The Founder of Do Not Disturb emailed me this week that the wonderful booties that I blogged about in “Bootylicious Do Not Disturb is keeping my toes warm this winter” are being shipped to Whole Body at the Hill Center in Nashville. Hopefully they will be here this week-end!
Mary, the Chief Relaxation Officer, of the company suggested to me that it’s a great gift for Valentine’s Day — paired with a coupon to take the kids for 45 minutes or a fun book…something to make a friend or loved one enjoy a few minutes of pampering on several levels.
And, of course, for anyone else out there that is taking one day at a time in getting through the brutal cold of this winter, don’t wait for someone to buy them for you!
Wonderful Lisa Ellis, Development Director of Siloam Family Health Center, a Nashvillian from the moment she arrived to town not fifteen months ago, is always introducing me to delightful, delicious secrets in Music City. This, I have to say, is the best secret she’s let me in on yet…
On the third day it was open, Lisa and I breakfasted at Mediterranean Grill at 600 West Iris Dr. in Nashville (formerly La Luna, near 100 Oaks Shopping Center and in Berry Hill).
Yanni Panagiotakis, the owner, greeted us warmly and called Lisa by name. We were the only people in there at 8:30 a.m. Lisa, I believe, had the Eggs Florentine and was delighted. I ordered the Eggs Viennese and, simply put, couldn’t stop dreaming of that for weeks after. Two poached eggs on an English muffin with cream cheese and lox topped with the most heavenly homemade hollandaise. I measure a breakfast place by its Eggs Benedict (or similar menu item). Not six months ago I had wonderful Eggs Benedict for $30. This at $6.50 put the other eggs to shame.
I begged and cajoled my family to come with me to experience the wonderful atmosphere created by this Greek restaurant owner who had a ready smile and is eternally determine that every guest (yes, not customer, you’re treated as a guest) has a wonderful time and delicious culinary experience.
My husband enjoyed homemade Spanokopita (fresh spinach, feta cheese, herbs and spices wrapped in a flaky filo dough) and Gyro platter ($7.50). He enjoyed every bite of the light pastry, fresh crispy Greek salad and thinly sliced lamb.
The menu is diverse and Yannis was happy to offer my daughter recommendations for a child’s palette. She chose the chicken fingers and French fries. The fries were heavenly (evidently Yanni has received accolades for years for his French fries in earlier restaurants he has owned) and the chicken fingers had a unique batter that was different enough to be interesting, but traditional enough to make a kid happy.
I enjoyed a sampling of various Greek dishes including Mousaka (layers of sliced eggplant, zucchini and ground beef topped with bachamel sauce), the Spanokopita and vegetable medly. If you love Greek food, Italian cuisine, healthy choices or fresh, made-from scratch pastries, you must go meet Yannis and his staff yourself.
He has created a restaurant that can be intimate or open up to a large enclosed patio-type area.
I am looking for an excuse for another breakfast meeting soon!
I get the same pit in my stomach walking into a Verizon store-front as some people do walking into the dentist to have their teeth drilled. Can you relate?
Our family is stuck with Verizon because of the contract we signed when we got our cell phones when we moved to Nashville.
Trying to get an answer to what should be an easy question is always a drama at the Verizon Brentwood, TN store-front (behind Publix on Old Hickory). No matter what, no one wants to help, no one knows the answer and they look relieved when you leave the store completely bewildered.
Two weeks ago I tried to upgrade to a Blackberry. I felt like, after three trips to the store I was in a Three Stooges movie. Ugh! They gave up and flung an 800 number at me when they said they couldn’t program their Blackberry to upload my email address. The IT people on the other end of the 800 Verizon number accused me of having an email account that is incompatible with their Blackberry — it’s G-MAIL for goodness sakes — the easiest email account to use!
I returned it for a full-refund, another 20-minute drill in Brentwood. If the “trained” employees couldn’t figure out how to program their own products, what are the chances that as technologically challenged as I am, that I would ever be able to use their product?
My son needed a new cell phone (he’d lost his). I broke out in a sweat, my stomach started doing flip-flops…was I getting the flu? No, it only happened when I thought of walking into a Verizon store and doing battle again.
We found a Verizon store-front on Hillsboro Pike across from Green Hills Mall. Someone actually greeted us when we walked in, took our information down and put us in the que for help! This was a whole new experience, maybe Verizon and the Schoerke family were going to be on the SAME SIDE of this battle! Could it possibly be?!
The man in front of us in line was having problems with his Blackberry. The sales consultant behind the counter, Ryan Jones, tried to fix the problem When he couldn’t, he called the IT 800 Verizon number HIMSELF and worked through the issue! WOW! Then he showed the customer what he had done and how to work his Blackberry going forward! IMAGINE! A VERIZON EMPLOYEE WHO CAN FIX A PROBLEM AND PROVIDE CUSTOMER SERVICE!! There was hope!
Our turn…Verizon was out of our first choice of a phone, but Ryan Jones solved our problem and found us an even better solution for our cell phone needs! He programmed it without having to ask us one question!
If you’re tired of dealing with Verizon, wishing, hoping, counting the days until your contract with them ends, I suggest you go to the Verizon store on Hillsboro Road, request, RYAN JONES, and have the experience of being treated like a valued customer. He even gave us his card so we call him if we had more questions.
I’m a little nervous giving out this information so freely. What if the next time we need help with Verizon we walk in and there a dozen folks waiting for Ryan Jones to help them. Well, I’m being a good neighbor and passing the information along anyway.
So next time you need to upgrade or have a problem, go to Verizon at 4040 Hillsboro Pike, Nashville, TN and ask for Ryan Jones, or call 615.385.1910. You will be so glad you did!
Thanks to J Moore Bannister, a master at hiring the best talent in North America, I had the privilege not so long ago to have dinner with a man that for over an hour had me enthralled more than I think I’d ever been entertained by a performance artist. But I had the prickly, uncomfortable feeling of coming to the table actually knowing less about him than I would have someone that I was seeing for the first time.
Click on the videos on these links:
Rob Faust is the Executive Director of FaustWork Mask Theater and a brilliant performer. His one-man (basically) shows are highly entertaining as he changes masks and transforms instantly between a strangely double jointed ballet dancer to a creepy monster and on and on. The audience which I was a part of, is typical, Rob said of most of his audiences. We were hesitant when he came out, arms crossed, daring him to win us over. By the third “character” he had some of the most sophisticated people in the United States (not me, the other people) enthusiastically cheering. And, by the end, it was quite obvious that he has a message during his wordless show that is profound for adults just as it is for children. I won’t ruin it by telling you what the message is, as no matter what your age you will be so proud of yourself by figuring out the secret (along with every single other audience member).
But, back to dinner. Because this is a man of masks…he makes the spectacular masks with his own hands, creates the characters (some it has taken more than three years to develope) and frenetically changes personalities several dozen time in the space of sixty minutes, he becomes like an empty bottle that takes on the taste of whatever is poured into it. So, I didn’t know what to expect. For an hour he was whatever I wanted him to be, or more specifically, he was whatever he wanted me to think he was.
Rob is an engaging, amazingly open and curious conversationalist. He doesn’t talk a lot, but what he says is thoughtful. And he is intensely curious about the people he meets. Which is refreshing to find in a performance artist — I’ve had dinner with plenty after performances in which they are incredibly self-indulgent. None of that here.
He’s been doing this for decades. He performs for schools, for corporate events and to the general public in large theaters. He performs anywhere and he’s brilliantly easy to work with and accomodating.
If you ever have reason to book talent for an event — a fund-raiser, special event for clients/employees, or character building event for students — and you want to hit a home run, you’ve got to book this guy. And absolutely buy him dinner afterward, it will be a special treat for you. If you don’t ever get a chance to have a say in hiring for an event, go out of your way to make an evening of it if you learn that Faustwork Mask Theater is coming to a venue near you!
“Tickles some sort of primal funny bone… hilariously hyperbolic…”
The New York Times
“Totally unique… I have never seen anything like it and neither have you. It is simply stunning.”
Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes
“Inventive, magical, never less than completely absorbing…”
The Toronto Star
I have become a voyeur. It’s Quinn Dalton’s fault. The moral ambiguity of her characters fuels my guilty pleasure of looking forward to savoring one of her short-stories each night before bed. Her latest collection, Stories from the Afterlife, does exact a high price for my voyeurism. I’m haunted by the stories and the characters. Dalton is a master at lovingly creating flawed characters that are so real you can’t help but bond with them. I wish I had more time with them when the last sentence is read.
The protagonists in each story are wildly different – young, old, black, white, gay, straight, adulterous, hilarious, angry, whatever – and yet each one is richly fleshed out and irresistibly tangible.
How I wish I didn’t care about all of these people, that I could skim over a story every now and then. But Dalton doesn’t let her reader off the hook. She doesn’t give us a respite to not care or not feel for even one brief story in the collection.
It may be because Dalton’s life is full to brimming. She wastes not a moment of her time as a mother, a professional and a writer. Since every minute of her day is scheduled and precious, she is a careful steward of the reader’s time as well. She wrote her stories so that each could be consumed at a single sitting. Yet the situations and characters will stay with you long after you close the book and turn out the light.
A vocal champion of the short-story, Dalton chose to publish Stories from the Afterlife (2007) with Press 53 in North Carolina. Her two previous books, the novel High Strung (2003) and her first short-story collection, Bullet Proof Girl (2005) were published by Simon & Schuster.