♥ Heart ♥ and ♥ Art ♥

This is going to be a short entry.  Maybe Ceri will add some to it later...  We didn't take pictures because cameras weren't allowed for the concert or the museum.  So we have what we have.. a few words by me. 

We went back to Dallas a few weeks ago to see Heart!  Wow what a show!  I have been to more concerts than I can count and I would be hard pressed to think of a concert that rocked harder than this one.  Those women are .... not spring chickens yet they were jumping around like teenagers! They didn't have an opening band so they just played straight for almost two and a half hours!  They played almost every song that I wanted to hear except "If Looks Could Kill" which was actually the song that got me to fall in *heart* with them.  But whatever else you could name, they probably played it. It was spectacular.  There was a scuffle at one point when some guy pushed some girl forward because he said she was too tall and I almost got in a fight :)  But other than that the show was just...  awesome.  I feel like I should have more adjectives here but.. It was just awesome! Oh and I have to mention I was wearing my dachshund and butterfly earrings, one in each ear.  Unfortunately, no one noticed how clever I am (except Ceri, of course!) 

We crashed out early that night because as it turns out I was coming down with the early stages of pneumonia.  It kinda sucked going to bed early after seeing those women who are old enough to be my mother rocking out for 2 1/2 hours... made me feel somewhat inferior and a bit on the wussy side!  But pneumonia is pnuemonia so I can somewhat succor my pride with that knowledge. 

The next morning we went to the art museum.  I wish I could say we stayed the whole day and soaked in the inspiring art all around us, but I have a short attention span and Ceri had things to do.  We did spend a couple of hours though which was maybe 3x longer than our previous trip in February. More importantly, we got to see everything we wanted to see.  I was glad we got to come back and take a longer look at the things we had seen before.  It's very interesting to see what people feel is art.  I am not really impressed with the industrial / modern art but I love that there are people out there exploring new avenues, broadening horizons.  I never thought of jewelry and forks and clothing as art, but they definitely are and I don't know why I never thought of it that way before.  There is so much art around us every day and we just don't think of them in those terms. Obviously, I'm a huge fan of impressionism, surrealism, and abstract so it was nice to enrich my scope a bit. 

Well, this concludes the catch up weekend.  Next week we are OTM (on the move) to Ireland. Before we leave, I'll try to post a few things we may get around to while we're out there but then it may be a week or so before we post anything else!  We're not bringing phones or computers with us, just cameras.  We'll have lots of pictures when we get back.   So stay tuned!

~ A trip to the Hill Country ~

Ceri has promised us a truly spectacular blog entry on a truly spectacular return trip to Fredricksburg and the surrounding area.  In the meantime, I have gathered some photographs of wildflowers taken along the Old Willow Road for you to look at in the absence of real content :)  I truly suggest everyone put that journey in Spring on their bucket list of things to do before ya kick it..

We've taken better pictures of these same sheep on a previous journey but I can't find those right now.  When they saw me come up this time they all rushed the fence (I'm going with they missed me and were really excited to see me.   .... or they thought I had food but I don't like that version as much!)

Of course, we have here the obligatory picture of Texas wildflowers.  What trip to the Hill Country in Spring would be complete without one!

Some more beautiful pictures of wildflowers...

And of course the pièce de résistance.  If someone wanted to paint this for me I would -not mind-!  Nope.. not one bit!

Sometime in February..

Sometime in January, Ceri's sister decided to have a girl's weekend in Dallas to celebrate her bff's birthday.  We had an amazing time!  Above is the picture outside of our hotel window.  There was some amazing architecture in downtown Dallas.  I've never spent much time there before.  

We started the weekend off with a fabulous yet surprisingly inexpensive dinner at a snazzy Italian restaurant.  I, of course, got escargot.  I didn't even know Italian restaurants served that! The other girls insisted on trying at least one.  They all agreed, it's not as bad as I thought it would be... Well, that's better praise than I was expecting! I love it.  I've had it before and most likely I'll have it again! (I just try not to think about the slimy things in my garden when I'm eating them! That's key!) There was a spectacular pianist playing the whole time we were there.  He definitely got a tip!  The food was divine.. and I almost never say that about Italian food. 

We moved on from this Italian jewel to a "little" comedy club.  We even splurged and got the vip tickets to seat early!  We got a lovely little spot by a wall and didn't have ppl squeezing by us the whole night.  The comedians... well I don't remember them, this was months ago.  A couple of our group got their cd's though.  You'll have to ask them.  I believe I laughed a few times and was a offended only once or twice :)  But the drinks were stiff and the company made up for what the entertainment may or may not have been lacking! 

The next day we went to the Cheesecake Factory and got deserts to go.  I think I worked on half a piece of some kind of chocolate slice of decadence for the entire rest of the weekend.  The cake won.  I was not woman enough to finish it (she says with her head held in shame...) To be fair, I don't believe Ceri finished hers either!  We also ran into Ozzy Osbourne while we were there.  Well, we didn't actually see him, but we were very close to where he was supposed to be!  That's gotta count for something? 

Ceri and I went to the museum while the others went shopping.  We didn't get to stay long because it was about to close but we ran through for about forty-five minutes and it was just spectacular.. simply amazing!  I brought my camera.. because.. I have no idea why I brought my camera.  But I took a picture of the beautiful sculpture and mosaic outside of the museum.  Below is a close-up of the mosaic and the sculpture. 

We finished this girls' weekend off with some time in a club, too many tequila shots, and Ashley and I went to a blues club!  That was the best part of the weekend for me.   Nothing like hearing the blues in a tiny little bar with people who have to get up and dance.  Plus Ashley kept buying me drinks.  I think we played a little pool later but I don't remember that part...  

All in all, it was an exciting weekend. 

Hello, World!

Well we've already run into some snags setting this blog up. Currently I am typing in frustration on my little TextEdit (Mac version of Word Pad) because I want to start writing now but it wont let me write and all I want to do is write damnit!! It's requiring a phone number to verify the acct. Surely not! Surely you don't have to have a phone to blog? Well, I decided to give it some time to "air out" and I'll try again tomorrow before I start kicking things.

So let me introduce ourselves. My name is Christie and my bff is Ceri. We've known each other….let's just say longer than we haven't. Well, since high school anyway. Let's just say we stopped counting how long after we used all of the fingers on our hands (and toes on our feet). We have lofty goals! Goals of being writers, photographers, poets, painters. Goals of traveling Europe and every nook and cranny of our home country America. Goals of experiencing every sight, every smell, every taste we can cram into the short amount of time we have on this crazy little planet! So since we have such lofty goals, we thought that some people may be interested in hearing about our experiences. Being the creative people that we are and both being writers, we decided to share a blog. So, some entries will be from me and some from Ceri and some may be from me but heavily edited by Ceri. I'm very late doing this because as you'll soon discover we procrastinate. In fact I think it's the team motto! So I'm going to write about a couple of trips we've gone on this year and we'll try to get better as time goes on. I'll also post some pix and links to more pix as time goes on as well.

-Xie (<-- that's Christie!)