woohoo for country music in Yakima!!

Just checked the fall-time fair concert schedule and we have two - count 'em: TWO! - great country artists, actually coming to Yakima!!  Phil Vassar & Billy Ray Cyrus!  Sure beats out the last time I went to the Central WA State Fair and heard John Michael Montgomery slur through his songs and forget words to music he's been singing for years...and "sip" from his water bottle on stage rather than "drink" from it.  Great.  Can't get much worse than that, right??

  

Oh yeah, and Boyz II Men are coming as well - only about 18 years too late (they were "the" boy band of, let's see...my 4th grade year....).  hahahahaha.  geeez.... 

Mark me down for Vassar!

clever

sun & guns: fire arm clinic day at a high-country desert orchard

This weekend has been gorgeous; we've finally had some nice warm weather after an extraordinarly long winter and slow spring.  I got out on my bike twice, felt good (minus my psoas cramping both times - I'm working on it at least).  Pruned on some yard plants.  BBQ'd tonight.  Putzed around the house with the kitties.  AND, made it out to a fire arms clinic at an orchard way out in the Naches/Wenas area...

Sure was a fun event!  Got to see several guns I'd never seen before (including some muzzle-loaders), as well as test out some various pistols first-hand.  I decided I have a new favorite:  the .500 Smith & Weston revolver.  Oh that baby is powerful and has sweet aim - and it is HUGE!  Apparently it's the most powerful production revolver out there.  I guess you can even hunt game with it at over 200 yards!!  The kick felt (to me) like I was firing a low-power rifle.  Very fun!  I was pretty proud of myself too...the instructor and his hunting buddies played with it before I got off my test shot.  They were trying to hit a hunter-orange "bomb" about 200 yds out on the ground that they had made with some explosive powder (I was told it's all legal - LOL) and were all off by a ways from it.  The instructor then handed the gun to me and told me it was my turn to show them all up.  I hit the dirt just 8 inches or so to the left of the target; very close, compared to all them.  He looked quite impressed and said had I aimed the gun just a hair to the right I would have hit it.  Woohoo!!  ;)

Just to give you an idea of how hurking big the 500 is, here are some pictures of the gun and ammo.  (I have no idea who the people in the pictures are - just pulled them off a google search.)

(that's pretty much what I looked like - LOL)

(yes, it's about as long as my forearm too)

(the thing takes HUGE bullets)

So all very fun.  Keeps me dreaming/drooling about that over/under shotgun I hope to buy this year!!  S.M.M.: you are definitely going to be there when I buy it, too, k??  I'm gonna need your help!!

"where'd I put my phone this time??"

I was pretty sure I'd finally lost my mind.  For almost the whole past week I've had the worst time finding where I've left my phone!  And of course I'd leave it on vibrate-mode, so that didn't help any.  And when I would finally find it, I couldn't figure out what I'd been thinking (or not thinking) when I left it in the places I'd find it!

Until today.  It all became clear...

I was eating dinner in the kitchen with mom when I heard "clink, knock...clink clink, knock...clink" coming from the stairs.  I got up to see what the kitties had found to play with this time, and to my surprise, Dallas had my BlackBerry in her TEETH and was dragging it up the stairs, dropping it, picking it back up, and dragging it again!!!  She was brining it up two flights of stairs, all the way from my headboard in my room across the basement!!  Crazy girl.

I quickly took it from her, and she protested by squeaking at me.

So mystery solved.  I'm not loosing my mind (as badly) as I thought I was.  One of my kitties just has a thing for my phone...

"thumpa...thumpa...thumpa..."

...that was my email code to Dad back in college, when I'd get too busy to write much, to at least let him know that my heart was still beating and I wasn't slumped over my books in some remote corner of the library where nobody had missed me enough to come looking yet...

So thump, thump - I'm still here and not laying prone somewhere past East 'G' Street on North Naches Ave (thank goodness).

I've been busy lately, but honestly, not sure it will sound like much once it hits the keyboard here...

-  work

-  back dr. appts. 3x/wk

-  stretching

-  making dinner for the fam

Yeah, that's been about it.

The exciting news is that my back finally started to turn a corner about Wednesday of last week - after over a YEAR of constant pain and ever-decreasing mobility and range of motion.  My 'therapy' has been kicking up a lot of toxins as my muscles finally relax and stretch out and my body starts moving like it should again.  It took a good 2-3/wks of therapy where I felt horribly miserably achey all over, dizzy as my body re-balanced to the appropriate height on the right side with my heel lift, and thinking through a dense fog of toxin-release before it seemed like the sun started shining again.  The best part:  I felt up to riding my bike this weekend - TWICE!...and my muscles didn't scream at me afterwards!  Granted it was only 15 minutes (about 3 miles) each time, but that is a HUGE accomplishment for me to do without experiencing any adverse pain!!

I still have a long ways to go and it takes about 1-2 hours out of each day by the time I'm done with appointments, stretching, exercising, and stretching again...but it's so nice to finally feel like I'm making progress.  Finally.

My best friends in this process: a roller massage table at my back dr's office and a foursquare-like rubber therapy ball that I roll around on at home.  Oh, and my dr is a good guy too.  :)  And then there's also calcium, magnesium, potassium, vit D, grape seed extract, fiber and water, which have all been fantastic as well.  And my job.  Thank you Jesus for a paycheck again to support the process.  

Speaking of my job: it's been a very very mellow one - so much so that when I get home, I don't even think about it any more (I can't remember the last time I haven't taken the day home with me).  It's left me open to doing a lot of daydreaming/scheming during my night-time hours.  The latest on that to come in another post, another time...