The Christmas Village is this weekend at the state fairgrounds. It's a blast if you've never been and you like to shop. They will have over 250 vendors there selling all kinds of stuff for the holidays and things you can use throughout the year. http://www.christmasvillage.org

We have our house up for sale and will probably move to Mt. Juliet (http://www.liveshopplay.com), but may also look at the Hermitage area. Jen's family mostly live in that area and it would put us quite a bit closer to work and friends. I really like Ashland City, but it's getting to be such a drive anymore and with gas prices sucking my will to live it makes sense to get closer to work. There is another area that would be cool to live in, but expensive. It's called Rolling Mill Hills and it will be on the site of the old Nashville General Hospital, right next to where the proposed new Sounds baseball stadium will be located downtown. That would put us about 2 miles from work and walking distance to downtown. I don't think we could afford to live there though as they are saying it will probably be $250,000 for condos starting on the low end. They haven't started anything yet so all of that could change, but it would be nice to see what the plans will look like.

This semester is almost over. I am taking an educational research class and a multimedia design class right now and then will only have two more classes in the spring and I will finish my Masters Degree. I'll be so glad when it's over. It's like having another job when you go to grad school full-time and work full-time. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are going to visit my dad in Statesboro, GA for Thanksgiving and then my reseach class ends the following week and the media design class the week after that. Next semester should be relatively easy as all I have left is a practicum, which I will be doing a promotional video for the study-abroad program at APSU, and then my final project, which I have already started. I'll be glad to see the month of May this year. That's all for now. Happy Thanksgiving in advance in case I don't blog again before then.

It's been really busy with work and taking classes, but I guess that's no excuse for not blogging....except that we never blogged in the 80's or 90's, so this ain't exactly my cup-o-tea. We are officially selling our house and now have it on the market. If anyone is interested or knows of anyone who may be interested in house in Ashland City you can send them my way. We are hoping to move to a new neighborhood in Mt. Juliet that looks like a really nice place. Of course the traffic coming in from that side of town is a pain, but with the commuter rail going in that might help. We'll see if Nashville can get a decent public transportation system going. I'll take Europe any day over the US in regards to public transportation.

Fall is finally here and I'm loving it. The leaves haven't started changing color yet, but the mornings are cooler and the afternoons are much more comfortable. My coworker, Bethany, brought in some Pumkin Bread yesterday. I love the smell and tastes of Autumn foods. I love Fall and Spring. I would love Summer a lot more if I had a swimming pool. We went to lunch at Genghis Grill Mongolian Barbecue on Monday. That's one of my top 5 meals. It may even be a top 3. It's located down in the Cool Springs area if you're reading this and have never been. I'll be looking forward to the next visit there. I also discovered recently that Famous Dave's has the best wings. Just an FYI. MERCY!!!

Not much else is going on. I am finishing some room upgrades on campus. Things have been progressing along nicely. Bethany created an awesome flash campus map and I will be working with her on adding some classroom information. Hopefully the campus map will be available on the web at some point so that everyone has an opportunity to see it. She did an incredible job with it and it's going to be a very useful tool. I am also working with my group members on upgrading our website. If it all comes together it will really be pretty cool.  It looks nice as it is, but we are hoping to liven it up a bit. I guess that's about all for now. I wish I could wear sweatshirts, jeans, and tennis shoes to work. I love being comfortable at work like that and especially this time of year. Maybe that will change someday. I mean who decided that clothes like this aren't acceptable? I am anti-dress code to a degree. How can you do your best job when you are wearing uncomfortable clothes all day? That's my rant....Later!!

Well, we just got back from a week of vacation in Helen, GA. What a wonderful time we had. Helen is located in the Blue Ridge or Appalachian Mountains in the northern part of the state and is absolutely beautiful. The whole city has a Bavarian theme to it and is referred to as Alpine Helen (www.helenga.org). Besides having several gift stores and restaurants they also have the Chattahoochee River running right through downtown. A couple of miles north of the city they have two tubing companies where for $3 to $5 you can spend a couple of hours tubing down the river. It's the best $3 I've ever spent (http://www.coolrivertubing.com/). We actually went to the Flea Market tubing company, which was less expensive, but the Cool River Tubing company has a better website. We spent the weekend camping at the Enota Campground (www.enota.com) and I must say this was a gorgeous location. They have a 400 foot waterfall on one side of the campground and a 200 foot waterfall on the other side, both feeding several streams throughout the campground. Just about anywhere you camp you are sure to hear the rushing water of the streams. We actually got the group campsite (we had a reunion with some of my friends from the Air Force when we were all stationed in Okinawa). The site sat right where two streams merged into one. It was great and the sounds of the water just lulled us to sleep each night. They also had cabins on the site, but I thought they were rather expensive. There are some more reasonable cabins located in various sites around Helen. The only thing that was weird was that the place felt like a commune. The people running the place pretty much worship nature rather than God and it was a little strange, but they never bothered us or approached us, so that was cool. The lady that runs the place is named Swan, so we decided that we would give ourselves commune names. Jennifer was Moon Child and my name was Hot Child In The City. For some strange reason no one ever called me by my commune name. I guess Joe just fits better.

We are thinking about going back there in December to celebrate our 5th year anniversary. It looks like they do some really fun things at Christmas time so we are hoping to get a cabin for a week. If you've never been there I would highly recommend it for a fun vacation spot. It's only about 5 hours away from Nashville and you go past the Ocohee River where there are plenty of river rafting companies and the site of the 1996 Olympic kayaking events. Anyway, it was one of the most relaxing vacations I've had and I hope we can make this a regular vacation spot with our friends.

Now it's back to work. I've got a couple of exciting weeks ahead of me. We are doing several room upgrades with new equipment and a couple of rooms getting some Crestron controlled touch panel systems, including the Benson Auditorium, which is in need of a serious makeover. We need to see if we can get Extreme Makeovers: Home Edition to do a "School" Edition with an unlimited budget. Come on Ty...you can do it!!

I guess it's time for my monthly blog We finished the downstairs, have carpet, and have furniture in place. It looks awesome. Now I guess we are going to list it pretty soon and move back to the east side of Nashville. We are hoping that the basement project will yield us a pretty decent return in the equity of the house and that it won't take too long to sell. Since Jen is working at Trevecca now it makes sense to move closer. I have been going to APSU every day this summer so with my daily mileage being over 120 miles and Jen putting 50 on her car it's getting to be a bit expensive as far as gas-o-leen!!! Plus with the bombings in London the crooked gas companies raised the price by almost 20 cents overnight. That's just criminal. It cost me $29 to fill up my stupid little Nissan Altima the other day. When we moved to Nashville 4 years ago I could have filled it up for around $10.

We saw War of the Worlds this past weekend. I really liked it, although the ending wasn't what it could have been. We also saw the Longest Yard recently. There was some language, but it was funny. The camera work during the football scenes was awesome. I am putting a DVD together from the footage I got over in Ireland. My little movie is over an hour and a half long. It's a regular full-length feature film. It really turned out good though. I wish I could just edit videos for the rest of my life. It's my favorite "work-related" activity. Not too much else has been going on. I get a few weeks off from school, which is nice and I should graduate in May. I was hoping to finish in December, but the load would have been too much in the fall so I backed off a little and will take two classes in the spring to finish up. We are going on a camping trip the first week of August in Georgia. It will also be a 20th year reunion with a bunch of my Air Force friends all getting together for the first time in a long time. I can't wait. Hopefully no Hurricanes will be blowing through that week. That's about all for now. Til next month