Front Porch Jam Session

I bought a ukulele from amazon.com a couple of weeks ago.  I tested my musical talents (ha!) over the weekend.

It was a bit chilly, but that didn't stop me.  I am trying to learn "Hey Jude."

Winky Nik no longer has to wear her cone and is back to being our neighborhood watch.

32

Life Lately.

This month I turned 32.  I celebrated by having happy hour with Bobaloo and some lovely friends and then enjoyed some veggie fajitas at On the Border.

Since I last visited here, life has brought losses of loved ones.

But in the spirit of spring; life has also brought babies, weddings, visits, vacations, celebrations, good friends, health, and all sorts of other good stuff.

Renewal & Regrowth.

Bobaloo's sunflowers have started sprouting over the weekend.  We also have been lucky to have some springtime hootenannies on the patio. 

Nik needed to get her eye removed a week ago.  She recovered well and is back to being as mischievous as ever.

What's new with you?

December 16

Today's blog-a-thon prompt is to share your favorite songs.  This list could get lengthy.  Hmmm... let's just stick to 15 or so, in no spectacular order.

Silver & Gold: Neil Young

Climb to Safety: Widespread Panic

Crimson & Clover: Tommy James & the Shondells

Rockin' the Suburbs: Ben Folds

Light of a Clear Blue Morning: Dolly Parton

Walk on the Wild Side: Lou Reed

Roll on Babe: Vetiver

My Life: The Beatles

Home: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

Hotel Song: Regina Spektor

Downtown: Petula Clark

Minnesota Moon: The Big Wu

Dead Sea: Lumineers

We're not the jet set: John Prine

Love Still Remains: Emmylou Harris

10 Rocks: Shelby Lynne

 

What are you listening to these days?

 

Join the bloggy fun!

Terrific Lady Day (part 1)

Bobaloo is a pretty good sport when it comes to doing the things I'm into.  These activities include cheesy tourist traps, going to see plays, checking out alpaca shows, and all sorts of other things that might not be up his alley.  Once in a while I plan an Ultimate Extreme Fun Day to the Max.  If you watch The League you may have heard it referred to as, Terrific Lady Day.  It's hard to explain but basically, we do a bunch of stuff I want to do.

Last week was rough (see yesterday's post) so on Friday I found $10 tickets to go see Jerry Joseph & Jackmormons up in Boulder at the Fox Theatre.  Just what I needed, a night on the town with my dude.

First, we had drinks at our old stomping grounds.  We used to hang at this bar all the time.

The show was awesome!  I have never been to the Fox before and really dug it.  A lot of great energy and some good butt-shakin' music.

 

 It was a good night.  A really, really good night.

 

Goings On

I have been trying to slow down this August and have been really enjoying being a bit more of a homebody.  Bobaloo has been getting the yard all spiffed up and I put up some blue twinkly lights on the back patio.  Pretty good stuff.

 

Nik helping with yard work.
 

  We went to the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival on Sunday to see one of our favorite music dudes, John Prine.  It was a pretty venue and he played one of my favorite tunes called "Lake Marie."

 

I need to start asking people to take our pic, we never have anything in the background!

A friend and I have started doing Mix Tape Mondays on Monday evenings.  We exchange mix tapes with different themes.  Next week's theme is "Roadtrip." 

What's your favorite roadtrip song?

 

America

A couple of years ago, Bobaloo and I went to a small blues jam in Greeley, Colorado that takes place every June.  On our way into town we stopped at a liquor store to stock up on some beer.  We were tailgating in the dusty dirt parking lot when we opened the case of Budweiser to find a new and awesome patriotic beer can design.  Maybe a little over the top design-wise?

I don't know why this can struck us so funny.  Maybe because we were going to a blues festival in a cow-town.  Maybe it was Bobaloo's patriotic farmer tan (red arms, white body, blue jeans).  Maybe a combination of all of this.  Whatever it was, we got the giggles and somewhere I have a picture of Bobaloo tailgating that day that he will be very happy I didn't put on the internet.  Here's a different picture of him:

Back to the beer can.  Ever since then, I have found myself starting quite a collection of very American can koozies.

"Land of the free, courtesy of the brave"

Happy Tuesday!

Yikes! I am just coming off of a 5-day weekend. 

The 4th of July went well, Bobaloo and I went to Red Rocks to see Moe and Blues Traveler.  The show was good and the fireworks were spectacular!

 

 

The rest of the time off was pretty low-key.  The darn brakes went out on the car so we stayed close to home.  We did check out the Forney Museum of Transportation where they had a 60's Cadillac exhibition.

They had some vintage Burma-Shave ads there too.  As I am not the biggest fan of Bobaloo's "New Years beard," I especially got a kick out of this one:

The answer to a maidens prayer is not a chin of stubby hair.

 

It's been a busy couple of weeks and my brain is still spinning a little, I am looking forward to things settling down a bit.

Past and Present

One of my favorite things in life is sitting on the porch and listening to tunes.  Add a couple of beers on a nice evening and you've got yourself a happy camper.

 

When I was a kid, these folks were my favorites.

 

Petula Clark, Diana Ross & the Supremes, Tiffany, Guns'n'Roses, Soundtrack to Follow that Bird

My favorites of all time.

 

Neil Young, John Prine, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Widespread Panic, and Big Wu

and it goes with out saying, but these fellas....

 

 

Here's some stuff I have been enjoying lately.

 

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic 0s, Regina Spektor, Wilco, Wishbone Ash, The Lumineers

So...

 

listenin' to any good tunes lately?

 

Friday

Friday evening was pretty mellow, I just sat on the patio with Nik and finished my book.

 

Saturday

Bobaloo and I took the lightrail to Larimer Square in Denver to see the Chalk Art festival.  It was a beautiful day out and the artwork was spectacular.  I wish I would have gone back yesterday to see the finished pieces, but here are some pictures of the works in progress:

I love the Bob Ross on the right.

Later that evening I went over to my buddy Aaron's house for a rousing game of Monopoly that of course, went unfinished.  Has anyone in the history of Monopoly ever finished a whole game?

 

Sunday

Sunday started as kind of a lazy day around the house.  My EFT class ended up being cancelled, so I listened to some Dolly and Willie records and took Nik for a long walk. We also had a new flower pop up.  Anyone have any idea what kind it is?

 

I had been looking forward to yesterday evening for a while because I got to see my first show of the season at Red Rocks.  Bobaloo, Aaron, and I went to go see Alabama Shakes and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.

Alabama Shakes

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

 

 

We had so much fun in the parking lot and at the show.  Both bands had a lot of energy and we sure did do some dancing.  If you ever get to Colorado, go see a show at Red Rocks.  It's life-changing, I promise.

 

I hope the weekend was well to all of you!

 

  

Last Friday Bobaloo took me to Red Rocks to see Atmosphere. I am not characteristically a hip hop fan, but since my little brother introduced me to the group, I have been rocking out to them on my iPod on my walks.

The show was fun and the company was awesome too.

Before last Friday, the most recent shows I saw were Widespread Panic back in June. Three days of fun, I tell ya.

The Panic shows were also Red Rocks.

Why does music sound better in the summer?

We bumped into an acquaintance of Bobaloo’s last Friday at the show and he commented that he could only imagine what is on our iPods at home with the different types of shows we go to.

Sticking to one genre is so boring, don’t you think? Variety is the proverbial spice of life.

I bought a record player a couple of months ago. On the weekends I like to go to Goodwill and Arc to comb through records. I’ve found a few gems.

I prefer records to CDs. I prefer CDs to iMusic. There something about listening to an album in the order it was intended and not just pushing shuffle.

Shuffling is chaotic. I enjoy the tidiness of an album.

What have you been diggin’ on lately?

Welcome back to that same old place that you laughed about

Bobaloo, some friends, and I were trying to think of awesome TV theme songs the other night. Well, it started off as a reversed version of “Name That Tune.” We would give Bobaloo a theme song and he would have to hum or sing it. He is surprisingly good at this game. He doesn’t know just the first line or two; he knows every word to a lot of songs. Tickle me impressed.

This game morphed into a debate about what the best TV theme song ever is.

Personal favorites of mine are as follows:

Welcome Back Kotter (all-time favorite) Cheers Laverne and Shirley The Simpsons The Facts of Life Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Married… with Children The Wonder Years

This got me ruminating (I’m deep). They sure don’t write theme songs like they used to. Seriously, I have been trying to think of some really good ones from 1990 forward and all that comes to mind is That 70’s Show, Frasier, Friends, and Fresh Prince (how’s that for alliteration?). Are there obvious ones I am missing? Maybe this is the excuse I need to get cable.

Old Souls and Free Spirits

It takes me 45 minutes to get to and from work these days. I don’t mind most of the time because I like to sing with the car radio and the views are pretty. It’s nice to have that time to myself to think about everything or nothing, however the canyon road moves me.

When I was growing up my dad cleaned on Sunday mornings. To make the task go by faster he would play his far out records. Records my mom came to refer to as his “boing-boing” music because of the wild melodies and the raucous resonance. The record player console was in the dining room where the sun caught the glass from the patio.

Once in a while, the old man would bestow upon me the great responsibility of choosing the cleaning music. Picking out a record is the first recollection music I have. When it was my turn to choosethe music, without fail, I would carefully slide the enthralling LP out of a box. I always found the record with children like me on the cover and was delighted. It was the first piece of art I thought was truly beautiful, even then. I was haunted by the sea-children climbing on rocks for many years. Much later, I realized the album was Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy.

My job was to dust with Windex, and I carefully sprayed every surface more than liberally and loved the smell always taking great care to get every spot on the coffee table. It was a special treat when my mother would have me dust all of her fragile pieces in the china cabinet. The sun would gleam on the clean glass and it made me happy. My dad loved the album. As he cleaned, he probably thought about everything or nothing, however the record moved him.

About three years later, I tagged along with my dad to the car wash to help him wash the Ford Econoline before we headed East for Christmas vacation. I was probably eight when we took this small voyage. I was always his little tag-along kid on these small errands. “Crimson and Clover” by Tommy James and Shondells started to play on the oldies station. We sang along and after the song was over, my dad told me about how innovative that song was in it’s time. I didn’t really know what he was talking about, but I felt important because he always spoke to me like I was a grown-up.

As we drove home from the car wash, we listened to more oldies and were happy. I was eight and my young mind was thinking about everything of nothing. When Christmas season comes around, I always throw “Crimson and Clover” into the music mix with all of the Christmas carols.

I grew fast, as kids do. I lived with my parents when I was nineteen and unfortunately, did not have many friends with the same music taste. When the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young tour came to St. Paul, Minnesota, I had no friends volunteering to check out the show with me. My dad bought us tickets and it was the first time the two of us went to a concert together.

The show was stunning. I was so happy. That night we spoke about everything and nothing, however Neil Young moved us. I still have the ticket stub in a box of mementos.

My dad and I have always had music in common. There were teenage years when it was hard to relate to one another and it seemed the space between what we thought and knew was a million miles. More years have passed and now I am in my twenties, and he is in his fifties. The miles are now space and distance between our doorsteps. He came to visit this last week and it is not too hard to catch up these days. All we need to do is throw a CD into the boom box and visit at the house, put a quarter into the jukebox while sitting on a barstool, or listen to the radio on a car trip and the time and distance doesn’t seem to matter anymore. We still talk about everything and nothing and in these conversations we are happy.