19 Shopping Days til Christmas

The countdown has started. We like to countdown the days to an event and just let the anticipation build. Of the many holiday festivities scheduled for the next 19 days, tonight is the annual Tennessee Trails Christmas Party. We don’t stay out late for much, but we usually stay out late for this. Therefore, I will be posting this early and report on the party tomorrow.

A couple of my best friends

me, Susan, and Karen

I need to go back a couple days and just say that I had a fantastic evening with my former team mates, Karen and Susan. We met at one of our favorite restaurants in town, J. Alexander’s. I think we started going there when they first opened and have been loyal patrons ever since. Of course, we don’t go as often now as we did when we were teaching together and needed the comfort that only spinach queso dip and warm tortilla chips could provide. We’ve laughed and we’ve cried at J. Alexander’s. We’ve gone there for baby showers and for retirement parties. Susan brought pictures of her almost grown children and Karen and I marveled at how big these children were who had been born on our watch. The oldest is not in college—where has the time gone? These are the ladies who taught me how to teach (even though Tennessee State takes credit for having educated me in the art of teaching children). I did my student teaching on their team and remained there until the school system made so many changes we had to go our separate ways, each ending up teaching at different schools. Thursday evening we talked about the current state of Metro Nashville school system, about retirement, about the dismal state of the economy, a little about politics (we’re a house divided so we usually steer clear of that subject), and about Mormon church underwear. They are the best, and I love them to death.

Today, I can see Gene’s head and arms stuck up from a pile of road maps and campground directories. He is trying to map out a route for the first leg of our next journey from here to Montgomery, Alabama and then on to Perry, Georgia for the next Christmas celebration with brother, nephews and their wives. We have the GPS and are looking forward to using that in our travels. However, we have not found software to exclude low underpasses in trip planning. Without that, we still have to use the trucker’s atlas to select our route.

I will busy myself with a few housekeeping chores and preparing food to take to the party tonight. I originally planned to take a smoked salmon log with crackers and purchased all the necessary ingredients. However, I also have more apples and pears in the fruit basket than Gene and I can eat before they go bad, so I decided this morning to fix one of my favorite Barefoot Contessa recipes—Pear, Apple and Cranberry Crisp. We are really looking forward to this party because it is where we see all our hiking buddies.

Details tomorrow.