Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings

Saturday night we decided to take our northern honky selves and go honky-tonkin' down on Broadway. Broadway is why Nashville has earned the nickname NashVegas. The two are very similar. We tried on cowboy hats and boots and ate pralines (praw-leans) dipped in caramel. We listened to bands in several bars and exclusivly drank Jack Daniels all night.

 

My favorite Neon sign

How cool is this?!! There is a bartender at the other end and the peddling propels the shaft and keeps them moving. There is a back up motor also.

We got photo bombed. Did you know photo bomb is in the Colliers Dictionary now?

 

Crossroads was one of the bars we went to. It had the best band of the night. They played music from the Zac Brown band to Garth Brooks to the Black Crowes. Unfortunately this is not Crossroads. This is the first bar I took photos of while drinking Jack, rendering me unable to take pictures when we got to the next bar.

Here's a tidbit for you. Stop going to Las Vegas for springbreak/bachelor parties/etc. Go to Nashville. The main strips are not so different but Nashville has better music. Nashville has cheaper drinks. Nashville has hotter women. True story. Unless you are really into silicone injected, spray tanned ladies, got to Nashville. The city is swarming with bachelorette parties and sorority sisters in short shorts and knee high cowboy boots. And if you fail at meeting women in Nashville you can enjoy a half rack of ribs for $8 and watch every football on approximately 42,000 TV's.


I do love country music. Always have, always will. I was still so into the music that I was skipping up the hill back to the hotel. Little did I know that Chris was in "my wife is adorable when she is drunk" mode and was snapping photos. Here's what I remember. I remember having to pee so bad that when we skipped past the christian book store I screamed "If you were really Christian you would let me use your bathroom! This is my time of need!" Despite the fact that it was midnight. Also, I remember skipping past a very scary building and saying that it was intense. Yes, I described it as intense. Luckily, my personal paparazzi managed to capture not only the building but my face as I took in the intensity of said intense building.

 

Intense building of Jack Daniels fueled nightmaric and intense proportions, also known as the Customs House. ( It was the Federal Building, now its for sale. Anyone want to go halvsies?)

Chris managed to catch me mid-skip and mid-terror during my first intense sight of the very intense building.

 

 Here it is during the day. Still intense.

Sunday was the home opener of the Tennessee Titans which meant downtown was vacant, everyone was across the river. We had lunch at one of these little throw back restaurants decorated with edison bulbs while all the waiters wear suspenders and bowties. It was good but their attempt at old fashioned southern whatever was ruined by the fact not one person had an accent. It was disappointing. Nashville is just a melting pot of musicians from all over the country. Our waiter was from Southern California. Our hotel is in the Midtown area and is full of little hipster restaurants that employ men with those This-is-not-a-mullet haircuts (that is really is mullet) and ironic mustaches that just drive my inner snob insane.

 

This is a city where you can see a dreadlocked white guy in cowboy boots drinking a $4 Kombucha while repairing his bicycle.

Nashville is just Portland with better Bar-B-Que.

While we had downtown to ourselves we decided to visit the Country Music Hall of Fame. Naturally I took pictures of everything that had to do with Dolly Parton. But they had some other cool displays too....

 

 



Like Elvis Presleys gold Cadillac Limo...

 

 

 

...and costumes from Taylor Swifts tour. Roll your eyes and judge me all you want, this is cool. Chris and I went to this concert last September and it was the exact day that Chris accepted the job in Las Vegas. From the time he picked me from work until the concert he was back and forth on the phone negotiating. It was the day that changed the rest of our life. And Taylor played our favorite Dave Matthews Band song (You and I) on the Ukelele so yeah, we love us some T-Swizzle. 

 

Unfortunately we missed our opportunity to attend the Tennessee State Fair, as I passed out as soon as we walked the 2+ miles uphill back to the hotel (in the 90 degree heat, in blister inducing shoes). Because of this we not only missed something called "Poultry Invitational: Champion of Champions", which I imagine as Chicken dressage, we also missed the Hedrick's Racing Pigs. I blame the Asshat cab driver and I leave you with this...

 

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that an ethiopian cab driver in posession of a yellow cab, will be in want for a fare longer than 2 miles uphill. However little he knows about the feelings or pains of such wanting passengers upon their first approach of his cab, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of all cab drivers, the he will deny the knowledge of mentioned roads and the english language until he can become the driver of someone in want of the airport."  -Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

 

 

 

Real American Whiskey

When we picked out our rental car in Nashville we had lots of options in American cars. In fact we only saw one Nissan in the whole lot. Not that we were looking specifically for a foreign car, we just noticed their absence. We drove our Dodge to Lynchburg Saturday and I have to say it was a very smooth and quiet ride. The country between the two cities is beautiful, although "city" is a loose term when it comes to Lynchburg. Acres and acres of green farmland, cattle, horses, goats etc. There are lots of small towns on the drive. Every building has an American flag or a steeple on it. Every home has an American flag. The porches really did have rocking chairs. I wanted Chris to pull over so I could run up a big green hill singing  the hills are alive with the sound of muuuusssssicc but we were sure that someone would shoot me right off their lawn.

The tour was awesome. It was beyond my expectations and I learned a lot about Jack Daniel the man. He was by all means a self made man. He left home at 10 years old for pete's sake. It was awesome and I felt a surge of patriotism just hearing about how hard he and Lem Motlow worked over the years. I even asked Chris if it was crazy if I exclusivly drank Jack Daniel's from here on out because I want to support the business. He said yes.

The entrance of the Jack Daniel's Distillery

Note to self: Schedule hair appt as soon as I get back in Sac. Super hip "ombre" hair that is supposed to look better as it grows really just looks trashier and trashier every day.

 Beautiful creek at Jack Daniel's

 

Jack Daniel was a tiny little man that stood 5'2".  They say he wore the suit everyday to look older then his tiny stature and to distract from the Baby Jack nickname he bore as the youngest of 10. The cavern behind this statue is the natural spring that produces the water that all Jack Daniel's products are made of. It's full of limestone that strips all the lead out of the water. This is one of the few places in the world where this process occurs naturally.

 

Proof that turkeys are following me everywhere.

 

We left the distillery and headed to Lynchburg proper. The sign says Lynchburg has a population of 361 but a quick search on the World Wide Web ( our tour guide kept calling it the World Wide Web) says it's actually just north of 5000.  Lynchburg is just a town square with tourist trap style shops wrapped around it. It would seem inauthentic if I didn't know that that the buildings really are that old. We ate lunch at a hole in the wall that smelled fantastic and served up some delicous BBQ. It seemed to be an old house turned into a BBQ joint. You could see right into the kitchen and it was your standard small house kitchen. While we were there they pulled a big yellow cake out of the oven. They dressed it up with chocolate syrup, coconut, pecans and served it to me hot when it was like, " Please let me eat that. I need that." Our sandwich was $2.99. The tea was sweet. It was the kind of southern hospitality you see in TV. But nestled in between all the Jack Daniels Fudge and antique shops was a " Dixie Souvineer" shop. I only peeked in the window but from what I can see it seemed to sell everything you could imagine a confederate flag on as well as a wide selection of anti-Obama merchandise including a " Don't blame me, I voted for the American" bumpersticker. In fact, even at the Moon Pie Cafe they sold little tins that had President Obama's face on them with the word DissapointMINTS underneath. The box was half full. It was next to another box that had Obama emblazoned tins that said ObamaMINTS. There were 2 more tins in this display so I bought both of them so they would be even. My fear was that if I bought the rest of the box it wouldn't be refilled and Pro-President Obama merchandise wouldn't be represented. But I didn't want the anti-Obama mints to outsell him.

Playing checkers outside the general store

 

Moon Pies are everywhere here! Moon Pies are a Chatanooga TN original and they are crazy about them. Who knew there are so many flavors? Banana, Strawberry, Orange, and Mint are some of the flavors we found besides the traditional chocolate and vanilla. We bought a few of the mini ones so we could try the flavors. They were gross.

 

 

Travelling around Tennesee was an eye opeing experience. Our tour guide at JD had a great little anecdote that sums it up quite nicely. Someone asked a famous person, "The world is ending tomorrow, what are you going to do?" The famous person replies "I'm going to move to Tennessee. Everything happens 10 years later in Tennessee."

 

We are fairly certain that Tennessee is where all the stock footage used in Republican commercials is filmed. This is "Real America", right here with the green hills and the blue skies and livestock. Where giant Ford trucks are a necessity because people actually haul things. Where Walmart IS the place to shop because it is the only big box store for miles. Where people grow their own food and hunting, not Whole Foods, puts food on their table. If this was the life I was raised in I too would think the TV was full of crazy people. Big cities and sky scrapers and hybrid cars, mini malls, smart phones, microbrews and soccer would seem all kinds of nuts and socialist to me too. In fact, anything that brings large amounts of people together while doing the same kind of thing would seem like a socialist activity. When Democrats go on TV and say "We are doing this together" it makes sense to me that the community here says "No we're not! I built this myself." Because they are doing things themselves. Yes, they have serious community out here but I can see where the western and eastern sea board seem so foreign and non representative of their life and how we are not in it with them. Because we don't. Even this one day excursion into the countryside has opened my eyes about the differences from state to state and I've been thinking about it so much I cannot even ariticulate it correctly yet.

 

There will be more to come. More adventure. More thoughts. I have to quit wasting this sunny day with blogging and a Gossip Girl marathon....

South by Southwest

After a grueling morning with only 3 hours of sleep, 2 flights and 1 document signing over our first born in blood to the rental car company, we made it to Nashville.

 

We look surprisingly chipper during our flight.Why you ask? Because we are fat. No one wanted to sit with us :( It's seat yourself on Southwest flights and all but one seat was sold. Should have been a pretty crowded flight, right? When the last few people were straggling in and it was down to several middle seats or the window seat in the row with Chris and myself, everyone looked at us and chose the middle seats elsewhere. Ha. I call Fat Perk! on this. Extra space and the option to snuggle with my honey is fine by me.

Turns out there are two hotels with the same name in Nashville. We went to the wrong one. Ours is not downtown as we had thought, but 1.5 miles away. We were a little bummed until we saw our room though. The registration agent sees how long we are staying and bumped us up to a rad corner suite. The adjoining wall is all windows as well.

Exhausted and famished from our travels we decided to call Friday a travel only day. It was 530p here which should have felt like 330p to us but we were ready for bed already. But first we needed food. We followed our first rule of travel only eat at places you couldn't eat at while home and headed to the White Castle down the street. Until I Wiki'd it and found out the history behind the White Castle, which basically invented fast food, my knowledge was limited to Harold and Kumar. We ordered a meal and a couple of teas, reminded ourselves that we have to specify unsweetened while here lest we want to have our first diabetic seizures, and mowed down on the tastiest, slimiest, pieces of "meat" I've ever consumed.

 

Our meal consisted of 10 sliders, 20 chicken rings, and a bag of fries. It was delicious or we were famished. All I know is that our hotel and this White Castle are in a sketchy area. I had to step over needles on the sidewalk sketch. People were sitting on the hoods of their cars in the parking lot and the counter girl was looking at us like we were bananas when we ordered. There is nothing that makes you have white guilt like handing a $100 bill to a 6'5" black man in a bow tie and paper hat except for handing a $100 bill to a 6'5" black man in a bow tie and paper hat in a place called WHITE CASTLE.

Back to the food. If you are in the vicinity of a White Castle and you have never been I recommend you go, once. Those are some steamy delicious little slime burgers that if I had been high would have been out of this world. I see the appeal of this as stoner food but there is a reason they call them sliders. You slide them right down and they...well...they continue sliding.

 

And then to recover for our next adventure, we slept for 15 hours.

The Dog Days Are Over

As I watered my beans Friday morning I noticed that my patio needed to be swept. I got out the broom, started sweeping up big yellow leaves and then realized

I'm sweeping up big yellow leaves, Fall is nearly here.

The signs have been slowly emerging..

 A pumpkin spice latte sign at Starbucks
 Cinnamon pine cones at the craft store
 Back to school supplies
 Squash displays at the market

 ...since these are commercial signs and they can be ad-set months in advance, I didn't buy into it.

But you can't argue with big yellow leaves.

Fall is my favorite time of year. Always. There is nothing I love more than boot weather, hot chocolate, nearly naked trees, couch snuggling and the fall premier of The Vampire Diaries.

Yes there is... Pumpkin flavored everything, It's a Wonderful Life, Halloween costumes, slouchy hats, big piles of leaves and the color Orange.

I know that here in California Fall will be different than it was back home in Kitsap. Which is okay because I don't like frozen sidewalks or monsoon rains. But I'm looking forward to whatever change may come.

When we knew we were moving to Las Vegas, which was approximately 1 year ago, I was so worried about what would happen to Fall. I estimated that living in Las Vegas would be like an endless summer. And that proved to be true. When I arrived in January it was 70 degrees. I had my sun dress on right away because to me it was summer temperatures. Our endless summer began. I haven't had a day below 70 degrees in 8 months.Chris hates it when I say the endless summer part because it implies some sort of vacation and our day to day life was far from a vacation. But we are settling in to Sacramento quite nicely. Chris is still on his training schedule so he is home most evenings and weekends. I am enjoying my first ever stretch of unemployment by being a better housekeeper and learning to do new things.

As it turns out, it's impossible for me to sit still. In addition to cooking recipes out of the Julia Child cook book I have canned several types of jam, a batch of pear chutney, and a huge crock pot of tomato sauce THAT I MADE FROM SCRATCH. And as most things I cook, will never be replicated ever again because I tend to throw pinches and hand fulls in the pot and never write anything down. But when you find beautiful San Marzano tomatoes at the market for .80/lb, buying 6 lbs of them, roasting them up, mashing them down and sprinkling them with with herbs from your own garden seems like the right thing to do.

And I made homemade butter. For real. Chris said I'm cheating because I used my Ninja instead of a freaking churn, but it's the 21st century my friend. And I'm not Amish. In the event that China attacks and enslaves us all for not being able to pay our debts there will still be gourmet eating at my hut. I know how to make butter in a mason jar and a blender and have 100+ jars of sauce to pour over our Soylent Green. ( I'm mixing futures here but you get the idea.)

I also made a batch of home made granola. Pennies on the dollar cheaper then the grocery store. And my apartments smelled fantastic.

My gardening is going well. My beans are growing like wildfire, or like Kentucky Pole Beans.

I have crocheted over 20 hats with the intention of opening a shop on Etsy in September. Last year I intended to keep my head fashionable and warm but had to throw an elbow or two to get people to stop snatching them off my head. That shouldn't be a problem this year as I plan on opening an Etsy shop where all of you can acquire my style through less violent means :)

Speaking of Kentucky, in a few days I will be there! Another perk of my temporary housewivery is that I can travel with my husband for his job. He has gone on trips to Utah and Arizona this year without me which is all good and fine. But Tennessee? No way he is going without me! Friday we fly into Nashville and since he doesn't start work stuff until Tuesday, we are spending the weekend in Kentucky. Elizabethtown KY to be exact.  This is a big deal to me because the movie Elizabethtown is one of my favorite movies of all time. Chris and I have always loved it and we have really bonded over it. Whenever we are sad about something we watch it and remind ourselves  "If it wasn't this, it would be something else." We constantly makes comments about our friends Chuck and Cindy, who are loving life 24/7. It has my second favorite funeral scene in a movie ( the first is Eulogy). Chris can recite entire passages from that movie and that is not something that Chris regularly does. I named my blog after something Claire Colburn says. And while I know that most of the movie was filmed in Louisville I still can't wait to actually see the town. And go on the tour of Makers Mark. 'cause we're loving life 24/7 :) Our hotel is on music row and I have a list of places I want to check out in Nashville like The Country Music Hall of Fame, The Parthenon, The Hermitage etc. I've been scoping out cemeteries too. I love historic cemeteries.

And because September can't possibly be busy enough, I have two job interviews the two days before we fly to Tennessee. So I will very likely get the rejection/acceptance phone calls while in Nashville. Neither job would start until October which is good because we just found out this week that Chris has to go to a 2 day conference in San Francisco a couple of days after we get back from TN. I've never been and unless something pressing comes up, I'm going to San Francisco too.

And at some point during all of this, I have to squeeze in some training for a volunteer position I will be starting at the end of the month.... Reading Tutor. The paperwork ball is already rolling and barring something like me actually having Tuberculosis, I will start tutoring 1 or 2 kids at a local elementary school in October. This is something I have always wanted to do, but I have always worked during school hours. I know that this will be challenging but I think the rewards will out weigh the hardships. Chris is afraid that I will have to end my commitment when I find a job and therefore I shouldn't even start. But I think I have to know that I at least tried.

All of this coupled with the fact that we opened a credit union account here means we are actually putting down some roots. In Vegas we always felt the need to remain portable. I guess we always knew Vegas was semi-permanent. I have even started to go through and update our addresses with our accounts. Which was something I was way to lazy to do before. One account even had our address from 3 years ago on it. Sometimes I wonder if that was my subconscious trying to not admit that the last two years happened. Like if there isn't a permanent record of it, we can try to deny it's existence. But all the hardships and OMG-IS-THIS-REALLY-MY-LIFE? 's we've endured have brought us to this spot. The spot where I wonder OMG-IS-THIS-REALLY-MY-LIFE? because of wonderful things.

Like this weekend...

I told Chris I needed to go to Penney's. He said he knows where a good outlet mall is instead. We hit the road and somewhere near Vacaville...

Chris: Are you going to ask where we are going?
Me: You said the outlet mall. Right now I'm assuming one in San Jose.
Chris: Nope.
Me: Are we just driving to San Francisco for the day?
Chris: Nope. Better. Napa.

Bra shopping at Penney's can wait. We're going to Napa Valley.

It was beautiful. I guess Chris drives through there every week to go to Santa Rosa and he wanted to show me our future house. I was expecting a great big villa in Sonoma naturally.

Welcome to the Ledson Winery. Which was originaly built as Steve Ledson's home. But he got so tired of people driving up and asking when the winery was going to open, he ran with it. He built a smaller McMansion out back to live in, quit selling his grapes to others and the Ledson Winery was born.

 

I just can't understand why people were driving up his driveway and asking him so many questions. You can tell by the understated driveway and entry that a Quasimodo style hermit lives here. Nothing says " Leave me alone, I'm recluse" like columns. And turrets. And medevil architecture. Seriously.

 (And in between those columns is my 6'3" husband for scale.)

 

 

We had a fabulous tasting and then drove back to downtown Napa. We had dinner at a little cafe called Downtown Joe's next to the Napa River. We talked about what we need to pack for our trip down south next week and it hit me.

 

OMG-IS-THIS-REALLY-MY-LIFE?

 

Eating dinner at this adorable cafe next to an adorable river in Napa discussing what distilleries we want to visit while we are in Kentucky next week. And how big of a cooler should I bring when I go to Fisherman's Wharf when we get back? And I hope I get the last spot in that cheese-making class I signed up for? And don't forget we have to cook up that King Salmon I bought at Whole Foods?

 

Yes, somehow this really became my life.

 

And trust me, I do not take one single minute of it for granted.

 I know what it is like to lose your job, sell everything you own, move into a bedroom at your mom's and be diagnosed with a debilitating disease. Some of you may not be enchanted with the idea and think a vineyard is a vineyard but I so clearly remember what it was like to not see straight for a week and I still want to look at everything possible. Especially when I know in the back of my mind that this is only the beginning and at any point Chris could be pushing my wheelchair up those steps.

 

Next blog will be coming from Nashville. Stay tuned.