Grandma's 80th Birthday Celebration

We traveled to Florida for a quick visit this past weekend to celebrate David's Grandma's 80th birthday. It was a surprise party, and all of her children and grandchildren were able to be there.

We waited as a group until Grandma arrived.

Aunt Sue said, "You have something on your shirt Uncle Rick," and we all had a good laugh!

Grandma has six children, five girls and one boy and 16 grandchildren ranging in age from 18 to 31.

Her birthday is actually Sept. 27, but our party was the day before, and she thought she was going shopping and to dinner with a couple of her children and grandchildren. She had no idea what was about to happen.

We're all hiding outside in the backyard waiting for her to make her way to the back door.

She's starting to notice all of us as we're saying, "Surprise!"

She had no idea we were all there waiting to wish her a Happy Birthday!

David and his Grandma Jo (Josephine)

We had some delicious food, including yummy appetizers, ribs, beef brisket, homemade potato salad, baked beans, coleslaw, macaroni and cheese, and collard greens.

Before we left, Cash was curious about our suitcase.

We had two smooth flights, only one hour and ten minutes each. It was a great Florida visit, but we're happy to be home with our highs in the 70s (not the 90s) and lows in the 40s later this week.

Happy 80th Birthday Grandma! We love you!

For the love of grading

While grading papers Monday, the right arrow key on my keyboard popped off. I couldn't pop it back in, so I made an appointment with the Genius Bar at the Apple Store in Knoxville, hoping one of the geniuses could repair it...no such luck.

The key is cracked, and the keyboard is the most intricate part of the computer according to Preston, the genius who assisted me. They've ordered a replacement keyboard and will repair my computer when it arrives. Preston said this was the first time he's seen this happen, so of course it would happen to me.

Hopefully, this repair will only separate me from my dear Mac for just a day or so. I can still use it, but I have to rely on the mouse more, and things take a little longer when I'm maneuvering around a document. I love my Mac, but at times like this, I am a bit annoyed and frustrated. Ah, the things we do for love.

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.

The light goes out

The longest running drama in television and radio history is now silent. The final episode of Guiding Light aired Friday, Sept. 18 after 72 years on the air. News of the show's departure was announced on April 1, and I honestly thought it was an April Fool's joke. Sadly, it wasn't. (If you don't want to know what happens during the final episode, then stop reading now!)

I grew up watching CBS soap operas thanks to my mother and grandmother, and even though years went by when I didn't watch them, I still found myself wondering what was happening with various characters such as Alan Spaulding, Josh Lewis, and of course Reva Shane Lewis Spaulding O'Neill (who has driven off a bridge, joined the Amish, was cloned, became a princess of an island nation, and recently gave birth to a son who is younger than her grandchildren.)

I started watching the show again a few years ago since we have a DVR, and it's easy to record the episodes and watch them later as a guilty pleasure. I noticed changes in how the show was filmed due to budget cuts. A lot of the scenes looked like I could have shot them with my camera, and many were shot outside instead of an indoor studio. I also could miss an entire week, watch one episode and be completely caught up, but that's how all soap operas work.

Despite the changes, I was sad to see the show go off the air, not only because it's the longest running show on television, but because a part of me will miss some of the crazy story lines. The last few weeks of the show, however, was a time to tie up loose ends and make amends. There were two weddings, a funeral, a life-saving medical procedure, several pregnancies and the happy homecomings of several former main characters. The show also introduced several gay characters recently.

In the final episode, the Spaulding family mourns the death of Alan Spaulding, who recently had saved his son Phillip's life during a risky medical procedure. He died peacefully of a heart attack, and his villain character became a hero. Josh professed his love for Reva and tells her they both need time to find themselves, and he'll return in a year and wait for her at the lighthouse if she decides she wants to be with him.

Fast forward a year into the future—babies are now born, a son has returned from war, and another wedding of two longtime lovers is taking place. Josh waits for Reva, and of course she shows up, and they drive away, starting a new life together...this time forever or at least until there's a reunion show.

99 years and counting

My parents recently reunited two women who've known each other for almost all of their 99 years. Millia was born on July 8, 1910, and here is what my mother wrote about her. "We have known Millia for years. I can remember her when I was a child as well as her mother and father, Uncle Joe and Aunt Carrie. She is distantly related somehow, but I don't really understand how. She spells her name with an "a" instead of an "e," but we call her Millie. Their farm is down the road from Louise and Millie still owns part of it."

Millie now lives in Jacksonville, Florida, and this is where my parents drove Irene Hunter to last weekend for the reunion. Known as Mrs. Hunter to me, she was born barely a month after Millie on August 7, 1910. She was a great friend to my grandmother before she died, and they often attended church dinners and events together. They talked on the phone almost every day.

Somehow my mom realized these two ladies had grown up together and hadn't seen each other in more than 20 years, so she worked on getting the two together again. Both women are in good health for their age. They've slowed down a bit, but they are still enjoying life.



I can only imagine what rich conversations and memories they shared during their visit. Thanks to my dad for taking and sending these great photos to me!

Tailgating at home

I don't envy folks who braved the weather and attended the UF and UT games today. It was raining in Gainesville, and it's warm up here in Knoxville. I love the energy of attending games, but I hate the heat and humidity.

Today, we've sat inside our comfortable home and watched both games. We also decided to boil some peanuts...a food I could live off of if necessary. They are so good! My dad boils them in a pressure cooker, which takes a lot less time. It took us almost six hours before they were done, but they are delicious. I like to eat them when they're fairly hot, and I have fond memories of my dad and I eating them just after he'd boiled them. They're also good once they've cooled.

In keeping with the tradition of football Saturdays and tailgating, we're grilling some hot dogs tonight, and I made some homemade potato salad. This recipe calls for peas, which is different than what I've made before, but we're always up for trying something new.



Hope you're having a great weekend! Next weekend will be interesting when the Gators play the Vols in Gainesville!

Get your flu shot!

Flu vaccines should be available in your area now, and I got mine yesterday at a clinic at Kroger. Most pharmacies now have walk-in clinics where you can get them as well, but sometimes you have to wait since people are also there to see a medical professional if they are sick. You might recall my experience last year at the "Minute Clinic."

However, waiting for a shot hopefully won't be your excuse not to get one. I've gotten a flu shot every year since I was a freshmen in college in 1995, and I've never had the flu. Yes, I've succumbed to colds and sinus infections but not the flu.

These vaccines arrived earlier this year since the H1N1 vaccine should be available in October. According to the University of Tennessee's Web page, the vaccine will be given in two doses over several weeks and will be free to the UT community.

I know some people don't like getting shots, but this one is over before you know it and barely hurts. I do miss getting a character-themed bandage though. :)

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.

Final Thought for August (130+ Animal Adoptions and an Earthquake)

I wanted to post one more entry during the month of August, and I didn't know what to write about earlier today. I have some ideas, but they will take longer to write, and I've been grading all day, so I didn't want to write a ton.

I just checked some local news sites and found a great "good news" story, especially for an animal lover like me! The Young-Williams Animal Center, where we volunteer, received a $10,000 donation, which means more than 130 animals can be adopted without adoption fees in Knox County. Once those animals are find good and caring homes, the anonymous donor will give another $10,000 for the same cause.

Read more about it at http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=97501&provider=rss. This donation probably couldn't come at a better time since the shelter has had more than 500 animals, but is designed for around 400. God bless that donor!

In other area news, we experienced a 3.3 magnitude earthquake earlier today. Well, I didn't personally experience it, but it shook neighboring Blount and Loudon counties around 10 a.m. this morning. The epicenter of the quake was six miles from Lousiville (pronounced Louis-ville and not Louie-ville), which is fairly close to Alcoa and Maryville.

In other weather news, we didn't make it out of the 70s today, and we're having lows in the 50s tonight. If you live in Florida, I hope you are very jealous!

Bring on September!

Listening to HD Radio

A few weeks ago I volunteered at WUOT's Annual Open House. Once public radio is in your blood, it's a part of you forever. The National Public Radio affiliate in Knoxville is celebrating 60 years on the air this fall, and I'll volunteer during the fund drive, which is October 19-24.

At the Open House, I hung out in the volunteer room and talked about HD radio. We've all heard about HDTV, well there is also HD radio, which is giving stations the ability to broadcast a second and even third channel. You can listen online for free or purchase an HD radio. A great resource for learning more about HD radio is http://hdradio.com. They make portable HD radios, and ones for cars, boats and home entertainment systems.

If you want to listen to WUOT's HD channel, visit wuot.org/h/listenlive2.html. WUOT has added a ton of wonderful news and talk programming on the second channel. Other stations have moved classical music to the second channel and added news and talk on the main channel. It's a great way to get all types of programming through one station.

Mr. Cash (Updated)

My friend Lisa gave Cash a present this week, a baseball cap with his name on it!

I was able to get a few shots of him "wearing" it. Thanks Lisa!



Ghetto style!



Where is Cash?



He might wear it better on his back end!



I didn't want Sammie to feel left out of posts, so below is a photo of both Sammie and Cash on the bed. They both now sleep at the foot of the bed during the night. Also, they've trained David to get up and feed them, just like Dolly had trained me. After they eat though, they come back and sleep in the bed with me! :)

Don't send a man to the grocery store

This is a funny video from North Carolina comedian Jeanne Robertson, who was crowned Miss North Carolina in 1963. She's definitely got some Southern humor. In this clip from youtube, she describes sending her husband to the grocery store to buy ingredients for a pound cake. Enjoy!

Texting and Driving

It is now against the law to text while driving in Tennessee. I own a cell phone, and I text at times, but never while I'm driving. I also don't like talking on a cell phone while I'm driving, but every day as I drive about 20 miles to and from campus, I see many drivers on their phones, engaged in conversation and not always paying attention to the road in front of them.

It is a hard law to enforce since people can always say they were dialing a number on their cell phones instead of texting. Teaching college students has made me aware of how many of them cannot put their phones down during class. A lot of them are addicted to text messaging. I have a rule that if they text during class, it counts as an absence, which hurts their grade. Some think it is harsh, but it's for their own good. If they are texting, they aren't listening to what we're discussing or working on their assignment that is due at the end of class and not a minute later.

I can't enforce what my students or anyone else chooses to do in their cars, but I hope they are paying more attention to the road and the cars around them than their cell phones.

The PSA video below was produced in the United Kingdom, and it's very well done. It sends a message about the possible deadly dangers of texting while driving. The video is graphic and has an 18 or over warning label on youtube.com. It is not nearly as graphic as a real traffic accident could be, but hopefully it makes people think about what consequences their actions could have.

Thinking like a child...

I had to share this brief post that I read on a friend's blog. Her mother's dog died this week, and she wasn't sure how to explain the pet's death to her children. Below is what she wrote about what happened.

I saw an opening, and mentioned that M.T. was very sick, and was probably going to heaven. A and S thought a moment, and then asked, "Well, how will she get there?" I said that I thought she would fly, as heaven is above us. A said, "Oh! So she'll just be sleeping and then she will grow wings and go up with all the other doggies and people in heaven." I said that sounds about right to me. Silence. "Maddie (their dog) is going to miss her friend," S said. "Yes," A replied. "But she'll see her again someday. We all will. Just later. Like when we're 100."

The beauty of being and thinking like a child.

Crazy Cash

Cash has adjusted well to joining our family, but sometimes we call him Crazy Cash since he walks and runs around the house making noises. He sleeps but not nearly as much as Sammie. If he hears us returning home, he races to the door to meet us. He is quite curious and explores everything.

Cash used to live in a home with a nine-year-old girl named Allison. The night we met Cash, she said, "This is a sample of what you can do with him," and then she picked him up and held him upside down. It was so cute, so now David and I joke about Cash and his samples.

One "sample" happened last night when David put this hat on Cash that he had bought a while ago for Dolly and Sammie. Neither of them would let us put the hat, which is made for a cat, on them, but Cash didn't seem to mind as he also played with his favorite yarn ball.

He also likes to sit in the recliner chair in our bedroom and sometimes places his front paws over the side while the rest of his body is in the chair. He might be a little crazy, but he's a cutie!

A Trip to the Zoo

I promised a six-year-old a trip to the zoo, and when you make a promise, especially to a six-year-old, you keep it! It was a fun day, and Isabella is a great kid. Yes, it is August, and very hot, but our Knoxville Zoo has lots of trees and shade. The animals, however, were not fooled. They sensed the heat and took the chance to nap and relax.

The sleeping female lions.



Rhinos relaxing in the shade.



This is as close as we got to a lion!



The elephants were actually inside when we arrived.



Since it was so hot, we took a break and cooled off with a Slush Puppie, strawberry kiwi flavor.



The giant tortoise



One of the zebras had his butt facing us, and Isabella didn't want to take a photo with a zebra butt! :)



Isabella loved petting the goats. She told me in advance about picking out the brush to use.



Funny and slightly scary story about the gorilla. As we entered the cave area to view the gorillas through a window, there was a man close to the glass. I guess he was sort of taunting the gorilla and trying to get him to turn around for a photo. Well, the gorilla was not pleased with the man's behavior, so he turned around and loudly slapped the window with his giant hand and grunted. Everyone was startled to say the least and jumped back. Isabella ran out of the cave but quickly came back. She said the gorilla liked us since he didn't mind us taking a photo of him.





Here is an adult giraffe. When they are born, baby giraffes are already six feet tall!


The zoo has lots of birds as well. Isn't that a cute owl!



The red pandas weren't there the last time I visited the zoo, so it was nice to see them.





The zoo has a great kids area where Isabella loved playing. They have an egg and nest area that makes for great photos! In fact, we bought a photo frame and had the photo below printed for it.



Also in the kids area is a frog pond area where kids love to splash and get wet. Isabella loved it.



All wet and standing next to the beavers and their dams.



What trip to the zoo isn't complete without a visit to McDonalds to get a Happy Meal for a happy little girl.