What is Regionalism?

I woke up late this morning, not that unusual for me, with a full day ahead filled with 3 meetings and a Team Green event. After pushing the snooze button so many times that I thought the alarm was going to start snoring back at me, I managed to swig some mouth wash, throw the dogs outside, and grab some lotion and deoderant rather than take a shower. Well, that lotion was not lotion at all, it was hair conditioner!!! On my way out, I had reached into my travel bag of small bottles to grab lotion with me to apply while driving. As I rubbed and rubbed the quite creamy sticky mess, the "cream" would not absorb into my skin. I looked closer at the bottle with my half awake eyes and brain to see the words bounce out at me clear as day- CONDITIONER! Well, screech went the brakes, illegal U-turn, and I was in my shower in not time. I then applied REAL lotion and arrived at my meeting 15 minutes late. The meeting I was late to was cumberland region tomorrow's strategic planning session. it was an educational, inspiring, and productive 5 hour session with high stakeholders in our region's future. we mapped out our goals for the next 1, 3 and 5 years. CRT is a fantastic organization that is pioneering talk and decision making on regional and global levels- check them out at http://www.cumberlandregiontomorrow.org I arrived to the station in the afternoon to find the office empty- everyone had driven to Bonnaroo and left us here with our air conditioning, free showers, and fridgerators at our hands. After a quick meeting, off to set up for TG's urban walk. We had over 50 people ranging from all different demographics, backgrounds, and ages come out to a free urban walk. Guided by Mark from Village and TK Davis from the Civic Design Center, we walked around downtown, over Shelby Bridget, then back over Gateway and across to Rolling Mill Hill. The entire event made me want to live downtown and get excited about the new developments and healthy living opportunities now available to us. The evening event tied quite nicely to my morning event from discussing regionalism to discussing urban prosperity. Well, off to apply conditioner- to the hair this time! Nite.

Indeed this is my first time blogging. I suppose I spend most of my time outside in the woods, on trails or leading Team Green somewhere foreign. So I got set up with this blog and it is quite exciting. Just last year I thought a "blog" was an error with an ink pen that soaked through. In fact, I just got a new cell phone at the same time that this blogging thing was going on (my old one was like talking to Andy Griffith's operator- "Hey, can you get Barney on the phone, the cat is up the tree again". . ) My new phone had something called "text". Of course it did (and still!) takes me a half hour to write a damn 3 sentence message. I had no idea there were so many acronyms out there. I got texted "Omw" and I thought that he wanted to check out a new root beer. Around the same time, I got an email from someone that asked, "do I AIM"? Well of course I responded, "Why no, I use Aquafresh". Well, the stories can go on and on. What I'm really suppose to talk about is music or Team Green. Since I did not attend a TG event tonight, I did hear/ see / experience music. Tonight was the Free-Roo concert at Hard Rock. The opener Thief was outstanding! They're from M'boro and can be found at myspace.com/thiefband. Then of course I did the ultimate embarrassing thing for any DJ who gets in front of a crowd-I got in front of the mic and started talking. silence. I waved my hands at the sound engineer. talked again. silence. got hit in the head with a drumset as they were switching from Thief to Cowboy Mouth. tried talking one more time. no luck. i then stared into the audience, took a swig from my Red Bull intoxicating spirited drink and tromped off the stage with a smile of "wow, that was kind of embarrassing!" Of course the crowd looked at me like what kind of girm is that who just has to be on the stage?!?! Anyways, Cowboy Mouth eventually went on but no more than 20 minutes, a fuse was blown. and no, it was not me pissed at the sound guys. for real, a fuse was blown. in fact we had snuck up to the roof of the Hard Rock to get a better view of the stage and then dark fell upon us. I thought, oh no, I hope one of my friends up here with me did not take a piss onto the power below. But no, actually a fuse was blown. I stuck around for a little while but needed to get home to my monster pooches who could use some red bull purina. Tomorrow is our urban walk with ice cream. hopefully no rain. so maybe ill blog again tomorrow. we will see if i remember my log-in and password (can't there be some kind of "read my mind what my password is" system w/ technology these days?!?!?) Till then, nite.