis then.

Now that I’m finished jet-setting for a while, my schedule is as packed as ever. I have at least one activity – usually two – on my calendar every day after work this week. Between my two bands, Soroptimist Club, yoga, social activities and various therapies (chiropractic and massage) to undo the travel damage, I’m a very busy woman…just the way I like it.

I’d love to talk more about BlogHer, but it’ll have to wait (although you can see a few of my photos on Flickr). Tomorrow morning I’m taking my blogging self to Los Angeles on a trip sponsored by Ford, to go behind the scenes of the TV show On the Lot.

The whole group of bloggers, which includes Liz of Everyday Goddess and Megan of Divine Reality and A Girl Must Shop, will get to hang out on set, drive around L.A. in Ford Escapes, and be treated to lots of California-style entertainment. I’m particularly looking forward to the road rally. I’ve been both driver and navigator in rallies before and they’re always a lot of fun.

I’m very interested in getting to be a part of a blogger relations program of this magnitude. I’m curious as to what Ford hopes to accomplish by exposing bloggers to their product in this way and I’ll be quizzing their PR people about it from the moment my plane lands.

Since this is more of an "official blogger" event for me than BlogHer, I will be bringing a laptop and blogging throughout. Unless I can find the cable for my camera, I might not be able to include pictures until I get home, though.

It sounds like a blast and I’m really looking forward to meeting the other bloggers. If you’re an "On the Lot" fan and there’s something you’d like me to try to find out, let me know!

I didn’t get home from band practice until after 10:30 last night, so I’ve been frantically doing loads of laundry ever since. Frankly, I’d have benefited more from extra sleep instead, but I can’t seem to get more than about six or seven hours a night. I may very well end up checking into the hotel tomorrow and taking a nap for a couple of hours!

It doesn’t really matter what I take to wear, so I’m not worried too much about that. My husband is getting my camera a new Flash card (I’ll have to ask him to buy batteries, too) and I’m going to skip trying to print quickie business cards for myself in favor of letting Wendy Kline make me some when I get there.

I was hoping to have two of my band’s songs on CD (or iPod) to bring with me. I’ll have to see if the guys made any progress last night on the guitar sound. I wanted to re-do my vocals on the second one, but I don’t think I’ll have time.

This morning I need to go by my credit union, deposit a check and get money for the hotel and miscellaneous meals. I found a dollar in the dryer, so I’m already ahead.

That just leaves packing, which I’ll probably start tonight and finish in the morning. My main imperative is to take my expensive lip glosses out of my purse and put them into my suitcase so the TSA doesn’t take them away. Beyond that, I’m just going to pick out my favorite t-shirts and coordinating Converse and throw them into my duffel bag.

The real kicker is that I’ll be back in town exactly one day before I leave again. Next week I’m going to L.A. on a sponsored blogger-relations trip. I’ll tell you more about that later.

Like last year, I’ve decided not to bring my laptop with me to BlogHer. I know! It sounds crazy not to directly blog a blogging conference. However, for me it’s more about meeting people and learning things. I can always make notes and blog when I get home – and I will.

Thus, this is probably my last post of the week. I’ll start my BlogHer recap on Sunday evening. Until then…enjoy your week!