It's right there in black and white...Happy First Birthday, Dudley! (Oh, and Rob has one too)

 

Wednesday, March 17 -  Byron says spring has officially sprung!  But then I had to pinch him because he wasn't wearing green for St. Patty's Day! LOL

Sunday, March 21 - We had an excellent breakfast down in Chattanooga today at a relatively new place called Syrup and Eggs.  We started off with these beautiful and tasty breakfast cocktails - the adult chocolate milk for Ashlee, and the apple pie chai (with Dickel) for me.  We deserved this good meal since we had to endure possibly the worst Mexican food we've ever had the night before at a crappy place out on Brainerd Road for our friend, Patrick, celebrating his recent birthday.  We were also celebrating another weekend of progress at the Carroll House/future AirBnb with the carpets cleaned, a cleaning service secured, replacing a broken outer deck door and two rotten boards on the same deck

Tuesday, March 23 - We enjoyed another installment of the Johnnyswim Livestream from the Backyard  (Palm Springs Edition) on YouTube tonight.  This couple have quickly become a favorite of ours out there in the musical world.

Friday, March 26 - We had tickets this afternoon to a timed showing of Picasso. Figures. at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville.  This is a hard ticket to get with most showings sold out weeks in advance.  On loan from the national Picasso Museum in Paris, these 75 pieces from the great master are only showing here within the U.S.  Quite the get for our little art gallery as it celebrates its 20th anniversary.  We enjoyed the exhibit despite not being big art lovers.  Picasso was an interesting dude.  That's for sure.

Before the exhibit we had time for a glass of wine in the lobby of the beautiful Union Station Hotel next door.   Afterwards, we took a nice stroll in the warm afternoon sun over to The Gulch for a tasty dinner at Emmy Squared.  On the way, our overpass view shown above of what seemed to be an endless line of train cars filled with Kentucky coal stretched out below us.

Sunday, March 28 - Happy Birthday, Dudley!  Our tuxedo boy, Dudley, turns one year old this week, so we decided to throw him a Black and White Party in honor of his signature colors.  Ashlee made this adorable coconut cat in his image.  We had about 15 friends and family over for the occasion. 

Dudley got lots of gifts as well as donations to local shelters in his name.  He seemed very grateful for everything and all the attention (somewhat).  

Thanks to our friend, Ginny, for this great shot of us and our special boy.  We love you, buddy!

Thursday, April 1 - No FOOLIN'  POOL'S OPEN!! 

Saturday, April 3 - After working most of the day on the soon-to-be AirBnB Carroll house, we stopped in for dinner at the fairly new location of Jack Brown's Beer and Burger Joint housed now where the old college bar, Yesterday's, was located.  Man, there are some memories in there!  But now the beer's way better and the food is outstanding as usual at a JBBBJ.  Glad to see something good is in a good ol' place. 

Sunday, April 4 - Happy Easter!  We went to breakfast again at Syrup and Eggs and then followed that up with a little churching. This was our first visit to the progressive service at St. Mark's United Methodist Church just around the corner from the Carroll house.   It was very positive and very music-oriented and we appreciated the social-distancing requirements in the pews.   Afterwards, it was a nice afternoon back home on the patio enjoying the spring weather with family and grilling out.  

Wednesday, April 7 - Just a cat in a yak....

Friday, April 9 - We packed up the car (and the foster kittens) today and headed toward Blue Ridge, Georgia, for a return trip for us to this great area.  This time, however, it was with our friends, Toney and Lisa.  Toney had a friend who had bought a cabin in Blue Ridge recently and he was able to secure us a decent deal on a long weekend rental of it.  On the way down, we finished one of the best audiobooks we've listened to in a long time:  Greenlights is the memoirs and biography of actor, Matthew McConaughey, who we both love.  Spoken in his own awesome voice, there's probably no better way to experience it.  Let's just say it's "Alright, alright, alright...." 

The cabin we rented was sweet.  Nestled down in a little hollow made it feel like it was a million miles from anywhere, yet the town of Blue Ridge is only a few miles away.   It has great amenities also like a big, covered hot-tub (in the background in the shot above); two decks facing out over babbling Sugar Creek, one of which was screened; a fire-pit built into the other deck; a pool table; and a beautiful shuffleboard table.   Tons of room inside as well.  Good find, Toney! 

The cabin was so peaceful, except at night when the spring peeper frogs roared through the surrounding trees.  Loud neighbors are the worst, am I right!! 

Saturday, April 10 - Despite some rainy weather in the area, we had a fun day starting with a visit to the very nice Bear Claw Vineyards, just around the corner from the cabin.   We both got wine flights and were surprised at how good their wares were. 

Great blues music by Travis Bowlin there in the background.  Great selfie skills by Ashlee in the foreground.  

After a pretty good dinner at a restaurant in downtown Blue Ridge called Southern Charm, we ambled over to Escape Blue Ridge to try out luck at one of their two challenges.  We chose the pirate-themed room (mostly because it was the only one available), and, man, was it HARD!!  We came up three locks short of winning the challenge before our hour was up, but we gave it a good try and all four of us chipped in to get as far as we did (including getting out of handcuffs we were in from the start!!). 

After our escape room fun (and failure) we returned outside to find the weather had broken and it was a beautiful evening in this always quaint little town here in the North Georgia mountains.  

We are fostering three young sibling kittens right now, so we had to bring them with us, of course. and they weren't any trouble at all. They were great little travelers! We were supposed to keep them in their kennel while at the no-pets-allowed cabin, but --- shhhhh --  they did get to explore our bed a little.  This is Clara in the photo above.  Her brothers, Morris and Asher, are out and about out of the picture as well.  

Spoiled women or spoiled me maybe since they allowed me to go to craft brewery here in Blue Ridge called Grumpy Old Men Brewing.  Ashlee and I came here several years ago when it was just opening and now it is a bustling and growing place that is very popular.  

We got back to the cabin to enjoy the hot-tub a little, then got a fire going in the fire-pit on the bottom deck and listened to more of the "roar" of the spring-peeper treefrogs that surrounded the cabin both nights we were there.  Thanks to my friend, Barry, for help in identifying the little loudmouths!!  And for telling us we were "lucky" to hear them since they only sing for a short time during the spring months.

Sunday, April 11 - The drive back was uneventful since we had the kittens in tow, and it limited our opportunities.  We did, however, stop back in Chattanooga and do a little work around the Carroll house prepping it ever closer to being an AirBnb hopefully.  Our biggest accomplishment was changing out this broken light switch (our first electrical project together).  Yes, we we need a new, white face-plate, but that's the easy stuff!! 

Tuesday, April 20 - Oh yeah, it's my birthday too on this blog entry.  Happy 54 to me!!  Thanks to the pandemic and my current work situation, we spent this one at home, but did take time to enjoy a good meal and a few libations at TennFold Brewing over in Donelson.  Thanks to our friends: Nate, Bethany, Danny and Brenda for joining us in the celebration.

Friday, April 23 - This afternoon we headed east to Monteagle Mountain for my post-birthday weekend trip to The Retreat at Deer Lick Falls.  It's a cool little development of tiny homes built around a beautiful waterfall that I visited many, many years ago.  We found this place on our last visit to this area back in 2019.  We had planned on going for my birthday last year, but the pandemic shut that down.  Our friend, Bethany,  joined us renting her own tiny house just a short walk from ours.

Our tiny house was a little beauty, and Bethany's was even a little nicer.  The whole community is really neat with hiking trails, communal fire pits, a playground for the kiddos, and even a nice covered pavilion for use by any of the residents.  After settling in (and hanging out with our illegal foster kittens...shhh, don't tell), we called it a fairly early night.

Saturday, April 24 - We woke up to some steady rain this morning, so we headed out for a late breakfast at Jim Oliver's Smokehouse, a staple up here on the mountain since the 1960's.  There was a wait for their famous breakfast fare, so we killed the time wondering around the store attached to the restaurant (I wonder if Cracker Barrel stole their concept from here maybe?).  Our greatest "find" was the hilarious Blazin' Rectum BBQ sauce (and jelly, yikes!!).  Nothing like truth in advertising I guess!  Breakfast was great and we also bought some fried pies and fudge on our way out.
(Editor's note:  In a shocking ironic twist, Jim Oliver's Smokehouse burned to the ground just three days after our visit.  So sad.)

After breakfast, the rain stopped and the sky lightened up enough for us to have a  nice window of opportunity to visit the showcase for the tiny home development, stunning Deer Lick Falls.  She was flowing beautifully after all the rain this morning and overnight.  

The trail down to the base of Deer Lick Falls  is steep and tricky, but we all made it safely in and out.  We had the falls all to our own as well which was nice.    Thanks to Ashlee for this great triple-selfie shot.

I made contact with our old friend, Jess Betchart, again today and arranged to drop by and see him.  We had a great visit with him a couple years ago when we were up in this area and wanted to show Bethany his neat wood-carving shop and to just see how he was faring through the pandemic.  We had a long visit that went close to three-hours as he regaled us with many stories from his past.  Sadly, his wife remains very ill, and his loving companion dog, Dusty, had passed away since we last visited, plus Jess's advancing age, all seemed to be taking their toll on him.  He was not quite the person we visited back in 2019 or who I met almost 30 years ago.  It's scary and sad to see a person's mind slowly start to slip and actually change who they really are or were.  It's a tough road we all must walk down eventually.  

Despite some nasty weather moving back in the area while we were visiting with Jess which even led to tornado sirens going off in the town of Monteagle, we checked the weather radar and figured it was safe to duck into The Mountain Goat Market for some dinner.  The place was hopping, but were able to grab a table and have a great dinner of fresh salad and two of their delicious custom pizzas.  This mountain goat astronaut mural overlooked us at our table.  Keep it weird, Monteagle! 

After dinner, the sky's cleared again, so we drove over to The University of the South at Sewanee for a quick look around.  Man, what a beautiful campus.  You really forget what a jewel it is as you zip by on I-24.  I caught this sunset and moonrise over their school's gothic-looking dining hall during our brief walk on the campus.
We spent our evening back our respective tiny houses, hanging out in both and admiring their craftmanship and ingenuity.  We even watched a silly tiny house hunting show at Bethany's place which seemed appropriate given where we were.  

Sunday, April 25 - We spent this morning packing up to head home and having some leftover pizza and fudge for breakfast...always thinking healthy!   I did enjoy the early morning tranquility out on the porch of our tiny home beforehand with a cup of coffee.  Bethany said he she did the same.  It really is a great place here, and we will definitely try and come back sometime if we get the chance.  

We got home in time to do a few things around the house before heading out again over to our friends', Danny and Brenda, house to watch The Oscars telecast in their newly-designed "relaxation room" over their garage.  They ordered some great Thai take-out and we enjoyed the pandemic-version of the awards show that was a little weird, sometimes funny and always interesting.  We are proud to say that we saw the Best Picture winner "Nomandland" a few months back and really enjoyed it.

Be My Valentine...every day! Ya big ol' SL-UT!!! Wait...what??

Tuesday, February 9 - Our heart-shaped gouda cheese plus a ton of other goodies from Kenny's Farmhouse in Kentucky arrived today as an early Valentine's Day gift for both of us!

Thursday, February 11 - Tonight we tuned into the first of a series of three Brett Dennen livestream shows.  Tonight he was performing his entire album "Loverboy" from a ski lodge in Taos, New Mexico, and it was great...
 ...and on Thursday, February 18 - he performed his entire new album "See The World"...
...and on Thursday, February 25 he performed a "trail mix" of some of his best songs.
We enjoyed them all and we love ya, Brett!  

During tonight's Brett Dennen show we enjoyed a pretty and tasty chocolate heart cake that Ashlee picked up recently at Trader Joe's! 

Friday, February 12 - It's Date Night...at home..thanks, Covid.  So instead of going to a theater for a Friday night flick, we rented and streamed Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, the brand new Kristen Wiig comedy off of Apple.  It was silly, but kind of fun.  In fact, it was a real "tit-flapper"!!  

Saturday, February 13 - Ashlee picked up this awesome little Valentine's-themed cake today that she had ordered from a local teenage baker.  It was light and delicious! 

Sunday, February 14 - Happy Valentine's Day!!  Unfortunately, our plans for a Valentine's Day brunch at The Farmhouse in downtown Nashville, and a virtual concert from The Ryman with Drew and Ellie Holcomb both had to be postponed due to inclement winter weather in the area.  We hope to get out to The Farmhouse soon to try their brunch, and The Ryman show has been rescheduled for Thursday, February 25th.

Ashlee instead made us a great dinner from our new air fryer.  And Drew and Ellie did give a free half-hour acoustic show from their house via Instagram tonight that was really good.

 
We followed that up with another free performance by Johnnyswim on YouTube called Live from the Backyard which was a lot of fun to watch.  We enjoyed watching both shows on our new, big screen TV in the den via our Amazon Firestick.

Monday, February 15 - Our newest (and youngest) cat, Dudley, had his first encounter with a reasonable amount of snow/ice on the ground today.  He wasn't a big fan of it, and came back in the house on his own pretty quickly.  None of the other three were interested in going out at all! 

Wednesday, February 17 - Ashlee snapped this pretty pic of our snowy home tonight.  The snow and ice continued to accumulate over to well over 4" in the last couple days, the roads are a mess, and the temps are frigid in this first (and hopefully only) major winter storm of the season. 

More fun with snow...balls.  These little solar-powered light balls that I got Ashlee for Christmas just on a whim have turned out to be really great.  Even covered in snow and ice after a cloudy day, they continue to glow and change colors.  Another great pic by Ashlee.  

Friday, February 19 - We celebrated the end of a long snow-bound week by finally getting out our new Solo Stove that Ashlee snagged on Black Friday back in November.  We enjoyed a few winter-style beers and munched on some delicious Kenny's cheese and sausages from our recent Valentine's order.  The new stove did great in keeping us relatively warm despite the temps never getting above freezing today and even dropping even more as the sun set.  

Saturday, February 20 - We fired up the Solo Stove again tonight and had a great Blue Apron dinner sitting around it that Ashlee prepared.  It was sweet sausage and peppers hoagies and cheesy roasted potatoes.  We also had some hot spiced tea spiked with with Maker's Mark 46 bourbon that was excellent.

Sunday, February 21 - We got together with our friends, Danny and Brenda, and planned a private movie screening at the AMC Thoroughbred Theaters in Cool Springs tonight along with a dozen  more of our friends.  It's a great offer that the struggling theater chain is doing right now to promote more visits during Covid.  Brand new movies are kind of pricey, but old classics are only $99.  

We chose our classic favorite, The Big Lebowski, of course.  This one has great sentimental value to the four of us since we went to a Lebowskifest in Louisville way back in 2011.  Everyone had a great time with a few of us even dressing up as characters in the film.  We might try and do this again with another classic movie in the coming months as Covid drags on.
Thanks to RedBubble.com artist, earlofportland, for use of the great film poster image.

Tuesday, February 23 - We finally came back to our local Roxy Theaters tonight to catch a $5 Bargain Tuesday showing of one of the current Oscars leaders for Best Picture, Nomadland.  We both really enjoyed it and thought it was insightful, interesting and a little sad...all the ingredients for a Best Picture winner probably.  

Sunday, February 28 - After a three-year hiatus, one of our favorite bands, Alpha Rev, were back together tonight with a free livestream show on YouTube in support of To Cure a Rose, a foundation started by lead singer and band founder, Casey McPherson, to help his 5-year-old daughter who has a very rare neurological disease.  We were more than happy to give a $50 donation to this worthy cause.  The band sounded great, especially with our favorite fiddle player, Brian Batch, back in the group.  

Friday, March 5 - We had another pandemic date-night Friday night at home and enjoyed the silly long-time coming Eddie Murphy comedy sequel Coming 2 America premiering today on Amazon.

Sunday, March 7 - We spent the weekend in Chattanooga working on the Carroll house in hopes of getting it turned into an AirBnB rental  Things are really coming together despite needing a couple more months of weekends to get everything ready.  

Wednesday, March 10 - We FINALLY got our new king-size bed delivered and set up today from Ashley Furniture.  We are very happy with it as are the cats.  The first to try it out was Doris, who has very picky tastes, so once she approved it, we knew we were good to go! 

Thursday, March 11 - Our friend, Amy, is celebrating her 50th birthday this weekend and she and her husband, Jeremy, invited us out for a visit to their home in the suburbs of SL-UT...you know, Salt Lake City, Utah.  We visited the big ol' SL-UT almost 19 years ago in late March of 2002 (pre-blog) and loved it, so any chance to return sounded good to us!  I had some flight credit on Delta Airlines to use and they are the only ones with a direct flight from Nashville, so we snatched up a couple seats, strapped on our masks, and took off westward.   The photo above is of Amy (and Jeremy's foot) tubing on a river through a cave in Belize back in 2010.  It was a harrowing trip that we all survived, but we won't ever forget it and has bonded us forever.  I ordered some playing cards with this image on them for her as a gag birthday gift also.  

The 3+ hour flight was smooth and uneventful.  We appreciated Delta Airlines still adhering to the middle-seat-open policy during Covid (Southwest has abandoned that idea and is filling up their planes to the max).  We arrived in the brand new SLC airport fairly late, and Amy and Jeremy picked us up and we headed to their home in Draper on a mountain a half-hour outside the city itself at an elevation of about 6,100'.

Friday, March 12 - The view out of Amy and Jeremy's front door is pretty spectacular.  While in a development, they chose well since this space across the street from them won't ever be built on to block their view of some of the peaks of the Wasatch Mountains.
We slept in a little and then headed over to the One Man Band restaurant in Lehi for some brunch.  This eclectic little place has been around a good while serving breakfast all day with a unique ordering system of old-style phone receivers at each table to call the kitchen direct.

We walked off some of our breakfast over in nearby Provo Canyon with a half-mile jaunt to the base of Bridal Veil Falls.  This 600'+ beauty was running a little slighter than we expected given all the snowfall recently and warming temps to create run-off.  As the pic shows, it was a little brisk with the wind.

A few miles further up Provo Canyon was the cool Sundance Resort made famous by iconic actor, Robert Redford and his same-named film festival over in Park City.  It was a great day to ski and snowboard and the place was busy.  We did neither, unfortunately, but had a nice look around this rustic, fancy area.

While Robert Redford actually recently sold his land at Sundance, his legacy remains here at the Sundance Resort and probably will for a very long time to come.

We headed over to Park City for dinner and a look around.  The little picturesque town was very busy with skiers and other tourists like us.  We luckily found a table for dinner at Flanagan's Irish Pub on the main drag.  The food and libations for very good.  We enjoyed the "winter lights" of many trees in the area on the drive out and back toward Draper.

Saturday, March 13 - We woke up to a surprisingly big blanket of new snow this morning up on the mountain.  Jeremy got to show off his snow-plowing skills more than once today.  The first time was to get their driveway clear for us to head down the mountain again for brunch at Bohemian Brewery in Salt Lake City.  This heavily-influenced German brewpub had some nice beers and a great brunch menu.

To kill some time until an afternoon tour at a local distillery, everyone agreed to my obsession of  seeing weird roadside things in person, and let me check out the real-life UP movie house in a new development west of town.   It was very detailed and very cute.  

We jumped into a last-minute afternoon tour and tasting at Outlaw Distillery, a young, very small, but talented, maker of amazingly good spiced rum, bourbon and a few other interesting libations including one made completely out of honey.  We would have bought a bottle or two if we weren't flying back and not checking bags.  Amy and Jeremy made up for that by buying three bottles.  The funny thing in the picture above is that our tastings were served in a rectangular Mormon Church serving tray...which you can't buy...no questions asked on how it got here! 

We came back to their house on the mountain so the girls could get ready for a themed ladies night for Amy's birthday and found another blanket of snow had fell during the day (9" total was the final tally), so it was Jeremy and his "humdinger" snow-blower to the rescue again.

The theme for Amy's birthday girls-night-out was The Roarin' 20's, so this flapper just had to get a selfie with the "humdinger."  

The drive back down the mountain late today to drop off the girls for their night out was a little harrowing.  The snowy conditions had lasted much longer than forecasted, so the decision was made that everyone would stay in downtown SLC tonight in a shared hotel room so as to not risk driving back in these conditions in the dark...plus everyone could get their drink on!  There was even a possibility the road could be closed by the time we got back late tonight.  So the cheap room at the nice downtown Homewood Suites was kind of a no-brainer.
While the girls partied their way through SL-UT (no pun intended) tonight, Jeremy and I met a friend of his for a tasty dinner and then hung out a bar until very late drinking beers and telling lies.
We all met back up at the hotel a 3 AM (thanks to spring forward) and called it a night.

Sunday, March 14 - We chased away the sleepies, the hungries and the hung-overies (?) this morning with a visit to Donut Boy which has been named "Best Donuts in Utah."  Might as well find out if it's true.  Despite our limited contrasts and comparisons, we can say these are pretty damn good.  The consensus was the apple-pie one was the best of our shared half-dozen, but I give the banana cream pie on a very close second.

Since we were on the northwest side of town, we decided to run out and take a gander at The Great Salt Lake itself.  The weather was great today, but the area was relatively quiet and peaceful.

The Great Salt Lake ringed to the north by the snow-topped Hogup Mountains is an mazing site.

Before dropping us off at the airport (which has great views as well) for our flight home, we had a good  lunch and some libations in downtown SLC at Bewilder Brewing to close out our visit.  Thanks to Amy and Jeremy for their hospitality and giving us a chance to revisit such a beautiful area.  We hope to come again some time to experience it even more.
Our flight home was a little bumpy as we skirted around a blizzard in Denver that luckily didn't affect our flight other than the aforementioned shakes.  We got home late and were happy to see all of our sweet cats and our new king-size bed!