avanta7 | Further adventures in Knoxville

My nephew's team competed early Saturday afternoon. After another lazy morning and leisurely brunch, Mom and I headed over to the convention center to watch them do their stuff. We saw a couple of teams ahead of them, and then they were on! Their skit concerned a idealized way to build a bridge between the clashing cultures of the Germans and the Jews circa WWII: in essence, if only the leaders from both cultures had sat down and talked together, the Holocaust would never have occurred. (Give them a break, folks, they're 5th graders.) Their bridge made of balsa wood, glue and fishing line held 135 lbs (WOOT!) and they scored well enough to come in 26th out of 55 teams. Not bad for their first time at Global!

After the competition, Mom and I went to a giant used book store, McKay's. This place is enormous! It also sells used CDs, videogames and DVDs, rack after rack after row after row of stuff. Neat and clean and organized by section; alphabetized within the section. Amazing! I was hoping to find a particular out-of-print book; however, although I recalled the title, I couldn't remember the author. I placed an emergency cell phone call to

shendoah, hoping to catch her at the computer and beg her to check my wishlist for the author. Got her voice mail. Nuts. I left a message and wandered over to the DVD racks, hoping she'd call back. 30 minutes and 5 DVD choices later, with no return call, I blew my budget and left the store. Oh well, better luck next time! (No guilt, Shen, I know you were busy Saturday.)

Bookstore fix satiated, we decided to have an early dinner and turn in. Back at the hotel, we got in our jammies, brought out our respective novels and whiled away the evening in companionable silence. The next morning, we checked out and were back on the road headed home by 9:30 AM.

The whole weekend, Mom and I kept saying to each other: "It's so beautiful here!" "I love this place." "Hey, that's a nice house." We talked to residents about the weather and discovered it's far less sticky and hot than Arkansas in the summer, plus the winters are fairly mild with minimal snow. We bought a Sunday paper and picked up real estate magazines. The cost of living in Knoxville, including housing, is roughly the same as Arkansas and the local economy is better. Mom and I both want to move. Now we just have to convince the rest of the family!

Seriously, after discussing it with spouse, I'm going to keep my eye out for any Knoxville vacancies that open in my agency. My chief objection to remaining in the South is the heat and humidity. But if we can live someplace in the mountains like eastern Tennessee....well, maybe remaining a Dixie girl won't be so bad.