Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Adventures in Mississippi, part 1 of many

Hello, lovely readers, from Jackson, Mississippi, where I will be living for the next year as I finish my last year of graduate school.
My new desk, where I am writing this post!
I've only been here five days and I've already had a few adventures I thought I would share, in cooking, running/walking, and in life in general.
This is the house I will be sharing with two other ladies for the year - we've all left our husbands in other parts of the country and will be roommates during internship year.  Adventure number one: finding out that all those beautiful trees in my yard are likely inhibiting my ability to get Direct TV, which is going to seriously alter my quality of life come football season when the Sunday NFL Ticket isn't available to me.  But, at least I have a shady back yard for Isis to play in.  (Feel free to contact me for a long rant about how the Direct TV people on the phone are FABULOUS, but the in-person technicians are the ABSOLUTE WORST... so angry!).
View of our backyard from my bedroom window!
I'm so very grateful to have a fenced in yard and great walkable neighborhood for my pup, but it does come with some minor drawbacks. Apparently, everyon in Jackson has a dog.  That's awesome, because Isis loves making friends.  However, most of my neighbors apparently see dogs as "outdoor only" pets, which means every time I let Isis out or we go for a walk, she encounters a minimum of two other dogs barking at her.  Two dogs in an adjoining yard have literally been outside nonstop for all five days I've lived here from what I can tell, and they bark every time I let Isis out.  Sorry, peace-and-quiet-loving neighbors.

While there are many perks to this backyard-with-a-fence thing, in adition to the barking neighbors, we ran into a bit of trouble on Monday.  Warning, this is kinda gross. I have been letting Isis play out in the yard for short periods of time with me being inside.  This works well because I can watch her play from my desk in my room and mostly keep an eye on her.  On Monday, I saw her jump at / bat at a bird.  I didn't think much of it, because, c'mon, a bird is going to get away from her with it's wings... right?  A moment later, I noticed she was intensely digging/exploring in a part of the yard she hadn't really been interested in yet, so I went outside to check on her.  As I emerged, she excitedly picked up something in her mouth and joyously began sprinting all around the yard.  The item in her mouth was grey-brown, and I hoped she had just found the most exciting stick on the planet, but once I got close enough to inspect the situation, I found out I was wrong.  To my horror, my little girl was carrying a dead bird around in her mouth.  EWWW. ISIS, WHAT THE HELL???  I was not pleased.  I eventually got her to drop the bird and go inside, and then had the pleasant task of disposing of said bird.  Seriously hoping this does not become a common occurence.

Although I have technically lived below the Mason-Dixon Line for my entire life, even in Durham I didn't feel like I was truly "in the south."  Yesterday, I knew for sure that we were truly amoung southerns when my roommate and I went to purchase a farmhouse table off of Craigslist.  We got the top strapped to her car just fine (our husbands would be so proud), but the base of the table was shaped in a way that we couldn't balance it on the car without hiting the windshield.  Luckily, the next door neighbors of the people who were selling us the table had a truck, and the man who lived there was willing to drive the table base to our house for us.  Yes, it was only a half mile away and took him less than 10 minutes, but as I watched him strap in our table, I knew I was finally, truly, in the south.
We successfully attach the top of the table...
We have a table.  And one chair.
Stay tuned for more adventures in cooking in my new kitchen and exploring my new neighborhood by attempting to run in extreme heat and humidity!

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