BILL BLOG
Friday April 26, 2024
And a good Friday morning from Music City. Good to be home, but I’m already repacking for another flight tomorrow morning to Houston. More on that at the end of today’s blog.
82 in Nashville today with a little rain this morning.
YESTERDAY
My wife
and I reluctantly hugged our daughter and son in law goodbye at the Frankfurt
Airport and then took the long flight home to Nashville. The flights went
great, but our connection in Charlotte got a little dicey. First, we did not
have a whole lot of time before our connection to Nashville. So the long line
at customs had us holding our breath a bit. We cleared that…we thought. And
then for some reason they pulled my passport and made us sit and wait
for an official to give approval so that we could get to our gate on time.
He finally did. Just in time.
Worried with about 20 minutes to spare maybe, we go through security. The alarm goes off as I’m trying to go through to collect my bag. And the next thing you know I’m getting a VERY thorough pat down from a security office. I have no idea why they wanted to examine my passport, and no idea why they felt like they needed to search every part of my body. I must have looked like someone on their wanted list yesterday.
And then we find out that our gate was at the very FAR end of Charlotte Airport. I haven’t moved that fast since I played shortstop for the New Hope Baptist Church softball team. Winded…we finally got to our gate and folks were still boarding. Whew. It’s just one more thing we’ll add to our bag of great memories from this trip we took to Germany and Austria.
And it felt pretty good sleeping in our own bed last night.
COME BACK TO ME
I’m excited to finally share this new song that the trio “Three Times A Lady” recorded that I wrote with one of the three girl singers Lauren Mascitti and our mutual friend Kristen Leigh Bearfield “Come Back To Me”. I love the girls harmony and stage presence, and they’ll sing our song and all the songs on their debut album that they recorded here in town at 3rd & Lindsley at an album premier party on May 16. Just click on the link above to listen.
You’ll hear Lauren tell a bit of the story of how the song was written when you listen. I had already written the chorus that you hear and when I played it for Lauren and Kristen that day Lauren lit up. And then we hunkered down together and wrote the verses. I’m so glad the girls love it as much as I do!
HEALTH NOTES
Experts say daily showers are purely performative and have no real health benefits. (So…you can save some money on soap if you want and just deal with not smelling good.)
A neuro scientists says if you want your face to look longer don’t drink these three things. Alcohol, Soda, and coffee. (Ya had me until coffee. Sigh)
Meanwhile some scientists claim that drinking milk could make you look taller. (Kareem Abdul Jabbar must have owned a dairy farm)
FUNNY STORY
I’m stealing this from my friend and Country Radio Broadcast Hall of Famer Jim Mantel who’s now retired down in Florida. Yesterday Jim shared on his Facebook page on his wedding anniversary. He wrote…”Before I got married, I’d just smash into the back of cars because I didn’t have a wife to gasp and scream when someone braked 3 miles ahead.”
Anyone else experience that?
VENICE
That beautiful city we had the pleasure of touring a few years ago has become crowded. Really crowded. It was crowded when we visited and has been crowded for a very long time. So much so that you now will have to pay 5 euros just to visit the city as they try to control the crowding a bit. It is some kind of beautiful…so it’s worth the 5 euros which is about $5.36 American.
If you do go and deal with the crowding…take the boat ride over to the Murano glass factory and watch the artisans make that expensive glass. Amazing. And much of it is on display to buy of course.
And have dinner at the little Italian restaurant like our group did. Unforgettable.
MEANWHILE AT DISNEY WORLD
Crocs are now being banned in some places at the “happiest place on earth”. They are getting stuck in the teeth of some of the escalators and have caused some rides to stop. Signs are up banning the plastic wiffle ball shoes.
The Disney folks ask that you start wearing these instead.
THEM AND US
Mark Zuckerberg, the kazillionaire guy at Facebook is building himself a little cottage. This one is on the island of Kuai. It’s a 260 MILLION dollar home that will sit on 110 acres complete with an underground pool. Just a little old cottage.
You know it’s a big place when they start referring to the place you live as a “compound”.
SECURITY
Wonder of Mark’s compound will install these bad boys. Security cameras that can shoot paintballs and shoot tear gas pellets at home intruders. “PaintCam” is what they call this this new device.
I think I’ll rig mine to unleash a nest of wasps at the bad guys.
RAISING KIDS
It’s getting more and more expensive. The cost to raise a child jumped 20% from 2016 to 2021. That now means a typical family is spending $237,482 dollars over the course of 18 years to raise a child. And that is excluding the cost of college.
It was a long while ago of course, but to this day I don’t understand how my parents managed to raise up 5 kids. How would they possibly do that in today’s economic environment?
NEW WAYS OF ORDERING YOUR FOOD
Now some food servers at some places will allow you to Zoom them to place your food order before you arrive. So you can see your server before you sit down. Sort of like you see your Uber driver’s face when you book an Uber ride.
We found not one but two new ways of serving food during our trip we just got back from in Europe.
The first was the roller coaster tubes in Europa Theme park that delivered your food after placing your order on a computer screen at your table.
The second was the robot that rolled up with our food in Frankfurt at a city view restaurant.
Ordering one’s food is becoming more fun.
WATER
This is a bit eye opening. A new study claims that nearly 64% of bottled water in America is just tap water. And there’s not much transparency on the bottles as to where the water really comes. So just get you a plastic jug, turn on the tap and claim it came from a pure mountain stream in Montana.
HEADLINE OF THE DAY
Hospital Begs For Snakebite Victims To Stop Bringing In Serpents When Seeking Help. Yikes.
TODAY
I’m packing the guitar and a light bag for a trip to Texas tomorrow where I have a fun show set for Sunday at 1:15 pm at a festival called “Gulf Coast Days” with my friend Brent Burns who they are naming the festival after this year. Brent and I and a fiddle player named JD Edge and I will close out the show on barstools at T-Bone Tom’s in Kemah, Texas with the Gulf Coast waters behind us while we play and have fun. I’m looking forward to playing some fun songs to the Parrot Heads that will be gathered there.
Have a great weekend.
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