Happy Hurricane Season!

Today kicks off hurricane season 2007 for the Atlantic Ocean. Tropical Storm Barry is brewing in the Gulf of Mexico, but he's going to head northeast up over Florida and the Carolinas, so he shouldn't be coming this way. I don't know what Mississippi and Louisiana would do if a hurricane does make its way over here--the Gulf Coast in both states is still in shambles. They just opened up a bridge the other day that got washed out in southern Mississippi almost two years ago during Katrina, and some of the towns down there still have yet to be rebuilt.

The staff at the Natchez National Historical Park has been awarded the National Park Service Southeast Region "Keepers of the Light" award! It totally sounds like some kind of Young Women's award, but I didn't tell the other rangers that because they wouldn't know what I was talking about. It is a pretty big deal though--the award is given to a park that makes extra efforts to provide educational opportunities. Because of our Junior Ranger camps, Junior Ranger program, and elementary school programs, we were obviously good candidates.

Speaking of Jr. Ranger camp, week #1 (out of four) begins on Monday. We've all been working to get everything together--now everyone just needs to rest up for what is sure to be a crazy-wild month of June! Angie and I went to lunch at La Fiesta today since we realized that this was probably the last time we would have a nice, peaceful, quiet lunch hour until after camp.

Today I gave the world's fastest tour of Melrose: 4 minutes! This guy came to see the house, but he said that he didn't want me to give him any information--he just wanted to breeze through and look at the house. He said he was tired of boring, detailed tours. Fine with me! We were literally in and out. I'm sure that was probably the shortest Melrose tour in history.

"The sky is falling!"

It really did look like the sky was falling this afternoon, or like Natchez was going to get sucked up into a black hole. We've been getting some pretty nasty afternoon thundershowers, but I don't know that I've seen blacker clouds than the ones that blew through today. We were having a Jr. Ranger camp meeting with all of the rangers up in the visitor center today, and then all of a sudden there was this huge flash of lightning. It must have hit somewhere on the property because it was SO loud! It scared us all to death. Last night, when I took this photo, I saw some crazy lightning. It had been raining all afternoon, but then it let up a little bit about the time the sun was setting, so I thought I'd drive down to the bluff to see the sunset. It was really pretty, but at one point there was this gigantic flash of lightning that went horizontally clear across the sky. It was crazy! At that point I decided I'd better vacate the area because, as my family knows, I tend to attract lightning bolts.

I usually give about 40 minute tours of Melrose, but the two tours I gave this morning went for over an hour! The people had a lot of questions, and I had some doll experts on my first tour today, so they spent about 30 minutes just at the grandkids room where we have a couple of old dolls. I was pretty pooped after the two tours, but then I got to tend the visitor center for the afternoon, which was a good break. By the time the storm rolled in, we didn't get any more visitors, so it was a quiet afternoon (except for the thunder and lightning). Ranger Nathan had this guy on his tour this afternoon who Tim and I decided must be a member of the KKK or something. He started talking about "color issues" and was going off about how "Abe Lincoln messed up the whole system!" Tim asked him what he meant, and the guy said, "With emancipation--freein' the slaves! He ruined the lifestyle we could have all had!" Yikes with a capital "Y"! There are definitely some crazies out there.

Catherine and Everett have gone on another fishing trip. I hope they don't catch any more fish because there is zero room left in my freezer!

Rendezvous at Wal Mart

Today was a super busy day at Melrose. I had to give four tours of the house, which always wears me out, but I met a lot of fun people. I finally got my suitcase back last night! It was kind of funny--I was picking up some groceries at Wal Mart, including a toothbrush in case I never saw my suitcase again, but then the airport delivery guy called me and said that he was in Natchez but couldn't find my house. I had tried to give him directions, but he said he still had no idea how to get there. He said that the one place he knew how to get to in Natchez was Wal Mart. So I told him that I just so happened to be shopping at Wal Mart, and we decided to rendezvous out in front of the store. So, I flagged him down when he came, he had me sign all of these papers, and I went walking across the Wal Mart parking lot lugging my suitcase behind me. It was kind of late at night when this all went down, so I had to kind of laugh to myself. I realized that it was kind of a comical situation--picking up my suitcase in the Wal Mart parking lot like it was some kind of drug deal or something. I was glad to have my stuff back safe and sound though.

When I opened the freezer last night, I found that it was FULL of fish! I thought, "Oooh, nasty!" But at least the fish are frozen. The Ratcliffes obviously had a very successful fishing trip last week. I survived cleaning out the litter box yesterday at Nathan and Kate's, but it was pretty smelly. Luckily they are home now, so I don't need to worry about that anymore.

The big news here in town is that the famous mansion Dunleith, which is just down the street from me (where our favorite restaurant The Castle is located) caught on fire! Dunleith is probably one of Natchez's most well-known houses because it is such an imposing, ornate structure. The firemen saved the house, but the gift shop and some of the staff offices were gutted. Yikes! Hopefully they can get back on their feet there before too long. Well, I'm going to go eat some dinner.

Lethal Litter Box

Still no suitcase, but the delivery guy just called me and said he's on his way to Natchez right now. But he's never been to Natchez before, so he was asking for directions. I tried to explain how to find Routhland, but we'll see if the suitcase ever really arrives.

Today we got a couple of new people here at the park. One lady ranger came here from the Selma to Montgomery National Trail in Alabama for a month-long detail working with interpretation, and another lady ranger came here on a curatorial detail from Fort Sumter National Monument. They are both really cool ladies, and it will be fun to get to know them better this month. Today I was in charge of teaching Carla, from Alabama, how things worked at the Johnson house. It was a pretty slow day there, so we mostly just chatted. She's really funny, and some people who had been looking through the house came downstairs and said, "You two are just delightful! It's as if you've been friends forever." They were surprised to find out that today was the first day Carla and I had ever met.

Now I have the unfortunate task of going over to Nathan and Kate's to clean out Regis's litter box (he's their cat). Their dog Scully has allergies, so Tim has been having to give her a Benadryl wrapped in peanut butter and ham everyday, but Tim refuses to clean out the litter box, so that job has fallen to me. Nathan and Kate are in Virginia until tomorrow, and the litter box has obviously been festering while I was in Utah, so I should probably just bite the bullet and go over there. I feel like I need a hazmat suit, or at least a gas mask, for this job. Poor Regis probably wonders what is going on.

Fortune Cookies

Happy Memorial Day everyone! Today was another eventful flying day. Usually nothing out of the ordinary happens when I fly, but such has not been the case lately. I left Salt Lake at about 9:00 this morning, and everything seemed good--we even arrived in Dallas a few minutes early. My plane to Jackson was delayed about a half an hour in Dallas, but that wasn't too bad. So everything was going well until I arrived in Jackson . . . and my suitcase didn't! There were a few of us on my flight whose bags didn't come. The airport people said that the bags were probably put onto a later flight out of Dallas, and they will deliver them to our houses tomorrow. Hopefully the bags really were on another plane and are not stashed off in some random place never to be seen again. Luckily I had all of the absolute necessities with me, but still--my toothbrush, makeup, hair products, numerous pairs of clothes, etc., etc. are in the suitcase. So I definitely hope to receive it soon.

I decided to not let the suitcase incident ruin my day, so I went on an antique shopping adventure. There's this cool place called Antique Mall of the South in Ridgeland, just north of Jackson, so I took a little detour and went antique shopping there. They had tons of stuff, and I could have stayed in there for several days, but luckily they closed at 5:00, so I was forced to remove myself. I found a couple of cool random little things. Then I decided to tool on over to Vicksburg and go to dinner with Angie since Matt was going to be gone this evening. We went to this funny Chinese restaurant and had some tasty food. Unfortunately the sushi chef was on vacation to Hong Kong. They brought us some fortune cookies after dinner, and my fortune said something like: "You will soon get something you have always wanted." Hmmm, a million dollars? Angie's cookie had two fortunes in it, and it was so funny because one of them said: "Something you have lost will be returned to you next week." She said, "Tiffany! This one is for you! You're going to get your suitcase back!" I said, "Hooray! But wait, next week? It's only Monday!" Hopefully the fortune cookie's prediction will come true this week. In fact, hopefully it will come true tomorrow!