Creating my future, one miracle at a time

The Mouse and I drove up to Nashville yesterday, to check out Hatch Show Prints for  field trip.  A very interesting place, but small and very busy and loud.  Maybe not the best idea.  And it's very Downtown (Broadway and 6th).  Little parking, and what there is is expensive.   But if you happen to be downtown, you should drop in.  Very friendly people, and an intriguing place.

 We had a terrific lunch, in Merchants Restaurant, in the old Merchants Building on Broadway.  It used to be half hotel, half pharmacy.  They've tried to keep faith with the original architecture and character o the building and have done a pretty good job. 

Then we drove around making lots of U-turns trying to get to a Violin shop we haven't been to.  Very nice place.  Thomas found two he really loved.  One of them I also loved.  It was old, and beautifully made, and when he played it, it was like stepping up from a regular to a grand piano.  Of course, cost as much as a piano -- $5000.  The other was a 5 string violin (say vee oh linn, like viola+ violin).  It is basically a violin plus the lower C string that a viola has, or if you're a viola player, a viola plus that high E string.  The two instruments share the D, G, & A. So anyway, it was a lot of fun to play, and would make transposing some of that medieval music he's been playing a fifth lower very easy.  (Makes for great harmonies).  Of course, it was $5500.  We decided he needed to be closer to perfect before we invest in one of those. The violin he owns right now is in the $300 - $500 range, except that it has a small, barely noticeable cosmetic ding, so we got it for $145.  It's better than the rental he was playing (which was still a nice instrument -- sold for about $300), but probably not the last fiddle he'll want to own.

We got home around 8pm.  A good day.

Of course, between our little outing and Saturday's migraine, I'm now about 4 days behind.  Yes, that's right. for every day of vacation you take, you get 2 days behind -- Law of the Universe. 

Thomas and I got up while it was still dark to drive to the Birmingham Art Museum. One of the other moms from Franklin School set up a high school field trip and got us a discount ticket to the special exhibit from Pompeii. She also set up an afternoon tour with a docent of some other art, but we couldn't stay for that because of violin lessons. So we just got to do the Pompeii part, but it was definitely worth it!

First we stopped at Mat and Rhiannon's to say "Hi" to Mat and get Rhiannon to come with us. It was great to have Rhiannon with us. I miss her too, not just Mat. It was good to spend the day with her. She sees things that others miss, so it's really fun to do things like museums with her. She and Thomas are probably two of the top ten most interesting people I know. So it was a great morning.

We lingered at all the pieces and exhibits. We were still only about 2/3 of the way through when someone back-tracked to tell us that the rest of the group was already in the cafe eating. Rhiannon and I just looked at each other like -- "what fools! here you are, with your one chance to study treasures from across time and the ocean, and you rush through to lunch." So we just finished the exhibit with only a few minutes left to grab a postcard from the gift shop and view a room of Asian art before we had to leave. And we stayed until the very last possible second.

In fact, we had to just dump poor Rhiannon out on the street in front of the apartment so we could grab Thomas some eat-in-the-car pizza, and get back in time for violin.

By evening our feet really hurt, and I was too exhausted for anything but I wouldn't have missed any second of the whole day for anything.