A few little sumpin' sumpin's

A few activities of note over the past three weeks or so:

Friday, February 8:  We attended the first of four sold-out shows for comedian, Drew Carey, at Zanies in Nashville.  He was pretty funny and his insight behind his new gig as host of "The Price is Right" was hilarious.."cash, cars and trips!"  He also had a pretty good opener by the name of Brendon Walsh. Our front row balcony seats were great.  Thanks to our friends, Wayne, Mike, John and Monique for attending with us.

Saturday, February 9:  We went and saw the re-release of the 1987 classic, "Top Gun" as it was presented in IMAX and 3D at Opry Mills Theaters in Nashville.  The 3D wasn't that big of a deal, but the IMAX conversion was excellent.  Maverick and Goose never looked so good...or BIG!!  Thanks to our friend, Mike, for attending with us.

Thursday, February 14:  We spent Valentine's Day at home this year and made some kind-of last-minute reservations for dinner at a new Italian restaurant over in East Nashville called Pomodoro East.   The food was very good and reasonably-priced, and Ashlee's violet martini (photo above) was tasty.  We have been looking for a good Italian place in Nashville and  we will definitely be back here, especially when it warms up because they have a sweet patio seating area as well.

Friday, February 15:  We weren't really planning on going to see Kid Rock at The Bridgestone Arena in Nashville (not our particular style of music and not our favorite music venue), but when a pair of tickets became available and were offered to us by our good friends, Chris and Tarryn, we decided to give it a go.  The concert wasn't half-bad and the guy is definitely a showman.  Our seats were good and dinner before the show at Big River Grille was tasty.  Thanks again to Chris and Tarryn for the invitation as well as their friends (and now ours), Stewart and Stacey, who also attended dinner and the show.

Monday, February 18:  We took advantage of the President's Day holiday today and slipped over to Belcourt Avenue in Nashville  for a late lunch/early dinner at Belcourt Taps (tasty "stuffed" burgers and good beer on tap) and then walked back across the street to The Belcourt Theatre to catch The Oscar Nominated Short Films (live and animated) for this year.  This has become a bit of a tradition for us the past couple years in preparation for the upcoming Oscars ceremony and the coinciding party we are invited to each year at our friend Brenda's house (see below for more info).  This year's entries weren't as good as the previous year's in our opinion, but all of them were interesting.  No clear-cut winners could be determined by us in either category, so it's anybody's guess who will win.

Saturday, February 23:  We were down in Chattanooga visiting Ashlee's mom (who continues to recover nicely) and since her house is a construction site currently due to a bathroom remodeling project, we decided to have a bit of a "stay-cation" by booking a cheap room (thanks to Hotwire.com's buy-it-blind program) at the historic and lovely Read House downtown.  The room was great and the bed was amazingly comfortable.  We slept in the following morning after a great dinner across the river at the Brewhaus, which has quickly become one of our favorite Chattanooga eateries.

Sunday, February 24:  We were invited again and attended again our friend, Brenda's, fantastic Oscar party and had a great time as usual.  Brenda added a twist this year by inviting all guests to dress in movie-related costumes if they wanted to with a chance for prizes.  I am proud to say that Ashlee took second place (which was a DVD copy of the soon-to-be-crowned Best Picture - "Argo") with her funny rendition of the bounty hunter, Django from another best picture nominee, "Django Unchained."  My costume mimicking the android, David, from my favorite film of the year, "Prometheus" didn't fare as well, but I liked it and it was damn comfortable!  Thanks, as always, to Brenda for throwing such a fab soiree of great food and good times.


Monday, February 25:  Tonight, we decided to plunk down some solid cash again and get our favorite Nashville Predator seats down on the glass behind the visitors' penalty box (we've sat here two other times and loved it).  Our friend, Mike, was in town and had never sat on the glass, so we figured that was as good an excuse as any.  Well, we couldn't have picked a better game to sit where we did.  There was  lots of action and scoring, lots of penalties for Dallas giving us a chance to razz the players sitting in front of us.  A couple of them were once again willing to read our signs for them:  "Never heard of you???"  and "ESPN is reporting you just got traded!"  and acknowledge us with a smile and a laugh.  There was a huge glove-dropping fight in the 3rd period, and finally, and best of all, the Preds had a dramatic comeback and overtime win of 5-4.  We had a pre-game dinner up in The Suite Spot up in the Patron Platinum Level of the Bridgestone Arena (access granted by our fancy tickets) which serves high-end concessions (the Buffalo chicken mac-n-cheese and the spicy southwestern meatballs were excellent).  Thanks to our good friend, Wayne, for coming with us again as well.

"Twinkle, twinkle, little Dallas Stars."  Let's try and count all of them...one, two...three...oh, wait, I see another one!  Make that FOUR Dallas stars crammed into the penalty box.  Naughty, naughty, boys! 

Below is a quick a video of the opening puck-drop that gives a sense of how close we were to the lightning-quick action.



A pretty darn fun February if we do say so ourselves!