7 Quick Takes Friday

On Saturday. I got distracted yesterday and forgot that it was Friday. To make up for forgetting, this will be a picture filled post. :)

1. Once in a while, something from Pinterest actually works out! I saw a pin for a really pretty nail polish and amazingly, it was a current color! I actually found it at Target and the color turns out exactly as expected. I love it!

Essie Bahama Mama

2. I just read a really cute book - Awkward Moments with Men - Stories About the Sex We Can't Live Without by Shannon Lee Miller & Megan Leigh Byrd. It's short essays from their dating lives. Some stories are really funny, a few are kind of sad. I see a little bit of myself sometimes. And it's almost affirming to see that even the beautiful women who wrote this book had dating horror stories, like the rest of us. The book is only $2.99 on Kindle right now. I highly recommend it.

3. Recently Michelle and I went to the Jackson Browne concert. A young girl opened for him and she was fabulous! Her name is Sara Watkins. Jackson sang with her, she sang with Jackson. I really love her voice. This is the video for one of the songs on her Sun Midnight Sun album. Seriously, check her out.

4. Sometimes when I'm reading a book I don't like the clothes the author has dressed the characters in, so I change them. For example, in this one book, the main character always wears a plum shift dress. Like wears it way too much. And the characters talk about how sexy it is. I don't think a shift dress is especially sexy at all! So in my head, I've changed the dress to be a wrap dress. Now that is a sexy dress. Right? Another time, a character was wearing cut-off jean shorts. A guy. A guy with a lot of money and tons of style. No friggin way. I know he was dressed down at the time, but that just wouldn't have happened with the character I had in my head. So I changed them to worn-out cargo shorts. Much better.


5. I will never have a white ceramic sink in the kitchen. Stainless steel all the way. John has two white sinks in his kitchen - both the main sink and the prep sink. They show absolutely every speck of dirt and I feel like I'm constantly cleaning them. I feel like I'm going to scratch them with the movement of dishes or silverware in them. I hate them. Really. It's almost a passionate feeling. :)

6. Sometimes I don't get my blog numbers. I'm not trying to reach a ton of people. I just wanted an outlet to write a little bit about my life. But sometimes a post will get unexpected attention, and sometimes a post will get crazy attention. For example, my posts get somewhere between 20-50 reads. (Again, not a ton, and that's okay.) My Fifty Shades of Grey book reviews got over 100, so did my post about September 11 and my post about the lightbulb debate (almost 200). Pretty good. Then my Shadow of Night book review got over 300! Whoa! But my post about my meth addict neighbor has gotten over 3000! Ridiculousness! It totally screws with my stats; I have no idea how people are finding my other posts because the form is full of meth addict stuff. Weird, right?

7. Since living at John's, I watch most of my shows on Hulu. They still have some commercials and one of the commercials was a plug for their very own show Battleground.

It looked really interesting, so I added the episodes to my queue. Here's the description:

In Hulu's first original scripted series, Battleground is a workplace dramedy set in the world of political campaigns. Head campaign strategist Chris "Tak" Davis and his staff strive to win a Senate seat for their underdog candidate in a race with national consequences.It takes place in Wisconsin, a real battleground state, where Tak and his team manipulate the 24-hour news cycle, new media, and social networking to navigate the unpredictable ups and downs of state politics. All the while, a documentary crew exposes the behind-the-scenes chaos of idealistic twenty-somethings trying to make a difference.

Here's the trailer:

I was hooked after the first few minutes. Really good show. No idea what the future is, if they're going to have a second season with the same cast or not, but I really enjoyed the show. And I really enjoy the guy who plays the main character, Tak Davis. His name is Jay Hayden and he is HOT. Not only that, but he's a good actor, too. He portrays a range of emotions in the show and does so believably. I hope to see him on a more highly viewed show soon as I think he really deserves it. (One of the girls on the show is now on Chicago Fire...) Here's one last photo of Jay...