One Week Down

It’s Tuesday the 14th Aug and today back in the office, found out I was going down to Mississippi next week. To be precise I’ll be at the John C Stennis Space Centre which is a big NASA facility in Mississippi for the next couple of months. Anyway not going to bore you with work, having meetings most of this week about what will be happening over the next couple of months, am going to skip most of the week just mention the things I did outside work
Rolls Royce in the UK were over for the meetings so spent a couple of days going out with them at night for meals, what I said earlier about the portions sizes is defiantly correct, you can almost go swimming in the coke it’s so big and some of the stakes are the size of a small cow, OK know I'm exaggerating a bit but they are big
After the RR guys had left it was pretty much the weekend, got invited to a couple of peoples homes for meals and a beer or two

Friday night went to Cathy and Fred's, they'd just built a new house for dinner. Another friend called Rich was cooking for us all, i knew Rich from working with him in Korea. Rich and His wife were living in Fred's and Cathy's basement, sounded funny when i first heared, made me want to laugh, i was thinking of what a basement or cellar in the UK was like especially mine, sounded a bit like they had squatters who they couldn't get out.

With this in mind is set out using the directions Cathy had given me, the house was about 15miles out of Tullahoma, found it no problem thanks to Mister Google.

The the house was fantastic, nice and big no close neighbours,the basement was like a separate house, it had it's own bathroom and kitchen plus everything else.

Fred and Cathy had built the house themselves, well not themselves literally but they had bought the land and hired labour. Apparently it's pretty easy here to buy land and build on it, seems you can pretty much buy any piece of land and build, planning permissions still needed same as for us but it's real easy to get so I'm told, must be because there's so much land around.

Forgot about the food,Rich did up proud he must have cooked for 10 instead of 5 as there was as much again left over even after seconds, had a nice evening a few beers good company and in a great place.

Guy who I'm sitting next to me in the office is an old friend of mine called Rusty he invited me round for dinner Saturday. Have worked with Rusty on projects in the past and he just happens to be from Mississippi where I'm going, so he's been filling me in all week on what i can expect down there. Mosquito's the size of helicopters, he compared them to the scene in "Apocalypse Now" when the helicopters are coming in to the sound of Wagner. There are also alligators snakes and a lot of nasty spiders and what they call fire ants, all of them bite or poison you.

The photos are of flag that decorate the wall of Rusty's office
The one on the right is the flag of Mississippi, and the one on the left is the confederate battle flag with a Nottingham Forest pin just to the right of it, some guy gave the pin to Rusty in a pub when he was over at Rolls in Derby. Above them both to the left is the stars and stripes, the war may be over but it's not forgotten down here.

On to the meal turned up at Rusty's again courtesy of Google, Fred and Cathy were there to. Took some Stella which i know he's partial to and some Cadbury's chocolate for his wife, it was made by Hershey's though, so no sure about that.
Oh forgot to mention was going to take some beer to Fred's yesterday, went in the supermarket to buy it, they would'nt sell it to me as i didn't have any photo ID on me. Apparently in Tennessee they have just passed another law (the bible belt thing) everyone and i mean everyone must prove there identity/age before being allowed to buy alcohol, felt a bit stupid having to prove my age, at my age.
Digressing a bit, the meal was great again, Rusty's wife had made it all except for smoking the ribs which he did. Old style southern ribs and pork loin, real real nice. Sort of a chocolate/sponge/cheesecake for desert with thick hot chocolate sauce all home made and great.
Anyway that's the end of the first week almost, so now to Mississippi.