Kissing July Goodbye

Right now I'm trying to figure out where the hell this month has gone. It's already the 31st. It seems like only yesterday I was heading off to the Mountaineer for my birthday dinner/gambling/fun day. GAH! Time sure does fly when you don't want it to.

It was a busy month all in all. I went to The Mountaineer for my b-day as I mentioned, a weekend trip to Erie, one trip to Phipps and now the Davy Jones concert. Lots of fun was had. I'm also crazy tired. Maybe this month was too much fun, because I don't remember having time to sit on my butt and do nothing.

I suppose that's a good thing. I hope August goes a little slower. I only have one weekend taken up this month. I plan to rent a car before school starts for my nephew and go up to the mountains one day and Idlewild. I was also hoping to get to Kennywood, but I don't think that's in the stars again this year. I never ever get to Kennywood anymore. (BAH!)

Basically I want August to be a calm month because I'm going to Atlantic City in September. A trip I'm going to need luck to survive, because my relationship with my traveling partner is a bit strained at the moment.

So right now I hope August creeps on by, because I'm not ready for September yet.

MMmm Davy

Lordy but Mr. Jones is one helluva good lookin' guy for his age. I should know, because I was front row and center for the concert at Falconi Field.

Opening for Davy was a do-wop band from the burg (as we like to call Pittsburgh) called The Skyliners.



You can see one of the members is teaching the team mascot to dance. They did an awesome version of Oh! What a Night and The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

The second band up last night was The Jaggerz who scored a hit with the song The Rapper.




I thought Mr. Pink Shirt looked like Malcolm Gets from Caroline in the City.

Finally, Davy came on stage. He did many many Monkees songs including Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow) Valleri, I Wanna Be Free, No Time, What Am I Doin' Hangin' Round, Papa Gene's Blues, Daydream Believer, A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You, I'm Not Your (Steppin' Stone) and She Hangs Out. He also did Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby (great song) a new Boyce and Hart song, which I wish he'd put on an album it was so good, his own I'll Love You Forever and Secret Love, which is a new song too.

Davy took the standup approach to the show, litering the moments between songs with some very bad jokes and cute stories. The man has incredible energy and is such a cutie.

Did I mention I got over 100 pictures? Most of them turned out quite nice which is great considering it was an outdoor concert and that Davy wasn't on until well after sundown.







The evening ended with a bang too.

Fireworks!

Out With The Old In With The New

Here is the greatest way to discover new music at a very cheap rate, while getting rid of CDs that you don't want anymore.

The site is called LaLa.com

Click here to get any of my CDs for $1

So far I've rid myself of 5 CDs and I'll be getting 6 in the mail at $1 plus shipping. Ya can't beat that!

Oh and these are the albums I'm getting in trade.

Delerium - Karma



Susan Werner - Last Of The Good Straight Girls



Jann Arden - Blood Red Cherry (I've been wanting this for ages)



The Moody Blues - Voices In The Sky (I love the art on this best of disc)



Rachael Sage - Public Record



October Project (self titled)



I don't know if they do shipping outside the US yet. So if any of my US friends want an invite, let me know and I'll get one out to ya, cos when I invite people and they become trading members I get a t-shirt!

Top 5 On Friday - Week 82

From those ladies at Music Memoirs

Top 5 songs you currently can't get enough of.

Natasha Beddingfield - Unwritten
I'm not sure why I like this song so much, it's so typical and top 40, but I love the lyrics. I also confess to liking the whole CD.

Figures On A Beach - No Stars
I just rediscovered this one. It's pure 80's new wave from the mid-80's. It's a bit Depeche-Modey. Love it.

Alana Grace - Black Roses Red
I got this on a M3P3 round over at Livejournal and it's one of my favorite songs. It's simply gorgeous.

Fish - A Gentlemen's Excuse Me
This song was sent to me awhile back. It's simply gorgeous. This is a song that Justin Hayward wishes he wrote. (If he ever heard it) As soon as I play it once I have to listen to it over and over again.

Chicago - Saturday In The Park
Between Pickle playing it all the damn time and Julie using it on her mix challenge, this song has stuck with me. (And it won't go away, damn it!)

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen reasons Saturday is going to kick some serious butt

1. Davy Davy Davy



Jones that is.

2. The concert isn't in Pittsburgh!

3. Falconi Field is really pretty.

4. We have field seating which means we could get right up by the stage if we get there early enough.

5. Parking is free at Falconi Free (imagine the concept of free parking if you can!)

6. I get to torture my nephew, Michael with my Davy Jones lusting.

7. Davy dresses slightly better than a certain tall blonde who usually sports an ol'e red Gibson.



Shiny gold shirt....tolerable



Canary-freaking-yellow jacket that makes me reach for my sun glasses....NOT TOLERABLE!

8. I will hear some of my favorite Monkees tunes live again. (It's been about 6 years or more since Davy & Micky played Pittsburgh last)

9. There are good cheap eats in the area of Falconi Field.

10. Davy Jones was my first musical love.



How can you not love that face?

11. My bet is I'll be able to snap as many pictures as I want during the show.

12. Fireworks after the show!!

13. Have I mentioned DAVY DAVY DAVY!!

Time For Those Hump Day Hunks

Where does the time go? Only a couple of more days left in the month of July and only a few more days til the Davy Jones concert in Washington, PA. Woot! I can't wait for that. I haven't had a chance to see Davy solo before, he's always been with the Monkees or at least with Micky.

But that's neither here nor there, it's Wednesday and that means its Hunk Day! erm Hump Day!

I Love The Pickle

No, not pickles, though I do like pickles quite a bit, Pickle F.M. our oldies radio station in Fayette County. Amazingly enough this station plays good oldies, you know the kind I like. Yesterday I heard 3 count em 3 Herman's Hermits songs, 2 Monkees tunes, one of which I requested and Manfred Mann's version of The Mighty Quinn! Squee!

All that and a few Beatles songs thrown in.

Life can't get much better than that.

OK, it could, the station could put a Moody Blues song or two in its rotation. If I want to hear them, I have to call and beg. Which I did last week, just to see if they had any of their songs. They did! Woot! I was treated to Ride My See Saw. Oddly that's one of my favorites so I was happy. It also got my thinking about the innuendo my brain creates when that song is on, but that's something for another day.

So far the only band I haven't heard is Gary Puckett & the Union Gap, and that makes me sad, because I really do love Gary. But who couldn't love this face?



I think I may be requesting Lady Willpower today, since it's embedded itself in my brain last night.

Sing it with me

Lady Willpower, it's now or never...
Give you love to me and I'll shower your heart with tenderness endlessly..

I think the DJ at Pickle is going to get sick of me over the next few days.

Things I accomplished this weekend

Believe it or not I did do a few things this weekend. (Besides having a lousy day on Saturday)

~ I took a gorgeous photo of a wild canary at the outdoor garden at Phipps.



~ Deb and I finally made up our minds on what weekend we are going to Atlantic City. The weekend of choice is Sept 8-10. I just know that there's going to be a hurricane coming up the coast that weekend or just some torrential rain that will make the journey wet.

~ I finished reading Janet Evanovich's Twelve Sharp.



If you are a fan of the Stefanie Plum series, this book is another great read. Hell, if you've never read any of the series this book is a great read.

~ We got back to Round Hill Cemetary and finished weeding Uncle Ray's grave. He now has one of my sister's yellow violas planted on him. Which is better than a damn geranium in my book. I will come back and haunt the first person that sticks one of those on me when I die, I swear!

~ I slept til 8 o'clock Sunday morning. That's amazing because usually my eyes pop open at the same time they do during the week. Somehow I manage to grab some extra time.

~ I ate entirely too much food. But Bucca Di Beppo is one of the best Italian restaurants around and mmm cannelloni is so damn good and so is spomoni ice cream.

~ I used the Zen this weekend! About 1000 songs on shuffle and what does it throw my way? Elvis Costello! ARGH! Just the music I'm totally not into right now.

~ I updated my photoblog, which I'd been neglecting for the past few days. When you take several hundred pictures, it's hard to decide which ones to post and for some reason with me that means I just don't post any. I also uploaded my Phipps pictures to my Snapfish account! Yippee!

I think that's about it. Less then a week til the Davy Jones concert! Squee!

Saturday Stunk

Yesterday was an over all bad day. Terrible in fact. Very few things could have made it worse than it was.

It rained most of the day, meaning I could have had my vegging day that I really wanted but.....

My nephew wanted to do something anyway. His first suggestion was to go see Pirates 2. I was ok with that, kinda. OK, actually I wasn't OK with it. I wasn't in the mood to sit through 2.5 hours of Pirates. I don't care if it's the best movie out there. Then him and sis didn't show up until after 3 o'clock and the movie is at 4. Cutting it close. And then the matter of popcorn caused a huge arguement. Started by yours truly. Don't tell me that I can't have popcorn when I'm watching a movie for 2.5 hours. I have a short attention span as it is. I don't know how I ever managed to watch Van Helsing in the theaters as often as I did. OK, that was Richard Roxburgh.

After a rip roaring row we ended up going to Round Hill. (It had finally stopped raining) The only problem there was that once we were out of the grip of the evil Walmart, we discovered Michael didn't have batteries for his camera. Enter huge, no ginormous Michael sulk.

I managed to take a few pictures of the starving ducks and a few Justins (erm squirrels) not to mention cows and goats.

After that I decided I was going to find my uncle's grave. He died when I was 10 and is buried at the Round Hill Cemetary. Oddly I found the grave without much problem, which is kind of freaky considering that I've only been there once back when I was 10.

I wasn't amused. The grave obviously hadn't been tended in awhile. I realize that his wife hasn't been in the country much this year, but there are other family members still living in the area, someone could have checked on the grave. So Deb and I took some time to weed the plot. So that you could read who was there. Grrr.

After that we went to Denny's and had one of the new burgers. Mmm chili-cheeseburger. Yum! Oh and we finally did get Michael his batteries.

Thankfully the day ended quietly....which was more than I could say for the rest of it.



Look its Justin on a tree. Erm OK it's a squirrel but I call all squirrels Justin.

I Just Want To Veg

Vegging usually doesn't involve me doing something other than sitting on my butt. Today, assuming it's not raining, I'm going to run to Round Hill Park to check out the animals. (even though I've seen them all a thousand million times) I'm also going to make a pot stop at Walmart to get digital camera batteries. A weekend in Erie can really suck the battery life from a camera.

Tomorrow I'm finally going to get back to Pittsburgh. We've been trying to go there since April or May. I don't think I've ever gone this long without a trip into the city, but with car issues and ailing parents and trips abroad, I just didn't have the time.

Wow! Me not having the time. That's amazing.

I will be doing the usual weekend things, like the laundry too. Gotta have clothes to wear, right? I'm going to finish reading the new Janet Evanovich novel, Twelve Sharp too. (Only 100 pages to go) Oh and if I'm feeling really industrious I'm actually going to spend quality time on a writing project that's been stuck at a stalement for about 3 months now.

Hmmm. I guess I'm not going to be doing much vegging.

Top 5 On Friday - Week 81

Top 5 ways that you'd describe your favorite band. (Be as silly, truthful and/or creative as you want to be)

1. The kings of greatest hits rock. More greatest hits collections than actual studio albums (Grrrrr) Plus you very seldom get a non-hit when you see a show. Hell you get the same 20 songs for the most part over and over and over and over and over and over. Can you guys not play Nights In White (f-ing) Satin just once? Nah...too many people would drop over if that song disappeared. (Hmmm that might a good thing)

2. Lyrically brilliant at times. And at other times lyrically baffling.

examples Words You Say (John "Lodgey" Lodge)

Words you say to me
I'm living in fantasy
If I don't know what it is
I simply ignore you.

I hear you every night
I listen but the time is never right
My life is so confused
What more can I tell you?

Oh John John John. WTF is up with this song?

Question (Justin "Squirrelly Man" Hayward)

I'm looking for someone to change my life.
I'm looking for a miracle in my life.
And if you could see what it's done to me
To lose the love I knew
Could safely lead me through.

Between the silence of the mountains
And the crashing of the sea
There lies a land I once lived in
And she's waiting there for me.

But in the grey of the morning
My mind becomes confused
Between the dead and the sleeping
And the road that I must choose.

I need my lighter now! C'mon everyone sway....the show's almost over. Oh wait that was my first reason.

3. Easy on the eyes.





4. Wine snobs, and at least one of them pays the bar tab!



Right Cheryl?

5. Lazy bums that seem to have a fear of recording studios and spending money on making a new record. Grrr it's already been 3 years since December was released.

I Want My CD

I hate ordering via Paypal. I only use it once or twice a year and I don't have my debit card on my account, so everything is done via echeck. Bah! 3-4 days to clear.

I want my Keri Noble EP now!



The EP is called Red Wine Til Daylight and you can only buy it on her site.

It used to be 20 dollars which was why I held off buying it. I got it for 16 now with shipping etc. Now if it would ever get here. I can't wait to listen to it.

Oh and I want her hair and tank top too.

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen pictures of today's b-day boy: John Lodge of The Moody Blues.

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13.

Happy 60something b-day Lodgey!!!