DISCLAIMER

"To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield"
- Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1833

"live deep and suck out all the marrow of life"
- Henry David Thoreau, 1845

"Some guys, they just give up living
And start dying little by little, piece by piece
Some guys come home from work and wash up,
And go racin' in the streets"
- Bruce Springsteen, 1977

"...to the heart, there's no time for you to waste.
You won't find your precious answers now
by staying in one place"
- Frank Turner, 2009

"The best things in life aren't things
They're living and breathing"
- Michael Franti , 2011

"Well, this world is ours while we are in it
Grab a hold of my hand
And we can take it
Together, our lives are just one passing minute
It could be gold, if we make it"
- Jay Buchanan, 2012

"We've got these times of our lives
Let's take this time to let it show
'cause these are ours.
These are ours!"
-Justin Furstenfeld, of Blue October 2013

"I owned every second that this world could give,
I saw so many places, the things that I did"
- Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic, 2014

"No cash in the bank, no paid holidays
All we have, all we have is
Gas in the tank, maps for the getaway
All we have, all we have is time"
- Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, 2014



All written content and photos by Rob Fulfer unless otherwise indicated.

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

MAYnniversary Month

Thursday, May 4 - We saw Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. in IMAX (obviously) tonight with our friends, Danny, Brenda and Wayne.  It was as good, if not better, than the original!


Saturday, May 13 - We saw J. Roddy Walston and the Business at The Revelry Room in Chattanooga with our friends, Danny, Brenda and Bill tonight.  Ashlee barely got in since she had left her ID at home, but thanks to the internet we got in.  We had an excellent dinner before the show a couple doors down at Stir.  It's very cool what Chattanooga has done with this area of town around the Choo Choo.
HAIR's J Roddy Walston doing what he does best!
Thursday, May 18 - We flew to Tampa after work today to begin our 16th Anniversary Trip along Florida's Gold Coast including a couple night's stay in the tiny hamlet of Cedar Key which is supposed to be a "poor man's Key West."
May 19 -  Happy Anniversary to us!!  And, hey, is that a monkey?  Well, it probably is since this is the Monkey Bar in Homosassa Springs where we stopped for lunch on our way north from Tampa to Cedar Key.  It seems that four spider monkeys live on the tiny island in the harbor here and can be viewed while you eat some tasty seafood and have a cold one.  The black smudge near the little house is one of the inhabitants that we saw while we were there.  
Cedar Key is definitely a small version of Key West with quite a blue collar on it.  While they have a few bars to bide your time at including this cool tiki bar at the Low Key Hideway, this is a working town and a naturalist's paradise.

Our stay at the Cedar Key Bed and Breakfast was pretty good.  We booked the Sunrise Suite bottom floor which is a separate house across the street from the water a mile or so away from the B and B.  Their breakfasts each morning  were just OK, but the view  with the meal was pretty spectacular back at the B and B main house with it's  lush gardens  and  ancient and giant live oaks.
Just across the road from our rental house was the beautiful gulf a view of some of the flat key islands.  We had good weather throughout our stay although the humidity had definitely found this place already.

Saturday, May 20
- We had an active day today with an interesting and informative morning boat tour of some of the key islands and then a great airplane ride over them for a totally different perspective.
Sea birds are the biggest inhabitants of this area outnumbering humans by a large percentage.
Our pilot, Marve, took us on a great 20-minute flight above the keys (this is Atsena Ote Key pictured here).  Big thanks to Ashlee for saying we should go today since the weather was not cooperative the next day.


Sunday, May 21 - We headed out of Cedar Key today and headed back south.  We had a late evening flight back home from Tampa and most of the day to kill.  On the way back, we stopped at the adorable Twistee Treat  in Tarpon Springs for some ice cream.  We really enjoyed  tooling around in our sweet Mustang convertible during this trip.  Enough so that we are thinking of a purchase of a used one in the near future.

With the weather improving as we neared Tampa, we stopped for a quick visit to Honeymoon Island State Park and took their ferry over to to Caladesi Island  which you can only reach by boat.  We just hung out at the dock and had a cold one before riding the gentle waves back to the mainland.  Another great little weekend trip in the books.


Monday, May 22 - We were fortunate to attend the historic Game 6 of the NHL Western Conference Finals where our Predators had a 6-3 win  over the Anaheim Ducks and will now be playing for the Stanley Cup!!   We had terrific upper-deck, front row seats ( Section 327, Row A. Seats 10 and 11) that we will definitely try and get again  We parked for free at Czann's Brewing beforehand and had a couple beers with our pal, Wayne.   After the game we met up with our friends, Brenda and Danny, outside the arena with about 10,000 others who didn't make it inside. What a beautiful night and what a beautiful feeling!!


Saturday, May 27 - We attended our friends, Wil and Alyssa's Wedding tonight and it was a beautiful ceremony at the very nice Legacy Farms venue here in Wilson County.  It was made even more memorable due to a power outage during the reception due to stormy weather, but a car-operated generator kept the lights on and the tunes blasting throughout the night of celebration.

Friday, May 5, 2017

March and early April - pre-big-Japan trip

Our plate was a little light this month as we prepare 

for our big trip to Japan next month!!


Fitz and the acoustic Tantrums
Friday, 3/3 - We headed over to the cool old Marathon Motor Car Factory, the home of one of the main shops for TV's American Pickers (photo above), in downtown Nashville tonight to catch one of our favorite new-to-us bands, Fitz and the Tantrums, play a short, but good, acoustic set at Marathon Music Works.  They closed the show of four different music acts.  The first three of which we had zero-interest in, but the price was cheap and it was for a good cause with all the proceeds going to help fund suicide prevention.  Thanks to our friend, Bethany, for tagging along with us, as well as to dinner beforehand at the tasty Slider House.

Sunday, 3/5 -  It continued to be an acoustic weekend as tonight we headed over to East Nashville to catch one of our favorite local singer/songwriters, Will Hoge, at The Basement East in a program called Four in the Floor, an intimate in-the-round performance by four different musicians.  Besides Will, we saw veteran troubadour, David Olney; rising country-singer/songwriter, Jaida Dreyer; and a very impressive performance of the young, raw talent of Tyler Childers (this guy's going somewhere, folks).   This was our first time at this relatively new venue as well and we liked it a lot.  We hope to return ASAP.
See Will Hoge's back, but listen to Will's amazing voice and songwriting talent!
Friday, 3/10 - We headed over to The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville tonight to catch the opening-night showing of Kedi, a documentary about the thousands of street cats in the ancient Turkish city of Istanbul and a focus on a few of them and their human counterparts.  It is a charming film that is well shot and totally entertaining...if you like cats, that is.  Beforehand, we had a quick bite to eat for dinner at McDougal's Chicken across the street from the theater.
3/13 -  Monday Fun-day?  Yep, that's right.  I had the day off and Ashlee played a little hooky from work today and we went into Nashville for a bit of fun on a cold and cloudy Monday.  It started with a delicious brunch at Wild Eggs, one of our favorite places to eat in Louisville now has a new location in downtown Nashville and it was as great as ever.

We walked off some of our meal by street-hiking a couple blocks up to the beautiful Nashville Downtown Library to check out the photography exhibit, "Hidden in Plain Sight", a retrospective of famous (and infamous) buildings around Nashville that played an important role in the history of this city, but most of which sit unassuming to most passersby.
From the library we walked a few more blocks to 5th and Church to check out one of the subjects of the "Hiding in Plain Sight" - the First Presbyterian Church which happens to be open on Mondays for self-tours and we were able to check out its amazing stain glass windows and Egyptian-style interior design.  


Next stop was the Antique Archaeology store which was open today over in Marathon Village which we had been to a few days earlier this month.  We also checked out the new (and very nice) Jack Daniels General Store also in the complex.
Thursday, 3/16 - Check out our newly redone wood floors!  And our new spring wreath! Thanks to Ashlee for spending most of her bonus from work this year to get our nappy dining room and living room wood floors redone.  They look amazing!

Sunday, 3/19 - We saw a show by the legendary Steve Martin (with the talented Steep Canyon Rangers) and the hilarious Martin Short at the Grand Ole Opry tonight with our friends, Nate and Ginny.    The show was wonderful and we wish it could have went on longer.  So many laughs, so much good music, and special guests like Jerry Douglas and his dobro, made this a great event.  Thanks to Ashlee for procuring the great seats we had as well!

Monday, 3/20 - It was a day off from work today for me, but that doesn't mean I wasn't working. With Ashlee's help, we got our new fire-pit put together and arranged using wood seats from our old maple tree.   The 80-degree weather made it seem like we were too late to use it, but we figure even with this being the first day of spring, we will still get a few chilly nights before long to fire it up.

Friday, 3/24 - Well, that didn't take long!  It was cool and dry enough to fire up the new fire pit tonight along with a couple bottles of wine and some tasty s'mores.
Saturday, 4/1 - With only two home-games left in the regular season, we actually attended our first (and only) Preds game at Bridgestone Arena together today.  The timing just hasn't worked out for us to get to any other games this season and we were honestly a bit burned-out from last year when we had partial-season tickets and going to the games became a bit of a grind.  We both agree going to fewer games makes the times that we do go much more special.  We got great seats up behind the Preds bench and it was a masterful 3-0 win over the Minnesota Wild for the good guys.  We won a lot of stuff including free Big Macs with a late second period goal.  Then, our Section 116 was selected to win scratch-off lottery tickets from which we promptly won three bucks.  And, finally, we secured free doughnuts with the impressive shut-out by our  awesome goal-tender, Pekka Rinne.  Before the game, we stopped by Czann's Brewing for a couple of pints and scored some very valuable free parking there for the game as well, and we also ran into our buddy, Nate.  Cheers!

Sunday, 4/2 - You're darn right we got our free Big Macs and Dunkin Doughnuts today!  Thanks, Preds!!
Saturday, April 8 - It was a beautiful day for a walk from our house to Speedy Burrito for a tasty lunch and then to catch the last 6 innings of the Cumberland University Phoenix baseball team taking on the Georgia Gwinnett Grizzlies.  We got $5 seats right behind home plate and while the Phoenix fell 9-6 in this game of big innings for both teams. they did take the weekend series 2 games to 1.