goin' to memphis

When I was little, my best friend was a girl who lived down the street.  Her dad worked for a major airline, and they were always getting to vacation in foreign exotic places.  I was terribly, terribly jealous.  The only time we ever got to take an airplane was when we went to Memphis.  My dad's from Memphis, and his dad was quite ill, so we made quite a few trips out there over the years.  As jealous as I was, and since Memphis was the only card I had to play, well, I made those trips sound as awesome as I possibly could.  (I mean, they WERE awesome, but visiting family versus a week in Granada, Spain?  Not much of a comparison.)  I guess I did a pretty good job, because one day while I was over at her house, I overheard my friend saying to her mother, "Why don't we ever get to go to Memphis?"

I didn't say anything at the time, but I can remember walking home with it mulling in my head.  Later on that evening, I mentioned it to my mom.  She was used to me complaining about how we never went anywhere interesting and exotic.  She smiled, and remarked that I was pretty lucky after all.

And I am.  I love Memphis.  It's one of my favourite places in the world, and my family there is just the best.  Now, I do have an actual purpose for this trip, which I will get to at some later point if everything works out the way I hope it will.

So the point of this post is that I will be away for a little over a week.  I'm not going to bring my laptop, but I've got a few posts scheduled to go.  You'll hardly miss me at all!  And I will return with photos, stories, and hopefully many, many tacky souvenirs. 

photo is of my brother leaping into my aunt and uncle's pool--and pretty much how psyched I am for this trip!