Loose Ends

I'm sort of running out of steam in the whole recent travels arena, and really, how many photos of Roman ruins can you look at before you become bored to tears.











Those Romans, so prolific.

The only place left that I haven't told you about is the city of Jerash in Jordan where we spent a day wandering around, you guessed it, Roman ruins. Jerash is the largest and most well preserved site of Imperial Roman architecture in the world outside of Italy. It's nestled in a valley amongst the mountains of Gilead, and has been dubbed "The Pompeii of the East".

On our drive to Jerash, we noticed lots and lots of pomegranates being sold out of the backs of trucks along the side of the road. Groves of pomegranates patch the countryside, and apparently it was harvest season. That doesn't have anything directly to do with Jerash, I just thought it was neat. Anyway, after Jerash, we drove back to Amman where we then flew back to New York where I promptly got sick. And that is all.



Now, on to more important items. The house. If you're tired of reading about our trip, you're probably even more tired of reading about our damn house. Such is our life and the contents therein. Hey, no one's forcing you to read this thing!

The progress we make on the house seems to be excruciatingly slow. But, there HAS been progress. We finally had carpeting installed in the master bedroom and actually SLEPT there last night for the first time. Miraculous.

This weekend, we painted a second coat of Gobi Desert in the master bathroom and then cleaned, cleaned, cleaned the master bedroom, moved our bed upstairs (moving a king size bed upstairs is neither an easy nor enjoyable endeavor, but through much swearing, laughing, and sweating we got it up there), and moved our nightstand up stairs.

The weekend prior, we painted the master bedroom the same Gobi Desert color of the bathroom (I swear it looks just like the desert surrounding Giza). Our carpeting is a dark chocolate brown and our new bedding is a spicy paprika color. I think it looks cool. Daniel, I think, is unconvinced. Just give him time.

Besides the master bedroom/bathroom project, we are, little by little, picking up various furniture items to furnish our house. We do this mostly by scanning craigslist for screamin' deals. We'd been wanting to find some kind of large table/desk type of thing to put behind the couch in the living room to serve a number of purposes. 1.) A convenient place to set drinks while sitting on the couch, 2.) A place to put a couple of lamps to make reading on the couch possible, and 3.) A desk space where a person could work on a laptop while also being able to watch tv.

I found a desk that fit the bill at a store called Southeastern Salvage, but even at salvage prices, it was a tad pricey for my taste. Then, a week or so ago, lo and behold, I stumbled across a similar piece on craigslist for about a quarter of the salvage price. Sweet. Only problem - it had to be picked up in Santa Fe, Tennessee.

If you've never heard of Santa Fe (pronounced FEE, not FAY, as one might assume), Tennessee, don't worry, you are not alone. It is a minute town about 90 minutes south of Nashville consisting of one gas station and the famous (okay, maybe not) Santa Fe Diner which boasts a Friday Night Fish Fry. We're talking COUNTRY. Middle of NOWHERE. "Nowhere" in the south can go from picturesque to scary very quickly.

Not only was this desk/table in a town beyond civilization, it was also located on an obscure country road named...wait for it....



Pigg Schoolhouse Road

So not kidding.

Honestly, when we found out where we'd have to go for this piece of furniture, I was like, "oh hells no!" But, it looked perfect - perfect dimensions, unique style, pretty dark wood, sweet-ass price. And then Daniel convinced me it would be a lovely, leisurely Sunday drive out to the country. So we drove to Santa Fe and Pigg Schoolhouse Road.

Pigg Schoolhouse Road is essentially a one lane, gravelly, twisty, turny road through the forested hills of Santa Fe Tennessee. There are maybe 2 or 3 houses, a shack or two of unknown occupancy, various dead end dirt paths, a lone satellite dish half hidden in the trees, and a barn with an abandoned home which I am pretty sure is haunted.

But we found our perfect desk/table and it was indeed a lovely Sunday afternoon drive.



And now we know where to hide out if ever we are forced to go on the lam.