People – kristilynk

Lake Day

I love water. The ocean, the river, a pool, a hot tub – or is it a spa? Are all hot tubs spas? Are all spas hot tubs? – I love water.

I don’t love the lake. I mean, they’re beautiful, because its water but…to me, it feels… germy. Especially in Arizona. Its HOT, the water is just floating around, not really going anywhere. Kinda gross if you really focus on it.

With that said, I am trying to get past this. So, me and my friend and our mens met up at Lake Pleasant in AZ., the mens sat at the restaurant, on the water , had drinks and snacks while me and the friend putzd around on the lake with our paddle boards.

Rule #1 carrier your blow up paddle board down to the dock.

Rule#2 get comfy and don’t complain, it’s going to take about 5 minutes to blow up the board.

Rule#3 don’t be afraid to ask for help getting into your board from the dock.

There was some shade, thankfully, it was still hot 🥵

Once

On the water it was my bliss 😍 even though I did forget sunblock!

You can’t really “make”time.

There are so many things we (humans) want or need to do. It’s said…a lot… you want it you have to MAKE the time to do it. There is no way to MAKE time. You have to change the way you use your time. This will take sacrifice or a game of if I do this I can’t do that. Example. I want to wake up an hour early to workout. I won’t because if I do, I can’t get that extra hour of sleep.

I’ve had a great day of “self care”. Yoga, manicure, putting around the house (ok really I was smudging the house with sage), took a stroll on the treadmill, did some journaling. It was lovely.

To do all of the things today, I had to sacrifice chilling at home with Jason and the muppet babies, my dogs for those of you who don’t know me. To write this random post, I’m sacrificing time. It means I’ll be late. We are having guests over and I still need to shower. I don’t want to so… here I am.

So I started this workbook called, “the artists way”. It told me to write three pages, long hand, each morning. It basically garbage. Not the idea, the idea is pretty cool especially because I’m writing about nothing. Only random thoughts, it’s pretty freeing, you wake up and write a few pages of all of the nonsense rolling around your brain first thing in the morning.

Some of the exercises are pretty intense if you want them to be. I don’t so I will cherry pick and sugar coat the things I don’t want to address in my mind. It’s week one. We’ll see how far I get. 😆

Small Town History

I have lived in the town of Weedville, AZ since the later part of the 1980’s. I had no idea I was living in Weedville until one day I posted a status on FaceBook and that status stated my comment was coming from Weedville, AZ.

What the heck is Weedville?? I thought I lived in Peoria. As I was giggling about Weedville..because let’s face it..Weedville is pretty funny….I googled Weedville, AZ. Apparently some Reverend (Reverend Weed) from Nebraska moved to the area in 1911 and named the town after himself.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/columns/articles/0427azhist0428.html

The link above is for any of you who may be interested in reading more..I’m not writing about Weedville today.. I am writing about Peoria. 🙂

As I said, I have lived here for over twenty years. Today was the fist time I have ever stopped at the Peoria Central School in Old Town Peoria. I have driven by this place many of many of times…thought about stopping but just never have. Today..I stopped.

Not only did I stop but I got out of the car and actually went in! 🙂

I was warmly greeted by the volunteers at this facility, “We are open but as you can see, we are in the process of redecorating, renovating and cleaning. You are more than welcome to come in and look around.”

The nice man noticed I was armed with a camera and proceeded to tell me, “and of course you are welcome to take pictures as well!”

I thanked him and proceeded to walk into the first building, this room will be set up as a replica of the old school rooms of the super early 1900’s.

Question..you see rule number 2? Well now look at rule number 3…How are you supposed to address the teacher if rule number 2 is NO TALKING? Yea, I was THAT kid. 😉

By the looks of these desks, I imagine in the early 1900’s they did not have the problem of child obesity that we have today. Maybe the answer to that current issue is to bring back the smaller desks!! Inappropriate? Well, I’ll save that discussion for another blog then. 😀

This is a piano from the late 1800’s – It looks as though it’s in GREAT condition! Chickering was in business from the late 1800’s and actually got out of business before The Great Depression, or so this website tells me anyway. http://www.antiquepianoshop.com/online-museum/chickering-brothers/

I’m not sure if classrooms were equipped with pianos in those days or not. Most likely not , the museum probably just has it because it’s old and cool and that’s fine but it did make me wonder so I asked uncle Google. I didn’t find anything on music in the classroom in the early 1900’s but I did stumble on this little note. Now, I’m not sure if it’s real or not but it’s cute and kind of neat to think about this little girl sitting at her little desk writing to students 100 years after her time.

http://www.dltk-kids.com/pioneer/school_in_the_1800.htm

To any of you teachers out there…this is a brilliant writing assignment for your students!

Yep, the classroom is even equipped with life size, creepy mannequin teachers. 🙂

This photo was hanging on the wall. I graduated from Peoria High School, the school is 91 years old! The people all look old so I don’t know if this was a graduating class or if it was the staff? I am leaning more towards guessing it is the graduating class..I don’t think in 1938 they would have had that many teachers in Peoria..

The next room looks like they might set it up as a home type setting. Here are some pictures of clothes drying..I like the long johns and the old time picture set up behind them.

I would imagine mom would wash, then squidgy the clothes before she hung them up to dry..

And just look at the art work on this sewing machine! The colors are so vibrant!

In this room was another piano or organ or?? I’m not sure..Anyone know what this is? Who makes it (I forgot to read it when I was actually there and I tried to zoom in on the picture but I cannot make out the lettering..)?

While I was in this room, one of the nice volunteer ladies came back to bring me a flyer for the Grand Re-opening happening November 2nd.

Here she is 😉

And see… there are the creepy, mannequin teachers in the back! Can you tell I am not a fan of mannequins?

After her and I talked for a bit, I walked to the Agriculture room. I didn’t get any pictures of this room because I was actually so engrossed with the stories I was hearing!

When I walked into the room there were two couples, about my parents age, in there. The ladies were sweeping and talking and dusting while the men sat and talked. Hmmm…. hah, I guess the old school mentality still applies here. 🙂

They told me stories of how long they have been in the area, what it looked like in their day and actually.. one of the ladies family had owned the farm property directly behind my house until about five years ago. It had been in her family for around fifty years!

Small Town..

Her and I walked together to the next building which was decorated with old old typewriters, stenographer machines, adding machines and in the corner was a glass display that scared me…In it was an old beauty shop set up..to be more precise it was a perm machine..yep..perm MACHINE..hairdressers would wrap ladies hair up in pin curls and cushions and hooked them up to ELECTRICITY…Check out this little video – about 40 seconds in the scary machine makes its grand entrance…. Sorry, in advance, for the poor quality but hey..I didn’t make it.

On that note..I will leave you for today! Until next time. Get out there everyone, learn, explore, talk to people!

Spain III (cont’) 2012

The guys called us to let us know they made it to town and gave us directions to the hotel we would be staying at for the night. We hopped in the Volkswagen and drove about ten minutes just outside of Liereganes. Wyatt, the singer of the band, Craig, the guitar player (and my travel companions “boyfriend” aka her guitar god) and Damon, the bass player were all standing in front of the hotel to greet us. Big hugs all around, it had been a while since we had seen each other, they had already been touring for two and a half weeks before we arrived. Carmen, the tour manager, was also there and it was so great to finally meet her in person! Her and I had been working together via email for the past two years coordinating booking details, interviews and promotions for the show – I act as sort of the liaison between the band and the booking agent/tour manger. Jason came down from the room shortly thereafter and we headed upstairs to our rooms. It was about five o’clock in the evening and we had about an hour and a half to catch up and relax a bit before we had to meet back in the lobby to head to the venue so the guys to do sound check before the show. Jason and I got a little snooze in, but not much of one of course because we hadn’t been able to chat all day, for some reason his cell phone went wacky and decided it didn’t want to work so we had to talk about the drive and how our days went, etc. 😉

Looking through my photos, I did not get one of the outside of the hotel, but here is a picture of the view outside the window from the inside of the hotel.

We met everyone in the lobby at six in the evening and we all piled into the big blue van and drove to the venue. The town was still silent. I was still nervous about how this show was going to turn out but did not express my anxiety to any one else in fear I might pass my stress onto them. The last things the guys need is to worry about is playing to an empty room.

Here we all are, minus Damon the bass player because he is the one who took the photo, waiting on the promoter and the club owner to show up. Left to right: Shirley, Craig, Jason, Carmen, me and Wyatt.

The venue, inside, was so cool! If I was a man I believe that is exactly the way I would want my man cave to look like. Let me rephrase that, I would love to build a man cave like Los Picos for Jason, I am sure he would love it!

Stone walls, thick solid wood bar, wood floors and cut out windows with decorative wooden shutters on the inside..very cozy.

While the guys were doing sound check, Shirley started getting cranky and decided she needed to eat and eat now so we left to find a place to eat dinner. I was actually OK with that because I was a little hungry myself, the guys were busy and all of the merchandise had been set up.

We came across a restaurant/bar inside of a local hotel, I had croquette. Not as good as the croquette I had in the Netherlands many years ago but it was still delish and I was happy to have found them in Spain! Croquette is a finger food shaped like a mozzarella stick but fatter and is filled with, instead of cheese, a white sauce which is mixed with meats and fish and vegetables, the inside filling has some what of a puree texture and I love them.

We were in the restaurant for about forty-five minutes and walked back to the venue to find the doors locked. There wasn’t much to do, by the time we left, it was around seven-thirty, the town shops were closed so we took seat on a bench in front of the venue and I played bejeweled on my cell phone until someone opened the door. The guys had finished sound check and had gone to dinner, no big deal, we went in, had a drink and waited on them. Check out the ice cubes in the my glass of Jack Daniels, they look like little shot glasses!

I’m not sure how businesses stay alive in these towns, where do the people work, how do they make money to spend money? Out of curiosity, I went to my handy know everything tool..Google and found that as of 2011 the population of Lierganes was only 2,457. I suppose many of the almost 200,000 people of Santander, which is eight miles north of Lierganes, may come to contribute to contribute to their economy. It is a perfect little get away town that if I lived in the area I would want to frequent.

The venue, Los Picos, was celebrating its forty-fifth year in business and the promoter working for Los Picos certainly must have done his job in spreading the word. Combine those factors along with the simple fact that Spain, plain and simple, loves American Southern Rock music and you have the success that was.

Just as the doors were opening, Jason and I went into the back stage area, he likes his quiet time before he hits the stage. The room was a little bigger than my bedroom walk in closet at home and it was there you could really feel the age of the building. Bands from all over the world leave their marks on the wall to let everyone know they have been there, shelves racked around the room are full of classic American vinyl records, old guitars leaning up again the walls and of course them empty bottles of liquor complete the Rock n’ Roll themed backstage area.

The rest of the guys came in to let Jason know there was only ten minutes to show time, with that said, I made my way back out to the bar area..I needed a refill anyway 😉

I was surprised to find….a full house! People of all ages, not kidding you, there were kids of eighteen years and there were adults of sixty years in this crowd. What’s happening is the older generation is finding Hogjaw’s music and in a not so common fate between parent and child, their children also come to love the music and join them to see the show. I can’t say the oddity of parent and child enjoying the same music is new to the Hogjaw scene, I hear of these stories from the parents back home as well, it is new to the stereo typical parent-child relationship regarding music.

At live shows I typically am running around taking photos, trying to get the perfect “Oh my god that’s awesome” shot. This show there were so many photographers and videographers I decided to take a back seat and let them do their thing. There were also so many people there I could not get to a good spot to take that shot. I did bring my camera and of course I did take a couple pictures so here they are:

He works hard for his money!

One of the videographers..Doing what he does – I stayed out of the way 😉

From what I remember, they played for two hours, they have 30 songs plus a few cover songs they like to play as well. With all of their material they have plenty of time to give the crowd what they want..music to feel, love and rock to!

Two hours is a long time and I have seen Hogjaw play many many many many times since the group inception so sometime during the set I went out side to get some “fresh” air. I say “fresh” air not because Spain doesn’t have fresh air but because I am a nasty smoker and I went out to smoke..there I said it! 🙂

So, I went out to get some “fresh” air and these two guys were also out there..polluting their lungs with the nastiness. I ended up trying to have a conversation with a couple of Spanish men..trying? Yes, trying because I have a very limited Spanish vocabulary and these guys had an even more limited English vocabulary. It was fun, I was trying to teach them how to pronounce English words and they were trying to teach me new Spanish words. Finally, a guy who spoke English pretty well came over to tell me just what one of the guys really wanted….He wanted to cut a snippet of my hair. Apparently, he was telling me how beautiful my hair was and that he had a hair fetish and would love to add a clump of my hair to his collection. I was mortified, I have never heard of anything such as a hair fetish in my entire life. It very much creeped me out! The creepy hair fetish guy that followed me around for the remainder of the night is on the right

The rest of the night was nostly a blur, the Jack and Cokes got to me, but I do remember roaming around the back of the venue, shoeless and that we found this alien face on a tree!