Dreams, I have Dreams...

The other day I had a dream that I was celebrating my birthday at a Chinese restaurant. The owners of the restaurant happened to be the parents of a good friend of mine...who is most definitely Latino.

So yes, in my dream, my friend's Hispanic immigrant parents were running an authentic Chinese restaurant (including cooking all the food) and hosting my party.

About halfway through the meal, my friend showed up wearing a tuxedo (minus the jacket), with his hair in an afro, singing showtunes. He was the restaurant's entertainment.

Let's not analyze this one, mk?

Jolly Good, Old Chap

Here in the newsroom, we have several interns who are given various projects to work on. We try to help them learn the process of producing news reports for radio, from start to finish. This includes coming up with story ideas, interviewing newsmakers and experts, editing digital audio, writing and voicing a story.

Last week, one of the interns finally produced a complete story, with her voice tracks recorded and edited together with sound bites. She asked one of my coworkers to listen to her story and critique it. My coworker happily complied, putting the headphones on and hitting play. She immediately started laughing and said "um, why did you record it in a British accent?!"

The intern proceeded to explain that she thought a British accent would be impressive and help her get a job in the industry.

As my coworker gently pointed out to her, "you're...not...British."

Rodeo Redux

I went to the rodeo again last night. Don't EVEN get me started on the nightmare that was traffic and parking. If I had known how bad it would be, I would never have gone.

The Black Eyed Peas put on a fun, high-energy show that had everybody dancing.

But the memorable incident of the evening for me was before the concert. I was standing in line to order a drink and the guy behind me leaned forward and asked "are you wearing perfume?"

Cue LJ's internal monologue "oh cmon...you can do better than THAT!"

But out loud I warily replied "maybe."

"What kind of perfume is it?" he asked.

"I honestly don't remember if I put on perfume this morning. But if I did, it's Romance by Ralph Lauren."

"Well I'm enjoying the aura of scent around you."

"Ok thanks."

And from there I moved forward in the line without looking back.

I didn't think much of the incident until this morning when I had a conversation with some coworkers about how a couple of people in our building use entirely too much cologne/perfume. All of a sudden it hit me: could I be one of those people?! Was Rodeo Guy actually pointing out that I wear too much perfume? I thought he was just trying to awkwardly hit on me...but what if the truth is much more insidious?

I'm having a identity scent crisis.

Tales of the Rodeo

I went to the rodeo last night. Of course, you know me. You know that a trip to the rodeo for me is bound to include SOME sort of amusing sidebar. This outing was no exception.

I went with a guy I know, who invited me to join some of his friends in one of the fancy schmancy box seats. We had a private room and seats, a full spread of food, drinks and dessert and a personal server waiting on all our needs and requests. Then what I like to call the Cart of Joy came rolling into the room. They had a mobile ice cream sundae station that they brought around to the boxes and let you select your ice cream flavors and toppings, all served up in an adorable plastic coyboy hat bowl.

But really one of the best parts of the rodeo was the tram ride from the parking lot to the stadium. My friend and I hopped on the very front row of the tram, so we were seated directly behind the driver. I glanced up and took a long look at the driver's shirt, then leaned over to my friend and said "um, does the back of his shirt say 'boobs'?"

"Wow. Yes, it does," my friend replied.

A few moments later, the driver leaned forward and we could see the rest of his shirt which said "Boobs Rock."

To which my friend responded "well, they do."

Fava beans and a nice Chianti

I have a stalker.

I mean, he's not really a stalker, but kinda. I don't want to blog about him too much because, let's face it, if he's a stalker worth his salt then he knows about this blog. He seems nice and harmless (isn't that what they always say in horror movies?). He calls me at the radio station about once a month and tells me what a great job I'm doing. We chat for a few minutes as he rambles about whatever story I did recently or how much he enjoys listening to me on the radio. Mostly I just say things like "oh thanks" or "that's nice" or "thanks so much for listening." After about five minutes of that, he runs out of things to say and promises to check in with me again soon.

Maybe I should tell him I "just want to be friends."

Macys Fashion Director

Macys Fashion Director: "

Vote for my outfit! If I get the most votes, I win a $500 Macy's card!"

Guns don't kill people...

Chuck Norris kills people.

Today is Chuck Norris' birthday. My favorite Chuck Norris moment was on a mission trip a couple years ago. Our team met up with missionaries in another country, including a 17-year-old missionary kid whose parents allowed him to join up with us and spend a couple weeks traveling through the Amazon region of Brazil.

One afternoon we were all hanging out, waiting for things to cool off again before we went out to the village. For some reason we started swapping Chuck Norris jokes. We were cracking ourselves up thinking of all the jokes we could remember.

Suddenly in the midst of our hilarity, our little meek and mild missionary kid calmly announced he had a Chuck Norris joke to share. We all looked at him in surprise...as this quiet sweet kid who was raised on the mission field said "Chuck Norris once visited the Virgin Islands. Now they're just the Islands."

It still makes me crack up every time.

Reasons for my absence and other things cleared up

Sorry it has been so long since I last posted. I've been on an unplanned blogging hiatus because of a death in my family. My Pawpaw passed away just over a week ago and was in the hospital for a couple weeks before that, so the rest of my life (including the QQ) has been on hold for a while.

I won't go into a lot of detail about the past few weeks or the funeral, except to tell one amusing story about my family.

The family needed to select music for Pawpaw's service and they wanted to use songs that he liked. They picked a certain hymn and then an instrumental piece he enjoyed. The only problem was the instrumental selection was on a homemade CD and it was a live version that included applause at the end. Not really appropriate for a funeral. So I was charged with finding a "clean" version of the song. My family said the song was called "Anchor Built."

I commenced my search on iTunes, to no avail. There was no such song by that name. I progressed to Google, which again turned up no results. I tried different variations of the song "Anchor Built" "Anchorbuilt" "Anchor-Built" "Anchor Build"...nothing.

In my experience, if Google doesn't know the song exists, you are out of luck.

In desperation, I played the song for my roomie, thinking she might be able to suggest a way we could cut off the applause at the end. As she listened to the song, she exclaimed "I know that! It's from the Mr. Holland's Opus soundtrack! It's the clarinet solo!"

We quickly turned to youtube, typing in my search terms "Mr. Holland's Opus clarinet solo" and eureka! It was, in fact the same song. However, I still didn't know the same of the song so I scrolled through the dozens of comments to see if I could discover the solution to the puzzle.

And there it was. The answer to my search. "What is the name of this song?" a commenter asked. "Stranger on the shore," an expert answered. "It's by the musician Acker Bilk."

ACKER BILK!!!!!!!!!

My family is going to make me crazy one day. I can tell already.