No Black Friday for this gal

Hate the cold. H-A-T-E it. But the cold does bring out the most vibrant sunrise colors. Picture this – the most intense blues and oranges and pinks and yellows you've ever seen and amp them up like they've downed three Monster drinks and you'll come close to the sunrise I saw this morning. It was so good I kept on walking the beach and gawking, even though my skin had double layers of goosebumps through my multiple layers of clothes.

     So no Black Friday for this gal. I had a wicked-cool-colored Friday, as Sister K would say. Everything is “wicked cool” to her. And she does the Black Friday thing. Makes it like a party to get up early, then go out for breakfast after her shopping is done. Not me, I think it stinks. Thanksgiving used to be a holiday when stores would close and workers get time off. Now it's nothing more than Black Friday Eve, with the stores opening at 10:00pm, midnight, 3:00am, whatever. Forget about turkey and family – take a nap and rush off to work.

     Besides Black Friday crapping all over Thanksgiving, don't we have enough clothes and appliances and electronic junk to last a lifetime already? Buying more just because you get a door-buster price makes abso-freakin-lutely no sense. I think it's time to turn off the TV so we're not brainwashed by all those buy-buy-buy commercials, recycle those Black Friday newspaper ads, and be thankful for what we already have. It's cheaper, a lot less stressful, and kinder to the planet.

     I hate preachy, so I'll tell my own self to “shut up” right there.

-----

I was feeling particularly nostalgic for the beach this morning, so I was rereading my memoir entry from this day last year and decided to post it. Unfortunately the "crapping all over Thanksgiving" part of Black Friday is just as relevant now, with retailers trying to one-up each other to get more business yesterday by opening earlier than the next store. Besides Wal-Mart, that never closes on Thanksgiving anyway, around here the big winner was Bass Pro Shop that opened at 7am yesterday. Boo to you, Bass Pro, for being the greediest turkey on Turkey Day.

     If you want to read more of my memoir "Life Gone South (when I ran away to live at the beach and be a writer)", you can find it on Amazon and Kindle, including in the Kindle free lending library.

    Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and more crrr-azy fun things to do than shop!

Election still on your mind? Read this and tell me what you think.

   I've been working on this piece since the election. I'm a little slow, I know, but life can get in the way of writing much too often. So if you're not totally sick of politics, give this a read. Or even if you are sick of politics, it might be good for a laugh and I would love to know your thoughts about how we can make things better. Feel free to share the piece if it strikes a chord with you.

THE CRRR-AZIEST ONE OF ALL

Mirror, mirror

on the wall,

who's the crrr-aziest one of all?

The President of the United States!

November 6, 2012: Election Day. Seems like a good time to talk politics.

     In case you've forgotten – amazing but true that we often forget about the also-rans before the winning candidate is even sworn in – this has been a contentious battle between good and evil. I mean, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. But it certainly played out as good versus evil in the media, social as well as news: Romney as the 31-flavors-of-conservative, quasi-Christian (meaning Mormon, which true Christians say smacks of cult because Mormons have their own “bible”), corporate kiss-ass CEO white knight sent from Massachusetts to save the economy (and presumably the country) from the radical Islamic, cocaine-pushing, terrorist-lover, quasi-foreigner-turned-President Obama. And these were some of the nicer descriptions of the candidates. I'm not kidding. I kept waiting for a photo of Romney walking on water to lay hands on a sick baby (because the economy makes for a lousy photo op) or leaked documents proving Obama bombed Pearl Harbor (he is from Hawaii, you know).

     Why either of these men would want to subject themselves to this kind of scandalous abuse is beyond me. Then, after months of torturous traveling, microscopic scrutiny, and televised debates worthy of Friday Night Smackdown status, the winner actually has to try to corral the folks that said such awful things about them in the first place and lead this monstrous mess of a nation. No way is being President worth it for a measly $400,000 a year, even with buff Secret Service agents forever at your beck and call (although that may be more of a perk when we have our first female President!).

     These guys must be crrr-azy to want the job. That goes for anyone running for any kind of public office. Politics has become an ugly business, where anything you have ever done or said or drank or smoked or voted for becomes fodder for the feeding frenzy of newspapers starved for paper-selling scandals, “news” channels and websites dedicated to keeping the public informed (and inflamed) 24/7, and your opponent to put in ads against you. Add to that all the stupid stuff the candidates do to sully themselves: torrid affairs; unpaid taxes and student loans; unscrupulous business deals; illegal alien employees; and ignorant comments like abortion should never be legal because a woman's body is able to shut down pregnancy in the case of a legitimate rape. If all the smear campaigns and “breaking news” crawls are true, these people should not only NOT be candidates for office, most of them should be behind bars. I am a pretty squeaky clean gal – except for my predilection toward driving too fast and drinking too much red wine (but not at the same time!), plus my un-Christianlike living in sin with DMan – but I wouldn't subject myself to the pains of politics to run for Dog Catcher, even if the job paid $400,000 and came with a free dog. And I love dogs.

     So why do politicians do it?

     That is the question that should be asked by the media and addressed in political ads because the answer – if it's truthful, which is hard to guarantee when politicians are involved – would tell everything about the type of elected official they will become. Some run for power. You can see it in their eyes, that Grinch-like gleam from dreams of domination and manipulation of their minions. You can hear it in their speeches, subtle hints that “we the people” really means “me the people, in order to form pork barrel projects and do anything else I can get away with.” That's scary, and sad. But even more sad are those politicians running because they actually believe they can change things and make a difference. As soon as they take office and have to work within our political system of back-scratching deals, PAC power, lobbyist-leaning legislation, and CYA-today-because-you'll-need-to-get-reelected-tomorrow, their demeanor changes even if nothing else does. They morph from Saint Bernards, willing to charge into an avalanche to save someone, into a tied-up mutt that lies down defeated in the dirt rather than run around in circles on a chain.

     Sure, I'm exaggerating. Slightly. But there's enough truth there to make you cringe a little at the state our union is in, right?

     So what can we do to fix it?

     Mama says, “Give 'em six years in office. That's all. No reelection, no lifetime of sucking off the public teat in political office. If they can't do what they need to do in six years, then they didn't deserve to be in there in the first place.”

     Makes sense to me. Taking the whole issue of reelection out of the picture would allow our elected officials to actually focus on what they got elected to do and not spend half their term trying to get reelected. Elections would cost less because there would be less of them. Plus there would be a steady stream of fresh ideas and new blood coming into office. Then maybe some things would change. Of course, it would take changing laws to make the change in terms happen, not likely when the ones in charge are eager to keep their jobs.

     My life buddy DMan wants to create a website called NoMud.com to counteract political ads. Candidates could only post what they believe in and are going to do in office – no smears, no slander against their opponent. The site would also allow politicos to provide a defense against misleading ads. Let's say incumbent Senator SoandSo voted against a bill that would save all the cats in animal shelters from being euthanized. Sounds bad, huh? And candidate Wannabea-Senator blankets the airwaves with commercials depicting cats marching into gas chambers under orders from Senator SoandSo. NoMud.com would give the Senator a neutral forum to set the record straight that his no-vote was because the bill also contained provisions that to save the cats, all the dogs in shelters had to be croaked. No one with any heart at all would vote for that bill. I hope.

     NoMud.com would be the “Dragnet” of politics – just the facts, Ma'am. DMan's idea gets my vote. But I would take it even further. I mean, if we are going to shake things up, let's really make a fizz: No more political ads. Period. With newspapers, internet, and multiple channels of constant news, voters can find out all they need to know and more about the candidates and issues without billions (I'm guessing) spent on paid advertisements. Most people ignore the ads anyway.

     Particularly in this election, one week before election day the entire northeast of the country was slammed by Hurricane-turned-Super-Storm Sandy, which caused billions in damage. People were homeless, cold, and in the dark without basic necessities. Over 100 were dead. Communities were devastated by floods, infrastructure swept away, and sand dunes where streets should be. And the rest of the country was flipping channels to avoid watching the political ads that could have paid for a hell of a lot of food, supplies, and clean up. That is a travesty.

     Now if a couple of non-political nobodies like us can come up with such great ideas, just think about what the whole country could do. So I have one more suggestion: instead of asking on our income tax form if we want to donate $1 to the Presidential campaign to be blown on costly but worthless ads, they should ask if we want to contribute ideas on how to make the campaigns and the country better. I bet we crafty, concerned citizens could come up with some doozies worth much more than a buck. But keep the suggestions clean, please. Let's lead the way to putting civility back in politics.

-----

November 7, 2012: The morning after. I am incredulous to wake up and hear President Obama has been reelected. When I called it a night on all the election speculation, the networks were reporting people were still in line to vote in Florida, one of the key “battleground” states, and would be for several more hours. The Mountain and Pacific time zone states wouldn't close the polls for several hours as well. I figured this would turn into a 2000 Bush/Gore, count/recount, chad-hanging, days-long fight to the Florida-finish all over again and I went to bed. So how can it be that the winner of the Presidential race could be “called” as early as 11:18pm Eastern Standard Time by the Associated Press when Ohio went for Obama? Is Ohio the crystal ball of the entire country? What about those poor patriots still standing in line at the polls – because supposedly EVERY VOTE COUNTS – when the results were announced?! Something is very wrong with this picture.

     In the spirit of full disclosure (not the usual spirit in politics, I know, but I'm hoping to start a trend here), I voted predominantly for democrats and yes, Obama was one of them. But despite there being a pretty clear victory with Obama's 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206, I'm not feeling any euphoric hallelujah moment from my candidate winning. This country is still a mess. People still need jobs. The economy is still iffy at best. Our soldiers are still dying in Afghanistan. The national debt is still growing by several billions every day. And if the world doesn't end on 12/21/12 when the Mayan calendar runs out, then our country is projected to fall off a “fiscal cliff” come January 2013 that sounds like the end of the world.

     None of these things are going to change just because an election is over. The newly elected who slung so much mud at the opposing side are now going to have to work with that opposing side in order to honor their campaign promises and fix this country. So lest we citizens become the crrr-aziest ones of all in believing our leaders will accomplish anything at all without a prodigious amount of (cattle) prodding, it is up to us, whether we voted for them or not, to make our voices heard about how we want this country ran. Write letters. Send emails and tweets. Make phone calls. Share their voting record on Facebook and post your like or dislike. Carve a huge message in the sand if you are still stuck without power in Super-Storm Sandyland. Our vote is only the beginning of our responsibility to our country because we've got crrr-azy people running our government.

Mirror, mirror

on the wall,

who's the crrr-aziest one of all?

We'll find out again in four more years. 

ALIVE

   DMan and I went this morning to cheer on his sister Barb in her first 5K. When we spotted her, she looked so ALIVE:  cheeks flushed scarlet from exertion; breath spurting white like locomotive puffs in the frosty air; arms and legs pumping fierce; a huge smile on her face before she even saw us. She knew she was almost there, almost ready to cross the finish line of a goal she'd been working toward for a long time. All of the participants -- marathoners and half-marathoners, grade-school kids, seniors, parents pushing strollers, even one guy running with bare feet -- had that same ALIVE look, that there was no place else they'd rather be, nothing else they'd rather be doing at barely eight o'clock on a cold Sunday morning than kicking butt on a goal they'd set for themselves. It didn't matter that they might be sucking air and sweating and tired, they were DOING IT in a big way. It was beautiful and inspiring to see.
   Congrats to Barb and all who ran or walked on your accomplishment! And wishing everyone out there something in your day that takes your breath away, makes your heart throb with excitement, and makes you tickled to be ALIVE.   

Sandy's Love Train

   Last night I was catching up on the aftermath of Hurricane turned Super Storm Sandy. The devastation I saw is beyond comprehension:  streets flooded or turned into sand dunes; homes and businesses swept away, ruined by wind and water, or burned to rubble; snow piled up to car windows; trees dead on the ground like road kill; boardwalks ripped apart and scattered like leaves. What really broke my heart was seeing families' possessions piled up on the curb to be hauled away forever, watching a little girl helping clear sand off her street with a toy beach shovel, hearing one woman tell how alone she feels because no one has come to help, and seeing the shock and helplessness on people's faces as they described their experience and loss.
   I understand. In January 2007, the Ozarks suffered a horrific ice storm. We went through days, a week, or for some several weeks without power or water. The store shelves were often bare as folks scrounged for whatever they could find to survive on. Broken limbs, still covered in ice, were piled house-high next to the streets. Then in May 2011, a monster tornado hit Joplin, destroying homes and businesses, killing 158, and changing the lives of those left behind forever. We felt shocked and helpless, thought life would never get back to normal again. But it did. With time and lots of help from neighbors and kind people we didn't even know, we got through our version of "Sandy."
   Since watching last night, I can't get the O'Jays' song "Love Train" out of my head:

People all over the world,
join hands,
start a love train, love train.

So let's start a love train to reach the victims of Sandy. If you can, send money or donate necessities. The Red Cross and Convoy of Hope are already there helping folks recover and can use all the donations they can get. If you can't donate, then pray. Or send out loving thoughts. Call or email someone you know affected by Sandy and listen to their story, encourage them, make them laugh. 
   Do something, anything, to help these people believe they'll get through this. Come on everybody, get on board.  

Ladies, I need your help!

   I've been working on a piece about the aggravations of aging.  It may go into a book of essays, or I may shop it to a magazine as a feature article, I'm just not sure.  So I desperately need some female feedback!  Is it funny?  Does it resonate with your experience of aging?  Are there nips and tucks and tweaks needed?  If you have time to give it a read, please post a comment and share your suggestions.  THANK YOU!

GET OFF MY FACE

   Do you think about your looks? I do. I try not to, but still I do. The older I get, the less I like what I think about my looks. And what I see. My looks have gone to hell in a handbasket. Hell isn't pretty. The handbasket either.

   I'll be the first to admit: I've never been a pretty woman. Cute, maybe. Interesting looking, probably. I had the unlucky genetic draw to be dealt my dad's pronounced nose and chunky-knuckled, veiny man hands. They look fine on him. On me? Not so much. But I'm okay with that. Who needs the pressure of maintaining pretty anyway? It requires an endless siege against that relentless flesh-wrecker Mother Nature and her evil sidekick Dr. Gravity.^*  One night of drunken splurging on all the infomercial gadgets and goos it would take to youth-anize the age spots, firm the flabs, smooth the sags, and make my teeth Chiclet white would bankrupt me. So I'm just fine with being an average-Jane.

   But there were times when I felt pretty good about my un-pretty self. Take good hair days, for instance. Even though I have a Medusa mop for hair – not curly enough for actual curls, not straight enough to be tamed into an actual style, more like a cascade of cowslurps than cowlicks – some days I got lucky (if there was 0% humidity and I prayed hard enough while blow-drying) and it turned out just right. Those were feel-good days. I felt like I could fly on those days no matter what shape the rest of me was in. Except that flying would have messed up my “do.”

   My arms are another example. Years ago when I was doing massage therapy for a living, using my arms every day to muscle the knots and tension of out my clients, these babies dangling at my sides were a work of art. I was proud to don a sleeveless shirt and strut my toned triceps, defined deltoids, and beefed-up biceps. I would even be so bold as to say I was buff. Once. For a brief while.

   Though I didn't have six-packs abs, I did have a waist and a flat(er) stomach. You never could bounce a quarter off my ass, but in my prime you might get a respectable recoil with a dime. And when I sported a tan to camouflage the cellulite, my legs looked damn fine. From a distance. In the right light.

   But those feel-good days have gone bye-bye for good. Good hair now is when I get my hair coloring timed perfectly so the white roots don't show. My buff arms are covered in buff-colored crepey skin these days, complete with butt-crack armpit creases and Jello jiggles when they dangle at my sides. My closet has only three-quarter length or longer-sleeved shirts, with anything arm revealing relegated to workout duty in the privacy of home. My waist is wider, my stomach squishy (and crepey, too, as if squishy wasn't bad enough), and the only thing you'd get off my ass nowadays is a soft sploink and ripple effect no matter what coin you use. I still tan once a week to relax and treat myself to a hint of color, but unfortunately my “natural” glow turns the veins fronting my calves a God-awful green and highlights the hollows in my cottage-cheesy thighs. Ugh!

   Nora Ephron, in the sadly true but oh so humorous essay “I Feel Bad About My Neck” from her book by the same name, says that for women everything goes soft and south when they hit age 55 no matter what they do. She is a damn fine writer (rest in peace, funny lady) and I mean her no disrespect, but Nora, you got it way wrong. My downhill slide toward the Savage “S”es (soft and south) started at 49, and now that I am 49-Part Two – I refuse to say 50, I actually had to write the number on a medical form the other day and nearly had a stroke – the slide has snowballed into an avalanche. Practically overnight I've become a breakfast cereal advertisement: waking up to a noisy snap (my ankles), crackle (my feet), and pop (my knees) with every step instead of every bite. I don't even daydream about being young and spry anymore; I dream of wielding an oil can like Oz's Tin Man to lubricate away the creaks and pains. Sometimes I even say it out loud – “Oil can, oil can” – in a squeaky, lock-jawed voice when my joints are loudly protesting my every movement, but so far the magical motion potion hasn't materialized.

   As much as it hurts to acknowledge how everything south of my neck has gone south with sags (and just plain old hurts some days), it's even worse to face my face. Whenever I inadvertently catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror – I never advertently look in the wretched thing – it scares the bejesus out of me. If my face is my window to the world, then I'm surprised children don't actually scream when they see me on the street from thinking the boogeywoman is alive and real and walking around in broad daylight. Especially when I'm lost in thought (usually about my aching body or whether Medicare will cover facelifts if it is still around when I hit the jackpot age) or deep in one of my black funk doldrums (about feeling old, no doubt), my face becomes a swamp of sad sags. I'm not kidding. If I frown, which is unfortunately my natural facial state, I've got a crevasse in my chin deep enough to carry an echo. I do my best not too let my boyfriend, DMan, whisper sweet nothings near my chin for fear the reverberating “I love you, I love you, I love you” might frighten him off for good.

   I used to wear eye shadow on those feel-good days or for date night with DMan. No more. Somehow the browns and grays I was partial to migrated into the creases below my lashes, and next thing I knew it people were asking me how I got the black eyes. Not what I want to hear when I've taken extra time to glam up. And lipstick? I've given it up, too. No amount of liner will keep the color from seeping into the indentations spiking from my top lip and making my lipstick job look like a three-year old's depiction of the stock market fluctuations. So I've reverted to my junior high makeup repertoire: mascara (waterproof so it doesn't creep into the creases), moisturizer, and Bonne Bell Lip Smacker lip gloss (but in a more sophisticated Berry Peach now instead of teenybopper Dr. Pepper). I figured why try if the results are only going to make me cry anyway. And I save money and time to boot.

   I'm also conserving cash since switching up my SJP NYC signature scent to MMR (Mentholatum Muscle Rub). I do miss the sweet, sultry undertones of magnolia in the SJP, but the zingy menthol both wakes me up and takes the edge off the aches. I just have to warn DMan not to get close to the lubed-up areas – neck, shoulders, low back, knees, feet – until the eye-smarting smell dissipates. So pretty much no morning hugging or kissing, another time saver.

   Who knows, maybe by the time I reach Medicare age I'll have saved enough to pay for my own nip-and-tuck (and vacuum the gobbler neck and plump the lips while you're at it, please!). If that doesn't work, maybe my mind will go south along with the rest of me, carry away all unhappy thoughts, and leave me with an instant wrinkle-lifting perma-grin. They say the mind is a terrible thing to waste, but it might be worth it if I get a free facelift out of the deal.

   I joke about aging because I don't need anything else making me frown, but I am really angry. It feels like I am being punished for following the rules by attempting to age naturally as a woman without turning myself into a waxified, monster-like caricature of my youthful self in an era when looking young is prized above all else and some people that are even older than me (Cher, by 16 years) look younger and better now than I ever did (Cher). It's just not fair (Cher!).

   I'm reminded of a gripping scene from the funny and poignant movie classic “Guess Who's Coming To Dinner.” Sidney Poitier, playing Dr. John Wade Prentice, is the “who” that's coming to dinner at the home of the much younger white woman he wants to marry. Keep in mind the film was made in 1967, when black + white = illegal in many states, so her otherwise liberal white parents were shocked and his conservative black parents were downright appalled. The scene that keeps playing in my mind is when the doctor's father is berating him for making the biggest mistake of his life for breaking the rules by wanting to marry outside his color. Mr. Poitier angrily responds:

You don't own me! You can't tell me when or where I'm out of line, or try to get me to live my life according to your rules. You don't even know what I am, Dad, you don't know who I am. You don't know how I feel, what I think. And if I tried too explain it the rest of your life you will never understand. You are 30 years older than I am. You and your whole lousy generation believes the way it was for you is the way it's got to be. And not until your whole generation has lain down and died will the dead weight of you be off our backs! You understand, you've got to get off my back!

   What a wallop of a speech! When I'm hearing it in my head, it becomes me blasting out those words at society and the media for setting the impossible rule that while the population is growing increasingly older, we women are expected to look young forever or become an embarrassing eyesore blighting the world of the beautiful rule-minding people. And I am lambasting Mother Nature and Dr. Gravity to get their dead weight off my back. Only I realize my back is one of the few parts on me that has held up pretty well – at least what I can see of it in the dang mirror without my glasses – so instead, you two GET OFF MY FACE! Just lay down and die and leave me alone to age and ache in peace. Please?!

   Until my speech starts working or my facelift ship comes in, I'll carry on with my mentho-masca-rizer routine with a side of lip gloss and the occasional apricot scrub (I think of it like taking a chance on a lottery scratch-off ticket and maybe one day I'll get lucky and all that scrubbing will reveal a whole new face). Might be a good idea to watch the movie again and then practice my spiel in the mirror to give it an extra punch. Oh no, the mirror, the dreaded mirror. I know, I'll practice by candlelight. Everything looks better in the soft flicker of candles. Even my face.

*An ironic sidebar about gravity, defined as physical bodies attracting each other with a force proportional to their masses. This cracked me up. The way I see it in the mirror – an absolutely abhorrent invention, by the way – the more gravity is involved, the less physical bodies will attract each other, especially when those bodies are carrying more mass.     

Pure Passion

   Last night I experienced pure passion.  Not in the bedroom but at Jalen's  watching Techs and the Roadies play.  At one point, the only people in the bar were DMan and me, another couple we invited, the mother of a band member, and the owner John, but Techs played like they were on stage at Madison Square Garden in front of 20,000 screaming fans.  Eventually a few more folks wandered in to have a drink at the bar, but the door take couldn't have made the band more than $20 or so apiece for four hours of intense work.  Didn't matter.  They belted their souls out for the love of the music and the joy of entertaining even a handful of people.  And I was mega entertained, as always, by their spot-on harmony and repertoire of Tech-ified sing-along classics, but more than that I was inspired by their pure passion for what they love to do.  Sometimes I get really discouraged that my writing is for nothing if no one reads it, but they inspired me to keep going because I love writing, it makes me feel alive and that I'm fulfilling my special purpose on this planet.  And if I can make even one person smile, like I was smiling huge at them last night, or feel true joy, like what was jolting through my body as I grooved to their music, or be inspired to pour their soul into something they love even if the effort may not seem to make a difference, then writing is worth it.  
   Thanks, Techs and the Roadies, for doing what you do simply for the love of doing it and for making our world a much happier place through your beautiful music on a cold Friday night.  YOU ROCK!
   Have a rockin' weekend of your own, Yall!  And thanks for reading.    

Going Downtown

   Hung out with my Sister K in downtown Springfield yesterday, on a gorgeous sunny afternoon perfect for people-watching.  From the window of Jimmy John's, we saw folks either dressed up in their snazziest urban-bohemian duds hoping to be seen (how do women manage those sky-high heels on the cracked and bricked sidewalks without breaking their necks??) or looking like they headed out still in their pajamas for a quick run to Kum & Go and ended up downtown hoping not to be seen.  At Park Central Square, we saw the usual mix of grunge skateboarders, bicycling families, and scary-looking, fringe-of-society teenagers hanging out in boisterous clusters.  The Square looked as pretty as I'd seen it in a long time -- clean; not mired in construction; decked out with huge pots of burgundy, goldenrod, and pumpkin-colored mums; and not a storefront vacant (except for the Heer's building, of course -- will that eroding eyesore ever find a tenant??).  
   Heading down South Street, we tried to avoid a threesome setting up literature on a card table on the sidewalk, thinking they were campaigning for some politician or cause.  When the head guy cornered us and asked if we wanted them to pray with us "about anything, love . . . finances . . . health, anything at all," I quickly said, "No, thanks," and walked on.  Sister K gave him a quick lecture about already being a Christian and not needing his help to pray and walked on, too.  Even she thought it was a weird thing for the threesome to do.
   We noticed a new restaurant where Trolley's used to be.  It's called Ry Mac's Rub and Pub.  The slogan on their sign out front read:  We love to rub our meat.  It may be a catchy catchphrase, but even if I wasn't a vegetarian I don't think I'd want to eat their meat.  That's just tacky.
   We popped into another newcomer to downtown, South & Walnut Bar & Grill, to take a peek around.  Sitting on the corner of South and Walnut where Bugsy Malone's used to be, this place has an elegant ambiance, with dark wood floors, cozy tables and a pop of stainless steel stripes fronting the bar.  Daniel, the owner, was always friendly and super knowledgeable as sommelier when he worked at Vino Cellars, so I'm hopeful he'll do well in his new venture as restauranteur.  DMan and I will definitely be going back there again soon to try out what I'm sure is an amazing wine and food selection.
   Strolling down Pershing Street, Funtiques Market looked like a fun place to peruse.  Once inside, we felt like we'd time-warped straight into the living rooms and closets of the Brady Bunch and our grandma!  If you are into everything seventies and earlier, this place will blow your mind.  Their prices were a bit mind-blowing as well, but it was a hoot to trip down the avocado greens and harvest golds of memory lane.
   Itsalldowntown.com is Springfield's website to everything going on around the Square, and they aren't lying.  You can see and experience it ALL downtown.  Check it out for yourself if you haven't been in a while.  The Halloween Pub Crawl is coming up next Saturday, sure to bring even more crrr-aziness to downtown.
   Enjoy these warm temperatures and the rest of your weekend, Yall!