SXSW show photos

So here are some pictures from our most recent show.  I love my new camera!  Although it's not an SLR, i'm pretty happy with it.  It's a Fuji.  It was a beautiful day for our show, and I recovered well enough from my flu, and was able to sing!  Of course when one thing goes wrong, everything wants to, so my car had to act up on me.  We think it might be the Water Pump.  Luckily our good friends Austin, and Mary, helped us out and let us use a vehicle to get to the show!  We opened up the day of music at W3LL a great little shop in Austin, that features eco-friendly makeup.  We took these photos after I got a mini-makeover.  She did a gorgeous job.  So all and all it was a good show.  I need to go see a guru on networking, and the business of music.  It's no easy thing to get the word out about what you're doing.  Goodness there's always so much to do.  Anywayz.  We're still working on getting those tracks put together, and on writing more great new stuff.  

...regarding the flu & herbal treatments : I came to the conclusion, that herbally, you can in fact treat yourself for the flu rather effectively.  All the things I did, helped, and I mostly kicked my sickness outta my body in about a week start to finish.  Not too bad.  Could definitely been worse.  Jimmy of course caught it from me, and he's still trying to get totally cured.  He also had to pedicab his butt off for SXSW, and after eating some pizza went straight to work.  He's still recovering.  It's his favorite time of year.  How can it not be.  

...special treat for today

-tranquility lavender chocolate from The Royal Blue Grocery.  It cost me a pretty penny but it was absolutely delightful

-Coffee with cinnamon, clove, cardamon, sugar, and ginger in a french press.  I have found for the first time in my life, a way I can drink coffee without cream.  

Soon very soon, i'll start the garden posts/pictures.  That'll be fun.

Much Love and Best Wishes

Herbal Treatment: Day 2 & 3 of the Flu

Sunday
I was more of a zombie than a human. I hadn't felt this sick in at least a year. I was so sick I didn't even drink any coffee. I haven't done that i'm pretty sure in years. Or for sure since the last time I was really sick. I managed somehow, miraculously to make it through 5 hours of work on Sunday. I should have called my boss on Sat night, but didn't. I pretty much just sat behind the counter, and if someone had a question, I answered it. I took 2000 mg of Vitamin C and brought a Liter of Superfood with me to work. I drank half of it at work. The only way I could stop myself from coughing was to have a cough drop in my mouth. So 5 hours later and most of my Organix cough drops gone, I got to go home. 2000 mg Vitamin C. Grapes with honey and white pepper. A large glass of soy milk. I had no appetite. I went straight to sleep. and proceeded to sleep 17 hours.
At some point in the night, I woke up, and knowing I needed to get some garlic in my system, walked in the kitchen, and ate a half a clove of garlic. First time and a last for everything. I had jimmy get me garlic capsules at the grocery, so I never have to do that again. It's supposed to kill the flu virus. I can see why.
Over the last few nights, if I breathed through my nose I could seem to control the coughing.
Monday. I am feeling more like a human and less like a zombie. I drink the other half of Kombucha, I'm not entirely sure when I drank the first half. I took a bath somewhere in there, and somehow have plugged up my ears. 2000 mg VItamin C. My cough today is subdued. I still cough, but its definitely manageable. Not constant and never ending like Saturday night and Sunday. Eventually jimmy brought me two new helpers
Elderberry
Kyolic Aged Garlic Extract
I took 2 pills of each.
Continued to drink my Superfood which I polished the 2 Quarts off today.
Continued with that regime the rest of the day. Later this evening, we had some whole wheat pasta and eggplant with red sauce. It was tasty. I had a bit of an appetite back.
I sat out in the sun today for while in my garden. It felt good to get some of those sun rays in. I got sunburnt.. crazy how easy I can burn in this hot texas heat.
I had enough energy that I took a short walk in the woods by my house up to the hilltop to see the sunset. It was pretty.
Now it's late, I took 2 more Elderberry & 2 Kyolic and I best be to sleep so I can make a full recovery by Thursday!

p.s. i've been using a humidifier at night, and that also seems to help. Especially if you have a "dry" cough

Day 1 of the common cold, herbal remedies. . do they work?

Day 1. I've got to get rid of the sickness as fast as possible. I went home early to start the recovery process. I still have to work tomorrow but this should help I hope.
This morning I started out with 2,000 mg emergen-c Vitamin C. Had my usual coffee, because I'm an addict, but supplemented with some Green Tea from Joe's. They have Mighty Leaf Teas. Normally I don't like Green Tea at all, but one day I tried some of Angela, a girl I work with, and I actually liked it. One big difference between all the green teas i had tried, and this tea, is that it was all Organic. Up until this point, I hadn't really even noticed to teas were organic or not. Now I'm pretty positive I can taste the difference in the 'aftertaste' of the tea. Back to the herbal remedies for the common cold.
I went to the grocery and bought up all the things that were said to be good for a cough.
Ginger
Onions
Garlic
Honey
Lemon
Grapes
White Pepper Salt
My favorite Superfood mix ( a big one)
Kombucha.
I also picked up some organic cough drops Organix that have wrappers made of cornstarch that are compostable. Cool. And lots of other good stuff in the drops too.

So far, I've had a bunch of grapes, which my throat did seem to like. Half of a Kombucha, and something that doesn't sound that great, but is actually fairly tasty.
A grape with Raw Honeyand Organic White Ground Pepper on top.
I also sucked on a cough drop, which made my throat happy until it was gone. I already want another one.
We'll see.
I'm pretty sure i'm either going to take a salt bath or go to sleep. I"m not quite sure which one yet.
My boyfriend has been writing Synth-Pop all day long. Here's the link. check it.
Sylent Kink - Jimbo's Synth Pop Song

so of course because we have a show next week

I get the semi-flu. Never fails. Yesterday I didn't feel enough to practice at all, had the headache that wouldn't seem to go away. Today it transferred to my cough. I'm so broke that I can't buy anything else to remedy myself until monday, except hot lemon water. Thankfully i had one emergen-c left and i'm sure my body appreciated that. We still much much more to do...We've pretty much added/reworked/gutted Code Blue, into its entirely new form, which we'll play This upcoming Thursday. I think it's good because we have our solid set, but now i'm wanting to develop upon it, play more keyboard, and i've written more lyrics. Jimbo has slowly but surely shown me a few more tricks in ableton. I'm not at all tech-savvy. And I when I look at manuals, they really look like Greek. It's why I was such an awful student in school. I was a fashion design major, and they say "read the book" God that was a long 4 years of my life. It's not looking so great with that dress. Being that I got sick and all. I might try to do it still, see how the rest of prep goes. Does anybody else have really long breaks? We always break thinking its gonna be like 15 min, and it's always at least an hour later when we like, ok, we best be back at it.
I just want to stop coughing :(
On the upside, I think our garden really appreciated the rain. Even though it was cold, All the plants seemed to have grown since last I saw them, and everyone is greener by the day. Everybody send me some get well vibes, so voice is back and better than ever by thursday.. :)
Cheers.
Love Life
Lux Divon

getting ready for our SXSW show

so tonight, after 8 hrs of work, we accomplished 3 hours of good solid rehearsal. I almost think we're crazy for everything we're trying to pull together by the show. Refreshing our minds of the set, reworking Code Blue, and adding one brand new song, maybe two.. eek! ahh, but really we work best when we know we have something to get ready for. It's our first show with my new gear, so that's pretty exciting. Always being the overly ambitious person that never gets everything I want to done, I also am pondering making myself a beautiful new outfit for the show. I will keep you updated as to how that is going, with pictures and all. Oh, not to mention, putting together cds to give out, and thing i'm most wishing will manifest itself into reality - - is getting our newest awesome tracks ready, mixed, and mastered in time to put on those cds. so yea, the cds might not happen. They'll just have to wait for the cd release ;P cross our fingers in the fall. Potentially we will be adding one more person to the mix, to do assorted instrumentals, and best yet, video. He said he might even want to add to the music mix this show. Now that'll be really interesting if it happens.
Did anybody see the full moon tonight in Austin? At one point it looked like the red moon, I wish i would have had my camera.
It feels good. I'm sick of the news. I'm sick of the internet. I think i'm even sick of shopping.(I never thought that would happen) I feel an insatiable urge to create. Sew. Paint. Write. Sing. Craft. Explore. It feels good to get away from the zombie-fiyer that is the tv/internet/movie/screen god. :)

where do the hours go?

So much to do, and the time goes by so fast. Today we took a trip to the Habitat re-store to get some stuff for our garden. I of course after Not waking up to do yoga, crawled out of bed i'm pretty sure after noon. So needless to say the day went by fast. Oh and then of course today ends up being the we've got to go get some groceries day. So we just went to HEB, but ended up with all organic stuff, realizing that we just need to start shopping at central market or whole foods. Mostly the same prices and better selection! I'll go into my thoughts about eating organic at some point later. We had to work on a few things in our set, so finally around 8pm we got to practicing. We have a show coming up in a few weeks, so as usual we're refreshing and cramming.. Alas brings back the good ol' college days. Today will be a short post. I must sleep. But I did get batteries for my camera. Hooray! I took some photos of the garden as it is right now. Luckily in our stir fry tonight we were able to use both snow peas and broccoli fresh from the earth :) Cheers.

the downward spiral of the universe as it stands

So i've been thinking, I need to start blogging. I like writing. I like pondering, analyzing, feeling, doing, and being. And I think I agree with the article in the chronicle, that it's okay now. It's changing. We can all open up. I intend to write about everything i want to write about. Everything I can think of, photograph, experience, and teach to others (if possible).

so about the downward spiral. it's that can't escape circle of doom and gloom that gets gloomier because of our impending doom, and gets scarier because we can't seem to spiral ourselves out of it. Where does it begin? Does it end? Do we ever find resolution? Is it resolution that we need, or is that we just need to STOP. and walk away for a minute, and have ourselves breathe a deep deep breath. I've been analyzing the state of the world, and my day to day relationships and affairs, and have come to a interesting observation. Negativity begets more negativity. Blame begets hate. Hate begets more of the same. It's an imaginary line we are crossing into the never never land of never finding peacefulness. Compassion. or Love. It is now destruction. Not creation.
Why is it that we can't seem to stop the process once it's begun. We eventually stop but after we're so tired, exhausted, and wordless that we have to stop. So broke, beyond our means, going out of our minds, that we have to change. We are trying to meet everyone's needs, but in the end no one's needs are getting met, because no one trusts anyone anymore. No one wants to really listen. We don't want to admit we're wrong. and We don't want to forgive. We want to follow the spiral. We think it will bring us to something that we want. but really you and I only end up going down down down.

The negativity around us is SO powerful that it took a tremendously short amount of time for people to go from feeling safe and optimistic to fearful, vengeful, and depressed. People are losing their jobs, possessions and homes, and it's becoming like an avalanche that just can't stop. Can't we see already what it's doing to us. It is the devil standing right in front of our eyes even though we want to say he is invisible. It must stop.

STOP STOP STOP i say to myself and all the people around me, in the world, down the street, and in countries I will never visit, and people I will never know. . .
Stop feeding negativity. Stop feeding ego drives. Stop feeding emotional impulse. Stop feeding fear, and mania. All it will ever get you is down. Not up.
I mean doesn't it make so much sense. Negative - down. Positive + up. Now take that and apply it to the nth level, and you get what I get. The LAST thing we would want to do is let ourselves choose into negativity or conflict. I know, I know, easier said than done.
So we do that, how do we deal with all the people that have messed up. and seriously messed up. They need help, and discipline and love. I was given that at a time in my life where I had screwed up, and needed help. And I thrive. If they had given me help, but discipline and hate, then down I go. They give me disipline and love, but no help, down i go. They give me help, and love, but no discipline, and down again I go.
Pessimistic - down.
Optimistic + up
My weekly horoscope was right on the money this week.
Healthy obsessions. not exhusting crazes or dramatic compulsions.
(Look up Rob Brezsny for Taurus horoscope this week if you'd like to read the whole thing)
Is what you're doing right now, is it a healthy obsession?
I think I'm going to be asking myself that question alot more now.
I guess it's what they say to be true, where you direct your energy, you will manifest. Where and what you sow you will reap.

Speaking of which, I should have some lovely pictures up soon of the texas bluebonnets next to our snow peas. They are both just perfect! I also love my henna hair color, i'll have to post some pictures of that as well. I highly recommend henna if you want to go red.
The first ranting. The first of the common woman's thoughts of the world as we know it.