Asheville - Dec. 10, 2022

The Husband had a 2-day seminar in Asheville, NC this week.  Neither of us enjoys flying - it's not the actual flying, it's the airports, and the grouchy people exhaling their nasty nose air in the seat next to you - so we drove.  Around 500 miles each way.  And since neither of us is fond of spending 10-12 hours in a car, we stopped for the night, coming and going.  So a 2-day seminar turned into a 6-day trip.

I spent the two seminar days mostly holed up in the hotel room, working.  (My new job, which involves mostly research, can be done from anywhere.)  

On our last night away from home, we stopped in Lebanon, Tennessee, which is roughly the half-way point.  We stay at the same hotel every time, mostly because it's relatively inexpensive and because there's a convenient restaurant in the same parking lot where we can have a cocktail or two and not worry about getting a DUI on the way back to the hotel.  But on this last night, we wanted Mexican food - mostly, we wanted margaritas - so we took a chance on driving to a restaurant 1/4 mile up the road.  This restaurant's menu was a little different from what we usually see at Mexican restaurants, and we weren't familiar with all of the terms.  In one corner of the menu was a list of street tacos, including one dubbed "taco lengua."  I had an idea what "lengua" meant, and when the waitress came to take our order, I said, "Lengua?" and pointed to my tongue.  "Si," she said.  I'd never eaten tongue, but by that time I'd enjoyed most of one margarita, so I took a chance and added a taco lengua alongside a taco pollo and a taco al carbon.  

It was delicious.

I washed it down with a second margarita, which was also delicious.  The Husband and I have been on a low-carb diet for six months and hadn't had a margarita the whole time.  We were both a bit giggly by the time we left the restaurant.  Good thing we were so close to the hotel!

Today, we have an unusual assignment on our agenda.  The merchants in the town where I've worked all these years puts on a "Dickens on the Square" festival every year, and the organizers con people into strolling the square in Dickens-period costumes.  We have never once joined in the "fun."  But the Mayor's office where I now work contributed to the festival by buying some decorations for the square and some costumes for the strollers, and I was asked to don one of the costumes and walk the streets for a while.  The Husband agreed to escort me.  

I have kicked myself a thousand times for agreeing to do this.  For the past couple of days, I have been praying for a gully-washer rainstorm that might relieve us of this duty.  And it is supposed to rain later this afternoon.  

Unfortunately, I volunteered us for morning duty.  *sigh*