Vacation Week So Far...

Although I have been on a "forced vacation" since April my wife has not had any significant amount time off at all this year. This week she's on vacation. We aren't going to any specific destination just spending time together and relaxing.

Sunday night we spent the evening at home together and watched the movie "The Bucket List." We both enjoyed it. The most interesting thing to me in the movie was the periscope glasses that Jack Nickelson was wearing in the hospital.

On Monday we drove to town my wife met up with her sister and they went to see the new movie "Momma Mia." A trip to a local Japanese restaurant for some sushi followed. Not interested at all in either of those activities I went to see the new Disney movie WALL*E. You can read about my experience with that movie in the post before this one.

Tuesday afternoon about 2PM we left for Nashville. The movie theater at Opry Mills Mall was our initial destination. We wanted to see the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, at the I-Max theater but it sold out as we stood in line. We did get to see it on the regular screen though.

I enjoyed the movie but knew a lot about the plot because I had read a detailed review beforehand. There was a lot of action, plenty of plot twists, and lots of character development. Heath Leger's final performance as The Joker is worthy of at least an Oscar nomination. His role would have been memorable even if he hadn't died before the film was released.

Once we were out of the movie theater we hurried to the other side of Nashville to one of our other favorite entertainment spots, Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theater. We arrived just in time to go through the buffet line before it closed.

I was disappointed to find out that after 8 years of going to Chaffin's and enjoying their wide variety of desserts on their dessert bar they have changed the way the serve dessert. There is still fresh fruit and jello desserts available on the buffet. However any of the other cakes, cookies, pies, ice creams or other desserts you now have order from a menu and pay for in addition to your theater ticket. I guess the change in the economy and food prices has hit everyone. I'm sorry that Chaffin's had to make this change. But I did order dessert. I had to have my traditional piece of Chaffin's peanut butter pie.

One good thing about the evening though was that our waiter was a guy who'd played our favorite character in the play "Smoke On the Mountain" that we'd seen last year. It was great to talk with him. I even got a new ventriloquist joke from him.

Anyway enough about the "dinner" part of our evening. The "theater" part was a play called "The Bop She Bops." It was about a trio of high school friends who made their singing debut in a high school talent show in 1962 but made awful fools of themselves. Ten years later they reunite and start practicing to perform at their high school reunion.

It was a musical and included songs by all the girl groups from the 60's including the Shirelles, The Chiffons, The Dixie Cups, and The Supremes. There were also a lot of other songs from that era. I enjoyed the music but the overall performance of the show was not among the strongest we've seen.

So that's been our vacation week so far. We'd like to do something else fun before the end of the weekend. We are thinking about going to the drive in tonight or Thursday night.

Even if we don't do anything special just being with my wife all this time without worrying about her job and just enjoying each other's company is something we've needed to do for quite a while.