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Average Jane Goes to the Zoo

Today was the day that they feed pumpkins to the zoo animals at the Kansas City Zoo, so I rounded up someone to go with me and spent the late morning and early afternoon there.

The zoo covers a lot of ground but we managed to see almost everything before our feet got tired and we got too hungry for zoo concessions.

Here are some of the photos I took.

Capybaras are my favorite.

The otters were definitely playing to the crowd and they were very cute. However, I can’t appreciate their cuteness quite as much now that I know about their dark side.

After several years of penguin-themed fundraisers, there’s a big new penguin habitat at the zoo. It was especially fun to watch them swim around underwater.

These birds had a very impressive double nest going. We wondered if they had built it themselves and quickly got our answer when we saw other birds of the same type gathering additional feathers and sticks to add to the pile.

Look at meeeee!

You should be glad there’s a fence here, delicious-looking humans.

Naptime at the meerkat habitat.

Are you sure you don’t have something tasty you might want to accidentally drop down here?

November 2, 2013
Average Jane’s Halloween

I've finally reached the age where my desire to participate in Halloween activities has certain limits. For example, I'm fine with parties but I don't want to wear a costume at work or anywhere else in public. I'll buy candy for trick or treaters at my office and in my neighborhood, but I don't want to cook anything with a Halloween theme.

This year with Halloween falling on Thursday, Saturday was the big party day. My band had a gig at a bar that was having a costume party, so we all dressed in costumes as well.

I'm kind of glad I chose the outfit I did because otherwise everyone would have been dressed completely in black. Come to think of it, that's pretty much the case for most gigs.

Big thanks to Hip Suburban White Guy for the loan of the phaser and tricorder. He also let me borrow a communicator, but it was hard to stand around holding all of the accessories at once.

Our keyboard player had the best costume, in my opinion. I know it wasn't very comfortable, but it paid off.

For actual Halloween night I bought a couple of small bags of Twix and Kit-Kat bars knowing that we wouldn't have more than a handful of trick-or-treaters. We ended up having exactly a handful: five. That's actually pretty typical for our neighborhood, although I expected more because our neighborhood party last summer gave me the impression that we had more kids in the area than we used to.

I'm not mean enough to put Toby in a costume, but I did have him wear his sweater to watch the door.

We gave up a little before eight o'clock and went out to dinner leaving the candy in a basket on the front porch. No one took any while we were gone.

So that's my 2013 Halloween. I didn't do much, but it was just enough.

November 1, 2013
Average Jane Comes Back

Sorry to drop that last post and then just disappear. For anyone who only follows the blog, it probably seemed like the next post was going to be from some relative of mine you've never heard of saying, "And then she died."

Actually, I'm fine. I figured out what was wrong with my body chemistry and got it straightened out. I feel a lot better now, but I'm just very distracted.

My band has been playing every Saturday night lately, so that's taking up a lot of my free time. Yet I've managed to clean my house, read a bunch of books and go shopping a couple of times. I even finally put up blinds in my bedroom just shy of the two-year mark after the remodel. Curtains are next.

I keep wanting to write blog posts but then I think about how I never wrote my vacation posts and it felt as though I was supposed to do them first. Well I've gotten over that. I'll throw some trip posts in when I get to them, but I'm not going to let the blog languish just because I don't have time to sit down at my home computer and pick out photos and themes.

On my to-do list is to make a photo book of the trip to give to my dad for Christmas, so that will be the natural time to write those posts. When I get time for that, I'll do both at once.

In the meantime, I have lots of stuff going on. More gigs, including one this weekend that includes a Halloween costume contest. I'll be wearing my Star Trek original series science uniform. I have my Sundays pretty booked as well: a tour of three winerys this week and Caffeine Crawl next week. My sister is going with me for both of those, which will make them extra fun.

So enough of the radio silence. As fall is settling in, I miss writing. NaBloPoMo is coming up (the real one in November, not the newfangled every month thing) and I'm considering posting every day just to get my chops back up.

And how are you doing?

October 23, 2013
Average Jane’s Doldrums

I had the best intentions when I posted that I would start writing about my recent trip. I really meant to, but ever since I got back I have been extremely busy at work and exhausted in the evenings. My wakeup time has been getting later and later, and when I do have some time to myself, I mostly just want to lounge around and read.

So it's not that I don't want to tell my stories and share my photos, it's that I'm just too tired and unmotivated. It feels like work, and right now all I want to do is rest.

My band is booked every Saturday this month and the first Saturday in November. Last Saturday I found myself walking the line all day between getting some much-needed housework and errands done and reserving enough energy to perform and stay up late. On Sunday, I slept a total of 10 hours and barely got anything accomplished unless you count finishing a book.

It's all very annoying. My husband keeps getting irritated with me because I'll promise to fix dinner only to change my mind once I've gotten home. One afternoon last week I sat in my car in the grocery store parking lot after work for about 15 minutes trying to summon the initiative to walk in and shop. I finally mustered up the energy, mainly because it seemed like such a waste of time to get that far and go home empty-handed.

I think it's safe to say that something is wrong with me, but I can't really hazard a guess about what it is. I suppose I'll be plunging back into world of blood tests and tentative medical speculation again, which is the last thing I wanted to do to finish out the year.

In the meantime, I'll try to drag myself along with healthy food and a judicious amount of caffeine. And naps, lots of naps.

Photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar

October 7, 2013
Average Jane Goes to Sweden

…and she's been back for more than a week with nary a blog post to show for it.

So yeah, I've been a little busy since I got home. I've had friends and relatives to visit, souvenirs to distribute, household maintenance to resume, and then there's my actual job. While I was gone we picked up a new client and I was assigned to a project for them the day I got back to the office. Not to mention my new quest to find a local source for coffee so strong that it's opaque. It's a bit of a whirlwind.

Now that I have a few minutes to stop and think, I'm trying to decide what to do with the massive amount of SWEDENNESS that was added to my brain during the trip. That and the 500+ photos I took. Do I write a travelogue? Should I pick out themes and write individual posts about them?

I'm leaning toward the latter. I have some stories that make more sense told in the context of the timeline of the trip, but I have a lot of general observations that can stand alone as feature posts.

Starting tomorrow (I know! What a fakeout, right?) I'll begin publishing posts about my two-week trip and I'll keep them going until I run out of stuff to talk about. Stay tuned!

September 23, 2013
Nobody Makes Average Jane Bleed Her Own Blood!

Yesterday was marked by a series of minor incidents that resulted in small quantities of my blood being displaced from its proper place in my circulatory system.

My company has an annual volunteering day where employees get on buses and go to various pre-selected nonprofits throughout the area to do hands-on work for most of the day. I chose an animal charity (surprise!), so I joined a group of co-workers to walk dogs for most of the late morning and early afternoon.

It was really a very pleasant activity. The dogs were delighted to get outside, they were very friendly and most were open to being petted for a long time. As with most shelters there were lots of smiling pit bull mixes, and my volunteer buddy and I mainly walked them.

Minor injury #1 occurred when we went to get a big dog named Captain out of his kennel. He was SO excited at the attention that he was leaping around and it was a challenge to get the lead over his head. Once we got outside I realized that I'd scraped and lightly punctured my arm in the chaos, but luckily it didn't hurt.

After lunch, we walked more dogs and then divided into groups to either wash dogs outside or stay inside to clean cat cages and socialize the cats. I chose the cats, naturally.

There were a lot of very sweet cats and kittens and I spent time petting a lot of them after I tidied up their kennels. Toward the end, my attention was drawn to two very noisy black kittens. They wanted attention and they let everyone know at the top of their lungs the entire time we were there. I opened their cage and picked them both up so that I had one on each side of my chest up by my shoulders.

They were purring and seemed very happy. All was well until one of them reached up and bit me on the earlobe. It wasn't just a quick nip either—the rotten little bugger bit and held on. If I hadn't gotten him unfastened, I might have had a new piercing. So yet again, blood.

I thought I was in the clear for the day after that, but I had a final bloodletting incident while preparing stir-fry for dinner. I was using my zucchini ribbon cutter and somehow I got my little finger too close to the blade. Dinner was a little late while I dealt with the gory aftermath.

I think I can call today a success if all my blood stays in my body. That seems like a pretty reasonable goal, don't you think?

August 21, 2013
Average Jane Plays A Gig

Last Saturday night, my band played at a local American Legion post. It was basically like a small town bar with a nice patio out front, a few more patriotic plaques on the wall than most bars would have, and, oh yeah, they allow smoking inside.

I’m not going to lie—I was slightly less enthused about the gig than I might have been for one at a regular club. After all, I have a history of asthma and secondhand smoke is not on my list of favorite things.

We showed up around noon for setup and there was a small group of bar patrons hanging out already. Usually when we do a lunchtime setup and sound check, the afternoon bar-goers range from dismayed to outright annoyed. Not at the American Legion. We ran through three of our newest songs to check sound levels while simultaneously making sure that we could still play them, and damned if the people there didn’t applaud after each one! That never—and I mean NEVER—happens.

When we came back in the evening to start our 9:00 p.m. set, some of the people we’d seen earlier in the day said hello and told us they’d come back to see us. There was a pretty decent crowd from the very beginning and it didn’t take even half a set before people were dancing.

The crowd was enthusiastic the whole time. They danced, they applauded, they sang along, and someone even bought two roses from the flower lady and laid them carefully on my monitor while I was performing. I took them home and now they’re on my desk at work in a vase.

Yes, it was smoky in there and now my carpeted monitor needs some sunshine to get the smell out and my stage clothes went straight into the laundry when I got home. However, it didn’t seem to affect my voice any more than the fog machine that we were using.

This is my official mea culpa for having even a little bit of attitude about that gig going in. It was by far the most fun I’ve had performing in quite a while and I sincerely hope we play there regularly in the future.

August 20, 2013
Average Jane’s Lazy Saturday Morning
I woke up a little before 6:00 a.m. today and I just caught myself thinking, "I don't have much to show for the four hours I've been awake so far."

Then I stopped myself because first of all, how much stuff do you need to accomplish on a Saturday morning when you're still in your pajamas? Second, I actually do have quite a bit to show for that time.

Since I got up I have:
1. Fed all of the pets.
2. Caught up on Dice with Buddies and Words with Friends.
3. Corrected and printed out the lyrics of the song I needed to learn for today's band practice. I also sang it several times and put the lyrics file on my iPad.
4. Sung the song we learned at our last practice, just to make sure I still have it down.
5. Packed up the foster kittens' food, extra litter and Lysine treats.
6. Seen the kittens off to their next foster home where they will have more socialization time before they go to a pet store.
7. Taken the dog out a couple of times.
8. Washed the pots and pans from last night.
9. Made dipping sauce for the summer rolls I prepared last night, as well as a batch of hummus.
10. Washed dishes again.
11. Loaded and run the dishwasher.
12. Made myself a breakfast shake.
13. Spent a reasonable amount of time on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
If that's the wrong way to spend your Saturday morning, I don't want to be right.
August 10, 2013
How Average Jane’s Life Is Like A Sitcom

Last Friday I did some on-site work at a client's office. I was sitting at a desk right next to the water cooler and workers came in frequently to get water. It was warm in there and I was thirsty, but there were no cups; everyone there had his or her own.

Fast forward to this afternoon: I'm back in their office but this time I'm ready! I've carefully placed a cup in my purse so I can have water to drink while I work. Always thinking!

I get to the desk and begin working. Yep, I'm starting to get thirsty. I take out my cup, walk over to the water cooler…and discover a sign that says it's out of order.

[Sad trombone.]

Seriously.

Photo credit: CJ Schmit

August 6, 2013
Average Jane and Coffee

Oh coffee, I just can't let you go!

I have given up coffee more times than I can count, and this latest dietary overhaul was no exception. The acid in coffee skews the body's acid balance, as evidenced by the fact that it often gives me heartburn.

But…but I love coffee so much! It smells good, it tastes good and it gives me a much-needed boost that nothing else quite matches.

So I'll admit it: I've been cheating some. At work when there's a fresh pot brewing and the aroma wafts by, I've been having a half a cup from time to time. And on Thursdays when the CoffeeCakeKC truck comes to my office, well, let's just say they have a pour-over with my name on it. But I've quit drinking it regularly and I definitely miss the productivity boost it once gave me.

Which leads me to this. After one of my band's recent gigs, one of the band members edited together some video clips and although we sounded good, it was obvious that my energy levels were pretty terrible. I remembered feeling kind of sluggish during that show, and seeing the evidence was a wakeup call that I needed to improve my stage presence and move around more.

However, the big question was how was I going to accomplish that? It's possible that a nice green smoothie might do the trick, but it seemed a lot more practical to have a big cup of coffee on the way to the gig.

Last night I got my chance to test that theory. Once I was dressed and made up, I journeyed to Caribou Coffee and picked up a good-sized cup of medium roast. I finished it just as we were getting to the club.

And it worked! I was supercharged through all four sets. I felt more animated than usual and I didn't find myself moving around less toward the end the way I often had, despite the fact that it's always three hours past my usual bedtime by the time we finish playing.

I'll be the first to admit that coffee isn't ideal for a singer. It can dry out your mouth and throat and I believe it did that a bit yesterday. However, I had plenty of water on hand and my singing felt fine.

So I think I may have established a new pre-gig routine. I get to enjoy a delicious cup of coffee and fuel myself up with caffeine to help me connect with the audience and stay charged up on stage. Sounds like a win to me.

Image credit: Natalie Dee

August 4, 2013