Showing posts with label Shopping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shopping. Show all posts
June 11, 2010
Written By: Christy Trent
My family has always been a musical bunch. As a small child I learned to sing from my mother and began singing in the children’s choir at my church. Many times my brothers, sister and I would sing together. Like most families our voices harmonized well together. I went on to take voice lessons and choir directing lessons to help further my love and use of music.
Written By: Christy Trent
My family has always been a musical bunch. As a small child I learned to sing from my mother and began singing in the children’s choir at my church. Many times my brothers, sister and I would sing together. Like most families our voices harmonized well together. I went on to take voice lessons and choir directing lessons to help further my love and use of music.
Taking the musical inheritance from my mom, I have a very loud singing voice, just like she does. When singing in a choir or a group, not thinking about anything except the love of singing, I would tend to drown others out. Microphones had to be turned down low when I came up to sing, and I had to learn to tone my voice down a few notches or I could easily put a short into someone’s hearing aide.
Recently, on Memorial Day weekend, I joined my brothers and sister, and we sang together for the first time in years. My parent’s church, the same church I was raised in, graciously invited us to sing a few songs. It was a lot of fun getting together and practicing, and then singing. Again, after all these years, I had to take the softest microphone and try not to drown everyone else out. We chose several old hymns from the past and the singing of those old hymns brought back many wonderful memories.
One of the songs, Shall we Gather at the River, brought back to mind a hot summer day when I was baptized in the murky water of Bear Creek. This was before churches had fancy baptismals inside and we would all go to the creek and take the plunge. I remember the congregation singing and then being leaned over backwards to be baptized in the muddy water.
As we sang the old hymn, In the Sweet by and By, I looked out into the congregation and remembered many of the older church members who have passed on. My grandma and grandpa were fixtures for years sitting just a few pews back from the pulpit, but have both been gone for quite awhile now. Singing at the church was a bit like walking down memory lane.
Music has a way of triggering memories. Some good, some bad. Certain songs can remind me of a broken heart, or the joy of my youth. Other songs remind me of milestones I have crossed while maturing into the woman I am today. One popular song played at the funeral of a young man who died much too early, still makes me start crying when I hear it playing over the speakers in the grocery store.
If your family is like mine, then there are times you need a good songbook. The local libraries carry a huge selection of music books. There are books with the most popular Christmas songs, famous country songs, Broadway musical selections, top 40s hits, and many more.
Grab a song book and a brother or sister or two, and recapture some joy by singing with them. It doesn’t matter if you can carry a tune or not, just the pleasure of being together and walking through the memories is priceless.
It was a great weekend again! However, it was a disappointment that Kil-Kare was rained out Friday night. It was to be the bus races at Kil-Kare which are rescheduled for this weekend and we really wanted to try the new gas from Estes Oil in Franklin.
Saturday we went to Pisanello’s for pizza and headed to the shop around 1 p.m. We got to Motorcar Auto Body just in time to help get the car loaded. Gary and some of the guys had already been working on the car since 9 a.m. We are trying different racing fuels from Estes Oil. We are also trying different staggers to try to get the Koehlke GreenPro Landscaping #4 faster. We got a new 12 volt battery this week with 1300 cranking amps. Ok I’m not sure what that means either but it more then the diesel truck we use to pull the trailer so starting the car should be easier.
At Columbus, we unloaded the Rebel 105.9 car and went out for the first practice. It had been raining and the track was still green. They also have a weep hold in the track in turn four where ground water can seep onto the track. They were trying to get it dried up. Our second practice, we found that we needed to make some chassis adjustments because our tire temp was off. By the third practice, we were right in line with most of the other cars. Just my luck, we drew 4 and was to be the first to qualify. I qualified at a 13.44 which was third fastest. In the dash race on was on the outside pole and as I described earlier there was a wet spot on the track on the outside of turn four. I was unable to get on the gas as hard as I like to come to the green flag. I ended up finishing the dash race in third.
It was privilege to go over to the fan section to sign autographs before the intermission. It was exciting to meet all my supports and answer questions. I had a great time greeting each one of them. The look on the girl face as she skipped off says it all.
In the feature, I started in the outside of row four in eighth In the Green Pro landscaping Koehlke components NASCAR Whelen LM . Just like playing checkers, you need to know what the other players could do. The guy leading my row was not great on the outside and was having problems with his car earlier. As I quested it I got pushed back to the tenth position it should have been ninth but a guy came in to my line and I choose to let him in because it was early in the race, I did leave the door open a little so it was somewhat my faulty. Unfortunately he hit me and we going to have to do some bodywork and paint. ( no Mirrors or radios in these cars) I had to wait for the right time to start passing. The opportunity to start passing came late in the race. I quickly moved up to the fifth position in just a few laps to go.
We have been doing a poll on Facebook with our new t-shirt designs. We hope to have a few of them available soon for purchase. We hope also have some exciting things to announce next week so be sure to tune in!
We are still hoping to get a tire sponsor so we can do some more testing. Dad is meeting with some people at Sport clips and we still waiting to hear from some others. I still need an anchor sponsor to finish out the year. Have a great week! Sloan and crew!! Follow me at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/pages/Sloan-Henderson-Motorsports/122508936584?ref=ts and sloan-henderson on twitter for race day updates
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I CONFESS, I’M A HOARDER!
Written by: Christy Trent
I have a confession to make, although it is painful for me to admit. Here goes; I am a hoarder. The television show, “Hoarders: Buried alive”, has scared me to death. Watching the show I see a bit of me in some of the subjects. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not one of those people with piles of garbage in their rooms, or the ones who can’t even throw away rotted food. Instead, I have cupboards and closets that are jammed packed with stuff. Ridiculous things I have kept hold of for years because I couldn’t bear to throw them away.
After watching several episodes I told my husband we had to clean. He was thrilled since he has complained about my hoarding for years. We spent one whole Sunday and cleared out four closets and countless drawers. Full garbage bags were piled at the end of our driveway when we were done, but my closets are now neat and tidy.
From the show I learned there are three types of hoarders.
1. People who hold on to things with sentimental value.
2. People who keep things because they don’t want to be wasteful.
3. People who are afraid if they throw something away they will need it the next day.
I am a bit of all of these types of hoarders. While cleaning the drawers I came upon at least four different piles of birthday, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and anniversary cards. There had to be over 100 of them. Obviously I have trouble getting rid of the cards for sentimental reasons. I keep them because for some reason I feel if I throw them away, the people who gave them to will think I don’t care about them. In my kitchen cupboards I had several dozen coffee mugs. There are only two of us, and I am the only one who uses a mug for my tea, but I couldn’t throw the mugs away because I felt wasteful. In the bedroom I found dozens of safety pins and we threw away over 200 hundred wire hangers. It felt wasteful to throw the hangers away although I refuse to hang up my clothes with them, and in my lifetime I will never use all those safety pins.
While cleaning I found several truly sentimental things I was storing; a cuckoo clock from my Grandmother, framed family photos, and beautiful knick knacks from loved ones who have passed away. What is the use of hiding something sentimental away? I pulled those items out, dusted them off and am now using the pieces. The book, Saving Stuff; How to care for and preserve your collectibles, heirlooms and other prized possessions, by Don Williams, helped me. I guess one of the reasons I had stored away some of my sentimental items is fear of them being ruined. This book teaches you how to properly display your items to have the least amount of wear and tear due to light, humidity, temperature, bugs and human contamination.
Chapters, such as, “ Deciding what stuff to save, give away or toss,” and, “ Saving the stuff only a parent could love,” teach you how to decide what is important to keep. I could have definitely used this book years ago before my closets got so stuffed.
You can find this book and others at your local library. They are ready to help turn your hoarding habits into something useful, practical and fun to have.
Cover via Amazon
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Qualifying Queen Sloan set fast time again
The weather was perfect Friday night. I was so excited about getting out on the track after so many rain cancelations. It was demolition trailer race night at Kil-Kare so there would be no heat race. We would only be qualifying and then the feature race. I was really happy with the Rebel 105.9 NASCAR Whelen Koehlke GreenPro #4. I went out and got fast time again! Kil-Kare inversion was a 7 so I started on the inside of the 4th row just behind Gary Estes in the Bond Machine Weiler Welding car. I was going to have to try to get to the outside row as soon as possible hopefully between the Oakley asphalt car and the Estes oil car if I had a chance to get to the front. This was going to be tough with no mirror or radios.
We did our two warm-up laps in the Rebel 105.9 Late Model and I thought something was wrong with my car. The green flag dropped and my rear end was hopping. My rear axle cap broke. In order to explain that in a little more in detail, the engine spins on a drive shaft through a Bert clutchless transmission. It then goes to the rear end where the spinning action is split between the two axles by a ring and pinion gears. Next, the 600 plus hp is delivered to the hubs by the axle. The point where the power is transferred to the hubs is where the axle caps is located. The axle caps are a small piece on aluminum that would fit in to your hand and weight around one pound. We check these regularly but stuff happens. I was done for the night. I was not a happy but those things happen in racing. My crew does a great job each week and it’s very frustrating for them and me when equipment fails. We were also grateful it was not as more expensive problem.
I would like to thank Classic Style Barber Service and Chips and Clips Lawn Services for becoming one of my new sponsors this week. Hunter Water Conditioning and Cox’s Service Station and Repair are considering being a local supporter. We are also still working with some local Chevy dealers and hope to fill our short fall in the co- anchor partnerships for this season. We are truly blessed by Green Pro Landscaping, Koehlke Components, The Rebel 105.9, Dempster Tire in Middletown, Estes Oil, First Command Financial, Line-X on Conover Drive, Miracle Welding, Shannon McGuire at Salon 122 in Hunter, Springboro Hardware, Larry and the crew at National Coating Systems Inc on Shotwell Drive, and Dayton Christian Schools. I have to also thank Miller printing and all of you for buying the paper. Dad gets so stressed out about the other sponsor we need but I know God will provide just like in the past.
Saturday, I got up and checked the weather. It looked like it was going to stop raining at Columbus long enough to sign in. We talked to Gary and headed to the Motorcar Shop in Spring Valley. We then got the call that Columbus was cancelled due to the pending rain. If I could make money on betting on the weather, I would be betting on rain on Friday and Saturday! Nothing can take away the bummed out mood like a pizza so I called Mom and Chase. We met at Pisenello’s for a great pizza. We got to meet some fans that were eating there. I would rather be racing but it ended up being a great. Sloan and Crew
Thanks, Steve
Sloan Henderson Motorsports, LLC
"Today Is Tomorrow's History"
www.sloanhenderson.com
Phil 4:13
937-533-6271
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[More]
We did our two warm-up laps in the Rebel 105.9 Late Model and I thought something was wrong with my car. The green flag dropped and my rear end was hopping. My rear axle cap broke. In order to explain that in a little more in detail, the engine spins on a drive shaft through a Bert clutchless transmission. It then goes to the rear end where the spinning action is split between the two axles by a ring and pinion gears. Next, the 600 plus hp is delivered to the hubs by the axle. The point where the power is transferred to the hubs is where the axle caps is located. The axle caps are a small piece on aluminum that would fit in to your hand and weight around one pound. We check these regularly but stuff happens. I was done for the night. I was not a happy but those things happen in racing. My crew does a great job each week and it’s very frustrating for them and me when equipment fails. We were also grateful it was not as more expensive problem.
I would like to thank Classic Style Barber Service and Chips and Clips Lawn Services for becoming one of my new sponsors this week. Hunter Water Conditioning and Cox’s Service Station and Repair are considering being a local supporter. We are also still working with some local Chevy dealers and hope to fill our short fall in the co- anchor partnerships for this season. We are truly blessed by Green Pro Landscaping, Koehlke Components, The Rebel 105.9, Dempster Tire in Middletown, Estes Oil, First Command Financial, Line-X on Conover Drive, Miracle Welding, Shannon McGuire at Salon 122 in Hunter, Springboro Hardware, Larry and the crew at National Coating Systems Inc on Shotwell Drive, and Dayton Christian Schools. I have to also thank Miller printing and all of you for buying the paper. Dad gets so stressed out about the other sponsor we need but I know God will provide just like in the past.
Saturday, I got up and checked the weather. It looked like it was going to stop raining at Columbus long enough to sign in. We talked to Gary and headed to the Motorcar Shop in Spring Valley. We then got the call that Columbus was cancelled due to the pending rain. If I could make money on betting on the weather, I would be betting on rain on Friday and Saturday! Nothing can take away the bummed out mood like a pizza so I called Mom and Chase. We met at Pisenello’s for a great pizza. We got to meet some fans that were eating there. I would rather be racing but it ended up being a great. Sloan and Crew
Thanks, Steve
Sloan Henderson Motorsports, LLC
"Today Is Tomorrow's History"
www.sloanhenderson.com
Phil 4:13
937-533-6271
A Good hair day at the Library
Except for one time in my life, I have always had long hair. My hair has been my security blanket in many ways. I could hide behind it when I was feeling shy, or it was my signature that everyone focused on when I didn’t have to be “on” with the other parts of me. Nothing made me feel better about myself then for someone to tell me my hair was beautiful. A bad hair day for me was a major event; it could make or break me.
So, many people were shocked when I told them I was going to get my hair cut short. I had just spent 5 weeks convalescing from bunion surgery, and my hair had gotten on my last nerve. Since it’s very heavy, coarse and curly, it became extremely hard to control, as if it had a mind of its own. Its annoyance had finally outweighed its beauty, and I decided to whack it off. Once I made up my mind I found a style I liked, printed multiple versions of it off the internet, and went to see my hair dresser. She was supportive about my decision, although hesitant to cut my hair until I reassured her repeatedly I wasn’t going to get up get upset.
We consulted over the pictures I took with me, and she cut my hair into a design that fit my needs and my face. I was pleasantly surprised I didn’t get upset and cry when I saw my hair lying in bunches on the floor, but I generally felt nothing but relief.
Before you do anything as drastic as I did, research different hairstyles either on the internet or in hair books. Find the perfect fit for your face and lifestyle.
One good book I looked at before making up my mind was, Great Hair, by Nick Arrojo, stylist for the show, What not To Wear, on TLC. His book runs the gamut of hair questions and answers. Nick’s hair philosophy is the same as mine, “The best way to get a great haircut is to match the texture and shape of your hair and not your face.” This will give you a low maintenance hairstyle that will work for you instead of against you. This is a philosophy I heartily embrace.
Since my hair is so thick and curly it would take me a huge amount of time every day to straighten it. Time that I don’t have. So I have always chosen a hair style that embraces my natural curl.
Some of Nick’s golden rules for taking care of your hair are:
• If your hair looks great long, who cares if you are over 40.
• Bangs cut wrong can make your eyes look too close together.
• A good haircut should last 6 weeks before needing another cut.
• When combing out tangles in your hair always comb from end to roots.
Throughout this book, Nick Arrojo gives timeless advice to having a beautiful head of hair. If you are planning on investing in a new hairdo, before making a big mistake, head on over to your local library and pick up this or numerous other hair care books.
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Written by: Christy Trent: At 40 something I was finally brave enough to do it. I got my first tattoo this year. After watching countless episodes of tattoo drama shows and reading books about the history I realized that everyone seems to have a story behind their skin art; a memorial for a loved one, representation for a difficult time in their life, or perhaps names and dates of special events. Always marching to the beat of a different drummer, I didn’t have a clear idea or design in my head, although I knew I wanted one. As I looked through hundreds of tattoos at the parlor, an idea began to form in my mind. Wanting something colorful and dainty I viewed delicate bird designs. Two designs stood out, bluebirds and hummingbirds. Both have a symbolism in American culture.
The Swallow, also known as a bluebird, got its legendary status with sailors. Since sailing was so dangerous men would get a swallow tattooed on their chest after completing a thousand miles at sea. The swallow symbolizes honor, faith, love, hope, and courage.
The hummingbird represents love, joy, beauty, and because a hummingbird hovers over a flower sipping the nectar he reminds us to savor each moment and appreciate the things we love.
Since I really haven’t done anything courageous enough to deserve a swallow, I decided on a hummingbird with tail feathers forming a heart. The symbolism for me is appreciating the things I love.
Then the next step was actually sitting for the tattoo. Wow, it hurt, but thankfully since I chose something small the pain didn’t last for long.
The book, Permanence: Tattoo portraits, by Hip Fulbeck, is a beautifully illustrated book featuring celebrities and civilians, their tattoos and the reasons for getting them. Some, like me, don’t have a life changing experience reason for their tattoos, but most in the book do.
One young man with Japanese American roots tattooed serial numbers on his arm to remind him of his parents interment in American camps during WW2.
An older woman tattooed a huge pink ribbon circling her neck and down her chest after battling breast cancer.
“Never forget,” is tattooed on a marine who lost comrades in the Iraq war.
A triangular symbol of the trinity is tattooed on one young woman’s foot to remind her that no matter what she goes through God is always there.
Tattoos no longer seem to have the same negative stigma attached to them they had years ago. It seems these days everyone has one. If you are thinking about a tattoo or just want to read about them, head over to your local library for a book.
Next tattoo I get, (did I say next? Yikes!) it will have deep meaning behind it. Maybe a turning point in my life or an insight that has finally broken through to me, or perhaps a special date. But then again, I really would like a pretty, colorful flower tattooed on the very top of my foot just for the sheer beauty of it…
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