Staycation Day 2: Out and About in K-Ville

I started Staycation Day 2 by oversleeping and standing Jeannie up for the gym. I felt a little bad about it, but she's done it to me more than once, so it's not the end of the world. I felt worse about missing exercise when I really need it, though, so I was glad that my plans for today started with a hike.

After yesterday's trip to the Gatlinburg Tourist Trap and Roadside Fun Zone (which, as Stan agreed, is still somehow not nearly as awful as Pigeon Forge), I decided that the theme for Day 2 of Spring Break Staycation 2009 would be "free stuff closer to home".

Free stuff idea number one: I decided that since it's been dry for about a week, I would go back to Mead's Quarry and hike the half of the trail that was too muddy and flooded out last time. The trail guide said it was moderate, and I skipped my gym time this morning, and I never got to see the rest of the quarry, so really this whole thing seemed like a win/win.

Until I got on the trail:



The half I missed last time? It's a half mile straight uphill at a 40 to 50 degree angle, the entire way. Obviously the trail guide and I have different definitions of the word "moderate" in that my definition doesn't include the words "gasping", "sweating", or "thinking about flinging myself over the side and into the quarry", but theirs clearly does. Granted, I could have just turned around and staggered back down, but I'm kind of stubborn.

About halfway up the mountain I stumbled into the Stanton Cemetary:



According to the sign, it was formerly the Johnson Family plot, and then became a community cemetary used mainly by quarry workers, who also fashioned many of their own headstones.



They stopped burying there in the 1930's, and the cemetary has fallen into a severe state of disrepair. Many of the stones have toppled or are weathered to the point of being unreadable, but some of the markers are in surprisingly good shape:



This pair, the former Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, is notable because the stones face opposite directions:



This is a symbolic reflection of their divorce.

After the cemetary, there was more of this:



At this point I was like, "Are you kidding? Seriously? How can there be more uphill? I'm on top of the mountain. There can't be any more mountain. No more. No more uphill," but then I came around the corner to the first scenic lookout:



The quarry is beautiful in the right lighting.



I want to go back again in the summer, to see it with green trees and blue sky, even if the climb up and down kills me.

Once I got done hiking the quarry, I decided to head to Free Stuff Idea Number Two: The Knoxville Museum of Art. Parking is free and the museum is free, so this idea was another win/win.

The exhibit of work by Josh Simpson, a glassblower, was gorgeous:







They had some of his pieces for sale in the gift shop, but even the little tiny ones are expensive because, you know, it's art. I had a great time at the museum, though, and decided to leave my car there while I went to the Knoxville Convention and Exhibition Center to find and photograph Free Stuff to See Idea Number Three:



That's the World's Largest Rubik's Cube. It was a gift to the City of Knoxville by the government of Hungary for the 1982 World's Fair, and when it's turned on the sides move and turn. It wasn't turned on when I was there, and rumor has it that it no longer works, but there was no one around to verify that, and I couldn't find an on switch.

Before I moved to Tennessee, I'd only been to the World's Largest State and the World's Largest Cabella's Sporting Goods Store, but now in just three short years I've managed to add the World's Largest Ten Commandments, the World's Largest New Testament, and the World's Largest Rubik's Cube. I swear, I'm only a ball of twine away from winning some kind of award for the World's Largest Tacky Achievement.

After the cube (will I measure my whole life this way from now on, as B.T.W.L.R.C. and A.T.W.L.R.C.?), I headed out for Free Stuff Idea Number Four: Go Walk Around Downtown. Every time I go there is new graffiti on Wall Avenue, so this idea is also always a win/win.

My original goal was to head for Yee Haw, the printing press, to get some notecards. I know that doesn't quite line up with my goal of not spending money, but they're never open on Sundays, which is usually when I go downtown. The car was still in the free parking at World's Fair Park, and I was squeezing in more exercise, so I figured it balanced out.



On my way to Yee Haw I passed a sign at J's Mega Mart that said they were having a closeout sale on wigs, and, while I don't need a wig, I was curious:



They have hundreds of wigs. Hundreds.



They'll be closing out forever before they get rid of all of those.

Anyway, I got my notecards and watched them run the printing presses at Yee Haw. I wandered past Wall Avenue:



and onto Market Square:



to see the new graffiti. I walked over to the courthouse and saw a couple getting married, walked through the square and saw someone playing the banjo, and mostly just walked and soaked up the nice weather. On the way back to the car I stopped at the Chocolate Factory to look around at their tasteful goods:



and then I headed home.

It was a good day, and there are more pictures on my page.

Staycation Day 1: See Beautiful Gatlinburg (And All Of Its Beautiful Crap)!

It's spring break at school this week, so I took today and tomorrow off to give myself a four day weekend. Since I won't be off again until June (unless a holiday pops up in there; are we off for Memorial Day?) I decide that I'm going to pack a a whole bunch of stuff into these four days, but I'm going to stick close to home to save money. In short, I am on staycation.

Staycation kicked off last night, when Jeannie and family invited me to go to dinner with them at Chili's. I won't go into excessive detail, except to say that dinner reminded me that I should never have children and that I should have been more faithful to my New Year's resolution to leave the area when Jeannie's kid starts crying. Here he is with his kid's meal dinner, minutes before the explosion:



Less than ten minutes later Jeannie was walking around the parking lot with him and we were getting everything packed into to-go boxes.

Despite the poor beginning, I maintained a freakishly high level of excitement for "Staycation '09: Spring Break Joelapalooza!", because my plan for today was to drive down to Gatlinburg, to go to the Aquarium of the Smokies and to just soak up the town. While I've driven through Gatlinburg a number of times, I've never actually gotten out of the car there. Instead, I've spent a lot of time in Pigeon Forge, the incredibly tacky tiny Vegas five miles down the road. Pigeon Forge is on my "places to visit" list, but I know I would need to do an overnight trip to see everything and squeeze in a couple of shows. Gatlinburg, on the other hand, can be done in a day, because it's like Pigeon Forge concentrated.

Gatlinburg, unlike Pigeon Forge, is inside the boundaries of the beautiful Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This means that instead of building Dollywood's and Christmas Towns and outlet malls, Gatlinburg has had to do the best they can with limited space, and they've done their best to make it as touristy as possible. It's ten stoplights worth of sheer tourist trap awful, and it's wonderful! I walked around town all day with a huge dopey grin on my face, because there was something terrible and wonderful everywhere I looked. The whole town, with its cheap hotels and cabin rentals and resorts, is designed to separate you from your money.

In short, Gatlinburg is full of crap, both figurative, like this dismembered Marilyn Monroe jewelry holder:



or this racy sign with its strategically placed price tag:



and literal crap, like this barrel of crap:



It may be the best crap in town, and you may be able to have it gift wrapped, but crap is still crap.

The businesses in town fall into several types. They stick in your mind because nothing in town is unique. If you see a candy store or a candle shop, you can spot at least two other candy stores or candle shops from where you're standing. One of the main types, not surprising, is the gift shop. They come in "tacky", "odd":



and "Southern stereotype":



If they don't have what you like at the gift shops, you can always just get something airbrushed onto a t-shirt:



I passed sixteen airbrushing stores, and there were probably others that I didn't see. Not only can you get any possible design, but they cater to tourists of every size:



I can't even form a mental picture of how large an adult 7 XL shirt must be. I wanted to go in and unfold one, but didn't think they would let me. They also have preprinted, non-airbrushed t-shirts, and the odd cultural mixing of Bible Belt and Redneck Stereotype leads to some hilarious displays:



Yes, if there's one thing Christian girls love, it's t-shirts with jokes about rutting.

Another ubiquitous business is the Old Tyme Photo studio. I took no photos of these, but I passed at least seven, and noticed on the way out of town that one manages to stand out by being a combination Old Tyme Photo studio and Wedding Chapel.

The third major type of business, the mini golf course, has also diversified itself. There's Jungle Golf, Dinosaur Golf, Adventure Golf, themeless mini-golf:



which manages to stand out from the others by having nothing special, Circus Golf, Blacklight Golf:



and several other varieties. Just down the road in Pigeon Forge, they also have Farm Golf, where you golf around cows. It makes me oddly homesick for upstate New York. You could spend all day in Gatlinburg playing minigolf, and it would be like a strange, tacky PGA tour.

The main thing that Gatlinburg is famous for, though, according to everyone around here, is pancakes.



There are pancake houses, pancake cabins, pancake buffets, pancake pits, and this, the most famous:



The Pancake Pantry is the most famous pancake restaurant in Gatlinburg, but I didn't eat there because there was a huge line, all day long. Instead, since I was out being a tourist, I ate somewhere super touristy:



I had the twisted mac and cheese:



It was good, but not spicy like the waitress warned me it would be. This was the first Hard Rock I've been inside in about five years, and nothing has changed. That's probably why tourists like them so much.

The other thing tourists like, at least in Gatlinburg, is the Ripley's family of attractions. They have a "Believe It Or Not!" museum, a "Mirror Maze", a haunted house adventure, a "Moving Theater":



and the Aquarium of the Smokies, the purpose of my trip:



At the aquarium I learned that a lot of people don't know how to turn the flash on their digital camera off and like to complain about it (my camera came with instructions, but I guess theirs didn't), that a lot of children run off even when their parents repeatedly say their name but don't actually chase them or try to physically restrain them, and that they might as well not put up those "don't tap the glass" signs because no one is going to tell their kids to stop doing it.

I also took a lot of pictures:

















As always, more photos are on my flickr page.

gardens in the rain

The rain pretty much shot all my plans for the weekend, and then poor planning finish the job. The poor planning was not checking the hours of the place I wanted to go to today to walk around and maybe take pictures, so I drove there only to turn around and drive home. On the way, I decided to stop at the university gardens. Not much is in bloom yet, so I decided to zoom way in on what was there.







Since we had rain, there was also a lot of flooding:





There were also some randomly stacked cups and saucers in the herb garden:





Even though it wasn't my plan for the day, I still think I got some nice pictures. This one is my favorite:

student journalism at its finest

My coworker Angi and I both bring in our lunch every day, and on Mondays we sit at our desks in our offices across from each other and read the student newspaper. Monday is the best day for this because Monday is the day when the laughable conservative columnist writes. If you went to college, you know the type. She's a sophomore white girl from the suburbs who wants to know why there's a black history month but no white history month, who thinks Obama is a socialist, and who opposes the teaching of non-Christian science. Sometimes when her column is really awful Angi and I read pieces to each other and giggle, and wonder what it will be like when she grows up.

Today I eagerly opened the paper, expecting to get my weekly fix of "marriage is only for men and women" or "everyone in Iraq is a terrorist", but my eye was caught by the apologetic letter from the editor. The paper wanted to assure us, the readers, that they stand for good journalism, that they were heartfelt in their sorrow over possible offense that Friday's headline might have caused, that they bear no ill will toward the Vols or the Gamecocks, and that they have nothing but respect for the AP news feed.

What the hell?

"Hey, Angi, do you have Friday's paper still?"

"I think so. Why?"

"The letter from the editor thing says there was an offensive headline."

"I don't remember anything too bad. Come look."

It didn't take us long to burst out laughing.



Inadvertant? How is that possibly not deliberate? I don't think "inadvertant" means what the school paper thinks it means.

the hunchbread of notre dame

Several of my friends have been on this homemade bread making kick for a couple weeks, in response to this book, which makes it seem very easy.

Apparently it's very easy for everyone but me. My friends keep producing show quality bread loaves. They're posting pictures of loaves that look like the fake ones food stylists use in photo pictorals of pastoral, rustic meals in the villas of Tuscany. When I page through the Dean and Deluca catalog and see sixty dollar "Toast and Jam" gift baskets that come with a loaf of bread, a jar of jelly, and require next day shipping, it might as well be my friends' bread in the baskets.

I, on the other hand, managed to produce a loaf that looks like it stabs other bread loaves on subway platforms, just to watch them die.

Let's figure out exactly how this happened.

First I got the book. Then I got the flour, salt, and yeast. All that was left was to get a six quart container that could be lidded but not airtight, for keeping bread dough. Sara said she got hers at "Bed, Bath, and Beyond" and posted a picture, so I went to the same store to get one of my own. Unfortunately the containers were not measured in quarts, but instead in cups. I know there are four quarts in a gallon, and I know that there are two cups in a pint, but the number of pints in a quart (which would give me the number of cups in a quart) was kind of hazy. Could be two. Could be four. Given the apparently arbitrary nature of the American system of weights and measures, it could be six or eight or ten, and of course none of the staff at the store could help me.

This is how I ended up with a 44 cup container when I needed a 24 cup container. The size of the container had no real affect on the freakish loaf that I produced, but the part where I can't mentally convert measurements will be important later.

Anyway, I measured out the flour:



Since you have to dump it all in at once, I figured I should measure it in advance. Even though I was carefully scooping and knife-leveling the top of my cup, somehow flour still ended up everywhere. I have no explanation for this other than demon magics, and feel that we should burn Goody Bird-feeding-neighbor-upstairs-who-keeps-throwing-bread-down-onto-my-porch-from-her-balcony at the stake at once for bedevilment of my flour cannister. My certainty in this has absolutely nothing to do with my continuous irritation toward her.

My friend Huge suggested sifting the salt in with the flour, and this seemed like a wise plan. The only problem was that the recipe requires one and a half tablespoons of kosher salt, and my measuring spoons only come in table, tea, half tea, and quarter tea. There is no half tablespoon in my set. Remembering the measuring disaster from the container shopping, I consulted the table of measurements in the back of my 1949 Better Homes and Gardens cookbook:



There are three teaspoons in a tablespoon. My inner monologue exploded.

"Three? THREE? How the hell does that make sense? Everything else works in a multiple of two. Two cups in a pint, two pints in a quart, four quarts in a gallon, but all of a sudden we get down to teaspoon level and it's THREE? Who the hell thought up this stupid system of measuring? How am I supposed to figure out how many teaspoons are in a half tablespoon? What is that? A sixth? Two thirds? I DON'T HAVE A SPOON FOR THAT."

I decided that the wisest course would be to just eyeball when the tablespoon looked half full, and measured out the salt. Pioneer women made bread with just a pinch and a gut feeling, right? I have a gut. I have feelings. This would be fine.

I mixed the yeast into the hot water:



I mixed the flour and salt into the yeast water:



I covered, but did not seal, my dough and let it rise until it doubled:



Everything seemed to be going fine, and I was ready to tear off a piece and shape my loaf. I looked at the book, I watched the youtube video, and I was certain I could handle this. I laid out my parchment paper, lightly floured the top of the dough, and reached in.

Bread dough is sticky like you would not believe. My solution was to flour my hands, too, so that it would stop sticking to them, with predictable results:



Flour everywhere. It was like the flour factory exploded on my counters, but I finally got the loaf shaped. After preheating the oven, I attempted to slash it for baking, but somehow did not use enough flour. Hard to believe, I know, but the knife stuck to the bread and my slashes were sloppy and imprecise. This means, of course, that my bread did not turn out very pretty:



My bread is a failure. It's ugly and malformed. It should be hidden away somewhere, so that other bread won't have nightmares. Even worse, it's dense, not light and airy:



Guess why?

Too much salt.

Stupid tablespoons.

Roller Derby

Last week I was downtown to see "Friday the 13th", starring Jared Padalecki's pecs, which spend the movie threatening to explode out of his five-sizes-too-small t-shirt, and noticed a number of colorful signs for the Hard Knox Roller Girls' Mardi Brawl season opener. You can see the corner of one above the triceratops:



They advertised two bouts for only fifteen dollars, and I thought, "Hmmm... I've never been to derby, but my understanding is that girls on wheels beat the hell out of each other for a couple hours. That sounds like it might be fun." Fortunately, in this case my inner voices were correct, and derby was awesome.

I invited ten friends. Predictably, only one actually followed through on coming, although a second would have come except that she wasn't directly included on the original email I send that said to forward to anyone else who might want to go, and she was happier to stay at home alone and whine instead about getting the forwarded copy, which I'm certain was terribly fun for her. Everybody has one of those sorts of friends, I'm sure.

(Everybody probably also has a passive aggressive friend like me who poke poke pokes at problems like that, but we're going to pretend I'm perfect and move on.)

We got there right at five when the doors opened, which was good because we got early-bird pricing and also because we got a front row seat. You're also allowed to sit on the floor right around the rim of the track, in the Suicide Seating, but I'm not that brave. We didn't realize there was a home section and an away section, and accidentally sat in the away section, but we will definitely be on the home side next time.

Before the first bout, there was a helpful segment with player demonstrations, to help you understand the game. There are three positions on the team, the jammer, the blockers, and the pivots. The jammer is the girl with the star helmet cover, and there is one for each team. The Hard Knox jammer is seen here:



That's the pivot next to her with the stripe down the middle of her helmet.

Each team has one jammer. When the jam, which is two minutes long, starts the jammers have to get through the pack, and then loop around quickly to lap the pack. The jammer that gets through the pack first is the lead jammer, but the other jammer can overtake her. Once the jammer laps the pack, she is awarded points for each member of the opposing team that she passes. The blockers try to stop her from passing, and the pivots help her get around them. The pivot and the jammer can also swap helmet covers and roles during the jam, so positions can change very quickly.

All of that sounds very straightforward and almost kind of boring when the announcer drones on and the players demonstrate at low speed, but the actual play is kind of like watching hockey. It's very high speed and there is a lot of slamming and checking, but instead of getting smashed into the glass the players going flying off into the suicide seating. This makes it even more fun, because you can watch the annoying girl in front of you who won't stop texting on her damn Blackberry and keeps flipping her hair in the way and think, "God, I hope someone clocks her."

Overall, it's a fun time. The crowd is high energy, people bring their kids, you can tell the players are having a lot of fun even though falling down on concrete, like this:



probably hurts a lot, and they all have cute nicknames, too, even the refs:



If you have derby nearby, you should go. It's fun, and they have nachos.