We went to Memphis’ big July 4th celebrations on Saturday (June 30). This year they combined the two big celebrations on each side of the city into one big one over the Mississippi. I say that like I have some authority. We didn’t go to either last year, so it’s all new to me. When we went to the Sunset Symphony I noticed a couple wheel boats go out on the river and come back to watch the fireworks. A little light went off in my head saying we should try that. So, when I heard about the fireworks over the river I knew I had to look into seeing if the boat company would be doing it again. They did. We went. We went with some friends from work. I thought it was nice. The fireworks turned out pretty well. They certainly spent a bunch on the show. I think they could have done a much better job of choreographing the way the fireworks went off, much of it seemed like they were just randomly hit “fire” buttons. They had a huge volume of them, though. It went on for 10 minutes or so. The important measure of what I thought is that I think we’ll go again some time.

Well, another day, another shooting.  I didn’t even see mention of this on the local news tonight.  Maybe I just didn’t hear it as I wasn’t watching/listening too closely.  This time maybe it was self-defense, but the alleged attacker certainly didn’t seem to have benign intentions and if he hadn’t been shot, what might he have done with the gun he brought while trying to break-in to the residence.  The scary part, all 3 involved are police officers.

http://www.wmctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6610489

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,277480,00.html

We tried something new today.  We took the trolley downtown for dinner.  It’s kind of surprising, but we’d never done that before (we’ve been on the trolley once).  It was really convenient to walk to the closest stop and just take that down.  We tried a place I’ve been thinking of going — Wang’s Chinese Bistro.  Good food.  It was a little pricey, but we’ll probably be going back.  Turns out there’s a Quiznos that way too, so I see myself going that way quite a few times before we move.

Well, I ran across this morbid article yesterday:

http://www.wmctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6574288

The good news is that we’re down 10 murders relative to this time in 2006, but the bad (and really scary) news is that there were 5 murders on this past Friday and Saturday alone. Pretty scary stuff.

Update 5/30/2007:

Just saw on the nightly local news that the murder count is now up to 62.  One of the homicide detectives they interviewed said 8 were from this past weekend.  One murder would have made it 63 when a pregnant mother was shot (woman is still alive, baby died), but because she was only 2 months pregnant they have to consider it an aggravated assault (baby wouldn’t have survived outside of the womb as the deciding factor).  Sad sad sad…

We went to see the Memphis in May 2007: Sunset Symphony on Saturday evening.  We didn’t know exactly what to expect, but I had heard about a mini airshow going to be going on.  That really drew me in.  Neat event.  The mini airshow was quite small, but topped off with a wonderful performance by Skip Stewart.  I’ve seen him perform before and, honestly, the dude is nuts.  There is a fine fine line between someone that is really really good and someone that is insane.  I think he tips toward the insane side.  I’ve read that he lost his FAA performance waiver for a while over a particular maneuver, so I’m not the only one.  They reinstated him, though, so maybe I’m just too conservative.  After the airshow was the Memphis Symphony performing many general public friendly pieces.  We didn’t really see that from where we camped out.  We could hear it, though.  This was followed by the Temptations, which was certainly a crowd pleaser.  Then for the closing act, the Memphis Symphony played the 1812 Overture with fireworks in place of the cannons.  Then after that was a beautiful fireworks display.  It started off kind of slow, but was really well done overall.  It was huge.   I’d say it’s the best fireworks display I’ve ever seen.  Very cool.

Yesterday, I was searching around for the results from the BBQ competition last weekend when I happened across this article about Tennessee students:

http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/education/article/0,2673,MCA_22897_5547147,00.html

I was surprised and dismayed that my newly adopted state performed so poorly with regard to education (not that Oklahoma was particularly great). I thought “at least they are being honest about it.” A local paper actually covering such news is important.

Well, today, I’m searching around for other local news to find out where a rather scary “random” park shooting was, and I came across this article:

http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/local/article/0,2845,MCA_25340_5549461,00.html

I thought that those articles were somewhat contradictory.  It’s certainly possible for, say, the best school in the nation to be located in the worst district in the nation, it’s just not likely.  So, I decided to find out a big more about the study mentioned in the article and I found the results posted here:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/challengeindex/

It was good to see exactly what the study was supposed to show.  Well, for one, it’s a “challenge” index and they state pretty clearly that they don’t include magnet schools, or charter schools with high (I’m paraphrasing here) composite ACT and/or SAT scores.  I have plenty authority on the matter to tell you that magnet schools can certainly challenge their pupils.  The mini Commercial Appeal article doesn’t mention this.  They also include a nice disclaimer at the end, so maybe they expect more astute readers to catch them, but I’m sure the schools they mentioned will be touting this as “proof” of the quality education they provide, just as the article implies.

Well, I decided to take a look at the list a bit and see who is where, etc.  Didn’t I just read that they leave out magnet and charter schools?  Then why is the #1 school on the list named Talented and Gifted?  Why is the #2 school named Science/Engineering Magnet?  I start scrolling down the list and find a school I’m a bit more familiar with — Classen School of Advanced Studies.  I know that’s a magnet/charter school.  There are a bunch more just like that.  Something seems a bit fishy to me.  At the minimum, there needs to be some clarification, but I’m wondering if there was some funny business going on here to make somebody look good.

We went to the Memphis In May BBQ Festival/Competition on Saturday. It was neat to walk around and see what’s up. After seeing the special on Food Network last year I just had to go. We walked down to the trolley and took the trolley down to Beale Street. It’s kinda cool to be able to do that. It’s also kinda sad that we haven’t done it before considering how long we’ve been here. The down side is that there was a lot more “college party” atmosphere than I expected. A bit more wild than I like. We’ll see if we ever attend another one.

We went to the 2007 Spring Vesta Home Show on Saturday.  Having been to the South End Home Show last weekend I wasn’t sure how much walking this was going to be, but I was prepared for a lot.  It turned out to be unnecessary.  The show was well organized and setup.  It justified the ticket prices a bit.  There were 7 homes to see and each were basically next door neighbors.  It turns out that the show was more than just seeing what’s out there, it’s a giant for sale ad.  The homes are already sold, but the contents seemed to mostly be setup specifically for the show.  Some things I’m sure will be staying in the homes (ie, garage flooring systems, cabinets, appliances), but much of the other stuff I’m not so sure.  Anyway, we got to see some really cool stuff and have a lot of ideas for the house.

First and foremost, I wasn’t really impressed with the appliances chosen for the homes.  I’ve done a LOT of reading.  It seemed to me that each house pretty much chose each of the major appliances one shouldn’t.  I was a bit surprised.  At least they looked nice.  There were some nice features to the kitchens in terms of cook tops, cabinets, islands, counter tops, and back splashes, but none of the kitchens stood out and made me go “wow”.

If there were a single thing that was consistent among the homes (which do vary widely in theme and content) it was hardwood floors.  Hardwood floors were almost everywhere.  That’s not to say there wasn’t carpet, there certainly was carpet in some rooms, but I believe ALL the homes had hardwood floors for the majority of the lower level (with various kinds of tiling being the other material).  I’m starting to get convinced of it’s value.

Garage floors are something I am interested in, so I made sure to see all of them.  Particularly, I was looking for something done by Ultimate Garage Solutions.  There appeared to be two homes that they did.  I was pretty happy with the flooring.  I kind of wished the homes had chosen some of the more exciting coloring options, but they were still good.  They also provided their cabinet system (which was cool).  One home didn’t have their garage flooring done at all (and having seen the other homes it made it seem incomplete).  Another home had a really interesting flooring that I had not found in my research.  It was done by Victory Swiss Floors.  This flooring consists of polymer tiles that interlock.  It’s a bit hard to describe beyond that.  You just have to see them (take a look at the website).  I don’t think we’ll use them for the garage, but maybe when we get around to doing the gym and maybe even the patio.  They’re cool.  The other homes used flooring systems from a couple of other vendors.  One type was the Williams floor paint (basically).  The other was some sort of flaked system that didn’t feel very durable to my hand.

Home media systems were an interesting thing to see too.  The type and size varied.  There were a few with dedicated media rooms, while others simply had large TVs in the family room.  I recall two having projector systems.  One was large, the other was larger.  Interesting setups.  The others all had LCD and/or Plasma screens.  One, that I think was cool, had the TV mounted up over the fireplace in such a way that at the press of a button on a remote, a screen came down in front of the TV making the setup look like a framed painting print setting above the mantle.  I may try to replicate that.  It was awesome.  The modern minimalist style is really starting to appeal to me and it would be a great way to help accomplish that.

Something I’ve been thinking about is a screened in porch/patio.  I haven’t figured out how to do such a thing with our house, but it’s simmering at the back of my mind for the future.  Each of these homes had some sort of shaded outside sitting area.  Some were more extravagant than others, but they each had them and now I want one.  A couple of homes had these really cool retractable screens.  I didn’t even know such a thing existed.  At the press of a button, these screens come down from small bays running the edges of the roof and completely enclose the porch.  It’s awesome.

Another something I hadn’t really thought about, but now want are organizer systems.  Each home had all kinds of neat little (or not so little) organizers.  Every master bedroom closet had something and most other closets, pantries, and cabinets also had something.  These don’t just look neat now, they look necessary.  Once the house is done, looks like I’m going to be building a bunch.

All in all, neat show and I’m excited to see the next one.

On Saturday, we spent many hours at the South End Home Show.  We wanted to get interior decorating ideas.  Several of the places we looked at won awards at the 2006 Vesta Home Show, so we figured they would be some good examples.  One word: wow.  Very cool.  It was lots and lots of walking, but worth it.  I had no idea condos in this area would cost so much either.  I’d say a majority of them cost more than the house we are building.  Not all of them, for sure, but the ones that weren’t were mostly of the studio apartment sized variety.  If I were big on urban living and didn’t have hobbies that could use large spaces, they’d be pretty appealing.  The way the south end is developing I think those properties are probably pretty good investments too.

I found this article a couple days after it happened and I just hadn’t gotten around to posting it (buried in a a few hundred open Firefox tabs).  It just goes to show one needs to be prepared anywhere.  This happened literally at one of the intersections that defines the border of our “campus” at work.  I haven’t heard it mentioned by anyone either.  We’re in a “safe” area, but that’s simply a misnomer in a place like this.  The latest statistics I’ve seen say that the murder count for Memphis for 2007 up to March 14 was 30 (up 7.1% for the same period in 2006).  Hopefully that’s just a statistical anomaly.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/local/article/0,2845,MCA_25340_5402238,00.html