Goodness. Take a little time off blogging to study/focus on schoolwork and the world goes wonky.

NashvilleisTalking‘s future is uncertain. In fact, by the time I get this written it may have disappeared altogether, or morphed into something completely different. About the time I learned NiT was changing, I heard about Metroblogging Nashville. Not sure about this one yet. I’ll let you know as I read more of the posts. Then this morning, Kat Coble opened the doors to Music City Bloggers. At least Volunteer Voters is still going (thank GOD!), though Kleinheider must be suffering from a summer cold. He’s not as snarky as usual.

On the SBC front, SBC Outpost is up and running in its new form, and already stirring up the pot; Art Rogers, as always, has posted some good stuff (especially here and here), Marty Duren’s new ie:missional blog is off to a great start and Ben Cole is, well, you figure it out. Yes, all is getting back to sort-of-normal in the SBC world.

I do have to say SBC Outpost is sorely lacking in women contributors (as in, there are none). That is, in my opinion, to their grave detriment. There are some amazing women bloggers out there who also happen to be Southern Baptists and SBCOutpost would greatly benefit from adding their voices to the cacophony of men’s. Ah, well. We are talking about Southern Baptists, after all. Sometimes the SBC acts like we’re still in the Middle Ages 1950s.

On another subject involving Nashville, I hurried downtown Wednesday evening to see the awesome fireworks Music City puts on for its residents (for free, how awesome is that!). I was not disappointed — until they ended. What the—?! Twenty-five minutes?? Hello! Last year and the year before were a lot longer. Forty minutes at least. I remember sitting in the parking lot of LP Field in 2005 looking through the fence at the river, fireworks going off above me and marveling that they weren’t over yet. I’m sure the show went on for over forty-five minutes that year.

I feel cheated. Twenty five minutes and it was done. I remember seeing the big finale and thinking, "man, they are good, faking us out like this!" In fact, after it was over I refused to get up for about five minutes so sure was I that they’d start firing off more any minute. Nope. And then I was just mad. I want more, dangit! Nashville puts on the best fireworks show I have seen since Disneyland’s 45th celebration called "Believe, There’s Magic in the Stars!" and I want more!

It was not to be. Instead, I had to settle for downtown gridlock. In our rush to make it to Bicentennial Park on time (okay, who in the heck authorized a time change for the fireworks without bothering to advertise said change, hmmm??? Do you know what chaos you caused us all??), we inadvertently parked smack in the middle of gridlock hell, which we promptly discovered in our vain attempt to exit said structure in a timely fashion. It was the only time in the last two years I’ve wished I was still working for the SBC and so could have used their parking garage rather than parking on Church. By the time we got to the lovely Billy Graham statue, a half a block from said parking garage, traffic was clear and the road was open. However, getting to that lovely spot took an hour.

Note to self, new Nashvillians and old-timers who are prone to forgetfulness: never, ever park in the structure on Church and Printer’s Alley during a big downtown event like July 4th. It took us a half an hour just to get out of the stinkin’ parking structure. And then the real fun began. Downtown was seriously gridlocked. It took us another half hour just to get the six blocks down Church, 4th and Commerce streets to 8th Avenue (after that the road was clear all the way to 10th where Commerce dead ends into LifeWay). Oh. My. God. I will never make that mistake again.

Thankfully, Nashville is full of cool people (stupid drivers, but cool people). I never saw any fights or bad behavior before, during or after the fireworks. And despite a few idiots who refuse to believe that pulling forward and blocking the intersection when the light turns red is illegal not to mention unkind to your fellow drivers, no one lost their cool, got horn-happy or yelled at other drivers. I think we all realized we were in this thing together and there was no point in yelling at someone who was just as stuck as the rest of us. Either that or everyone was exhausted from the heat and just happy to be in an air-conditioned vehicle with padded seats. At any rate, I was never happier to cross the 65 and head down the "open road" of Broadway/21st toward home.

Even with all that mess, Nashville’s still the best place to live on the planet. But next year I’m parking up by the courthouse on James Robertson Parkway so I can beat a quick exit via the bridge (and catch I-24 South) out of the downtown suck-zone. Here’s to learning from our mistakes.