Mom and Dad's Visit to TN

We're having a great time with Mom and Dad. They arrived on Thursday evening last week. Saturday we all went into Gatlinburg and wandered around. We had a great pancake brunch, and then came home and watched NE lose a tough one to VT. Sunday we went boating pretty much all day. Dad drove for a while so that Caitlyn and I could raft together and he broke a new record for air time when he hit a wake and sent us both bouncing up into the air and off the raft. Yesterday (Mon.) Mom and Dad went downtown to the older part of Knoxville to explore on their own.

Today I took them golfing at Willow Creek. It's a long course, and yes, Dad beat me again (he had a 93 to my 97). I didn't bring a calculator for Mom's score (actually, she did pretty well). Tonight we may go to the science museum in Oak Ridge and listen to a lecture on the state of the Y12 plant (where I work). On Thurs, Mom and Dad are planning on going to the Biltmore castle in Asheville, NC (I may join them time permitting). This weekend we'll probably be back out on the boat and having dinner on the lake. Wish you all were here too!

John

Rough Weekend

We had quite the weekend. On Friday afternoon I rode up with a couple of other musicians to rehearse and play a show with Joe Piscopo - nice guy, BTW, and a real pro. He sang, played about 5 different instruments, did comedy bits and impressions, interacted with the audience, auctioned off chances to dance with him, and generally brought a lot of Vegas energy to a room of about 200 (I kind of felt sorry for him - it seems kind of a tough way to make a living for a guy who had made it to the big time. Maybe he knew somebody on the board of the charity we were raising money for - or knew somebody who benefits from the charity). Here he is (sorry for the blurry pic) auctioning off a chance to dance with him after the show.

Anyway, we had about 2 hours or so to kill after the rehearsal before the show, so we headed to Old Chicago to have a beer - on the way I get a text message from Julie to call her - it seems Tommy snapped his ankle playing ultimate frisbee down at Cook Pavilion. She later sent me a picture message of his ankle before the doctors reset it (WARNING - don't click if you have a weak stomach) you can see the pic here if you want. It was pretty horrifying to see that and not be able to be at the hospital.  The gig went until about 11 pm, so I didn't get home in time to head to the hospital until the next day.

He had his surgery Saturday morning, and it went fine.  Now we're just dealing with how we're going to get him to classes.

Our Return to Boating

Hi family:

We finally got to test our new boat yesterday, and it worked great! The lake was calm and empty (TN was having its first home game), and the temperature of both the water and air was perfect. I sent you all an invitation to see the pictures I took on Kodak ShareGallery, but I'm not sure its working, so I thought I'd make this posting as well (I did not get any messages from anyone about the last one share gallery I sent, about our Labor Day in a cabin, but that could be because my email address in KodakShare was out of date). Anyway, hope everyone is having a great weekend, and we can't wait to see Mom and Dad in a couple of weeks!