Day 7

On Day 5 I was in Tennessee, in a bar shortly after noon throwing darts with my fiance's best friends. At first I felt weird being in a bar on a workday, but it didn't take me long to think to myself, not my workday! And I ordered a White Russian. It came to me in a glass the size of a water glass. They must have known.

After we finished up there, we went to a place in Nashville called the Basement, which is a bar-sized live music venue. Somehow, we lucked out and it was smoke free which is almost a miracle in Tennessee. All the way there I was coached about how live music was a whole new experience in Nashville, and that there are "1 million residents of Nashville and 3 million are musicians" trying to make it. Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band played first, and it was actually a small damn band consisting of a drummer who was the guitarist/lead singer's brother, who was married to the washboard player. Yes. The washboard player. I was already amazed enough with the weird way the guy sang and played the guitar, but to watch this sweet looking woman's face change into a demonic glaze as soon as her hands hit the washboard was so odd it was almost scary. She was wearing baseball gloves to which she had fitted metal points, and she played that washboard like it was going to go out of the style it's never been in. I loved it. They were nuts. My favorite song and the only one I could understand any words to were "Birdy's Cousin's on Cops," which was written after Birdy's cousin (Birdy=washboard player) was seen on Cops. Next was a cool group with an awesome violinist called Hopsing Project. The headliner, Ballhog, needed to pass the ball. They were missing members and totally wasted and self indulgent. What, play for an audience? No - we play for ourselves!

Anyway, to make a long story short, we were supposed to come back on Sunday. We started driving (I kept thinking "road trippin' with my two favorite allies/fully loaded we got snacks and supplies/it's time to leave this town it's time to steal away/let's go get lost anywhere in the USA...") and stopped off at the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, just because there was a sign and we could. It was another stupid thing America did: they built a huge marble shrine around the tiny cabin he was born in. And to make it even better, the shrine was closed. Lame. We eventually made it to Louisville, Kentucky and stopped at the visitor center which wasn't supposed to open until Tuesday. But, in good southern fashion, the woman in the center let us come in and take a brochure and called some restaurants to see if they were open for us. We ended up at Proof on Main, a majorly snooty restaurant/art gallery/hotel. My arugula salad, octopus, and dark chocolate gelato was divine but the waitstaffs' noses were all so upturned that if they sneezed they'd blow their hats off.

But here is the true Gainful Unemployment Moment of the Trip: at dinner, TM and I managed to talk BA into stopping in Indy to crash with my brother, and blow Monday off. I was such a giddy unemployed git, absolutely bursting with the happy fact that I didn't have to rearrange a damn thing! My brother seemed slightly miffed that he had to rearrange his night, but he was a good sport in the end, like all good brothers end up being. How free! How wonderful!

I did go and listen to Wangari Maathai speak tonight, the first female Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Green Belt Movement in Africa. The thing I got out of it the most: I tend to be furious with the government a lot, and she did point out that governments are supposed to be the custodians of land and take care of it. But she went on to say that our laziness is just as big a contributor to continued environmental degradation as anything else. She also talked about tribal conflict in Africa, and how to the West it seems almost baffling that people can't get along, but she summed it up well after talking about how the environment is used and mishandled and parced out: when you have a large number of people competing for scarce resources, there will be conflict. It was her warning for the evening.

And today? I'm not doing a whole hell of a lot. I sent some emails and am waiting to hear back. I'm going to sign up for a YMCA family membership tonight. That's the extent of my plans.