Meet-Up & Meet Cap

Friday, August 6, 2010

We had arranged a dinner this evening with our Meet-up.com group, The Nashville Child Free Couples Group. Meet-up.com is a great site that allows people in a certain area of the country (or world) with the same interest (kayaking, wine tasting, hiking, etc.) to "meet up" and do things together. While we are members of several Meet-Up groups in the Nashville area, and have met some great people; most of them are, admittedly, single and looking for more than just socializing. So, we started our own specialized group a year or so ago in hopes of meeting a few other couples without kids who were wanting to socialize in the Nashville area. We thought that surely we weren't the only couple whose other couple friends were either too busy with kids now to go out much, or when they did go out only seemed to want to talk about their kids' lives. There is nothing wrong with busy parents and/or proud parents. It's just not a choice we have made for our lives together.

We were surprised to have gotten a really good response right from the start. In fact, we have over 80 members now. Over the past year or so, we have met some great couples that we now consider good friends, and tonight it was sort of a core group of six of us who originally met the very first time we got together socially, There was Gary and Cary, John and Dorie and ourselves. There were two other new couples that had originally signed up to attend, but dropped out a day or two before for different reasons (fairly common in the Meet-up.com world). Six is a great number for dinner anyway, so no big deal. We met at the City House Restaurant in the Germantown neighborhood of downtown Nashville.

What a cool place! Housed in an old, but impressive structure of exposed brick and high ceilings, City House boasts a very unique menu for Nashville with an emphasis on house-cured meats (their sausage made on site was amazing), fresh pasta and locally-grown produce. Funky and delicious cocktails along with an excellent beer menu just added to the greatness of the place. We plan to come back sometime and sit at the chef's bar that overlooks the kitchen to watch the magic happen first-hand.

After a great time of excellent food, lively conversation and a lot of laughs, we opted to head over to 8th Street and catch the 9:45 show at Zanies Comedy Club starring John Caparulo. "Cap" as he is known, has become one our favorite round-table comics on the late-night celebrity-bashing TV show that we love with a guilty pleasure called "Chelsea Lately." Not only was Cap on fire with his stand-up routine and had us rolling, but both of his openers were great as well including the hilarious Mike Speenburg. It was a perfect way to "cap" off a great evening in Nashville.