Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig!

Our trip to Nashville was fun, fun, FUN.  We sweated our fannies off at the Nashville Zoo Tuesday morning in 105 degree weather.  The only thing hotter than us was the elephant's butts.  It was enjoyable though, and Hubby was a good sport about waiting at every exhibit for me to take 1,621 pictures.  Then it was off to the hotel to shower and change before dinner and the concert because we had sweat right through our underwear, and frankly, that's no way to see a show.  We figured the folks in Section 106, Row L, seats 3 and 6 would appreciate it if we cleaned up before rolling into the arena. 

Dinner was good.  I ate my weight in crab legs, and then we scampered on down to the arena just in time.  The concert was outstanding.  Sometimes those older performers can be a little long in the tooth, but not these guys.  Stevie Nicks and Rod Stewart may be in their 60's but they still got it.  Their voices were strong.  Stevie was looking exceptionally good for 64, and Rod still knows how to work his fanny.  Hand to God, he moves as much and as well as he did when I saw him live in 1987.  In fact, the only difference in his approach to his shows these days are the big pictures of his grandbabies that he displayed on the big screens.  Yes, the man who brought us Do Ya' Think I'm Sexy in the 70's is now bragging about his grandkids.  And we all oohed and ahed because most folks in the audience had grandbabies, too.  Too funny.  By the way, his encore was a cheeky version of Do Ya' Think I'm Sexy while wearing a cowboy hat and a somewhat unbuttoned shirt.  If I die tomorrow, I'm ready to go, ladies.

The arena was packed with middle aged women like me who think he's still hot (see, it's not just me), and the whole evening was a trip down memory lane.  He sang all of his very best songs with an acoustic section smack dab in the middle of the concert that featured a few members of the Nashville Symphony.  Have I Told You Lately That I Love You and others.   Lovely, just lovely.  Stevie's encore?  Landside.  Lovely, just lovely.

We hit Broadway after the show, and piddled around a little downtown.  I've said it before, but I'll say it again, I just love Nashville.  It has the best people watching after dark when all of the wannabe stars and the homeless singers hit the streets, singing and playing on street corners.  And there are more tight skirts worn with boots than Little Jimmy Dickens has spangles.  It's why we call it Nashvegas.

We did find a nice hotel room at a decent price, for the two of you who were wondering.  I highly recommend the Millennium Maxwell House.  It was very clean and less than half the price of the Holiday Inn Express.  It was also quite a bit cheaper than the few downtown hotels that still had available rooms.  The Maxwell House is about a five minute drive from downtown, and they had a free shuttle to the downtown area, so that saved us cab fare, except on the way home after the show since we stayed downtown waaay past the last shuttle ride back to the hotel.  The Maxwell House is connected to the coffee by the same name, and it has a great history, so check it out sometime when you're Googling around on the internet.  I won't use up space here for that.  I'll just tell you like your mama did when you were a kid and asked her what something was and she said, "Go look it up!"  Seriously, go look it up.  It's kinda' fun.  Oh, and the hotel has a life sized statue of Jack Daniels in its bar (there is a connection between him and the hotel).  Did you know he was only 5'2"?  There's your trivia tidbit for the day.

Now it's back to work and back to getting stuff done around the house.  Mount Washmore was waiting on me when I got home, and the garden was full of tomatoes that needed picking.  Our tomatoes are rolling in.  So much so, that it's a little hard to keep up with them.  It's been so hot, and the tomatoes have been so plentiful that my diet lately has pretty much consisted of very few meals.  Instead, I just wander into the kitchen when I get hungry and eat a bowl of cherry tomatoes.  (We picked about five gallons of them this past week.)  I do that until my colon screams, "Enough FIBER already!"

This weekend will be an opportunity to relax a little, catch up on some pool time and edit some wedding pictures.  Here's hoping it cools down a little, although cooling down means the upper 90's at this point, and that's not really cool.  That's just less hot.  I'm not whining about the heat.  I promise.  Given the choice between garden tomatoes in 105 degree heat or a big heavy coat in 30 degree weather, I'll take the tomatoes and heat.  My colon might beg to differ.