Eshtine

"Got kinda tired of packing and unpacking"

So I'm living in a new city now, and if you know the song I quoted in the title you know which city that is.
My first full day of living here, a mysterious note appeared promising me some freelance work. Sometimes one gets what one asks for...
The job is writing bar reviews. Yes. I am to visit ten bars before February 10th. Hey, it's a quick'n'easy way to start getting to know a city.
I had my first bar-hopping excursion last night. I started at this place called Glendale Gaslight Cafe, which is in a lovely old building in a lovely old village. The owners had added on to the property; what they added was what I would call a "'verandah' with an 'h'"--simply calling it a veranda would not give the whole picture of lazily rotating fans on the ceiling and massive windows that in the summer would be opened to let one take the air, you know. I imagine a fair amount of ice tea sipping is done in such an environment.
The next place I went to was the Glendale Pub. As I approached, I heard music and wild cheers from the upper story. "Live band?" I asked the bartender when I walked in.
"Karaoke night," he answered. "Sounds like it's really swinging up there, doesn't it?"
It did, and it was. I walked in just in time to see a woman who appeared to be in her 70s take the mike for Mary Chapin-Carpenter's "I Feel Lucky." When she did the "rrrrrr!" growl at the end, the crowd went nuts--even more nuts than they had been going, I should say.
This is all more than I can fit into the reviews I'm writing of these places--the reviews can only be 40-90 words long. But I just had to share.