Hot Times in Music City

Thankfully, there were no trench coats involved with meeting my OLF, Kimber. In fact, it was like love at first sight!
The hubs and I met Kimber and her crew {her boi Scott, his cousin Jared and Jared's wife Kathy} at the Summit Grille in Nashville. Super nice restaurant with all kinds of completely weird things on the menu…it had all the potential to be an expensive episode of fear factor. I didn't hear many complaints {thank goodness… we picked the restaurant} and the hubs and i managed to eat our odd entrée of BBQ pork tenderloin {why you would want to ruin a perfectly good tenderloin with BBQ sauce is beyond me but whatever} on a bed of tangy cabbage and diced sweet potatoes. It was interestingly tasty, but I'm glad we split it because a) there was enough food on my plate for two people, and b) after about halfway through my half portion, I was over the odd combination on flavors.
enough about the food.

Kimber is just as I expected she would be. We've joked that we're practically one in the same person…separated at birth by 15 years. We're both Kimbers, both have dark roots {heh heh}, both have two kids, both say word, and both love Jesus—so any other differences we have are just not important. She's from the swomp {sorry, that's how she says it} and I'm from the hills {practically the same thing, right?}, she can add and subtract like a champ {she's an accountant} and I haven't balanced my check book since I was 18 {and even then I think my mom did it for me}… a match made if frikkin' heaven if you ask me!

After dinner we went to Tootsies, the legendary bar on the strip in downtown Nashville, with two bands on two levels and scads of people inside. 

Football fans from Vandy, LSU, Oregon {playing UT in Knoxville the next day}, and the Raiders {playing the Titans on Sunday} packed the house. And by packed, I mean packed. 

It was awesome to see people older than us {if you can imagine that} partying right alongside college co-eds. Getting to the bathroom would have been easier had i had a body guard {which, incidentally, we did see following this old guy in a huge white cowboy hat and we were all like who was that… and was that a bodyguard??} but it was fun anyways. The band was wedged into the front window of the bar playing on the world's smallest stage. Good thing the lead singer had a cordless mike… made it easier for him to sing as he sidestepped peoples' drinks up and down the bar. It was a legit Nashville honky-tonk. Tootsies has a 50-year-long tradition of housing country and rock-n-roll music's top performers, and has the memorabilia all over the walls to prove it…like a real-life museum with live music and a lot of beer. A definite must-see on anyone's Nashville tourist dance card.

The party was really just getting started when the hubs and I had to beg off because of a full work day ahead for us on Saturday. Booo on being responsible. We hated saying goodbye to Scott and Kimber and the rest of the group… but before we left, Kimber and I vowed to do it again, and we both said it at the same time… but next time with Julie. Mama4Real you were sadly missed at this party. We won't do it again unless you join us.…and that's a promise!

{On a side note…

I could hardly keep myself from cracking up every time Jared's wife, Kathy, spoke. She reminded me of Claire Foster {aka Tina Fey} in the scene of the restaurant where she said in this uber-northern accent, "I'm gonna go home now and fart in a shoebox." Kathy has this super-duper midwestern accent {face it mid-westerners, you DO have an accent!} that just had me picturing Tina Fey/Sarah Palin/Claire Foster. Kathy was sweet though, and I say this as a reference point, NOT to hurt her feelings b/c she's WAY too sweet to hurt her feelings. And since I'm originally from Wisconsin and my entire family talks like this, I'm completely poking fun at my own people. But I don't think I've ever heard that thick of an accent from someone from Cleveland, before. Fargo, ND? Milwaukee, WI… Yes. Cleveland?… Nope!}