Life in Technicolor

(Val) As I sit here in my kitchen, glancing out at the beautiful colors God himself painted on our Bradford Pear trees, I am overcome with what an amazing artist He is! It’s hard to believe that it’s the second week of November when the temperature outside is supposed to get into the upper seventies today and the sky is such a vivid blue. Makes me wish there was a race to go to, because the weather is perfect!

Although it will be a few months until I get to attend any races, my pal Spring is headed to sunny Phoenix for this weekend’s NASCAR Nextel Cup event. With garage access that we managed to finagle via a friend who works at Roush (THANK YOU JC!!!), and armed with her big ol’ Canon, I know Spring is going to have the time of her life. I hope the weather is as perfect there on Sunday as it is here today.

It has been a long-time dream of Spring’s to go to a Cup race, and to get to see it from the inside out ought to spoil her for any future events. She will be in the garage area when she can, and then in the grandstands for the actual race. I know she is hoping to get to participate in some pre-race activities as well, so it will be interesting to see what she gets herself into.

This week has been tumultuous, at best. Despite the crazy outcome of the elections, the rest has been good. Disney-Pixar’s Cars came out on Tuesday, so Spring and I met at the local Wal-Mart, picked up our copies of that (the bonus copies with the Rascal Flatts video and behind-the-scenes stuff of course!) along with Keith Urban’s new CD, Love, Pain and the whole crazy thing. After watching the CMA’s on Monday night, I could have spent a lot more on new music, but I limited myself to Keith’s new CD, although Sugarland’s latest will probably be next.

Cars on DVD is just as good as it was on the big screen, with the exception that I can watch it whenever I want to! So far, I’ve played it twice, and watched all the bonus features. I love the making of the Rascal Flatts Life is a Highway video. Those guys are so awesome, and seeing the set and the things that go into the making of the video is really cool.

While we were chatting over breakfast on Tuesday, talking about the future of GGR and what we want to do over the winter, the photos of Jason Aldean came to mind. I decided to contact someone about getting them on his web site, and managed to hit pay dirt. They were looking for new photos to add to his site, and it looks like they will be using a few of the shots Spring took at Gateway back in April. Yay!

With that in mind, and the Keith Urban CD booklet in front of us, Spring mentioned how much she would like to shoot a CD cover for a band. We started thinking about how fun it would be to go check out some local bands and see if we could get anything going there. Then, this morning, I’m surfing around Jason Aldean’s site to see if the photos are up yet (they’re not) and I decide to check out his schedule. It turns out that he, along with Taylor Swift and three other bands will be in our area later this month at a free concert put on by a local radio station. I thought Spring was going to come through the phone when I called her about that!

So now we are trying to figure out how to get credentials so we can cover the event. We’ll let you know here what happens, so wish us luck!

Besides the concerts and Spring’s coverage from Phoenix, we have a few other things in mind to fill in those long winter months ahead. Keep checking back for more information on our plans, and as always, thanks for your support!