jaylopez

I love music.

Ever since I was a little kid I could sing and dance to every song on the Earth, Wind, and Fire greatest hits record. I would dance whenever Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder was played even if it was a jukebox in a crowded restaurant. And no matter the time of night, when Barney Miller’s theme song started my mother said I would come running from my room in my PJ’s to dance to the song in front of the TV.

I love playing it, listening to it, and even writing it sometimes. When I was a kid I played the trumpet. In Junior High learned percussion which I played throughout high school and in my 20’s I learned to play guitar. Lots of music always playing around my home and car. I love it.

  (READ MORE)

I'll admit it. I'm a big fan of cheap wine. Yummy. Give me some Boones Farm Strawberry Zinfandel on a hot summer night, and I'll get my buzz on - and get it on good. And I used to, back in the day, enjoy a nice cigarette (or ten) with my wine. Even now, every so often, I'll get a craving for a cigarette. Thankfully, the urge is usually cured by the smell of a heavy smoker passing by and occasionally cured by a simple, single drag on another person's gross-stick. (READ MORE)

As if diabetes wasn’t in the back of my mind enough as it is, the music industry seems to be playing a little joke on me to keep it on my mind even more often. We all know the tools that keep us healthy are filled with wires, and electronics, and batteries, and that has been a stellar improvement on diabetes care over the decades. But with all this technological advancement comes the need for increased safety measures, including alarms that beep to proclaim an insulin pump error, a successful blood test, or a completed phase of setup. The joke becomes less funny when I am driving down the highway with some music going, focused on the road, when an identical tone comes from the stereo that sounds like my insulin pump.

  (READ MORE)

Blogabetes

So,what to write about today..? (READ MORE)

Singers are very passionate people and a lot of times the power behind their voices comes from the struggles that they have encountered in life. This was definitely the way I felt as I watched Elliott Yamin put on a passionate and heart-felt show here in Columbia Tuesday night. (READ MORE)

Mordent, or turn: in music, a grace of several short notes in tonic succession about the main tonal value.

Commenting on Amy Tenderich's Friday post discussing bloggers' viewpoints, I mentioned that the different types of diabetes blogs -- personal, technical, news, activist -- were like the various voices in a chorus, and that it is the counterpoint of different perspectives that presents the more complete view of how diabetes encompasses our lives (or how our lives encompass our diabetes). I had meant to pursue that line of thought here, but a key phrase in my draft -- "or like the instruments in an orchestra" -- set me off on a totally different tangent: if living with diabetes were a symphony, what would that symphony sound like?

  (READ MORE)