I do believe in Spooks

I love ghost tours.  Kinda in a weird way.  I was NEVER into ghosts, but after my first ghost tour experience in Richmond, I was hooked.  Sorry I'm not sorry, but they're SO MUCH fun.

Last weekend I had friends in town and Friday night we decided to brave the 109 degree weather and do the Nashville Ghost Tour.  A 90 minute walking tour downtown full of stories of Nashville & her ghosts.

We met our tour guide, Jodi, down by the Hermitage hotel and she was dressed in costume with her lantern in hand.  We heard about the MULTIPLE ghosts that are hanging out in the Hermitage hotel (I definitely want to stay here one night - but only if I can stay in room 816 or 910) then walked us over to the Capital building where we heard the stories of the two architects of the capital building that are both buried there.  They hated each other and life and now have to "live" together for eternity.

Our tour guide, Jodi - Complete w/ Costume & Lantern

Gorgeous Hermitage Hotel. Totally haunted.

A couple more stories followed down by the first Catholic church in Nashville and the infamous L&C building (let's be real, L&C stands for "Life & Casualty" - lots of ghosts there, people) but the real take home to mom story happened down on Printer's Alley.

Uh, yeah - our capital building is scary.

Example #37 of things that JUST HAPPEN in my presence:
Printer's Alley isn't exactly the classiest place to go in downtown Nashville.  The history of this area is this is alley that housed a lot of publishing companies back in the day.  Obviously it turned into an alley of bars.  This IS Nashville after all.  I wouldn't call these bars Honky Tonks.  I would call these bars secret strip clubs because I'm pretty sure that's what they are.  At least that's what I've heard, I've never actually been "out" down there.  Hopefully I've painted a good picture of our surroundings at this point:
We walk over to Printer's Alley to learn about a ghost living inside the Southern Turf building and all of a sudden this MAN falls out of the door of a bar. Literally, the door opens up and he fell straight onto the ground.  It's hard not to stare at things like that, but I tried to focus on Jodi and the ghosts.  This man (who we'll later learn is named William) is now flat out laying on the ground. Just hanging out. He's not worried.  Well, he's not worried until the police come up.  Police man tries to create a distraction from this tour group who is staring at William and calmly asks for his identification.  William can't seem to find it.  So, calm police man says:
"William, buddy. You have two choices.  Tonight you can either go to the hospital, or you can go to jail."
William looks up at him and says "But...but, I want to go home."
Police man says "Nope. Two choices.  One or the other - you can go to the hospital, or you can go to jail."
       [It's hard for me to put into a blog what happens next.  Please believe me that this is real.]
William doesn't reply and all of a sudden police man looks at him and says, "AND you just peed on yourself."

Poor William.  I wonder how his night ended....

Printer's Alley. (Bottom left corner: William on the ground...)

Kendall & Kelsey seeing if they can feel the ghosts through this HAUNTED door

All in all, the ghost tour was a success and a good way to do some sightseeing with friends on a weekend where being outside during the daylight hours could have produced 3rd degree burns.  Fortunately things are cooling off here in Tennessee, just in time for my NEXT weekend visitor that arrives tomorrow - MY MAMA! :)

Love having friends come to visit!!

That's all from me y'all!

There isn't much I won't do for Edward Cullen

During the month of June, every Wednesday night, there was a free outdoor movie shown @ Percy Warner Park - this is called (go figure) Movies in the Park.  Most of the Nashville Food Trucks show up every week to feed you and the movie starts at Sundown.

I first read about this in one of the Nashville blogs I follow.  This sounded like a pretty fun thing to do so I checked more into it.  Then things got real.  Week 3 they were showing Breaking Dawn - Part 1.  Uh, duh.  I'll be there.

I recruited a work-friend to go see this with me & she brought along some friends as well.  No one had been before, so we showed up around 6pm worried that we might be facing a park full of teeny boppers who are on summer vacation.  Sure, there were teeny boppers, but I was more irritated with most of their moms who were treating this like a sorority social.  I put my blanket down as far away from most of them as possible.

Everyone starting to set up camp

I've been wanting to try The Grilled Cheeserie Food truck since I moved here and I was super pumped to see them there.  Pumped to see them there...a little disappointed with the outcome.  Let's just say, it's no grilled cheese from Shockoe Espresso.  I also finally got to try out The Cupcake Collection.  Cupcake stores are all the rage here right now and their food truck is an old school bus.  Let's just say the Sweet Potato cupcake is borderline life changing.

Now, given that I've seen BD-P1 multiple times already there were no disappointments there.  It's literally a gigantic blow up movie screen and sure enough, the movie started right around sundown.  I will say the length of the movie combined with sitting on the hard ground created a bit of a situation by the end of the movie.  Next time, I'll bring a chair in addition to the blanket.  A chair to sit in, a blanket to wrap up in - it gets COLD when that sun goes away!

I told you: LITERALLY a giant blow-up screen

Not too shabby of a view

I'm bummed this is only a one-month thing and wish I had caught on a little sooner to have seen some of the other movies, however, now that it's over 100 degrees every day, I think I'm fine with putting a blanket on the floor of my air conditioned apartment and making my own grilled cheese.

Live a little, Love a lot

In case you live under a rock and missed the appx. 97 mobile uploads that took place last weekend on Facebook, I went to the Tim McGraw & Kenny Chesney concert.  The prodigal sons returned to Nashville for the "Brothers of the Sun" tour and it. was. amazing.

Do you ever get nervous before live concerts that you're going to be disappointed?  Yeah, me neither. I love live concerts.  I'll go see anyone. (Seriously, I've considered going to see Def Leopard & Poison this Tuesday night...stay tuned...)

The concert lasted from 4:30-11:30pm and just imagine them singing every awesome song they've ever sung, and we heard them all.  The next day I felt a little bit like both an Indian Outlaw and a Hillbilly Rockstar Out of Control.....

It was a thousand degrees, we sat in the nosebleeds, and I wouldn't change a moment of that day.

(one of the) Best Concerts Ever.

A few pics below:

Tailgating all day outside of Titans Stadium.  (So ready for football season...!)

My Sisters of the Sun

When the musicians have concerts in their hometown, their famous wives show up to sing as well - Tim & Faith