twenty-fifth new thing...

this week actually presented itself with many, many new things, most of which i cannot or will not blog about right now as part of the 52 new things. i don't want to tempt fate, or the fates, or whomever might want to smite me in my uncharacteristic hopefulness and generally sunshiney nature. but i've said too much already. so let's move on. what i can blog about, however, is the fun time i had in nashville on friday night. for my twenty-fifth new thing, i attended my first bluegrass pickin' party.

nashville has a great community of green spaces throughout the city. seriously, they are major selling points for this athens of the south. i always loved driving about 10 minutes from downtown to radnor lake or percy warner or the trace (though that one is more than 10 minutes, but so worth the drive) and feeling like i was in the woods, a million miles away from whatever pressures you faced at the office or in a classroom earlier in the day. as a way to preserve and protect the warner parks (percy and edwin), the friends of warner park have fundraising events (as every good advancement officer knows you should...) including a summer tradition every third friday of the month starting in may and going through september, the full moon pickin' party.

how i managed to live in nashville for 6 years and never attend one of these i'll never know. for the low, low price of $20 each attendee is treated to 4 hours of amazing homegrown bluegrass music and 4 (yes, i said 4) complimentary beers in your commemorative plastic cup. and we aren't talking cheap beer here. no sir. that certainly won't do. we do it up in nash vegas. only the best...and appropriately named...beer will do. you also get that warm and fuzzy feeling (no, not from the beer) from knowing that you are helping preserve a great natural treasure. score.

we were able to procure a prime spot for our blankets and-- aside from the barefoot (though rather cute) hippie chick asking all of us to "dance" to music that only should be knee-slapped or square-danced to-- a great time was had by all. the usual suspects (me, kendra and brian) hung out with some stellar new friends (anna, evan and maya!) and some familiar faces (art and doug!) and ate true kettle corn, drank cold beer, and watched the lightning bugs while some of nashville's finest undiscovered talents played the banjo, standing bass, guitar and-- my personal favorite-- the mandolin. we ended the evening over some fresh baked apple pie (courtesy of the masked baker) and random youtube perusal. i think we all benefited from our lives being "grassed-up" that night. i know mine did.