Stephen Yeargin

Hockey season is back in Nashville despite some uncertainty earlier this summer. Samantha and I went to the game Saturday night (Predators 5, Hurricanes 1) with some club-level tickets from her employer. Her company jumped on the the season ticket push bandwagon, and I am incredibly grateful for it. It has always been one of my goals (aside the whole financial aspect) to be a place in my career to see professional sporting events on a regular basis. Right now I am perfectly content to live that goal vicariously.

Our one year wedding anniversary is right around the corner on Oct. 1. My gift was hockey tickets (are you noticing a trend here?) for the Red Wings game on Thanksgiving, so the bar had been set pretty high. Concert tickets? The artist of preference hasn’t put out any decent music since starting a family. Trips? I only have one vacation day to play with, and we are shooting for a couple of savings goals, meaning I was instructed not to overshoot the cost of the tickets by much. I settled on something that has given more to Nashville’s history than the Briley Parkway 10+ year road project: an acoustic guitar.

Gift giving in a household with the aforementioned savings goals means that the element of surprise is usually spoiled weeks before the actual event, and the receiver plays a role in picking out exactly what is desired. Some may see this as less romantic, but it also keeps us out of return lines at Target. Samantha picked out the DR-90 Acoustic Player Pack from Epiphone (a Division of Nashville-based Gibson Worldwide). We were a little disappointed that the product itself is manufactured in China (we are all about domestic production), but it came highly recommended on various Web sites and will be a great starter instrument.

The quote of the day comes from a sales associate (and musician) at Sam Ash in Rivergate. He was holding a side conversation while ringing up my purchases.

Associate 2: [Something technical to co-worker]
Associate 1: [To me] Yeah, there’s nothing like be indebted to your employer.
Me: I take it you’re also a customer?
Associate 1: Yeah, all my stuff’s from here.
Me: It could be worse. You could be a bartender with that problem.
Associate 1: That’s one way to look at it.

Now if I can just slip Dave Matthews tablature into her practice books …