Did you miss me? ;-) - August 30, 2023

Sometimes, getting what you wished for turns out not too badly.

You've seen my griping about needing a change of scenery.  The Husband has heard it (repeatedly) too, and he took me seriously enough to tack a couple of days onto a business trip to Nashville so that we could do some sightseeing.  We went to the Grand Ole Opry Saturday night.  Sunday, my cousin came to our hotel, and we visited the afternoon away.  

There were two other things on my list that I intended to do, visit the Tennessee State Museum and the state archives.  I wound up not doing either one, because one of the "side-trips" that the seminar provided was to the Goo-Goo Cluster store.  It was right smack in the middle of the day Monday, which didn't leave enough time to properly do either the museum or the archives, but this tour was a wine-and-chocolate-pairing tour (sanctioned day-drinking!); learning that we'd get to make our own Goo-Goo Clusters sealed the deal.  

The tour group was made up of people from all over the U.S.  It shocked me that most of them had never heard of a Goo-Goo Cluster.  

We listened to a short history of the candy, then donned aprons (which we got to keep) and gloves, and chose our own ingredients from little cups on a table - various flavored nougats, caramel, nuts, crunchy things.  We put them in a mold that was already lined with chocolate, then the candy person sealed the top with more chocolate and cooled it.  I left the store with a hockey puck-sized piece of chocolate, filled with salted caramel, brown sugar nougat, pecans, toffee, and pretzel pieces.  

O.M.G.

Monday night we went to dinner with the Tennessee group.  The food was ridiculously expensive.  

I could have gone to the museum Tuesday, but I didn't.  Ten years ago, I would have hopped in the car and driven myself, but city traffic unnerves me these days, especially in an unfamiliar place.  I might have plastered a few tourists doing stupid sh*t on electric scooters.  In broad open daylight, there were open-air buses full of drunk people, zooming around, thumping music.  Sensory overload!  I stayed in the room and painted.

Yes, I took my paints.

It is good to be home and sitting on the back porch, with only the sounds of bugs and frogs assaulting my ears.