Sunday January 1st - Oh the agony.  A thousan tiny dwarves are running around my head wih a hammer banging on it.  It took quite a bit of time to lose this hangover.  Finally we got motivated and headed out for lunch and a trip to the Tennessee Aquarium.  We wanted to eat lunch at the Mellow Mushroom.  It is great food and I love to support businesses that support rugby.  Sadly they partied so hard the night before nobody made it in to open.  We settled on a nice microbrewery across the street.  The had good food and better beer.  It was camparable to my beloved Great Southern Brewing Company/Downtown Grill and Brewery.  After sampling their wares  I went and sat in a brick boat til the others promted me to move on to the aquarium.

I have to say this is an awesome place.  I could spend hours watching fish and other aquatic life.  At one point we saw the scariest turtle I have ever seen.  It was a 100 year old 175 pound gatorsnapper.  The thing could have taken my hand off in one bite.  Later Al caused one of the tour guide types to freak out when he grabbed a sturgeon and attempted to rip it from the tank.

The night was subdued as we had a long trip home the next morning.  At some point during the night a horrible thunderstorm rolled through.   Lightening hit very close to the house and woke everybody up except for me(I can sleep through pretty much anyhting)  and Dancin' Stevie(who had taken a Finnegrin).  Everybody thought they heard a low conversation going on somewhere in the house until they all realized it was my hideous snoring.

Monday January 2nd - All good things must come to an end and so did our New Year 05 adventure.  Of course the trip home still held some minor adventure.  We stopped and ate at the Cracker Barrell in Cleveland.  The idiot that seated us put us at a tiny table.  There were five of us and there was a six man table available.  I made my displeasure known to everybody within earshot and fortunately the server in that section was more competant than the idot who seated us.  Our food was, of course, very slow getting to us.  But it was good and we just wanted to get out of Cleveland at that point.

We stopped to gas up in Athens and it reminded me of some of my old adventures at Tennessee Wesleyan College, but those are a story for another day.