SassyBlonde

Oh the humanity. Way too much egg nog last night. Okay, I always pooh-pooh this, but I always end up doing this anyway, so here are 2007's goals:

1. Stop biting my fingernails. [UPDATE (12/31/07): Thanks Sassy Jo!]
2. Start running again every morning.
3. Stop spending money outside my budget.
4. Start saving for retirement seriously.
5. Practice at least one instrument every day.

6. Return phone calls within 24 hours.
7. Stop talking about people.
8. Go to the gym at least three times a week. [UPDATE (12/31/07): Good Lord, what was I thinking.]
9. Take better care of my car.
10. Pay better attention to my plants. [UPDATE (12/31/07): So much better, except for the China trip. Don't ask what happened to all of them while I was gone.]

11. Read War and Peace. Yeah right. Read Barack Obama's new book.
12. Finish painting my kitchen cabinets.
13. Finish slipcovering my sofas.
14. Learn to play the oboe. Really.
15. Buy a piccolo. [UPDATE (12/31/07): Done!!]

16. Lose enough weight to get back into my birthday dress.
17. Brush and floss three times a day. Floss. Uggh.
18. Test my blood sugar at least six times a day. [UPDATE (12/31/07): Done!]
19. Pay more attention to what I wear. [UPDATE (12/31/07): Much better.]
20. Pay less attention to what I can't fit into.

21. Clean the bathroom more regularly than I have been.
22. Fold the laundry after I wash it so my husband isn't stuck doing it.
23. Finish learning Flash.
24. Start learning Dreamweaver or GoLive.
25. Try not to hate Nick Saban. Continue to dislike Mal Moore. [UPDATE (12/31/07): He did admirably well, I think, given what he had to work with.]

26. Go to at least one college football game, Alabama or Maryland.
27. Go to bed before 1 AM most nights.
28. Pay all my bills on time or ahead of time. [UPDATE (12/31/07): Score! Credit score, that is.]
29. Pay off my credit cards. [UPDATE (12/31/07): 2 out of 3 ain't bad.]
30. Be excited about my thirtieth birthday. [UPDATE (12/31/07): Very well done. Of course, having a party for two hundred of your closest friends always helps!]

After the week I just survived, I've decided that it's time to share some ground rules with my fellow musicians out there. I came damn near to killing some people this past week over some pretty simple breaches of etiquette that everyone should know in the world of a working musician, but unfortunately these are things you have to learn in the real world, which apparently has been in the shitter as an educational enterprise lately.

When you graduate college or make your first foray out as a musician, just like other professions, you usually enter the world professionally naked and alone, and you'll get your ass kicked if you don't mind your P's and Q's. There are things you never learn in college that you need to learn to survive-- here are a few that everyone who aspires to work as a musician needs to know, after the jump.

Riiight. Savvy traveler I am not-- I’ve had a crash course in getting ready for an overseas tour: shit has gone wrong and gotten turned around in ways I couldn’t have even imagined getting ready for this trip. Here’s how NOT to prepare for a two week trip book-ended by nineteen-hour flights:

• Renew your passport via Expedited Service two months before you leave. Feel very proud of your accomplishment in remembering this.
• Realize that your manager needs your passport tomorrow two days after putting it in the mail to the Passport Authority. Shit.
• Receive passport in mail, immediately drop it in the mail to your manager without making a copy in case of emergencies to leave with your husband. Shit.
• Realize that you don’t have a carry-on for all your various expensive medications and paraphernalia. (My spell check just told me that, yes, that is indeed how to spell that word.) Shit. Ask your Mother for one for Christmas. Even though you’re now almost thirty years old, apparently your parents are still Santa Claus.
• Search for another pair of pants that your husband bought you for Christmas (you’d fight anybody who tried to take them away from you) that fold up into a sandwich bag and feel like a hug. Discover that apparently they have fallen into the Gap they came from and are no longer available in any size but extra small. Shit.
• Plan out all the medications you need for the trip. Forget to order them. Order them the week before the trip and pay hefty FedEx fees for your stupidity.
• Think about whether to take your laptop. Think better of it and determine you can check email via your PSP, which is lighter and smaller and you can use to play Death Junior.
• Fool around with the PSP and decide that entering text via a joystick kind of sucks. Decide to take laptop.
• Buy expensive airline adapter for laptop then determine that your flights will have no outlets for it as you are neither cool nor rich enough to afford First or Business class.
• Make a list of everything you need to pack. Have an Oh Shit moment at the length of your carry-on list and decide not to take laptop. Who needs to be sane on a thirteen hour flight anyway when you can talk to the crazy smelly people in your group.
• Forget about your packing list and update your blog.
• Go get your hair cut by the lady who is taking over for your usual hairdresser. Discover the next morning that she is one of those hairstylists—it looked great when you left the salon but you will probably never be able to replicate the look yourself without your blowdryer.
• Burn out blowdryer trying to replicate new haircut. Give up and buy a travel dryer for your trip.
• Buy various adapters and transformers for your electronics, never mind that you have no idea which ones you’re bringing yet.
• Do a trial-run of packing you carry-on and find out all those things on the list are, in fact, really small and you still have room for your laptop. Score!
• Leave your unopened suitcase lying around if you have a cat. He will decide it’s a litter box and take the appropriate action. That smell never comes out. Chuck the suitcase.
• Wait until two nights before you leave to check out your husband’s suitcase. The wheel will fall off when you take it out of the closet and roll under the couch, and you will have a shit-fit, because now you have no viable suitcases in the house.
• Wait until the night before you leave to try and find a new suitcase. Invariably the one you want will be discontinued and sold out and you’ll have to settle for a navy blue off-brand, which even though it’s cheap, is still navy blue and off-brand.
• While rushing to pack, forget to charge your cell phone. Shit.
• While doing said packing, forget to pack cell phone charger. Shit.
• After you’ve packed it, realize all of your flight information is on your laptop. Unpack it and print your boarding pass. Repack it, but forget to turn it off so it dies a slow hibernation death while you sleep.
• Get up and decide not to take a shower, you’ll just do it when you get to your sunny humid destination.
• Notice when you get to the airport that you packed your sweater but are wearing your heavy coat. Remedy the situation in the freezing cold from the trunk of your husband’s car at the departure curb.
• Discover after a smooth check-in and security check that the place where you’re going has been storm-struck. Call your friend to make sure he still has a house.
• Get on your flight and immediately place the carry-on with all of your entertainment items in an overhead bin above a very belligerent looking fat man in the row behind you. Shit.
• Discover that you could have bought one of your gadgets cheaper in the SkyMall magazine, meaning you really got ripped off.
• Arrive at your destination and forget to call your spouse to tell him you got there safely. Shit. Ditto for your mother. (Yes. Thirty. You still have to call your mother when you arrive.)
• Discover upon trying to call your husband that you have a dead cell phone and no charger. Shit.
• Try to charge cell phone with newfangled airline charger thingamabob. Discover that your service provider is a pack of bastards that will only let you use “approved charging devices”. Shit.
• Give up, buy expensive new cell phone charger while waiting in the airport for the second leg of your trip. Search for any available plug in the terminal, then sit on the cold tile floor next to the charging tram car and finally talk to your husband.

One of the beauties of going on tour with a bunch of friends is the amount of verbal gems you come away with by the end of the trip. Here, for your enjoyment, are some of ours (and if you don't know, I'm not explaining). Yes, there are over thirty, but who can choose? Those of you wonderful people frm the group who are reading this-- if I've left any out, click here and leave them in the Comment section. Rock out.

“THOSE are not hers.”

“People paid thousands of dollars for these tickets…”
“Big daddy”
“Rock star!”
“I am local people. You come have tea with me?"
“Where’s Danny?”
“What is that smell?”
“Get them ALL out of here! Her too! I am TRYING to run a rehearsal!”
“I have a bowing change,”
“Dun-didda-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-didda-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun…”
“Please!”
"Why the hell am I so hungry all the time? It seems like half and hour after I eat I... oh. Right. It's Chinese food."
“When are we leaving again?”
“And yet… he’s hot-- I’d do him.”
(To the tune of Come On Over)"I itch, I scratch, 'cause I just shaved my snatch..."
“I have fabulous hair.”
“I love that there are so many mirrors in this elevator.” ”Yeah—so you can look at your hair.”
“Happy ending?”
“Travel buddy!”
“Fuck these people. Fuck ‘em.”
"And... scene."
“Seems like one of you married girls could help a single brother out.”
“I just want to know what it is I’m putting in my mouth in the first place.”
“I’d say a third of my shoes never leave the bedroom.”
“Does it have snake in it?”
"And... scene."
“Lookee lookee!”
“Hello shopping lady, come smell my wood!”
“You beautiful. Yes?"
“GucciPradaBagWatchArtComeLookeeVeryGoodPriceHello?”
“You’re from Birmingham and you’re talking to me?”
“With love and cellos,”
“So what’s the groove for today?”
“What exactly IS the use of a man’s room attendant? I mean, has any guy ever REALLY looked over at this guy and said ‘Excuse me, could you hold this for me for a minute?“
“And… diminuendo.”
“Look honey, I am not your girlfriend, I am not your bitch, and I am not your mother-- I don’t want to sit with you and I definitely don’t want to hear about your hemorrhoids.”
“One more beer-- fist in mouth.”
“Holy thong, Batman!”
“Dances with curves”
“There is just an ambient layer of schmutz on this whole country.”
"After all, all it really takes to make her happy when I get home is a fat check, a silk dress, and a woody."
"Bu yao motherfucker."

Ahhh, the ER waiting room, or the ER room you're waiting in. (And here I was, worrying about not having posted a Thirtylist in a while.) Finding ways to pass the time is essential-- here are a few I've tried tonight (or other people here have):

1. Go outside and check your phone messages.
2. Walk around the ER.
3. Go out to the waiting room for a Diet Coke.
4. Go out to the entryway for newspaper.
5. Kick the nurse's ass for not giving your friend her pain meds.
6. Sit and think about your bed.
7. Sit and think about how tomorrow's going to blow.
8. Write a new blog entry on your notepad.
9. Kick the nurse's ass for not listening when your friend says she can't roll over by herself.
10. Go outside and check your home phone messages.
11. Watch Battlestar Galactica on your iPod. (wishin')
12. Listen to Audible books on your iPod. (reality)
13. Get snacks from the waiting room machines.
14. Plan your garden for the year on your notepad.
15. Walk up and down the hallway of the ER.
16. Try to take a nap in your uncomfortable chair.
17. Walk outside around the building hoping the guy in the next room stops retching by the time you come back. (Poor guy)
18. Talk to your friend's mom and try to get the nurse to listen to her for your friend's history.
19. Kick the doctor's ass for not making sure she got her pain meds.
20. Joke with inordinately hot X-ray tech walking by.
21. Clean out your purse.
22. Organize your purse.
23. Fall asleep in your uncomfortable chair.
24. Fall over onto floor. (Just call me grace.)
25. Hold your friend's hand when she wakes up because the pain meds aren't working.
26. Bring your friend water.
27. Try to get the nurse to bring your friend a blanket.
28. Talk to the lady next door whose husband has stopped retching and is now sleeping.
29. Go and get coffee for you and the lady next door.
30. Go find the doctor and make sure your friend gets some more pain meds.

The list is getting longer, but that's enough marking time for me. Hope my friend improves here a bit, I'm ready to beat the living shit out of this nurse. Think good thoughts for her (my friend that is... this nurse needs an attitude adjustment, so she can kiss my ass)!

In honor of my zany brother-in-law and the fact that this week will be largely spent away from the computer and outside digging in the dirt so the bees can come back, I give you Thirty Interesting Facts About Bees. Enjoy!

• Honey bees' wings beat 11,400 times per minute.
• Bees' flight speed averages only 15 miles per hour.
• Bees possess five eyes.
• Honey bees can perceive movements that are separated by 1/300th of a second. Humans can only sense movements separated by 1/50th of a second. Were a bee to enter a cinema, it would be able to differentiate each individual movie frame being projected.
• Bees cannot recognize the color red, but they can see ultraviolet colors.
• Honeybees' stingers have a barb which anchors the stinger in the victim's body. The bee leaves its stinger and venom pouch behind and soon dies from abdominal rupture.
• Africanized Honey Bees (killer bees) will pursue an enemy 1/4 mile or more.
• Honeybees communicate with one another by "dancing" so as to give the direction and distance of flowers.
• A single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 bees.
• The queen is the only sexually developed female in the hive.
• The queen mates in flight with approximately 18 drones. She only mates once in her lifetime.
• A queen can lay 3,000 eggs in a day.
• Queens can live for up to 2 years.
• A queen can lay her weight in eggs in one day and 200,000 eggs in a year.
• Fertilized eggs will become female offspring, while unfertilized eggs will become males.
• The only function of drones is to mate with the queen.
• The workers are sexually undeveloped females.
• The honeybee is not born knowing how to make honey; the younger bees are taught by the more experienced ones.
• Honeybee workers move to different jobs as they grow older: * Week #1 - clean the hive * Week #2 - feed the larvae * Week #3 - do repair work on the honeycomb cells * Week #4 - guard the hive * Week #5 and beyond - collect pollen and nectar from flowers
• Life expectancy is approximately 28 to 35 days.
• Bees have been producing honey for at least 150 million years.
• The honeycomb is composed of hexagonal cells with walls that are only 2/1000 inch thick, but support 25 times their own weight.
• Honey never spoils.
• Honey is nectar that bees have repeatedly regurgitated and dehydrated.
• In the course of her lifetime, a worker bee will produce 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey.
• The average American consumes a little over one pound of honey a year.
• To make one pound of honey, workers in a hive fly 55,000 miles and tap two million flowers.
• In a single collecting trip, a worker will visit between 50 and 100 flowers. She will return to the hive carrying over half her weight in pollen and nectar.
• Theoretically, the energy in one ounce of honey would provide one bee with enough energy to fly around the world.
• Wasps feed on sweet liquids, and some that have been feeding on fermenting juice have been observed, eventually, to get drunk and pass out. (I know, I know, it's not a bee fact, but I thought it was hilarious)

Facts originally found here and here and here.

It's time once again to revisit and revise the resolutions for this year. Feh. More work to do. (List after the jump.)

It's that time again-- the day for starting over and doing better, so here are my goals for the year. (For reference purposes, see this and last year's list) It's a little shorter than last year's, but it has more punch this year I think. Also, it's about as long as I have energy for and about as much as I think I can realistically take on, so here goes:

So here's the thing:

I've missed you guys.

I've had some pretty heavy things going on in my life this year, things which basically have changed the face of my entire existence in one way or another. And I haven't really felt comfortable talking about that here, in public, for anyone and everyone to read. More importantly, there are very good reasons why I can't and shouldn't.

And frankly, it's killing me.

Because if you're still reading this, then I've probably known you, or had you as a reader, for long enough that you're probably wondering what the hell happened to me.

Because if you're still reading this, you're probably one of the people whose opinions and love I value enough that I'm going to need your help in the next year.

Because frankly, I need an outlet more in-depth than Twitter and less personal than Facebook.

So here's the other thing:

On March 1st, this blog is getting a makeover. I'll be moving it to a new server, shaking up the layout a little, and converting it to a new CMS, though the site address won't change. The ranting and raving and silliness will stay the same, only there will be some things that I don't want to share with everybody, some things that I may need to share and say, but only within certain circles. I'm tired of keeping it all pent up and I've done that for long enough.

If you're still reading this blog, and you're been a loyal reader or friend or even a long-time lurker, email me at (sassy{at}sassyblonde{dot}net) with the title of this post in the subject line or comment on this post and request an access key. I'd love to have you in the circle.

Til then, I'll be cleaning house and doing some renovation, and I'll see you on March 1st.

UPDATE: So, snow and circumstances being what they've been around here, I'm going to have to ask you guys to wait around a little longer, which actually ends up being appropriate for a lot of reasons. I've gotten all your emails and comments, and if you can hang tight for a few more weeks, I'll have the next phase ready on April 1st.