Go Faith Hill

Apparently at a recent Tim McGraw/Faith Hill concert, an overeager female fan groped Tim McGraw's privates, right in front of his wife Faith Hill. She responded by publicly reprimanding the girl from the stage. Watch it here. I think the girl got off easy. If I were Faith, standing over the girl like she does in the video, I would have kicked her in the f*ckin' head!

Karaoke Queen

What a great party Saturday night! It was every bit as fun as I'd hoped it would be, with plenty of karaoke opportunities. I bailed out this terrible girl (who turned out to be Jeffro's hairdresser!) trying to sing Cher's If I Could Turn Back Time, sang a duet of Bon Jovi's Who Says You Can't Go Home, and sang Pat Benatar's Hit Me With Your Best Shot. A most fun time, once I got my courage up! There was a lot of great dance music in addition to the karaoke and some really great drinks, including a Captain Morgan Parrot's Bay bottled pineapple colada that was really good, if a bit sweet. I got to see some friends I hadn't seen in a while, which was really nice.

The week started slow today, since I was running myself ragged all weekend. The good news is, I have a second phone interview with the company I talked to last week. Jeffro thinks all the phone interviewing is a little odd, but I don't really mind. I hate to waste my time going all the way out to MD for no reason. At least this way, I can sneak off during lunch hour and not have to make some excuse for being gone several hours in the afternoon. So we'll see what happens. I'm not holding my breath, but I am excited to get a second interview.

And lastly, don't forget to watch Six Degrees of Martina McBride tonight at 9 pm ET on ABC! I'll be at my yoga class, but I intend to tape it!

Week in Review

It was a very, very long week, with a lot of stuff happening at work with our conference coming up next month, a phone interview, and two doc appts. The interview was a follow-up from something I had done before I got my current job. It's hard to say how it went, since it was just a phone interview, but my fingers are crossed, cause I think it would be a cool opportunity, despite being a lot of work.

Last night Jeffro and I went out for sushi, then watched a very messed up movie called Molvern Callar. Very bizarre. Today is cleaning & errands, then a great party tonight where I'll get to do karaoke, provided I have enough liquid courage beforehand! Tomorrow is lunch and possibly dinner with two different friends. Very busy indeed. I need to find time to figure out if I will be able to put together my new gas grill so I can start grilling every night!

Harry Potter Widow

Since Jeffro picked up the new Harry Potter yesterday, he's been reading just about non-stop . . . to the point that he just finished the 700+ tome in less than 36 hours. So I guess now that the weekend is over he'll be willing to go out and do something fun in this beautiful weather!

Six Degrees of . . . Martina McBride?

Yep, believe it or not, Six Degrees of Martina McBride is a new TV show airing, Monday, July 30 at 9 pm on ABC. It's a very odd concept, and I'm not sure what to make of it. Of course, since Martina is my favorite singer, I'll watch it, despite my enjoying my long summer nights sans TV. Anyway, I plan to check it out, and you can read more about it here. The very complicated premise is six Nashville hopefuls will compete for the chance at recording and releasing a single.

According to article, part of the competition is finding a connection to Martina McBride: "To complete this part of the competition, contestants had to go to someone they know and ask them to take them to someone they know and so on with the goal of eventually getting to someone who knows Martina McBride personally."

Once that's done, the article says, "Paired with some of the best songwriters in town, they'll be charged with learning a new song and then face off in a singing competition held at Nashville's famous Wildhorse Saloon. The three contestants voted best by the audience will move on to studio sessions with Martina McBride herself at her recording studio in Nashville. She'll help each singer produce a demo of their best work, which will then be critiqued by three judges, all pros from the music industry. The winner they pick will be revealed on ABC July 30 and the winning single will be released that night, digitally distributed by Sony BMG through iTunes and other online outlets."

Photo courtesy of ABCNews

Petition VA Traffic Fines

Have you VA residents heard that out-of-staters can speed in VA and pay less in fines than actual VA residents? Do something about it, like signing this petition. And the fines were talking about are in the thousands of dollars!

Thanks to Jeffro for the tip.

Parlo Italiano!

I'm taking an Italian class this fall. Yet another early birthday gift to myself! I also bought this really cool sapphire ring recently! I'm milking this birthday for all it's worth!

Productivity

I had such a productive night, it's amazing what you can do with the paltry 4 hours you have from the time you get home till the time you're too exhausted to do anything else. I love nights like this:

• roasted eggplant
• made blueberry cobbler
• did some freelance work
• started tracking things for my latest skin allergies
• filed my nails
• talked for an hour with a friend
• did some major straightening up/throwing things away
• read a magazine outside for a while
• watched HGTV

DC Restaurant Week

If you hadn't heard, DC Restaurant Week is coming up, August 6-12 with fixed price, 3-course lunches at some of DC's top restaurants for just $20.07 and dinners for just $30.07. Check out the selection at Open Table. Absolutely the easiest way to check availability and get a reservation. And no, they didn't pay me to say that. Jeffro and I will be sampling Willow for dinner one night--was supposed to have been our Valentine's dinner but that didn't happen due to family emergencies--and then Hook for lunch with friends. Check it out!

Beautiful Night

Last night was so gorgeous. I went to an outdoor party at the Old Dominion Boat Club, right on the water on King Street. They served great food, free mai tais, and had a great band playing. The weather was perfect, a slight breeze and no humidity. What more could you ask for? I didn't get home until really late, so I'm totally dragging today but managed to vacuum and get a pedicure.

Crazy (But True) Story

This story completely made my day today. I'm really stressed out at work this week--we have a huge deadline looming at the end of the week and it's really putting everyone to the test to get everything done. I had to work late tonight, and probably will the rest of the week. However, this lunchtime entertainment really made my day bearable. I was in a good mood the rest of the afternoon.

In the complex where I work, they have been holding afternoon concerts once a month this summer. I was curious to see today's band, Don't Panic because last month's jazz duo was quite good. I walked down to the area where the band was playing, and noticed that my drum teacher was their drummer! What a surprise! I knew he played in a band, but didn't know the name of it. Well, now I do. I must say it was a good performance and it was really great to watch my drum teacher perform. I'd never seen him perform before, and it kind of validated that he's a good teacher. He made drumming look so effortless, which it's not. It was almost like getting a mini-lesson/performance because he was (it turns out purposely) using some techniques that we'd just been talking about the lesson before. He came and talked to me afterwards, and he verified that he'd been doing some things specifically for me to see how they would work in a performance. So that was really cool! And it turns out their band does a lot of great work for charity, so that's another reason to go to their website and see what they're all about.

The other even crazier thing that happened during the performance was this woman came to listen with her dog on a leash and kid in a stroller. The kid was old enough to walk, so at one point he was toddling around and he started getting away, as did the dog. I reached over and grabbed the dog's leash as it went by, and the woman came over to get it from me and thank me. About 5 minutes later, the kid came toddling over to me (I was pretty far away from them) and reached out his arms for me to pick him up! It was so hilarious! I didn't know what to do, so I picked him up and put him in my lap for part of the show. He was having a grand old time with his new-found friend, and I kept gesturing over the mother at first that I had no idea why he had come over to me. Hilarious! He finally went back to her, but came back to bring me a leaf and then again to check on the leaf. After the performance, my drum teacher asked if I knew them, and I told him I'd never seem them before in my life. What a weird story. Things like that, luckily, happen to me all the time. I say luckily because I like having a good, weird story to tell. And it's 100% true!

Live Earth Disappointment

Jeffro and I did indeed get out to see Live Earth here in Washington, DC. What there was of it, that is. As I suspected, the crowds weren't so bad. We got to stand in the shade, which was nice, but we didn't really have a direct view of the stage at all. The stage was set up at a weird angle so that very few people actually got to see it, except for the camera people.


Apparently they were having some pretty bad sound problems, cause you couldn't hear a single word anyone said. A few people spoke, but I had no idea who they were cause we couldn't hear anything. Then Al Gore came up and said some words, which again I couldn't hear. He introduced Garth & Tricia who came up on stage and gave the performance of their lives . . . uh . . . yeah. They sang one song. Yes, indeed, one whole song, We Shall Be Free. The cool thing about it was that it was acoustic, just Garth on guitar, Tricia, and two backup singers. But I mean, why bother? Why would they come and just sing one song? It was such a joke and the whole experience wound up being completely ridiculous. The only good thing was that I can now say I've seen Garth live, and at least they sang loud enough to be heard. So it was quite an interesting time. The photo shown above is Garth and Tricia on screen. On a full monitor, it's a pretty cool shot, considering we couldn't really see much. Below is a shot of Al Gore on screen, and a shot of the crowd. Happy Live Earth. Or something.

Garth and Tricia in Concert!

WMZQ announced this morning that Garth Brooks and Tricia Yearwood are performing on the mall for Live Earth on Saturday morning. Check out the info here. I am actually considering going, which is weird because I never do these sorts of things. But I'm hoping that it will be a little less crowded than normal due to the holiday weekend and no advanced warning about the concert to attract people from everywhere else. So we'll see! I'll keep you posted!

Celebrate July 5!

I feel like I've been celebrating all week, and indeed I have. Friends of mine throw a July 3 party every year, so I went to that, then last night I went to a party at Halstead Towers and watched the DC fireworks from the 15th floor pool/patio. It was a pretty fun time and I met some real characters.

Today I got a bunch of stuff I ordered from Amazon and I'm psyched to listen to new music. Check out the selections on the right side of my blog. I also got a drum book/DVD (came with a really cool wall poster) to help me with my playing. Check it out here: Groove Essentials.