Tag: Brewery

Retirement Ahead, Anniversary Outings, and Today’s To Do’s

On By BackporchwriterIn Food, Nashville, Restaurants4 Comments

Ahhhh, it’s been two days of no blogging but it feels like a half of a century!

Friday we went to our financial meeting in Hendersonville. I always enjoy going to these as I learn so much and it’s interesting to me. Financial subjects have always intrigued me but also has intimidated me as the terms and the concepts can get away from you really fast. I always had an interest in everything financial – just like I do science, but both topics took a back seat to everything else in life. George began doing our finances as he asked to do so when we got to together. We have come a long way since then. And we are set to retire in just 4 years now, Lord willing.

The pic above is our coming back from our meeting, but after our dinner at Casa Vieja in Hendersonville. Was a really nice evening as a cool breeze and fall weather has begun, so we sat very comfortably out on their patio.

It was nice going home and realizing that we had 2 days off.

Saturday, The dogs had to be at their groomer at 8:00 a.m. And George and I dropped them off and went to the store for a few things for the crab boil we are having tonight. Fun to see fall coming together.

We went the back way to check out another store close to us and found something interesting and disgusting. I guess whatever was in the trash at the Thai restaurant was totally calling in the vultures. Interesting isn’t it?

There were SO many more than this. Like 3 times more. You should have seen them take flight when we came through. I’ve added a video here of the vultures but may come back and take it out because it doesn’t appear to be working too well. In case it doesn’t work and I forget……..If you see it – then we are lucky. If you don’t – you know that WordPress failed at being able to show it. This feature has been iffy in the past if you don’t put it on YouTube or Vimeo. Right now as I’m in draft mode, it looks black and says “loading”. So no guarantees.

When we got home yesterday from the store, I worked in the house some, fixed us egg sandwiches for breakfast, started laundry – mainly my normal routine. I did catch up watching a lot of the YouTubes I watch throughout the day here and there – mainly while eating – lol since I am sitting anyway.

We did a bit of meal planning for the week.

One of my favorite things is to dip food into Catalina Dressing. I tried to pick one that wasn’t too sugary and had the best oils in it. I’m sure it’s not the healthiest of dressing choices but it’s better than most. I enjoyed this snack and it made a perfect lunch yesterday.

We picked the dogs up from their trim. They came home and snoozed to recover from the excitement of getting baths and poked and prodded. We hear Roger is not fond of getting his paws done. With no teeth, when he tries to bite, he only gums you. lol. Bless him.

Miss Maisy
Mr. Roger

They look sharp after their trims. I really like Maisy with her butterfly ears but we get them trimmed back as they grow pretty fast. She looks like a boy til it grows back. But we know that she is our dainty little Maisy so no gender confusion there! lol

We have kept the sunroom open! Not many times in the year that can happen as no heat/no air makes for a very hot or cold room.

Later on we headed over to HomeGrown Tap Room. Wow it’s been a long time. Hardly anyone there. Everyone wearing masks when moving around, waitresses and waiters wearing masks, and hand sanitizer on every table. I wasn’t as impressed with the beer selections. None of my favorites were there but they did have an IPA I liked.

We didn’t really NEED food, but we had bacon pop corn. NOT your healthy pop corn here. We sure knocked it down.

We discussed Christmas plans a little bit. That is always fun. We used to budget as we had a lot to buy for. There is not as many to buy for these days so we nixed the budgeting.

Later we headed over to our dinner reservations at Hermitage Steakhouse. We were unsure how they would handle the salad bar, or if there would even be one. No one was allowed to do their own. There was one lady, wearing a mask that completed all the salad bar entries. Their salad bar keeps people coming. Well as does their steaks. I don’t think I’ve EVER had a better steak!

We swapped our anniversary cards at the table. A side perk to this is that every time, we end up getting a free dessert. It’s always fun to see if we do each year. This year was an excellent one.

I am not sure how this menu turned out so pink. I guess it was the glow of the light through the wine bottle. But look at these choices of desserts. I mean how could one decide?

It’s torture to pick from those as ALL were my favorites. George, not a big dessert person, usually lets me pick. I picked…..drum rolllllllllll……………….

Our waitress was cute and sweet. She was learning. She had never uncorked a wine bottle and George showed her how. She blocked her managers view so she wouldn’t be thought less of I guess. And when we ordered dessert, she was really pushing the chocolate cake. I ordered Bananas foster and she said “I’ve only made this once”. So I know she had hoped we ordered something else, but she did great. I wasn’t going to take a pic as I didn’t want her to feel “watched”. But George encouraged it. I missed the big flambay though by the time I actually hit the button to take the pic. You can see a little of it.

The restaurant is so nice and elegant with white table cloths. And a log cabin interior. I took pics after the people in the seats next to us left.

So you can imagine how stuffed we were? I realized later while looking at other tables, they had forgotten to bring us bread, but I was so glad they did. After all we ate yesterday and also this meal of salad, and loaded baked potato, a steak and then bananas foster which had an entire banana and 3 scoops of ice cream as well as sugar and other ingredients. Oh my gosh! But we left nada! NOTHING!

We were absolutely miserable by the time we left the restaurant and remained so through the night. We were going to watch a show but for me a food coma had set in. I went to bed. I had to eat a Rolaid at 1:30 a.m. and drink water. Wow, it was so good though. Every bit of it.

We are trying not to eat anything today until our crab boil. I think I may mix up one of my cleanse drinks. LOL

So today’s agenda:

  • Devo
  • Laundry
  • Change sheets
  • Iron
  • Work in my office which includes below
  • Carpet places research
  • Cleaning the office
  • Prepping for next Video
  • Uploading footage I did yesterday
  • Working on some projects
  • Planning
  • Telling Alexa the grocery items needed for my upcoming dishes.

So, I am cooking a couple of times next week. White chicken chili and BBQ meatloaf. So I may need a few things. I’ll have to make sure we have what I need.

I am excited to get on with our day. Hoping to get started on the next video, but I have to do a few things. One I already figured out. I figured out the subscribe button. It now displays all the way thru my videos at the bottom right hand corner. So now you can easily do this while on YouTube. But you do have to have an account. It is FREE.

The other thing is I have to redo the Intro and Outro. The audio in my current intro is not working. So I’ll have to silence the video on the intro where I introduce myself and George and the fur babes – as the audio is on the video itself. I will silent the video and then add a voice over. That will solve that. But I also want to add a quick little branding start up – I’m not even sure what you call it. They call it an intro but it’s just part of an intro. I can’t explain it but hoping I get to work on that today as well.

I better get started if I want to accomplish everything today. At least I feel great other than being overly stuffed and very WHALE like! lol

What on earth are YOU doing today? I love to hear your stories! Leave me a mini blog post in the comments below, ha! Love it.

Starting the Labor Day Weekend and a Fun Day Out.

On By BackporchwriterIn Uncategorized9 Comments

So this front came through and gave us some great temps yesterday with MUCH LESS humidity. We are getting our first taste of cooler drier air and a bit of fog in the mornings. And it is lovely by comparison to the hot humidity we have had the last couple to three weeks.

It’s a good weekend for the weather to give us hope for fall, as Labor Day Weekend is the weekend I get out the fall decor, put up my whites, and begin thinking about our fall schedule. We have some plans beginning to perk up but nothing huge. And likely no travel. I have a lot of plans for getting the house in order and some improvements done.

I am soon to be focusing on going through some things in the house and either disposing of it, donating it, or selling it. I’m not really wanting to do any more yard sales. I’ve said that before. But eventually we probably will do another one. It’s nickels and dimes and then some of the folks that have come kinda scare me a bit. There have been some crimes related to them as we live in that kind of world today. But all those little things you paid $ for you hate to just NOT get anything back for it.

So I need to find some type of on line sales thing for smaller items. I have one for my clothes with Thred UP. We have one for books, games, and such as George gets credit with his McKay’s membership. I guess I could look at Ebay again. I just don’t know much about the online sales. I don’t want anyone coming to the house but there are some things that are big that need to go. But all in all there is just a lot to go through that has collected over the years. I quit going through things because most of it seemed like George’s and I didn’t want to mess with it. At some point I think I just got discouraged at so many things collected and ignored it as a lot of it wasn’t mine. But it’s time to tackle it over the next few months. And it’s time to get the insides of this house fixed. Even if we don’t stay here ourselves, if we decide to move again, it will be more in a position to sell and we’ll be in more of a position to move. Those things have been on my mind lately.

So yesterday morning I was able to start doing a lot of things. I was in the middle of a lot of projects when it was time to go out for a fun afternoon of George’s birthday with my SIL and BIL, Kevin. We have had it planned so I knew it was coming, but still I tried to cram as much in as possible Saturday morning because I don’t really get a lot of home time and I had double extra projects this weekend.

Projects:

  1. Fall Decor
  2. Bathroom Storage
  3. Organize the Camera equipment in the new camera bag.
  4. Organize my iMac files
  5. Cleaning out and going through some things
  6. Starting the next iMovie

And that is about it for the main projects aside from all the many normal ones like laundry, store, getting ready for the next work week, and so forth, and all those things on my list that I want to do as far as learning curves on iMovie, TubeBuddy, YouTube, and making graphics and so forth.

BOTTOM LINE? I was able to do enough yesterday morning to MESS UP everything. I have not cleaned up for the weekend yet, so there is all the normal mess of a lived in house on top of the projects lying around. I had just enough time to start working on things and not enough time to finish. So there is a LOT of “messy” about the house. I don’t like leaving it like that, but we went out and had a great time and I left my frustration behind as I was totally in my REORG and CREATIVE zone and had to switch gears. But we had a great time and had looked forward to it and it was nice to get out!

We met at Half Batch Brewing in Hendersonville.

It’s nice to be able to do breweries again. We wore masks when standing up in there and tables were distanced away. Honestly there was hardly anyone there. So that was nice too. I had us take this pic so we could remember this day, in our masks, at some future point in our lives when we look back.

We then went to a Liquor Store George wanted to go to – to see if they had certain things other ones did not for the cocktail hours at home. We needed Vodka for the fruity or herbal drinks and then an orange liquour for a special drink he wants to make. I bought a favorite, Quilt which you can now get at a $27 price point instead of the $44. And I bought another favorite Coppola’s “Rosso” which we first began enjoying in the days we frequented Sole Mio in Nashville (no longer in business).

Then we went to Sam’s Club. We had a great time there getting flounder, steaks, some canned goods, and some other frozen goods. We had assessed our freezer capacity so we’d know when to quit throwing things in the cart. lol We have a lot still in our freezer because of the cow, the pig, and our frequent going out and buying chicken or other meats during the “meat scare” and other freezer things we bought during the pandemic. It seems once we have space, we fill it up again.

Then off to the Lost Cajun where George had been wanting to eat. He loves that place.

I got a dish that was perfect and was not heavy with a lot of fried food. Most everything there is fried except for like Gumbo, red beans and rice and things like that. Mine was a sautéed shrimp, rice and veggies meal.

So back at home I watched my You Tube shows and George read. We were both happy. By 9:30 I fell asleep with clicker in hand searching for the next “show” so then I decided maybe it was time to go to bed.

Sleep was good. George has tried to take care of Maisy the last two days while I get sleep. It is nice that he tries, but it doesn’t work too well. Maisy is NOT happy until I’m UP! She doesn’t want me petting over Roger when I try to stir him up. If it’s just Roger and I in bed, then I have to wake Roger up and let him stretch so his legs will hold himself up. Maisy does not like it when I’m talking to Roger and taking care of him. She wants a tummy rub and my attention. Other times of the day she is not jealous but she wants that morning attention. I can’t leave Roger in bed though by himself. He will fall off or try to jump off and his little body can’t take it. So I end up just getting up and getting Roger up too. And Maisy barks through the WHOLE thing and it’s BEFORE COFFEE! No one wants constant barking before coffee and to be told what to do. LOL. But she is a demanding one. She is also a sweet one. And I would do anything for her. So I do. She loves me so. And I love her.

As I type, she is at my feet sleeping away. lol.

Well, I’m moving onward to get many things done. We have to go out to the store today to get a few things and then we will be in for the rest of the weekend. We are looking forward to our steaks today and doing our projects or doing whatever we want.

Are you doing anything special this weekend? Any favorite Labor Day meals you are cooking? Having any cookouts?

Living on Tulsa Time

On By BackporchwriterIn Uncategorized4 Comments

The plane ride to Dallas was smooth. I sat next to a talker. We had an empty middle seat between us. But midway we ran out of interesting things to talk about and broke off into our own worlds.

On the plane, during boarding, a big group who was settling in to their seats got up and grabbed their bags and left. They had to get luggage off for them underneath the plane and our flight was late to Dallas.

We arrived I was excited to get to see my girl! She had a table at a restaurant waiting!

We split a salad as it was pretty expensive.

It was perfect to get us through the next few hours!

Our ride to Tulsa was only 45 min in the air. No service. They claimed it was too bumpy but it really wasn’t. Often on short rides they claim that.

We arrived in Tulsa and got the rental car. And drove to our hotel. Tulsa is dryer and less Green than Oklahoma City. The roads are in need of paving in some areas. But seems like a nice place so far.

We wiped down our hotel room as we had our plane seat area.

And changed clothes to get out of any germs. I will say that as close as you are at the airport and in planes- it would really be hard NOT to get something contagious. Especially while in a huddle trying to load when lining up. We took inside seats on the plane.

American Solera Brewing, Tulsa

We found a cute brewery- but we didn’t like their beer so much. We spent 48 dollars on two flights and an appetizer and tip. (Insert your favorite rolling eye emoji here.)

Katy said next time she would choose a brewery with normal brews instead of decor. lol Don’t get me wrong. We had a great time and good conversation and the beer – well – it’s great for those that like sours and the new flairs of brews. I’m still trying to like IPA lol – but it was fun regardless. We each have our own tastes.

So it was t our favorite but it might be yours! The place was adorable!

The evening was warm. 70’s!

We then went on to our dinner at the Irish restaurant. We were so excited to go in. A true Irish experience- not that we really know what that is! lol

Kilkenny’s, Tulsa, OK

I picked a nice Italian wine for dinner. and ordered this wonderful dish.

It was the Jenkinstown Cottage Pie. Not many peas and carrots I noticed but the dish tasted great!

After dinner we wanted to get Gelato at the place we saw down the street. We went in and I went to the restroom first. When I came out Katy Said “we have to leave”. I said “why?”

As we walked out Katy said that they were closing early because the employee had been exposed to someone being tested for the Corona virus. And yikes I just used their restroom.

So we went back to the hotel from there. Slept pretty good. Woke up a couple of times. I’ll stop there! We are on the way to Pioneer Woman!