A peek at the life, times and thoughts of John during his two-year stint in Knoxville.

It looked like the weather was very favorable today. I don't think I set foot outside the house...but I did get some reading done, and that was very much needed.

Hebrew continues to be a struggle, but this is only the second week. If I had flawless recall, I would probably remember Greek taking some time to not feel like a 2-hour beat down each session. I am starting to recognize characters and transliterate more quickly and this will make things go much more smoothly...I hope. Some improvement was made today after working through an exercise in the book.

I still have a load of laundry sitting in the dryer. It's been there for hours now. I hope it's actually dry.

There have been times in my life when I drink pop after an extended abstinence from it and notice something about the taste I hadn't when I was a regular consumer. This is starting to be the case with television. I do not watch much television anymore. So, imagine my surprise when I turn on the TV yesterday and am able to clearly see what I hadn't paid much attention to when I watched it all the time: the extent to which sex is used to sell things.

Don't mistake me: I've known for a *long* time that sex is used to sell things. It was, however, surprising to see an advertisement for orange juice that was trying to use sex appeal. Weren't the ads with a 1/2 gallon box of ice cream as the pool boy bad enough?

I was watching a few minutes of CNN's election coverage while I ate my dinner (West Virginia's primary is today). They continue the recent media trend of painting West Virginia in the most favorable light possible.

A day or two ago a writer suggested that the reason Clinton was so far ahead of Obama in the polls is because West Virginia Democrats are racist. I suppose if they had been big on Obama they would have been sexist.

A brilliant Republican Strategist on part of CNN's election coverage panel peered over his laptop long enough to say that middle class, white West Virginians will vote for Clinton and if you're black or go to Starbucks "maybe the only one in West Virginia" then you'll vote for Obama.

Very classy. Thanks so much CNN. High quality, professional election coverage. I'd be fine if we didn't have a Starbucks, but as it stands we have plenty. We have electricity and telephones too.

I've come close to going through with it before, but today I finally did.

My old blog, johnalism.mindsay.com has been deleted. I've decided there are bound to be things in the archives that people who lack an understanding of me might mis-perceive and I don't want to give them that opportunity.

-John

Subway's $5 foot long special is about to end. I know because I was told by an employee today. It was fun to get a sub that usually costs $4.79 for a 6" in the foot-long variety for $5.

--Happy Mothers' Day. I'm not sure if punctuation technically belongs in the "Mothers" part. Is this a day that mothers own to themselves? If it's possessive then I'm correct. If it is just a day full of mothers then no apostrophe is necessary. I'm not sure what the case is.

--The Hebrew alphabet (and vowels) are coming slowly for me. Today I will add the last of the vowels to my flash card deck and then set about focusing on not only remembering the names and the forms but being able to put it all together from memory. So far I can go through and by looking at the characters tell what the names are. For the test I have to provide it all myself. We'll see how that goes. The test isn't until Tuesday, so we've got some more time.

--I'm still a bit sore from tennis and reminded how out of shape I am. I've never really had my ankles/lower shins hurt the way they do from Friday's adventure. I would love to hit the court 4-5 days a week, but as tight as my schedule is this quarter that doesn't seem likely.

--Getting back to the Mothers('?) Day theme: the founding of the holiday in the United States is attributed to a West Virginian. That West Virginian is from a town called Grafton which is not too terribly far from my stomping grounds. Another town near me claims to have had the first observance of Fathers' Day, but there seems to be more room for debate as to whether they really "invented" it or not.

Nonetheless, West Virginia can theoretically claim to care more about parents than the rest of you states. Take *that*!

--American Apparel is expanding. Don't ask me how (I don't know anybody who has ever bought an item from American Apparel), but they are now advertising on Facebook too. I've noticed that Mindsay is prominently featuring Travelocity today. We're moving on up!

-John

Just like that, one week of the summer quarter is over.

I got out and hit some tennis balls today for the first time in what seems like at least two years. Played best-of-seven sets with three classmates. It took a little while, but my serve came back, my backhand was decent and my net play was as good as it's ever been, despite the usual goof or twelve along the way.

In all I won two of three: 4-1, 0-4, 4-1. Not a bad day. Played some doubles after that. Took a 4-1 win and an 0-4 loss to finish the day.

It didn't take long to remember why I have always enjoyed playing tennis so much. Very good workout and yet oddly relaxing. I have never put *too* much pressure on myself to win in tennis, although admittedly I'd rather be on the winning side.

Since the weekend is here I'll be doing a lot of reading. Mostly for school with a little bit of personal, casual reading scheduled too. I'm finishing up my run through the Hebrew alphabet and hopefully will get Sunday and Monday to review it all and be ready for the test Tuesday.

Have a good weekend.

-John