Friday Lunch at Sushi Masa's & Southern Gospel Music Concert

I hadn't been to Sushi Masa's for lunch for a couple of weeks so decided to go on Friday. As soon as I walked in, Miyoko the waitress wanted to know where I'd been. Tomiko who does the cooking is in Hawaii for a week. A friend of her's from Japan was flying to Hawaii for a visit so Tomiko flew over to meet her. She'll be back next week. It is so telling when Tomiko is not there, the food doesn't taste the same. :)

My friends, Ron and Chiyoko were there too. They are part of the regular Tuesday group. They had a friend with them that I have met before. I told them about our new car so Ron went outside to look at it. Masa-san came out too.

Then Friday evening we went to a Southern Gospel Music Concert. I am on an email list for another group and on Wednesday they sent out an email saying that friends of theirs was going to be in Sacramento Friday night. The name of the group is "The Greene's". I went to their website and found out where they were going to be in Sacramento. I mentioned it to Gerry and he said, "yeah, let's go". The concert was at 6:30pm so we decided to get something to eat afterwards. He had gotten in late from his ride and ate some lunch and wasn't hungry.

Well, what I didn't know was there was a charge for the concert and there was another group singing too. The concert was at the First Baptist Church in Carmichael, however it was sponsored by the Sacramento Southern Gospel Music Association. I guess I should have called the church. Well, it was a good thing Gerry had his check book with him.

We had to chuckle to ourselves, the age of the majority of the people were probaby in their 60's and older. Its the generation that appreciate and love southern gospel music.

The concert was opened up by a young guy from Tennessee. He happened to be in the area for some concert dates. He was very good. Then a trio of guys from Sacramento were next. They were outstanding!! The Greene's are from Charlotte, NC. It's husband and wife and 2 other guys. TaRanda (the wife) got the Dove award for Best Female Vocalist in 2007. She sings with other groups too. Her voice was absolutely beautiful. They all had CD's to sell and we bought all of them, 10 CDs total and 1 DVD. I need to get the CDs ripped to my computer then put on my Mp3 player which we are taking on our trip. We have an auxliary plug in the van to play a Mp3 player, a lot better than having to wrestle with a huge CD holder. Ours is stuffed full and it's heavy. The Greene's were outstanding too.

The concert was over at 10 pm. We still had to eat and the only place that came to mind was Denny's for some breakfast. It was too late for a full blown dinner. Well, the Denny's was a disaster. They were short staffed, two waitresses and one waiter. One of the waitresses was also trying to be the hostess too. The manager was absolutely hopeless. He finally came over to ask us what we wanted to drink after we'd been sitting there for 5 minutes or more. Gerry was getting ready to stand up and leave when the waiter finally came over to take our order. Then when he went to put our order in, the manager went on a break. For some reason the computer gets shut down when he does that and by the time it came back up, one of the waitresses had a huge order to put in. So our order got pushed back even farther. Well, we got free desserts because of the exceptionally long wait. We got them to go. The waiter got a nice tip. It wasn't his fault.

As we were driving home, we realized there were some other options besides Denny's such as IHOP which is not too far from home. I told Gerry we are not usually out after 10pm, he laughed - said it was a little past our curfew!! LOL!!

It was about 1 am before I finally went to bed. I'm glad we went to the concert. It was absolutely outstanding!!