McNelis.biz

I’ve read TWO books, and completely forgot to talk about one when I finished it.  In my defense, we were heading out to Nashville when I read it.  So what to talk about first?  I suppose you’re probably more interested in the Nashville trip than the books I’ve been reading so I’ll start there.

First, I hate rain and lightning.  Ok, generally I like it, but last Friday morning our flight was supposed to leave Chicago at 7:40 in the morning and we pushed away from the gate on time.  Then?  The weather shut down the airport because of rain.  So we sat on the tarmac.  For two hours.  Then, they decide to take us back to the gate when it starts to lightning, do you know what that means?  They can’t push us back to the gate.  We sat there for three hours before taking off on the bumpiest flight I’ve ever had.  Thank God it was only an hour long flight.

We got down there and picked up our rental car and drove out east of the city to Lebanon and drove through a state park out there before eating some great barbeque in Lebanon at a Nashville BBQ chain called Witts.  It was great, I had ribs, Chris had pulled pork, a good kick off on our journey.  Then, exhausted, we checked into the hotel and took a lonnnngggggg nap.  When we woke up we checked for food recommendations at the hotel’s front desk.  By the way, if you don’t know this already, most hotels have a list of non-chain food places and directions from the hotel handy to give out.  We’ve found this to be really useful in our last couple of trips to check out some local fare.  We ended up at a southern / soul food place called Monell’s where they sit you family style with other people.  We met a group of interesting and nice folks there and enjoyed some AWESOME fried chicken, corn pudding, collard greens, corn bread, mashed potatoes….it could go on and on.

The next day we drove west of the city through White Bluff to the Montgomery Bell state park and hiked around and saw some really beautiful areas.  We also had breakfast at a little dive called Hog Heaven, which was pretty good.  In general we found that we really liked the area west of the city a whole lot, and if we decide that its Nashville for us, then thats the general area we’d like to be in.

We also checked out the Vanderbilt area that night and the next day and took in an arts and crafts fair at Centennial Park, which was a fun and relaxing way to end our trip before heading back.

All in all, I think we both really really liked Nashville and the people we met were awesome, even if we don’t necessarily agree with all their world-views.  As we’ve been talking, Chris has been saying that the more she thinks about it, the more she likes it.  So now we’ve got to plan our Portland / Portland-Seattle trip to help us make our final decision since we could, today for example, buy 20 acres in White Bluff that is wooded with a creek along the back of the property for under 80k.

Now really quick I’ll cover the two books.  Number 23 was called The Haven and was loaned to me by one of my co-workers, Q.  It was a sci-fi / fantasy novel where dogs were the most feared creature on the planet and pretty much all the animals can talk.  It was a little strange, but right up my alley.

Number 24 was also loaned to me by a co-worker and was Japanese author Haruki Murakami’s Kafka By The Shore, an intense metaphysical coming of age store with some fantasy elements thrown in to help with the overall pace and meaning of the book.  This one is going to take quite a while to digest, the book is filled with riddles that aren’t ever really completed, but that is part of the joy of this book.  It allows the reader to complete the puzzle and get a different meaning out it each time its read.

I started Number 25 this morning, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, also the author of No Country For Old Men, which I read late last year.  Once I finish that one up I’ll have some more stuff to add.  I also need to start blogging more regularly in general, a once-a-week book post just isn’t cutting it.

24 down, 26 to go.