Author: Average Jane

Why Average Jane Planned the Nashville Trip

From the late 1970s through the early 1990s, my husband lived and worked in Nashville. He eventually became a respected studio drummer, as well as a touring drummer for bands including James Brown and the Famous Flames and Wayne Jackson and the Memphis Horns.

He moved back to Kansas City around 1991 after his mother was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis. She outlived the two years the doctors had estimated and passed away in 1998. In the meantime, he met and married me, we bought a house, established careers, and settled in the Kansas City area.

I know my husband has always considered Nashville his second home and wondered what might have happened if he'd moved back. We've traveled there a couple of times since we met, but it had been a while, so I wanted to give him a whole week to look up old friends and take the time to reminisce and, if the opportunity arose, sit in with their bands.

So that's what we did.

Most of his friends are still part of the music scene in some capacity. Some are quite well-known; others are still hitting the road every week to play wherever the money is decent. One has recently found new careers as a wood carver and occasional actor.

One of the best things about the trip was that my husband managed to reconnect some of his Nashville-area friends with each other.

At this late date, it seems unlikely that we'll ever relocate to Nashville, but I'm glad my husband had the opportunity to get in touch with his old friends again. They're now his friends on MySpace and Facebook, and there's a real possibility that some of them can actually send work his way, now that technology has made it possible for him to record tracks here and FTP them to Nashville.

Either way, my husband had a wonderful time and I enjoyed seeing him so happy.

May 6, 2009
Average Jane Visits the Parthenon

One of the few touristy things we did in Nashville was visit their full-scale replica of the Parthenon. The Nashville version was built in 1897 as part of the city's Centennial Exposition. It was originally meant to be a temporary structure, but was restored beginning in the 1920s to the permanent building that exists today.

I visited once on a family vacation when I was growing up, but didn't really remember much about it. Since then, they've added an enormous statue of Athena inside the main chamber.

Around the perimeter are casts from some of the marble statuary from the original Parthenon.

They also have scale models of the statuary from the outside of the building.

If you click the photo, you can see more detail of the artwork. There's mesh all around the statuary to keep these guys from nesting there (the pigeons, not the gryphons or the gargoyles):

Nashville's Parthenon is the only full-scale model of the building in the world. Pretty cool, huh?

May 5, 2009
Average Jane Hits the Road

Last Monday, my husband and I loaded up the car in the morning and took the nine-hour drive to Nashville, Tennessee for the week. Because the rancorous interactions between Xena and Trillian were more than we wanted our cat-sitter to have to deal with, we decided to take Trillian with us.

I booked us a room at the pet-friendly Studio Plus near the Nashville airport, bought Trillian a harness and leash, and we arranged her food, water and a cat box in the back of the Honda Element as we packed the car.

My husband used to have "road cats" who traveled with his various bands when they were on tour. From Trillian's personality, he judged that she would have the temperament to be a good road cat. Some of our friends thought we were crazy, but we put her in her new harness, gave her a nice, comfy blanket on the back seat and took off.

At first she was a little stressed out. She did NOT like riding in the front with us because of all of the scary movement out the windows. It didn't help that it rained almost the entire way there, which made the ride noisy. However, she settled down and chilled out on her seat most of the way, even though I'm sure she was bored and a little freaked out.

Once we got to the hotel, Trillian started to realize she had us all to herself and she had a blast. Here she is suggesting that we read the Nashville Scene to decide what to do that day.

She behaved just as perfectly as we could have hoped…except for Tuesday morning. After she'd slept off the stress of the trip, she woke up at around 5 a.m., realized she wasn't at home, and decided that we all needed to wake up right away to address the situation. She was so insistent that we almost started wondering if it was a, "Lassie, is the hotel on fire?" type of situation. It was not.

Before we went to bed that night, I explained to her that I needed to sleep until at least 7:30 the next morning. On Wednesday morning, she popped up onto the bed right around 7:30 a.m. I got up, played with her a while and got online to read my e-mail and do some work. She went back to bed.

As we traveled around town each day, we'd pop back by the hotel periodically to give her some attention, check her food and water supplies, and let her play fetch with her favorite toy mousies.

It was nice having a kitty with us on vacation. I always miss the cats when we're away.

Trillian was much more relaxed on the way home. She even slept for several hours at a time. We made it home by 7:30 p.m. on Saturday and installed her in the studio rather than throwing her back into the mix with her cat buddies (not Xena, of course).

She was just as good a road cat as my husband had predicted. I can definitely envision us taking her on future road trips.

We did a lot more than just hang out in the room and play with the cat. More Nashville posts to follow all week.

May 4, 2009
Average Jane Has No Complaints

I think one of the reasons I've stopped blogging as often is that I'm really rather disgustingly happy with my life. It's great for me, but it doesn't exactly make for scintillating blog fodder. To quote Tolstoy, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

My husband and I are coming up on our fifteenth anniversary late this year. Despite some minor chore imbalances around the house, we experience very few conflicts. He's considerate and thoughtful, loves the cats and worries when I'm over-scheduling myself. I am inspired by his ability to pick up interests and study them until he becomes a self-taught expert.

We've finally lived in our house long enough that it's almost the way I want it.

My job is wonderful. I get to do work suited to my talents and personality that I really enjoy, and see minute-by-minute results.

I'm mature enough to be comfortable in my own skin…even when it encloses a couple dozen extra pounds that I haven't gotten around to addressing. I know who I am and what I stand for.

I have an almost unbelievable number of friends. Not only do I keep in touch with old friends clear back to elementary school, I'm constantly meeting new people who enrich my life in ways I would never have anticipated.

I haven't even mentioned the little joys of life: cats, coffee, books, movies, favorite TV shows, yoga, ice cream and too many other things to enumerate.

When I don't post, it's largely because I'm spending my time living this life and appreciating every moment of it.

That said, I'm looking forward to having some fun posts next week, complete with photos. See you then!

April 29, 2009
Average Jane Is Puzzled

I keep seeing this billboard along I-70 in Kansas City. I think Pepsi has mistaken Kansas City for St. Louis. The only person I know who pronounces "soda" as "sody" is my aunt in St. Louis. Even she, if I remember correctly, doesn't actually call it "sody pop." Very strange.

April 24, 2009
Average Jane Gets A Sneak Peek

Last night I enjoyed one of the perks of being a blogger: an invitation-only advance look at the newly-renovated AMC Mainstreet movie theater up the street from my office.

I've been watching the renovation process with interest the entire time I've worked in downtown Kansas City. I could see the green dome from the Kansas City Power & Light Building where I worked at my last job. At the time, it was a popular gathering place for pigeons, which made it just as poop-bedecked as you'd imagine. Back then there were also trees growing on the roof.

Now it's beautiful outside and inside. Here are some photos of the theater throughout its history. The main photo on this post is by Eric Bowers, whose blog I've enjoyed for a long time.

I met up after work with a big group of bloggers and Twitterers, most of whom I already knew through either the Kansas City Bloggers group or the KC Social Media Club.

During the tour, we learned that it was originally built in 1921 as a vaudeville theater. Eventually it became a movie theater, and it remained open until 1985. I'm a lifelong Kansas City area resident, but I'd never been there and I have no memory of it being open or advertising movie showings in the paper. I guess we lived too far south for it to have registered.

I made the mistake of failing to check my camera batteries before I went,
so the only photo I got is from my phone. It shows the "backstage" of
the new theaters built within the brick shell that still contains the
risers and spotlight platform from the original vaudeville auditorium.

After our tour, which included a look at the huge server room and one of the projection rooms for the all-digital theater, we got to see The Brothers Bloom in one of the Cinema Suites theaters. The movie choice was a pleasant surprise given that we'd been told we were going to see Valkyrie.

They'd given us a few appetizers, but I was hungry for dinner and ordered the mac n' cheese during the movie. It was tasty, but I wouldn't order it again because it was very difficult to maneuver in the dark and I dropped pieces on my shirt several times.

The Cinema Suites lounge chairs were very comfortable and it was great to be able to put my feet up for the whole show. They even have transducers in them that make them shake when there's some particularly low-frequency sound onscreen (explosions, trains going by, etc.). Pretty cool.

I haven't even mentioned that there's a restaurant inside the theater, as well as a huge wall of concession stand drink options, popcorn toppings and condiments. They have beer on tap and a coffee bar, too.

So that was my evening last night. Special thanks to Logtar and Bea for walking out with me and making sure I got to my car safely.

The theater doesn't open until May 1st, but I could definitely see
myself going back (albeit probably for the less pricey regular theaters
as opposed to the premium Cinema Suites experience). Thanks, @jpgardner, for setting up the tour and including me.

April 23, 2009
Average Jane Celebrates Her Husband’s Birthday

I just realized that I haven't been blogging often enough to tell this story without laying a bit of groundwork. I'll keep it as basic as possible.

We had band practice on Tuesday night and our new drummer did not show up. His wife called the next day with a drama-filled explanation, but obviously things were not going to work out with him. Thus, we had to prevail upon my husband to play our Friday night gig with us.

Friday was my husband's 52nd birthday. You'd never guess, would you?

I knew he really didn't want to spend his birthday working, so I stopped at Costco on the way home from work and bought him a huge chocolate cake with chocolate mousse filling. We packed up our music gear and took the cake with us to the bar.

On our first break, I invited all of the bar patrons to have cake with us. A few brave souls outside of our usual fan group took us up on it. When we got back onstage, everyone in the band and audience sang happy birthday and my husband looked pleased despite his avowed disinterest in celebrating.

I purposely left the weekend open so I could hang out with the hubby as much as possible. We slept late on Saturday, went out to breakfast at Einstein Bros. around 3 p.m., went to an art opening in the early evening and finished off our day's activities with dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant. We were initially planning to go out and see a band play, but I ran out of steam and needed to get some sleep instead.

Today we're getting together with the guitarist from our defunct original project to grab an early dinner and go to a jam.

My husband's birthday gift from me is a trip to Nashville that we'll be taking this spring. He's planning on meeting up with his old buddies from the decade that he lived in Nashville and worked as a studio and touring drummer. I'm thinking of the trip mainly in terms of the delicious food we're going to have (Pancake Pantry, Corky's Barbecue, etc.).

It's a couple of days late now, but "Happy Birthday, Honey!"

April 19, 2009
Average Jane and Books

I've loved reading from the moment I learned how to read.

I was the kid who strained her eyes trying to read by the dim light of the nightlight when I was supposed to be going to sleep.

I would sit off to the side of the playground at recess and read my book until the teachers expressed their dismay that I wasn't playing. Then I'd sit on the teeter-totter with someone and continue reading as we went up and down.

In the summer, I'd climb up my favorite tree with my current book in hand and then prop myself among the branches to read.

Thanks to Twitter, I've met a lot of librarians lately and it's inspired me to want to start reading more books again. Oh, and since @BonnieGlick (former librarian) showed me her Kindle, I may not be able to resist getting one.

Which brings me to yet another book meme. This one came from Florinda, who says she stole it from The Boston Bibliophile. Feel free to steal it yet again!

1. Hardback, trade paperback or mass market paperback? I like trade paperbacks. They're substantial but not as heavy as hardbacks.

2. Barnes & Noble or Borders? They're pretty much indistinguishable to me. I'll go to whichever one is convenient.

3. Bookmark or dog-ear? I used to dog-ear, but now I'm a pretty faithful bookmarker. If I'm reading a hardback, I'll tuck one of the dust jacket flaps in as a bookmark.

4. Amazon or brick and mortar? Mostly Amazon.

5. Alphabetize by author or alphabetize by title or random? Stack in huge piles until they begin falling over, then move to any shelf or surface that will hold them.

6. Keep, throw away, or sell? I don't do much selling anymore. Mostly I give them away (or BookCross them), except for the occasional keepers.

7. Keep dust jacket or toss it? Keep it.

8. Read with dust jacket or remove it? I leave it on.

9. Short story or novel? I prefer novels.

10. Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket? Harry Potter. I tried to like Lemony Snicket, but there's something about the books that I just don't dig.

11. Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks? Unless I'm reading right before bed, I'll stop at chapter breaks.

12. "It was a dark and stormy night" or "Once upon a time"? Once upon a time. I'm a sucker for fairy tales and fantasy.

13. Buy or borrow? I mostly buy, but I'm trying to get back into the library habit.

14. New or used? I once was a used book junkie, but these days I buy all new.

15. Buying choice: book reviews, recommendations, or browse? The top reasons I'll buy a specific book these days: 1) It's for a book club, 2) Someone I know (or whose blog I read) wrote it, or 3) I saw it recommended online somewhere.

16. Tidy ending or cliffhanger? I don't have a preference.

17. Morning reading, afternoon reading, or nighttime reading? I like to spend entire weekend days reading. I also keep a book or two on my bedside table to read before I fall asleep.

18. Stand-alone or series? Either one is fine with me.

19. Favorite series? Harry Potter

20. Favorite children's book? Any of the L. Frank Baum "Oz" books.

21. Favorite YA book? The "His Dark Materials" series is YA, right?

22. Favorite book of which nobody else has heard? "Sock" by Penn Jillette. Here's my blog post about recommending it to a new book club where everyone HATED it.

23. Favorite books read last year? "Water for Elephants," "The Little Book," "Blindness," "I Was Told There'd Be Cake," "Waiter Rant." I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch.

24. Favorite books of all time? The "Lord of the Rings" series; the "Hitchhiker's Guide" series, the "Harry Potter" series and "Gone With the Wind" (as un-PC as it is). If I weren't so lazy, I'd go down to my bookcase and just look to see what my keeper list consists of.

25. What are you reading right now? My bedside book right now is "Stuff White People Like," which I picked up at BlogHer last year.

26. What are you reading next? "Not Done Yet" by Laurie Kingston. I'm setting aside this Saturday just to read it.

27. Favorite book to recommend to an eleven-year-old? Probably the Nancy Drew books.

28. Favorite book to reread? I like to revisit the "Hitchhiker's Guide" series periodically. No matter how many times I read them, they still make me laugh out loud.

29. Do you ever smell books? I can't help it, my sense of smell is very acute.

30. Do you ever read primary source documents, like diaries or letters? Yes. They're quite the phenomenon these days. I believe they're called "blogs."

April 16, 2009
Average Jane Plans A March

If you spend as much time on blogs and Twitter as I do, I'm sure you heard about the terrible tragedy that befell Maddie Spohr last week. After the Spohr family lost their daughter, friends and strangers alike rallied to donate more than $25,000 (to date) to the March of Dimes in her memory.

I'll be doing the March for Babies Walk in Kansas City, Missouri in a few weeks and I'd like to ask you to click the graphic at the top of this post and donate a dollar or two to help me reach my fundraising goal. Or perhaps you'd like to join a team and walk.

You don't have to be a parent to appreciate how vital it is to work to ensure that the March of Dimes' goal comes to fruition as soon as possible.

Thanks in advance.

* * * * * * * *

Update: Thanks so much to Laurie and Cagey for their generous donations. I'm almost halfway to my goal!

April 13, 2009
Easter Dinner with Average Jane

Once again, my sister has agreed to continue the family tradition of hosting a big meal on Easter, despite the fact that we're pretty much the most secular group of people imaginable. We'll have at least ten people – a comfortable combination of relatives and friends.

The main entree is easy: my company offers a discount on Honeybaked Hams which are then delivered to your desk on the Friday before the holiday. I stuck with the "small" 7-pound ham because, seriously, how much ham can a person eat?

Last night I was relaxing at home all evening watching TV and surfing when I realized just as I was getting ready to go to bed around 1:00 a.m. that I hadn't made my Easter cheesecake yet. It needs to cure for a couple of days before being served, so I was up until about 3:00 a.m. baking my usual delicious recipe but with a ginger cookie crust. I'm a little concerned that the crust may have overbrowned, but it's hard to tell because there's something spilled in the bottom of my oven that's smoking a bit. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Me suggested that peach topping would be good with the ginger/walnut crust, so I'm looking forward to serving it that way tomorrow.

Originally I was thinking of making an asparagus souffle as a side dish, but after looking at a bunch of recipes I decided it was too much trouble. However, I did run across a veggie snack that sounds delicious and would use up a bunch of the frozen edamame I have: Garlic Edamame. If I don't make it as an Easter appetizer, I'll definitely try it soon.

My final contribution to the meal will be my usual dinner rolls. They didn't come out very well at Christmas, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that tomorrow's batch will be better.

The one thing I'm not making is hard-boiled, colored eggs. Because my sister is the one with the kids, I'm sure she'll have more than enough at her house to cover our deviled egg needs.

If I were dyeing eggs, I would definitely try making the silk-dyed eggs I've been seeing all over the 'net in the past week or so. I just don't have the time or motivation to go to the thrift store for silk ties this year.

So that's my plan for tomorrow.

Today I'm heading to Parkville, Missouri to meet up with some of my friends and get to know some of my Twitter buddies in person. The plan is to have lunch and do a bit of shopping.

I can tell this is going to be a very lovely weekend.

April 11, 2009