Month: October 2011

Two Good Days (Pictures)

Golden Last week, I had two really good days. It all started Friday morning. I had to get up super, duper early, which normally would not be a good thing for me. I am not a morning person at all! I’m a night owl all the way and often wonder if I’d do better if I lived on the other side of the world. But knowing me, I’d still end up a night owl somehow.

But anyway, this time it was OK to be getting up at 7am because I was going to get pampered! Late last year, I purchased a Groupon voucher for The Spa on Oak for a one-hour chocolate massage and one-half hour cinnamon sugar scrub. I was ready to redeem it (I’m always afraid I’m going to forget to redeem those vouchers and they’ll expire!), so I made the appointment and grabbed the first available slot. Hence the early morning wake up time. Anyway, when I was checking in, the lady behind the counter asked if I wanted to upgrade, for free, my sugar scrub to a facial! Of course I said “yes.” I’d never had a facial before and I’d been breaking out like a fifteen year old.

So, I got to spend the morning getting pampered. The massage was a combination of Swedish and deep tissue. I am no stranger to getting massages–I try to get one every couple of months if I can–but it had been a while and it was really nice. Then the facial. That was nice as well, even with the extractions, which really felt like I was being pinched. By the time it got too uncomfortable, it was over. My chin hasn’t felt this smooth since before I can remember.

After my morning of pampering, I headed down Oak Street, which is a chi-chi street in the city. Lots of high-end boutiques. I wandered into Juicy Couture and made my way upstairs, where all the running suits and sale items were. I ended up getting a cute tee-shirt. Then I made my way to the beach. I hadn’t been to the beach since the day I hung out with Mylin, and it was so beautiful out, it just seemed like the right thing to do. I sat right in the sand and read, enjoying the warm sun and soft breezes.

Just Chillin'

Oak Street Beach Oak Street Beach

After that, I did a little shopping on Michigan Avenue. That wasn’t as much fun because for some reason, there are a LOT of tourists downtown still, even though tourist season is over, and THEY WALK SLOW. They like to walk five abreast and just saunter down the street. It’s hard to get around them! But I managed it, and I found some really cute socks in TopShop, and some great deals on tops at Gap. I’m talking shirts and tanks for just a few dollars, and long sleeve tee-shirts for 9.99. I love long sleeve tee-shirts. They’re great for winter and fall weather, and nice to wear under sweaters or hoodies. I even got colors that aren’t grey or black, if you can believe that! Wait, I may have gotten one grey shirt or tank. I guess there is no denying what I like, but really should wear brighter colors this winter. Maybe that’ll help keep me from being so depressed come February. I am in the market for sweaters, but finding a normal sweater is always a challenge for me. They’re all shaped weird. The ones I DID love, from TopShop, were out of my budget. So, I didn’t come home with any new sweaters. I guess that’ll wait ’til the next check comes in.

After my excursions, I was finally tired and made my way home. Spent the rest of the evening relaxing and reading and playing on the computer. I started to feel nauseated and a migraine was settling in, so I took it easy.

Saturday, I went to the library and checked out six books, then I had brunch with a former co-worker, now friend. We ate at this place called Angel’s. Just happened to find it by looking on Yelp. Four and a half star review? Yes, please.

This is what I had:

Brunch at Angel's

You know you’re jealous. I’m jealous right now and I got to enjoy it already! I had bacon, pancakes with strawberries, and scrambled eggs. Orange juice for my drink. It was really good and the price was pretty good, too. Our waiter was interesting. My friend and I hung out so long that he brought me a free margarita! OK, any place that doesn’t mind if I sit and chat for three hours AND gives me a free drink to boot? WIN!!!

So, those were my two really good days. I caught a cold Saturday night and my migraine started up again–BIG TIME–so the days weren’t perfect. But I can’t complain. I just can’t believe it’s already going to be Friday again. Seems like this week went by in a flash. And it may have, seeing as I spent three days of it lying in bed trying to get over a migraine and a cold (which is gone now YAY).

Is it just me, or does every cold get worse? I really don’t remember them laying me up for three days when I was little, or not even a year ago. Being sick is the pits, and today is the first day I feel 100% again. So YAY for that. I should probably get back to yoga practice tomorrow, huh?

That’s all for now. ‘Til next time! πŸ™‚

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I Won An Award!

I haven’t won a blog or Web site award in years. But the awesome Priyanka at Girl on the Move was nice enough to award me the following, which I guess means I’m versatile. Or something. πŸ™‚

YAY!!! So, now I get to pass it on! πŸ™‚

1. Thank and link back to the person that gave it to you!
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Send the Versatile Blogger Award on to 15 other bloggers and let them know you have awarded them!

OK, so 7 Things About Me:

1. I LOVE to read, and I read mostly YA novels.
2. Guilty pleasures of mine? Stupid Zynga games like Cafe World and FarmVille. I know, right?
3. I’m a night owl.
4. I don’t like the sound of footsteps, especially high heels.
5. I imagine what it’d be like to be a Time Lord.
6. I’m a nerd (see #5).
7. If I had more room in my apartment, I’d have an aquarium, a snake, some bearded dragons, and possibly a guinea pig, as well as my cats.

So, now I get to tell 15 bloggers that I love reading their blogs. I bet some of them have received this award before. Well, they’re getting it again, so there! πŸ˜€

Here are my 15. Some of these are blogs I’ve just discovered, and some of them are friends I’ve known for a long time. All of them have the effect of making me drop everything when I see a new entry from them in my RSS feeder. Please visit them and tell them I sent you. πŸ™‚

1. Krista @ Army Wife Style
2. Lotus @ Inside My Velvet Rope
3. Dara @ Not In Jersy
4. Liza @ Liza Loves
5. Theresa @ I, Mami
6. Mama G @ Growing Up Geeky
7. Melissa @ Filling Our Bucket
8. Sweaty @ Do Sweat the Small Stuff
9. Jen @ My Boss is Teething
10. Nikki @ Everything Under the Moon
11. Mandi @ Life in Beta
12. InC0h3rent @ My Wall of Wonder
13. Sun @ SunBrokie.net
14. Rho @ Rho Rho’s Flow
15. C_Chan808 @ Say Cheese!

YAY again! πŸ™‚

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Migraine Madness (Picture)

Stressed? As far as I’m concerned, a migraine is one of the more pointless headaches one could get. At least with a tension headache, stress or something has caused it and there are things you can do to make it go away. Not the case with a migraine, at least, not for me.

I have all this cool stuff to blog about, but all I can concentrate on is how much my head hurts. Sometimes when I get a migraine, the light sensitivity is too much and I have to turn off every light and simply lie still. Right now, it’s progressed to the sort of headache that lying down in complete darkness doesn’t help (now I get to be in pain in the dark!), so I figured I might as well blog (with the screen brightness turned way down) while I wait for it to go away.

Medicine doesn’t help when it gets to this stage. I have Vicodin, but all that will do is make me loopy and nauseated. I took one Excedrin Migraine–usually that’s enough to take the edge off–but not tonight. If I take another, then hello nausea. Plus, Excedrin Migraine has the added benefit of caffeine. So tonight I get to lie AWAKE and be in pain. Great. Awake with my mind racing with all the stuff I need and want to do, but knowing that the best thing for me to do is to get back off the computer (don’t worry, I’m going to, I promise!) and lie back down in the dark. Maybe take another Excedrin Migraine and deal with the nausea. At this point, it doesn’t matter. Either way I’ll feel icky.

To add insult to injury, I think I’ve caught Adam’s cold. My throat feels pretty scratchy and my nose is awfully runny. Boo.

In spite of how crappy I feel right now, the last two days have been really super, and I will blog about them once this headache lets up. It has to soon. It’s been here on and off since Wednesday.

‘Til next time….

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MMC’s Got It Going On…Funky Style! (Long, Multimedia)

I know I have blogged about this before, but watching YouTube today brought it back to the forefront of my mind.

When I was in high school, I LOVED LOVED LOVED the all new Mickey Mouse Club. This is the show that spawned Britney Spears, Keri Russell, and Justin Timberlake. I was a fan from the beginning–well, once we got The Disney Channel installed in my house. Back then, I had to beg and plead for us to get cable in the first place, and The Disney Channel was a premium channel, like HBO or Showtime! My parents knew how important Disney was to me, so they sprang for the premium. Back then, my cable life revolved around The Disney Channel, MTV, BET, and VH1. I loved music videos and there was no shortage of them in the early 90s.

I started watching MMC when I saw the video for Summer Vacation by The Party on MTV. I thought Damon Pampolina was the hottest thing on TV. I was ready for a new crush–I was over my New Kids on the Block phase, Joey Lawrence and Kirk Cameron did nothing for me, and Dino and Glenn Medeiros were just too old. I am not sure how I figured out that The Party had to do with The Disney Channel, but once I realized that The Party was made up of Mouseketeers from MMC, I was hooked. My crush on Damon was short-lived, though. I started watching MMC in its third season, and that’s the season that Ricky Luna started. More on that later.

The show, to me, was so different from any other show. It wasn’t a typical multi-camera sitcom filmed in beta. It was a variety show, with skits, singing, and dancing. My favorite was the musical numbers. I liked learning the dance steps and I liked singing along. The cast members used their own names, and at the end of a taping, they let the audience come down and dance with them, which made them seem more approachable than say, the kids on Blossom. I really wanted to be friends with all of them.

My life back then mostly consisted of school (ugh), an after school job at the deli, marathon phone conversations with my best friends (our record: 13 hours), writing (mostly fanfic), and music. I wasn’t getting out much nor was I participating in a lot of school activities. My life was MMC and those kids. I wrote fan fiction about them before it was cool. If I wasn’t planted in front of the TV at 5:30pm Monday through Friday, then the VCR was recording the show. That show was the reason I got up some mornings, the reason I got dressed and did my hair. Maybe I was just going to be in front of the TV all day, frantically rewinding the VCR so I could learn yet another dance step, but I was up and moving. And that was a good thing.

There were two Mousketeers who inspired me the most. One was Mylin Brooks. I thought she was absolutely beautiful. She had this gorgeous dark hair, this beautiful face, and she was on a TV show that was filmed at Disney World. She was smart and talented and I desperately wanted to be her.

It was this video here that started my fascination with Mylin:

Please refresh if the videos aren’t showing up. YouTube is being a pain in the rear.

Ah yes, Disney Channel’s watered-down pop lyrics. I didn’t care. I watched the video all the time. I even learned the steps. I can still do most of the steps. I NEVER in a million years would have imagined that one day, this would happen:

Me and Mylin

Through the wonders of the Internet, I reached out and asked Mylin to be my friend on MySpace back when MySpace was cool. She accepted, and we began talking back and forth. When everyone moved to Facebook, she and I kept in touch on there. I was part of her “American Girl” street team back in 2006. It was amazing to get to work with her.

In July of 2010, I finally got to meet and spend the day with this woman, and let me tell you, she is just as sweet as she is beautiful. My mom is tickled pink because she knew how important MMC was to me, and she knew how important those kids were to me.

The other Mouseketeer that changed my life was Ricky Luna. I had an obscene crush on him when I was a teenager, and I didn’t care. Every single day from 5:20-6:00pm, I would sit in front of my TV, VCR remote in hand, ready to tape anything with Ricky in it.

When the MMC came on, the Mouseketeers would pop into a circle and say their names. He popped into his circle, yelled “Ricky!” and I was instantly head over heels. Well, as much as a girl can be with a guy whose first name is the only thing she knew about him. But we don’t need to worry about that. Look at this video:

He’s the one in the red shirt and the suspenders. I dare you to say you don’t understand how teenage me could have fallen for that total Mr. Hottyness.

I got to meet him for the first time in 1993, when MMC came to Cleveland to do a tour. Boy did I make a fool out of myself. I grabbed him and yelled “I’M IN LOVE WITH YOU.” Mortifying. Forgive me. I had no social skills and I was face-to-face with the object of my teenage fantasies OMG what was my life??? Don’t judge me.

Here are a couple of pix from that weekend:

MMC in Cleveland 1993 MMC in Cleveland 1993

Forgive the blurriness. I scanned these back in 1997 when I had no idea how to really work a scanner.

In late 1997, Geocities came out. I could make my own web page, what! So I did. I made a Ricky Luna fan site. If you google “Ronni’s Ricky Luna Fan Page” some old, old, old mirrors of that site will come up. Good times. I made that site in hopes that Ricky would do a search of his name and find it. He did. That site was the top hit in all the search engines. He contacted me and we kept in touch on and off over the next several years. MySpace and Facebook kept us even more in touch. Back in 2009, this happened:

Ricky Luna & Me

Yeah, it was pretty awesome. I got to hang out with him and his manager’s family. It was a really fun day. He lived up to the crush that 17-year old me had on him and then some because he’s just an awesome, kind, and warm human being. We laugh about my declaration of love for him at Tower City mall back in 1993. I still can’t believe I did that. Anyway, now he’s a super talented producer and he makes really good music, which you can download for free from his site. I recommend the Electro Bomba mini mix. You can get it here. πŸ™‚

I’m proud to call him my friend.

I leave you with this video. I just watched it again and it gave me chills because I loved it so much back then. And as I belted along with it, remembering all the words, I realized that I still love it today.

If only The Disney Channel was still this awesome. Oh well. At least they have Phineas & Ferb.

This post is cross posted at my Disney blog. Feel free to visit and follow!

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Sunday Stealing (11)

The Lucky 33 Meme

1. Can you cook?
Yes. Adam would probably disagree because I rarely do cook. However, when I do cook, it’s good.

2. What was your dream growing up?
To live in the suburbs.

3. What talent do you wish you had?
I wish I could sing, draw, or play the piano. I’d also love to be able to do elite gymnastics.

4. Favorite place?
Disney World

5. Favorite vegetable
Spinach

6. What was the last book you read.
Entice by Carrie Jones

7. What zodiac sign are you?
Sagittarius

8. Any tattoos and/or piercings?
No

9. Worst habit?
Procrastinating

10. Do you personally know anybody on blog?
On blog? Do you mean do I personally know anyone who blogs? Yes, yes I do.

11. What is your favorite sport?
Gymnastics

12. Negative or optimistic attitude?
I think I’m in the middle.

13. What would you do if you were stuck in an lift with someone of the opposite sex?
Try to brainstorm with him to get the hell out.

14. Worst thing to ever happen to you?
Well, everything bad that has happened has had something good in it to pull me through.

15. Tell me one weird fact about you.
I hate the sound of footsteps, especially high heels.

16. Do you have any pets?
Yes. Three kitty cats.

17. Do you know how to do the macarena?
Yes. And the best part is that I learned it years before it became famous. My Spanish (Alicia Chavez) taught me in my Spanish 104 class.

18. Is the sun shining where you are now?
No

19. Do you think clowns are cute or scary?
Cute

20. If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?
I’d have six-pack abs with no stretch marks.

21. Would you be my good angel or bad angel?
Good angel. πŸ™‚

22. What color eyes do you have?
Hazel

23. Ever been married?
Yes

24. Bottle or draft?
Neither. Beer sucks.

25. If you won Β£10,000 today, what would you do with it?
Exchange it for U.S. dollars, pay off my Capital One, shop a bit, save the rest.

26. What kind of bubble gum do you prefer to chew?
I don’t really chew bubble gum, but I like Extra.

27. What’s your favorite bar to hang at?
None. Hate bars.

28. Do you believe in ghosts?
Not sure.

29. Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
Read

30. Do you swear a lot?
Yes

31. Biggest pet peeve?
Other people in my way

32. In one word, how would you describe yourself?
Silly

33. In two words, how would you describe yourself?
Loving, nerd

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