Thanksgiving Weekend Recap

My Thanksgiving weekend was a little non-traditional. Since Ben's ability to take vacation time is somewhat limited, we decided to take advantage of a sure-thing-four-day-weekend and get out of town. Just the two of us. It was our first trip like that since our honeymoon three and a half years ago! So while we forfeited our typical trip home to St. Louis to see family, we tried to incorporate some of the Thanksgiving standards like food and football...

Thursday we left Nashville and headed east towards Asheville... you wouldn't believe the confusion that caused people when we told them about our trip, since those two words obviously sound a lot alike! We occupied ourselves during the drive by listening to all the songs on my iPod in alphabetical order. When we got bored with that (around letter D) we switched to listening to episodes of Arrested Development, which was quite entertaining.

We arrived after a twisting and turning drive through the mountains to our destination: the Inn on Mill Creek, a bed & breakfast in Black Mountain, NC. We would highly recommend it if you are interested in staying in that area! It was really secluded... so much so that instead of a street address we had to put the longitude/latitude coordinates into our GPS to get there! Dave & Brigette, the innkeepers, were really great and so helpful. Plus Dave's breakfasts were delicious!

That night we had a proper Thanksgiving dinner at another local B&B that has a restaurant. There was turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, carrots, pumpkin pie - the works. We definitely didn't miss out in the food department!

Over the next couple days we had fun exploring Black Mountain and Asheville. While in the area we visited the famous Biltmore Estate, the largest private home ever constructed in the United States. It was built in the late 1890s by heir to the Vanderbilt fortunes. It was interesting and beautiful, although crowded and a little touristy.
We had more fun taking silly pictures outside on the beautiful terrace as the sun was setting...
We had a fun day in Asheville after we finished at the Biltmore. We googled "best burger in Asheville" and were directed by our GPS way across town to a hole-in-the-wall joint called Burgermeister. No, really. We were a little skeptical as we wove through some sketchy looking parts of town, but we ended up in a neighborhood called West Asheville, full of funky shops and cool finds. And Burgermeister delivered. If you know me, you know I am not a big red meat girl. No real reason - I'm not offended by the eating of cows, but I just prefer chicken. But when you go to a place called Burgermeister and it is advertised as the best burger in town... well, you know what they say. When in Rome...

I swear to you after eating this delicious burger I could feel my body respond, thanking me profusely for the intake of iron. I felt stronger... I now had the strength of a grown human and a bit of cow. (Ahem, Dwight Schrute reference.)

After we rolled out of there and stopped at some of the shops, it was cold and icky and rainy and we decided to go see a movie. Ben oh-so-graciously accompanied me to see Twilight. I loved it even more the third (yes, third, don't judge me!) time around and to my surprise and delight Ben said he liked it too! Most of that can probably be contributed to the fact that he likes ME and is a good husband, but still. I'll take what I can get, and if he says he liked it then I'll believe him!

Saturday night we holed up in our room and watched the OU-OSU game. It was a nail-biter at times but my Sooners were victorious, winning 61-41. With their win, the three-way tie for the Big XII South was in place, and I had to wait until Sunday afternoon when the BCS standings were released to find out that OU was officially headed to the conference championship game to face Mizzou! I know a lot of people were disappointed in the way things turned out and believed that Texas earned the shot at the title by beating OU on neutral ground in the Red River game. Of course I disagree and would argue that OU's margin of victory in defeating ranked opponents is enough merit. But either way it is decided now and I am ecstatic that we will get our chance to win the Big XII and go to the National Championship game! Boomer Sooner!

As if all that wasn't enough excitement, we ended our Thanksgiving weekend by rushing back to Nashville through awful rain and traffic to get to the Ryman Auditorium in time to catch the Jason Mraz concert.

It was a fun show - very high energy and lots of crowd interaction. I was especially impressed with Lisa Hannigan, who was his opening act. She is an Irish musician probably best known for her vocals on many Damien Rice songs. She has a beautiful voice and played lots of interesting instruments in cool arrangements. But once again my concert experience was slightly marred by an annoying drunken person. This time it was a hippie dippy lush seated next to Ben... well, seated isn't the right term, considering she spent the entire concert dancing awkwardly and flailing around spilling beer on people. She also was trying to hang all over and sort-of flirt with Ben, for which I served her up a few dirty looks laced with the clear message of "Keep your damn drunken hands off my man." Ugh. Ben handled it nicely; he has lots of experience with that sort of person from his many stints at Bonarroo!

Anyway, aside from that it was a fun show and a great end to a rather nice holiday weekend!

More Than Swell

Last night Ben and I were able to go to see The Swell Season at the Ryman here in Nashville. It was such a great show! Some people know I'm not a huge concert goer... it probably has to do with my bouts of socially crippling homebody-ness and my crowd-induced claustrophobia. Hmm, that last sentence made me sound a little neurotic - I'm exaggerating a little!

However, the Ryman is such an amazing venue - the atmosphere of the place just gets to you. You must in your lifetime make an effort to see a show there. And I was familiar with the Swell Season from their association with the movie Once. If you've seen that movie, then you know who they are too - the guy and girl from the film, Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova, tour as an actual musical group called The Swell Season, often (as they were last night) backed by most of Glen's other band, The Frames.

Anyway, that was a lot of build up to say that their music is really beautiful and emotional, a la their fellow Irishman Damien Rice. So even though I only knew a few of their songs, from the movie, going in, I still really loved the experience.

One very cool part was when Glen opened the show with the song that opens the movie, "Say It To Me Now." He walked out to the very front of the stage with his guitar, and without plugging in and sans mic, he just started playing. Everyone was pin-drop silent, just enraptured listening to his voice ringing out through the auditorium. Goosebumps moment!

Right away after that Marketa came out and they played "Falling Slowly," which was the main song from the movie and the song they performed (and with which they won) at the Oscars. I was a little surprised that they didn't save it for an encore or something but it was just lovely.

Here is a picture I found online so you can see the crazy damage to his guitar!

Glen told a really funny story of walking around Nashville and stopping in Gruhn's Guitars. He said since his current guitar was bound to give out at some point (the top is practically swiss cheese from years of aggressive strumming), he'd been on the lookout for the next one. He sat and played a vintage 1939 Martin for what seemed like hours, trying to justify the pricey purchase. As he talked with the staff he said, "I don't know, I just can't spend $6000 on a guitar." To which the staff member replied, "You read the tag wrong." He looked again and realized it was $16,000!!! The audience spent the rest of the night trying to convince him he deserved it and to go back and buy it. I guess we'll find out if he does!

He also played a cool Van Morrison cover of Astral Weeks (I had to google it, I didn't know that was what it was off the top of my head!) where he was literally strumming so fast and so hard that I thought his guitar was going to turn to sawdust. He did break a string!

Anyway, if they are coming to your town any time soon it was a great show and I highly recommend it! And if you haven't seen Once I recommend that too... although their Irish accents are so thick you'll have to watch with subtitles. And they say the F word a lot... because, well, they're Irish. :)