• Confessions,  Fun in Knoxville,  Random Thoughts

    My Refrigerator: In Constant Evolution

    I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my refrigerator lately. I remember when I was in college: my roommate and I had one of those tiny dorm refrigerators. We had typical college dorm stuff in there: leftover pizza, pudding, cheese, cans of pop…you get the idea. When Jim and I got married, he was in the Navy and out on the ship a lot. We were also on an extremely tight budget so as I recall I had the following in the refrigerator: cheese, jelly to go with my peanut butter sandwiches, ketchup, bread, and milk for the endless supply of Kraft macaroni and cheese I kept in the…

  • Confessions,  Something That Could Change Your Life

    What If We Just Don’t Ask “What If”?

    Recently I visited an alma mater of mine. Sidenote: I just had to look up “alma mater” to make sure it means “a school I once attended” rather than “a school from which I graduated”. The fall after I completed high school I entered Tennessee Technological University as a freshman majoring in German and stayed there for six months. I loved my time at TTU, short-lived as it was. My visit a couple of weeks ago brought back all kinds of memories. I drove by Jobe Hall, which is where I lived on the third floor. I walked through the student union. I walked across the quad to the south…

  • Childhood Memories,  Confessions,  Fun in Knoxville

    Home is Where the Heart is.

    One of the scariest things about moving away from a long-time home is the idea of starting over again, from scratch. Finding the nearest grocery stores and other preferred shops, setting up new doctors and a dentist, figuring out if the area where you think you want to purchase a home is actually the area in which you think you’ll be happy long-term, and so many other details can be completely overwhelming. Multiply that frustration by three or four times if your long-time home also happens to be the city where you’re from originally and then multiply that by ten times if you’re a control freak who hates change. I…