Since this is all happening in small-town Ohio, the odds of said dinner being at Bob Evans are high.
Livin' large Buckeye style! Well, at least your DH can speak in the only right and proper accent while he's there.
I have to finish this administrative stuff, but the studio keeps calling me! I just learned a really awesome piano part (Over the Rhine, Cinci peeps!) that I thought was really hard but turns out, no, just pretty. Man, musically this kind of thing just freaks me out. I swear I have utterly wasted all the intervening years from 10th grade when I learned all these skills until now when I decided to try to use them.
I actually think it's one of the things I bump up against in music education, where women are fine learning the skills and exercises, but then get conditioned against actually putting them in practice, playing "guys'" songs, and songwriting.
I remember this moment in my own guitar lessons as a kid, actually. First off, that my little shop was so shocked I wanted to take guitar lessons and would cut my fingernails to do so, that they commented on it every week. But then, once I'd basically passed through the method book, the teacher asked me what songs I wanted to learn. And I really wanted to learn James Taylor songs, because I loved him, and I could hear the parts really clearly. But I was too scared to ask for it, because I thought it was going to be too hard for me. And so I petered out, and basically spent the entire rest of the time I studied, treading water, and chatting with the teacher. And James Taylor stuff would have utterly appropriate for my skill level at the time. But I never knew it, because I never dared ask.
It's something I want to instill in my female musicians, to be able to push past that, and really play and write.