Some people bring spare parts, Popper Boy brings spare cars...

Have lots to post about so I’ll attempt to do them in order.

4th of July is my favorite holiday. Though when my sister told that to my nephew his quick-witted response was "you like it more than Jesus' birth?!"

Did I mention he's only a 3rd grader?

Anyway, for the 4th - my family goes all out. Even my dad gets into it with his lanterns and cherry bombs.

Don’t ask. There’s a lot of family legends involving those particular fireworks.

Anyway, we did tons of parachutes, sparklers, fountains, artillery shells, snakes, crackling balls, and ground blooms and yet I still have leftovers. Except for smoke bombs I’m out of those. Turns out my godson and niece are pyros and blew through two boxes in a single afternoon.

Not bags.

Boxes of those bags.

Apparently they take after me. Even Bex never matches her socks, I’m so proud.

Anyway, after all the gunpowder and glory – and I say glory because one of the neighbors set off a huge firework down the street and my nephew's quick-witted response (yes, same nephew) was “That sounds like glory!” – I had an interesting journey back to my apartment.

So imagine this, you’re driving down the interstate. It’s like 11:00 PM. Pitch dark. You see two trucks in a row going slow and decide to pass them. Mid-pass of the back truck you look over and see a turn signal flashing. Suddenly said truck is pulling into your lane.

That was my adventure on the way home from fireworks. Needless to say I swerved into the median to avoid him, then swerved back to avoid a reflector pole.

So maybe those Defensive Driving courses (aka the 2 STOP classes I’ve taken) were actually worth something.

Had to call the boyfriend at work who then made me get it checked out the next day. Thankfully there was just some grass and mud underneath so they didn’t even charge me. Though it did make me hesitant to drive for a while.

After the 4th came our Motorcar Adventure in Centerville, Iowa. It was supposed to rain all weekend but somehow it contained itself and only ended up pouring Saturday night after we were done.

The boyfriend doesn’t have air conditioning in his box van so we left early Friday. Ended up riding Friday night, then most of the day Saturday and again Sunday morning and afternoon.

It was a lot of fun. Minus the heat that is. 85 degrees may not sound so bad when compared to 90’s, however when you’re out in the sun with no shade or breeze it gets hot fast. Thankfully when we were moving you didn’t notice.

For some reason something always goes wrong when I’m riding with him and his car started acting up. Luckily he had a second in the van so we switched them out. And then got crap for it.

According to his motorcar buddies, apparently, “some people bring spare parts, Popper Boy brings spare cars.”

Don’t ask about the nickname. It’s a long story. And it's spread. I'm apparently now Popper Gal. Or Popper Girl. I get to choose.

I was bummed because one of his buddies didn’t make it there. Actually I think that’s the one that so lovingly dubbed his as Popper Boy. He’s the one making us plan our wedding around his schedule.

Jokingly. I hope.

After the ride this guy sent the boyfriend a picture of a billboard for a jewelry company. It had a picture of a ring with the subtitle: Your Girlfriend Wants Me.

I told him I approved.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of our Motorcar Excursion.









and of the lineup


Yay for panoramas.

After all that fun the boyfriend and I hit up the Paul McCartney concert. We’re both huge Beatles fans and even though it was semi-expensive (although really not all that bad) we figured 1. He’s getting older and how many more tours is he going to go on. 2. He’s not from the states. And 3. When is he going to come here again? Chicago or Denver perhaps but not here. So we went for it.

It was excellent. He played for 2 and a half hours before taking a break. Not bad for a 72-year-old, who by the way, still doesn’t look a day over 50. He had an excellent lineup including his Beatles stuff, his Wings stuff, and a bit of his New stuff. He joked he can tell which songs people want to hear because when the classics start playing all the cameras go up but when the new stuff starts playing they go back down.

After playing for that long he came back for not one, but two encores saying something to the effect of, “you know I have to go home sometime…” But he was excellent, lots of Husker and Nebraska references which were amusing. Played most of my favorite songs, and the boyfriend and I really enjoyed it.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from that:









On to the music:

Gotta go with Paul on this one.

Silly Love Songs - Paul McCartney & Wings


The boyfriend was disappointed cause apparently this is his favorite McCartney song. I told him it could be our first dance song, but he’s stuck on that stalker song by The Police and envisions our wedding party following us around with binoculars and cameras. Which would actually be highly entertaining.

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about try actually listening to the lyrics to this song:

Every Breath You Take – The Police


Back to the actual Rec’s

Yesterday - The Beatles


He waited 'til the encores to play that one so we knew he was coming back...

Extended Rec’s

Whilst motorcarring I had my own playlist on repeat that consisted of a ton of Lily Allen. I bought her new album before we left. Here's my favorite from the new album:

As Long As I Got You - Lily Allen


Love it.

I was so proud the boyfriend actually knew who she was. Or one of her songs at least. It’s kind of a big deal to me as she holds the number three spot on my list of favorite artists of all time and no one here knows her. For those of you wondering it goes:

1. Maroon 5
2. She & Him
3. Lily Allen
4. The Wreckers
5. Eminem

Yes, I’m aware it’s a random lineup.

But if you were to change it to current radio it would become:

1. Maroon 5
2. She & Him
3. Lily Allen
4. Karmin
5. Is up for debate. Maybe Cassadee Pope.

Because The Wreckers haven't come up with anything since I was in college and I don't like Em's new stuff.

Sorry.

Have you heard Weird Al’s new song Word Crimes? I feel like it could be my new theme song.



Only online for a week and it's almost at 10 million views...

Alright, that’s all I got. Next up will be camp stuff which always comes with lots of stories to post about. Hope you have a rockin’ week.

singing my life with his words...

Well now I officially feel old.

But still inspired.

Today marked my two year employment with the library.

Originally I was at one, then two, now back to one but it's the other one, if that makes sense.

I started as an Aide at the home branch exactly two years ago today, so it was a happy coincidence that I got to spend all day there today with my former bosses, one scheduled (Glee-Loving Boss) and one that stopped by (Sensei).

Took me back a bit, I still remember my first big assignment on the new job. Three hole punching the bottoms of plastic library bags because that way if a kid puts one over their head they'll still be able to breathe.

It was some sort of legal issue I guess.

I can still picture the look on Glee-Loving Boss's face when he said and I quote, "I know this is ridiculous but..." So I spent the majority of the day in the backroom poking holes into bags and more of the same the next day, except it was me and the other aide - the kid who's no longer a kid - and this time we put bookmarks in the bags.

So you know, if they decided to put it over their head they'd at least be able to look at something pretty whilst still being able to breathe because there are holes for that.

After that it was sorting carts, well items on carts, cause if you put them in the right order on the cart you can put them on the right order on the shelf.

And even if you couldn't do that they all had orange tags in them so they'd be easy to find on the shelves when the boss made the rounds.

But I got to find my purpose in life in the process and meet some pretty great people along the way.

So I brought cookies for the backroom. Half of them are gone by now, and with Space Cadet and her carb addiction who knows if there will be any left by the morning. HA!

I know this post should be doubly long as I skipped out last night.

To be fair I konked out at like 10, and this is even after the boyfriend came to visit.

I was zonked, for serious.

But today I was actually awake and coherent the whole day.

Which was good because at around 4:30 all hell broke loose.

No seriously, we went from 5 people to around 60 all needing help at once. It was ridiculously busy and Glee-Loving Boss and myself envisioned our recovery shift getting there at 6 and them seeing us flee the building for the sake of sanity.

But we stuck it out. We're tough like that. Besides it all calmed down by the time they got there and I got to tell Space Cadet all about life at its current state, aka meeting the parentals, Vegas... apparently the fact that I have a boyfriend and the fact that he's still around is widely appealing.

I shall have to tell him that later.

Unless of course he reads this, then I'm telling him now.

So if you're reading this, congratulations, people like you and are glad you're still around.

If not then I'm talking to myself, which really wouldn't be a shock factor.

Scale of Awesome time.

So I watched We Bought A Zoo.

Simply fantastic.

Real heart-warmer and all that, but it was comedic and real and just a really good root for the underdogs kind of story.



Basically his wife dies and everything around the house and around town reminds him of her so when his son is expelled they go house shopping and find this house that's perfect, only catch is that it's a zoo. And by buying the land he is also buying the zoo. So he decides to reinstate it to its former glory and all that with a lot of bumps along the road.

I'm gonna give it about a 9/10, and I highly recommend it. Matt Damon is great, showing he can do comedy, drama and action - not action in this but you know you've got Bourne and all that.

Speaking of Bourne, am I the only one looking forward to the new Bourne movie? I love Jeremy Renner.

I know he's not Jason Bourne! But that's the point!! He's a different agent entirely, stop freaking out! They'll bring Matt Damon back when he's ready to do another movie. Geez crazies.

Sorry, where was I? Oh right, Scarlett Johansson is quickly rising in the Scale of Awesome meter of you know awesomeness and she's like serious zookeeper woman in this who has no outside life cause she's always there. And then you've got Thomas Haden Church as the protective accountant brother, a bunch of crazy staff members, plus the two kids who couldn't be more different from each other and it's all based on a true story! With a book to go with it!

And the line in the trailer about him having more hair than the other dads is a joke since the actual Benjamin Mee is in fact bald.

I love his line about 20 seconds of insane courage, great life motto.

So go watch it. Rent it, buy it, check it out, whatever, just do it cause it's fantastic.

I'm excited, I get to semi-sleep in tomorrow. Sort of. I start late cause I'm off late, helping out with a middle school visit that isn't actually a school visit, it sounds a bit like a school carnival or end of the year event thing, so we're going to promote library stuff I guess. I've never done one before so I guess I'll find out.

But I've got the awesomeness that is Girlscout with me so she'll get me through it. Plus I think the intern is going which is cool as she's in the same masters program I'm in. Seems pretty cool so far so it should be fun.

Things on my to-do-list:

Yes the ever-growing and never disappearing to-do-list.

-Finish editing friends stories, making that a priority as it took me like 5 months to get through one and that's awful. Usually it's more like 2 weeks but apparently library life keeps me pretty busy.

-Format Camp J songbook, how long has that been on the list that I've been putting off? Seriously? Just do it woman, the stuff is already uploaded all you have to do is space out the notes to match the lyrics.

-Buy 200 juice boxes. Okay that one's a little more complicated, but it's for the kickoff, and I also need to buy more candycorn while I'm at it. Also for the kickoff, don't ask I'm sure I'll ramble plenty about it when it comes around. Target man, Target. Screw HyVee I tried that already. Go here: Sharkey walks the plank

-Come up with Camp J application form that one I also have a deadline for since the meeting is on Saturday afternoon. I'm stoked! We're thinking of driving out to camp to check out the new digs. They built a new cafeteria/craft building with storm shelters and air conditioning. Now everyone's gonna wanna work in the kitchen and that never happens.

I'm sure there's more but I'm totally blanking.

I should sleep, as exciting as sleeping in sounds you have to actually fall asleep for it to take place.

"Yesterday" Adam Levine and Tony Lucca

love it.

"Killing Me Softly" Katrina Parker

he picked tony anyway, but i thought katrina was great, really grew on me throughout the competition.

but i'm all for the underdogs.