Stay with me. Go places.

Well, I'm officially going to New York. December 13-21, 2007. Flying out of Memphis nonstop to Laguardia. $340 roundtrip.

I feel this trip will mark some sort of milestone in my life. It will mean I'm becoming cultured, I'm going places. Two years ago I went to San Francisco. Now I'm going to New York City. Growing up poor in a small Southern town, I always entertained ideas of seeing California and New York about as wholeheartedly as I pursued notions of being an astronaut or runway model. These places seemed just so foreign for me, so out of reach. Had I been asked five years ago if I ever thought I'd go either place, I'd have said no, that I never figured I'd make it to a city bigger than Memphis. And I was content with that, too. I didn't know any better. My family doesn't travel, short of a trip down Highway 61 to the casinos in Tunica, or a little further south down to Vicksburg to see the Civil War battle sites. I come from practical people, who spend their money on car insurance and new glasses, not whirlwind tours of Broadway.
When I went to college in Arkansas, my momma and daddy didn't know what to think. Neither of them had ever been there, so for them I might as well have been packing my bags for China. Three hours from home is much like going halfway across the world for people who have never lived anywhere except the same small town. Since then I've spent a summer living in New Brunswick, and now I live in Knoxville. Seems like I've become more adventurous. Here I am, forever a Mississippi expat, girding my loins and gathering my bearings to see the Big Apple.

It's an exciting time, folks.