Photos and fall things
Oct. 15th, 2006 01:05 amSign it's fall: passing trains sound like they're right outside my window, instead of three miles away. (I actually just found this out today. I did know about the propensity for sound to travel better in cold/dry air, which is what we've had for the past several days, but the trains at night are so much louder that I thought CSX must have changed the routes to run closer to my house. I can now just barely hear them actually chugging along the rails, in addition to just the whistles at the crossing. I've never been in this house in October before--we moved in February of my senior year of high school--so this is new and different. I like it, though.)
Another sign it's fall: Oktoberfest. Which was today, and which was also kind of a bust. This is the first year I've gone, and really, the one here is more of a neighborhood party that the rest of the city is invited to, rather than anything to really do with Germany (or rather Germany-as-conceived-by-Americans, which is likely to be very different from the actual country). The band up onstage was doing some passable oohm-pa-pa, and there were a few guys in leiderhosen wandering about (also some guys in kilts, which didn't make a whole lot of sense), but beyond that, it was just people trying to sell various handicrafts. The houses in that area are very pretty, though, and one of the booths was for a greyhound rescue organization. They had greyhounds there for petting. Aw, doggehs.
Anyway, better festivals last weekend, which brings me to the main subject of this post: Pictures!
First of all, we have my incredibly belated photos from the trip to a local butterfly garden/greenhouse we took, um, more than a month ago. Butterflies everywhere!
Next, we have pics from Chandra's visit. Last Saturday, the new symphony hall had an open house, with music everywhere, all day. It was fantastic. The hall is beautiful, and the acoustics are fantastic. We were there for a performance by the Philharmonic Orchestra (yeah, I didn't even know we had a Philharmonic), and they sounded amazing. Part of that was of course that they are very good; Chandra and I were sitting in the choir seats behind the orchestra and could see the conductor as he very vigorously conducted. He was singing along with the music ("Hoedown," something about dancing by Webern, something relating to Jupiter by Mozart, and something that was incredibly familiar, but which neither of us could place) and waving his baton all over the place. He was so funny. I've gotta try and hear these guys again.
After the symphony hall, we wandered around downtown for a bit (I finally had my camera while I was at the library for the first time in years, yay!) and then ended up at the Celebration of Cultures at Centennial Park, where the first thing we saw on the stage was...the youth program of the Nashville Ballet doing part of "Laurie's Dream" from Oklahoma. Hmm. We had some really excellent Indian food (I must find a recipe for vegetable korma) while sitting in the shadow of the Parthenon. Yes, Nashville has a full-scale replica of the Athenian Parthenon. It's a long story. We wandered through that, since it was free that day, and saw that hideous 40-foot statue of Athena, which is even more hideous now that it's been covered in gold leaf. (I weep, people. Weep.)
Sunday saw a visit to the Hermitage (Andrew Jackson's home) and Opryland Hotel (a kind of indoor arboretum writ large, with a hotel added on...must be seen to be believed). Oooh, pretty.
Monday was the zoo, 'cause they have baby snow leopards! We, and everybody else at the zoo that day, came by for feeding time, and got to see the handlers drag those wee little cubs from their hiding/sleeping place at the very furthest point of their enclosure and carry them down to near the fence so they could eat. SO. CUTE. They'd also finished their lorakeet enclosure since I was there in August; you go inside and they'll come land on your hands or head, if you're lucky. They sell little cups of nectar to make that more likely. Everything else was much the same; the meerkats were still adorable, I got a better picture of the elephants, and the goats in the petting zoo were still kind of zoned out from excessive kid attention. Yay for zoos.
Hmm. It's 1 AM. I should probably go to bed. Although I want to keep listening to my new Hem album over and over and over...
Another sign it's fall: Oktoberfest. Which was today, and which was also kind of a bust. This is the first year I've gone, and really, the one here is more of a neighborhood party that the rest of the city is invited to, rather than anything to really do with Germany (or rather Germany-as-conceived-by-Americans, which is likely to be very different from the actual country). The band up onstage was doing some passable oohm-pa-pa, and there were a few guys in leiderhosen wandering about (also some guys in kilts, which didn't make a whole lot of sense), but beyond that, it was just people trying to sell various handicrafts. The houses in that area are very pretty, though, and one of the booths was for a greyhound rescue organization. They had greyhounds there for petting. Aw, doggehs.
Anyway, better festivals last weekend, which brings me to the main subject of this post: Pictures!
First of all, we have my incredibly belated photos from the trip to a local butterfly garden/greenhouse we took, um, more than a month ago. Butterflies everywhere!
Next, we have pics from Chandra's visit. Last Saturday, the new symphony hall had an open house, with music everywhere, all day. It was fantastic. The hall is beautiful, and the acoustics are fantastic. We were there for a performance by the Philharmonic Orchestra (yeah, I didn't even know we had a Philharmonic), and they sounded amazing. Part of that was of course that they are very good; Chandra and I were sitting in the choir seats behind the orchestra and could see the conductor as he very vigorously conducted. He was singing along with the music ("Hoedown," something about dancing by Webern, something relating to Jupiter by Mozart, and something that was incredibly familiar, but which neither of us could place) and waving his baton all over the place. He was so funny. I've gotta try and hear these guys again.
After the symphony hall, we wandered around downtown for a bit (I finally had my camera while I was at the library for the first time in years, yay!) and then ended up at the Celebration of Cultures at Centennial Park, where the first thing we saw on the stage was...the youth program of the Nashville Ballet doing part of "Laurie's Dream" from Oklahoma. Hmm. We had some really excellent Indian food (I must find a recipe for vegetable korma) while sitting in the shadow of the Parthenon. Yes, Nashville has a full-scale replica of the Athenian Parthenon. It's a long story. We wandered through that, since it was free that day, and saw that hideous 40-foot statue of Athena, which is even more hideous now that it's been covered in gold leaf. (I weep, people. Weep.)
Sunday saw a visit to the Hermitage (Andrew Jackson's home) and Opryland Hotel (a kind of indoor arboretum writ large, with a hotel added on...must be seen to be believed). Oooh, pretty.
Monday was the zoo, 'cause they have baby snow leopards! We, and everybody else at the zoo that day, came by for feeding time, and got to see the handlers drag those wee little cubs from their hiding/sleeping place at the very furthest point of their enclosure and carry them down to near the fence so they could eat. SO. CUTE. They'd also finished their lorakeet enclosure since I was there in August; you go inside and they'll come land on your hands or head, if you're lucky. They sell little cups of nectar to make that more likely. Everything else was much the same; the meerkats were still adorable, I got a better picture of the elephants, and the goats in the petting zoo were still kind of zoned out from excessive kid attention. Yay for zoos.
Hmm. It's 1 AM. I should probably go to bed. Although I want to keep listening to my new Hem album over and over and over...
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