Grits, Rednecks, and Squirrels ... oh my!

Amanda and I went down to Kentucky this weekend to visit my Grandparents and Aunt/Uncle/Cousins for the Thanksgiving weekend. We've made this trek once a year since we've been living in Chicago (three total treks, two at Thanksgiving and one at Christmas).

I'm by no means a city slicker but I do play one on TV, or at least I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night ... or at least I feel like one whenever I get hanging around Russellville, Kentucky, too long. Think of every stereotype of a redneck and that's what you see when you walk into the local Walmart or the local Mexican restaurant (think about that for a second, rednecks and enchiladas?) I can safely type this for two reasons: the first being that I'm safely back in Chicago, the second being that my family members are Russellville transplants.

Thursday was spent driving.
Friday was spent eating.

Saturday is where it gets interesting (at least in the theme of this blog post). Saturday morning we were in a hunt for breakfast and figured that since we're there we might as well jump in with both feet! So, we hopped into a staple restaurant that's been featured in many movies and songs, Waffle House! After a thoroughly American Heart Association approved breakfast of fried bacon, fried eggs, fried potatoes, fried toast and a waffle for me and cheesy eggs, grits, fried toast and fried bacon for Amanda we set off, clogged arteries and all, to another staple of southern living, a real live, genuine, flea market in Nashville.

At the flea market we discoved two things, one is that southerners like to smoke, the second is that they like to talk. Both of these discoveries were subsequently confirmed multiple times this trip. For some strange reason I like to keep my lungs free of tar and as such I am not very patient breathing in second hand smoke. We had to expertly maneuver around many smokers, both inside and outside of enclosed structures. Further evidence for the tobacco lifestyle included authentic Tobacco baskets for sale. As for talking, as you are aware you just can't get Amanda or me to stop talking, so we were right in our element! This was particularly highlighted when we were looking at some nice handcrafted breakfast tables and the proprietor for the selection tried to chat us up. He was friendly, from Alabama and we got talking about politics. I think we convinced him that he should move to Alaska where people and politics are like oil and water (i.e. they don't mix). If we ever make it back down one of those tables might be in order! They were nice but we couldn't justify a purchase due to not knowing the design of our future house or the timing of having two mortgages.

One last thought about the flea market: If only we had known of the abundance of flea markets when we were ordering for our Operation Gentle Hands project we could have saved money on bulk toothbrushes and socks!

After the market we made our annual pilgrimage to Jack's bbq. It's tasty, give it a shot!

Other highlights from the trip are the songs:
-Mississippi Squirrel Revival
-One with the opening lyrics of "I've got a beer in my right hand, in my left I've got my wedding band"

I think these songs sum up the experience.

See ya'll later!

p.s. If anyone from southwest Kentucky is reading this and they want to kick me out the next time I come down just look for my truck, it's the one that's jacked up, has big mud tires, mud flaps and a light bar!

You should be like me-e-e

The owner of my current company recently came back from a trip to China. Today he was in the kitchen talking with a coworker about how the food over there was so bad and that he should tell them they need to fix it. The coworker agreed and mentioned that "it isn't anything like the Chinese food over here" (which is true in the context that the preparation and flavors are different), to which the owner said that "it isn't anything like the food over here period" (which again is true in the flavor/style profile, but that wasn't the meaning behind the statement).

All this dialog was disconcerting to me in the facet of my mantra being supporting cultural diversity. Just because it's different doesn't mean it's bad and should be fixed. I'm not a meat and potatoes midwestern guy, I'm a "I haven't tried Moroccan food so let's drag our meat and potatoes midwestern family out to a Moroccan restaurant" type (the iteration of that Moroccan meal wasn't too pleasing but I'm game to give the style a second chance!) Main rule is all is fair except for brocolli!

This encounter brought me to internally lament about the American way of wanting everyone to be like us, down to the food they eat. For some reason this made me think about the song sung by King Louie in the Jungle Book:

"Oh, oobee doo
I wanna be like you
I wanna walk like you
Talk like you, too
You'll see it's true"

Although in this case it would all be the reverse and would sing something like

"Oh, oobee dee
I want you to be like me
I want you to walk like me
Talk like me, gee
You'll be set free"

All this talk about the monkey song harkens times past where I would get raucous in singing this song. Apparently when I was a kid I would go around when this song was playing and belt out

"I wanna be like you - oo oo oo"


Anyway, get out there and enjoy all of the cultural diversity that God has created!

The Lion sleeps tonight

We have had three realtors over at different points in the past couple of weeks to talk over how they would market our property, fees, expected selling price, the works. They've all given generally positive reviews of our property and how it's presented (good job Amanda on having the artistic eye), however, they've all stepped into the lime room (our guest bedroom complete with a live rendition of a Kaffir Lime tree, painted to match) and had the reaction of "Oh ..........", followed by a "You need to paint that room". For what it's worth, our target audience of 3-year olds liked the lime color!

Farewell Lime Room ...

Hello Lion Room!

I don't know that I have any "before" pictures, if so we'll do a before and after.

Oh, and this is post #100, yippee?

Hey, at least we're better than those 6!

"Illinois, Georgia, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts were the least knowledgeable states overall, with average scores under 75 percent"

Illinois representing at #45

Gentle Hands

Thanks to all of you who donated to our Gentle Hands Christmas project. It was a huge success. We were able to fund a Christmas gift for every child at the orphanage (all 66 of them). A few of us got together last night to wrap all the gifts and package them for shipment to the Philippines.

The first three pics above are obviously of us packaging the gifts and the last one is a recent picture of the kids at Gentle Hands wearing the shirts that my company donated for our last shipment.

On the Road Again

Well, we all knew it was coming sooner or later. Once again we're packing up everything we own and moving to a different state. The move this time will be a bit shorter than the last one (Alaska to Illinois vs Illinois to Minnesota) and we have a few more personal possessions (a small SUV-full last time vs a large moving truck this time). We got the job offer on Friday the 2nd and after some intense negotiations accepted the offer on Tues the 6th. Moving day has officially been set as December 14th.

We are excited about being in Minnesota, not so excited about the prospect of selling our townhouse in the current market (anybody looking to buy a townhouse?).

Due to the busyness of the next 6-8 weeks you may notice a slight lull in the frequency of posts, but don't worry, we'll be back when things settle down.

Thank You, Thank You Very Much

I just wanted to give a shout out to Mr Buehrle. He was kind enough to spend 7 hours of his Saturday helping Tom paint the kitchen, dining room and breakfast area...and all I had to do was entertain 3 boys under the age of 4, one of which has not gotten the hang of eating from a bottle yet (read, refuses to eat from a bottle). At one point I did get two of them to go to sleep at the same time and the third one entertained himself for a bit, so I was able to help paint for about 15 mins. Well worth it on my part.

Something's fishy

Saw this article in the Anchorage Daily News, I don't have much to say other than they might as well be asking Chicagoans to forego hot dogs, they might as well be asking Italians to forego pasta, they might as well be asking Chinese to forego rice, they might as well be asking Londoners to forego .... .... .... sorry, nothing that they shouldn't forego.