Persistent Illumination

Funny.

May I highly recommend Hotels.ca.

Though I did manage to find my own accommodations for Thunder Bay.

They say that a land of people who are perfectly in harmony with each other is a land that will exist without any sort of history....

... or, I may suggest, they just got really, really busy.

Not sure which category is me, but I haven't posted in awhile.

Life has been good, but busy. My new part-time girlfriend is really my old spurned lover - volunteering. Helping out a bit with the preparations for the upcoming Entrepreneur Week, worked here and there on media relations stuff for Impact, and good old EWB and I have had a fun fundraising experience or two. Interesting dates, me and this old lover, but I must admit that she takes more than she gives lately...

Which just puts my *real* girlfriend in that much more striking relief. Yup, Amy and I are still quite happy, even if she is late getting out of her rehearsal tonight ... where is she ?!? ... Mostly we've just been recovering from (read: missing terribly) Nashville, watching plenty of movies, and doing plenty of snuggling, cooking, eating and just generally having fun.

Shad is going well - they're sending me up to Thunder Bay for the first three days of next week, and I am likely going to be in Belleville for the last two. Shad has a very strong, positive brand - it is both interesting and educational for me to work for company like that. I also like the people I work with, and they essentially let me create my own position - resulting in very few constraints on my part. Plus they pay me to drive and, when I'm away, they pay me to eat :) which I like.

In other news, Imprint's Editor-in-Chief Carla Sandham is resigning effective (really soon) in order to pursue other opportunities in the journalistic field. Which means that they're looking for a new EIC ... watch out, I see Rick Smit coming!!!

Oh, and in case you're wondering, that whole bit about "Our Town" was really tongue-in-cheek. It's not going to be that boring - or at least, it had better not, seeing as I'll be catching multiple performances. :)

It appears that both Amy and her friend Courtney have gotten core roles in this semester's UW drama production (read: play).

It's a production of Our Town by Thornton Wilder, a supposed "classic American drama" (read: boring, plotless play) originally penned in the 1930's. Courtney will play the *very* central role of Emily (I think of it as the lead female part, but the play's a bit of a mess what with a stage manager and all), and Amy will play the eccentric (read: crazy) town gossip Mrs. Soames, who does a lot of weeping during both wedding and funeral. They're both quite excited about the parts because, although I may think the play to be plotless, the UW director (Alan Sapp) is supposedly some fantastic person.

Well, congrats to you both, ladies (read: Andrew now only has a part-time girlfriend ... applications now being accepted...). And Amy, you now owe me some dinner! We shook on it!

I should mention - my family members in Nasvhille who were Katrina refugees from the Mississippi coast left for home the same day that I returned to Canada (Friday, Sept 9). They arrived safe and sound, and though they say that there is a *lot* of work to be done, it's not as bad as they had hoped. Marian and Joe's house, for example, only had 4-6 inches of water in it, rather than the expected 12 inches.

Still, they have no phone service to speak of, no internet service. Apparently there is refuse littering the sides of many a street, waiting for what surely must be a full army of garbage trucks that will come from goodness knows where to clean out all sorts of flood- and wind-damaged goods.

My parents' house, obscured by the Nashville foliage. 

Any wonder that I hail from the "Volunteer State?" 

And of course here's Amy, though I'm not sure whether she's glad to be in Tennessee or just glad to be out of the 12 hour car ride...

Mom and Amy at a full-scale reconstruction of Athens' Parthenon, housed in downtown Nashville. 

My fantastic travelling companion. 

(Reclining in the halls at the Opryland Convention Centre.)

I'm flying, Jack! I'm flying! 

Amy with "Sharky" at the Nashville "Aquarium" at Opry Mills Mall. 

Amy's famous! 

Amy at the beach! 

OK, so there's no beach in Nashville, but this picture was on the roll and I thought it high time that I get some pics of Amy up here.

Amy waiting for service at the local Sonic Drive-In. And yes, in case you're wondering, that is my shwanky new car that she's driving around in.

The Brentwood Baptist Church, just around the corner room from my parents' house.  Take a close look at the picture and note the size of the building against the cars. This place is HUGE! Amy and I snuck in it once - it's longer than it is wide in the photo, and the actual service room ("sanctuary," Amy calls it) is bigger than the Grand Ole Opry. Apparently one Nashville newspaper dubbed it "Six Flags Over Jesus," in questionable taste.

Grand Ole Amy.  (You know, I'm starting to notice a theme to these Nashville pics...)

Inside the Grand Ole Opry, home of the longest running radio show in history. 

A dressing room at the Grand Ole Opry. 

Inside the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center. This is the picture of an island that sits in the midst of the hotel, note the bridge that runs out to it. 

Another shot of the Opryland convention center. Note the river running below. 

Amy in Mammoth Cave's "Rotunda," some 60 feet below ground at the start of more than 360 miles of caves. 

Yeah, so it's hard to get a decent picture when the natural lighting is absolutely nonexistent...nothing like travelling in the world's largest cave to really put the damper on a good photo.

Just a quick note to say that I am now back in K-W, safe and sound. Trip was a bit longer than usual, as we stopped to check out the world's longest cave system in Kentucky. Props to Amy for being an excellent co-pilot the entire way. Also I managed to bring back some of the 70c/L gas ... yes, in case you were wondering, it is legal to do so, "in reasonable amounts."

Soon I will start on my job, but first I have to attend to all sorts of the usual Waterloo madness ... ah, I am loving it!

So we made it to Nashville safe and sound on Saturday night, front door to front door in just under 12 hours. The trip was nice, relaxing and very telling of a certain marked difference between Canada and the US these days:

From Waterloo to Windsor, gas prices ranges between $1.17 and $1.35 per LITRE, with most prices falling in the higher range. From Detroit on down, though, things were quite a bit different. Gas prices ranged between $2.81 and $3.07, with most of the prices in the low $2.90's, per GALLON. Now, using a quick price conversion, that works out to ...

... between $0.74 and $0.82 cents per LITRE. Anybody want gas from the US?

It also didn't hurt that my car gets such good gas mileage that we went from Waterloo well into Michigan on only a half-tank of gas. I get somewhere around 550 km/tank in the city, with the number going much higher (by a few hundred) for the highway driving. Woo-hoo!

And all is safe and sound here. Marian, Jennifer and Joe seem to be making the best of their hurricane refugee status - Joe has helped the family fix and re-stain our family's back porch, as well as installing a system of co-ordinated smoke detectors in our house. We are all keeping abreast of the regular news reports, including those stating that Tennessee's own senator Bill Frist has been down exercising mis medical credentials as well as his political ones.

Back up here in the volunteer state, my guest and I have appropriately relaxed, hung out with the family and playing games (Beware - Amy rules at Taboo!), took tours of the mansion-riddled neighbourhoods here in Brentwood and watched a few movies. Yesterday I cleaned out Perry Ellis on a Labour Day sale (apparently the biggest shopping day outside of "the day after American Thanksgiving") and she took home half of the Banana Republic. Nothing like cleaning out a designer clothing store at $10/item!

Today is dedicated to downtown Nashville, visiting Vanderbilt and a few other places. Grand Ole Opry tonight, I hope, and perhaps a picnic by the Parthenon...

Something is better than nothing. From today's Globe and Mail.

Well, today I helped sort a few thousand Lego pieces, by hand. Other than that, though, it's been a pretty amazing experience here. Enjoy the following pictures!


ESQ's logo. 

The DC quad, home of registration, camper drop-off and pick-up. 

Campers get picked up inside when it rains. 

Teamwork blossomed between many campers, especially when it came to helping each other with computer activities. Somebody always seemed to know how to program HTML, and someone else could make good Flash movies. Lots and lots of teamwork. 

After a few icebreakers and a special "brain warm-up" activity, campers started by building their own programmable Lego vehicles. Racing them down the hall outside our camp room door was quite popular. 

Top view. 

Front view. 

London bridges, falling down... 

Part of a photo scavenger hunt we did each Monday afternoon. Other items on the list included:

Your group doing the YMCA!