I'm the proud owner of a ceiling fan

Yes, it's the small pleasures in life that make us happy, and a ceiling fan is one of those this week. As we've moved farther north, we've realized ceiling fans aren't as common as they are in Florida. I remember my parents installing ceiling fans in our bedrooms, family room and play room during the 1980s, and all the apartments we lived in during college in Florida had ceiling fans in each room. When we moved to Tennessee, there was a ceiling fan in the master bedroom and one in the living room, but in Kentucky, there is only one ceiling fan in our living room.

When we moved last fall, the weather was already turning cooler, but now that it's warming up again, we miss having a ceiling fan in the master bedroom, so we bought one, and electricians installed it Monday afternoon. It's a great addition, and we're hoping to save money on our electric bill by using it this summer.

I know my parents and many people throughout the South grew up without ceiling fans and air conditioners, but I am very thankful for these inventions. Ironically, we have some friends who just moved to upstate New York, and their house doesn't have an air conditioner, just a heater. As I've said before, I think Kentucky is as far "north" as we want to live.

The past 2 months in 10 photos

It's been a whirlwind two months...we've moved to Lexington, Kentucky! David has started a new job as a chemistry lecturer at Eastern Kentucky University, and we traveled to Florida to meet my new nephew, Judson. I'm still commuting to Knoxville a couple days a week to teach, but the drive is beautiful, and the fall leaves are changing colors.

I know I haven't posted a lot, but I'm trying to catch up. Here are 10 photos that represent what's been happening in our lives since August 13, the day David received a phone call about teaching. I'll write more soon about each experience, but this is a good recap.

If you're a Gator fan, you know football season hasn't been a great experience. Oh well. At least my adorable nephew Judson has a cute outfit to wear for basketball season. I found it online at the Disney Store. 

Cash and Sammie love the stairs in our new house. Although, Cash is more daring than I'd like. He tries to step outside the railing and walk down.

On our final day in Knoxville, David was packing up the car. Sammie didn't want to leave, so she hid in the green chair AFTER he folded it up. That's classic Sammie.

Her curiosity got the best of her, and she jumped up into the Jeep Liberty once David had packed it in the garage. Little did she know that she'd be riding inside a Honda a few hours later and wailing at the top of her lungs. I guess she prefers Limousines.

David lived in a temporary apartment for about a week that smelled like a combination of cigarette smoke, animal urine and mold, but look at those gorgeous hard wood floors. Lucky him!

During a moving trip to Kentucky, I managed to give Heidi Honda a flat tire when I tried to parallel park at the temporary apartment and hit the curb too hard. Where's the candidate for public office who wants to eliminate parallel parking? Let's focus on real issues!

David really likes his job teaching chemistry lecture and lab courses at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky, about 20 miles south of Lexington. It's a beautiful campus, and this is the view from his office. 

In case he forgets where he is, there is a sign outside his door.

Speaking of chemistry, we also gave Judson his first Pooh Bear, but I think he was upset more about his own pooh in this photo. :)

My mom finally has her first grandson, but she's had an "adopted" granddaughter for a while who she adores. I think the feeling is mutual. :)

A trip to Kingston

We recently decided to explore a part of East Tennessee we hadn't been to, the town of Kingston. It's not very far from Knoxville, but it was a nice drive through the country. Kingston Pike is one of the major highways in our area, and if you keep heading west on it, you'll end up in Kingston. It starts as Cumberland Avenue near downtown and UT's campus, also known as U.S. Route 70. Before Interstate 40 was constructed in the 1960s, it was the main road from Knoxville to the western edge of Knox County.

An afternoon thunderstorm rolls in as boaters enjoy Watts Bar Lake.

It was about a 30 minute drive, and we ate at Red Bones on the River, one of the few restaurants in Kingston. Red Bones serves a variety of dishes, but we focused on their seafood and sandwich options and ordered alligator tail as an appetizer. I had a shrimp poor-boy, and David ordered a sirloin steak sandwich. Our window view overlooked the lake.

Red Bones on the River is right off the main road with outdoor and indoor seating.

It was a nice afternoon outing, even though we stayed on land. Maybe some day, we'll own a boat, or at least have some friends who do. :)

Another view of Watts Bar Lake

Take a listen to the 1982 World's Fair music

The 1982 Wold's Fair was in Knoxville, and after living here for four years, I can tell just how proud this city is to have hosted the event, and it should be. I remember my grandparents traveled from Florida to attend the fair, and they brought me a World's Fair teddy bear that I still have.

The fair went from May through October, and more than 11 million people came to Knoxville for the "Energy Turns the World" themed event.

A friend recently posted a link to the official songs of the fair. They are great to listen to since they were written and recorded in the early 1980s. You just have to listen: http://www.expomuseum.com/1982/audio/index.htm and make sure you click on the youtube video clip above for a World's Fair commercial. It's definitely a piece of nostalgia for those who grew up in Knoxville or attended the fair. Enjoy!

Gunshots fired

It's been a week since a rather disturbing incident happened in our neighborhood, and it's one I won't soon forget.

I was sitting at our kitchen table working on my dissertation, where I could see the road down below that is the entrance to our subdivision. I heard a noise that sounded like a car backfiring, but I didn't think much about it. A few minutes later, and I'm not sure how many minutes exactly, I noticed two Knox County Sheriff's deputies pull into our neighborhood with their sirens blaring. They pulled over at the end of the first intersection and were clearly in a hurry to get out of their cars.

I called David into the kitchen and we watched as more deputies drove in, and we could tell something wasn't right. We used our binoculars to see better since we live a ways up the hill. We could see deputies running, and getting larger guns out of their trunks, but we still couldn't see what or who they were going after. Then we heard a series of gunshots...not just a few but at least 10 or more. I can remember asking David during the gunshots, what in the world could be happening? We could only see the deputies running, but we never saw who or what they were shooting at during this period.

By this point, more sheriff's deputies were driving into the neighborhood, and next came an ambulance and firetruck. We didn't know what was happening, but it was obvious someone had been shot. After a few minutes, knoxnews.com posted a very brief story online about deputies firing shots at a West Knoxville man who was threatening to commit suicide.

During the next few hours, more official cars arrived along with satellite trucks from the three local TV stations in Knoxville. There were around 15 deputy cars and other SUVs with flashing lights. It was surreal to see this happening, and the photo above doesn't quite capture all the traffic and uncertainty about the events. Initial reports said a man was trying to break into a house and then threatened suicide and a call to 911 was placed.

I was surprised that a couple of the local TV stations didn't add this information to their web sites as quickly as they should since they could easily confirm the information with the sheriff's office. It took one station more than two hours to post any story about the shooting. As a journalism educator, I'm constantly telling my students that the web is driving news. People go online to get their news first, and if it's not there, they go to another site, which is what I did.

You can read more about what happened at www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/feb/25/three-deputies-involved-in-fatal-shooting and a follow-up story at
www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/mar/01/3-knox-deputies-fatal-shooting-back-work/. To summarize, a woman called 911 to say her husband was suicidal, and she was afraid for her life. She stayed on the phone with 911 until deputies arrived. Deputies met the man outside, and he started firing, so they fired back. He later died at UT Medical Center.

While I didn't know this family personally, we see their company trucks coming in and out of the neighborhood on a daily basis. When we go on walks, we've seen them washing those trucks, so it's hard and sad to believe that a life was lost.

I realize this is a personal family matter, and I don't need to know why this man acted the way he did. His wife is a widow now, and his family is without him. It's just another example that shows how quickly life can change in a matter of seconds.

First fall visit to the Smokies

We traveled to the Great Smoky Mountains recently on a rainy afternoon. Fall technically doesn't start until Tuesday afternoon, but the autumn season was already in the air in the Smokies.

They were decorating the day we were there in Gatlinburg. All the pumpkins and gourds are from a farmer in Cosby, a neighboring town where one of my dad's army buddies has lived for years.







After a delicious lunch at the Pancake Pantry, we drove up into the "smoky" mountains.







As we were driving home, the sun decided to appear through the clouds.

It's Football Time!

College football has started again, and while I don't attend the games in Knoxville, I enjoy watching them on television. We also were able to watch the Gator game last night on television. Both teams scored more than 60 points and defeated their opponents.

UT recently completed a stadium expansion, and I snapped the photo above last week. It's not the greatest angle, but it shows the new expanded front.

Some much better photos are from our very talented UT students who covered the game against Western Kentucky yesterday. Ben has great shots of the players, fans, cheerleaders, the band and more. Visit the Tennessee Journalist at tnjn.com/2009/sep/06/ut-vs-wku-photo-galleries/ to view them. Great job!

Go Vols! Go Gators! (In two weeks, they play each other, so I'll just make sure I'm wearing orange!)

Celebrating 75 Years of the Great Smoky Mountains

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is celebrating its 75th anniversary. President Franklin D. Roosevelt presided over the opening ceremony at Newfound Gap on Sept. 2, 1934, so earlier this week, there was a rededication ceremony at the same spot. Only 2,000 people were able to attend, but there was live coverage to watch online. Of course Dolly Parton was there and sang a song she'd written about the mountains, where she grew up.

The Knoxville News Sentinel asked readers to share their favorite memories of the park, and I submitted my thoughts below. (The edited version that is linked above has some minor errors in it that must have happened when they transferred the text from my e-mail to their layout, so my original version is below).

"I've only lived in Knoxville for about three years, but my family has vacationed in the Great Smoky Mountains every year since I was 18 months old. I'm now 32. We usually made the trip during October to see the fall leaves and sometimes also visited during June.

One fall it was rather cold and there was snow and ice on Newfound Gap Road. The road was open, and there wasn't a lot of snow, but since we are from Florida, it was quite exciting. My dad wanted a photo of me near the snow, so we pulled off and got out of the car to snap a shot. My mom was afraid I was going to slide off the mountain, but I obviously didn't.

My husband and I moved to Knoxville in July 2006 so I could enter a Ph.D. program in communication and information at UT. His parents visited for his birthday in early December. It had snowed the night before, and late on a Friday afternoon, they reopened Newfound Gap Road, and we were able to drive a ways and take some gorgeous photographs and play in the snow. It was the first time I had seen that much snow in the U.S. I'm attaching a few photos I took.

I had only seen the Smoky Mountains during the fall and summer seasons, so the first glance at winter is one I'll always remember. We went at the perfect time too since I'm sure it started melting the next day."

Here are some of the gorgeous photos I took during that December visit.






Ironically, I don't have any recent photos of the Smokies during the summer. We usually don't visit as much since it's hot and crowded. I have some previous posts though about visiting Cades Cove and Clingman's Dome during the fall. We've also traveled to the mountains during the spring, and there was even snow up near Newfound Gap.

It's a great place to visit, and I'm thankful we've lived close enough to see the changing seasons of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Three Years Ago Today...

It was our last night in Gainesville, Florida. Hard to believe it's been three years since we moved to Knoxville. It was a Saturday, and we had finished packing. The movers had already come on Friday, so Saturday was our final day in town. I remember getting a haircut and pedicure at my favorite salon. We also had a yummy steak (chicken for me) dinner at my parent's house.

We thought that night would be the last time we saw my family before we left early the next morning, but as we tried to pack things into both cars, we realized they would not fit. So we called my parents, and they came over Sunday morning and picked up some things to store for us until they visited us that October.

Today, I edited a friend's dissertation...never thought I would be doing that three years ago! Time really does fly when you're having fun...or when you are always doing something productive. I wonder what we'll be doing next year on this day?