Find Your People - Episode 121

Mandy. I'm trying not to crunch my crackers in my microphone. Crunch away. We might have people with this missing missing phone. What's it called? Missing Thonia. They hate to hear people eat. Hopefully not. Sorry y'all. I'm just glad to be here. Let me tell you. It's been a journey. It's been a journey. Of the roads we have traveled. It's been a journey. Yes, I think when last we left. Uh-huh. I think we hung up quickly because the dog had to poop. Yep. So we did not disclose that I was heading to New York for the weekend. Left at, left my, got up my alarm was set for like 4 15 or something ungodly. Ouch. Left my house at 5 a.m. which you know wasn't real sure how mercy was gonna react to that. When I opened her crate door she looked at me like what are you doing? It's the middle of the night. Right. But um and you know how it is when you leave your children or your animals and you have to have like yes everything's set up and it's like a house of cards. Yes. So I get to the airport. I was flying out of Destin which I haven't done in a minute and you know it was dark and raining and I live in a place where there's like very little covered parking available at an airport. So if it's raining you just get soaking wet. So there I am already soaking wet. It's fine. It's fine. We're fine. Um get to Nashville. I had a long layover in Nashville on a zoom call and I get a text from the dog sitter who was gonna go by and let mercy out on her way to work that she has been an offender bender and so she cannot get to my house before she has to be at work. So then I launch into okay who can I call? So called my friend Jetty who has adopted one of my previous dogs and she comes and lets mercy out. Mercy poops four times. Four times. Magical. Magical. Thank goodness it was Jetty who understands why we're on ours. So anyway then my sister joins me in Nashville. We get to New York all's well and good. Go to dinner with our loyal listener Allison who listens in spurts like she she listens when she drives to Georgia from Brooklyn and so she'll be hearing this particular episode I don't know probably in August but we had a lovely dinner in February didn't we Allison? And then the next day listen New York was balmy on that Saturday I was walking around in a short-sleeve sweater without my coat on. Look at that. Went and had a lovely dinner at a new restaurant it was real average it wasn't that lovely it's a beautiful room the food was quite average. And at Rockefeller Center because that night we went and saw Jason Isbell at Radio City musical. Amazing. Super fun. Concert was great. He played both of my favorite songs different days and relatively easy. It says if he knew it was my birthday. And then I started looking around this room and I kept looking around the room and telling my sister like look at all these people can you believe all these people know who Jason Isbell is and also like him enough to have bought tickets. And then I started looking thinking all these people are gonna be leaving at the same time we are we gonna have a hard time getting a cab. So Jason always does three songs for an encore and one of them is a cover typically. Well he played a cover you could you know it's winding up and he plays a cover and I was like well wait a minute maybe he's not gonna do this typical encore maybe Radio City music hall has different rules. And so I said I think we might need to leave. And my sister's like no that's fine we can stay we can still stay. Well then he starts playing cover me up after he played the cover and I was like oh this is it this is the finale let's go. And she's like are you sure. I'm like yeah let's get out of here. So we're walking at the aisle and there's like a drunk man in the aisle and he grabs my sister who's in front of me and he's like you can't leave during this song. And I just said spoiler alert he left her. Yeah I was about to say he if he can leave we can leave. If you aren't familiar with cover me up it's a beautiful love song that Jason wrote for his ex-wife. Yep. Just hit the same y'all. Anyway so we got out of there we got a cab lickety-split. Great. As soon as we walked out of the door Julie and I are both looking at our phones and we have a text that our flight has been canceled. Our flight on Monday. This is Saturday night our flight on Monday has already been canceled. So we were just like well for all along what do we do. So we rebooked for Tuesday leaving it like 10 a.m. That was gonna get me home like probably 10 p.m. I can't remember. But that was the plan. All right one more night in the hotel. We offered to change hotels because of course we had gotten a nice hotel. It was my birthday we were gonna be there you know. No no stay in the same hotel it's fine. So Sunday it started snowing at about probably like 1030 maybe and it wasn't sticking because remember I had been walking around in a short-sleeve sweater the day before. So it wasn't really sticking. It wasn't snowing that hard. We met my friend Leslie who lives in the West Village. We met her for brunch and I was basically like Leslie what do we need to be doing. She's like when we leave here I'm gonna walk y'all. We're gonna walk to the grocery store. Then y'all get some things. Just get some things to have. We had a refrigerator. We did not have a microwave or a coffee maker. They have a great coffee bar and the downstairs of the hotel. So we got some yogurt and some hummus. That kind of stuff. We had already ordered levain cookies. They had already been delivered. We were stocked with the delicious cookies. Then we had gotten some pastries the day before. We were good. We were set. So we had brunch with Leslie and I went back to the hotel for a minute and then we decided to go see ragtime y'all. I was hesitant. I wanted it. I tried to make it work for Friday night but I was just afraid we were gonna be late and we wouldn't get there in time because Joshua Henry who is the lead doesn't do the Sunday matinees. Would it have been better with Joshua Henry? Yes it would have been better with Joshua Henry but it was amazing even without him. I cried three times. Love it. Three times I cried. Great show. The fact that it is a story set in 1906 and it is so relevant for our times. Oh I know. Heartbreaking. Joshua Henry could sing our show notes and they would be spectacular. I hate that you missed him but I'm sure the understudies are just as fantastic. I mean that's part of New York theater. It was amazing and that theater was great. It's a little theater up at Lincoln Center. Okay I've never been to a show there. Well I've sung in Lincoln Center twice Katie. Of course you have ma'am. I don't sing. There we go. But those are in those concerts are like in a big hall. That was like an Alice Tully Hall. This is a little thing. I mean it's a little theater. It's not like you know an off-broadway theater. So listen y'all I just can't recommend the visual. The way they use the stage was fascinating because it is kind of smaller so you know they had to be creative and how they did that. It's really just beautiful. Highly recommend it. So we did that. We came out of that and then it was snowing and sticking to the point that it was a little bit touch-and-go getting a car. But we had decided to go get some pizza for dinner and Julie was like do you think we need to get it to go? I was like no we're gonna have one more meal in a restaurant before we get stuck like we're fine. So we went to this great pizza place on the Lower East Side. They were running a special that if you got two pizzas you got a free bottle of wine. So I had a free bottle of wine. There we go. I didn't drink it all. But and then we got in a cab and went back to the hotel where we stayed until about two o'clock the next day. And it was fine the problem being the coffee shop did not open. Because the mayor had implemented a travel ban and non-essential people were told to stay home. And guess what? Coffee apparently is not essential. I would disagree with that sentiment but the people are more valuable than coffee. But I say it's essential. Coffee is essential. It is essential. So anyway we were then then we get then when is that when we when did we get the notice? It was late Sunday night. Not late. It was like 730 Sunday night that we got the notice that our flight on Tuesday had been canceled. So we had rebooked for 6 o'clock Wednesday morning. So Monday we did eventually after it stopped snowing at around 2 we ventured out and walked like a block to the Empire Diner where I drank a latte and approximately three sips and then got a Bloody Mary. Amen sister. Amen. So yeah so had that had that meal which was nice and then just went back to the hotel I ate leftover pizza just stay in the hotel and then Monday was that yeah that was no that was Monday that was Monday yeah then Tuesday when you know at this point we live in New York now I've been trying to get into this little Italian place in the West Village called Via Corota for a thousand years and had done the thing on Rezzi where you can say notify me and so I woke up at one in the morning and I had a notify me from Via Corota that we could go to lunch. I was like book it. So yeah so Tuesday we got up and we went to lunch at Via Corota. I might have had three glasses of wine with lunch. Love it. And then we walked around the West Village which we had already done but we walked around some more and then we went to the Frank and I lean store which is uptown it's on the Upper East Side and so then we popped into Central Park for a minute it was just lovely. I love that. My concern hearing all of this is did you have enough clothes? So yes okay I had only packed. I wore like the Old Navy's equivalent of the scuba like scuba material. Okay. Our listener Elizabeth had told me I really needed to get the Old Navy version of that so I had worn that pants and a sweatshirt to fly up and then I had brought with me one pair of jeans and one pair of corduroys and a skirt. I wore the jeans on Saturday and just kept the same outfit on all day long Saturday which was a good call. Yeah. And then I wore my pants the rest of the time and I did I had enough shirts. Love it. That I could rotate and then flew home in the same outfit I had flown up in. There we go. So worked out great. I mean you were in a great shopping place but still like that was I was sitting there thinking gosh I probably wouldn't have had enough clothes to last. Well the shoes because you know once we decided to walk around not everybody has shoveled their sidewalk right and I had almost packed or had almost worn my duck boots which are my snow boots because I live in Florida. Yeah. But the forecast when we left was not that bad. And so I was like no I'm fine. So I did have two pair of soles. I had my tennis shoes which are water they're not like they're water resistant probably. And then I also had a pair of like Chelsea style boots. Okay. That are the same they're waterproof. So and they did me right. They did me right. It's great. My sister had bought some snow boots on Saturday when we were in Soho. So she had actual snow boots. Yeah. So I would let her lead the way and discover the hidden puddles that I could then avoid. Love it. But yeah. So we did fine. So then we get up Tuesday morning in the middle of the night. It was 3.45 Eastern Time which is 2.45 Central Time y'all. And we go downstairs and we get in our Uber to the airport. The security line is three miles long. But we got through it fine. Good. We get to our gate. We sit down. Take a breath. Get on the plane. Like didn't even go get a coffee. Like it was cut that close. So we just got on the plane. They close the doors. We push back from the gate and the bottom falls out snowing again. Oh my god Mandy. My sister had fallen asleep. So when she wakes up an hour later and there are people walking on the plane she's like she text me she said did we take off. I was like have you had a stroke. No. What are you talking about. She said I fell asleep. She didn't know where we were. She didn't know what was happening. I said no honey we're right where we were when you fell asleep. So they switched which runway everybody was going off of. But then by that time we had to go back and get more gas and get the ice to get them. And at that point they let us off the plane. So we did go get some coffee at least at that point. But we were it was four hours. It was four hour delay. At which point I had missed my connection in Nashville. But I was like that's fine. That's fine. There's a flight that leaves at 520 going back into Destin. It'll be fine. As we're pulling as we're going into Nashville to land I get a text that says they have rebooked me on a flight on Thursday morning from Nashville. That would be Katie because the 520 flight was full. Oh god. I'm like uh uh screw this. I'm just renting a car. I'll rent a car and drive home from Nashville. It's fine. That's what I'm going to do. Well then thankfully my scheduler brain kicked in and I thought well wait let me see if they have any flights into Panama City. And then I can rent a car in Panama City and drive to Destin which is a whole lot better than Nashville to Santa Rosa. So that's what I ended up doing. I booked on a flight later that afternoon into Panama City. I rented a car and then it dawned on me again that I didn't have to go all the way to Destin that night. I could just go home because the next day I had an appointment with a new ENT over close to the airport. So it worked out great. Look at that. Went and dropped got my well went and dropped the car off got my car went to the ENT then I went to get my allergy shot. It was just great. Just great. Just another $174. What was money? What was money? What is money? And I love that you have a new ENT. Well. Well. Okay. All right. My my my PA who was my primary care provider. When all the sinus stuff started. She had already I already kind of had a bad feeling about her just because she tended to blame everything on BMI. And then when all the sinus stuff started she totally blew me off. So I had fired her. Guess who has been hired as the new PA at the ENT's office. And guess who I'm going to see for my follow up because the PA that I saw when I went last week is about to be on maternity leave. I give up. I give up. I give up. Anyway. So that was my adventure in New York. I mean for all law. Freaking law. And listen. So I spent all weekend doing nothing. Should I have worked one of those days? Yes. I should have worked both of those days. Yes. But I didn't. I figured out about the time I got home that I had a brief due in Moultrie on Monday. And I didn't want to ask. The last time I had a brief due in Moultrie I had a colleague help me get it filed and it was just too much. So I just decided I needed to get it done. And FedEx had to have it at the UPS store by 430 on Friday. But I got home late Wednesday night. So I had to get that done. So I was just exhausted. So I really didn't do anything on all weekend and rested. I took three naps both days. Like the whole night in New York. Take Mercy out for the last time Sunday night at about 1030. And there's a wad of like plastic wrap. It was like somebody had unwrapped a sandwich or you know a cupcake or something. Who knows what it was. But they had just dropped this wad right outside our door to our building. She snaps it up and she doesn't always. This is the problem with her. Sometimes she does this but not always. If she always did it I would always be on high alert. But she does it. Sometimes she'll just walk right by something and not pay attention to it. Well she snapped this up. So the whole time we're walking around the green I'm thinking OK she's going to get distracted in a minute and she's going to drop it. I'm trying to offer her treats to give it to me. I'd give her like a whole handful of food. She thinks about it real hard but nope. Because at this point she knows I want it. Yep. They know. So we get all the way back up here and I'm like OK I'm just going to give her a whole bowl of food. And she thought about it but that wasn't enough. So I had a rotisserie chicken. So I pull out. You know she can't have chicken. She's allergic to it. At this point I'm getting desperate because I'm like if she swallows this entire wad of plastic. You're going to have to have surgery. Yeah. While while I was gone the poor pet sitter who had had a fender fender let's remember then had to stay an extra two days. She takes to me one point and she because I had started her on some diarrhea medicine right before I left. She had she's a vet tech and had took mercy with her to one of the because she works at two clinics. Yeah. Took mercy with her to one of those clinics and that doctor had said yeah that's not working. Why don't you try this. So she had bought her another med while I was gone. So she's on like two different diarrhea medicines and Alexa said when she barked she would chart what we're dealing with. And this dog now has a giant wad of plastic in her mouth. Well I mean at least she wouldn't chart. There's no way it was getting through. So I offer a piece of chicken. She picks the piece of chicken up. She realizes like OK I can't swallow the chicken with the plastic. She puts the plastic down but as soon as I pretend to reach for it she snaps it right back up with the chicken. Swallows it all. Frick. At which point I'm like do I have to go to the emergency vet. And I'm trying to talk myself into the fact that I don't. I mean and I ate a whole bag of hot dog bones one time. Right. Like this. But who knows what was in the plastic. The dog's already sharding. She's allergic to every thing. We gotta go. We gotta go to the emergency vet. So we load up drive to desk and to the emergency vet. Three hundred and fifty dollars later. Within about two minutes the dog had thrown it up. Anyway. That was fun. I mean you can't catch a break these days. But hey guess what y'all. Remember last year when the Braves knew free agent signing got popped for steroids and suspended for half the season. Yesterday I got an ESPN alert. And all I could see was just part of the alert and it said Jurex and Profar. And I'm like oh shit. What did you do. So I go to try to open it to read the whole thing it takes. I don't know if y'all have these ESPN alerts but it sometimes it takes forever for that to load. Forever. And the whole time I'm thinking I can't wait to tell Casey and Kelly that I was worried that he was going to get busted for steroids again. Guess what he was. And now he's suspended for the whole year. Again. He did it again. He did it again. Katie. How old is this fella. Is this frontal lobe fully formed. OK. He's like 32. Oh come on. Did it again. And what doesn't make any sense is he got the big contract. He's guaranteed that money. It don't matter if he strikes out every at bat. He is guaranteed that money by doing what he has done. He forfeited half of his salary last year and now he will not get any of his salary this year. Does he have a wife. I think he is married. I hope she gave him a talking to. Listen. I can't. I just can't even. Anyway there's the good news. But hey listen the world baseball classic starts tomorrow. I can't wait. OK. So it starts tomorrow. I need to do a little tomorrow. There are some games already being played. Where do we watch. On all the different Fox affiliates so that the U.S. plays tomorrow night on Fox. OK. But then you can also watch on like F.S. one Fox sports like all those sorts of things. So but yet tomorrow night on Fox. The U.S. plays. The U.S. really has a good chance. They're position players. They're loaded. They're loaded. They had scored I think eight runs just after three pitches yesterday in their exhibition game against the Giants. The pitching and we actually have more pitching than we typically do because it's hard to get the pitchers to participate in the world baseball classic. But we have Tarek Scoobel who won the Cy Young for the American League. We have Paul Skeens who won the Cy Young for the National League. Both of them are going. Scoobel has already said he's just going to pitch one game and then go back to spring training. So he's not going to have any big impact. He's going to pitch against Great Britain who we were going to beat if I pitched against them. I was about to say can Great Britain even field a team. Right. Last time in the world baseball classic they had apparently they had iron on letters on their uniform because they started like falling off during the tournament. But so the teams to watch are the United States of course the Japanese team of course as we got Shohei. I think Yamamoto also went out who's now a pitcher with the Dodgers that's really good. They've got the Chicago Cubs say Suzuki is there as well. So they're they're lighted and they won it last time. And then but the other team everybody is talking about is the team from the Dominican Republic. I was going to say probably Dominican or Cuban. I guess Cuba's probably not even there but Dominican. Yeah that was going to be Cuba is participating because one of their coaches and one of their pitchers were denied entry to the United States yesterday. Because that's who we are. So anyway yeah the Dominican lineup is like a bunch of big dogs. Yeah. So yeah so that'll be fun. Yeah so excited to watch. Yes very excited. Jurex and Profar is on the Netherlands team which is coached by Andrew Jones and also has Ozzy Albies. Love it. You're just going to have to wait a minute. She's asking to go out. Yeah mine or she won't start breathing heavily over here. You had some fun. Katie tell us about your trip. So yes I had a great trip. Nashville was cold at first. I was not prepared or packed for that. But I got up there I was I have been asked I think we talked about this last time I've been asked to be the South Georgia one of the South Georgia representatives as a disaster response person. So anytime there's a hurricane a tornado we can now mobilize and I know how to do that and I was trained on how to do that this past week in Nashville. But all of the disaster response teams from all over the southeast jurisdiction met and so that's why I was in Nashville but I went up a day early and I got some great recommendations from Mandy which are all now in my favorites. But it was really really great. I do I have added to my skill set. Not only do I know how to drive a forklift but I now know how to tarp a roof. I will not be tarping a roof but I can now look at one and tell if it's done properly. You're welcome world. Come to Florida. Well yeah they were Florida reps there I mean there's a Alabama West Florida was represented. There are tons of people you know that has that's going to be happening very soon. And so it was a great trip that I really enjoyed it. I love Nashville. I'll give you the rundown in my favorites of what I where I ate and where I shopped and all those things. But it was really really great. I loved it. It was just a nice chance to get away but of course many and true dog fashion mine had bloody stool the day I left. So she spent the first day of the vet with the vet tech who was my dog sitter or is my dog sitter. She's fine. Everything's fine. It's you a vet tech dog center. Yep we're all fine. Everybody's fine. She's lost some weight already. She's on COSA Quinn for her joints. So she's living her best life but she scared the crap out of me. Yeah they do that. They do that. Also that day my member of my church her granddaughter was born and sent directly to the ICU in Macon. So I felt so helpless on the six hour drive to Nashville. It was awful. But it was great. It was great. On the way up I also stopped at Candler and had lunch with a friend of mine that works there and I got to see some of my professors and they were like oh my god you're back. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? And they're like we don't know how long. But yeah it was great. So it was really really good. The other thing. I know look I'm trying to let Maggie have her best life. I am. I am trying. I don't want her to ever have to be in a crate with the door closed. She has access to her crate. She has two of them actually. One that I had for the cats when they came in when it was really cold and one that I was given when I received Maggie. She can go in any of those crates she wants. But I don't want her to ever be shut in a crate. But she snores like a freight train. So Katie doesn't sleep. So she sleeps in the laundry room with the crate door open so she can walk around if she wants to stretch her legs get some water. Well in my guilt of even doing that I decided that I wanted to bring her joy by singing Rod Stewart's Maggie May to her every morning. And so Honey and I sing Maggie May to Maggie every morning that we go in there to get her. And then I felt guilty that Honey didn't have a theme song. Of course. So hers is Tupelo Honey. So I play Tupelo Honey when we're snuggling in the bed before we get up so she'll know we're about to have to get up and go get Maggie. And then we play Maggie May and of course the first line is wake up Maggie. I think I've got something to say to you and we sing that to her every morning and it makes her so happy. And so then I thought well why not just get a whole list of them. So we have a car riding playlist of all the Honey and Maggie songs and they could care less but I love it. These are the micro joys that we must find in these times which we live. Yes indeed. I think it's great. So yeah. So we just have the best time. Chris Stapleton has a Maggie song about a dog that dies and it makes me cry every time I hear it. That's on there. Taylor Swift has a song called Honey about how people use that term in a derogatory way. But by the end of it she redeems it for the people that love her. And so that's on there. The Beatles Maggie May is on there. So it's it's a really great playlist. Well good. Yeah. So there's that. And then today in the mail I bought a pair of Sam Edelman boots which I love my Sam Edelman boots. They go with everything. Their slip on little ankle boots are great. But because I bought them from Sam Edelman I now get the catalog and in the summer shoe catalog I should you not Mandy. They're making jellies again. And I've been making jellies. What in the world. Sweaty feet in South Georgia and jellies are never going to happen. I will not be wearing jellies. Why Sam Edelman. Why. I don't even understand the like basket leave shoe. That there's all those two. I don't get it. I don't get it. They're not even cute. I don't think. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not a big fan. Yeah. That was crazy. So that was my kind of week in summary. It's been a great week. The weather's warming out the tulips are blooming. So that's been really nice to see some kind of spring springing although my car is yellow already from the pollen. Oh yeah girl. Yeah. So there's that. Oh yeah. Well Mandy I am excited to see this book. I've never heard of it. So tell me all about it and your books. It is called The True True Story of Raja the Gullible. OK. Add it to my TBR on story graph. Let's see who the author is. Yeah I can't pronounce the author's name. We'll put it in the notes. Yep. It is another one of those books that sort of hops between timelines. It follows a young man in Beirut and it kind of hops back and forth from sort of modern day in his childhood. And there was a period of time in his childhood when he was kidnapped. So it kind of covers that but it's humorous more than anything. It kind of focuses on his relationship with his mother. And she is a riot. Her favorite saying is F your mother. As you would imagine right. Yeah. So but anyway it's just a great sort of it's very funny and but also very heartwarming with some trauma mixed in as well. And I just really enjoyed it. So the true true story of Raja the Gullible. And I've never heard of this. I'm so excited. I love these little treasures that we find sometimes. I can't remember where I heard about it but it was great. I love that. Yeah. Tom. Talk to us about your favorites Katie. Well I have several from Nashville if you're ever in Nashville. Mandy gave me a lot of these so she already knows most of them. I think I may have one that you don't and I'm hoping or two I'm hoping to introduce you to some things as well but you know my whole on my bucket list like not the weird bucket list of things I get to do in South Georgia that I never thought I wanted to do but like my actual bucket list of life was to go to Parnassus Books which is our one of our favorite authors who we've talked about here a bunch and patch it as her bookstore. And so I went to Parnassus Books and it did not disappoint. It is a beautiful bookstore. Everyone was lovely. It was very well stocked. I got several books but what she also has is a shelf full of books that she signed. And so I got my bestie down here one of her favorite books of Anne's that she signed and I got myself one that I had never read before for me to read that and signed. So it was well worth the trip. It was not far from where we were staying. We were staying right. Actually we were staying at this place. I should have said this before but it is called Scarrett Bennett and it used to be a women's missionary college a hundred years ago and it looks like Hogwarts. And so it's right on the edge of Vanderbilt. I think so yeah. Yeah. My sister used to live when my sister was in nursing school. There's a if you're headed towards Hillsborough Village from where you were staying. Yeah. There was a apartment like a red brick apartment complex right on the corner and we called that Melrose where my sister lived. Yeah. It's a great little place to have an overnight kind of meeting. It's a Methodist old Methodist college that they've turned into this place. Anyway so Parnassus Books was great. The other thing the other place I went shopping that day was a place called the perfect pair and it's a boutique in Nashville that one of my very best friends from Macon actually used to own after she went to Vanderbilt. So she and her best friend Whitney Dunn who yes of course Ronnie Dunn's daughter. So it's called the perfect pair. I got a sweater that was on sale and a skirt and a top. So I don't know if you've been there Mandy and Mandy of course is frozen right this minute but. You're back. Oh good. No I have not been there. I've not heard of it. Oh you need to go. I'm excited to check it out. Yeah so upstairs is the sale and that's where I got a sweater that I had to wear because it was cold but they have really they're very sweet people really cute sales associates. They curate some really fun clothes that are not like their clothes that you and I would wear they're not like too young you know revealing stuff. So it was great and they were very kind and sweet and I loved it. So. Well good. Yeah. So there's that the perfect pair and it was. OK friends. Thank you for being patient. If you heard a big gap or just drop off it's because my Wi-Fi is terrible today and it cut us off in the middle of our zoom but I told me indeed that I would record the end of my favorites and and get that spliced in and get it uploaded so we will have a full. Oh yeah yeah a full episode so I apologize to Mandy and to everybody but this our Wi-Fi situation in the woods is just terrible. So when I left off I was telling you about my favorite boutique in Nashville it's called the Perfect Pair. But the two places I went to eat were both places that Mandy recommended Loughlin Table and Pancake Pantry and Pancake Pantry is like a Nashville staple it's like an elevated IHOP it is so good I got a sampler of three different pancakes I got a cinnamon no I got a pumpkin with cinnamon syrup and they brought a whole vat of it to the table and I also pro tip put it in my coffee to flavor my coffee it was delicious. I got a blueberry pancake which I adore blueberry pancakes and waffles with a blueberry compote that was divine and then I went rogue and I got a savory pancake and the savory pancake was a cornmeal pancake that had it was like a southwestern had cheddar cheese and it had green chilies and you could top it with a with sour cream and a salsa and it was also delicious and I love that I could try a variety of things to figure out what was my favorite and what I liked because that way I could sample everything that they had to offer which was a very wide variety of offerings highly recommend the pancake pantry in Nashville. The other place that I went the night before was Mandy sent me a whole list of her favorite restaurants and I looked at all the menus and I thought the one that had the most on it that I thought I would like was and they all look great but this one was called Lachlan table and it was it did not disappoint. It was a real neighborhood eclectic kind of place. I had a beautiful Piperdale homemade pasta with a short rib ragu and I never met a short rib I didn't like and it was delicious and for dessert. I got a warm like pan cast iron skillet chocolate chip brownie with it had ice cream on top and it was just divine and I may or may not have gotten two of their smoked old fashions. I was taking an Uber that night so I could do that and it was just the most delightful place the waiters I was just there me reading my book. The waiters were wonderful. They asked me when I was reading they loved that I was by myself reading and enjoying a nice meal. They were very kind. It was wonderful. I will say in this chocolate chip warm chocolate chip cookie was a Nashville chocolate company chocolate chips and I swear it made it ten times better and the name of the chocolate is olive and Sinclair chocolate company and so I've linked that in my favorites as well because it was delicious and I just fell in love with this place and this menu and this chocolate. The other two things I thought I would bring to you two new TV shows that I've been watching that I was intrigued by. One is one of the Yellowstone spinoffs with Casey Dutton as a US Marshal on Paramount Plus. There's only been one episode so far it's really good. I love Casey Dutton. He's really fun to look at and he takes his shirt off so there's that and then the next one if you like Stumble which I've talked about before it is kind of the parody with Kristin Chenoweth and some other people you recognize of the cheerleading junior college cheerleading world. If you like that then I think you will like the rise and fall of Reggie Dinkins and it is with Tracy Morgan plays Reggie Dinkins who bets on himself in a football game and gets caught and then Daniel Radcliffe plays a documentary filmmaker trying to redeem Reggie Dinkins and it is hilarious and weird in that Stumble kind of way and I have loved it tremendously. It is really funny and if you like Abbott Elementary if you like Stumble then you will like this very much so I recommend it and it's on NBC and so yeah there we go so those are my favorites. I'm sorry that we don't get to see what Mandy is doing this week but I'm sure next week she will tell us don't forget to watch the World Baseball Classic and go find your people.