good-music-pallooza

I know, I know. It's felt like centuries since I've updated. I told you I was bad at this. But I swear to keep up with it better now! Scout's honor!

So tonight, Brooke and I had dinner at Terri's place, and after we ate we got talking about concerts. And as it turns out, there is a whole slew of great ones coming up! And the mere thought of a good concert gets me uber-excited about life. (If you want to go to any of these, I plan on going to them all so hit me up!)

One of them is Keith Urban and Sugarland. The part about Sugarland I'm not dying to see. I'm not a huge fan of the lead singer. The thickness of her accent when she sings is sometimes over the top, and rumor has it she worships the devil, which makes me a little uneasy about her. (Ask Brooke about the devil worshipping thing). But Keith Urban more than makes up for that!

Another is (drum roll please!)........NO DOUBT. That's right, No Doubt is back together and comin to Charlotte. I about fell over when I heard it because not only are they awesome, but the band and their songs are in a good many of my childhood memories, and few things make me happier than getting nostalgic. Plus, Paramore is opening for them. HELLOOOO Paramore is so amazing. That is gonna be one hellagood (yes, pun intended) concert!

And the last one that gets me all giddy is Little Texas. Now, you may not know who Little Texas is right off that bat, unless like me, you listened to nothing but country music when you were a youngster. I literally listened to nothing else. I think it was because country was deemed as being a lot more PG than other genres of music and not as boring for a kid as classical. But for whatever reason, country music was my world. And Little Texas was one of the bands that graced my country phase.

Not only is it cool that they are touring, but they are coming to little ole Rock Hill. That's right - no BiLo Center in Greenville or Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre in Charlotte. They will be playing one street over from where I work in Downtown Rock Hill. The City of Rock Hill should be giving themselves major kudos right now for pulling off that caliber of a concert in our suburb (they are also bringing Marshall Tucker Band if you like them).

I'll leave you with my favorite song by Little Texas - "What Might Have Been". If you know ANYTHING by Little Texas, you know this song (or "God Bless Texas"). I honestly believe this is one of the greatest songs ever crafted. For your added entertainment, please note the hair of the band members, thus undeniably identifying the decade that this song came out in. ENJOY!

Little Texas More CMT Music More CMT Music Videos

"Just because it's low impact doesn't mean you won't get...high results"

I've been thinking a lot lately that I'm pretty tired of being lazy. I hate to exercise. And I love to eat. Bad combination. I have a gym membership, but I haven't been to the gym in about 6 months (maybe more). That's crazy, but honestly the only time I can go to the gym is right after work, and my gym is kinda far away, so it takes about 20 min to get there in the rush hour traffic. Then when I finally get there, I feel like since I've driven all the way out there I need to get a REALLY good workout in. So I work out for an hour - 1.5 hours, then drive 20 more minutes home. But I'm really sweaty and I HATE to feel gross, so I gotta take another shower. By the time all of that is done its 8pm and most of my night is totally wasted. Plus most days, work drains me so much that I just can't get the motivation to go. SO, there is my problem. I would love to have a treadmill or an elliptical machine in my house but a) there isn't enough room and b) i don't have that kind of money. But it would be nice because I could eliminate all that time spent driving to and from the gym, I can do it whenever the mood strikes me, and I can do it for a bit before I get my shower in the morning, thus eliminating the two showers per day thing.

So what did I do, you ask? I did a little research online about collapsible gym equipment (ya know the stuff they advertise can fold down and "fit under your bed"). Well all of the larger machines like that are pretty expensive, plus there isn't much selection. I guess anything that can fold down isn't, perhaps, the sturdiest of machines. But I did stumble upon one little contraption on the Sears website that looked promising.


It's called the Nordic Track Mini-Stepper. It got super great user reviews online, so I decided to give it a whirl. So I dragged Brooke out to the mall with me and purchased one. It was only about $60. I was super excited about my new purchase, so I busted it out of the box, slipped on my new balances and hopped on. All it is is the pedals off a stair master with resistance bands attached for your arms. It has a timer and it counts your calories and strides, so that's pretty cool. It looks like you would have problems falling off because of no handles, but it's actually very easy to keep your balance. And to make it more challenging, I vary my pace, and I constantly use the resistance bands to work different parts of my arms, and I twist from side to side to work my obliques. The day after my first try on it, I felt like I had had a run-in with Chris Brown (ha ha that was bad). But that's good because I knew it worked a lot of muscles and stuff.

I would definitely recommend it if you don't have the space (or money) to purchase a large piece of equipment. I've had it for about a week and a half and I've tried using it most days, so I'll let you guys know if I start to see any weight loss. I do need to get my diet in check, which I am going to start doing this week, so I probably won't start seeing results til after that. But I'll keep ya posted!

And so in the spirit of exercise, I will leave you with one of my favoritist videos EVER. It's an SNL digital short featuring Drew Barrymore, and it's where the title of my blog comes from. Enjoy!