Jeff n Arline's Chill Lounge

99.9 percent of their songs are reasons why Taylor Swift should not have won so many awards this week, but I guess the powers that be needed a younger pop audience. Well mayby Ms. Swift should stop labeling herself as country and go after the market she is shooting for. But I digress...

ZBB, smart lyrics and great musicians. They don’t take themselves serious enough to leave out the comedy. They have a couple of pretty quirky songs on The Foundation. One in particular I hated every time I heard it, Sic ‘em on a Chicken.

Then I read the liner notes. On people the band wanted to thank (and the list was LONG), credit was given to Peter Pan, Zacs dog. The song is about… well, dinner.

In this video the music soars, does not need engineering makeup. It just is good solid writing; lyrically and musically. I hope you enjoy the Zac Brown Band as much as I do.

And what the the hell was with the CMA giving TS so many awards and these guys got squat? Pop is pop. Give it it’s own category please…

But now, The Zac Brown Band.

 

So I go to the Doc because I’ve got this weird sensation in my left arm, kinda like your foot is asleep. And considering my age and lack of knowledge of the human heart I figured The Doctor was a good choice.

I told him what was going on and he replies with “Well that opens up a lot of diagnostic possibilities” and then goes straight for the stethoscope. (I just realized that was the first time I’ve ever tried to spell stethoscope).

ANYWAYS, he checks the heart. I guess it was ok, or at least he didn’t hear screaming and yelling coming from it, because he started checking my arm after that. Pulling this way and that, asking if I was getting that same sensation. And he finally made it happen.

Then he starts pushing on certain areas. He finds a part that when he pushes makes me do two things.

1. Make him aware that he found a spot that creates considerable pain for me when he pushes on it and,
2. Tell him if he pushes it again I’d have to kick his ass.

Well it turns out it’s just my tendonitis (again, another first in writing) flairing up. I told him it’s never felt like this before and that I’ve got a brace already. The Good Doctor gives me a prescription for an anti-inflammatory to reduce any swelling which is causing the weird sensation in my arm.

Here are the side effects:

No offense, Doc. But are you looking for repeat business? Think I’ll just stick with Motrin.

It’s that time of year again…

As a child I viewed it as a time in autumn that brought the Santa Ana winds, late night cheesy “B” rated horror movies with  equally cheesy horror hosts, ghost stories and an imagination that ran amok.

Having since moved from southern California and grown up (sort of) to dislike the offbeat, almost humorous horror movies I used to like, I still enjoy the occasional ghost story or the driver that gets me going in that direction.

These days I’ve shed the Elvira gravitational pull of my youth for a more serious and artful group,    My Pet Skeleton. This company is not only serious about art and music, but keeps alive the imagination of the inner child in all of us that long for windy days and nights filled with humorous fright.

We broke the pics out to separate albums, so as to avoid the "slide factor" our parents neighbors' cousins' used to put us through. Pick n choose at your leisure.

Arline found this place when the fly somewhere else thought fell by the wayside. It was time we got away. Between the Block Watch and other weekly and monthly commitments we turned around one day and said… lets just go. So we did.

This trailer was built in 1958 and is the same style as used in The Long, Long Trailer with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez. But these days it sits in the middle of a residential neighborhood in Patagonia, AZ. Wheels since retired but with all the comforts of home. And I mean ALL the comforts. BBQ, laundry, self contained kitchen and well stocked pantry and fridge.

But the best part, or one we enjoyed on a nightly basis, were the TV trays we ate off of. Total retro. The first night we watched the VHS of The Long, Long Trailer. Good times… There are photo albums below the BIG trailer pic.

 

 

Here’s the Trailer…

 

 

Birds in the front yard…

 

 

And of course, what would a vacation during monsoon season be without the storm? Dull. I have to say, we really enjoy the storms here in AZ... as long as we are home at the time.

Do you know what the difference is between a 20% chance of rain in California and a 20% chance of rain in AZ is? In Cali, you will get the fringes. Light sprinkles may turn into a rain. In Arizona you stand a 20% chance of getting your fucking ass kicked!

 

The Storm...

        

 

The Patagonia area is a known birders paradise. We even interrupted a meeting of birders that had traveled from all over the states to go there. It was funny really, because the meeting was just closing after the main speaker had spoken, we open the door to the restaurant and the whole room erupted in applause! We thought, what a great way to market! Every time the door opens have everyone applaud. It was a great ego boost as well!

But, like I said, it wasn’t for us…

Nice name for a restaurant, too. The Velvet Elvis.

They are looking at a hummingbird nest. Yeah, we didn’t see it, either.

But here is where they go for birding… Patagonia Sonoita Creek Park

Pics from August…

We were at San Tan Mountain Regional Park last night for the scorpion hunt (with black lights... it's bitchin'). Well it's monsoon season and one was rolling in. This is just one of about 200 - 300 lightening strikes.

They were not much for bantering with the audience, but it was 2 hours and 20 minutes of rock, blues and great music. Unfortunately, we sat next to Brandon Spears, Britneys’ illegitimate brother. We just dubbed him that because he was the worst dancing white guy we had ever seen…

Dig this, we live in an unincorporated area... no city, town, just a bunch of sub-divisions. The new County Supervisor was going around telling people (79,000) he was going to give this 67 square mile area a name. No input. No vote. Just do it.

Well screw that. In four days an IT couple we know put together a web site for voting. They are block watch coordinators as are we and we worked our network to get the word out. We do not have a local paper and quite frankly an email network did the trick.

In four days we had the word out what this dude was doing and got the vote done last night.

San Tan Valley, Arizona. As VOTED for. BTW, the supervisor was pushing Bella Vista.

The people have spoken. Amen.

 

Last weekend we spent an afternoon at an alpaca show. Nice people. Great animals. And we got educated on all of the processes from animal to handbag.

Click View Full Album below then click “slideshow”…

 

 

Larry and Lizzy doing it in our front yard.

 

     

Sweet Love by Najee

Them Changes
Buddy Miles with Santana...

  

Bizkt the Sleepwalking Dog...

    
 

The only thing that could make Bev Mo a better alcohol outlet is if they took the pricing philosophy of The Dollar Store. That said we had a nice very full bodied Shiraz to kick off the weekend with. The Water Wheel Bendigo 2005 Shiraz from Australia was really good and a good value. A little too powerful upon opening, but the longer it was opened the more subdued  it became. But that was at the end of the bottle, so who knows?

Wine snobs? Hell know. Got a 12 dola box up in the fridge for the week. But Wine Wednesday, Friday and part of the weekend call for something else.

All righty now. Just givin a shout out to our nephew Rory. This is what happens when you let your magician cousin show you tricks…

Weird sequence of events for my boss. One of the nicest people I've ever met, btw. Last Friday he was taken to Emergency, heart was beating 181 times a minute. Team of doctors gave him something to stop his heart, of course they didn't tell him that. Or they may not have needed the extra medication. So for a few seconds that Friday my boss was clinically dead. It was explained to him that his heart wasn't getting the correct electronic signals. So stopping the heart was like rebooting a computer... kinda like a reset.

Well Monday someone who knows him called our plant to see if he had died over the weekend. This person had read an obituary with his name in it! It was actually some other person but with the same name. So my boss found the obituary, printed it out and is keeping it for very strange reasons (I surmise).

Monday comes and he needs to go back for a check up. I told him to take the obit and see if he can get his co-pay back...

The End

No, it's not a disease. It's actually a food out of the UK. We had some friends from there stay with us for awhile. And while I'm inclined to be adventurous in the kitchen, I know nothing about English cuisine. So I did some research on Recipezaar and came upon a sponge cake... Spotted Dick.

I asked our friends what it was like. Ricks' comment was "Ah, they served it a lot in boarding school. It has a minimum of nutrition with a maximum of stodge". That would be starch in the US.

I found this at World Market and keep it in the pantry just to say we've got Spotted Dick if anyone would like some!

Cheers!

So they say Arizona is first in bugs and last in education. Well, some local podunk politician was tired of hearing Arizona was last in education. So in front of a large crowd of media, this podunk mofo says that Arizona is actually twentyoneth in spending on education. Twentyoneth. He caught his own error, but I wouldn't call that good testimony to the education in Arizona. BTW, this dude is a home grown local.

You'd think that with work slowing to a crawl, our decision to cut back on community stuff and day light savings kicking in, we'd have more time for books. Hell, that Netflix on the entertainment center is dusty. Oh, after three weeks laying around, which we weren't, we finally find out that it's got a crack all the way through. Format not supported my ass!

Anyways...
Today we bowed out of a committee with the HOA. Instead of a meeting at two, we'll have a late lunch at Four Peaks Brewery in Tempe. They have several beers on the market. Our favorite being Kiltlifter. Cool name, huh? So we'll go there and chill at their lounge.

UPDATE!
True to JnA fashion, we make the 20 minute trek to the freeway, then another 20 minutes or so to get to the connector for the 101 north. Uh, does RAMP CLOSED mean anything to ya? Damn.

So we head on over to El Paso BBQ in Awatukee. Great place with great food. Oh, and the last time we were there which has been like forever since it's so far away, our waiter was dreamy (this is Jeff btw). Yes, El Paso BBQ has gone by the side like so many other businesses. CLOSED. Damn.

We actually had a very nice lunch across the street... don't even remember the name. Good salads and better beers.