Jonathan’s Mindless Blog

Well, it’s Labor Day and I didn’t do much of anything . It was a lazy good day with some hamburgers and hot dogs and my nieces were in town. It was Elizabeth’s birthday celebration today and I played the part of human jungle gym. It was a very nice day with sunshine, mild temperatures and a good breeze. I’m really wishing I hadn’t stayed in town, but since I did, I got some great pictures out of the 100 or so I took yesterday like this one: This is an excellent example of the local agrigulture and general culture mentioned in the previous post. This week will only be 4 days long and it’s payday on Friday!!

Friday I got a personal tour of Chattanooga and took some (I think) pretty cool photos. I’m working on post-processing on a few of them to put up on flickr… maybe finish those today. My outlook was broadened quite a bit. I thought the only thing there was a hospital and a lot of stinky industrial factory type industry, but IT’S NOT TRUE! There really is a downtown, even though I’ve never really seen it, and it has quite a bit of old architecture that’s full of character. One of the things I noticed was an extensive use of glass blocks in a lot of the old buildings, also, when looking from the pedestrian bridge over the river, one notices that blue is the requisite color for new architecture in the city. Lots of really neat out-of-the-way kind of places around as well. We ate at Durty Nelly’s Pub for lunch which was pretty good, where I had a reuben, which was VERY decent. For supper we went to the Bluff View Art District and mosied through the sculpture garden and cool courtyards and ate at Tony’s Pasta which was incredible. I had a dish of Baked Chicken Pesto, but that’s not entirely the proper name… It was excellent food and atmosphere anyway.

Now to satisfy the title… I grew up in Cheatham County, which borders Metropolitan Davidson County, but seems a lifetime away from the city. One of the great things about this time of year, right about the beginning of September is the time when the darkfire tobacco gets smoked in the barns. This produces an incredible amount of smoke, usually enough to fill the valley the barn is in with smoke and it hangs like a thick fog. The smell is INCREDIBLE!! It’s not like a cigarette or any finished tobacco product, it’s just unique unto itself. Well, since I have a motorcycle now, and, in my opinion, it’s the best way to experience the sight and smell of this phenomenon, we tooled around part of the county yesterday looking for some of this in action. I expected to see maybe a few barns, not really expecting to see more than five or six, but we saw 30 barns in about 35 miles! Almost every turn yielded more smoking barns, and statistically speaking, that’s about a barn per mile! It was one of those evenings to remember, everything nice and calm, fall in the air and the sight and smell of home everywhere. I think I’ll go back today and try for some pictures of the best ones…

Ok, so mostly feelings don’t go here, ’cause I don’t like sharing some stuff with the world, but…  The last week has been absolutely awesome, and I’m not going to go into gritty detail, just some surface stuff.  Like the weather has been hot, but not unbareable and there’s been a breeze and I’ve been outside in it enjoying it almost every day.  Also, I’ve been getting enough sleep which makes the day go faster and my attitude better, I’ve had a great time with friends almost every day since last Thursday.  I have some awesome friends.  Last night was several nice conversations and I found out that one of the guys at church works for the Nashville Civic Design Center and is working on the project for our neighborhood!  I got paid today, which makes life a little better yet.  Yes, doing things for other people is a wonderful way to make yourself feel good.  I love doing it and it’s always nice and usually a bit overwhealming when others do for me in time of need.

Lots of rambling here, but this weekend is only going to be better!  Lots of cool stuff coming…

This weekend has been great so far…  Even with the flat tire on the way to Cookvegas, stupid road debris.  I headed over to the metropolis of Cookville on Friday to attend a LAN party which turned out to be very cool.  Got to see some folks I don’t get to see much and kill them (virtually, of course).  I made it ’til I think almost 3am before passing out with the laptop on my lap, headphones still on.  I think it was about 4 when everyone started leaving and I kind of woke up enough to crawl over behind the couch and sleep.  Sat I stayed ’till about 3, which was about an hour after everyone started going again.  I headed home and attended a wedding reception for some of my neighbors which was very nice.  Last night I fell asleep about 8:30 and didn’t wake up until until about 7AM, so I think I’ve made up for crazy Friday night sleep schedule.  I can’t wait to sample some more of Ross’s wares, the nut brown had a really good flavor and I’d like to try some more.  Now off to church and see what else comes my way today!

So after checking out the blog this morning, it seems like everything didn’t get imported correctly.  I can search with the search button, but can’t see categories or click on the date archives and have approved results… SO, I think I’ll just wipe the thing and start over, so clean start, new categories and all that happy stuff.

It’s been a hard week, Sunday morning, Angelon, mom’s older sister, suffered a massive stroke and was life-flighted to Vanderbilt hospital where she was worked on all day and was not responsive.  She passed away at 1:37AM Monday morning.  Mom is still pretty upset, all the sisters were pretty close.  So today I’m going to the visitation and tomorrow to the funeral in Red Boiling Springs, TN.  This is the first of the siblings to pass away.  My sister is coming in from Memphis this morning to be here as well, and hopefully bringing Elizabeth, her youngest, with her.