Novemberings

It was a fun and busy month of November for us...

Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - 85 degrees - might as well get in the pool and clean out the fallen leaves...thanks, global warming!

11/5 -  We had a fun Saturday today starting with brunch at The Nashville Jam Company, a fairly new place over on the lake in Mt. Juliet.  The food was tremendous!

This was my pimento cheese and bacon omelet complete with a fresh biscuit and a hash-brown waffle!

We took a short hike around The Sellars Farm Indian Mounds/State Archelogical Site near our house in Lebanon to walk off our big breakfast and to start to get Ashlee's knee some rehab work:

One of the state protected Indian mounds at Sellars Farm.

We continued southeast for an afternoon visit, tour and tasting at Short Mountain Distillery over in Cannon County near Woodbury.

They are making some good hooch up here on Short Mountain.  We bought a bottle of their smooth Charred Shine (our favorite from the tastings) and even got a Hatch-Print style poster signed by the owner, Billy Kaufman.

Thursday, 11/10 - Tonight we caught a show by Ingrid Michaelson at The Ryman.  Her positive energy and songs were just what we needed after this surreal week of elections.   We had dinner before at the wonderful Jack Brown's Beer and Burger Joint with our friend, Bridgette, and her brother, Eddie, who were also going to the show.

Ingrid and her dynamite band put on a great show at The Ryman.

Friday, 11/11 - We attended an Open Telescope Night at the Dyer Observatory in Nashville tonight with an almost full moon and a cloudless sky.

Dyer's largest telescope, the Seyfert (under the dome in the above pic), was trained on Neptune tonight and although it only appears as a blue glowing dot through the lens, it's not visible to the naked eye and it's kinda cool knowing we saw something 2.8 billion miles away.  The observatory's smaller telescopes were trained on Uranus /(1.8 billion miles away), the surface of the Moon and the Pleiades star cluster.  What a great way to spend a Friday night!

Saturday, 11/12 - It was another weekend of beautiful fall weather, so we took an overnight road trip eastward and then up north into Kentucky to visit Cumberland Falls and the famous moonbow there since it was an almost full moon. We stopped in Cookeville for a tasty lunch at Father Tom's Pub on the way.

We were welcomed into Kentucky with a stinking flat tire just 20 or so miles from the falls.  We managed to get it changed onto the doughnut wheel and make it to the Cumberland Falls Resort Inn and checked into our room before dark.  After a ho-hum dinner at the lodge, we headed down to the falls to see the faint, but visible, moonbow.   The next day. and $70 later at a nearby Wal-Mart, we got our new tire and headed home without further incident.

11/13 - A Sunday morning view of Cumberland Falls.

11/13 - Sunday sunrise at the awesome Cumberland Falls Lodge patio looking down on the Cumberland River.  There was still a surprising amount of fall color despite it being mid-November and some very cool temps recently.

While we weren't able to capture the moonbow on our phone cameras the night before, we did get this rainbow shot in front of the falls the next morning.  This is about where the moonbow appears just a little lower toward the water.

Sunday, 11/13 - We got home from our road trip, rested up a bit, did some work around the house and then headed to Nashville to catch a showing of Jurassic Park at The Schermerhorn with The Nashville Symphony playing the terrific movie score.  We had dinner before at the always-great Suzy Wong's House of Yum with our friends, Wendy and Charlie, who also went with us to the show.

The screen's smaller,but sitting behind the orchestra as they play the movie score is the only way to experience it.

Autumn Activities

We started October 2016 with two separate trips with my guys-trip to Miami getting cancelled thanks to Hurricane Matthew, and Ashlee's to Key West and the Bahamas with her mom and niece almost being cancelled due to the same storm.

10/19 - Soon after her trip, Ashlee had to have knee surgery to repair a meniscus tear that had been bothering her for a while and that, obviously, put a damper on our activities for the next few weeks at least.

10/21 - Our first post-surgery activity was going to see the goofy comedy, Boo! A Madea Halloween, at the Watertown Drive-In.  Such a great place for a bargain movie and pretty darn good concessions at a reasonable price.

10/22 - We early voted today and this was actually our first time we've ever voting together, but it was important as we felt we had to do everything we could to stop a dangerous, unqualified person (not to be named here- trying to stay positive) from being our next president .  (Editor's note:  11/9/16...God help us all.)  

10/27 - It was a beautiful night for some Thursday Night Football in Nashville,  Halloween edition!

There was a pre-game show by one of our favorite local bands, A Thousand Horses.  And then another local up-and-coming band, The Cadillac Three, played at half-time.  All that and a game-that-wasn't-as-close-as-the-final-score thrashing of the Jacksonville Jaguars in prime-time on national television, 36-22.

We have to say as always "thank you" for the invitation and the tickets to the game to our own Pink Nightmare, and our dear, dear friend, Wayne.  It's always an adventure with The Wayniac! 

10/29 -  It was a beautiful day for a car ride today, so we headed over to College Grove, TN, to check out another Southern Living Idea House in the swanky development there known as The Grove.

The Southern Living Idea House in The Grove was stunning inside and out, but the backyard and its multiple decks were our favorite part of it.  Anyone got a million bucks or so just layin' around??