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Pop Rock Nation

Category: People

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  • Breaking away…

    Breaking away…

    Maybe for the last time in a long while, Bill and I are going to be breaking away for another military hop…

    Call it Bill’s last hurrah on active duty. We’re taking advantage of his last six weeks in the Army and going on a trip. Where to, we’re not sure yet. I had my eye on England or Ireland. I was hoping we could get a flight to Mildenhall Air Force Base in England and then work our way west. But now, it looks like we’re going to Germany. From Germany, we could end up anywhere, really. First, we have to fly to Baltimore on a commercial flight. I bought us tickets yesterday. Don’t you hate it when you’re shopping for airline tickets and the price goes up $100 in the course of a few minutes? That happened to me yesterday.


    If we make it to Baltimore in time, we could have two tickets to paradise… or at least Europe.

    The flight will hopefully get us to Baltimore in time to check in for Space A travel. We have to be there by 8:30pm. Our plane is supposed to get to BWI by 6:50pm. Last time we flew Delta, we did end up getting delayed in Atlanta, both there and back. I would have liked to have chosen an earlier flight, but unfortunately none of the others worked out any better time wise. Bill’s mother is taking us to the airport so we won’t have to pay for parking and we have to put our dogs in a kennel. We needed to leave late enough to get those things accomplished. An added bonus is that because our car will be parked at mother-in-law’s house, we won’t end up losing it in the parking garage, like we did last time!


    Here we go again… Just like Whitesnake, we really don’t know where we’re going yet.

    I suspect we could end up in France if we make the Germany flight… what a fine vacation that will be.


    We have no plans to water ski.

    Or maybe we’ll get a wild hair and go somewhere completely unexpected. Maybe Slovenia? Wherever we go, it hopefully won’t be in America.


    David Bowie and the Pat Metheny Group sing about disaffection and alienation in the United States. Every once in awhile, I feel the need to break away and go somewhere different.

    I only wish it took 90 minutes to get from New York to Paris… though some of the trains in Europe could be described as “all graphite and glitter”.


    Unfortunately, the future isn’t bright enough for 90 minute transatlantic flights yet.

    Even if we do go to France, I don’t know if we’ll visit Paris. It’s lovely in the springtime, but we were there a few years ago and there’s more to France than Paris.


    On the other hand, I could probably be talked into Paris…

    If we don’t make the flight to Germany, we could always go to McGuire Air Force Base, where there are a couple of flights going to Hawaii. I have not yet been to Hawaii, though it would be very strange to get there from Texas by way of New Jersey. That’s the nature of Space A travel, though. You have no idea where you’ll end up.


    The Rescues understand the concept…

    If I’m making no sense today, it’s because the prospect of breaking away is on the brain. I love to travel. I love to be able to discover new places. And since we are breaking away for the next couple of weeks, I will not be posting on Pop Rock Nation again this month. I hope everyone enjoys the rest of the month. Have a wonderful weekend and wish us luck! See you in June!


    Good traveling music…

  • Leaky roof…

    Leaky roof…

    Thanks to a storm last night, we have a leaky roof… It’s like a metaphor for life!

    It’s no secret that I’m not very fond of the house we’ve been renting here in Texas. We kind of got stuck here because we moved from North Carolina and didn’t have much time to find suitable digs. Our first choice house fell through and this one was next on the list. In retrospect, we were very stupid not to invest in a couple more days in a motel and find a home in better condition. In the last week, we’ve had to deal with a cracked pipe in the pool, smoke alarms going off in the middle of the night, and now, thanks to a big rain storm with wind, a leaky roof.


    Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are not singing about the house I live in right now…

    Our situation is probably better described in a classic song by The Talking Heads…


    Especially the part about the “nasty weather”…

    I am hoping that sometime in the next few months we can determine where we’re going to settle and buy a house of our own. Renting is kind of convenient when you have to move as often as we have over the past seven years. I long for roots, though… and a place of my own where I don’t have to worry as much when mishaps occur. Not long ago, my husband Bill nodded off while holding a glass of red wine. You can imagine, that was a mess that took me a couple of days to clean up. Thank God for Wine Away to get the wine out of the yucky carpet and a mixture of dishwasher detergent and hydrogen peroxide to get the stains off the walls…


    I’ve always liked this song by Eric Burdon and War, but I sure wasn’t singing it the night Bill made his mess after spilling the wine…


    I’m impressed that Bruce Springsteen covered “Spill The Wine”…

    Unfortunately, Bill’s still searching for the right job and that may mean we’ll be changing cities again. I don’t mind San Antonio that much. It’s a big city and I’m more of a rural kind of girl, but the people here are basically nice and we can get pretty much all we need here. We also have friends in the city, which is more than we can say about some of the other places we’ve lived. So maybe Glenn Frey got it right…


    Should we embrace a more urban lifestyle in a house that doesn’t have a leaky roof?

    Embarking on a life beyond the U.S. Army has a bit of a St. Elmo’s Fire feel to it. Bill is a “man in motion”, as John Parr suggests in this 80s classic.


    Something about this song makes me think of beer commercials.

    I’m actually really glad “Our House” is not in the middle of the street…


    But if we have another windy night, the roof might be…

    …though again, this song does not describe our situation at all. Because the people in Madness look at their house with fondness. It probably doesn’t have a leaky roof like “our house” does.

    So if you have any spare good vibes, please send some our way. We just want to go home… a home without a leaky roof or property managers.


    This song is about a miserable time on a boat, but given all the rain we got last night and the way I feel about this house, perhaps it’s fitting.

  • Ben Taylor’s salivary duct stones…

    Ben Taylor’s salivary duct stones…

    When I heard about Ben Taylor’s salivary stones, I was reminded that we’re all humans…

    For those who will read this and happened to see the blog post I wrote yesterday about Ben Taylor’s salivary stones, excuse me. For the rest of you, I just have to share this totally funny yet horrifying video I found featuring Ben Taylor. Ben Taylor is the son of James Taylor and Carly Simon. He has a wonderful voice that is a velvety mixture of his father’s clear, comforting tenor and his mom’s smokey alto. Taylor’s parents’ genes endowed him with a voice that is all his, yet recalls the distinctive sounds of his parents and other singing relatives. Not only is he blessed with a fantastic singing voice. He’s also a fine guitar player and songwriter.

    Despite all of those things going for him, Ben Taylor has to deal with unpleasant health stuff just like the rest of us. Not long ago, I had a really bad canker sore in my mouth that for a brief time, had me fearing that I might have salivary duct stones. That fear led me to seek out information about salivary gland stones, which also included some rather disgusting photos of the condition. I also found a video starring Ben Taylor. In it, he discusses his own revolting and painful experiences with the damnable stones and the raging infection that developed due to their presence.


    Try to watch this and not cringe!

    One thing I love about Ben’s video is that he seems like such a down to earth guy. I have a feeling I would enjoy knowing him, if only because we could share gross stories about infections. I have a few of them myself.


    Ben Taylor and dad, James Taylor, play “Up On The Roof”. This is one of my favorite songs by James Taylor and they are great together!


    Sort of the unofficial North Carolina theme… I love this song too. I bet it was magical hearing “Carolina In My Mind” in Raleigh.


    Ben performs “You Can Close Your Eyes”, one of his dad’s old songs, with mom, Carly Simon, and sister Sally Taylor.

    While Ben is great when he performs with his parents, I also like his solo efforts. The video below is of a song my husband, Bill, heard for the first time while he was deployed to Iraq. He was actually in Qatar when he heard it, sitting on a bus waiting to get back to the war zone. Every time I hear it now, it reminds me of how much I missed Bill while he was gone and worried about him.


    Ben talks about his mother, Carly Simon, in concert. The song is “Nothing I Can Do”.

    I think I need to explore more of Ben Taylor’s music. Maybe that will be a project I undertake this weekend.