• This weekend was the annual Sacred Harp Singing in Henagar, AL. It was beautiful as always, the food was great, and the weather was lovely. I ate, no kidding, four kinds of macaroni and cheese. There may've been more on the other table (there were two long tables just full of food). One thing I noticed was that there were no handbags with big designer labels. It is a rural area, but these are not unstylish people. In fact, I saw a few outfits I coveted. Except that's a sin. Ha! But I did record it thanks to Kelly Jo's digital recorder. Audio to come later, it's loading right now.


• Seems as though someone with whom I spent some time a few years ago is importing his email box into every social media system. It's pretty annoying. I wish him no ill will, but I do wish he would leave me alone. Unfortunately, I no longer seem to have his phone number or email address. I can only hit ignore so many times, you know?


• My godchildren (and accompanying parents) are back in town to live, hopefully for good. I'm very excited by this!


• School has started. Assignments have started! Difficult puzzles, some math.


• Looking to sell condo at the end of summer. Needs work, looking at a few different contractors.

Labels: news, roundup, school, travel

This weekend was the Stomp in Knoxville. The Stomp is an annual Tennessee derby conference where the three existing teams in TN (Memphis, Knoxville, Nashville) play each other and have fun mini-challenges. Our league started it last year, and next year I assume memphis will be hosting. In future years perhaps we will see fledgling Johnson City and Chattanooga leagues participating!

I am under financial restrictions, self imposed. I used some hotel reward points for the room (fancy!), and rode with the Splatters (I paid for a tank of gas which was considerably less expensive than it would've been for me to drive myself and pay for a hotel).

During Saturday's bouts Memphis won two, Knoxville won one, and Nashville won zero. I don't remember the exact scores but they should be on the Nashville Rollergirls site within a few days. Parting was done but not by me as we had our first B-team bout the next day! I took a long walk through downtown Knoxville with Macy for food and some alcohol. there was an abandoned home fenced off but I REALLY wanted to explore. Clearer heads (Macy's) prevailed so I skipped it. It was dark and my picture didn't really turn out but others have taken pictures--the boarded up windows and doors were covered in art (from flickr, not taken by me):



More from flickr (not taken by me):

Cape Sale with a little more of the house (and check out the artist's page.
From the front
Freaky
Whimsy

Later, at the liquor store, we were told that the building was definitely haunted by the spirit of a young boy who was abused and later died in the house.

So, our B-team took on Johnson City--except that it was only a few JC folk and mostly Knoxville girls, including a couple of girls who had played the day before on their All-Stars team. Hardly seems fair (there was more unfairness but it was rumor so I will not post it here), but at any rate we ended up winning. Again, don't remember the score, but again, check the site in a couple of days.

I missed the mini-challenges (saw a tiny bit of Amazons vs Shorties) because I really wanted to stop at the two French's (Frenches's? French'ses?) in Crossville as these are the originals and they seem to be the best! Yes, there are two stores, both on Main right off of 40, catty-corner to one another. One carries western wear and boots, one carries regular shoes, both have large rack rooms. The Splatters both seemed interested so I wanted to strike while the iron was hot and while the store was still open. I was less impressed this time around but that's ok, I still walked away with a pair of Indigo by Clarks (does this make me old?). There is also another further up 40, but we did not stop there.

I did get home, dog under the kitchen table (no, he was not there over night alone, he stayed with my parents). Off to bed.

Labels: roller derby, travel

I may have talked about my summer job where I travelled the country counting seed packets at the end of planting season. I actually worked for the company for two seasons and while I didn't make a ton of money I did enjoy seeing the country at a young age.

I didn't make a ton of money because these people were cheap. While the company is fairly well known we were given insanely low maximums for hotel room and if you had to go over (which I did...I was without a travel partner for much of the time) it was deducted from your pay check. At one point I was in the same city as the Football Hall of Fame during induction week. I think I was at a Super 8 that cost close to $80, and that was about eleven years ago. We were assigned travel partners, but by mid-summer my first year of working for them I requested the San Francisco area and my travel partner opted to go straight home (presumably to do more "bump," a drug she'd raved about in the short time I knew her). This left twenty-year-old me alone, and without a travel partner my expenses increased but my hotel allowance stayed the same. I will save the rest of this story for later if you want to hear it. It's fun, and I look back on those two summers with much fondness. Don't tell them (they'll come back wanting me to reimburse them) but I would've done it for almost free since they covered gas, hotels, meals, and some incidentals. While I did have a cell phone (incredibly rare at the time, and it was parental issue, not company) I opted instead to stop at the various and sundry coin-op phones that you used to see. I ate at truck stops! I spent time in highwayside motels with vibrating beds and sweeping views of the coast and the mountains!

But I'm not going to talk about that today. Instead I'll talk about a small place outside of New Orleans called the Evergreen Plaza Inn in Metairie, LA.

My second summer I was paired with a good friend and we were sent South to Louisiana, the state I'd spent some time in my first year. I was newly 21 and ready to prove it in the French Quarter. After a weekend of such, L and I ended up in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie. I'm not sure why we chose the Evergreen--I think it's probably because of the hotel coupon magazines you see at rest stops (those things were a lifesaver--we stayed smack in the middle of the Quarter for $29 a night).

The front desk clerk was an albino version of Richard Simmons who wore thick glasses and clear polish on his fingers. Our room was by the pool and we could see no problems with this. Upon check in we noticed that one of the channels seemed to always show free pornography; we couldn't believe this and left it on all the time because we COULD. There was nothing titillating about this, it was simply an oddity that we embraced. The source of this pornography was a VCR in the business office; I found this out when I went to pay for another several days and saw Albino Richard switching the cassettes. At the end of our stay we were completely desensitized to sex.

We later found out that this hotel was a preferred spot for thug teens to throw parties. We were awakened in the wee hours by the sounds of hardcore porn (this time NOT from our own television) and the terrible noises created by Master P 9I am loathe to call it "rap," let alone "music"). Apparently there was a pool party also. We called the hotel office and the music only got louder. The hotel office really treated us in a way that led us to believe that the Partiers' comfort superceded ours. Luckily our stay in that area was done and we moved on.

There was also a weird supernatural event that I won't go into here, but I would not be surprised to find out that the seediness of this place thinned the veil between our world and the Netherworld.

More information can be found:
The hotel's official site
TripAdvisor review from 2003. Little seems to have changed.
A very bare Yahoo travel page, worth linking only for the sole review (close to the bottom).
The Google Maps view. Take a look at satellite view, zoom in to see the pure class.

Labels: travel, youth