Another Week in Knoxville

It's a sunny Saturday afternoon here in East Tennessee.  I'm sitting on Lovie the Loveseat, my laptop propped up on a pillow that is covered by one of Maddie's old shirts. Smoke is sitting on his scratching post, serenely observing the world around him.  On the television is one of my favorite movies, Now Voyager, with my gal Bette Davis.  Its just coming to the moment when she inadvertently gives her mother a fatal heart attack.  Oooops.  There goes the mother, sliding down in her rocking chair, now dead.  Melodrama at its finest!

This movie is why I started smoking when I was
fifteen.  It was just so damned romantic!

Everything going along just fine here.  This week has been filled with working on my damned prospectus.  I met with my advisor, Dr. F., on Monday, and he gave the overall idea an enthusiastic two thumbs up.  He caught me in a bad error, using the name Philip Kearny when I met Stephen Watts Kearny--he teased me about the horrified look on my face when he mentioned this boo-boo of mine.  But I won the next argument, about the word "mutiny" as one of the charges brought up in the court martial of John C. Fremont.  Dr. F. felt that the charge could not possibly have been mutiny, but I looked it up in the official record and looked up mutiny in the Articles of War enacted by Congress in 1806, the forerunner of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  And I was so right--Dr. F. gave me an A+ plus three gold stars for my research.  😉

On the down side, I'm having to rewrite the chapter descriptions that are contained in the prospectus.  This work is absolutely necessary, as I have shifted the project from a chronological to a thematic structure.  But I'm getting so tangled up in my own writing that I can't tell what I'm doing.  So, I'm taking the Easter weekend, starting with Good Friday, away from the prospectus.  I'll give the damned thing about look on Monday and hopefully finished it up early next week.  Then off it goes to the Director of Graduate Studies, Dr. P., who will send it out to the entire department, along with the prospectuses of pals Alex, Laura, Tess, and Minami. We'll all give eight-minute presentations on our dissertation projects on April 19.  That's when the real pain will come, as we face our classmates and our faculty and have to defend our project ideas.  I'm so scared of Drs. O. and M. asking me questions that its ridiculous.

Me and my Prospectus
(artist rendition)

This week's walking took me even further on the Teague Greenway, from the beginning of the trail all the way to Walker Springs Road.  I'm starting to see the same people on my walks, also out getting their steps in.  Sadly, I don't always recognize the people.  I recognize their dogs instead.  There's the miniature Schnauzer, the crazy like Yorkie, and the poor little white mutt that walks behind the man that walks him, making it look like it's the man on the leash and the mutt calling the shots.  This week there was also an older lady who was walking a young puppy, which she told me she was training to the leash.  Unfortunately, this lady let the dog do all the training, making the lady stop whenever the dog wanted to sniff things off the path or meet new people--which is how I met them.

This morning I tried someplace new for my walking.  Now, I really should have been forewarned as I checked this trail online.

But I considered myself such a bad ass that I didn't heed the warning.  And the warning people were not kidding.  The inclines were HORRIBLE!  It felt like I was climbing The Hill at UT (something I've never done because of the ease of taking the bus).  As I sit crossed legged on my loveseat writing this, I'm feeling the strain on my muscles.  I thought that the hills I climb on the greenway were bad--this place gives me a whole other workout.  But, to be honest, the views were worth the struggle.

It was such a lovely day, I sort of wish I'd done the loop twice.  But that has to come later, when my legs are used to that kind of climbing.  Then, once I've worked up to it, the plan is to do the quarry trail around the lake at Ijams Nature Center, including a side trip to the little cemetery that's up there.  So many plans....

Bette just uttered the final words of Now Voyager:  "Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon.  We have the stars."  Big sigh from me.

So, I can mark off my to do list that I've written this blog.  Makes me feel productive.  That's all the news from Knoxville. Bye....