Misterissippi

I was watching the crazy/awesome "24" season finale last night, and there was this funny Pepsi commercial. It said that 56% of Americans think Pepsi taste better than Coke, so in honor of that they proposed creating 56 states out of the current 50 United States. One of the proposed ideas was to split Alabama into two states and "call one Misterissippi so that Mississippi has someone to talk to." Ha ha. That was kind of funny. Everett and Catherine have left on a fishing trip for a few days. Mom suggested the perfect word to describe Everett: he is a "quintessential" Southern gentleman--meaning he lives the typical old-time leisure life of the Southern gentlemen of the past.

I get to fly home for a few days on Thursday!!! I am soooooo excited! I leave from Jackson in the morning on Thursday, so I am going to spend tomorrow night up at Angie and Matt's in Vicksburg--so I'll just have a 40-mile drive to the airport as opposed to a 115-mile drive. I wish I could stay at home longer, but I'm grateful for the time I will have there. The Mormon History Association conference should be a lot of fun too. Last year it was in Casper, Wyoming, so Mom and I made quite a drive, but this year it's in Salt Lake, which is very convenient.

I had some really nice people on my tour this morning. One couple was from New Orleans, and the husband was a firefighter. He had some crazy Hurricane Katrina stories. They said that their 8-year-old son wants to write a book about how his dad saved his hamster. I guess that the hamster, appropriately named Lucky, was marooned at the family's home for a couple of weeks. They were unable to access their house and were afriad that Lucky wouldn't survive, but the dad and his fire crew were eventually able to get to the house, and Lucky was still alive so they saved him! The other people--an older mom and her daughter--were from Illinois. They were excited to hear that I'll be going to Eastern Illinois University in the fall and they told me how much they like the town of Charleston, so that made me happy.

Vicksburg National Military Park (where Angie's husband Matt works) is at the forefront of the latest National Park Service news. I guess that earlier this month some vandals dug a bunch of holes around the Texas monument at the park--obviously looking for artifacts. The damage to the area was extensive, so the park began a restoration project as well as an in-depth investigation to try to figure out who did it. Well, in the process of investigating, they uncovered a human skeleton buried in a shallow grave near the area!! It's like a real-life episode of the TV show "Bones!" So now the area has been turned into a crime scene while they try to figure out when the body was buried, who it is, who vandalized the monument, etc., etc. Craziness!