OKnLA

I love ice cream. I love its sugary, creamy, cold goodness.  To me, there is no better ice cream than the ice cream they have at Braums. Unfortunately I'm hundreds and hundreds of miles from the nearest Braums, so I make due with things like Baskin Robbins and Haagen Dazs. It's a hard life.  Even the substitute ice creams have fallen by the wayside, as I am smack in the middle of month two of drastically cutting down my sugar intake. I'm not crazy: I still eat fruits that are full of natural sugar. Occasionally I'll drink juice (though I try not to, pressed juices exempt). I still use honey and sometimes raw sugar when I cook/bake, but never more than two teaspoons of sugar. I'm not going to pass up a Nature Valley crunchy granola bar, which is loaded with sugar. Like I said: not crazy. But I have stopped drinking my normal two hot chocolates per day. In fact, I haven't had a hot chocolate since June.  I know you've picked up the phone to report

To be honest ,there really isn't a time that I don't crave live music. I'm always down to see a show. But last week I realized that it had been quite some time since I had seen small-time, indie-type bands play. Little-known bands are my heart and really, what are we without our hearts? What are we without hyphens? When I caught wind of a (read: FREE) music festival happening in Echo Park, I was all the way down. It was simple enough to rope my tune-lovin' Jersey boy into coming with me because he knows the lead singer/guitar player of The Streetwalkin' Cheetahs, one of the bands playing the event.  We got to Echo Park in time to hear the end of the set preceding The Streetwalkin' Cheetahs. The band: The Groms. The sound: Loud. Think surf party music but darker and with more yelling. This makes sense because apparently a Grom is a young surfer. Thanks, Urban Dictionary . The venue was a gallery – as Echo Park Rising was also an art festival – so

via earlychildhoodfun.com Since the Mike Brown tragedy, I've been riddled with grief.  Every few minutes I need to disconnect myself from whatever I'm trying to do and breathe deeply in order to bring myself away from the verge of tears.  All week (white) people have been asking me what's wrong. How do I answer that?  It occurred to me that, to them, this situation is unfathomable. How could an officer of the law allegedly shoot a young man who was unarmed seven times? In what world does something like that happen? I understand that, even though my Twitter feed looks like notes from a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee meeting (or sometimes a Black Panther meeting), while their feeds are business as usual. I realized this when a coworker shared Refinery29's coverage of #IfTheyGunnedMeDown with me on Thursday, and asked me if it had anything to do with the rally I was rushing to.  In our world, far too often. The kicker is that we, as minorit