Lots of Good News
You know you're not in the South anymore when you go to the grocery store and have to search for the corn bread mix, and only find one kind after looking really hard. I know people eat corn bread up here. I've seen them. And surely they're not all making it from scratch with corn meal, because that was hard to find in the baking aisle as well. It totally confounds me how a grocery store that has ostrich eggs, tinned Russian herring and fresh cannoli can only have one kind of corn bread mix. But there you are.

A lot of really good things have happened lately, and this week I'm going to try to list a few. I'm probably not going to have space to list everything, but I'm going to try.

First, my parents bought a new house in Nashville. I'm am happier for them than anyone can possibly imagine. Over a decade ago my parents moved out from Nashville into the deep wilds of the suburbs, to buy a house in a factory town called La Vergne. For those of you who have never lived in a semi-rural Tennessee factory town, you may be thinking 'oh, how nice that they moved out of the city into the country-side'. Well, think again - we moved to La Vergne because it was the closest place to town where my parents could afford to make that transition from renters to house owners.

La Vergne was not a great place to be when I lived there, although I've heard it's changed quite a bit as Nashville has grown closer and closer to sort of swallowing it up as big cities will do to small towns on their outskirts. But when I lived there, it was this violent place with one stoplight, a waffle house, and a day care center in the High School. If you have any doubts in your mind as to why it's a bad idea to move your city child into a rural factory town, I sincerely suggest you read Katherine Patterson's immortal _Bridge_to_Terebithia_. I *was* Leslie.

So I'm super happy the housing market in Nashville has again become reasonable, and my parents have once again returned to the city, this time not as renters but as triumphant house-owners. Good for them.

Second, lots of good things have happened to my friends lately. My roommate Aral is getting to quit her evil toy store job. My friend Christi got ordained by her church, my friend Kati is getting married, and my friend Dustin seems to have found his groove in eastern Tennessee. The new Scribbling Mob web site went up, thanks to Devon. There are people and good things that have happened to them that I'm forgetting, but I guess I'll have to remember them later.

Oh, and now my living room is a nice shade of lavender, instead of dirty antique white. Antique white has become my least favorite color, ever since I had to paint about a hundred dorm rooms at MTSU that shade one summer. When I look at antique white, all I see are cinder block walls and roaches. As dorm painters, at first we were so careful taping off the windows and outlets, taking our time…but as the demand for painting rooms soared against what time our work crew had, we got sloppier, painting over everything - tape on the walls, outlets, lighting covers - and if what we were painting over moved, we would just paint harder…

…man, am I glad I'm in graduate school. And I'm also very, very happy that everything seems to be getting better, for my family, my friends, and myself.

And I'm also very happy there's almost no more antique white in my apartment.