Is it bad that I have only been back to work for three days and I’m already scheming about where I want to go on vacation next time? In between now and then, though, I have a few obligatory trips I need to make. One of my cronies from the office is getting married in October in Williamsburg so I anticipate being up there for an extended weekend and probably a “pass-through” visit to Western Maryland on my way back to Tennessee. Then of course there is the obligatory Christmas visit. After that, though, it’s pretty much an open slate. Maybe somewhere warm with a rum economy in the spring. If the euro would ever stop beating up on the dollar, I’d love to go back to Europe but I don’t foresee that happening any time in the immediate future.

It’s not so much that I’m out of good ideas as it is that I want to make these trips count since they’re getting to be pretty damned few and far between. One of the biggest problems with west Tennessee is that getting anywhere is an expedition that involves an overpriced airline ticket (for a hub airport, MEM is ridiculously expensive) out of the city or an all day drive in any direction. In the interim, I’m hoping to coax a few old friends to Memphis with the promise of world-class barbecue and… uhhhh… Bible study.