Nashville, TN

The Nashville Sounds have made the post-season again. They began play yesterday against the New Orleans Zephyrs but lost the first game. The second game is this afternoon and I believe the return home this weekend.

This is the third time in as many years the Sounds have made the playoffs. Two years ago, they won the Pacific Coast League Championship.

You know, not to sound like a broken record but a quality baseball team deserves a decent stadium. And let’s face it–Greer ain’t cuttin’ it. The Sounds have put a quality product on the field and through bungling and mismanagement by a lot of sides, a deal for a new stadium is no where on the horizon. And it should be…

If you’ve got a Facebook account, be on your guard if you’re invited to use Quechup. Apparently it will infilitrate your address book and send out a SPAM to everyone on your list to join as well–without your permission.

Good news–it sprinkled on my car on the way to work this morning and there’s rain in the forecast for today.

Bad news–It’s been so long since it rained, most of Nashville has forgotten how to drive in the rain…and it’s not like we, as a city, were too great at it to start with….

If you want to see my pictures of the fun you missed at the Nashville Bloggers Meet-Up Picnic, you can surf on over and see them here.

Enjoy!

I haven’t had a chance to download my pictures from the Blogger Picnic yesterday, but I will soon and post some of them here.

Others will be used as blackmail material….oh wait….unless you can get in trouble for being over the age of 20 and stinkin’ at kick-ball, I guess not much incriminating.

Anyway, to tide all of you over until I get off my lazy rear and get those uploaded, here’s a funny item that was forwarded to me….

A Diary Review: Moving South, 2007

May 30, 2007 :

Just moved to Nashville, Tennessee from Chicago, Illinois.
Now, this is a city that knows how to live!
Beautiful sunny days and warm balmy evenings.
What a place!
I watched the sunset from a park while lying on a blanket.
It was beautiful.
I’ve finally found my home.
I love it here.

June 14, 2007 :

Really heating up.
Got to 100 degrees today. Not a problem.
Live in an air-conditioned home, drive an air-conditioned car.
What a pleasure to see the sun everyday like this.
I’m turning into a sun worshipper.

June 30, 2007:

Had the backyard landscaped with western plants today.
Lots of cactus and rocks. The yard is a breeze to maintain!
No more mowing the lawn for me. Another scorcher today, but
I love living in Nashville.

July 10, 2007 :

The temperature hasn’t been below 100 degrees all week.
How do people get used to this kind of heat?
At least it’s kind of windy, but getting used to the heat and
humidity is taking longer than I expected.

July 15, 2007:

Fell asleep by the pool.
(Got 3rd degree burns over 60% of my body.)
Missed 3 days of work. What a dumb thing to do.
I learned my lesson, though.
Got to respect the ol’ sun in a climate like this.

July 20, 2007:

Morgan (our cat) sneaked into the car when I left this morning.
By the time I got to the hot car for lunch, Morgan had died and
swollen up to the size of a shopping bag and stank up the $2,000
leather upholstery.
I told the kids that she ran away.
The car now smells like Kibbles and shits.
I learned my lesson, though. No more pets in this heat.

July 25, 2007:

The wind sucks.
It feels like a giant freaking blow dryer!
And it’s hot as hell!

The home air-conditioner is on the fritz,
and the AC repairman charged $200 just to drive by and tell me he
needed to order the parts.

July 30, 2007:

Been sleeping outside by the pool for 3 nights now.
The monthly house payment is $1,500 and we can’t even go inside.
Why did I ever come here?

August 4, 2007:

It’s 105 degrees. Finally got the air-conditioner fixed today for a
cost of $900.

The temperature gets down to 78 degrees,
but this freaking humidity makes the house feel like it’s about 95
degrees.
I hate this stupid city.

August 8, 2007:

If another wise ass person cracks, “Hot enough for
you today? I’m going to strangle him. Damn heat.
By the time I get to work, the radiator is boiling over, my clothes
are soaking wet, and I smell like baked cat!

August 9, 2007:

Tried to run some errands after work.
Wore shorts and sat on the black leather seats in the ol’ car.
I thought my ass was on fire.
I lost two layers of flesh and all the hair on the back of my legs and
ass.
Now my car smells like burnt hair, fried ass, and baked cat.

August 10, 2007:

The weather report might as well be a damn recording.
Hot and sunny. Hot and sunny. Hot and sunny.
It’s been too hot to do anything for two damn months,
and the weatherman says it might really warm up next week.
Doesn’t it ever rain in this damn desert?
Water rationing will be next, so I might as well watch $1,700 worth of
cactus just dry up and blow into the damn pool.

Not even cactus can live in this damn heat.

August 14, 2007:

Welcome to HELL!!!
The temperature got to 105 degrees today.
Forgot to crack the window and blew the damn windshield out of the car.
The installer came to fix it and said, “Hot enough for you today?”
My wife had to spend the $1,500 house payment to bail me out of jail.
Freaking South.
What kind of a sick demented idiot would want to live here?

Just a reminder…blogger picnic is Sunday.

Let’s get together and celebrate our blogging community!

This is an All-Skate. Families, kids, doggies, kitties and small farm animals are all invited.

Please bring a covered dish…or two. A grill will be provided for those who would like to fire it up. Sorry, no alki allowed at the park, but there is a great playground! (I’m sure a game of challenge-kickball will break out, as well.)

We will be under the covered pavilion…it has picnic tables, but you may want to bring a lawn chair along.

Sevier Park is located at the corner of Granny White Pike (12th Avenue South) and Kirkwood Avenue. Feel free to e-mail me at GingerSnapsTN-at-gmail-dot-com if you are unclear as to where that is.

We hope you can make it!!!!

Yesterday, I wondered if we might not be albe to avoid rain for Sunday’s big blogger picnic.

And as I drove into work today, I heard the weather forecast say the best chance of rain this week comes on….wait for it…Sunday.

You can send all your hate mail to me…

We’ve not had any significant rain for a long period of time and I know that our state desparately needs it.

I keep praying for rain and checking the forecast, hoping we might get some good, soaking rain that would at least put a tiny dent in the drought.

Well, except for Sunday.

See, Sunday, in case you forgot is the big Music City Bloggers picnic. And I’m looking forward to attending it. And yet I know if I allow myself to look forward to it too much, that means it will rain that day. Which we need, but if it’s going to have a good, soaking rain, can’t it at least wait until Monday?

I am planning to make Jell-O cake and honestly I don’t want to have to eat the entire Jell-O cake myself.

Selfish?

Yes, I am…why do you ask?

Just wanted to repeat a warning I’ve seen in a couple of papers the past few days.

Apparently there is someone out there calling people and phishing for information, claiming to be with the Tennessee Highway Patrol. This is a scam and you shouldn’t give out your information to them.

THP has issued an advisory on this.

If they call you, let us know…I’d be interested to hear what the scam is.

Brant Snedeker, who hails from the great state of Tennessee and played his college golf at Vanderbilt, has been having a great rookie year on the PGA Tour.

It got a lot better yesterday when Snedeker won his first PGA event, the Wyndham Championship. Snedeker started the day several shots off the lead, but shot a final round 63 to win the tournament.

Congratulations to Snedeker on his big win and hopefully this will be the first of many on the tour.

I guess with the Titans actually in practice preparing for the upcoming season and playing a few pre-season games that Pac-Man is having to work overtime to come up with ways to get his names in the news.

That would explain the latest–seems Pac is going after a singing career. He’s going to become a hip-hop artist and should have a single out in the next few weeks.

Yeah, let me run out and not buy that one….

Good grief, this guy just will not go away. If the Titans were to win the Super Bowl, I have no idea what this guy would do to try and get his name out there above the team…

The Sounds are in negotiations to move out to Franklin.

I’m happy to see they might stay in middle Tennessee, but disheartened that Nashville seems content to sit by and let them go.

Looks like all that revenue from a downtown stadium may head to Williamson County.

Toy-maker Matel is expected to announce another toy recall later today. The recall is for toys with lead-based paint that were manufactured in China.

No word yet on which specific toys will be affected, but as soon as I hear some news, I will pass it along.

Not a good month to be Matel.

I watched much of the Titans vs Redskins game Saturday night on television. I love football, but there’s something not so much fun about a football game when the temp is in the 90s at kick-off at 7 p.m. at night.

OK, let me rephrase that–I’m not so thrilled by pre-season games in the heat. Now if it were a game that counted and I could go, I’d be all over it.

I know, some of you were worried that maybe I’d been replaced by a clone.

That said, the Titans effort on the field was great on defense, not so hot on offense. Our running game has got to get going. I miss Travis Henry already. OK, more than I did before…

I was particularily annoyed with Comcast last night. Several stations were have some issues (the picture kept breaking down, similiar to what happens when you have a scratch on a DVD and the sound kept fading in and out), including one of the stations I planned to watch–SciFi.

See, it was Tuesday and that means time for an all-new episode of Eureka. Fun show, nice summer time diversion.

But I couldn’t watch it last night. Well, I could–in between the image breaking up, the sound fading in and out. Call me crazy, but I like to see and hear what’s going on in the show. The verbal barbs the characters trade are funnier when, oh I don’t know, you can hear them!

Anyway, I called Comcast and got the usual b.s that it was issues and they were working to resolve them. Yeah, not very hard since this had happened for several hours that day. I didn’t check this morning any of the affected stations because I was too busy trying not to throw up from the unrelenting Barry Bonds coverage (seriously, ESPN…there were other teams playing last night. Did you just flash scores on the screen for every other major league game? Oh wait…I’m sure you showed full highlights of the Yankees because heaven forbid be not see those!)

Anyway, I hope this problem is fixed soon….as in by Friday night when Flash Gordon premieres.

It’s not like Comcast really cares…they’ve got a monopoly on the local cable market and they know it.