I Think I’m Done with Tennessee for 2010 and Let Me Explain Philly…..

Who can believe that this Yankee has been to Tennessee twice in three months? I was in Knoxville this past Thursday through Sunday for a trial advocacy convention. I traveled there with one of my co-workers. In every cab he would ask the driver the following, “If I have to see just one thing in Knoxville what would it be?” The answer was always the same, “the stadium.” UT was not playing home this weekend so it was a ghost town and not a tsunami of orange. Apparently the stadium is their Eiffel Tower. Anyway he finally said to one cab driver, “If I have to see one thing in Knoxville, NOT the stadium, what would it be?” The cab driver was silent. Seriously. The football stadium is what they’ve got.

What other tid bits from Knoxville? The hotel I stayed in is owned by Peyton Manning. I love Peyton, truly I do but I have some suggestions for him, such as: 1) I’d like him to consider a spa at the hotel. After a long day in the trial seminar is it too much to ask for a damn hot stone massage? I may have even forked over $200 bucks for forty five minutes. 2) More flat screens and NFL Sunday ticket. For the love of everything holy dude you are an NFL quarterback and there is ONE lone TV in the lobby, two dinky ones in the bar…and 3) speaking of the bar, it closes at 11. That’s just a tad ridiculous. Especially when you have people coming in from out of town. 4) There is a plumbing problem Peyton. At 5 am on Sunday I hear from my bathroom an odd noise, only to find that the toilet is overflowing. With just water. They could not fix it and gave me a card to use the room next to me (thankfully unoccupied). I did however express, in my very Kim-like manner, my sheer and utter disappointment with the facility in my room and was comped the entire night. Score! Perhaps by Sunday they had had enough of lawyers on the premises.

Apparently there is also some issue with the picture that has appeared on FB of me in a Phillies hat. Let’s dissect shall we? One of the lawyers running the program is a Philly fan the way I am a Yankee fan. He ordered 25 hats from Lids earlier that day and handed them out. I told him his gesture was nice but I would not be donning the hat, nor would I take one home for my son. We all went to BW3’s to watch the game and unbeknownst to me, Mike snuck up behind me and stuck the hat on my head and had someone snap the picture. This was all in a matter of seconds mind you. If you notice, the hat is not securely on my head. I believe my friend Melissa called me out on smiling. I mean I was a tad shocked they caught me off guard. And I was gossiping with the girls already so I was pre-occupied. So I still bleed navy and white.

Anyway, I have a few pics of the dude. I missed him a lot. I have not been away from him this long since I went to Ireland. But I think this was a good thing. I need to be able to do conferences like this to expand my career, to network with new people and to go out and be an adult for a whole weekend. He had a great time staying with his father and was thrilled to see me when I pulled up. My little cutie. Here are just a few pics from last week to tide you guys over!