One of the best pieces of advice I have ever gotten in my life came from my Grandmother. I was in a situation that I was not sure how to deal with, and I was a bit stressed out, when she told me over the phone, to “just breath” . This was not coming from a woman who spent time in yoga classes, her advice pre-dates the yoga craze, peaceful speak. This was advice from a woman who had lived a life, and who knew how it felt to be overwhelmed by that life from time to time.

My situation was that I need to find a new place to live . And moving can be stressful enough on it’s own, but I was dealing with the fact that my beloved dog had just died, I was splitting up with my boyfriend, and my move was not simply to a
new apartment , it was a cross county move to be made in a Chevy Blazer with 200,000 miles on the odometer. Moving during the best of times is stressful, and when major life changes are occurring, that stress can add up. when you move because you have to move, it is a completely different experience from the one in which you move because you want to move. At this time it is best to take note of just what you really need to bring with you.

I looked through my things, and gave away those which I hadn’t used in the past year. This cut down the load for my Blazer quite a bit. I called my grandmother a few times while I was packing, just to hear her voice and to consider the various things that I thought I “needed”. Turns out though, in the end all I did really need to do, was just breath, like she said. I drove the Chevy across the country, from Chicago to Phoenix, and I made in one piece, breathing the entire way.

Moving During Stressful Times: Just Breath is a post from: Empty Voices

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1. Moving: A New Chapter

Yesterday, was an all day driving day, 450 miles to be exact. We had a great Mexican breakfast in Carlsbad and drove on out. There was not a whole lot to see on the drive, we were on the 285 going through Pecos and Fort Stockton, then to the I-10 east and got within an hour of our destination, San Antonio. We stopped at Kerrville, it was this neat historic town that is know for it’s annual folk music festival.

After attending on of the best folk festivals we’ve ever been to, we drove that hour and checked into one of the best hotels in San Antonio, which we booked online at this site. A side note: I only paid $2.07 for diesel, which is by far the cheapest gas I’ve paid for on this little road trip of ours, and that helped us do more financially, than we thought we would be able to do, thanks to cheap diesel in Texas!

We arrived New Years Eve, because we wanted to be somewhere different for the beginning of 2010, someplace with fresh energy and a place that offered a different atmosphere than what we are use to back in California, and you can’t get much more different than Texas. We celebrated New Years Eve in our hotel room.

Then, New Years Day, which was a beautiful day, about 70 degrees, we decided to check out the Alamo. We’ve both seen it in movies and read about it in our history books, but we wanted to see the little mission for real. We thought we’d be the only one’s to tour it, being New Years Day and everyone recovering with hangovers, but we were so wrong. The place had a throng of people, is was totally mobbed! Apparently, everyone in San Antonio had the day off and decided that there was no better time to see the Alamo! So, we opted to do the Riverwalk instead and relax with listening to live music. So much for the Alamo!

New Years Day in San Antonio is a post from: Empty Voices

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Lady Gaga might have a good Poker Face but it probably would be no match for the Las Vegas Law casinos throw down in the city of sin. Many singers have come and gone through the city, some only as novelty acts that lasted a few months with whatever smoke and mirrors they brought with them and their entourage, others as stupendously successful acts that lasted for months and even years with all the glitz and glamour of Hollywood clotted into just a solitary theatre on the strip. Celine Dion and Bette Midler are a few of the artists who rolled the die and had it come out in their favor show after show after show.

However, it is a different kind of show back stage where an acquaintance of mine works. Though I only work in the casinos as a card grunt, shuffling cards in complicated patterns and tricky combinations to distract the losing patrons from packing up leaving with the rest of their money, the amateur magician in me sees something kind of magical in the things this guy does back stage.

His name is Antoine. He is French and comes from a long line of French entertainers. He is so entertaining that I have hard time telling the difference from the reality of his past the lovely lies he tells to fill in the gaps and crevices in between his stories. Those fill-ins are usually only there because he wants to cover up the uglier part so his story that he doesn’t want me to hear. Like about his mother died when he was ten. He claimed it was in a trapeze accident where when she flew up in the air, she could not stop falling up. I knew the truth was probably that she could not stop falling down.

He is not just a magician in his story telling art. He also knows how to make a stage shine. He helps to light the stage in reds and yellows and blues in the same bright hues of the Bicycle playing cards that we use at the tables. He knows how to make a shimmer appear across the stage at the right time so it appears as if the light is sighing with the audience. Perhaps most importantly he knows how to read an audience knows what to give them. I know that’s why the story about his mother’s death has ten different versions.

Las Vegas Law and Magic is a post from: Empty Voices

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