5/7/12 I Think That I Shall Never See, A Tree So Lovely Before KUB

I have a conundrum, oh beloved Internets, and I'd like your esteemed opinion.  See, I had a visit from the local utilities board (KUB) the other day regarding the two giant oak trees I have in my front yard.  It seems that the power lines that run along my street have filed a restraining order against my trees, and my trees are currently in violation of said order by not maintaining the required minimum 10' distance:

Exhibit A:  See the power lines at the top of the picture?  My trees are clearly not respecting the 10' safety zone as dictated by the power company.

Because of this, the power company spray-painted green dots on my trees and came to the door to let me know that some guys wielding chain saws in bucket trucks would be along to extract vengeance upon my topiary trespassers.  Now, I don't remember if I told you guys about this before, but I had almost this exact same conversation a few years ago when the utility guys came through to clear the lines, and back then they absolutely butchered my trees.  They cut this giant wedge out of half of the tree, and they looked stupid for...well, I guess until this year when they grew back out and retook the power line.  So apparently the trees are of the size now that this is going to be a reoccurring theme.  They invade the lines, they get cut back, they look stupid, they finally grow out again, they invade the lines, and the whole cycle repeats.  I said something to this effect to the utility guy, and he was like, "Well, you could opt to be in our tree replacement program". And I was like, "whaaa?" and he was like, "Yeah, we cut down your giant trees for free and replace them with two smaller ornamental trees of your choice.  We even come back out and plant them for you."  And I was like, "For freesies?"  And he was like, "Totally without charge to you". And I was like, "Hmmm".  

So here's my thing:  I can keep my giant trees with the understanding that they will spend pretty much the rest of eternity sporting a really bad hair cut compliments of Knoxville Utilities, or I can have them cut down and put something smaller like dogwoods or flowering crabapples or the like in their places.  Tony and I have been waffling back and forth about it for a week now.  He thinks that it would be a shame to kill some trees that have been here a lot longer than we or the house or even the power lines have been here.  I think they drop leaves and acorns all in my flower beds in the fall, make it impossible for grass to grow because everything is always in deep shade, and completely block the view of the house from the street.  

House?  What house?
(Hint- mine is the one with the white porch, not the one with the car).

Now, some of you are probably asking if they keep the house cool by shading it in the summer, and the answer to that is no.  The way the sun comes up means that they might shade the house for a second at dawn, but that's it, so energy savings are negligible and therefore not a consideration.  And before you even recommend getting rid of one and keeping the other, remember that any big trees that remain will have the "Skrillex 'do", which may work for electronic dance musicians, but not so much for oak trees.  

See? It sounds like I have talked myself into replacing them, doesn't it?  A pretty dogwood perhaps?  Flowers in the spring, doesn't drop acorns in my pond, doesn't cause the yard to look like the 100 acre woods where Christopher Robin played?  But then I look out my window and I see this, and it's so tall and majestic that I'm like, "I can't cut something like that down! It's probably as old as I am!"  And then I'm right back to where I started.  

So what to do, Internets, what to do?  The deadline for the tree replacement program is Thursday.  Cut them down and replace them with pretty little trees, or keep them in their majestic yet soon-to-be funky shaped and acorn dropping splendor? What would you do if you were me?  

3/3/10 Busting Out a Little Round Ball

Here's something different: Tony and I went to a Tennessee men's basketball game tonight. They were playing Arkansas, and it was apparently senior night, so we said why not, might be fun.

And it was. Which was kinda surprising, because normally we're not that big into basketball. Hockey? Absolutely. Baseball? Okay. Football? I can even follow that. But basketball? Not something I've ever really gotten into. (On TV, it just seems like a bunch of running back and forth, back and forth. But live? Actually pretty exciting if I do say so myself).

Of course, good tickets help A LOT. Some guy at Tony's work has season tickets on the SECOND ROW right behind the UT bench. He couldn't use them tonight, so we ended up with them instead. ON THE SECOND ROW! How sweet is that?!? We were so close I could have offered Bruce Pearl some of my hot pretzel. (I didn't because he was all busy stomping back and forth and yelling and I didn't want to interrupt his whole coaching mojo thing, but the point is that if Bruce had looked the slightest bit hungry, we soooo could have been pretzel buddies. Next time, Brucey baby, next time).

Also? Second row gets you into TV shots whenever they pan the bench or do a closeup on Pearl. (And knowing this, I very craftily wore my cute new pair of cargo pants which were purchased not two days ago and were just begging for local tv exposure). Not to mention that if you're going to be sitting on the second row with roughly 20,000 people behind you, it's always a good idea to bring the cuteness. Besides, all the pockets meant I could bring my phone/money/PDA/lip balm into the arena without having to drag my purse around and/or be searched for weapons at the gate. (See how smart these cargo pants are? I heart them.)

Being close to the action doesn't actually mean that you'll understand it, however. Every time they blew the whistle, I was asking Tony, "What happened? Why'd they stop? Is there a foul?" (Foul is the only basketball term I know). And he, without ever taking his eyes off the court in that way that men do, would say something like, "The call was an illegal screen in the backcourt by the blah, blah, blah more technical basketball terms here and now the defense has the ball." And I'd be all like, "Yes, but should I clap or boo?"

Another thing? Whenever there was stoppage of play, all these little kids with towels would run out and crawl around cleaning the floor. Every single time. Maybe a dozen of them, all out wiping away on their hands and knees, happy as clams. And I was like, heeeeeeey! They're really onto something here! I'm not sure how they got around the whole child labor law thing, but I'd like to order two please. First they can wipe up my floors, and then, if they're really good, they can maybe even scrub my bathtubs. Like little under-aged scrubby bubbles, complete with their own mini-towels. Sign me up for that.

Somewhere around the second...half? (Period? Regular playing interval?) I noticed something written on the back of the Arkansas shorts. (I know, I know, my first thought was "bootylicious" too, but that wasn't it). I couldn't quite make it out, but Tony said that it probably read "backs". And I was like, "They need it to say back? Can't they just look for the tag? Or the drawstring or something?" (I mean, I know it's Arkansas and everything, but surely they can dress themselves without having to label everything front and back). And he just stared at me for a minute before going, "They're the Arkansas razorbacks...they're called the backs for short". (And then didn't I feel like a doofus...like maybe I should be the one with labeled clothes). But you know, in my defense, what kind of nickname is the backs? And wouldn't you wonder if you saw it on the back of someone's shorts too? Exactly. Besides, how hard is it to spell out razorbacks? Put forth a little effort, Arkansas.

Of course, in the end we won (although I couldn't tell you by how much since I've already forgotten the score) and I was able to wear my cute pants and watch Bruce Pearl turn purple from all his yelling, and clap and boo (sometimes at the same time) while all the players ran back in forth not 5 feet in front of me. All in all, not a bad evening. This whole basketball thing is growing on me. I might even look forward to doing it again sometime.

I'll even share my pretzel.

9/2/08 Rafting Pictures

I finally got the Whitewater rafting pictures back! There are a ton of them so I put them in slideshow form, but I wanted to put some on here as teasers.


Here's our motley crew: Me, Tony, two friends from work, and their significant others. Also a significant other's mother and sister. A valiant group if ever I've seen one.

Here I am sitting in the back, apparently singing. Or screaming. It's hard to tell really.

Also, see those feet stuck up in the air? Yeah, that's Tony. See how much fun he's having?

All this and more on the slideshow.

9/30/08 Wordless Tuesday: Balloon Edition

So as promised, here's part 2 of our fabulous Saturday! After the bike ride, we rested up a bit and then headed over to the Hot Air Balloon Festival! I'm going to try to let the pictures speak for themselves instead of yakking on and on about everything we did. Put on some soothing music and enjoy this photo story.

Okay, I have to interrupt here with a little bit of an explanation. Once it was dark, all the balloons lined up and would flash their burner-thingies on and off in time to music. It was REALLY neat. Like giant fireflies. So that's what the night pictures are about.

Okay one more interruption. I just wanted to point out how you can see the reflection of the balloon in the water of the pond. How cool is that!?! Okay, back to being wordless.

Me again. Don't you love this picture where all the balloons are all lit up together? It took me forever to get that shot! It was really just chance. Out of about 300 pictures, one of them was bound to get them all lit up together. Okay, carry on.

Boy, I'm really bad at this wordless thing. I almost didn't include this last shot but it was the only one with both of us together. Ignore the face I'm making and the fact that it's slightly out of focus and that it looks like I have multi-colored Micky Mouse ears on my head.

Ta-da! So that's my (not quite) wordless picture story of our Saturday. Not pictured, but definitely added to the fun-ness are the two bags of kettle corn that I consumed while watching the show. It really was a blast. I think we're going to make it an annual thing.

Maybe by next year I can actually work up to being wordless.

9/29/08 Blatent Neighborhood Coveting By Bicycle

Oh hey. Everybody have a good weekend? We had a great one. In my continuing effort to spend less time staring aimlessly at the TV and more time outside and doing things around good ol’ K-town, I scheduled another action-packed Saturday for us. And unlike the “forced fun” Saturdays (which are fun, but still forced), Tony seemed to be eager to do this fun. So I can actually say that a good time was had by all.

In fact, it was so much fun that I’m splitting it into two posts…not so much because of the length of detail by detail fun-ness, but because I took pictures to document all of our fun, and nobody wants to see one post consisting of 50 billion pictures. (Instead, I have very thoughtfully split it into two posts of 50 billion pictures. You’re welcome.)

Anyway, part one of Saturday started at 10am, which is a respectable time to start any fun, so the day began on a good note. Tony and I loaded up the bikes and headed downtown to join the Knoxville Bicycle club’s monthly ride. This is the same bike club that sponsored the Downtown Scavenger Hunt, and I must say that I LOVE. THESE. RIDES. This is a fabulously well-planned and fun group, and I’m totally addicted to their trips. So as soon as I heard about the September ride, I marked it on my calendar and off we went. If you’re anywhere near Knoxville and can ride a bike, look these people up!


The ride wound through several of the old historic neighborhoods, including 4th and Gill, where I have decided I want to live one day, even if it means in a box on the sidewalk. All of the houses were built in the 1890’s and are absolutely beautiful. I went weaving up and down the streets shouting “Look at that one! I love that one! Oh Wait! LOOK AT THAT ONE! I LOVE THAT ONE!” I also tried to take pictures of all of my favorite houses (read: All of them) while I rode, which mostly resulted in pictures of my bike pedals and the ground. Since the edge of my shoe fails to really convey the beauty of this old neighborhood, I recommend you take the photo tour on the neighborhood website. I sooooo want one of these houses. They’re crazy out of our price range even if we were looking to move now, but I’m putting them on my “someday” list. I told Tony that if we could buy a house there, I could ride my bike to work. The gas savings alone could probably pay the mortgage, right?

Photo: A bajillion bikers gathered in the park at one of the home tour rest stops.

In addition to riding around in real life Architectural Digest, the weather was beautiful, and we had a really good turnout. There were hundreds (250 actually) of bikes in all sizes and shapes from really fancy professional bikes to bikes towing kiddie carts. There were two person bikes and recumbent bikes, and one bike towed a rolling stereo, which provided bike-themed music as we rolled down the street. I’m sure we looked like a giant bike parade. People came out of their houses and waved. It was like the bike version of a big dog party (minus the tree, of course...although there were two dogs that ran down the street with us), and after the ride we all ate pizza back in Krutch Park. (Because everybody knows that pizza is calorie-free after a bike ride).

I hear the next ride is to look at Neighborhood Christmas decorations. I may actually brave winter weather for that one. Especially if it involves "my" new favorite neighborhood, and assuming the residents haven't already called the cops on me for loitering in the street and waxing poetically about the souls of old homes.

Tomorrow: The second half of our fun filled Saturday, in picture format. Stay tuned!