Dey's so purty!

Well, Happy Memorial Day, people!  If there is anyone reading this who is either a soldier, past, present, or future, or a husband or wife of one, my hat goes off to you!  Thank you so much for your service!  You are the reason for this country being great - you and BBQ ribs.  But mostly you!  :-) 

Jenny and I got up this morning and figured we should probably work in the yard.  The lawn really needed a haircut, and Jenny wanted to get rid of all of the weeds in the garden areas, so we launched the "Weedeater Offensive"  Unfortunately, many brave flowers were killed during this offensive, but they did not give their lives in vain - the yard looks a helluva lot better than it did!  It almost looks like we know what we're doing!  :-)

We got the yard done just in time, really - there was a bad looking storm rolling in!  We ended up not getting too much rain, but the wind was blowing to beat the band!  I took a couple of minutes as the rain was starting to take a few pictures of my wife's favorite flowers in our yard: her hydrangeas.  They really are absolutely gorgeous, as you can see!  She's so proud of them, because for the longest time it seemed like we couldn't get them to grow.  I guess she finally figured out the magic words!  Today's stroke is based on the colors of her beautiful hydrangeas - enjoy!

Noticing the days hurrying by/ When you're in love, my how they fly...

Well, today I played a couple of great sets at church!   I really had a blast playing this new funky tune Jason wrote, called "Taste and See".  I'll see if I can get a recording sometime and put it up.  Both services were pretty well attended, as we had a few baby dedications this morning, including one for my niece, Savannah, during second service.

After church, I came home and got ready to go to my sister (Savannah's mom) Erica's house to stuff myself silly with hamburgers.  As I was getting ready, I looked outside, and realized that the sky was as clear as all get-out - almost looked like the sky in that scene in Ferris Bueller when he's justifying "taking the day off".  It immediately inspired me to do today's stroke, so I started rummaging through my paints.  I came across an absolutely beautiful blue - one that really reminded me of that particular "Ferris Sky".  It just happened to be one of the colors that Jenny picked up the other day for 2 bucks!  A "Two-Buck Blue", if you will!  And I will!  So, anyway, I slathered a bit of that on the canvas, and went on my way.  Happy Day-Before-Memorial-Day to ya!

Protect your chicken from Dokken...

Ya ever have one of those days when you start out thinking you're going to do one thing and end up doing something completely different?  Yeah, that was my day.  I woke up and played some hide and seek with my niece, Atala.  Then we went upstairs and did some coloring in one of her Barbie coloring books.  Got to use her Crayola Glitter Crayons™, which was pretty cool - we didn't have anything fancy like that when I was growing up!  :-)  After we all took a little trip to the St. Louis Library, Jenny and I dropped Ma and Atala off at my sister Erica's house, and came home.

I had originally planned on going on down to the Rib America Festival downtown to see some music, but ended up running some errands, grabbing some new clothes, and watching the baseball game at home - figured it would save money!

A band I know from Chicago, The Steepwater Band was playing early, then a bunch of 80s hair metal bands were gonna play: Jackyl, most known for their ridiculous blues-rock number "The Lumberjack", during which the lead singer "plays" a chainsaw solo, L.A. Guns, who are kind of a raunchy-bluesy rock band from the Sunset Strip in Hollywood (an offshoot of Guns and Roses).  Next was Dokken, which was one of my favorite bands back in high school - I was definitely "Rokken with Dokken"!  They had a few minor hits, including the theme song to A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, cleverly titled "Dream Warriors".

Finishing up the night was the Attention Whore Of The Month, Bret Michaels.  Yes, I know he's been in the hospital, etc.  I do, however, question how bad he really was, since he's already back out on tour, despite warnings from his doctor.  Of course, this all could have (to a certain extent) been a major PR move on his part to A) help him win The Donald's Super-Has-Been-Apprentice thing, and B) sell tickets to what was probably only a half-way-decent selling tour.  I have nothing more to say about him. I will now step down from my soapbox. :-)

Anyway, tonight's yellow and black stroke was inspired by the only band I really wanted to see tonight, Dokken, stars of probably the funniest commercial for anti-virus software ever.  BOOM!

You got some syrup with that?

Hey, it's finally Friday, and whats more: it's Memorial Day weekend!  Three-day weekend, baybee!  You could tell as soon as you walked into my particular place of employment that even though there were a few warm bodies present, there was really no one there!  We ended up shutting down the whole place by 2 pm.  Woo hoo!

So I came home and started cleaning some stuff up, because we've got some company this weekend: Ma came up with my niece, Atala, for the dedication of another niece, Savannah, at church this weekend.

One of the first things Miss Atala asked me about was this painting, and if she could contribute to it in any way (she didn't put it quite that eloquently, but you get the general gist).  I told her she could, of course, do a stroke, so she picked out this nice little light purple.  Since it was a last minute thing, and it didn't really correspond with anything that happened today, I figured I'd just give you this picture to ponder:

It's in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills. It's in somebody else’s name.

Well, so Jenny had the day off and was running some errands when she gave me a call this morning.  She said that Joanne's had a massive sale on a bunch of different paints, in the brand that I use and wanted to know if I wanted any.  I figured for a bunch of paints that were normally $8 or $9, on sale for $2, even if I don't use them that much, it still expands my palette, and ya never know when I'll be able to put it to great use. 

Today, for instance, I immediately went for a particular color she bought - one that I'd thought about buying a few other times, but just couldn't justify buying it, since I didn't know how often I would use it.  I think it could be a lot of fun, though.  It's called Iridescent Light Gold, and yes, it's all shimmery and stuff - OOH, LOOK, SOMETHING SHINY!  I may try to do a whole other painting showcasing that particular color at some point, but I've got a lot on my "to do" list at the moment.

And right now I need to get going - got band practice, then I've got to get to bed asap.  I've gotta be at work at 6 am!  That just may kill me!  I still, after all of these years of getting up early, hate mornings!  Later!

Do bears bear? Do bees bee?

I know I'm likely going to start sounding like a broken record, but there are just a few things in my life that I really love enough to talk about on more than one occasion.  Tonight I actually went down to the library to get a couple of movies.  I was just in the mood to watch a movie - preferably a scary movie (I had my mind set on "Drag Me To Hell") but it wasn't in.  I did, however, grab a couple of different movies.  When I got home, though,  we were hungry, and Jenny got a phone call, and in all that time being side-tracked, I got out of the mood for other movies, and instead got in the mood for a little "Moonlighting". 

Now I know I've talked about this before, but I really love David Addison!  I always did.  He was just so much of a smartass - I wanted to be (and, I guess to a certain extent did become) like him!  I like to think I got some of my timing (comic or otherwise) from watching him.

Well, it's late, and I've gotta watch the rest of this episode and get to bed!  Tonight's stroke (which was originally supposed to be a kind of light blue-ish-grey-ish purple-ish kinda thing) ended up being more of a brown-ish grey, and for that I'm truly sorry.  It seems to work, though.  You don't like it?  Boy, are you a tough customer!  I bet you didn't even clap your hands to save Tinkerbell!  (this is a line from the show, by the way!)  G'night!

This is a really volcanic ensemble you're wearing, it's really marvelous!

There's this book that I'm almost finished with called "You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried", by Susannah Gora, which is all about the John Hughes movies of the 80s (think "Sixteen Candles", "Breakfast Club", and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off") and the effect those movies had on not only pop culture, but society as a whole - how we began to think about life after watching them.  I wasn't really that fond of her style of writing - she seemed way too much like a "fan-girl", or someone writing for a teen magazine or something.  I did, though, enjoy the behind-the-scenes stories on all of the movies she did cover.  There were a lot of things I already knew ( just because I'm a movie/music/pop-culture geek), but then there were a lot of things I didn't know at all, and that was kinda fun!   I guess all in all, I would recommend the book if you are a huge fan of that particular genre of movies.  Just don't expect some sort of masterpiece in literature - or even correct grammar and punctuation in a lot of it.

Okay, enough griping!  The book did, at least, inspire a nice little pink stroke!  I tell you what, I'll never forget the night I first saw "Pretty In Pink"!  I was a member of one of those "BMG Music Clubs" or something like that - one of the ones where they send you 8 cassettes (!) for one penny.  I finished watching the movie, watched the credits, and as soon as I turned off the VCR I ran into my room and filled out the little order card, ordering the soundtrack to the movie!  The film itself just made that much of an impact on me, but the soundtrack itself was absolutely brilliant!  I still listen to it to this day, at least once every month or two!

By the way, I always thought Andie should have gone with Duckie.
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You're still here?

...But then my homework was never quite like this...

Yes, folks, it is definitely that time of year!  Summer In The City.  And for those of you who don't live here, St. Louis is notorious for their hot-and-humid-as-all-get-out summers!  Today was the first really hot day at work, too.  Hopefully I'll get the boss to get me a fan soon - there's no circulation whatsoever in "the cage" where I work!  It's all good, though - at least I've got a job!  Plus, I'll take the heat over the cold any day of the week!

It's a short blog tonight - nothing really that impressive happened today!  :-)  Just figured I'd throw a little bit of red and orange down and give you guys a few "Hot" songs, and now I'm gonna watch a little TV with my lovely wife!

Waiting for Freedom Williams to come along and start rapping...

Man, did I get a rude awakening today!  It's been really nice, temperature-wise, all week, and then yesterday and today, BAM!  Hotter Than Hell!  Yesterday it wasn't quite so bad - we went to the game, but we were in the shade.  Even when I mowed the lawn after that it really didn't seem so bad. 

Today, though, we finished up the whole moving process for Jenny's dad - loaded up all the boxes, washer and dryer, deep freeze ( I wanted to get in there and take a nap!), dressers, etc.  It was so darned hot and, of course humid (this is St. Louis, after all!) that we were all just miserable!  We were all just dripping with sweat!

All of us were talking all day about how wonderful it would be if the swimming pools were open, so I figured I'd do a nice little cool-pool-blue stroke today!  Hopefully we'll get to jump into one pretty soon!

The farm team ain't *that* bad...

Well, hey hey, folks, it's been a heckuva day!  Thanks to my friend Sam from church, I got to take 3 buddies to the Cards game in amazing seats (see pic)!  We didn't win, but the "farm team" as we were calling them (Tony had most of the regulars out of the game - Yadier Molina, who's normally the catcher, ended up playing 1st base in place of Albert Pujols towards the end of the night even!) really tried to rally in the 9th inning, coming back from a 10-3 deficit to at least make it 10-7. 

Anyway, after the game, I came home, mowed the yard, and then while I was getting cleaned up, Sweet Pea came by with her mom to say "hi".  I was so glad, too - I hadn't seen her in quite a while!  We played Poptropica for a little while, and just generally had a great time!  She asked if I'd already done my stroke for the day (she likes to keep up on my painting) and, since I hadn't, she asked if she could do it tonight.  Of course, I said she could!  She picked out the red, so I squirted some on the canvas, and she just scraped it across a little bit.  I thought it looked pretty good!

Game: Blouses!

So tonight Jenny and I were out running some errands when we decided we were hungry - and we didn't feel like trying to dig anything out to cook!    So we headed on down to Lemay to go to Cusanelli's.  It just sounded really good, and we knew it would be a good meal, relatively inexpensive, and quick.  Jenny got the barbeque chicken and I got the fillet of sole - that's one big ol' piece of fishy, lemme tell ya!  It was really good, though!  So we came on home, stopping by the DQ on the way home, because it's on the way, and I'm pretty sure there's a local law that says that if you've had dinner and you drive by a DQ, you have to stop in and get some ice cream.  We didn't want to be on the wrong side of the law, so we stopped in, and indeed got ourselves some ice creams.  They were very yummy, thanks for asking!  :-)

After we got home I was kind of wondering what I would do again tonight (I've been in kind of a slump the last few days - I think it's just a normal phase, though) so I asked her what I should do.  She actually suggested that I merely slap some plain medium on the canvas for some texture, but I didn't want to do that, so I decided I'd use some Clear Tar Gel.  I didn't do it clear this time, though, like I did a couple of months ago - I mixed some purple in there, mostly because I love purple, but also because I just love Prince!

I'm actually not sure why I thought of Prince, or purple, for that matter.  It just kind of popped in there, kinda like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man did in Ghostbusters.  It just happened!

Whoa--o-o-o-ohhhh! Who-o-o-o-oo-o-ohh!

Tonight is a much happier night than last night - if for nothing else, than just the mere fact that the Atlanta Braves beat the Cincinnati Reds, and the Cards won, so we're back on top in the National League Central Division!  Woo Hoo! 

I actually feel the need to apologize - I feel as if I've kinda cheated on you guys tonight.  The biggest thing on my mind this evening was not this particular paint stroke, but another project, which I wanted to do pretty much to relax; to take my mind off of my tics for just a little while!  They've been extremely bad the last few days, and I just really wanted to do something to distract myself, and this is exactly what I needed!

So,anyway, I got that outta my system (for tonight, at least) and I decided that since I was so happy with the Braves helping us out, that I would dedicate this evening's stroke --a red with a teensy bit of purple in it --  to the Tribe (wait, what? - dass nachos!).  I'm man enough to root for my competitors if it means that it benefits my guys!

So anyway, that's what's going on tonight - now to finish up watching the Grey's Anatomy with the wife.  Don't know why she watches this stuff - I'm usually at band practice.  I'm not a fan of this drama stuff - there's enough drama in real life, ya know?

Let me take you down, cause I'm going to...

So I'm in a real hurry - gotta take care of some stuff tonight, so I'll tell you that I was excited to find out I had some strawberries in our little garden!  We planted them a couple of years ago, but this is the first time we've really gotten any, so - YAY!  They're really great, too!

Since it's a short blog tonight, I'll give you a few strawberry things to listen to, for my red stroke:

Brothers Johnson - Strawberry Letter 23

Deana Carter - Strawberry Wine

Strawberry Alarm Clock - Incense and Peppermints

So enjoy, and I'll talk to you tomorrow! :-)

A Møøse once bit my sister ...

Mynd you møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti...

We here at "365 Strokes" would like to apologize for the beginning of this particular blog entry.  Those responsible have been sacked.  :-)

Well, we just got back from Jenny's dad's again to load up (hopefully) the last of the stuff we "inherited".  Yup, I got my big-ass TeeVee!  :-D  Jenny may be right - I may not ever leave this room!  It's got heat and AC, the computer, and now this monstrosity!  I wonder if there's a way we can put another bathroom in here - it could be like a mini studio apartment!  HA!

Jim (her dad) had a coupon to a place called Indigo Joe's out there in Wildwood.  The food was great, as long as you like pre-made stuff warmed up to make it look like it was fresh.  It was kind of like that scene in National Lampoon's European Vacation where the family is at a Parisian restaurant and after they order they cut to a shot of the kitchen and the "cooks" are just warming up TV dinners and putting a little plastic French flag in them.  Well, at least we had the coupon.

The best part of the meal for me was this dessert I got.  I don't have to go to the doctor for my next check-up for 6 more months, so by dern I'm gonna eat some sweets!  I got this triple-chocolate-something-er-other with layers of chocolate mousse and chocolate cake.  Man, was it ever rich!  But it was just yummy enough to inspire tonight's stroke.  :-)

Cards 'n' ice cream 'n' smelly thangs...

Well I tell you what, I'm in a pretty darned good mood today, despite the fact that it's still grey and narsty outside!  My brother-in-law, Jimmy, is taking Jenny, their mom, Carla, and me to the Cards game tonight!  Hopefully the rain will hold off, like weather.com says!

It was a pretty good day at work, too - everyone kind of left me alone, and I got to get stuff done.  Then one of the guys I work with, who's been out for almost a year because his kidneys pretty much shut down came in to say "hi" and told me he's going under the knife in October - they've found a donor!  That's awesome!  They really thought it'd be a couple of years before they found anyone, but a co-worker of his wife happened to be a match and wanted to donate!  He's been doing dialysis 3 times a week since he went into the hospital.  Turns out that all of his life he'd been living on one kidney, and then the one that was working was only functioning at about 5%!  I'm so glad he got this - you can tell just by looking at him he's got a new lease on life.

Well, like they say, life is short - better stop to smell the roses, live life to it's fullest, eat more ice cream, hug everyone ya love, all that  kinda good stuff!  Mmmmmm, ice cream!  Oh - speaking of which, that's what I based my stroke on today.  See ya!

Orange you glad...

Boy, do I need a pick-me-up today!  It was nasty out once again (I swear we're living in Seattle!), the Cardinals lost again, knocking them out of first place in the National League Central Division, and one of my heroes from my metal-head days, Ronnie James Dio passed away.  He was one of the original metal dudes, in bands going back to the 60s.  He was in Black Sabbath for a while, replacing Ozzy Osbourne (who ever thought Dio would outlive Ozzy? :-D).  Also, he was pretty much solely responsible for popularizing the devil horns sign.  Dio said that his grandmother used to make the hand gesture to ward off the evil eye, which is very common among superstitious Southern Italians. The "horns," or "Corna," themselves are used both to scare away and give someone the "Malocchio" (the Evil Eye).

Well, enough heavy metal (and Italian superstition) history.  I needed a little sunshine today, so I decided to put down a little bright orange.  It reminded me of an album by a guy named Todd Fancey.  Not sure why he put a big ol' orange on the cover, but the songs inside are so wonderfully happy and sugary sweet they just can't help but to make ya happy!  They're like good old fashioned cheesy 70s AM radio pop hits!  I'd post some on here, but I honestly just can't find any online.  I did, however, find this little gem from another band he's in, The New Pornographers.  Enjoy, and have a sugary sweet, wonderfully happy day!

Grey. Gray. Greigh?

However you spell it (yeah, I made that last one up - but I would definitely use that!  It just looks cool!) that's how I describe this day.  It's grey outside, and I feel a bit greigh on the inside - just a bit blah in the stomach.  Probably all the drainage caused by allergies, caused by the grey-ness outside!  It's all a vicious cycle!  :-)

So today we went out and got some more stuff at her dad's house.  Tomorrow we get the fridge.  I'm starting to feel very claustrophobic in here, lemme tell ya!  This move has almost made it to where we've outgrown our house and need to move, too!  :-)  I guess you could just say our house is just that much more cozy!  :-D

So, since all this gray stuff was happening I figured I'd mix up a bunch of different colors and make a little greigh myself. 

Oh, and here's a nice little song by Junior Senior to take all of this grey away!  Enjoy!

It's not easy...

We woke up this morning and started getting ready, like always. Once the sun came up, Jenny looked outside and said,"You know, everything's just so green!"  She was just really impressed at how wonderful everything looked outside.  Since we'd had so much rain the last few days everything was, indeed, very green.  Unfortunately this means the weeds, too! :-/  We've gotta find a way to get rid of all that crap, and then we'll have a yard just as good as the little old lady across the street who gets up at 5 am every morning and is out there literally sweeping the yard with her broom, and picking up every single leaf by hand!   Boy, does her yard look good, though - maybe even Hank Hill good!

So I thought about this all day, and I figured it's been a while since I did anything with green (yeah, this one may make ya need a hanky)  - or at least a real Green (this is one of my favorites of all time.  Jenny and I have two songs that are "our songs" - this one and "More Today Than Yesterday" by Spiral Starecase.  That's the one we had our first dance to at our wedding reception.  Both of these will always hold a special place in my heart!  Love you, Jenny!  :-)

Any way, I kinda got off on a tangent there - I meant to tell you that I did a nice little stroke of the green stuff, in honor of our lush, green yard!  Just squint really hard at the picture, and maybe you'll see our front yard!  Okay, prolly not, but it's fun to do, anyway!

I have to push the pram a lot...

So Jenny's dad is moving, and so he's getting rid of some furniture - just doesn't have any room for it, doesn't need some of it anymore, etc.  Therefore we're inheriting some cool stuff.  We've got a new hutch to put more dishes and whatever else we want to in there.  It's got a couple of shelves in the top part, with glass doors and a light - just perfect for our set of plates commemorating potatoes that resemble famous polka stars.  No, we don't really have those.  But they would be interesting. 

We also got something we really wanted - a new dining room table!  We had a great one that I received from some friends of my family's down in Cassville, MO, where I grew up (I actually grew up in Washburn, about 8 miles south - Cassville was the "big town" where we went shopping, went to church, and where we teenagers would go to "cruise the square" on Friday and Saturday nights).  It is a great table, and we'll most likely keep it, but we wanted something a little different.  So we got Jim's table, which just happens to be round.  Yup, it is, indeed, a round table.  I feel a bit like some important dude - maybe even a king or something.  Maybe his name is Arthur.  Yeah, let's go with that.  :-) 

So now we've got it all in the house and situated.  The only thing left now is a TV and refridgerator, so we've got some more heavy lifting coming up this weekend!  (yay.)  It's all good, though - the house looks completely different!

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you that I put down a light brown stroke this evening, to go with the light brown round table (enjoy this bonus footage - it's awesome! :-D)

BYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.....

There have often been special guest hosts who went on to host major television shows: Ryan Seacrest was a guest host on Casey Kasem's "American Top 40" before Kasem retired and Seacrest took over.  Jay Leno (who was arguably much funnier at the time) guest-hosted for the mighty Johnny Carson before he beat out [the better candidate] David Letterman to take over that top spot (a spot which he had to fight tooth and nail for over the years, occasionally yielding to Letterman's better numbers).  Yeah, as you could probably guess, I'm much more a Letterman fan that Leno.  I also liked Conan a lot more, too.  Truth be told, though, I'll take Craig Ferguson over the lot of 'em. This is a brilliant monologue he delivered a couple of years ago - kind of serious, but he's just so damned funny every night!  He and Conan O'Brien were the only talk show hosts who stayed in production over the writer's strike a couple of years ago because they write their own stuff!  So, yeah, I'll take that over the watered-down corporate crap on the other shows any night (not that I ever get to stay up to see 'em, but ya know)!

Anyway, I decided tonight that I'd like to have a "guest painter" for the night.  I was asking Jenny for her advice (she's definitely my muse in all of this, as she is for pretty much anything creative that I do) and she asked if she could possibly do a stroke.  After I grilled her a minute or two on her aspirations and intentions, I decided that she would be a worthy guest host tonight. 

She picked the color (yellow), but I asked her not to use the big-ass brush she originally had in her hand.  She did, however, pick the location.  I can't remember exactly why she picked that particular spot, and neither can she, other than "it just looked like it should go there".  Good enough for me.  Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.  Until then, good night, and good morning.