An East Nashville co-worker suggested a simple flow chart to answer the question, “When is the Tomato Art Fest“. It only needed two paths to answer the question, “Is it the hottest weekend of the year?” If the answer was no, it was obviously not time for the Tomato Art Fest. It comes as no surprise that the moment I stepped out the door this morning for the festival’s 5K road race that I instantly broke a sweat.

I drove my car a street a few blocks from the starting line, a point bemoaned by my wife and her friends. Sure, we live a little over a mile and it would have been an easy walk in anything other than this oppressive heat. Even if I had braved it, the “getting home” part would have sucked after the race was over. I also needed the car as a place to leave my wallet and keys, as I do not think the post office would appreciate it very much if I used my PO box as a locker.

I searched around for the registration table, finding it right next to the starting line. When I picked up my packet, I noticed that Samantha’s name was still on the list, and that her bib had been printed. We had arranged for a friend of ours from college to take over her number, but it apparently was too late to get the name (and gender) changed on the registration. I went on, but I was already fairly sure what was about to happen.

The mayor was the grand marshal for the race, announcing “I’ll give you guys the same advice I use for myself: start the race slow, and finish slower.” I joked to myself if this was also his campaign strategy when the convention center opponents go to the polls next summer. We were off, and I set into my usual race strategy — keep pace with the “casual runners” until I need to let up a bit. That lasted for about a half mile for this one, as we started hitting the more hilly areas of the East Park area, and realizing that some of the crowd I had been running with had trained quite a bit more than I had. The East Nasty runners group was out in full force, so I tried to avoid setting any benchmarks that I knew I could not hit. Seeing one of their shirts usually indicated such a benchmark.

As we rounded 6th Street to head back towards Five Points, my one mile time came in at 12:37 (if the time keeper was to be believed). If I could have that pace for all three miles, I would be a lot happier with how I do in 5Ks. My goal is to consistently get below 40 minutes, and then pick a target that will probably not go any lower than 35-36 minutes. My 200-pound body is a bit tough to lug around, even with long legs.

Around the halfway point in the race when the course goes by Sky Blue Cafe (the owner goes to our church), the smell of bacon from breakfast wafted out into the street. I think I would have put up a sign that said “Too hot to run? Come inside for BACON!” She probably would have had at least a dozen or so folks take her up on the offer.

As we made the final series of turns to go back towards Five Points (after running through a sprinkler that one of the homeowners along Fatherland has mercifully pointed over the sidewalk), I encountered the unexpected. There, standing along the street was a woman in a red apron with a pan and a pair of tongs. She simply said “Bacon?” This mystical woman was offering that very thing I had craved 10 minutes earlier. My first thought was that I was hallucinating, and that I had actually fallen over in a ditch somewhere along the course. I took the piece of bacon, thanking the Bacon Lady and ran on. She continued to offer it to other runners, so I at least have other witnesses that can verify my story.

Bacon was a bad choice, by the way. My stomach, already jostled from two bottles of water and two miles of running, did not react well at all to the sudden influx of greasy goodness. It tasted great though, so I cannot say that I necessarily have any regrets. Another couple was talking across the street ahead to their neighbor about inviting them over for Bloody Marys. One runner stopped and said “Bloody Marys? What house number is this?” The unamused guy said “You’re on Russell Street.”

We were on Woodland.

I tried my best to run the last few blocks, making that the toughest fifth of a mile I think I have ever tackled. Nothing — lungs, back, legs, feet — on my body wanted to do that. I plodded across the finish line, watched my run tracking app crash and did some quick math. I came in at 43:33 according to my phone, but my chip put me in at 42:52, certainly not my best performance of the year, but not too far off pace from my other races.

We do not have any other races scheduled for the fall yet, but I am certainly looking forward to the cooler weather.

“Should this mirror go?” “Yeah, the water was at least that high, and the wood is probably starting to mold.” I set down the prybar that I had been using in a futile effort to remove the carpeting edging and placed both hands to either side of the mirror. I stopped suddenly. “Wow.”

On the mirror, the dirt was very pronounced right at where the water line had been. I let it hang there for a moment more. I could see the reflection of the volunteers streaming in and out of the house on Neill Street in East Nashville, a large trash pile looming large behind them lining the city street. The small, two bedroom house was starting to empty of its contents, with all of the carpet removed from the living room, the kitchen mostly empty. Empty, except for the remnants of the Hanes t-shirt box that had held the family’s Christmas tree. Mud was still caked everywhere.

The scene was similar to a dozen or so others from earlier this morning and yesterday. Volunteers entered houses clad in yellow shirts, gloves, face masks, carry tools and cleaning supplies. Five to seven people would work for an hour or so before moving on to the next work site. The piles of trash strewn across the yard along the street would grow five-fold in that time, all of it the personal belongings of complete strangers, ruined in the flood.

This is parts of East Nashville. With widespread devastation in Bellevue, downtown, Opryland and other places, it is tough to catch much of a glimpse of it on the evening news. Finding these work sites is often a challenge without a GPS. But when you do find it, it is unmistakable. Some folks are lucky. Their basements flooded, turning everything that had been kept in storage into toxic trash. For those folks, it is a matter of getting rid of stuff they probably had not seen in years. Others, it is their entire home and living space. In the six or so hours each day that I was on a worksite, I have seen homes with minor flooding (12 to 16 inches in the basement) to catastrophic losses (the home on Neill Street had at least 5’6″ of water in it). Look up from your computer and mentally picture where that would be on your wall. Now figure out how much stuff you would still have.

The work has been hard, but it has not been without a few laughs here and there. Yesterday, I worked in one side of a duplex owned by a retired couple. Our job was to remove the first four feet of drywall (I later learned this is because drywall comes in four-foot sections) and the insulation behind it. The reason to leave the second four feet intact was because it did not get wet, and could be retained when the contractors came in to finish up. My hammer slipped, nicking the top section. The son of the couple just laughed, saying sarcastically “Don’t worry man, it’s just my inheritance.” The gravity of the matter was that his parents had no idea how they would pay the $5,000 deductible per unit before their insurance would kick in.

When working a townhouse on a different street, our team scooped up the contents of the living room before ripping out the carpet. It was obviously the home to people with children, as toys, books, crayons and more were all scattered about. While carrying out the dishwasher, one of the volunteers found a Justin Beiber CD, covered in mud next to the door. “Well, it looks like this, uh… Justin BYE-ber disc isn’t any good anymore.” Another volunteer carrying an armload of garbage dryly said as he walked by, “It was already ruined long before the flood.”

At a house on Joseph Street yesterday, we waiting for a FEMA agent to enter the home before we began work. She methodically walked throughout the house, taking notes on her tablet PC and snapping pictures with a small digital camera. The questions were about how high the water had come, where the circuit breaker box was located and whether the chest freezer had been knocked over by the water, or if it had been turned over when they entered the home. I could not pay much attention to what was happening in between arm loads of soggy clothes. The two residents stood at the fence line while we worked. I would imagine that being in the house would have been tough for me had I been in their shoes. They could barely even look at the trash piling up on the street.

To us, the flood meant trash. Our job was to get as much of the stuff out of there as quickly as possible before deadly mold set up in the home. But it is not that simple. Our groups were also dispatched with volunteers experienced with pastoral care. Because the flood was not just an event that turned their belongings to trash. It was something that has forever changed their lives, mixing hope among the tragedy of losing everything. Each box was more than just a soggy stack of old clothes — they were memories that the volunteers could never really connect with, but as vivid as ever for the those that called the place home.

No matter what building we entered, it seemed to be a universal truth that everything that touched water had to be put out to the curb. Except the Bibles. If you waited around long enough or if the right volunteer saw it before moving things out, there would be a single family Bible left on the porch railing. Faith is a powerful tool in coping with hard times. I am not sure if the book was left for the homeowner as much as it was for the volunteers who walked by it on every trip back from the street corner.

The weekend has ended without feeling much of a sense of accomplishment, but it was not for a lack of trying. There is still so much work to be done on the long road to recovery for Nashville, and even longer for the cities and counties to our north, south and west. The efforts of volunteers has been inspiring to many people who call Tennessee home and beyond. The reality of volunteer work is this, though. You will have times when it does not just simply come together, personalities clash and effort is wasted. But I believe that anyone who tries to help a neighbor in their time of need has made a difference in a world often called cold and cynical.

For many volunteers, the work week will start tomorrow just as it always has. My mind will be wandering down a street that, before this weekend, I had never even heard of.

The alarm had gone off two hours prior, but getting out of bed this morning was a chore and a half. We had watched and celebrated the Nashville Predators nab their first road playoff win over the Chicago Blackhawks late into the night before, and the older we get, the earlier our bedtime is supposed to be. My plan for the day was sparse, but I really wanted to check out the Earth Day Festival at Centennial Park like we did last year. While Samantha was getting ready to head out, I started to straighten up the apartment and took out the trash.

Today was a beautiful day, with the temperature hovering in the low 70s for most of the day with bright sunshine. As I walked back from the trash cans, I noticed that Samantha’s car door was not all the way shut. I opened the door to lock it, and saw the pile of of stuff in the passenger seat. We had a bit of a guest overnight, likely walking through the parking lot and looking for unlocked cars. Whoever he or she was, he opened the door, sat down and emptied the glove box and center console. Not finding anything of value, he moved on. Nothing was stolen, not even chargers for our phones. After reaching that conclusion, I put back where it came from and cleaned out the floorboard of the car from the leftover Diet Coke bottles from her last two weekends on the road.

I went in and told Samantha what had happened, and called the police. While nothing was stolen and the car was not damaged, I wanted to make sure that the incident was at least part of the statistics in case there was another car break-in overnight. The dispatcher took my information, and said an officer would be there soon. I kept cleaning out the car and making sure there was not anything that I remembered leaving in it. The person could not have spent long in the car, as the backseat was left virtually untouched (same beach towel in the seat, paperwork in the back pockets still in place). The officer rolled up about ten minutes later. My opinion of Metro response times has greatly improved.

He was a friendly guy, gesturing me to come to the side of the squad car where he rolled down the window. He asked a few simple questions (“When did you find it like this?,” “Are you certain that nothing of value is missing?,”) as well as the expected reminder about locking your doors in any neighborhood, not just East Nashville. “I’ve worked in this neighborhood for 19 years, and I can tell you it has really changed,” he said. “But you’re still going to have things like this happen in every neighborhood. You just gotta be smart.”

We talked a bit longer while he finished up the paperwork, noticing the UT Alumni Association plate that my wife has on the back of her car. “I went to UT, but it was time to go,” explaining that he, like me, had a bit of an extended stay. He was talking about Knoxville, but I decided not to bring up that I attended UT Martin. I signed the report, and he gave me the slip of paper with my case number on it. As frustrating as it is to have somebody go through your stuff, I am relieved that nothing was in there to steal, and that whoever it was did not damage the car in the process of not finding anything to steal.

We drove to the post office, where I learned that our Earth Day plans were changing — we were finally going to go get bikes. When Samantha and I moved to East Nashville, there were three stereotypical requirements for living here: skinny jeans, station wagon and bicycles. Neither of us can do the skinny jeans part (there’s a joke here about cheap hotels, but I will save that for a later time), and the car situation is fine as it is. The bikes, on the other hand, have just been a question of when and how much we wanted to pay for them. The answer was “soon” and “not much at all.”

We drove to the Academy Sports in Rivergate to grab two $125 bicycles. Many good friends of ours pleaded with us to get “real” bikes, but we went with the economy line of Huffy cruisers. Nothing fancy, nothing to write home about, and probably will have a resale value of about $25 a piece when they inevitably fall apart. I sent a message to a friend of mine with a Honda Fit to help us get them home — as Alison put it, her contribution to Earth Day was transporting two bicycles in a vehicle that gets 38 miles to the gallon. The three of us chilled at Ugly Mugs for a bit before getting on with the rest of the day.

I attached the various accessories that Samantha had picked out, aired up the tires and adjusted the seats before heading out for a test ride. Mine rides fine, Samantha’s still has a few kinks to work out. Not being too terribly mechanically inclined, I am hoping whatever is wrong is a simple fix.

All in all, a productive but strange day.

Metro Nashville schools were out this week on spring break, meaning that my already short commute whizzed by that much faster. I have finally hit a point where I can make the trip between our apartment and work without a whole lot of thought, muscle memory taking over and driving me to and from the office.

Today’s lunch was a trip to a taco truck — Mas Tacos Por Favor, to be specific. You cannot quite feel more urban than when you’re ordering a taco from a brightly painted Winnebago. Over lunch, we debated the finer points of being a “hippie” versus a “hipster,” and where you would find the highest concentration of each. I have also decided that anything with quinoa is not going to make it into my regular meal rotation. The chicken and fried avocado, on the other hand, were very good.

I sat down tonight to start sketching a new layout for this site, but have grown a bit fond of the overall look and feel. What I might do instead of a full redesign is clean up some of the finer points of the formatting. I have started with some of the headline typography and changing the behavior on the portfolio link (it now loads right over top of the page).

The rain is supposed to roll in Sunday, so I hope we get to enjoy a beautiful Saturday outside tomorrow. I might see if we can go for a run around the park.

Tonight I was driving down Eastland Avenue and was caught in a parade of runners darting across streets and down the sidewalks. I called Samantha to ask what on earth could be going on, because it obviously was not the kind of road race where they block off the streets. “Probably a runner’s club,” she said. I muttered something about reflective tape and Darwin’s theory of natural selection. When I finally got to our parking lot, I found a restaurant patron had taken our one assigned space — my space. Samantha usually snags the one marked “compact” while I get the one with our apartment number painted on it.

I became frustrated. The tow-away signs went up a week or two ago, so this had become less of an issue lately. There were no other spots nearby, so I went back down the street and into the Kroger. Two goals: Coke and lottery tickets. Having grabbed both and weaving through the typical post-5 p.m. crowds, I drove back to our apartment. The car was still there. Still somewhat frustrated, I stuck a note on their window with the simple message of “[...] We will tow you.” Well, at least we will try. Samantha had called the towing company before, only to learn that it typically took them several hours to get a truck out for a request such as ours after dark. I really fault the planners of this particular development more than the driver because “adequate parking” never made it on the list of amenities once the third restaurant opened. Still, the jerks from Robertson County should read the signs and not park in a numbered space.

My penmanship leaves much to be desired. I am tempted to fire up InDesign and Illustrator to have a more professional looking note to leave behind when it inevitably happens again.

The words “unseasonably __” have come to mean little so far this year, but they are being tossed around anyway. We have had two or three snowy/icy days lately that brought the city to its knees (or out to play, depending on your perspective). And today, in February, we had 60 degrees and sunny without a cloud in the sky. Being a weatherman in middle Tennessee must be the most frustrating and thankless job in America.

Yesterday morning we went to a legislative breakfast on Jefferson Street hosted by Sen. Thelma Harper (TN-19). It seemed like everyone I ran into was running for Juvenile Court Clerk, as at least four of the eleven candidates were in attendance. After a great breakfast and a lengthy update of what is happening (and not happening) this session, we quietly slipped out the back door.

We picked up another piece of furniture from ModerNash, bringing our total to two new chairs, a coffee table, a bookcase, a nightstand, a six-drawer dresser and the new three drawer-dresser. If IKEA were a publicly traded company, I wish I had put part of my retirement funds in it before we moved. I guess on the plus side, if I ever need another hobby, apparently “furniture assembly” is making the short list. The good news is that only a few things do not have a “home” yet in our storage-strapped single bedroom apartment.

After finishing up with the dresser assembly, we went to an ordination service at our church. The candidate was a young woman that chairs our outreach committee and works with victims of domestic violence and abuse. I have never been to such a service before. I guess I had assumed that simply graduating from a seminary or divinity program fully qualified you to be a minister. This particular service had much more of a ritualistic nature to it, where the candidate receives a robe, a stole, hymnal and other such items prior to receiving the notation in the order of service as “Reverend.” There were many moments where you could feel the collective tears begin to well up in the eyes of all gathered. It was a very inspiring service.

Both yesterday and today have been gorgeous, although I can hear the rain begin to fall outside our bedroom. This morning we walked to Mad Donna’s (a restaurant) for brunch, debating how soon we needed to pick up bicycles (the final verdict is to hold off until at least mid-March). A mile or two worth of walking through the neighborhood is a welcome change from how we would have spent a similar afternoon this time last year. We even managed to sneak in part of a Scrabble game before the afternoon crowds at the two neighboring restaurants became too much of a hilarious distraction to finish.

I can hardly wait for spring to really begin.

The replacement appliances are on order to be delivered next Monday. Paying for a washer and dryer two years after buying the last set stings, but there is little that can be done after the architect decided that only stackable units should fit. Also on the agenda are a computer desk (a maybe) and a counter-top microwave (a must). Replacement shower curtains, mini-blinds, trash cans, etc. are also on the shopping list.

The good news, as I have said before, is that we are selling or donating many things that will not need to be replaced. We offloaded four bags and two plastic bins full of an assortment of items at the local Goodwill today. Most of it was old coats and household decorations that never quite fit the decor here and simply would not fit at all at the new place. As much stuff as it was, it does not seem to have made much of a dent in what we wanted to be rid of. Our associate pastor and his roommate came and got our washer and dryer today while a friend from college picked up the bar stools.

Fewer daylight hours, busy times at work and the whole process of moving has sapped just about all of the creativity out of me. If I can get one or two of those things in better shape, I think I will be a bit more upbeat about 2010. In the meantime, I am going to go explore the joy of figuring out our tax return.

It was still there on Thursday morning as I wearily walked to my car, but the warmer weather of the last few days finally put away the remains of the tiny snowman the kids downstairs had built next to the bush. We had all survived the Great Flurry of 2010, one that only kept me working from home for half a day. The bitter cold was more of the story than snow and ice, which is why the snowball had been hanging around for so long.

Last Sunday, Samantha and I signed a lease on a new apartment in East Nashville. We might not have realized at the time, but now a gigantic digital clock now floats over our heads everywhere we go. The time on that clock counts down to the day we have to get all of our stuff out of one apartment and into …

Not necessarily the next one. Every time anyone moves some things make the transition, others do not. For us, more than the average percentage of of our property will be sold, given away or trashed. That time has finally come — when you chunk the dorm-room era stuff and either replace it or decide it was not that critical to have in the first place. As the next place is a single bedroom, we are learning exactly what we really need to keep. That lesson simply reads, “not that much.”

Sentimental items rarely keep the same sentiment after a few years. Old Rolling Stones? Keeping four or five issues, chunking the rest. Hand-me-downs from relatives? Not that great in the first place. Kitchenware? Logo apparel? CD racks? There’s a pile of stuff that will likely require two trips to Goodwill to get rid of it all. Many of our larger pieces of furniture are being donated to the fraternity for Scholars House.

The process is not a fun one, but it is cathartic in a way. We managed to fill this 900-plus square foot, two bedroom apartment with a lot of stuff we never wanted or needed. I feel something approaching excitement at the idea of simplifying our possessions. Clearing away the senseless clutter in our lives should really be a daily habit.

The next place, while smaller, has a lot of added bonuses. It is trendy and modern looking, but that is not really what appeals to me. The location is right in the middle of where we spend a good portion of our free time anyway — down the street from our church, within walking distance of our favorite coffee shop and restaurants. Mostly by being “not Goodlettsville,” it is more likely that we will be able to get out and do more without the added expense of having to drive 15 miles to do it. While Samantha’s three minute commute is now going to take around 15, my 30 minute commute is dropping to about seven. If I want to come home for lunch, it is just a quick trip over the river from Germantown.

The location was ultimately what swayed us away from our original plan. We had talked to two of the high-rises downtown about moving. The prices were within our range — it actually irritated us that one of them would be less per month than if we were to go month-to-month at our current complex. The thought behind moving downtown was that if we were to ever move to Chicago or some other major city, urban living might be a necessity. If that were the case, we wanted to try it out in a city we already knew. All that said, I really was not all that excited about becoming a one-car household nor was I ready to shell out the $100 extra per month for a second parking space. But I was coming to terms with it. Had it not been for a friend of ours telling us that the other apartments were leasing, there is a fairly good chance we would have gone another route.

I am really looking forward to having the whole process over with, though. My office area (another casualty that will not be at the next place) is impassible with boxes, crates and paperwork. Somewhere in our closet Samantha has already picked up a shirt that says “East Nashville” in big, varsity type. I think she has been ready to go for a while.