Category: entertainment

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Must We Wake Up Already?

Last night was so much fun. I had a blast in the restaurant where a bunch of Facebook friends decided to meet up. We all got together at Puckett’s Grocery downtown. It’s not really a grocery – it s a bar, restaurant and place to hear live music every night of the week from local talent. The food is great and reasonably priced, and it’s a casual, friendly place. I had a blast!

This morning I am paying for it, though. I am SOOOO tired! I think I am allergic to mornings anyway, but this morning it is especially hard to wake up and get started on my day. Ugh. But I have a long list of errands and chores, so I had better get off the computer and get busy. Later, taters!

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Halloween Parties for Grown Ups

This weekend is when all the adults get to have their Halloween parties. The clubs and condo party rooms will be full of people in costumes, eating spooky snacks and having lots of fun. Downtown will be especially interesting this weekend, with just about everyone local going out in costume and only the out of towners still in street clothes.

Halloween is actually Thursday night, and next weekend will be too late for grown ups parties. I am glad that I can go out and have some fun with my friends this weekend and then stay home to pass out candy to the kids on Thursday night.

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Clever Street Art

Photo of street art with a mouse watering weeds

 

I guess that, technically, this is graffiti, but I think it is a cute example of street art that takes something ordinary, like a tiny weed, and turns it into something whimsical. Can you see ordinary things like weeds and get the inspiration to create something like this mouse watering a weed, as if it is her houseplant? I think it is so clever! And I don’t have near the talent to even draw something like this, much less come up with the idea in the first place!

I wonder if the government would get all upset if little drawings like this started showing up on the street curbs. I really think most people would enjoy them, but I bet there would be some jerk who thinks it is destruction of public property or some other stupid crime. And some people do not appreciate art at all – they like things plain, sterile and ordinary. I’m so glad that I am not one of those types!

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Rainy Forecast for the Fourth

This year I was really looking forward to going downtown on the Fourth of July holiday, but now I don’t think I will be going. The weather forecast is for rain tonight and all day tomorrow and a rainy Fourth of July night – all the way into Friday night. Yuck.

Several municipalities are cancelling their fireworks shows based on the rainy forecast. Some are pushing them out to Labor Day holiday weekend, which is a long way off but a kind of nice idea to add to that holiday celebration. Around here Labor Day does not usually mean much other than some people get a day off from work and all the outdoor swimming pools close.

Closing the pools on the first weekend of September is stupid in the South. The weather here is usually warm enough to enjoy a swimming pool for another 4 – 6 weeks.  I can see that if they need lifeguards it might be hard to find teenagers and college students available for lifeguard jobs, but truth be known, school here starts August 1, so the teens and college kids are long gone before Labor Day.

Anyway, if it really does rain all day and night tomorrow, I will stay home and watch the fireworks on TV instead of heading downtown. The last time I went downtown for fireworks, we got caught in a violent thunderstorm halfway through the fireworks show and the asshole police would not let us leave the bridge to go to our cars. They forced us to stay out on the bridge over the Cumberland River and risk getting hit by lightning. I was never so mad and so scared we would be hit by lightning before in my life. I will never let the police force me to stand outside in a thunderstorm again. So any time there is a serious threat of rain involved with a downtown event, I refuse to go.

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Stanley Cup Viewing Party

Watching pro sports on TV is just more fun when you have several people watching the game with you. I am looking for a Stanley Cup TV viewing party tonight – anybody know what sports bar is showing hockey instead of basketball?

I watched the first two Stanley Cup playoff games at home, alone. And usually I am totally OK with being alone. But the finals are so exciting, I would have more fun with at least 4-5 other people cheering and having fun watching the game live on cable.

My favorite team is the Nashville Predators, but they have not made it to the finals yet. This year the championship game series is between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Boston Bruins. Both teams are great and the first two games have both gone into over time.In hockey, there are no tie games and Stanly Cup overtime means sudden death – the first team to score wins the game.

I am cheering for the Blackhawks – I am in love with Chicago’s goalie, Corey Crawford. That man is amazingly flexible and quick!

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Listening to the Oldies

My favorite way to listen to music is with the online service called Spotify. You can use it for free, but I pay a small amount every month to get extra features. I’m not sure what the difference is, but I love Spotify and I don’t mind spending $5 a month to support this service.

Tonight I will be listening to the Oldies while I clean house and do the laundry. The weird thing is that my definition of the Oldies might be different from what you call the Oldies. There are actual Oldies radio stations, but they play really old songs, like from the 1950’s and 1960’s. That’s before most of us were even born. In my world, Oldies means the songs of the 1980’s.

The 1980’s songs were so fun for dancing and the best days of heavy metal bands. All the great Metal bands were forming their sound in the 80’s – like Metallica, Guns and Roses, Kiss, AC/DC, Alice in Chains, etc., although the genre got it’s start in the late ’60’s and 70’s. I think the 80’s were the hay day and I love the loud, upbeat music while I am busy scrubbing floors and washing dishes.

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Gaining Followers on Spotify

About a year ago I signed up for one of the very first American Spotify accounts. It was available in Europe for a couple of years, but for some reason – I’m sure it had to do with money and royalties – they did not bring it to America until 2012. I found a tekkie friend who shared one of his 5 allotted invitations to join up the first day and I’ve been hooked ever since.

I don’t know what the average user does about playlists, but I made up a BUNCH of playlists. I started out with a modern country playlist because it was easy to recognize the current stars and their current hit songs. Then I went to rock and roll from when I was in high school Those songs will always have tons of memories for me – they are what I grew up listening to. The third playlist was harder and took longer, but it is my favorite: adult contemporary. I like this music because it is fresh and easy on the ears. It is the kind of music that you hear on all the different genres of radio stations, but they appeal to everyone.

I had no idea that anyone cared about my personal playlists, but a few months ago I started getting email notifications from Spotify that people were subscribing to my adult contemporary playlist. I don’t know these people and don’t know how they found my playlist, but it is kinda flattering to find out that a lot of people share the same interest in music with you. I keep adding subscribers somehow – about 1 or 2 a week. Last time I checked, I had 64 subscribers to my playlist from all over the world – and I don’t personally know a single one of them!

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Wearing Green and Drinking Beer

This weekend is all about Saint Patrick’s Day. Here in Nashville we love any holiday that gives us an excuse to drink beer, so this is a big deal for downtown bars and restaurants. On top of the holiday, we have the SEC basketball playoffs here this weekend, with a huge number of extra partiers to accommodate.

I heard some big numbers on the news about how the downtown bars and restaurants can only actually seat something 75,000 people on a weekend, but with the basketball game there are going to be more like 100,000 people looking for fun and refreshments on Friday and Saturday nights. With all these extra people, Nashville decided to have a big street party and rope off a few blocks downtown to allowing drinking on the street – a very rare thing for our proper southern city!

To be honest, I do not drink much beer. I tend to not want the hassle of watching my intake and fretting about driving home without the risk of trouble with cops. And second, I don’t want all the extra calories. Third, I only like beer that is ice cold. I don’t want to hold a bottle in my hand and just sip on it for an hour with the heat from my hand raising the temperature of the beer. I don’t like drinking from a bottle anyway. I like a glass – and not plastic, I mean a real glass.

Sorry if I sound so finicky, but I have learned what I like and what I don’t like and I will certainly seek out the things that I like if I have that option. Maybe once in a while I might be at the boss’s house for a backyard barbecue and have to drink a beer from a red Solo cup, but most of the time I will be seated in a sports bar or a stadium suite and enjoy an ice cold beer served in a glass along with the peanuts or Chex Mix and a good baseball game or hockey game underway.

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Big Party Weekend in Washington DC

Tonight starts one of the biggest party weekends for Washington DC – the Inauguration! I actually know people who are going to one of the Inauguration Balls and loaned one of my girlfriends a gown to wear. How funny to think that my dress is going places that I cannot!

I wanted to know what is going on besides the Inauguration Balls, which are just party of all the festivities in DC, and found a complete schedule of the inauguration events, with names of the celebrities and performers on the ABC News web site.

While surfing around some other sites, I found a playlist of songs by the scheduled singers and bands on Spotify. I think that was a good idea to put together and will check it out next time I’m on Spotify – probably sometime late Saturday, while my dress is dancing with the stars in Washington, DC.

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Friday Feels Like Wednesday This Week

All these holidays days off earlier in the week plus bookended by weekends have got my internal date/day/time clock totally messed up. I still know about what time it is, but my days are so confused. This does NOT feel like a Friday. I cannot believe that tomorrow is Saturday and I have two days off again so soon.

I did enjoy having Christmas on a Tuesday. That gave me the whole weekend plus Christmas Eve being on a Monday was like a free bonus day to get all the last minute things done. I know a lot of people took off Monday completely or were able to leave early to get home and prepare for Christmas day.

This weekend is my R & R weekend. I don’t have to clean anything, the tree and decorations are already put away, and I think I will stop by Redbox for a couple of movies to take home with me for a Friday night movie and popcorn night.

Tomorrow I will deal with a little bit of paperwork – I have to make new files for the bills and taxes for 2013 – that means I will get some practice writing 2013 and letting the fact that this really is a new year sink into my brain! Then I might call a friend and see if anyone wants to go to the movie theater and watch either the Hobbit or Lincoln with me. If you want to go, hit me up!