Wednesday

One week ago I made the just over five-hour drive from eastern Kentucky to the North Carolina piedmont in just over seven hours. I never knew that I-64 dwindled to one lane amid Charleston, West Virginia. I've driven that route dozens of times, but this time I found myself in the other lane just after three pm, accidentally crossing a rickety bridge into a leafy little South Park neighborhood where the only southbound interstate access was on the far side of the very active central school zone. Having already ruined any chance of a speedy drive, I stopped for lunch in WV's souvenir crafts tepee cum travel plaza Tamarack,* which is lucratively nestled between two turnpike tolls near the state border. This started a culinary trend I'm following throughout my vacation home. Not eating crappy Quizno's subs, thank god, but eating well below my established health goals. Being at home, it's easy to slide right back into past routines of fat cheese sandwiches and kneejerk coffee dates and nightly trips to the bar. Some of this is necessary for the pitched social calendar I'm keeping. Some is habit. Some is certainly part of an eleven-day rebellion against discipline. I've tried to eat healthy sushi for every stacked wad of pepperjack or Irish whiskey Manhattan, so I'm sure I've broken even. Anyway, I'm having a blast. Here's a small update: somewhere during an email exchange yesterday--in which we might've secured a twice-weekly cook for the approaching years abroad--we got a scoop on where we could be living. Take a look at these. Possibly this is just a wishful rumor, but I see no reason not to consider this housing as typical of the places available to us, even if it's not the exact address of our destiny. [Cavin]