Monthly Randoms March 2022: Dinosaurs, Good Anthems, and the Pesky Dream

 Hey Friends,

Happy Friday everybody. I hope your week has been good. Well, it's time for another Monthly Randoms! The segment of this blog where I give you an over view of random things in my life from the month. That's basically it.  So lets hit the ground running.

It'd like to open with a random concert preview video that I think is appropriate for the day from musician SJ Tucker. The song she sings is one of my favorites. She's having an online concert, they'll be two shows I think, the first is tonight. All the proceeds go to various causes, which she mentions in the video. So check the show out if you have a chance.

 

Decided my nails needed a pop of color. So I dressed them in L.A. Colors® Color Craze® Number 504. Good color I think to end and start a new month.

Favorites on my Socials:

We'll begin this section with a Reddit post that really hit my r/nostalgia by u/tRubbelMaker1. This is a video of the opening of the old Dinosaurs TV series. It followed the adventures of your typical prehistoric dino family. My whole family loved this show. I still have somewhere, at least I'm suppose to, the toys that one of the fast food places gave away with their meals. One Christmas both my sister and me got talking Nugget dolls, the baby if your not familiar with the show, this is also the year the dad Earl came with Santa. Santa's sleigh must be magic to fit a dinosaur. 

Over on Instagram a favorite of fine this month was these group of shots from one of my favorite places in Asheville: Morgan's Comics. These were from their Spring Eve celebration this year. It's got comics, flowers, and bubbles.

The "Dreaming Star" dice set that Spaethenarts made were so gorgeous that I had to enter her give away for them. Sadly I did not win, but you guys should totally check out her dice guys. They are beautiful!

Over on Tumblr the Mistress of the Manners of the Gothic Charm School made me smile when she sought support from her "emotional support cannibal".

Meowcos pinned a cute pull tab heart necklace tutorial on Pinterest, credit for the idea was given to @yano4kaa. I love when people do craft projects with recycled elements.

Things to Watch:

Earlier this month Fangirl was regaling me with the tale of Quincy's Tavern. The tavern in question is the Lucky Gryphon, run by Quincy who is ready to offer adventurers with a quest, food, or good advice. This concept is a brilliant idea. The way it's filmed you are made part of the scene, as if you are a patron of the place. He utilizes ASMR sounds creating a rich experience. Quincy himself is a kind, knowledgeable man. I see so many times in his comments he is a calming spot to people's day, and I have to agree. There's just something relaxing about these videos. 

Things I Want To Get:

Last year I posted about my dream keyboard a couple times I said my dream keyboard would have the classic look like this keyboard and the back lighting of this keyboard here. Well my friends 7 Keys must have sense my desires, because they have made my dreams reality with their Retro Typewriter  Keyboard! This has the look of the old, but with a modern day twist. Squees! 

Music I'm Jamming To:

Last little while I've been jamming to my writing playlist as I've been writing. It's filled with music to break up the quiet, but not enough beat to get me jamming. I tend to start jamming hard to some songs. One of  those songs was a cover of Touch the Sky from Disney's Brave by Malinda Kathleen Reese. It was a suggested song by Spotify for this list. An excellent suggestion.

Apart from this list I've been listening to Ya'll Means All by Miranda Lambert from season 6 of Queer Eye. A beautiful song of a country girl who welcomes everyone. I'm the same, out in my section of the backwoods all are welcome here at my house, well if we could fit you.

Been also jamming to Michael Jackson's Black and White, the anthem that encourages people of all races to stop looking at the skin, that we are all the same no matter how we look. I feel like the world really needs to revisit this song. 

Lastly been jamming to Belle from Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Belle is one of my favorite Disney princesses that came out when I was a kid. We have a lot in common a love of books, being big dreamers, and stubborn women.

 

Belle hanging out on my bookshelf near the bookmarks.

 

Books to Read:

Austin Kleon is celebrating ten years of his hit book How To Steal Like An Artist. In a recent newsletter he reflected about writing it and its success. I don't have the original, but I do have the journal he put out for it. I love it! Congratulations on your success!

Random Ramblings:

Understanding That Dream

I've always had strange dreams. Some mornings my senior year I'd tell my friend Fangirl them, to the point she bought me a dream journal for Christmas and told me to write them down. Well in the years since high school I've always left space in my journal entries for my dreams. In all those years though I've had a reoccurring dream that bugged the crap out of me. 

The Dream: I'm an adult who's returned to do senior year, or college, all over again even though I've completed it. Often times I'm freaking cause I haven't been to class most the year and now like the finals are happening and I fear I'm going to fail if I don't start going. Often times have forgotten my schedule, and can't find it in my bag, which added to the stress.  Sometimes I think I also remember forgetting my locker combo too. 

As I mentioned this is a dream I've had frequently over the years, I had it multiple times in one month. I knew my brain was trying to tell me something, but I couldn't figure it out. I tried multiple dream dictionaries looking up the symbols trying find the answers, but never had luck, that is till last month. I came across this article by Kate Bingham-Smith for Scary Mommy. Here she says "...all fingers point to stress, anxiety.." Upon reading that everything became clear. The keyword here is anxiety. As I've mentioned here before I suffer from bad anxiety issues, which does causes me a lot of stress to boot. Which explains the frequency of them, cause I'm frequently in the anxiety hole. Now knowing the cause I'm sure won't make the dreams go away, unless you can wave your hand and make my mental health issues go bye bye, but at least know I know why I have them. It'll make it less frustrating. 

 

Ok guys that's enough random rambling for the month. Next time I'm hoping to have you a Musical Moment post (I know been a moment since I've done that). I hope you all have a good weekend, have great adventures, and God bless. 

*Thrifty Geek*

Austen and Austin

Happy Monday My Friends,

Well I'm happy to say this cold seems to be loosing it's grips from me even further. I unfortunantly till have some conjestion, I think I'll use a term a girl I knew said once, lung butter, but on the positive end I can pop my ears again! I never thought I'd be so happy to be able to pop my ears. Ok enough of this episode of my strange body let's get to more literary topics.

Musings of a Budding Janeite
If had told me in High School or college I would enjoy Jane Austen I'd proabably would have fallen off my unicorn. But I think it was only a matter of time. I enjoyed movies like Clueless, which is based off Emma, and The Jane Austen Book Club, I really enjoyed the mini series Lost in Austen. The closest I came to reading Jane's words was what was used in Sense and Sensibility, and Sea Monsters. I had a failed start one night, but I did attempt later with flying success, and thouroughly enjoyed it, I was kinda suprised to be honest... Should I ever marry I fear I'll hear my husband speak of my nerves as Mr. Bennet does his wife's. Last year at Books Unlimited I found a used copy of Emma with notes made by a student. Some probably don't like having books written in, but I love it, even if I don't understand sometimes what they've written.

The whole reson I bring up Austen is because of a web series inspired by her work Pride and Prejudice called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. I discovered this while watching old episdes of Felicia Day's Flog. Actually it was more than a web series, websites, twitter accounts, and such were set up as though the characters had made them and they would post stuff to go along with the episodes. How often can one get a chance to tweet with Mr. Darcy. This year mark's the 5 year anniversary of the show so they are releasing the episodes, tweets, and all as they were released 5 years ago posting them through their Facebook Page. I was a little late when they started showing them again, but a quick binge and now I'm enjoying as it appears on my FB, I find it better this way as opposed to the huge binges sessions I did when I first watched it through. I really recommend you check it out, and when you're through with this series and are itching for more from Pemberly Digital's Austen interpretations check out Emma Approved and Welcome to Sandition, I think it's easy to guess what Austen work each is based from. The writers actually ended up combine all these Austen works into one universe, and they use the same multi media story telling format, Welcome to Sandition, if I understand correctly went as far as having their fans get involved in a roleplaying sort of thing, that was awesome. I'm kinda hoping these other two shows get the 5 year anniversary treatment next year.

When I started rewatching LBD I found this video in my Youtube recommendations. For the 5 year anniversary the cast came together to play a game called Marrying Mr. Darcy. Basically you assume the role of one of the single ladies of the book and try to end up with a suitor, or be an old maid. You know part of me wishes I had more Janeites around who would have fun with this, but at the same time makes me wander what my regular peeps would do with this.

If you've yet to tire of Jane Austen the Marrying Mr. Darcy blog shared a link to a Hellogiggles.com Article on How to Host a Jane Austen Girls' Night In. It's not an extensive list of ideas, but it does offer up some things I didn't know about.

The Austin in Austin
　A few months ago I was diving in a Goodwill Outlet bin trying to find the rest of these Fairy and Mermaid Oracle Cards for Fangirl when I found Austin Kleon's Steal Like An Artist Journal. I was excited to find this. I've been following Austin Kleon for a bit, I don't know how I originally found him, maybe through the writer Keri Smith, though I'm pretty sure it was through his black out poetry. He's a writer and artist living in Austin Texas who sends out great e newsletters each week, and keeps cool notebooks. That's actual one of the purposes of the book I found is to be a notebook to collect your inspirations.

The book also has activities for you to do to get those creative juices flowing. My favorite thus far is where we were asked to climb up our creative family tree. You pick who your most influenced by then find 3 of that person's influences, and then those three's three. It's interesting an interesting tree I must say.

Of course I'm not the first to write in it, as I said it's used, but it's fun seeing what this person, a lover of Van's Chocolates apparently, came up with for some of these prompts. That's what I love about getting second hand books, you never know what treasures you'll find within, and I love connecting with a past reader of a used book I own.

With that I hope your week is good to you friends, may good books come your way, and God bless you!




Ninja <[0000]---------------[0000]> Writer