Rain, rain, go away

We had a doozy of a thunderstorm the other day. We really missed the Memphis rains while we were in California, but this was ridiculous!

Our yard is like a mini New Orleans. The house is at the bottom of a bowl, and we have no levies to hold back the water, so when it rains heavily, we quickly find ourselves in the middle of a huge puddle. Here is a picture of our front yard taken near the end of the storm.



Luckily, the previous owners spent a nice chunk of dough installing a French Drain. So, within five minutes of the rain stopping, all the water went down here:


And our yard was left muddy, but water free.

My very own chauffeur!

Someone in the picture below got his learner's permit today. Can you guess who?


This means Everett can get his license near the end of January. Just in time to take a date out for Valentine's Day!

Congratulations, Ev!

Ev's new ride

Ev turns 16 on September 25. Although he does not have his license yet, nor even his learner's permit, he's got a sweet ride waiting for him when he finally gets them.

The day I arrived back in Memphis I found out a good friend of ours was selling the '96 Volvo his daughter drove in high school and college. Scott and I had been discussing getting Everett a car and had worked out a deal with him where we would match any dollar amount he saved to buy one. Well, we weren't planning on getting one so soon, but our friend offered us a great deal and our number one priority for the car Ev would get was safety, so we couldn't pass up the Volvo. Ev still has to save some money to cover his half, but he doesn't have far to go.

I think Ev had imagined something like this for his first car:


But once he gets behind the wheel of the Volvo (and when he comes out of his first wreck without a scratch) I know he'll fall in love with it.

All is well that ends well

Ev's first week as a sophomore at White Station High School started off a little rocky, but things smoothed out quickly.

Even though we registered Ev on the Friday before school started, he was not enrolled when he got there Monday morning. Apparently his file was stuck with files of other transfer students who could not be enrolled until they were withdrawn from the school from which they transferred. Ev was never registered anywhere else, so that was a mistake. So, unbeknownst to us until he got home Monday, he spent the entire day sitting in the gymnasium.

But, all was well Tuesday. He was able to get the office to put him in the system in the morning, he got his schedule and he was on his way. He likes most of his teachers (based on the first week's impressions anyway). He was very happy to see some of his friends he hadn't had a chance to see yet since we got back. He seemed pleased with the first week over all.

A friend of Scott's who lives a few streets away from us has a daughter who is a junior at WSHS. She drives to school everyday, so she gives Ev a ride. That means I don't have to drop him off and pick him up everyday, so I am happy. Ev likes it too. He would be happiest if he could drive himself, of course, but since he can't do that yet, riding with a friend is still several marks higher on the cool meter than catching a ride with mom.

Citizen Petra

My very good friend in California, Petra, became a US citizen last week. Congratulations, Petra!


I was vary sad that I was not there to witness the ceremony, but only until she told me it took place in a room filled with 3,000 people with no air conditioning. Sounds delightful.

Petra is from Snina, Slovakia, small town near the Ukrainian border with a population of just over 20,000. Isn't it beautiful?


Petra came to the United States the first time in high school when she was an exchange student in Minnesota. She returned to Snina to attend law school and eventually came back to the U.S. to stay, arriving in California on July 4th - such a little patriot! She and her boyfriend, Krasen (who is from Bulgaria), plan to move back to Europe in a few years, but for now she is an American girl. Welcome to the club, PP Magee!

Ev is officially a Spartan!

We found out yesterday that our son, Everett, was accepted by White Station High School. We do not live in the WSHS district, but Ev went to White Station Middle School before we left Memphis and most of his friends (including his cousins, Cody and Zach) went on to WSHS. It is also the number one high school in Memphis City Schools system. We are very happy, but it was much more of an ordeal than it should have been to reach this point.

We were told initially that Ev was 26th on a waiting list to get in White Station. We kept up our hopes about WSHS, but we also began contemplating what looked like a very likely plan B, which was going to Central High School (the high school for the district in which we live). Now, I moved to Memphis my senior year of high school and I spent that year at Central. It was probably the worst year of my life. I do not have pleasant memories of Central and my first reaction was "There is no way he is going there." However, once I looked into it and talked to a few people about Central, I calmed down and realized I was making a decision based entirely on emotion. It is a very good school and Ev would get a great education if he went there. So, Ev tackled the summer reading list for Central and I met with the principal to be sure we had our ducks in a row to get him in the classes we wanted. All the while though, we kept jumping through the many bureaucratic hoops presented to us along the way in our attempt to transfer to WSHS.

In the interest of brevity I will spare you the rest of the long story. Suffice it to say most of the hoops we jumped through turned out to be completely unnecessary. The important thing is that Ev is in the school he really wanted and we are pleased. Unfortunately, Ev busted his butt to complete the reading list for Central (he finished three books in less than two weeks) and now he has to three more books to attack. Luckily the teacher has extended the deadline by a month for Ev. He is already half way through the first one (in less than a day!) so he will be fine.

Go Spartans!

Missing California...just a little

We are very happy to be back in Memphis, but I must say there are some things I miss about California.

Mostly I miss our friends. We didn't make a lot of friends while we were there, but the ones we did make were amazing and I wish we could have brought them with us. I speak specifically about Julio and Fabienne (and their daughter, Morgane, of course) and Petra and Krasen.



I think of them everyday. I hope they will all visit us!

I also miss how beautiful California is. The weather was wonderful and the scenery was beautiful. We could admire it from almost every window in our house. My favorite was the view from one of my bedroom windows.


I would lie in bed and imagine I was on vacation somewhere tropical and this was the view out my hotel window. Nice.

Of course, there are many things I do not miss about California. The crowds and the traffic are the first things that come to mind, but I don't have any pictures of those to share with you. However, I do have a picture of my least favorite thing about California: SPIDERS. The place was lousy with them. I found this one just outside my back door one night.


I think he was about to let himself in and help himself to a beer and the remote, but I scared him off. (If you look closely you will see he is on his way to devour a slug. This guy does not limit himself to insects and he does not wait for things to get stuck in his web!)

So, if Julio, Fabienne, Petra and Krasen can stay safe from the enormous beer drinking spiders, we will hopefully see them soon and then I won't miss California so much.

Time for an update

Wow! I have been very lax in my duties to keep everyone updated on our activities. Here is a brief review of our life since June:

June 6 - The buyers who made the offer on our house backed out less than two days after we accepted their offer. We were very disappointed, but got over it quickly. We decide to go ahead with our plan to move at the beginning of July, even though the house in Cali has not sold.

June 13 - My last day at work. Yipee!

July 1 - Scott picks up the 26 foot Penske truck, the largest truck Penske has, that he and Ev are going to load and drive to Memphis. After loading some boxes on the truck Scott is feeling smug because he is confident we will have more space than we know what to do with, despite the fact I insisted, over his objections, on getting such a big truck. I fly out of San Francisco that night with the dogs along in their crates in the cargo hold.

July 2 - We (me, Archie and Jammer) arrive in Memphis. We are picked up at the airport by my good friend Ann and we spend the evening with my sister, Margaret, my nephews, Cody, Zach and Austin, and my friends/cousins, Susan, Bill, Erin, Joe, Karen, Greg, Kevin and Zeke. I receive a few concerned calls that evening from Ev and Scott. After a day of loading the truck they have realized the truck is too small and everything will not fit! No worries. It's just stuff.

July 3 - After half the truck is unloaded, rearranged and reloaded, and several more calls are made to determine what we can and can't live without, the truck is packed. Scott and Ev take off Thursday evening, leaving fewer items in California than we feared we would have to.

July 6 - Scott and Ev arrive in Memphis mid-day. They park the truck, take showers and decide to spend the afternoon visiting friends and family and leave the unloading for the next day.

July 7 - The truck is unloaded. I get busy unpacking.

July 8 - After furniture is arranged, some boxes are unpacked and we can take a breath, we realize that we LOVE our house and are very happy to be there.

July 12 - Zeke and Meredith get married! Yay!

July 14 - Scott begins working from home. He enjoys it, particularly after the camera and sound are set up and he can see and hear his co-workers in California and they can see and hear him.

August 6 - Almost everything is unpacked. Remaining boxes are all collected in the otherwise empty dining room where I can conveniently forget about them until I am ready to deal with them.

That pretty much brings you up to date, except for the fact that our house in San Jose has still not sold. But it's okay because I keep it in my mental dining room where I can conveniently forget about it until I have to deal with it.