sun burned chest.....

Sun burned chest. Sorry for the junior high humor but the robin red breast has returned to middle Tennessee. This is my second spring season in Tennessee and it's kind of fun using the robin to mark the passing of time. The robins return here a lot sooner than they did in central New York but return they did. I need to do the googles and find out where they go. They were never in Texas so maybe it is someplace in between. Or maybe they went to Mexico. If it was Mexico, I'm glad that they were able to get back. What a mystery.

Step 2.....

My obsession with the sun room continues. The hot tub is gone but there was an ugly carpet under it. Since it was in a hot tub room, the carpet was closer to astro-turf than carpet. I anguished over the type of floor to put in. The room is not climate controlled 100% of the time so my first choice of hardwood was out. Then I priced tile. Yikes. I settled for a Berber carpet and a thick carpet pad. Step 1 in my room redo was to get the tub out. Done. Step 2 was to get the carpet out. The damn thing was glued to the floor rather than tacked along the edges. I survived the ordeal and the carpet installation is next. I will conquer this room yet. giggle

the same but different....

I've been here for a year and a month and i noticed some differences between the 2 locales. I don't know if it is a difference between large city vs big city or central Texas vs middle Tennessee. As a public service, here are the top 3 differences between here and there....

1 - I go to the store twice a week and I have yet to see anyone graze at the grape display. Are people hungrier in Austin? Why are they always sampling the grapes?

2 - My vehicle in Texas was a Honda Accord and I loved that car. I took great pains to park it far from other cars but after a year, it was covered with small door dings. sniff. After 13 months in middle Tennessee, my Mazda 3 doesn't have a single ding and I work at a construction site. Freaky.

3 - I run at 5:00am and I'm struck by the number of empty vehicles warming up on cold mornings in neighborhood driveways. It does get a little colder here but it's not frigid. Were people scared to idle their cars in Austin for fear that they might get stolen?

No one probably finds this stuff interesting but there it is.

i'm dreaming of a white january 12th.....

We had our first significant whiteness today. It doesn't compete with a New England snowstorm but it was still a little exciting. It was 47 degrees this morning and by the end of my work day it was 24 degrees. The weather reports mentioned flurries but they said there would not be any accumulation. That type of forecast and miss is rare - they usually predict life threatening storms and then nothing happens. It will be curious to see what tomorrow looks like in terms of work attendance. Most people will take advantage of the snow and stay tucked in bed in the morning. Remember how we would walk to school in the snow when we were kids? Barefoot? Up hills both ways? Jeeesh.

8,760 hours and counting...

I passed my one year residency landmark yesterday. I pulled into central Tennessee at 3:00am on December 19, 2010. I have a Tennessee drivers license and a Tennessee license plate on my car. I was in corporate housing for 2 months, an apartment for 7 months and a house for 3 months. I don't have much furniture but it's home. I got a little promotion at work and I'm enjoying life on the construction site. My car was new when I left Texas and it has 16,000 miles on it now. I'm learning my way around Nashville and I've managed to avoid the Parthenon. My running has gone from 200 miles a month to 100 miles a month. That will change back in 2012. I'll turn the double nickel in November. yikes.

My goals for 2012 include keeping my job, buying a lawnmower and dipping my own bottle of bourbon in the wax at the Maker's Mark distillery. It's good to have goals.

oh, nuts....

Since I don't have the gang at Green Mesquite to bake for any more, I've started baking batches of banana bread for the guys in my group at work. At first, I would sneak loaves in and place them by the coffee pot. Everyone thought the banana bread fairy had paid a visit. Finally the secret was out. One guy was so taken by the bread that he had his wife pick up a bag of nuts for the cause. His wife had picked up 2 types of nuts. He asked me if I had used walnuts or pecans. If I was the bread nazi, I would have said "No bread for you." He thought I may have used walnuts? yikes. I calmed down, accepted his gift of pecans and let him keep his walnuts. He will also receive his own mini loaf in the morning. yum

"why don't you make like a tree and scram..."

This post is a couple of weeks old but the trees are bare. It seemed to happen over night. One day everything was bright and colorful and then a wind comes along and blows all the leaves off. It was really evident when I drove toward Nashville this weekend. The interstates in this part of the country are really quite scenic. In between cities, the highways go through windy and hilly sections of the state with very little evidence of development. The woods come right up to the edge of the road. It's a drastic departure from central Texas where businesses and strip malls tend to migrate to the highway.

Anyway...the scenery was very different on the drive this weekend. I guess I have about 5 months until everything is green again.