unforth | Walkabout, Day 7

Well, there's shockingly little to say about today, only that I'm sitting here listening to the game and watching the horrible flash animation, and my emotions are flopping between bliss and annoyance, because on the one hand, I'm listening to the game, but on the other hand, I'm NOT watching the game...

This morning, I woke up and drove into Nashville with the intention of visiting Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, on the grounds of a lovely late 19th century mansion. It wasn't a huge museum, but it had a nice collection, with strengths in Worcester Royal Porcelain Manufactory porcelain and pottery - one of the biggest collections in the world and it was very nice stuff - a neat collection of Chinese snuff bottles, and some nice Fabrege stuff, including three eggs (though one was away on loan). I'd never seen much Fabrege before, so that was particularly interesting.

I had hoped to see loads of Tulips, but I was disappointed - they didn't have a big collection - but they did have a few which were in full blossom, and some lovely daffodils, though they were past their prime. They had a neat forest trail with weird sculptures in it, and a very peaceful and pleasant Japanese garden (though my highly pleasant Zen moment there got disrupted by a couple of people who were talking and said something vaguely stupid).

I've been pretty tired all day, though, because I was up a ...

SHIT, come on, Pelfry! A three run homer? Seriously?

Sorry...

Anyway, I was up a lot during the night because of the light seeping in through my window, which made me think at 3 AM that it was about 7, which sucked when I finally checked the time. As a result, I didn't have loads of energy, and in particular the drive was pretty tough, but I bore it through and arrived in Knoxville relatively early. My thoughts today? Pretty scattered - but mostly they were about the Civil War novel that I want to write, as I considered the strengths and weaknesses of different types of lead characters. I'm still a long way from starting that project, but I do want to start thinking about it so that I can be keeping my eyes open while I'm reading about the war for appropriate materials and research.

I wanted to get to Knoxville early so that I could watch the game; I arrived at about 4:30, settled in, screwed around with photographs (I'm almost caught up on the uploading, and if I have the energy this evening I'll start to label and link to a few of them) and then grabbed dinner and ice cream and got back just in time for the first inning (I missed the first batter) and promptly bought myself a subscription to MLB.TV, which I've been planning to get for a while. I went to watch the game...and it says that I can't watch it because I'm in the viewing territory for one of the teams - presumably the Reds in Cinci, since I know they don't get SNY out here. Either way, it hardly matters, because the hotel is definitely not getting the game. Still, if I hadn't got MLB.TV, I don't think I could even be listening to the game (the WFAN radio broadcast) so I guess it's something.

Of course, it's only the first inning, and Pelfry is already crashing and burning, which is not reassuring...apparently, my brother is at the game - I was going to try to spot him while I was watching it, but I guess it's not to be.

Right. So, as I started out saying: not very much to today. :) But that's okay - there need to be days like that.