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Muff Doctor

Most of you who know me have seen me out on the town wearing my foxfur stole, white pants and leather boots with foxfur cuffs. What nobody knows is that I have a matching foxfur muff to go with the outfit. I never took along the muff because the satin lining is in tatters and there is an unsightly cheese-whiz stain in the fur. Imagine my delight when I found the Muff Doctor! I thought he would be like the Furniture Doctor in Carrboro, NC, and that he would be able to fix my muff good as new. I was looking forward to bringing the muff to a football game to keep my hands warm on some chilly autumn night, perhaps the Mississippi State/Arkansas game on November 18th. That’s gonna be a good one! There will definitely be some head-crackin’ at that one! Imagine my disappointment when the Muff Doctor, a 250 pound greasy gentleman with a very hairy neck and a cigar stub in his mouth, simply looked at my muff, shook his head and walked away. At first I thought that my muff was simply beyond repair. Then I realised, upon looking around the Muff Doctor’s facility, that he didn’t actually repair muffs at all! Or maybe there is some other kind of muff. Maybe the word muff means more than one thing. So when I got home I looked it up in the dictionary. Oh my goodness! I didn’t know it meant that! Oh I am so embarassed…

Ho Hum

Nice sunday afternoon. Walked with the family up to the Collis Wade Depot, which is the student bookstore. An impressive example of corporate insinuation into the life of a public university. A complete Barns and Noble and Starbucks along with a complete textbooks section, atheletic apparal with MSU logos, souvineers and school supplies all under one massive roof and right next to the football stadium. We got some books for the kids, some colored pens and Bulldog T-shirts. We have two tickets to the MSU vs. U of South Carolina game this thursday. They came with Mrs. Tobit's new faculty welcome package. We got the kids some pom poms too. I like the school colors, maroon and white. I look good in maroon.
Saturday we drove out to the Natchez Trace parkway and drove around. We found a spot that seemed to say that you could walk along the original Natchez trace. We took the trail into the woods and after about a hundred feet it just came to a dead end. WTF? We blazed a new trail to a country road and ambled back around to the car. Then we drove to Jeff Busby campground and up to a bluff with an overlook. I think I read there that it was one of the highest points in Mississippi, if not the highest. Something like 610 feet above sea level. Back in town we had a pretty nice meal at a restaurant in the Cotten District. The kids behaved well. They have been very good this whole time. The weather has cooled off considerably. Today's high was 93.

Unloading

Finally our stuff arrives. Our only complaint was that none of the hardware needed to reassemble the furniture was saved. Fortunately I packed my extensive collection of random screws. Also, we inquired about some wooden pegs needed to reassemble an antique table that were missing and the company, All My Sons, never called back, even though they said they would. I called twice, and both times they said they would call back in the next day or two and let me know what they knew, but they never did. We eventually found the missing pegs.

First day in Mississippi

Nice house, big rooms, hardwood floors. No landscaping.

Fill er up

This is why you pay movers. Lorenzo packed this truck full to the top. I was impressed.

Packing

We have a lot of stuff. It all fit. Barely.

I'm OK

We arrived in Starkville late in the night of Thursday, August 3rd. We let the cats loose, pumped up the air mattress for the sleeping children, unpacked the coolers and mixed our cocktails. We explored the empty house and were delighted with the hardwood floors, high ceilings and large rooms. The real treat was finding a basement garage. We got very little sleep as we had driven all the previous day and found it difficult to unwind. That and Spooky wandering from room to room howling. The next morning the kids were up at 6:30 their time, of course it was really 5:30 since we had crossed into central time. We got up and had some breakfast and waited for the movers, who had said they would arrive at eight. After a long morning with two excited boys in a house with no furniture the movers arrived at noon. It was already a hundred degrees outside. They had had trouble finding the place because of many roads on campus being closed. Well, we had the same trouble at eleven o’clock the night before, but we had made it. Oh well. We got everything unloaded by 5:30 and sent them on their merry way.

After two days of unpacking we decided to take a Sunday drive down to the Noxubee wildlife refuge. We walked on a boardwalk through a cypress swamp. We saw some interesting large wading birds. I couldn’t tell you what they were. We walked through a large forest of old pines that was managed by controlled burns and was a cockaded woodpecker habitat. We did not see any cockaded woodpeckers. A few days later we read in the newspaper that one of the two lakes in the swamp is going to be drained in an attempt to eradicate a highly invasive aquatic plant known as hydrilla.

Starkville is a small, friendly town about the size of Hillsborough or Pittsboro but with no sprawl to speak of. There is a brand new bypass on one side and three large factories coming soon. I am told that there will be a building boom in the next few years. Also, in a town with a university that offers masters degrees in landscape design and landscape architecture, there are no landscape designers in Starkville. Actually, I looked in the phone book and found exactly one. Everyone who hears that I can do design work tells me that this town needs it. The landscapers do the designs themselves on a sheet of paper pretty much on the spot, from what I hear. “And I am worried that it is the same old thing they just did somewhere else. I want something special,” said the guy who sold me my car insurance policy. I could do so much for these people. But I am thinking of going in another direction. I am taking a sabbatical from the world of landscaping.

Today I got my Mississippi driver’s license and Mississippi tags for the Golf. A very proud moment for me. I have much more to do. Better get to it.