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This week in…: Volume 34

October 2, 2015 by Jana 24 Comments

At least I think it’s volume 34. Maybe it’s higher. I’ve lost count. But I don’t really think it matters much since today is THE MARTIAN DAY!!! Or, as it’s known in my house, the day I got my husband to use a vacation day so we can go see a movie while the child is in school because The Martian is the only book we’ve ever agreed on in our 19 year relationship so of course we have to go see the movie at the earliest time possible.

Also, Erin told me that you get to see Matt Damon’s ass in the movie (and even if it’s a body double I’m pretending that it’s not). Alerting you to a sighting of your celebrity crush’s naked butt is the sign of a true friend.

Let’s see what else happened this week.

Added Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille to the DNF pile. Finished Modern Romance and picked up 4 more books. Lots of rain and impending hurricane means hours of reading time. Also, don’t forget that Show Us Your Books is on October 13. It’s the one year anniversary and Steph and I have some presents for you to thank you for a year of support and engagement.
Gave a couple of new shows a spin. The Grinder (with Rob Lowe and ~~Kevin Arnold~~ Fred Savage), The Bastard Executioner, and The Muppets (of course). Love the first two. Hopefully The Grinder didn’t use up all its good stuff in the first episode. The Bastard Executioner is violent and disturbing but quite good. The Muppets, though. I don’t want to say anything bad about my beloved Muppets but this show? Not so great.
Speaking of TV, does anyone know where I can watch Fargo, Season 1 for free? I really want to watch season 2 but not without watching the first one ahead of time.
THE METS WON THE NATIONAL LEAGUE EAST FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 9 YEARS!!! Let the playoffs stress being.
Worked on one of my fall projects: organizing all my Pocket links. I have a ridiculous amount of saved links and need an easy way to access them, specifically the recipes and the ones I want to share with you guys. I’ll be publishing the full list of fall projects on Tuesday.
Read author profiles on Patrick deWitt and Andy Weir. My #booknerd heart is full.
Read these interesting articles: Buzzfeed nailed the differences in the way people treat physical and mental illness. Mashable shared some Easter eggs in The Martian inspired by actual NASA things. This post on envying wealthier parents. Rage Against the Machine’s bassist apologizing for Limp Bizkit. And this infographic with the 69 rules of punctuation.
Found this funny around the interwebs:

Hope you guys have a wonderful weekend, whatever you choose to do. See you on Tuesday!

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This week in…: Things from a couch

September 25, 2015 by Jana 21 Comments

Last week I was on Charlotte NC for FinCon15, which is a conference for personal finance bloggers and those in the finance industry to connect and learn and also drink. I mostly did that last one because I am not a finance blogger (obviously). But I did return home with some new friends, great memories, a bag of white chocolate Oreo popcorn (thanks, Tonya!), and a horrible, terrible cold that has been kicking my ass all week.

As a result, I haven’t done much except sit on my couch and so this week, I bring to you all the excitingish things that happened from said couch:

- finished $2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America and started Radiant Angel. I also picked up Did You Ever Have a Family and discovered a new bookish podcast, Overdue. Reading doesn’t take a break because you’re sick.
- binge watched “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp” so you don’t have to (trust me. The movie? Excellent. TV show? Abomination. Hopefully on purpose). I started “Hand of God” and you should get on that one. And kudos to Netflix for scoring “How to Get Away with Murder” so I can finally catch up on that.
- ordered a whole bunch of storage containers so I can start prepping my weekday lunches ahead of time. Lunch annoys me and I’d rather just take the headache and decision making out of it. Speaking of which, what’s your favorite make ahead lunch? Let me know in the comments.
- booked my room for FinCon16 which happens to be in San Diego next year and also I’ll be doing another mentoring session which I love to do so hooray for that!
- made a list of fall projects I want to work on. They’re easy and not too crafty so I should be able to complete them (I’m obviously still on a completion high from the Literary Ladies challenge). Would you guys want to know what I’m planning to do?
- watched a YouTube video on how to do an upside down French braid because #cheerhair. I *might* have cursed at the child’s coach when she announced this was the style because really, what the fuck? Why is this necessary? They don’t score points for hair.
- read some internet stuff: How to lose weight in four easy steps (it’s not what you think). 10 ways to stay healthy while working from home (really great tips that I definitely need to employ. Especially the one about getting dressed). This story about a man who embezzled $8.7M and hid for 6 years on the Appalachian Trail (there’s a link to the longform story at the bottom of the post I linked to). Why women love crime (guilty. Also, the woman who wrote the article, Megan Abbott, has written a bunch of book, some of which I’ve read. No real point to that fun fact except it is fun).
- laughed at this:

I was more productive from my couch than I thought! Who knew? Anyway, have a great weekend! See you on Tuesday (oh, I think I’m done with Monday posts for now. I struggle with Monday appropriate topics).

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Favorite forgotten hairband songs: A playlist

September 24, 2015 by Jana 29 Comments

This entry is part 2 of 8 in the series Playlists

Jana of JanaSays.com is in her late 30s, and Erin of TexErin-in-SydneyLand is in her early 40s. #noshame #oldladieswin

Aquanet … Spandex … Blue eyeshadow … MTV … BIG HAIR … all of these things were part of our childhood and teen years. So was the genre of music that gets a lot of teasing (pun intended) and ridicule known as Glam Metal, Hair Bands, Cock Rock….but these bands and songs are beloved by the two of us. In fact, as we got to know each other, we instantly connected with our mutual love of books and hair bands. This is not the list of songs that are played in sports stadiums or classic rock stations. C’mon. Admit it. You guys know Welcome to the Jungle, Every Rose Has Its Thorn, and Livin’ on a Prayer. You probably even know Pour Some Sugar on Me, Cherry Pie, and Here I Go Again. (You’re probably singing one of them in your head right now. You’re welcome.)

These are the songs that you have to turn to a specialty station like SiriusXM’s Hair Nation (in the U.S.) for a chance to hear them. Or be an avid fan of this music from days gone by. This list is a combined effort of our favorite forgotten hair band songs.

1. Wait for You by Bonham – 1989 – Do you recognize this name? John Bonham, the drummer of a little band called Led Zeppelin, who died in 1980…he had a son named Jason Bonham. He can play drums too. He had a band that had a song, and this is it.

2. Call to Your Heart by Guiffria – 1984 – Honestly don’t remember anything about Guiffria except this song. And, this is a good song.

3. Edge of a Broken Heart by Bon Jovi – 1987 – Back in the day, pop radio had djs and you could actually call and request to hear your favorite songs. The local Houston station (104 KRBE) had a “Top 8 at 8:00” most requested program. From Erin: “I’d wait for this song to play, so I could record it on my cassette tape each night, so I could have an entire cassette of just this song playing over and over.” The work and commitment we had to give for our favorites…..

4. Burning Like a Flame by Dokken – 1987 – To be honest, we could give you a whole list of Dokken songs of fantastic songs from Dokken, but this is a fave. From Erin: “Is this the time that I tell you about getting my picture taken with Don Dokken when my friend was getting beers or going to the bathroom, and she’s the one that really loved Dokken and she missed the photo opportunity??”

5. Tell Me by White Lion – 1987 – Don’t know many girls
that didn’t find Mike Tramp (the lead singer) pretty dreamy back in the
day. The last time I (Erin) saw him was 2008, and he was still pretty dreamy.

6. Coming of Age by Damn Yankees – 1990 – Once upon a time, a supergroup was formed with a member of Night Ranger, a member of Styx, and Ted Nugent. Fun fact from Erin: “I saw them open for Poison in Fargo, ND.”

7. Bang Bang by Danger Danger – 1989 – From Jana: “They were my
favorite and I was obsessed. Meeting Ted Poley and Andy Timmons was the
highlight of 8th grade.” No other words are needed.

8. Love Song by Tesla – 1989 – Serious now. If you aren’t going to listen to any other of the songs on this list, listen to this one. It truly is one of the greatest anthemic love songs ever created. Yes, we are biased about this list, but we speak the truth about this song.

9. Dirty Love by Thunder – 1990 – This British band has 9 studio albums, 7 live albums, and 22 singles released. Sure, they’ve had a lot of band members in and out during that time…but that’s more albums produced than Taylor Swift or Rhianna or One Direction or many of the other big sellers of popular music.

10. Big Talk by Warrant – 1989 – Awww Warrant. The band known for Cherry Pie. In fact, that song was part of the demise of lead singer, Jani Lane, who died a few years ago from an alcohol fueled death. They really were a talented band. (Feel free to fast forward the first minute of this film clip.) R.I.P Jani

11. One in a Million by Trixter – 1991 – This song hit radio airwaves the same year as Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Poor Trixter was just a little too late for any serious music people to listen to them. Wait. We ain’t about those music snobs anyway.

12. Mad About You by Slaughter – 1991 – Not sure this song made it to the music charts. There were actually some songs on this album that got more airplay. But, we’re rebelling and going with this lesser known gem for our list.

13. Tainted Angel by Southgang – 1991 – We knew this one was a given. Erin loves Butch Walker (he’s the hunk of a brunette guitarist in this video clip). Admittedly, most of the love is for the artist that Butch is now. (No joke. He is a hugely talented singer-songwriter-producer-and yes, guitarist.) Jana saw Southgang in concert New Year’s Eve 1991. Jana frickin’ wins!

14. I’ll Never Let You Go by Steelheart – 1990 – This is Jana’s favorite power ballad, and it was going to be left off the list “because his voice may hurt the ears of others” (that’s actually verbatim), but Erin said “Hell no! I’m totally including Steelheart!”, and here you have it. (Get to the chorus – the vocals are seriously insane!)

You really have no idea how difficult it was for us to narrow down this list. It was like selecting our favorite child or something (even though Erin doesn’t have a child, but she does have step-children, and Jana has one, so obviously, that one is the favorite). So, really, this was more difficult than picking our favorite child. We’re still questioning how
Ratt, Cinderella, Mr. Big, Skid Row, Firehouse, Whitesnake, and others didn’t make this list. But, we wanted to keep it short enough that you may stay with us.

If you’re actually still with us, tell us some of your favorite songs from big hair bands.

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Blogs you should read instead of mine, part 1

September 18, 2015 by Jana 18 Comments

I’m at a blogging conference this week, running a mentoring session, so there’s no recap for the week. But I didn’t want to leave you hanging on Friday and create a void in your life from the usual stellar content I create in this space which is why I’m suggesting you read these blogs because they’re approximately 100 times more awesome than me (except I’m not awesome and they are and even though 100 times zero is zero, you know what I mean because math is confusing):

TexErin in Sydneyland–Erin is one of my two internet twins (does that make us triplets? Again, math is confusing). She writes about music and books and her cat looks just like my cat and I love her and you need to pay her a visit.

The Random Path–Mackenzie is my other Internet twin and she writes about motherhood and recipes and living in Portland and all kinds of stuff.

Alyssa Goes Bang–Alyssa is hella talented and smart and disciplined and ambitious and she is what I wish I had been at 25. She also has a magazine and edits books and does yoga and runs and really, I’m exhausted just writing all of that.

Voyage of the Mee Mee–Amanda is one of the most hilarious people on the interwebs and if you’re not reading her beautifully redesigned blog, you need to change that pronto.

Ali A–I genuinely don’t even know what to say about Ali except she’s hysterical and sarcastic and smart and writes one of my favorite blogs of all time and she’s from Long Island and lives at the beach which of course makes me love her that much more.

Easily Entertained–if you want to read anything about TV or movies or concerts, you need to have Christina’s blog on your radar. She also talks about living in Seattle and her kids (who are adorable) and I think maybe she and Mackenzie should meet because I think they’d get along really well.

Stuff, Things, Etc–I want Kristin to be my daughter’s teacher so badly because she’s an amazingly passionate teacher. She’s also a military wife, dog mom, recipe giver, booknerd, and other kinds of awesome traits that make her blog a definite daily read of mine.

If I didn’t mention you today, don’t hate me. This is something I’ll do monthly because let’s face it, there are so many of you guys who are way better than me and deserve the props.

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This week in…: Volume 33

September 11, 2015 by Jana 24 Comments

I made the decision to return A Little Life to the library. It’s a wonderful book so I’m going to buy it and keep on the shelf for the winter. It’s just too heavy for me right now. I’m in the middle of Dietland and picked up three new ones–Ally Hughes Has Sex Sometimes, You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, and $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing. I also figured out that I can borrow and loan books from my Kindle app so now I don’t need a Kindle. Hooray for saving money!
I need to save money because I finally bought a FitBit. I am in love with it and I’m using it to track my sleep as well as my steps. Hopefully this will give me insight as to why I’m so tired all the damn time. The first night I used it, it told me I was restless 11 times. Eleven!!! That’s a whole lot.
Longmire is FINALLY on Netflix (well, season 4, which I’ve been waiting for for what felt like an eternity)! I can’t even begin to tell you how happy that makes me. Also making me happy from TV land? The return of Project Greenlight! Anyone else watch it? Are you as excited as I am about the new season?
You know what I forgot to mention in my post about fall? How much I love fall baseball. You know what’s extra exciting about this year? My beloved Mets are still STILL in first place and someone actually used the words “Mets” and “magic number” in the same sentence yesterday. Barring any epic collapse, my boys will get to hang the National League East Division Champions 2015 in CitiField next year!
Speaking of NY, as today is the 14th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, I encourage you to take a moment to remember everyone who lost their lives that day in New York, Pennsylvania, the Pentagon, and the ensuing wars (if you’re curious about my thoughts, you can read my inarticulate post I wrote a couple of years ago).
I finally watched Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time ever. I did not like it. In fact, I forgot that’s the movie I was watching because it bored me so much and this conversation happened:

Husband: Are you even paying attention?
Me: Yes. He stole some shit. Now he’s teaching some shit. I’m all caught up.
Husband: Now they’re talking about the ark.
Me: There’s an ark?
Husband: IT’S “RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK”!!!
Me: Oh, right.

Internet reads: Are you Gen X like me (or are you in that weird bubble between Gen X and Gen Y like me)? Then read this post with 29 characteristics of Generation X. Maybe you’re not Gen X but you are creative so maybe check out this infographic of the daily routines of famous creative people. I loved the results of this blogger’s experiment of not complaining for two weeks and it kind of makes me want to try it or one of Gretchen Rubin’s 21 Day Projects (and yes, I’d pay $4.99 for one of her books. I love her). And finally, yesterday was World Suicide Prevention Day, so this post from Buzzfeed about the lies your depression tells you is timely and poignant.
Re: Depression. It sucks. It’s the worst thing ever, and if you’re dealing with it, please know you’re not alone. And it might not seem like it now but it will get better. Maybe with medication, maybe with therapy, maybe with time, maybe with all three. But it will get better. And please, if you need help, reach out to someone. A professional, preferably. Especially if you’re thinking about suicide. You can find help at 1-800-273-8255 or via the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline website: http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ Your life matters.
And thanks to Ali for sharing this which I’ve unabashedly ~~stolen~~ borrowed:

Have a wonderful weekend! My new couch is being delivered so expect many pictures from my new sitting perspective! You can follow me on Instagram for those.

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This week in…: Volume 34

This week in…: Things from a couch

Favorite forgotten hairband songs: A playlist

Blogs you should read instead of mine, part 1

This week in…: Volume 33

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