I'm home again, after spending most of the week in Chattanooga, Nashville, and on the road to and from. I decided to make a bigger deal of Mom's 87th birthday than we usually do since she'd been feeling good this spring, and took her on a vacation to mark the occasion. I'd originally looked into making it a cross-country train trip in a sleeper car since she loves trains, but when that proved impractical I opted for a driving vacation in Tennessee instead.

I booked us into the Hotel Chalet at the Chattanooga Choo Choo to keep with the train theme. As it turned out the converted sleeper train carriage I reserved had plumbing problems and flooded, but since that was unavailable at the last minute the hotel comped us a very nice regular king room plus dinner Tuesday night at the hotel restaurant.

We toured the ocean exhibit at the Tennessee Aquarium Wednesday morning, where we walked through a solarium filled with tropical butterflies and I got to pet stingrays. Then we traveled to Nashville in time to take a dinner cruise on the General Jackson Showboat. I'd expected entertainment to be a house band in the background, but instead there was an hour-long stage show with six talented singers performing Country standards. We enjoyed the show alone enough to be worth the ticket price, nevermind a nice buffet and getting to see the downtown city lights from the river.

Thursday we continued our nautical theme with lunch at The Aquarium Restaurant and a brief wander around the Opry Mills Mall. We spent the afternoon and evening walking around the Gaylord Opryland Resort, touring the conservatory and atriums, taking an indoor riverboat ride, watching a fountain show, and having coffee at the Cascades before returning to the hotel for our last night.

That all sounds great, Matt! I’m so glad you were able to pull off such a treat for your mom!

That sounds absolutely wonderful! It's a delight to see you having such a perfect trip.

I finished my personal tax return and filed it this morning. Woe is me. I am going to have to plan much better this year, but it may be too late already.

That sounds nice Matt!!

We had a dance (two step and line) last night but one of the folks convinced me and some others we should go out to the club afterward. Which I hadn’t done in forever and it was packed, but fun. I think I left around 1230am? Which I guess isn’t actually all that late but it felt very late. But then for some reason my body felt it important to wake up at 730am. Tried to doze but mostly failed. Supposed to do playground and lunch with my friend and her 4 year old later…maybe this afternoon will be nap time.

Orban lost in Hungary, it looks like. Not going to pretend I know about who or what comes next, but since he seemed to want a Putin-style stranglehold on the country, that feels like a healthy sign.(Also, commentators are saying Vance's intervention was a fricking disaster and I can't get enough of reading that, personally. Your schadenfreude may vary.)

Better than him winning, surely. I don’t know what comes next for Hungary but I am rooting for them

And I hope it’s a bad sign for authoritarians everywhere

From your pixels to the universe's earballs, -t.

Gee, after a personal visit from JD and a phone endorsement to the populace from the orange Don.

T. is becoming the opposite of a kingmaker.

We had a delightful afternoon at the symphony, and my hip let me walk about 1/2 a mile to the restaurant afterward (that is very seriously so much more than I've been able to walk at one time in about a year -- maybe my hip is improving!), and we had excellent tacos, including a life-changing huitlacoche taco.

And then I had to come home and file our tax return. Rude awakening indeed. (We got a refund; the problem is that the H&R Block program kept giving me a glitch because I auto-downloaded Tim's W-2, but it seems the program didn't like the auto-downloaded W-2. Ultimately I had to delete his W-2 and then key all the info in by hand, which I would have done from the start if I had known that auto-downloading the W-2 would be a problem. I'm going to blame this one on H&R Block. But at least it's finished!)