Tennessee has taken a no holds barred approach to construction, blasting through what appear to be small hills that could have easily been built over (from my non-expert eye) which has created wonderful views of rock strata that would normally be obscured by grass.  Tennessee’s geology is light on monoliths leading to a step-wise appearance to the rock face which explains the number of rock warning signs.  These fall into three categories which I think go in increasing severity:

• Watch for fallen rocks
• Watch for falling rocks
• Falling rocks

The determinism of the last is a bit scary but after seeing what appeared to be little boulder families trying to cross the road I learned the resignation of the safety officer resigned to the inevitabilities of the hubris of construction.

Another road attraction was driving through Knoxville and seeing the glorious golden sunsphere.

I really knew nothing about Danakin/Daniel Lackey before meeting him except that he was the friend of Bakkster/Andrew and his wife was… unenthusiastic about the prospect of having a strange man in the house.  I think Andrew’s encomium helped overcome this and the bond was sealed when I called her a “smelly pirate hooker” at dinner.

They were polite enough to let me do three loads of laundry and my efforts to separate the whites from coloreds came easily as I was in the South *rimshot*.  We broke the ice watching back episodes of ESPN’s Cheap Seats which I think is a show offered on what’s called a television.  It’s like a computer monitor except that you have a much narrower choice of options and the quality is slightly above that of YouTube.  Additionally, new content appears to be generated at specific times rather than continuously and the action is disrupted by 2 minute pop-up ads 5-7 times an hour.  It was fascinating.

Clarksville had recently flooded and on our way to dinner we surveyed the damage before eating  at a local brew pub.  The meal was fine but the restaurant hosted quite possibly the worst restroom I’ve ever used.  There was a 1.5″ gap between the stall door frame and the wall and urinals were situated such that just about everyone using one got to see my junk.  Also, the toilet was mis-seated so when a man of my… carriage sat on it water slowly leaked out the bottom resulting in a pants stain that made it look like I lost a rodeo competition to a fire hose.  My shirt tail was long enough to largely cover this but without the shaping power of my belt, I looked like a transvestite pear in a house dress.  Hazaa!

My pants were largely dry by the end of The Amazing Race which we re-wetted by Jill’s tears at her sadness when the gay brothers beat out the cowboys to the finish.  I faded off to sleep after more “television” this time by monitoring British automobile idiosyncratically on Top Gear.  This TV stuff can be quite entertaining, I hope it catches on.