Another blog?

What's that you ask? Another blog? Already? But Michael, you may say, I haven't even taken the time to read the one you wrote yesterday. Well, do not fret dear reader (yes, I'm talking to you ... the one person who is reading this) I assure you that I have no intention of making a habit of this frequent posting. After all, I have no real interest in you all knowing what is actually going on in my life, much like you do not want me to know what is going on in yours (unless you are the one friend I have that actually blogs with any consistency ... Hi Ombra)!
So, yesterday when I realized that we were actually moving (the closing on our current abode is less than 18 hours away) I decided that it would be wise to gather some more boxes. I sent Brigitte to procure boxes from the local box supply place...some storage facility and she had come home with the most expensive boxes known to man. Well, that may be an exaggeration, but $2 per "Medium Sized" box seemed excessive to me. Therefore, I set out to find free boxes. A friend had tipped me off that Wal-Mart at 5:00am was the place to be for free boxes, but ... well, either I am very asleep, or wishing I was at that time, and it was 3:00pm and I needed to feel as though I had accomplished something. So, off I went.
I remembered that my grandfather had always told me, "If you ever need boxes, check the liquor store." We aren't much for prophetic statements in the family, but I remembered it. So, off I went to the local liquor store. I drove around back only to find a large trash bin. Well, I wasn't going to go in there. So, off I went to another local liquor store (there were three other that I could think of, but I went to the fanciest one). After several failed attempts at drivnig around back, because comemrcial parking lots can be confusing when you go behind the buildings, I found the back of the liquor store, and apparently the back of a Japanese restaurant. I also found a giant dumpster. This one was marked "Carboard Only," so I grumpily got out of the car and dove in. There I was at 4:00pm in the afternoon, 94 degrees, pouring over used cardboard boxes, weighing the merits of each. The Japanese chefs, cooks, line cooks, guys who cook ... looked at me like I had lost my mind. And perhaps, at that moment I had. I was feverishly tearing through the boxes throwing the best out onto the cement for moving to the car once I had extricated myself from the dumpster.
Finally, after several minutes of wondering how I was going to write what was in the black boxes I had pulled out, I got out of the dumpster and began to load the car. When I completed this task I looked over the hood of the car and saw that one of the gentlemen who worked at the restaurant was standing inside a small rectangular fenced in area behind the back of the store. There was grass and coming out of the grass were plants and herbs. In the middle of Cool Springs, a shopping mecca in suburban Nashville, there was a small 15' by 5' garden so that the restaurant could actually serve fresh produce. I was most impressed. By the look on his face, he was less impressed with my venture.
Tonight, having worked my way through half of the boxes I scavenged I have realized that they are too small and not too helpful. This means that I will likely be back in the dumpster tomorrow following the closing.
I have also come to the conclusion that I am glad that there is a little garden in the middle of the Cool Springs area in Franklin.
Finally, white gaff tape. That's how you label what's in the all black boxes.

Moving...It's About That Time

As some of you, and by you I mean the 4 people who read this (and one of them is my wife), may have heard, Brigitte and I are moving to Oxford, MS for my new job at The University of Mississippi. We are pretty excited about the whole thing but will miss a lot about Franklin and the memories that we have made in our condo here.
It's hard to believe that we have only been married for three years (as of Tuesday the 19th). In those three years I got my first teaching gig at TSU, we had a daughter, most of our friends who were still in Franklin moved away and now we are finishing off the packing to get the hell out ourselves. Many of you know that I grew up in Franklin, so leaving again is much harder than I had anticipated. I have so many memories here both from my childhood, and now from my daughter's childhood that it is hard to leave those behind. When I look at our living room and see it filled with boxes I remember the first time Evelyn rolled over (the one first that I got to myself as Brigitte was at work - haha...yes I'm a bit competitive). But I also remember her first Christmas, Halloween and Birthday. I remember bringing her home from the hospital, setting her down in front of the staircase and the cats slinking up to sniff her. We don't have stairs in our new house. This is the first time that I will be moving where I am sad that I will never see the inside again.
Brigitte and I made a trip to Knoxville a year ago around our anniversary and looked at all of the old places we had lived and while it was good to see them I had no real desire to go back in. There were no clear memories that jumped out to me as something I needed to be in those rooms again. Even the memory of my friend Aaron setting his face on fire showing us how he could breathe fire on our back porch. There are lots of good memories like that, but nothing like this.
I know that we will make wonderful memories in our new house, but I find myself remarkably sentimental at the moment. On top of all of that, while the house we bought in Oxford, is bigger with a garage and a yard, I apparently like this place after all. It's going to be hard to leave it behind.