Character Sketch Special Edition: Katy Perry
Posted: January 12, 2018 Filed under: Entertainment, Road Trips | Tags: arkansas, Carly Rae Jepsen, character sketch, concert, Katy Perry, little rock, road trip, Verizon Arena 4 Comments
We’re at the Verizon Arena in North Little Rock tonight for Carly Rae Jepsen and Katy Perry; it’s a new experience being the average age in a crowd of concert-goers. We’re usually the youngest people, like at Peter Frampton.
Y’all. This place is full of adult couples. And older adult couples. And families with kids. And packs of teenage girls chaperoned by the unluckiest mom on the block.
The couple in the seats in front of us have just arrived; it’s forty-five minutes to showtime. I feel so grown up and got-my-shit-together looking at them. Their iPhones are our iPhones’ great-great-grandparents.
And they just asked us to take a picture of them so I cannot possibly talk shit about them. They’re too cute. She has a darling ribbon rosette jacket over a black and white dress. He has a man bun, black plastic-framed glasses, and a neatly trimmed stage between five o’clock shadow and actual beard.
The couple behind us is supposed to be seated on our row, but they’re old and are still learning how to work smartphones. Someone will figure it out eventually.
There are so many blinking purple and red kitty cat ears in the audience. It’s going to be awesome when they turn the lights down.I have never seen such generous portions of chicken strips at a concessions stand. And funnel cakes that look like pies.
A girl two rows down has no qualms about showing all of us behind her nudes as she scrolls through her photos.
Thirty minutes to showtime. I am so stoked for all the little girls here that are so excited they’re about to burst.
I just photobombed the cute couple in front of us. It was an accident. We all laughed about it.
I’ll let you know how the concert is.
Mini Vacation
Posted: June 15, 2017 Filed under: Art, Entertainment, Food, Marriage, Road Trips | Tags: art, dallas, frida kahlo, golden chick, hotel, lorenzo hotel, museum, road trip, vacation 3 CommentsOn Tuesday we went to Dallas for a mini vacation. We got a good deal for a single night at the Lorenzo Hotel, and we wanted to go see the Mexico show at the Dallas Museum of Art.
We left Tuesday afternoon, got to our hotel, and went swimming for a few hours before dinner at Village Burger Bar and dessert at Sablon Chocolate Lounge. Then back to our room.
Our room had a lot of mirrors.
Yesterday we got up and dressed and ate kolaches from downstairs before heading to the museum. We spent almost four hours there. I had no idea that The Two Fridas was so big, nearly six feet by six feet.
On the way home we stopped for lunch at Golden Chick because we’d never heard of it, and they turned out to have amazing yeast rolls, so we brought two dozen home with us. It was a good decision; they went over well at dinner.
Almost Vacation
Posted: April 12, 2017 Filed under: Entertainment, Marriage, Road Trips | Tags: anniversary, kentucky, louisville, memphis, nashville, road trip, tennessee, trip, vacation 4 CommentsThis year, we’re going northeast for our anniversary, starting with seeing Tom Petty in Little Rock, then lunch in Memphis on our way to Nashville for a week. We’re also going to spend a day in Louisville.
Any suggestions on can’t-miss attractions any of those places?
So far, we have a watercolor class in a Nashville park, the zoo, and some museums in Louisville.
Reminiscence
Posted: February 11, 2017 Filed under: Entertainment, Road Trips | Tags: alberta, baraboo, canada, drive, edmonton, photo, road trip, trip, wisconsin 2 CommentsI went looking for a photo prompt at Morguefile and found this, which reminded me of something I did once.
I drove from New Orleans to Edmonton and back when I was twenty-one. It was a totes awesome trip.
I took three days to get there, including an afternoon stop in Baraboo, Wisconsin to meet a couple of internet friends. I was tickled pink when I stopped at a gas station in Baraboo and I finally got to hear a Wisconsin accent. I’m sure the clerk was just as tickled by my Cajun accent.
I drove across the US/Canadian border on a small highway from North Dakota. I didn’t have to wait in line or get out of my car or even have a passport.
I used the tiny inside dial on my speedometer that measures kilometers, and bought my gas by the liter.
I remember watching the glow in the sky grow larger and larger until finally I crested the last hill and I could see Edmonton, bigger and brighter than anywhere I’d ever been by myself. It was so much more than this photo.
And I have to think how much time I would actually spend going through the photos I took of my trip if I’d had a smart phone. It would be nice to have actual photographs of the people I met instead of sketches and faded memories. Photos of the places I saw and the adventures I had.
Then again, it’s pretty cool this way, too.
And I don’t really look at the pictures on my phone that often anyway.
And They Rode Off into the Sunset
Posted: November 12, 2016 Filed under: Writing | Tags: car, desert, flat tire, ipod, rewrite, road trip, story, tire Leave a commentKaren squeaked as her iPod slipped from her hands and fell into the black hole somewhere between the passenger seat and the door of their convertible. She fumbled with the aux cord a moment longer before tucking it under her leg while she fished beside the seat.
Timothy opened his mouth to ask what on earth she was doing, but the question went completely out of his head when the right rear tire popped with a loud bang. The wheel jerked in his hands, and he cringed as he saw Karen’s head strike the door out of the corner of his eye. He quickly regained control of the car and slowed to a stop on the shoulder.
She came up wincing and checked for blood with the palm of her hand before lightly probing her tender scalp with her fingertips.
“Are you okay?” asked Timothy, concern evident in his tone.
“I’m alright,” Karen answered, with one more quick check of her fingertips to make sure they were free of blood. “What happened?”
Timothy shook his head. “Blowout,” he answered. “I guess I must have run something over, but I didn’t see anything.” He shrugged. “I’m glad you’re okay, though.”
Karen opened her door just a hair and leaned over to pick up her iPod from the floor next to the seat. “At least you can have music while you change it,” she offered Timothy. She plugged it in and hit shuffle.
Timothy made a resigned grumble in the back of his mouth and got out to assess the damage. Nothing was bent or broken, and he whistled along to David Guetta as he uneventfully changed the tire. In next to no time at all, he was back behind the wheel, and they were on the road again, driving through the desert on their way to adventure.
When the sheriff passed by the spot a few minutes later, the only thing to mark their stop was a few footprints on the dust just off the shoulder.
A third version of this and this.
The Mini Vacation
Posted: June 16, 2016 Filed under: Writing | Tags: bad day, fiction, grumpy, road trip, trip, vacation 2 CommentsKatie packed a quick tote and threw it in the back seat of her car, mumbling to herself the whole time.
“Shit day at work, shit day at home. Bullshit left and right. So sick of you, so sick of you, so sick of you. I’ve got to get out of here.”
She slammed her car door to go back inside the house for one final check for any obviously-needed items. She found none.
Katie picked up her sunglasses from the table beside the front door and put them on her face, snagging her ear in the process and letting a small cry of pain escape her lips. She grimaced and set her face into a sour don’t talk to me mask and slammed the door behind her.
The next door neighbor looked up at the ruckus, but hurriedly looked back down at his weeding after a glimpse at Katie’s face. If she’d noticed, she might have snickered at how well her mask worked.
But she didn’t notice.
She started her car and sat a moment, squeezing the steering wheel. “Shit day,” she muttered, one last time, as she out the car in gear and left the driveway.
A few deep breaths later, she reached out and flipped the radio on.
A few slightly off key songs later, she began to lose the tension in her shoulders.
And by the time she was out of town and driving through the dancing shafts of sunlight cutting between the trees growing to her right, she was smiling.
The mountains were calling.
R. Sativus 