When You See a Hand That’s Held Out Toward You, Give it Some Love, Some Day It May Be You

Wednesday. Well, faithful readers, today has been fairly crappy so far. The Big Boss Lady was in town for a half day today. Basically she stopped in to get a preview of my two presentations I'm giving in a week and then she was out the door to catch a flight to Philadelphia to meet with the customer. The good news is that she liked both of my presentations. I just have a few minor tweaks and I should be good to go for the big financial conference in a week. The bad news is that the Big Boss Lady informed me that the company has just implemented an internet monitoring program that in Big Brother fashion will now monitor the times that we as individual employees log onto the internet, how long we visit each site, and what sites we are visiting. That means that I have to seriously cut back on my blogging so I don't get flagged on one of these monthly usage reports. I can't express how lame this is going to be. This job is already boring enough, but to not be able to sneak in a quick blog read in between spreadsheet projects is seriously going to suck. Other than that, I am dealing with a bunch of other crap and trying to fight off some kind of nasty sinus pressure/headache deal that is making my head feel like it weighs a hundred pounds.

Sorry for all of that bad attitude. I just needed to vent. Now that's over, let's move onto the music review portion of today's post...

Today I listened to Janis Joplin on the drive into work. If you aren't at least somewhat familiar with Ms. Joplin, you definitely need to educate yourself in a hurry. I know she gets lumped in with all of the other '60s rock stars that partied hard and died young, but Janis was a truly talented vocalist of which there is no compare. Everyone knows her songs like Bobby McGee and Piece of My Heart, but prefer her bluesy stuff where she could belt it out like nobody's business. Some of my favorite Janis tunes include Ball and Chain, One Good Man, and I Need a Man to Love. Of course there's many others that she recorded in her short-lived career as well. To say that Janis Joplin remains one of the most influential artists to this day is an understatement. To truly understand the lasting effect that her contributions have made to the music world, I would highly recommend picking up some of her stuff right away.