Young and Talented

If you like jazz, there's a noteworthy artist who I've recently fallen in love with. Kat Edmonson, a 25 year old Austinite, will warm your heart with her seductive voice. Recently her single "Lucky" aired on the Showtime show,"United States of Tara" but she's known widley for her song covers, one of my favorites being Billie Holiday's Summertime.

Edmonson's debut album Take to the Sky, was playing in the Blanton Musum gift shop when I first fell in like. She reminds me of Norah Jones, yet a little more unique, and with lots of potential. The song titled, Just One of Those Things is one of my top played songs.

Catch her performing tomorrow night, at VinoVino! 7PM.

Creative Juices flow best in the morning...

And late at night. Being woken up abruptly makes for an easy way to remember dreams. I don't know about you, but dreams are my personal psychological analysis...or are simply entertaining and I do my best to remember what I can. Living in a room with a  window that's 15 feet in front of railroad tracks, I wake up at the oddest hours of the night, with the strangest thoughts present.

It's also strange how dreams seem to pick right back up where they left off before you woke up...as if you're pausing a movie when you wake into reality, and then pressing play again. While Freud analyzed dreams as early as 1900 they're still researched in the modern era. 

This brings me to the idea of lucid dreaming... there's an actual institute in Hawaii that is devoted to bringing followers in to a state of lucid dreaming and teaching various techniques. Amazing. 

Although dreams are irrelevant to some, for myself , others and countless other cultures dreaming can provide precious insight into the self and one's emotions. Plus, they make your perspective on reality a lot more clear. A recent study showed that participants who were allowed eight hours of sleep but woken up at the beginning of their REM stage of sleep (the stage in which you dream), experienced hallucinations, difficulty concentrating, and other signs of psychosis just after three days of missing out on REM sleep. Don't call your therapist, close the laptop and start the snoozin'.

Sunday Funday?

Having a part-time job is frustrating and often backwards in schedule, at least in my book. On the weekends, when most people are taking a much needed hiatus from their 9-5 weekday work schedule, yours truly...along with many other students and young adults spend their time working. I don't see this as wrong or unjustified, I just like to complain about it. Working in the restaurant industry does not make it any easier.

Growing up, Saturday or Sunday brunch was part of the way I spent time on weekends with family. In fact, it's one of the only times we would all devote to spend together without complaint. Austin Java, Trudy's, Central Market, Magnolia Cafe and Kerbey Lane, just to name a few, were the places we'd go to at our leisure to have a midday brunch. Now, as a student, working at a restaurant part-time Saturday and Sunday brunch has become an entertaining and hilarious experience in which I clock most of my hours. Every weekend, in preparation for the hundreds of people that come into South Congress Cafe for brunch I'm up at 8AM. The mornings are rough, and usually fueled by a lot of caffeine, but hung over or not my co-workers and I are all on our feet for seven hours strait, serving up mimosas, bloody marys, eggs benedict and ever-famous migas to guests ranging from just rolled out of bed at 2PM for breakfast to those entire families who've already dedicated a full hour of their day to God by 9AM.

Before the rush, the mornings usually include:

Preparing veggies, polishing glasses, cutting fruit...

Protecting our plants from the Texas climate...

Confirming reservations, picking up the chronicle, preparing Sangria,

AND being alert and spunky as possible by 9 AM to serve the hungry, hung-over, even eager parents with screaming children.

It's amazing that people will wait up to an hour and a half for a good brunch. It's also amazing how many beautiful people live in this city. People watching is the best part of my job. This city is so diverse.

Keeping up with The Times

I created this blog a few months ago...needed the excuse to update it and not be ridiculed by my blogless, twitterless, anti-internet communication friends. Alas, my Monday evening Entertainment Journalism course has given me reason.

Day three of my fall semester is over...there's only one way to celebrate my three days of immensely hard-work, retail-therapy and evening festivities.

Started here in my search for new room-decor for the duplex I just moved into: 

Then came here...a new dress was necessary: 


AND ended, guess where?

Austin's own tree-house full of inebriated college students on 21st street.
Real-life photos soon...when my cybershot is back in business.