Saturday, December 2, 2006

Last night was worth bragging about for a long time. Dan and I went to the Dixie Chicks concert last night. I have been whining to Dan for months about how badly I wanted to go, but the tickets started at $50 a piece. Not exactly in the budget.

So our good friend Kris comes through at the last minute, with a skybox compliments of his employer Ernst & Young.

I am such an obnoxious concert-goer. I can't help myself I have to sing along at the risk of annoying other concert-goers. I was so psyched. I loved their performance, their jokes and their songs. They marched on to the stage to the song "All Hail the Chief." Very appropriate.

Security was frisking attendees, so I don't have any pictures of me having an incredible time! I'm sorry that you don't get to see it.

I would give you a full report, but I'm still so excited about it, that I might need some more time to process. Come visit Music City and you can come to amazing shows, too!

Monday, October 23, 2006

I have really fallen down on my blogging. I am trying to catch up. Although this picture looks very boring, it is actually quite an accomplishment for us. We are very proud of the fact that we uncovered the remnants of an old garage under our yard, and build a shed on it. It took us almost two days, but we finally finished. Before, we had no outdoor storage at all, but now we have a place to store things so people can actually stay in our bedrooms without sleeping next to our bicycles. We cleared off enough of the slab and lined it with bricks so that we have enough room for a little patio when the weather gets nice again.

At first Dan and I thought we would have a Halloween party to show off the house to our friends, but now we're thinking Christmas...I don't know if we'll ever feel like we're done with it.

If you ever get a Home Depot or Lowe's coupon in the mail that you're not using, send it on to us. We can put it to use!

I'll try to keep up with the blogging better. Thanks for your patience!

Tuesday, September 19, 2006: Go Oilers, I mean, Titans!

Dan and I got to go to our first NFL game last Sunday. It was an interesting experience. Half of the fun was being around folks that we never would have been around on a regular basis.
The Titans lost, and it started to rain a little, but it was still fun. Mostly it was fun because we rode our bikes downtown and bypassed all traffic and parking issues. We earned the right to be smug by riding our bikes.

We were literally in the next to last row...of the entire stadium. But, that's fine with us. My boss rewarded me with the tickets. She seems to like me...

Monday, September 11, 2006: Discovery of the Patio...

Since we have decided to start inviting people to visit this winter, we need to reclaim our bedrooms from the piles of stuff that are stored in them currently.

So we bought a shed. We started by clearing away some dirt to level out the ground. Thud, thud...as we dig. Turns out, there's already a huge concrete slab under about a quarter of our yard where a garage once stood. How convenient! We kept digging, and it's large enough for the shed to sit on, and for a little patio on the side. We were excited until we couldn't figure out how we would anchor it to the concrete. We're taking suggestions.

This picture shows Dan digging out the slab, and Maddie eating dirt. She loves to chase anything that moves, including dirt that's being thrown onto a pile. She had so much fun chasing and eating dirt.

She did get tired after a bit, and just wanted to guard the pile of dirt. I'm glad somebody was having fun while Dan and I were shoveling and assembling metal pieces...

We're not finished. It will be a couple of weeks since Dan has to travel to Missouri next weekend to visit his ailing grandmother.

Keep Dan and his travels in your thoughts and prayers. He will only be there Friday night through Sunday afternoon, so it will be a crazy trip.

Wednesday, August 9, 2006:

We're singing at the Ryman! We're real Nashvillians now.

Tuesday, August 8, 2006:

Dan's week is improving after the lawnmower debacle. In fact, I learned this week that having your lawmower stolen in East Nashville is really a rite of passage. Check out this story by my NewsChannel5 reporter colleague about East Nashville's sense of humor regarding or quirky neighborhood:
http://www.newschannel5.com/content/news/21250.asp

His week didn't just get better because of the news story. I have been making friends with Dan's fellow Vanderbilt sociology grad students. One, Emily, used to work with the Center for Biomedical Ethics in Society at Vanderbilt. After I told her about Dan's research interests, she dropped his name to the director, who contacted him. He will be able to work with her on research within his interest, get paid and get published. And since many professors at Vandy don't expect their TA's to do a lot of work, he will have time to pursue these other opportunities.

Things are going well--we are still piecing together the house and getting settled in.

Don't forget to start planning your visit to Music City!

Thursday, August 3, 2006:

Nashvillians are serious about their music. I knew this in theory before arriving, but now I have undisputed proof.

Dan and I attended our first Music City concert at the most iconic venue in America--the Ryman. The Mother Church they call it here claims to have the best acoustics in the world second only to the Mormon Tabernacle. So, when folks pay for a show there, they expect to get one. We got one from Ryan Adams, my favorite musician. As a member of the former band Whiskeytown, he was a pioneer of the Alternative Country movement in American music.

At the show one front row audience member tossed an open bottle of liquor onto the stage. It bounced around spewing liquor on Ryan Adams, and he was not impressed. He stopped playing, pulled a candy bar out of his pocket, and started eating it. He stood there while his band stopped and said, "I don't need this." Spectators started booing, and screaming "Kick him out!" Security guards found the perpetrators and escorted them down the aisle. As they were walking down the aisle, the girl sitting beside us told us to lean back because she planned to spit her drink through her straw at the disruptors. We leaned back, but she wasn't fast enough. They were whisked out of the building quickly.

As soon as they left, and the audience was still cheering, Ryan and the Cardinals started back up again. Not 15 minutes later, Ryan stopped again. Apparently a drunk fan in the front row was taunting him verbally and physically. He yelled, "You wanna come up here and say that to my face?!"

Again, the audience was pissed that this disruptor was cutting into precious Ryan Adams time. They chanted to kick him out. Again, the Ryan Adams waited until his disruption was removed before he continued.

The concert was amazing, and not just because it was the most anticipated concert of the year for me. He really put on a great show mixing easy sing-alongs with new tunes, danceable beats with slow ones. The entire show (audience and performer) was great until the last song. His last song was reminiscent of a Wilco concert I attended recently. Ryan moved into an experimental ending to his last song that lasted way too long. It was painful at the end, after the novelty wore off.

After his too-long experimental ending, he walked off the stage, the house lights came up, and security came out onto the stage. No encore? No encore. How disappointing....

I have to continue reliving our concert moment for a long time since this was the first and last concert we will be able to attend for a while. We were so hopeful that music options would be so available in Nashville that there would be a lot of free options. There definitely aren't as many as we wish. However, the Derailers are doing a free show this Saturday night that we will definitely attend.

This place is a trip. You gotta come visit!