Happy Easter, y'all.

I can remember Easter dinners at my grandma's house when I was a kid. It was the one day a year I saw those estranged cousins, aunts, and uncles on the Sisk side of the house, and it never failed that Chris would have a new baby to show off with some atrocious middle name (Wayne, Joyce, and sundry others), and the likelihood that David, Jr. was in jail again and Grandma couldn't know was very high. But my Grandma, bless her heart, probably always knew. She was a hard one to get anything over on, but she played along like a pro. And she always had a Port Wine cheese ball and mayonnaise-y potato salad we'd eat alongside our ham on red plastic plates. And The World's Best Lemon Icebox Pie. I'd give my hind teeth for a slice of that pie.

This Easter I'm in Knoxville, diligently avoiding the work I should have done when I was back home in Arkansas and Mississippi on Spring Break. If it warms up outside, I want to take Flat Stanley around town and photograph him doing interesting-but-first-grade-acceptable things for my cousin Lily, a first-grader who asked if I'd decorate her paper doll and send pictures of him back to her teacher. I'm probably more excited about this project than she is. I've got plans to photograph my blond, blue-eyed Stanley working the photocopier and standing in front of the Sunsphere. I might take him to the Mellow Mushroom for bluegrass night on Thursday, but I'll have to make my friends (who I will require to pose with him, obviously) hide their beer cans. Someone's got to defend the innocence of youth, right?

So if you see me around with a paper doll and a digital camera, don't think I've lost my grip on reality. I'm still barely grasping, at least for another 5 weeks, another 3 research papers.