Peppered Thought – The Spice of Life

This Friday, I would like to Take Five minutes to be grateful for this new and old music that puts me in a summery mood. This weekend there is a 30% chance of rain, which will make for some amazing photos, to say the least. But summers here and more than complaining about needing rain. Summer can be full of no pants (i.e. dresses, I suppose), floating in the pool, watching pine trees, early morning napping (I call it a gradual wake-up) on the hammock, an icebox full – no, really, FULL – of popsicles and bike rides through some beautifully colorful neighborhoods.

Bluesy blues perfect for a muggy, sweltering monsoon night, fanning myself on the hammock, eating a popsicle. Seriously, I should be doing everything with a popsicle in tow-the freezer is full!

If you click through on this video, it should play all the songs, as a playlist. If you don’t want to click through, it will just play Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” sung by the awe-inspiring Puppini Sisters. NOTE: “Thursday Night” by Honey Honey and “You Can’t Stop Me Now” by RZA are a tad NSFW, but the rest are all fine. 

on the road again…

Wow. My weekend lasted for 4.5 days. It was glorious while it lasted. I packed a lot into some seemingly relaxing days:

-went to the gym

-watched two amazing World Cup matches

-partied with family on Whiskey Row in Prescott

-got a fisheye lens and used it enough already for people to get sick of me behind the camera

-creating one of the better care packages I have made, complete with homemade Surprise Ball!

-getting to scour the internet for acrhitecture pictures for my brother. He is moving back to Chicago at the end of the summer and wants his room to be real classy. I am incredibly touched he asked me for help, but, in typical brother fashion he just said he wanted “black and white architectural pictures,” and left it up to me to find out what that meant.

-in the above search, finding this astounding book. MUST HAVE. 

-I also did a lot of bike riding, sleeping in my hammock, and losing a couple pounds, despite eating fry bread, multiple tecates, and a HUGE family breakfast.

It wouldn’t be a picnic without a slight rainstorm and consequent dam-builidng.

Okay, everyone in my family who reads this blog. This is my top 5 list of things I would like to see this weekend:

5. water balloons. They may have shut down the water war cruises (I did that back in the early 90′s, before it got out of hand), but that doesn’t mean we as a family can’t get soaked.

4. Sparklers. Everyone bring their lighters, because we are spelling out some letters!!

3. BBQ. Since The Beau introduced me to Jack Daniels BBQ burgers (homemade), I have become obsessed with BBQ. Please someone, save me some BBQ.

2. Huge family breakfast. I don’t care if it’s at our favorite come-together restaurant, or at my na-na’s with people piled everywhere in chairs or sitting on stoops. I would prefer chorizo and waffles at na-na’s - I will even repay you by doing yardwork, nana!!!

Every family has an endless supply of spy glasses, right?

1. Just being together. Our family is finally in a 2-state radius again, so we can get together like this more often, with everyone truly being together. I feel very lucky that my family is so close, and we love each other so much we are willing to camp out it in each others back yards and under tables just to be able to spend as much time as possible with each other. Thanks, Fourth of July Weekend!

Oh sports. There are so many different slang terms for each sport, I don’t know if I will ever understand them all. But watching the World Cup, I have found a fascinating new phrase that I want to work into my own vernacular: to be at sixes and sevens.

Unfortunately the only way I could work it in is if bad things are happening, so maybe it’s a good thing I had no idea what it meant.

“At Sixes and Sevens (“at 6′s and 7′s”) is an English phrase, describing a state of confusion or disarray. The origins of the word are a bit muddled, but the funniest one is the quarrel between the Merchant Taylors’ and the Skinners’ Livery companies. They have fought and been in a dissarray about who comes sixth in the order of precedence. I will give you a minute to click through that link, read all the awesome names in the order (HABERDASHERY FTW!)

Ahh, you’re back! Okay. So, as with quite a few crazy phrases, no one is for certained who coined the phrase as a phrase, but I like ridiculous quarrel stories.

p.s. Going back to the World Cup, haven’t the commentators been AMAZING? I want Ian Darke and Ally McCoist to commentate on everything!