Welcome back to my blog, rockers and rockettes! I apologize for the rather on-the-nose title, but I cycled through about 15 different rock-related puns before I decided to just keep things simple.
Those who know me know that I’ve come to find a new love for nature in my advancing age. On any given day, you’re likely to find me surfing, hiking, skiing, or…bird watching. That last one may come as a surprise but it’s difficult to explain how exciting it is to capture a new bird species on film.
Even my spare time at home is often spent enjoying the gorgeous southern California weather in my yard. As a lifelong cityslicker, a yard is a novel thing. Nothing beats watching the sun slowly disappear over the western horizon with a warm mug of tea in your hand.
Recently, however, I’ve once again found myself wanting *more*. Rather than more money or the usual avenues for avarice, however, I found myself wanting a better outdoor space to spend my time.
My evening soujorns in my yard saw me imagining an expansive backyard retreat rather than a scraggly patch of grass. Running water, a nice fireplace, and maybe a game area to host my buddies all sounded rad.
If my career taught me anything, it was that dreams shouldn’t stay dreams. You have to put in the work to make them reality! With that in mind, I started asking around for a solid landscape contractor that could put my scattershot ideas together into a cohesive design.
Soon enough, all signals began pointing to the same answer: Torrey Pines Landscape Company. I took a look at some of their project pages and something immediately shouted “yes” inside me.
The company has designed dozens of custom fire and landscape water features that could transform our semi arid environs to a near-tropical oasis. The Torrey Pines team also seemed uncannily talented at matching their floral plantings with any architectural design.
Reading on about the company’s design process, it also became apparent that they genuinely cared about conservation as well as aesthetics. The team prides themselves on creating waterwise landscapes to preserve our parched resources. Even for seemingly water-intensive landscapes, the team is able to use irrigation methods that significantly reduce waste.
With my mind racing about the dozens of bird species I may be able to attract to my private nature reserve, I called and set up an appointment immediately. The person on the phone was barely able to keep up with my stream of consciousness ideas. They assured me that their team of landscape architects would be able to handle it, however.
If you’re an outdoor enthusiast looking to spruce up your outdoor spaces, you owe it to yourself to give Torrey Pines Landscape Company a call. Their intricate designs can turn your yard into anything from an extended entertaining space to your own little botanical garden. Call today!
Hello once again, rockers and rockettes! Despite my advancing age and receding hairline, I am feeling VERY high energy today, which inspired me to put pen to paper (so to speak) and harken back to a not-so-distant past.
Why am I feeling so high energy, you may ask? Well, I recently rediscovered the incredible benefits of massage therapy, which means the searing pain I’ve been feeling in my T-band for the last year has FINALLY been taken care of!
One less-than-glamorous aspect of being a touring musician is the aches and pains you get from constantly sitting in a van day after day. As a younger man, I spent nearly 3/4 of the year on tour, so roughly 270 days ‘on the road.’
While you can spring back from this pretty easily as a younger man, the damage eventually wears you down. Once I hit middle age, visits to the physical therapist became a weekly necessity, and they begged me to start making some significant lifestyle changes.
Being a blockhead who refused to accept the reality of my aging body, I doggedly went back out on tour. A few weeks in, however, I was in so much pain I was having difficulty getting out of the hotel bed in the morning, let alone rocking on stage.
Talking the problem over with my bandmates and fellow travelers, I got the usual mixed bag of recommendations: self-medication, yoga, exercise. One older roadie mentioned that his bad back had been almost completely cured through the use of massage therapy, which sounded pretty good compared to the other options.
Wincing in pain as I stumbled through the doors of the nearest massage therapist, the girls at the counters took one look at me and cleared their schedules. This was going to take some work!
That first session was one of the most painful experiences of my life. They pounded me, stretched me out, and gave my muscles and joints a beating I would never forget. Grumbling about quackery, I limped out of the building and sped off to our next hotel, hoping to sleep it off.
Lo and behold, the next morning I felt better than I had in years! It was the first time I could remember getting to a show and not having to knock back a few shots of whiskey to dull the pain. I played better than ever, and I knew then that I had discovered my lifeline.
Once I retired, I picked up yoga and a healthier lifestyle, so I figured the need for massage therapy was now behind me. After a few years of enjoying the quiet life, the old pains began to catch up with me – but this time I was prepared.
After a cursory Google search for ‘messages near me‘, I drove up to Irvine for a place that had pretty solid reviews – Massage Matters. The masseuses used a wide variety of tools in addition to the typical massage techniques, which once again gave me a savage beating.
The effects, however, were just as startling as they were the first time I went. The aches and pains were gone, replaced by a pleasant tingling sensation.
If you are getting consistent aches and pains in your muscles and tendons, I’d heartily recommend giving massage therapy at Massage Matters a try. The team is top notch, and the work they do makes you feel like a million bucks. Call today:
Welcome back, rockers and rockettes! Today, we’re going to discuss the topic of aging. I know it’s a subject I, in particular, don’t enjoy bringing up, but sometimes we just need to stare reality in the face.
In my rockin’ youth, I grew up in a working-class family in the 70’s and 80’s, which meant lots of TV dinners mixed with the occasional fast food. As I grew older and started my music career in earnest, the lack of money meant this diet didn’t change until well into my 20’s, when suddenly champagne and caviar were added to the mix.
Despite the wealth, my eating habits remained pretty terrible until I hit my 30’s and noticed a new and unwelcome spare tire growing around my midsection. Not only was I quickly becoming unable to fit into my old leather pants, I found myself nursing an upset stomach most days of the week.
Ever since, I’ve tried every diet and health kick in the books to try and get my digestive system back into gear with mixed results. Keto and an all-meat diet were terrible for my system, while pescatarian and vegetarianism seemed to have an opposite (but equally unwelcome) effect.
My diet coaches were finally able to create a complicated and bland diet that seemed to quiet things down a few years ago. Unfortunately, this wasn’t exactly an enjoyable way to live life – I felt like a Spartan living in the barracks with nary the occasional treat!
After the umpteenth breakfast of bland toast and eggs, I was fed up with it all and began to look for a solution that would fix the underlying problem: my gut health. The years of eating garbage had done a number on my intestinal health, and it was time I made amends with my digestive tract.
During my frantic research, I discovered a number of gut health supplements designed to assist those in desperate need like myself. The most powerful of which – Zeolite – seemed to be the miracle cure I had been searching for.
Zeolite is a naturally occurring mineral made from the mixing of volcanic ash and seawater. This mixture creates a unique structure that can help scrape away the toxins built up in the intestines and soothe the inflammation caused by a lifetime of poor choices.
High-quality zeolite can be tough to find, but I was lucky to come across a company that had just started distributing it: Shayna’s Kitchen. Shayna’s Kitchen offers a variety of different health-boosting foods and compounds, including ceremonial matcha, a long-time favorite of mine I discovered when touring Japan.
The zeolite was able to rectify some of the worst symptoms of my intestinal problems, greatly expanding the diet my coaches prescribed. I was once again able to eat tomatoes – an experience so sweet I nearly cried!
If you are looking for some A-grade health foods and compounds, there’s no business I would recommend higher than Shayna’s Kitchen. Give the website a look, and do yourself a favor and order some of the matcha. It’s seriously delicious.
Welcome back, rockers! Today we’ll discuss one of the few consistent hobbies I’ve had since making it big in the biz: golf!
I don’t usually like talking about this because I get the impression that most people think golf is for rich old guys with too much time on their hands – all of which is true. That being said, I like being outdoors, I enjoy day drinking, and I enjoy yacking people’s ears off, and golf lets me check all those boxes. Win-win!
Since the pandemic started, I’ve been dead set on trying out all the courses within driving distance of my sunny southern California residence. Doing what you do at home in some exotic locale is pretty lame anyway, and I get to meet and make some good contacts with local bigwigs that can help grease wheels when needed. Yet another win!
My latest trip took me to a small Orange County community called Lake Forest, a little piece of suburbia I would usually pass right by. The course was fairly standard, though well maintained, and it was a great day for golf. I even met an old acquaintance of mine who had driven up from a ritzy little community called Coto de Caza, and we got to drinking like we were in our 20’s again.
After the 9th hole, we determined we were a little too sloshed to continue the game once we both got a bogey with half the course left to play. My acquaintance mentioned he had recently gotten a putting green with a couple of holes installed on his property, and we decided to take a taxi back to his place to continue the party.
We putted (and drank) until about 10 in the evening, studiously ignoring his wife’s hints about him needing to stop and help with the kids’ homework. Even in my revelry, I was seriously impressed with the little course he had installed in the yard. Well-placed obstacles, perfectly manicured grass, and tasteful elevation changes-it was like a classy miniature golf course.
After sleeping it off in the pool house, I sauntered into the kitchen at around 11 in the morning and treated myself to some waffles that my acquaintance’s scowling wife said she had planned to only make for herself and the kids. He stumbled in shortly afterward, and we went to the backyard so he could get some air.
As it turned out, he had worked with a Lake Forest local company-NoMow Turf-to design and install the fake grass putting green. He and I marveled at the craftsmanship of the installation a little more as I waited for the taxi to get me away from the cold, unwelcoming stare of his wife.
Safe to say, I’m now considering getting my own putting green installed, if only because I’d like to invite my acquaintance to hang out and get a break from his henpecked existence. If you’re considering something similar in the Orange County area, I can’t recommend NoMow Turf more than I do. Seriously, their turf installations have to be seen to be believed. Call today:
As a guy who has been a sponsor of every environmentalist organization you can imagine over the last four decades, it shouldn’t be too much of a shock to say I’ve never been a fan of exterminators. The chemicals they spray, the way the poisons work themselves up the food chain…for an old tree hugger like myself, it represented pretty much what I hate.
Then I became a business owner whose establishment was raided by a particularly nasty colony of termites. My objection to using exterminators quickly began melting away as evidence of their spread throughout my building started mounting. I needed a solid exterminator and fast.
Luckily, in this day and age there’s no reason to have to choose between being an environmentalist and a pragmatic business owner in need of pest control, thanks to companies like Natural Science Exterminating. The company uses naturally occurring substances to eliminate ongoing infestations and prevent the critters from coming back later on.
The company doesn’t just have an advantage in methodology – they also have impeccable customer service. Check out what their clients are saying:
I could not be happier with this company. We have pets and I did not want to have to move out during termite treatment. I was hesitant try this method but it works. The areas that I could see now have no termite evidence. Fast forward to August we had flying ants coming in through our bedroom window sash in the evening. Brian identified them and treated them. He said they’d be gone by a week. They haven’t appeared since he sprayed. I highly recommend this company. They are reachable, friendly and professional. Their prices good also. Win-win
I really appreciated the honesty and upfront nature of this company. We had a bad ant problem all throughout our home that we need to bring professionals in for. We wanted something that would work but that was nontoxic or eco friendly as we have 2 little people living with us that can help but put everything in there mouths (children ). From first contact I felt taken care of. I explained our situation and was given options that would best suit us. They let us know that the product they’d be using inside may not be as effective but would still work. They even came back out at no cost to spot treat a few areas for us (within 30 days). All and all it’s been a little over a month and we haven’t seen a single ant. It’s such a relief since ants were in the little ones cribs upstairs. I’d highly recommend them.
Wild K., Yelp Review
If you’re like me and are a big fan of the environment but still need some pesky bugs or rodents removed from your property, get in contact with Natural Science Exterminating. They’ll ensure the problem is taken care of without the need to release industrial poisons into the local food chain. Win-Win!
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