Weekend

Residents near Bowling Green were back home by Friday morning and most of Interstate 65 is back open.

The area was shut down for several hours Thursday night after a tanker carrying a toxic chemical caught fire.
~WTVF - News Channel Five, Nashville, TN 07.14.2006

I was caught up in this when I went down to my brother's on Thursday evening. The drive should take about five hours with minimal stops, and I voluntarily only made two stops, one for dinner to go, and one to fill up my tank with gas. Because of the abovementioned accident however I had to detour around about twenty miles of I-65 right north of the Tennessee state line. It took me almost two hours to go those twenty some miles. I left the Cincinnati area around 17:30-:45 Eastern and I didn't arrive in Nashville until 01:00 Eastern!!

Once I got down to my brother's place things were much better. Friday he went to work, so I was able to relax and hang out with my nephews. We played some computer games, I worked on some Lego projects, and we went swimming. Unfortunately I forgot to get a picture of the Legos, :(. Above you can see one of the pictures I snapped while waiting in traffic. Below is one of the pictures that I took Saturday morning.


My brother has several canoes, including one (or a couple?) that he has built. We took a couple canoes and a kayak out to a local lake for an hour or so of fun on the water. I've only been out on such small boats a couple times that I remember--once at a family reunion in Montana and a couple times on the huge Rivers of America canoes at Disneyland. It was great. Of course since I was in the front and one of my nephews in the back I was the power paddler, ;-). I definately exercised some muscles that I wasn't used to using.

We paddled out to one of the islands and pulled up to the beach. There I took several good pictures, and even more as we paddled back along the cliffs. I think that I took at least forty pictures on the lake! After we brought the canoes back in I took the kayak out. It was great! As fun as the canoes were the kayak was even better. You only have one paddle, but it has whatchamacallit paddle thingies on each end. I knew the general idea that you paddle on the left to go right and vice versa and you paddle backwards to slow down and sometimes to turn as well. In the kayak you have much more control over these features than you do as one person in a two man canoe. I could go as fast as I wanted and completely control the steering. Great fun!

After we returned from the lake we all went to see Pirates. It was great fun, even though it was my second viewing. My brother asked me to drive, which worked out great because then I was able to insist that we sit through the credits to see the short scene after. My brother owns the DVD of the first movie and didn't know about the scene after those credits! He normally just shuts movies off as soon as the credits roll--or leaves the theater then. I've begun to always stay through credits if I can--not only for scenes afterwards, but because I usually enjoy the music as well. If all these people put all their effort into the movie the least I can do is sit and watch their names while they play beautiful music, ;-).

Anyway, after a great beef brisket dinner we watched some TV via Tivo (i.e. several minutes late so we could fastforward through commercials) and then my brother helped me out with resume advice. It will be hard work to do everything that I need to, but I know that I need to if I'm actually going to get another job and leave my time at bigg's behind me.

Sunday wasn't quite as fun as I had to leave the house around 07:30 so that I could be sure of arriving back in time for work that evening. For some reason the store manager doesn't like giving days off three in a row--even though I was given four days off a couple weeks ago (unasked!) so I couldn't get Sunday off. :(

~Matt

PS Here are some of the detail/landscape pictures that I took. I'm currently using the last one as my background.