Friday, July 25, 2008

My Daily Dose of Romance

I knew I loved you before I knew you

The hand of time would lead me to you

An evening star was from afar

It guided me, it knew you'd be here

Now wrapped in moonlight, at last together

Here in the incandescent glow we are all we need to know

As we softly please each other til the stars and shadows glow

And we sleep with our dreams around us

It guided me, it knew you'd be here

I knew I loved you before I found you

I knew I'd build my world around you

Now all my days and all my nights

And my tomorrows will all begin and end with you

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

for grilling!

Justin's parent's bought him a wonderful grill for his early birthday present and after a few mosquito infested hours Monday night and yesterday evening, we (okay, well mostly Justin but I held a flashlight for him dangit) finally got this baby put together and cooked our first meal.

Cooking is something that I can always remember helping out with around the house when I was little. If it involved chopping things like for homemade pizza, or pre-cooking ingrediants like hambuger for chili, I was there. Although my enthusiasm for making full blown meals lacked in high school, once I moved into my first apartment after graduating college I was thrown into being "mom" and feeding myself and Megan every night. I think I did an all right job.

Nowadays I get to cook for Justin and I, so I'm always looking for new recipes in order to keep our rotation of favorites from becoming monotonous too quickly. I love cookbooks and I've also found that I get most of my new ideas from http://www.allrecipes.com/. I think I like the site so much simply because you can rate the recipe after trying it and leave a review. Those reviews come in handy since most people make suggestions for extra/less/substitute ingrediants and if some part of the recipe didn't work, they'll usually tell you how to prevent it from happening to you. I'm also trying to show Justin a few tricks here and there as we go about our time together, and I have to say that he successfully made himself pancakes while I was gone to California to visit Flo and Brian. He says that they each turned out to be as big as his head, but I was still proud nonetheless.

So here's to the rest of the year full of hamburgers, hot dogs, grilled chicken, steaks and veggies. I can't wait to throw some skewers filled to the ends with zuchinni, squash, mushrooms and tomatoes for kabobs!

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Feeling grown up

This weekend seemed to bring about a lot of thoughts concerning maturity and growing up into my mind. I guess a combination of cleaning the old clutter from your room and declaring a huge step in life to family members will do that for a person.

For the first time in a long time, I went home Saturday to spend the night with my parents. I used to do this fairly often, but it seems that every since Justin and i started dating, there's just been a lot of events happening on weekends that aren't conducive to spending more than just the afternoon and part of the evening at home. Mom and I spent a few hours at Mamaw and Pap's that afternoon, doing the usual. Talking gardens, flowers, quilts, the latest family news. It was also this day that I had decided to tell them that I was moving in with Justin at the end of my lease term. I forewarned my mom the week before saying "We're going to tell Mamaw next weekend about me moving" to which she responded "We?" It actually went better than I had thought, but only because Mamaw had been expecting as much and seemed to have prepared herself. THere wasn't a lot of discussion, as she doesn't like the notion one bit, but it felt so good to have that off my chest. Mom and Dad have known for a few months now, so it's just been a waiting game with her.

Saturday night I holed up in my room to start cleaning out what had come to be a nine year collection of stuff in my room. A clutterbug/hoarder by genetics, I've started making myself go through my belongings with less tolerance for emotional attachments as of late, because really, who needs to hold onto class notes from that Business Calculus class you took your junior year of college? But over the course of three trash bags full of things to throw away, I found letters from friends, from old boyfriends, from people that I used to have such a good time with and somehow messed things up with along the way. Such is life I suppose, but it really made me stop and think about how bad of a friend/girlfriend I had been in past situations. And those thoughts then lead me to where I stand today.

I finally feel that it's the point in life where I'm a real, mature adult now. Despite the fact that I've stayed at his house for more than three months now, in exactly a month from today I'll be taking the first step to a more permanent relationship with Justin by officially moving in. No more backup plan of an apartment I'm paying rent on that I can run to just in case, just me and him in what will be my new home. I've never lived with a boy before. It had been contemplated at one point in time, but that was purely out of finanical concerns. And I'm glad that it didn't happen that way. It just wasn't meant to. And to add greater joy and meaning to the occasion, after the last bits of carpet have been cleaned and furniture moved into what will then be "our" humble abode, I will be able to open a great bottle of wine to share with Justin to mark our six month anniversary. To me, the stars couldn't be better aligned.

There was a moment last fall that everything changed. That as I look back, I can see where I transformed from an unsure, always indecisive, constantly questioning pre-adult, stuck in between the carefree days I had in college and the wanting so badly to feel like a respected grown up, to a live for today but think about tomorrow, place myself first on the priority list, be nothing but happy in all the decisions I make kind of woman. I finally put my foot down, said "No more" and stepped it up. And after living in my new perspective for a few months, everything started dropping into place like I had always hoped it would. And that leaves me here: staring at the horizon of a full life I'm going to live. The mistakes and naive decisions from the past will always be with me, but they merely remind me of how far I've come and where to not go back. My heart and mind are finally content.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Shana goes Acoustic

I have always been a fan of stripped down, acoustic music. Granted, I'm also one that normally gravitates toward more "breakup" and "I'm in love" music than just regular every day stuff in general, so of course anything put into acoustic mode usually makes me happy. What makes me even happier is when the biggest badasses of rock can take it down a few notches and show off their chops with just some vocals and guitar. Here are a few of my favorite acoustic versions of songs, not in any particular order.

First off, I'm a huge, beyond huge, Papa Roach fan. Their latest cd, "The Paramour Sessions" was incredible and they put on one of the highest energy shows I've seen yet. And of course, I may have a small celebrity crush on Jacoby :) Here's two songs of theirs that they've done live acoustic performances of in recent years, and as Jacoby says in the first, they don't do many stripped down performances. It's during songs like these two that it's reaffirmed the man can sing :)



(For the actual song, skip ahead to 3:22)


I fell in love with Paramore the first time I ever heard "Misery Business" on the radio. I immediately hit youtube and listened to everything they had available and had the band in constant rotation on my phone within days. I think Hayley is really talented and she shows it well here.


Crossfade has several songs that I really enjoy. This particular one is awesome in it's full, high energy version, but I've always had a greater liking for this recording of the acoustic version specifically.


And of course those are only a few of many. But I just thought I'd share some entertainment for the day. Enjoy!