Posts Tagged ‘Adam Lambert’

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Glam Nation Tour – oh yeah


2010
08.02

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I kind of like Adam Lambert.  Or, more honestly, I absolutely adore Adam Lambert, which is why I bought tickets to his Glam Nation tour stops in Costa Mesa, CA.  When tickets went on sale, I got two for July 28th. As usual, even though I went online at the very stoke of 10 am, all the best seats were gone.  How does this happen? I really don’t understand the Ticketmaster system.

Tickets sold out fast and another performance was added for the 27th.  Cool, I thought, I’ll try for a better ticket for that, and if I only buy one, I might have more luck.  So I did, and I did get a closer seat, but way on the side.  Later that day I decided to try again, just in case something had opened up, and I did get a better seat, center and fairly close.

Now I had four tickets, so I figured I’d go both nights and sell the others.  I got a hotel reservation where lots of the other Glamberts were staying and planned to meet the Glamily for dinner.  Fun times ahead.  And what could illustrate the Creative Every Day theme of Fire? Adam Lambert sets the audience on fire.

Somehow, I failed to take into account that I would be gone most of July.  Uh huh, I was.  So I didn’t quite get around to selling those other tickets.  They weren’t expensive and I figured I’d sell them at the venue.  Uh huh again.

On the 27th Mark and I drove to Burbank in separate cars so I could continue to Costa Mesa and he back to Bako after our mammoth buying trip to IKEA, the Goddess of Retail.  We got sheets and towels for the cabin (we’re going to rent), bookcases for our house, a trundle bed for the casita, and assorted other items. We went our separate ways and I had plenty of time to get to the hotel and check in before the Glamily dinner at Mimi’s Cafe.  So I thought.

It was a one-hour trip but I wasn’t having good trip luck.  Remember the 24-hour cross-country flight?  This one-hour drive took me 2 and 1/2 hours.  Traffic was creeping, really close to a standstill on the 5.  I turned to the radio station that reports traffic on the “ones.” The station says things like,”Big rig overturned, two right lanes blocked,” or “Two-car accident blocking the left lane,” or “Injury accident closing the northbound lanes.”  Our delay was termed “police activity.”

I had never heard that before in the countless times I’ve listened to traffic reports.  I still don’t know what it is, but I watched the minutes tick away until it was clear I would not be attending the dinner.  Now I began to hope I’d be attending the concert.

Finally – made it!  Checked in and headed to the Pacific Amphitheater by myself and instead of selling that other ticket, I just went in.  I had all the entrepreneurship squeezed out of me by the traffic.  My seat was pretty good, but still not good enough for good photos.  They only allowed cameras six inches or less in the venue.

I had to eat.  The amphitheater is in the OC Fairgrounds.  So I ate a hot dog, nachos, and kettle corn.  I had a margarita.  I knew this was a very lousy choice of food, but I didn’t have much choice.  The hot dog was actually delicious.

Concert opened with Allison Iraheta – the ferocious, young redhead who came in fourth on Idol last year.  I love her.

Her set was good, but when her band came out, I looked at the woman next to me and we both said, “Are they kids?” They looked like just barely teenagers.  Or else we are getting old.  Unaware that Adam’s demographic, while including all age levels, centers on women over 40, several of the people around me said they thought they’d be the oldest people there.  Uh – no.

Next up we had Orianthi.  Did you see the Michael Jackson movie This is It?  Orianthi is the Australian, blond guitarist who followed him around on stage everywhere.  She is insanely talented, but her set was loud.  Really loud.

At least one person in the audience didn’t want anything to do with anyone who wasn’t Adam.

I wanted to ask what she was reading.

How to show I was there? The self-portrait.

Finally, after a very long wait, several waves that went around the amphitheater, and thunderous foot-stomping, Adam appeared.  Like a voodoo shaman, singing Voodoo.  Oh, the glitter and the sparklies, the rhinestones, the glam. He is a gorgeous man.

There are fabulous photos all over the internet – this is so poor we barely see his glam. God, his voice.  It’s not possible.

I don’t even know how to describe him.  You have to see for yourself. Before I left, I had decided I couldn’t go to both concerts because I was done in from all the traveling.  I thought, who would really truly like these tickets, and I came up with Janna, the daughter of the woman I was visiting in Pismo.  I asked Pat if I could come a day early, gave the tickets to Janna, and that was that.

Oh, I regretted not going the second night, but I had enough sense to know it would be too much.

The next morning I headed up to Pismo and Janna headed down to the OC, and everyone was happy.

By the way, Adam is asking his fans not to bring gifts to the concerts.  He wants donations to the Glam a Classroom campaign on Donorschoose.org.  His career is just starting and he’s already responsible for over $300,000 of giving!

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Being non-judgmental, inclusive, generous and positive: a reminder from the Glamberts


2010
05.23

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“A man is but the product of his thoughts; what he thinks, he becomes” ……. Mahatma Gandi

Late yesterday afternoon I did a quick check-in on Twitter and saw that Adam Lambert would be coming up on the KISS concert in Boston. Great timing for me – I didn’t even know there was a KISS concert.  I’m don’t know much about this radio live-streaming stuff.  As I waited, I reflected on my fangirl experience and realized I’d learned a lot about being non-judgmental.

I believe I have basically always been non-judgmental in that I try to be open to anyone, no matter how odd that person seems at first or what he or she looks like.  Others in my family tell me so – and that they operate from exclusion, not inclusion – they say so, not me.  I’m the one that invites people to Thanksgiving when they have no where else to go, and at first my family was not happy.  But I was cooking the dinner so I did it anyhow, and it turned out just fine.  Still does.  Why would we not include people if we are able to?

As I embarked upon my year-long study of fandom and started following other glamberts (fans of Adam Lambert) on Twitter, sometimes I’d think, That person is a little scary; why is that person so obsessed, or that person must be living in a fantasy world.  As I prepared to go to Fantasy Springs for Adam’s first concert, I bought flashing antenae, which – face it – could be seen as more than a little weird. And, let’s face it again, I was being judgmental about something I had no real knowledge of.  And I was a little bit scared. But I started to meet people, people I’d known only on Twitter, or whom I hadn’t even seen on Twitter.

This is what I found out. One woman, who seemed a little bitter and in need of attention, had experienced an unexpected divorce a year prior, right when Adam’s season of Idol began.  She had no children and was adrift.  This was giving her an anchor, at least until she sorted other things through.  Others had simiilar situations.  Some were just having fun.  Some, like me, had just fallen in love with this wonderful man and felt fiercely protective and supportive.  I didn’t think I was scary, obsessed or living in a fantasy world (although sometimes I’d like to).  Why had I been feeling so judgmental?

And I found out this: I was one of those fangirls that could be seen as a little obsessed (but could we say focused instead of obsessed?).  According to my previous thinking, I was just as scary as anyone else.

I remembered that one of my daughters likes the eHow I wrote on How to Control your Anger in Traffic better than any of the others.  In that little article I said it wasn’t worth getting fussed at drivers who sped ahead, did something rude, because we didn’t know what was going on with them.  Sure, they may be rude people, but they may be rushing to get to a hospital or a child, they may have had a horrible day, someone in the family may have died – we just don’t know.  So how can we make judgments? Perhaps of an act, but  not of a person.  If I live by the premise I try to, that everyone is doing the best they can, where they are with what they have, I have to believe that the rude person is doing the same.  I don’t have to like it or befriend that person, but there is it.

And this is what I found out, and have continued to see on twitter: the Glamberts are kind, generous, non-judgmental, inclusive, and caring.  They are positive people.

And I realized this: Adam never says anything negative about anything or anybody.  He’s a master of diplomacy, yet – that’s the way he is inside.  He is always telling people to be positive, that being resentful is “so yesterday,” that entitlement “isn’t sexy,” and when his fans ask if he likes gifts from them, he says of course he does, but he’d be happy if people gave him receipts from charities they’d donated to instead.  How can you not love this beautiful human being – beautiful inside and out – with an indescribable voice?

I guess like attracts like, and that’s why Adam has attracted such a large, loyal fan base that share his values.  He sets a positive, non-judgmental, inclusive tone.  When a Glambert -or – anyone – says something negative on twitter, that person hears about it – nicely, from other Glamberts.

Last night when being interviewed and asked about the fan gift thing, Adam said to donate to a charity and give him the receipt instead of a gift.  He didn’t specify what charity.  I tweeted to @glamulli to help spread the word about the fund drive I’m involved in to build the statue for Fannie Lou Hamer., seeing it as an opportunity to maybe bring in some money and shoulder my part of the fundraising effort.  I said $10 a person would help even. And that I thought Adam would approve of this charity.

@Glamulli did retweet my request because Glamberts can count on the support of other Glamberts.  It’s actually amazing.  Already someone has tweeted she made a donation, and not for Adam this time, but because Fannie Lou Hamer needs to be “remembered and celebrated.”

I’ve not been successful getting many donations. A plea on facebook resulted in two.  I’m guessing I’ll get more from Glamberts than any other source. It’s easy to donate on Fannie Lou Hamer.

So that’s my train of thought, my journey through judgment in the last few days, my belief that being inclusive is so much more positive than being exclusive.  I’m glad I was reminded of it because since I am not a perfect person, I have to keep on striving.  I hope I never become a perfect person – it would probably be boring – and it would end the journey, the climb.  We’ve got to keep climbing until the very end, when we topple over into wherever it is we end up.

Benjamin Franklin said it well: “The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.”

And like Fannie Lou Hamer, celebrate the positive.



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My Fangirl Experience with Adam Lambert, Fantasy Springs Resort, and Synchronicity: Part One


2010
03.01

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The glittery alien from the Planet Fierce

Maybe I could just write the name Adam Lambert Adam Lambert Adam Lambert over and over.  Would that explain it all? How does one begin talking about Adam Lambert? I’m going to try, so stick with me.  Because this story is about more than one man, one glittery alien from Planet Fierce.  It’s about bringing people together and making us play dress-up and go places we wouldn’t ordinarily go – not in our demographic.  Adam’s main demographic, or fan base, as of now at least, is women over 40.

Creative Every Day’s theme for March is telling stories – and this is a multi-faceted story. Besides Adam Lambert, it’s a story about Twitter and making friends from cyberspace to real life.  I went to Fantasy Springs with Nita Lambert, daxtonsnini on Twitter.  I drove from Bakersfield; she flew from Oklahoma.  We became best friends in 14 hours.  But let’s unravel this story from the beginning, which of course is American Idol.

Why Adam?

Adam captured us with his voice.  And his looks.  Which did we notice first?  Who could say? He’s the total entertainment package.  But that voice, which spans octaves, bass to tenor!  And that face and that body and the chameleon ability to morph into any decade, era or style!  I talked about this with dozens of women at Fantasy Springs – what is it that binds us to this 28-year-old gay man?  I think when we first saw him, it was nice to realize someone could still excite us.   Next, our jaws dropped – someone like Adam couldn’t really be possible, could he?  Then it was just fun.  But we saw something else.  As a 28-year-old gay man, Adam was comfortable in his skin.  He had nothing to prove; he wasn’t making excuses because there was nothing to make excuses for.  And he was nice – just a polite, nice Jewish boy.  So we did what Jewish mothers do best – we got protective.  Adam has thousands of mothers out here who will protect him like only a mother can.  That’s our demographic. Don’t mess with our kid.  Understand?

I become a fangirl and find daxtonsnini

We were captured and captivated and we began reading whatever we could find about Adam.  This newly-minted fangirl, who had previously only followed Don Drysdale (a Dodger pitching great of the 50s and 60s) with any passion, found herself joining fan communities.  And one day I must have done an Adam Lambert search on Twitter because I found someone named daxtonsnini.  I’ve written about Nini previously.  But her name attracted my attention – because who would be called Daxton except my 13-year-old granddaughter Daxton? Who surely was unique in the namebooks.  So I tweeted daxtonsnini, asking her, “What’s up with your name?”

She has a three-year-old grandson named Daxton – that’s what’s up.  And her name is Nita but he can’t say that so he calls her Nini.  Daxtonsnini.  We had Adam and Daxton in common.  And we were both equally star struck. We had stars in our eyes.  We were starry-eyed. The stars had come out for us.  I’m glad we have camera-phones, however poor, to capture stars.  This is Nita and me.

Let’s jump ahead (which I just did in the previous photo).  Adam was giving his first solo concert at Fantasy Springs Casino and Resort in Indio, near Palm Springs.  I wanted to go.  I wasn’t going to go.  I had to go.  I couldn’t afford to go.  But how could I miss it!?! I would miss it. I was at the cabin on the day tickets went on sale, and at 10:00 A.M. I was online buying two tickets.  I tweeted Nita.  I had two tickets and a reservation at the hotel.  She had to come.  No, she said, she couldn’t come.  Daxton had been ill, had surgery, and she’d taken too many days off work to care for him.

Did I mention she is a teacher, like me?  And a reading curriculum specialist, like my daughter Jennifer?  And that she’s been married 40 years?  And I’ve been married 41 years?

Blackmail – almost

I shamed her into it.  If I could go to Switzerland for four days, which I once did to visit someone, surely she could fly to Palm Springs from Oklahoma on a Saturday and return on Sunday?  Indeed she could.  I told her that she’d know me at the airport because I’d be the one wearing blinking antennas.  If she didn’t believe me, she didn’t know me.  (I have a friend, Tammie Stevens, who made a shirt for me once that said “Dignity is not in my future!”)  So here we are in the airport and I have my blinking antennae on.

Synchronicity

I’m jumping ahead again – Nita didn’t arrive until Saturday morning, and I arrived Friday.  I checked into the room and went to the box office to collect the tickets.  And I ran into lots of people doing the very same thing.  A few of us went into the Special Events Center where the concert would be held to check out the stage.  And play on the stage as it turned out, and stand in the very same place Adam would be standing.

People came from all over the United States – the world even!  Canada, Thailand, Australia – and Bakersfield, CA.  I went into the casino with these ladies, who were from New York, Canada, and I forget where else,  to have a drink in the steakhouse, suppressing my normal behavior which would have been to go to my room, relax, read, write, etc.  I was going to wring every once of experience out of this fangirl adventure.  And in the steakhouse we met Isabelle.  She is an 89-year-old woman from Wisconsin who is a huge Adam fan!  She recorded a happy birthday message to him on you tube, it came to the attention of fan groups who found out she couldn’t afford to go to the concert, so the fan groups started fundraising and bought plane tickets for Isabelle and her daughter; Fantasy Springs kicked in the hotel rooms, and Isabelle was even able to meet Adam.

That’s Isabelle in the middle.  What a sweet lady and what a wonderful story!

Now this starts to get bizarre – creepy – strangely wonderful – and the synchronicity kicks in.  I am in some fan groups but I can’t remember which ones exactly and my user names are all bollixed up, and Nita was my only Adam-related Twitter contact.  As the concert approached, she suggested I follow GlamUlli, LambertFan8, and Binahlinda.  So I did.  Right after we posed for this photo with Isabelle, another large group came in for dinner.  I recognized a photo from Twitter – it was GlamUlli – from North Carolina!  Out of the 3,500 people attending this concert, GlamUlli walked into the restaurant!

Pretty dang amazing.  Then a smaller group walked in and I sort of joined them at their table for dinner even though the waitress said there wasn’t enough room.  And of those four people I joined, two of them were LambertFan8 from Fairfield in Northern California and Binahlinda from Texas.  How amazing is that?  I had just met three of my four twitter contacts and would be picking the fourth up at the airport the next morning.

That’s LambertFan8 on the left and Binahlinda on the right.  So far, we all seem like pretty normal people.

Crisis

We had a great dinner – excellent food – and finally I headed to my room.  I got undressed and started setting out my clothes for the next day – I knew I had to pick up Nita at 9:58 so I had to be prepared – I am not a morning person as regular readers know by now.  I started organizing.  Where were the tickets for the concert and the Glamily Reunion?  They were not in my purse.  But I put them in my purse – carefully!  Stay calm, I told myself.  Check jeans pockets, remove everything from purse, check wastebasket.  They just weren’t there.  Call restaurant.

I got the security desk in the casino. I explained my predicament.  They said the restaurant was closed. I said, please go see if Dominic is there (the manager) and he’ll remember me.  Please look for my tickets.  They did, they called back, and said no tickets had been found.  I was approaching full-panic mode but I was stark naked.  I called the front desk.  All I could do was wait for the box office to open at 10 in the morning.  But Binahlinda might still be in the casino!  I called her cell number.  It was not her cell.  It was her home number.  Her husband answered and I explained and asked for her cell and he told me to hold on while he found it.  He must have had to go a very long way to find it but finally, I had it.

I texted Linda.  Are you still in casino? No, she wasn’t. She had returned to the Holiday Inn.

Saved

I got dressed.  I went to the restaurant.  The door was open – I told the bartender what had happened (she remembered me also as we’d had quite a chat about Cochise County, Arizona, where she’s from), she told me to go in the restaurant and look, and someone appeared to say they had found tickets.  I was saved.  Can you even imagine having to pick up this wonderful woman Nita whom I had almost browbeaten into coming with the news that the tickets were lost?

Tomorrow I’ll finish with Part Two, unless it drags on, in which case I’ll turn it into a three-parter.

Stay tuned….as I proceed to dress completely inappropriately for my age and body type.

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Two days until G-day/American Idol is ruined


2010
02.25

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That would be Glambert day.  Two days to go until the big Palm Springs adventure.  (the Adam Lambert concert that I’m going to with my twitter friend from Oklahoma) Didn’t realize quite how long the drive was – four plus hours.  I’ll be fine if I sleep.  Last couple of nights I’ve been getting up at midnight or 1:00 am and going down to the studio to do a couple of journal pages.  Been too long since I’ve been in the studio and it’s bottling up.  Too much happening too, what with our unexpected purchase of a house.

Who watched Idol Tues. and Wed?  I had a feeling that the season would be flat without Adam.  He was so exciting that we can’t expect anyone else like that to show up.  But really – the song choices were so drippy and boring.  Out of the thousands of choices available, this is the best they could do?  Casey is the boy standout, and not just because he’s so darn cute.  He puts his soul in his work and his image fits his song choice.  Other than him, where’s the stage presence?

Girls – Crystal and Lilly were the only stand-outs as far as I’m concerned.

And yes, I miss Paula; and no, I can’t get used to Kara.  I keep trying but just can’t warm up to her.

So here are the journal pages I did the last two nights.  They don’t mean anything in particular: my constraint for journaling still is watercolor background and collage material from a few National Geographics I have laying around.

This is The Blues.  The next one is Electro Pop.

Full report with photos coming after Palm Springs.  However – the Casino says we cannot take cameras into the concert.  And how is this stopped, what with cell phones and all?  We’ll see.

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#CED2010: Adam Lambert! And New Works


2010
01.29

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Posted in Art, General, Photography | 3 Comments »

Talk about a body!  What better way to end Creative Every Day’s Body-themed month than with Adam Lambert.  I’ve got two tickets to see him at Fantasy Springs Resort and Casino in Palm Springs in February.  It wasn’t easy – I do not know how to be the first on those phone lines or on the internet!  But I’ll be there.

This guy is as gorgeous inside as he is outside.  And his voice is indescribable. But I divert.  Easy to get diverted by Adam Lambert.

This will no doubt be my last post for January so I thought I’d put in a few things I’ve done up here at the cabin.  The photos are very bad, however.  I had to crop so they would be straight and lost a little of the art.  Contrary to usual patterns, the plate to my tripod did NOT show up after I ordered new ones.  So much for that theory.

Besides writing a poem and a few stories, I did an 11×14 of the Shadows study in my workbook.  It’s less crowded on the bigger sheet, and at first I wasn’t sure about it.  Now I like the simplicity.

For those of you who didn’t see the post, these figures are my grandchildren.  I took the photo so long ago, and it was during the infernal photo-organizing project that I rediscovered it.  Which reminds me that when I’m home Sunday, I have to finish that project up.  Anyway, you can see the original post here.  And the original shadow.

I did a quick journal page with a photo I plan to use today in a full-sized work.  But it’s not going to be like the journal page.  Years ago I was driving Caliente Creek Road and stopped into Twin Oaks General Store. This Popeye can was on the shelf.  I didn’t know Popeye graced canned food, but I loved it.  So of course I took a photo.

Maybe I should call it Spinach?

The last one I did was hard.  I couldn’t get it to work at all until I spattered paint on it as water droplets from the wave.

The wave and the people in the boat are from that Japanese Print book we were discarding.  The fire is a photo I took at an oil well blowout in Coalinga years ago.  And the eagle is a photo I took at the San Diego Wild Animal Park carousel.

So it goes.  I’m going to finish up my last day up here with another story and another collage, as well as uploading photos to my flickr page.  Flickr seems to be productive – I’ve had two photos put in tour guide books because they were found on Flickr – one from the San Diego Wild Animal Park, one from Stanley Park in Vancouver.  Important to put those tags!  Some of the same photos plus more from Vancouver and the Wild Animal Park on on my web page in the gallery.  They are in the flower gallery, a sub-gallery under nature/travel, and in the animal gallery.

For all you Creative Every Day folks, see you in Feb. with HOME as the theme.

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Best of Blog 09: Social Web Moment – a Tweet-up


2009
12.27

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Gwen Bell poses this question for her Best of Blog challenge ’09: Did you meet someone you used to know only from her blog?  Did you discover Twitter?

Yes and yes.

I thought Twitter would be stupid but I didn’t want to get left behind, so I signed up.  I’m amazed!  First I was just following news, then news and Adam Lambert; then news, Adam Lambert and photography sites; then news, Adam Lambert, photography sites, and people involved with the Bakersfield art scene.  I’ve made friends.  One of my new friends, whollyjeanne, uses the word “tribe” for the friends she is making on Twitter. I love that term, tribe, because I feel like we are connecting in such a way with other people who share common interests that we will be honestly using the term friend – becoming part of an extended tribe.  Besides whollyjeanne, there is BeKatherine and daxtonsnini – geographically located all over the United States, but I feel like if one of these people put out a call for help, I’d be there.

So in 140 characters or less, it’s possible to get a real sense of a person.  And I do get updates from certain news sites so I can scan them and click on something that interests me.  I’ve followed people who end up tweeting too much and carry on conversations that could better be held on instant messenger or by texting, and that’s annoying so I drop them.  I’ve wanted to follow people but don’t like the language they use, so I drop them.  That sounds terrible, doesn’t it?  Dropping someone? But I guess that’s what it’s called.  I’ve learned that Adam Lambert’s fans are extremely intelligent, devoted and caring people, that LaVar Burton is a kind man without a mean bone in his body.  Someone named Ben Decker started following me and I gave him a follow back, and I really like this guy.  I’m not sure what he does, but I think he’s involved in events in Los Angeles, or a model, or something.  But he is a lovely person.

But to the main part of the question: did I meet anyone?  Yes.  A group of us Bakersfield tweeps had a tweet-up!

We met at Caffeine Supreme, a downtown business, on a First Friday.  It was really bizarre to walk up to someone, for example, the women in the chair, and say, “You must be glitzyorbit.” And it was.  Or, look, MySoulIsHome is here!  So instead of the web alienating us from real people and personal contact, we wanted to see each other in person.

We toasted marshmallows – that’s me in the hat. LissaFudge and prosejunkie are also in the photo.  Lissa – whose name is Terry – also goes by BacPage and she keeps up a blog that chronicles all events artistic in Bakersfield.  Prosejunkie has a blog and he’s reading and writing about the Best 100 books on the Modern Library list.  Such interesting people!

Dave runs trivia contests at Sandrini’s Bar, so he came and we had some trivia fun at the tweet-up.

I donated packets of greeting cards that I make so there would be prizes.

We even had a visit from the man in red.

It was fun – and we all want another tweet-up soon.  I may even organize it because so many people who wanted to come to this one weren’t able to.  It’s the first thing I’ve felt like organizing in a long, long time.  Twitter is good.

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Best of Blog ’09 – Catching Up- Life Changes in a Flash


2009
12.18

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I’ve missed writing about Challenge, Best Place, Album of the Year, New Food, Change to Place I Live, Rush, Best Packaging, Tea of the Year, Word or Phrase, and Shop.  Why so many?

We were on a cruise to the Mexican Riviera, all going well, when we got an email from my sister saying “sad news,” and then in the body that my uncle had died.  He’s my dad’s only surviving sibling – but my dad is 91 so what can you say?  But then came an email saying “critical, not dead.”  My mom, whose short-term memory is gone, mixed up the message and told my dad his brother was dead.  Then another the next day – my mom had broken her elbow and wrist after slipping in the rain.  She’s 86.

All in a matter of a few days – and dealing with my mom and the fall, my sister and I realized irrevocably that the next step in my parents care had arrived.  We needed someone in the home with them at least four hours a day, at least five days a week.

All I’ll say about that is how do you get someone when your parents keep forgetting they’ve agreed to it?  Is it possible to preserve their dignity?  All I know is that my sister and I need relief or we’re going to crack.  So that’s what’s kept me from doing the Best of Blog, and I’ve missed writing.  Today, the 18th, is the first time I’ve been able to sit down and think.

Challenge I’m in the midst of the challenge of the year right now, dealing with aging parents.  Stubborn, aging parents.  I hope I remember that I’m conditioning myself to be fine with help, fine with anything.  I’ve told my kids I want them to visit me regularly when I’m old but please, don’t get involved with my day-to-day care, errands, cooking, shopping, etc.  Get someone to do this.  Have me live in a place that takes care of things.  The burden my parents have placed on us kids by not even considering they would get old is just about too much.  I’m trying to face the challenge with grace and patience, but it isn’t easy.  My son-in-law’s grandma was hospitalized in this same time period with congestive heart failure, is home now, and on seven meds.  Her daughter, my husband’s mom, says when it’s her turn, just push her out the second story window.  I must tell her that it’ll have to be higher than the second story!  This challenge will be ongoing.

For a sampling of what this is like – before it got as bad as it is now – I have a story posted about my parents which is also recorded for our local public radio station.

Best Place Am I allowed to say my bed, with my wonderful latex mattress, my own pillows and my Chinese silk comforter?  That’s about my best place, besides my bathtub with bubbles.  We didn’t travel much this year so I have no new best places.  It seems like comfort is high on the list, though.  So I’m going to list two things besides my bed and my bathtub.  One is our cabin in Alta Sierra.  I go as much as I can, often alone, and work up there on my art.  I write, sit, watch the blue jays, walk, let my mind go.  I enjoy the silence.  I never even put my iPod on the iHome because I don’t want to break the silence.  My other best place is my studio at home.  We converted the grandkid’s playroom to a studio and I love to be in there working.  My best places are all close to home.

Album of the Year No brainer.  For Your Entertainment by Adam Lambert.  It would be my best album of the year even if it wasn’t any good because I am a glambert, or grambert, through and through.  But it IS good; in fact, it’s fantastic.  Adam’s voice is the most amazing instrument with such a preternatural range.  I love listening to him.  The album itself has so many types of songs on it that it can’t be confined to type.  Just buy it, listen, you will be amazed AND you will be entertained.

New Food This really isn’t a new food, but I’m in the midst of a duck craze.  One of our local restaurants, Valentiens, cooks duck to die for.  I’ll go soon again.  When will I be out of my duck rut?  Who knows.  I love it.

Change to the Place I Live This is so easy!  We have an entire room in our house that we use as a playroom for the grandkids.  They’re getting older now, and the young ones live in Colorado.  I’ve been itching for a studio – so we made the room a studio!  Wow.  An easel, paints, photos, a paper cutter, all my stuff, everything I need.  It’s a new life.

Best Packaging and Tea of the Year I have no idea.

Best Rush I think it is yet to come.  Monday afternoon I’m going to the Leno show and Adam Lambert is the guest!  I may actually faint for the first time in my life.  I feel positively giddy at the thought of being so close to him.  Sigh.  My kids read this and they will think their mom has gone bonkers. But I took my two oldest grandkids shopping today (15 and 14) and someone thought I was their mother, not grandma!  So maybe I can get by with semi-bonkers.

Word or Phrase I’m more interesting in banishing words and phrases than adding them because so many redundancies emerge.  But I will say this – I love the vocabulary that is Twitter – tweets, tweeps, tweet-ups – perhaps because I love Twitter!  I hear that 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of tweets.  Can that be so?

Shop I’d love to be clever about this and tell about my wonderful discovery, but I can’t because the best shop is and will always be Trader Joes.  Trader Joes fans out there?  Here’s a story.  A couple of years ago, my husband, a friend and I were sitting in a church in Rome waiting for an opera concert to begin.  Yes, in Italy.  We were talking and one of us mentioned Trader Joes.  The woman in front of us turned and said, “Did you say Trader Joes?  I love Trader Joes!”  We then discussed our love of Costco, I would add Target and Cost Plus World Market.  That does it for me.

I don’t think I’m interested in being a ground-breaker right now in terms of discovering new things.  I’d like to stabilize my life first is all.  Somehow, I don’t think it’s going to happen, so that brings me right back to the first topic – Challenge.  The challenge is to meet the daily changes that keep coming and coming at me (at us all) with grace and patience.  The challenge is to find the good and the fun and make the most of everything.  After all, the fact that so many things are hitting me at once right now – not-so-good things, must in itself be good.  Because if I didn’t have a large, loving family and people I cared about, I also wouldn’t have the challenges.  I’d be sitting in a sterile, controlled vacuum and it would be boring.

Life is anything but boring.  I’m not knocking boring.  I’d love to experience it for a day or two or maybe even three.  But not for long.

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Best of ’09 Challenge – My Blog Find? MJ’s Big Blog or course!


2009
12.07

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First I looked at the question for today – best blog find of ’09.  Gotta be honest here, I don’t spend a lot of time surfing the web.  Actually, I spend no time.  If I find something it’s because someone else told me about it, or I’m looking for specific information.

BUT I did make a marvelous find thanks to Twitter.  Love Twitter.  Love my tweeps.  And I love Adam Lambert so I was idly doing a twitter search on him one day and I found…MJ’s BIG BLOG.  Oh my God, what a treasure chest!  What a cornucopia of Lambert information.

So let me say this before you all start thinking, OMG, what’s a 63-year-old woman doing being obsessed with Adam Lambert?  I’ll tell you what.  He has a HUGE fan base amongst cougars, which is a term I object to because I am most decidedly not on the prowl.  But it seems to be the term applied to older women who are still breathing and out there.  Or rich.  Something else I am decidedly not.

I think it started like this.  We saw this alien from the planet fierce on Idol.  He was gorgeous, he was daring, he was sexy, but most of all, he could sing – I don’t think there’s a note he can’t hit.  And we loved him and as he began to reveal himself, we loved him inside and out.  We became Glamberts with an instinct to protect this beautiful person.  He was our secret fantasy but not for long because soon we became his mothers, his grandmothers, his protectors.

Did you know that during the Idol tour he asked his fans not to give him gifts but to donate instead in his name to Donor’s Choice to raise money for arts programs in public schools?  And raised over $250,000?  Like I said, gorgeous on the inside.

And then there was MJ’s – found it on Twitter, and MJ subtitles it “American Idol – I Love this Cheesy Show.”  Anything idol can be found on MJ’s including news round ups, sales figures, video, anything.  If she’s missed something, someone sends it from her loyal followers.  And not just Idol – she covers So You Think You Can Dance and X-Factor, which I’ve never watched, and that amazing show Glee.  If she covered Survivor and Top Chef, it’d be perfect.  (For all of you that have been holding your breath, wondering if I would reveal my television habits, I just did.)

She live-blogs every single show so anyone can follow the commentary. I ashamed to say how many shows from the Idol Concert Tour I “watched” with MJ.  Just to gauge the fan reaction to our alien from the planet fierce.

So that’s my blog find – MJ’s Big Blog.  And it’s fun.  It’s fun to have something to be interested in besides global warming, wars, Iran, etc. Not that I don’t have plenty of interests – I do.  But you know what I mean.  Something frothy to be consumed by, something fun.

So this glambert, who goes by Grambert on MJs, says thanks, MJ.  Thanks, Adam.

P.S.  I have a granddaughter named Daxton – an unusual name.  Never heard of another one.  While searching Adam Lambert on Twitter, I came across a fan called “daxtonsnini.”  What?  Turns out her name is Nita but her 3-year-old grandson calls her nini, and his name is Daxton!  Wow – a 3-year-old little boy Daxton in Oklahoma!


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Blog Challenge Dec. 5: A Night Out that Rocked My Socks on the Papagallo II Yacht


2009
12.05

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You know, at 63, we just don’t have that many nights out.  At least the drinking, raucous revels.  Not because we don’t like it, but the next day is just too hard.  So I can’t tell you about something wild and crazy, but I can tell you about a completely special night for many reasons.  A surprise party for a best friend on a yacht in Morro Bay…and more.

We were on the road again – and I won’t detail the drive that involved ignoring the engine warning sign, backtracking to rent a car at the Bakersfield airport, and turning a three-hour drive into a six-hour drive.  I won’t mention that my husband should have listened to me.  Oops!  Anyhow, we were on the road to the coast from hot, dry, dusty Bakersfield to cool, refreshing Morro Bay.

road

Morro Bay is a small town on California’s central coast and it’s dominated by this huge rock in the bay that is beloved by almost everyone but me.

town

You can see that it dominates the landscape.  But that coastal air was so refreshing and exhilarating that I didn’t care about the rock.  We saw a seal that seemed to be in a blissful state of meditation.

seal

We saw fascinating pelicans.  I really like these pterodactyl-like birds.

pelican

And finally, we found the yacht – the Papagallo II.

papagallo

When we moved to Bakersfield in 1979, the first couple we met, Wendy Wayne and Gene Tackett, became our closest friends.  We’ve done so much together over the years, watched each others’ children grow up, shared joy and sadness.  We had a common bond in that all four of us had been Peace Corps volunteers – Wendy in Kenya, Gene in India, and my husband and I in Morocco.

This evening was a surprise birthday party for Gene that Wendy organized.  This is the first very special aspect of this night out since Wendy had just come through a huge battle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.  She was terribly sick and it took a while to find out what was wrong even, she completed chemo and went into remission, she relapsed, and then she had a stem-cell transplant.  That transplant was an arduous experience but it saved her life.  So far, all systems are go.  Wendy was well enough to plan this party.

I should mention that when Wendy was ill, our boat was rocked almost to sinking.  I’ve never been hit like that in my 63 years, and I don’t ever want to be again.  My whole family was devastated.  Besides being a friend, Wendy is a pillar of the community and just about the most loving, giving person ever.  So this night was special.

Wendy arrived first while Gene was parking the car, and we were ready for the surprise.

surprise

We ate, drank, danced, drank, talked, and the boat chugged on – for all we knew, we were going around in circles.  It didn’t matter.  Everyone was having a super-charged excellent time.

me inside boat

That’s me inside the boat with a friend from Palm Springs.  People came from all over for this party.

me and morro rock

Me outside the boat with that dang rock.  There was a cool fog bank in the distance, but it didn’t affect us.

fog

And there was a sunset.

sunset

There were good friends – here’s Gene with my former principal John Hefner, a fantastic man.

john and gene

And here’s another thing that made this night special and did indeed rock our socks.  We got to meet the newest member of Gene’s family, Little Loretta.  Wendy and Gene’s son Benji and his wife Amy had their first baby and named her after Gene’s mom.

family

We probably could have had a more exciting night, or a night with more thrills, but this night couldn’t be beat.  Everyone had a magical time.  The boat, the company, the food and the wine, Wendy’s recovery, Little Loretta, the great guests, whatever it was, people are talking about it still four months later.

So that’s the night that rocked my socks.  But if you want a different kind of night, we could mention the American Idol’s concert.  I prefer to think of it as the Adam Lambert concert.  Woohoo – did that ever rock my socks!

Inside the Staples Center

Inside the Staples Center

Inside the Staples Center with three of my grandkids, a friend, and my Adam Lambert shirt.  Had to buy it.  I’ll never wear it.  But I’m a Glambert.

adam resized

OK, that was just for fun and so we could hold our collective breath for a moment at the sheer awesomeness of Adam Lambert, person as beautiful inside as he is outside.

The stand-out evening of the year was Gene’s surprise party.  An homage to strength, spirit, love, courage, recovery, family and friends.  Couldn’t ask for anything more.