Out and About in Tennessee

We had a wonderful weekend in Nashville last week.  Far and away, the highlight was the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art. From the architecture to the gardens, to the sculptures to the Fabergé collection, it was absolutely worth the drive.

My favorite, the Glass Bridge by Siah Armajani, was created with the memory of the bridge designed to span the Grand Canal in Venice, during the heyday of Murano's glass industry. The original collapsed, but this one stands surrounded by oak trees.

This is bamboo in the forest near the Japanese gardens.  Almost makes me want a bamboo forest of my own.

Except I don't, because bamboo is like a tattoo for your yard.  Once it's there, it's not budging.

We also really loved the spider-web patterns formed in the melting ice over the ponds.  At some point, someone must have thrown rocks in, breaking the ice.  As it melted, it left the sheerest traces of patterned ice.

 Moments later, we literally watched as the wind blew over the surface.  When we returned 40 minutes later, most of the patterns were gone.  I shot these two photos with my point-and-shoot; I'm really pleased with how the exposure turned out, since it was entirely guesswork on my part (LCD screens not being wildly reliable).

We'll actually be going back to Nashville to meet up with some college friends of mine.  Since we weren't able to visit every part of the grounds (it's quite extensive), I'm not-so-secretly hoping to go back.

And when we return for a brief time to Memphis in June (most likely; we don't have solid dates yet), I'm hoping for another weekend Nashville trip.

In less sophisticated entertainment, we finally got to see the Peabody Ducks!

There they were! Swimming around and around in the fountain in the center of the lobby.  And after swimming, sometimes one would hop up on the ledge to get a look around...

...and preen.

Which makes sense, because it's not an insignificant audience.  We arrived twenty minutes ahead of the 5pm march out, and the place was packed!  We were able to get a spot on the mezzanine.  This was good, since we got a nice overhead view, but bad, because the flowers happened to block quite a lot of the exit.

Like, pretty much all of it.









After a while, the Duck Master (I'm totally not making this up) starts to prep the area by shoving away small children and preparing the red carpet.

Not an easy task.

After a rousing retelling of the hotel's origins - and how the ducks came to reside inside - the music played, the ducks swam more frantically, and the Duck Master called up!

And as far as I can tell, each duck jumped up.  But it's hard to say, because the flowers were in the way.

Then the Duck Master and the Honorary Duck Master (the elderly lady in the chair on the left, celebrating her 85th birthday, bless her) proceeded to walk the ducks down the red carpet.

At least that's my guess.  It's hard to see ducks when there are two adults walking behind them.  But they waddled (the ducks, not the adults) right into the elevator.

It was an excellent time.  As was dinner at Bhan Thai, which had one of the best Pad Thais I've had.  And very nice people, since I left my navy blue cardigan (the one I wear almost three times a week) and they not only found it but folded it nicely until we picked it up later.

We head back to the West coast on the 26th.  We both miss being near friends, family, and familiarity terribly.  But until then - we're still cramming in as much sight-seeing (and eating) as possible.  We'll meet Danny's cousin and great aunt at the Memphis Zoo tomorrow; Sunday, it's a whirlwind trip to Nashville.

And then...Washington!

Can't wait!

Research and Weekend Plans

I'm behind. I'm a week behind on the book, and probably two weeks behind on blog posting. Won't even talk about my laundry, but the kitchen is hanging on by the skin of its teeth.

Such an odd phrase - skin of its teeth. Especially since teeth don't have skin.

I'm a little loopy. Frankly, I'd love nothing better than a nap but I'm fighting those instincts and trying to get things done. Like blog.

I called the Art Institute of Portland today to see if I could schedule a tour of the campus. I came clean about being a writer - having a phone conversation as your character is exhausting enough, trying to be them in person seems daunting. While I half expected the admissions office to blow me off so they'd have time for real students, the office was very helpful, even directed me to their PR person.

We get to do that Saturday. Also on tap Saturday, earlier that day, is a meeting with my web designer. We've kind of tried to put things together over the phone - not something I'd recommend. It's like giving advice about a painting over the phone. So we're getting together, hopefully over cupcakes. We'll also take some additional author shots for the website; the kind of shots we get and what I wear will decide the color palate for the site. There are decisions to be made. I kind of suck at decisions. For a while I was thinking, two days, I'll only pack for two days. That's not much! But now I'm realizing I'll need to bring clothing options and books for props...this is all practical, mind you. None of my over-packing tendencies are coming into play here.

Cupcakes, on the other hand - I'm great with cupcakes.

After the tour and after the web meeting, we'll most likely be heading down to Powell's to look at their rare books. More and more of Simply Sara seems to revolve around rare manuscripts, and I've really enjoyed the research. Finally found this site for terminology, so I finally know what it means when pages are "foxed."

I had intended to head to the U of O's Knight Library to look at their collection, but I couldn't come up with the energy. The books aren't going anywhere, and when I'm spending this much time stressing over the book, it's nice to have another afternoon at home to work.

Tonight we're helping my brother and his wife move into their new apartment, which brings back memories of moving into ours. I remember waking up in the morning, stumbling into the living room, and sorting through the boxes of belongings and wedding gifts.

An update on the basil: it is still alive. However, it's been fairly unhappy with me since I left it for a short period of time in a hot car on a 100+ degree day (I don't usually take it for drives; the reason it was in the car was that I had to take it to my grandmother's before the Canada trip, and thought it would be prudent to run errands before hand. Little did I know).

These days, it gets a little wiggy if it gets too much sun. I'm hoping to keep it alive through the winter, though, so here's hoping.

I forgot

Story of my life at the moment. First, I uploaded new pictures from both our Silverton trip and our Banff trip to the photo slideshow here on the blog. If you see one that looks interesting, make sure to click on it! A lot of them look best larger.

Secondly, I met Lucy Neatby at the Calgary airport. Don't believe me?

She's holding her sock (her design, I believe) and I'm holding the shrug that I wanted to have done a month ago and haven't really touched lately...took to Canada in good faith, and wound up reading the whole time.

And participating in a wedding. And tromping around Banff. But lots of reading in between.

Anyway, Lucy (for those non-knitters out there) is a knitting teacher, book and instructional DVD author. If you're interested in learning how to knit, take a look at her DVDs. Her blog is now in my "Places to Click" section, so go take a look.

Also, I got TOTALLY hooked on Google Chrome in Banff. Chrome, for the uninitiated, is the Google brand web browser. It's streamlined yet clever, works faster than internet explorer, and crashes a whole lot less. I don't normally get excited over web browsers, seriously, but Chrome is worth it.

That's it for now. I'll let you know when I remember something else.