BRAINFREEZE!!!

Friday night I had the opportunity to go to Miss Jones Grown Folk Friday's (thanks to Nia; please visit her website Nmyfootsteps.com). Yes, I just threw a plug in there! For those of you who don't know, Miss Jones is a popular radio personality on Hot 97 and she also broadcasts on 100.3 The Beat. The return of Grown Folk Friday's was a highly anticipated event and some stars came out to show their support. Some of the stars that were in attendace were Ray-J, Young Berg and members of MTV's Making The Band: Season 2. The bandmates that showed up were Dylan, E-Ness, Babs and Sarah Stokes. Some of you may remember Dylan if you were a Dave Chappelle fan because he did many skits on him on his show.Sarah Stokes announced her new make up line called SAS that will be in stores soon and Babs said that she was no longer with Bad Boy but that she was signed to another record label. It was nice to see the band after all of this time. However, Babs could have done a better job with her hair. I mean she did know that she would be taking pictures and be in the public eye and she didn't seem to mind the fact that her hair was, well, ROUGH! I do remember episodes of Making the Band when Babs was shown getting her tracks sewn in on national television, so maybe her New York: I don't give a fart! attitude makes her more relatable. She is a rapper and it seems to be a need for female rappers to appear hard and rugged but I've never seen Lil' Kim in a photo or public event with her hair tossed like that. But hey, it could have just been one of those days, so I'll cut her a little slack.

Meanwhile Ray-J performed his hit 'Sexy Can I?' which is my number one favorite song right now. We wanted to interview him but his bodyguard wouldn't have it. He wouldn't even let us take any footage of the performance. I don't know what that was about. I mean he is a celebrity but come on, it's not MJ!

Tell me what you think...

~Lana~

CREAM AND SUGAR?

AMEN?

There's nothing like a trip downtown on the subway in Philly right? You never know what or whom you will encounter. Well on Monday Jessica and I were going downtown to a class and there was a lady on the subway preaching the Word of the Bible. She was not only preaching it but she was yelling it over the sounds of the subway.(So we can all imagine how loud she was). It was an awkward feeling as me and Jessica sat down on the subway. I scanned the faces of the people sitting and standing on the sub. There were looks of utter disgust, they were some smirks, there were people that completely ignored the lady, and there were a few people actually listening intently. For the most part, everyone kept their own individual thoughts to themselves. The people that were talking kept their conversations quiet as if they didn't want to be rude in church lol. But seriously speaking, no one was blatantly rude. I'm sure there were people of many different religions on that sub, but no one objected to anything she was saying or seemed to get angry. The fact that it was 8:00 on a Monday morning could have had something to do with this as well, but let's not get too technical. This is the great thing about America. We are free to practice whatever religion we want and talk freely about it in public. I have to admit, when I first sat down, my first thought was Oh goodness someone please 302 this lady. (For those of you who don't know, that means send her to the looney bin). But after listening to her for a little while I found myself caught up into the things she was saying. I have to say I admire her strategy. What better way to get people to listen to you than to preach on a public transportation vehicle. I mean we are underground where most cell phones are out of service. There were the select few that turned their IPods all the way up, but this woman was pretty loud. I guess my point is that America is really a great country to live in.

Tell me what you think

~Lana~

SUGAR SWEET:

POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT

I've been trying to be more optimistic lately. I am a worry-aholic, yes I just invented a new word. Anyway, I am one of those people that sits up all night thinking about all the things I have to get done the next day. I am a Christian but I, like most people have my weaknesses. Christians are not supposed to worry themseleves with things that are out of their control, which is pretty much everything; they are supposed to look to God to make it alright. Now I know that every person is not a religious or spiritual person, so for the worry-aholic people out there, I think I've found a solution that really works. Most people have heard of positive reinforcement. For those of you who have not, here's a brief definition: Positive reinforcement is remaining optimistic about whatever situation you find yourself in. For instance, if you have a major exam or meeting to go to, you simly say to yourself "The meeting/exam will be a piece of cake" or something positive. I have found that once I claim a negative outcome of something, the negative prevails.

Positive reinforcement has really been working for me lately. It helps relieve a lot of my everyday stress. You have to believe that everything will work out just fine and it will. Positive reinforcement is also encouraging to the people around you. IF your friend or someone close to you is going through something, telling them that everything will be ok may seem like sugar- coating but it is actually very helpful. Sometimes just hearing that from someone else is reassuring and helps the person to believe it. My mother does this all the time to me when I get down about something, she tells me it will be fine and that encourages me to believe it.

Try it out for a while and see if it works. It has for me.

TEll me what you think....

~Lana~