If anyone reading this has an induction stove, I would appreciate an unbiased opinion on how you like it. We’re looking to upgrade the existing one in our new house, and thought gas was the way to go. But the newest trend is induction cooking, which uses some form of magnets to generate heat directly into the bowl. Sounds pretty Star Trek to me, but so did microwave ovens when I first heard of them back in the seventies.
Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category
Induction Stoves
Monday, September 6th, 2010Golf in a Different Zip Code
Sunday, September 5th, 2010Our new home is near Temple Hills golf course, which borders the Nashville suburbs of Franklin and Bellevue. Vince Gill, who’s as passionate about golf as music, used to live in Temple Hills before he married Amy Grant and moved further into Nashville.
Today I wanted to celebrate the holiday weekend, and the cooler temperatures by breaking out my clubs, but figured I might not be ready for Vince’s league, so I declined an invitation to play Temple Hills and went to the driving range that’s in walking distance of our new house.
I had joked that I wanted to see if I hit the ball further in our new zip code, and I did. Though I was rusty, I got it down around the 250 yard sign enough to feel proud. The problem is that so did everyone else. Think I’ll stay on the nine hole course until I get a little less rusty. 
Aftermath of the Nashville Flood, 8/30/10: “The Last Rodeo”
Monday, August 30th, 2010
The Country Music Hall of Fame After the Flood
Brooks & Dunn, the most successful duo in country music history, will be performing their last concert next Thursday. Since one of their hit songs was “That Ain’t No Way to Go”, they wanted to go out with style, and they are. Proceeds from their last show will go to benefit the Country Music Hall of Fame, which was hit hard by the May Flood. That definitely IS a classy way to go.
Washing Dishes Was Never So Scenic
Sunday, August 29th, 2010View of the sunset from the kitchen window of the new Casa De Shepard.
And Then There’s Low Tech
Saturday, August 28th, 2010After my 83 year old father in law told us how amazed he was at how high-tech the house deal was yesterday, I confessed that I think technology has done as much harm as good for most people, and things have gotten too darn complicated. It just happened to come up that he was throwing out a 17-year-old Kenwood stereo system with separate components because he prefers his modern new compact Bose radio. Ironically, I lost an almost identical Kenwood system in the flood, and had been watching Ebay for something close to replace Old Faithful. He was so honored that I would want his old stereo, and I am so excited to have a real system the way they used to make them. Who knew :0
Sold in 7 Days
Friday, August 27th, 2010After I spoke at a conference of presidents of Chambers of Commerce in Lafayette, Indiana yesterday, my beautiful bride and I spent the night in Muncie with my father-in-law. While he was driving us to Indianapolis to do a little shopping today, I got a phone call from our realtor in Nashville, who just received a contract on our old house, for full asking price, one week after we listed it ( the same day USA Today ran a story about how no one is buying houses). We needed to find a Kinko’s, so my father-in-law used OnStar in his new Cadillac to navigate us to one, which was only 4 miles away in the Indy suburb of Fishers. The realtor faxed the contract there, I signed it, Kinko’s scanned it in, we then emailed it back to him, and continued on with our shopping. It is truly amazing how easy technology has made our lives.
Aftermath of the Nashville Flood, 8/25/10: “The Numbers”
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010The reason I continue to write about the flood is because it continues to affect so many lives, yet so few people – including many of those who live in Nashville but were not affected – understand how long it takes to recover. According to the Greater Nashville Chamber of Commerce, 2,773 businesses in Nashville were directly hit by the flood. Of those, 442 are still closed, including the Opryland Hotel and the Grande Ole Opry House. That amounts to 14,500 employees who lost their jobs, even if they didn’t lose their homes.
Aftermath of the Nashville Flood, 8/22/10: “Happy Birthday to Slash”
Sunday, August 22nd, 2010
In another welcome sign of progress, Nashville’s Gibson guitar factory has announced that it is back up and running at full speed, cranking out about 250 guitars a day. The first one to roll off the post-flood production line was given as a birthday present to former Guns-N-Roses guitarist Slash.
Guitar Town is slowly rising again.
Aftermath of the Nashville Flood, 8/21/10: “A Special Thanks to Robin Roberts of Good Morning America”
Saturday, August 21st, 2010From WKRN:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts toured flood damaged areas of Nashville on Thursday and visited with residents in Old Hickory. Calling the flood of May the “forgotten story,” she told News 2 she volunteered to come to Nashville and meet with flood victims.
“Next week is the anniversary of Katrina, and we’re going to be down there and I raised my hand and said there are a lot of hurting people right now, and Nashville is the forgotten story, and I just didn’t feel comfortable talking solely about the Gulf Coast,” she said. Roberts said she knows the Volunteer State didn’t get the national coverage it deserved.
“There was an attempted terror threat, the oil spill [and] I’m going, ‘Yes, and Nashville is underwater’ and it was disheartening,” she recalled. “I was in many ways embarrassed because as a nation, the media, we did send a reporter here, we did cover the story, but I agree, not to the magnitude we should have.”
Why Is It So Hard to Give Nice Things Away?
Sunday, August 15th, 2010Now that we’re all moved into the new house, we’ve begun emptying out the old house so that we can put it on the market. We decided to donate a $4,000 Select Comfort Sleep Number bed to charity instead of bringing it over, but it turned out to take an act of Congress to get someone to take it, even though it was barely used. It was almost as difficult as giving away the Jaguar last year. It just baffles me that it’s so hard to give away nice things.