1796-1996 - it was a long tour!

Well, summer is going out with a bang. It was near 90 and felt like hotter downtown. Ryan and I ventured down to the Tennessee Bicentennial Capitol Mall Park. It has lots of Tennessee state history and has a veterans' memorial.

One of the coolest things was an enormous timeline of TN historical events, medical breakthroughs, battles, quotes, etc.




The whole thing is granite and it stretches from one end of the park to another. It started with "billions and billions of years ago..." and went through the date when the wall was put in. Ryan took a picture of me taking the first picture.





I don't know what this part of the park was. It wasn't really labeled. Ryan laid down on the ground to make me look taller.






This is a very symmetrical WWII memorial.








The sky was an incredibly deep blue, at least for the hazy South. Near the railroad bridge that bisects the park, there are two clusters of Tennessee flags. I don't know why they need so many, but hey, it's their world.












I guess these are self-explanatory. You can see Ryan's technique here.


I guess I didn't downsize any pictures of the fountain to put on here. I was highly jealous of the little kids running around in the water. They were the only cool people I saw in the park.

One of the only things I knew about this park before going there was that there is a giant map of Tennessee on the ground. Ryan is standing in Georgia taking a picture of Collegedale.

Here's Sumner County, where I live. Highland Academy is actually on the map, north of Gallatin on 109.





And this is where I used to live in TN, near Johnson City. I don't know what our address was exactly, but I think it was near Gray. I'm pointing between Sulfur Springs (where dad was on the VFD) and Gray.






The steps up to the Capitol make good leading lines. We walked up to see the view from the little overlook. You can't really get a good aerial view of the park, because it's not high enough up.


I guess you can kinda see the park behind our heads. We're the important part anyway...

stupor-vision

The only reason I'm putting these pictures of last weekend's supervision is so you can see the contrasts with this weekend. For one, notice I'm wearing long sleeves (I was still cold with them on). Secondly, I was bored. This is not the case this weekend since Ryan's here.

Don't believe your eyes (or my lens)!

Despite our major drought, my hastas have bloomed again!

The hummingbirds are still going strong. Between the hastas and my trumpet vine, they have other options besides the feeders.

in the absence of a real post . . .

You Are Pumpkin

Realistic and practical, you see the world for how it is. You know what it takes to succeed in life... And you're happy to help others reach their goals.

What Color Orange Are You?

confessions of a delinquent blogger

It probably goes without saying that I've been really busy. Besides the same work I did last year, I'm a class sponsor, teaching a class, and trying to fit in all the other stuff. I went to Collegedale for homeleave and it was really good to see Jaclyn, Ryan, Tara, Hollie, the Heilmans, Grant (& Gaby [wink]), Grandpa, all the c/0 '07 HA grads, Asti, Elaine, and everyone else. It's always like that going to Collegedale. Despite not feeling the greatest for a couple of the days, I had a really fun break and did a LOT. Here are some choice pictures of a last-minute boating trip, a picnic at the Riverwalk, an impulsive blood donation, and pancake breakfast.

one man's junque is a class's treasure

I have to say that one of the events I have really been looking forward to as this school year starts is Junque Games. Because I'm a sophomore (class of 2010, crazy huh?) sponsor, it was a little different for me this year.



SA came up with a bunch of crazy ways to get items or trivia answers to the middle mat. One of those ways was to mattress surf a kid out and back to get a trivia question and then back out to take the answer. We won a couple of those because we were fast at the surfing.

I still had to take pictures for the website, so I did a fair bit of running around getting pictures. I was on hand, however, when they called out for a sponsor to be carried to the mat. We won that point.

You can see how exited our class was to be ahead at this particular point check. We lead most of the competition, but the juniors pulled ahead after a couple of trivia questions and name-that-songs.

Another thing they changed this year is that the pyramids have to be constructed at the middle mat instead of in our corners. During this pyramid, a girl (the middle one in blue) tripped and hit her face on the floor on her way out to the mat. She completed the pyramid and then realized her chin was cut. Three stitches later, she was fine.

Lauren grabbed my camera and snapped this picture of Ryan and I getting ready to leave the gym. It was about 105 degrees inside (I'm guessing) and we were all drenched with sweat! :(