After putting a $1000 into my 1997 Honda Accord with 160,000 miles on it to get it to Texas, after it running like a freaking champ the whole 1500 miles down here, two days after it was full of expensive electronics, Ikea furniture, and my life — after all that, some asshole stole it out of our parking lot last night. The police officer I talked to said that 3 late-90s Hondas were stolen in the area last night, so most likely my beloved car is being chopped into a hundred pieces. We were having such great luck so far, too. Damn.
AUSTIN!
We made it. 1400 miles. The Honda took the trip like a champ. Our life was crammed in the trunk and a rented mini-van. Our apartment is great, but empty. The neighborhood is great. The city is great. Tacos and lemonade for dinner. It’s hot and beautiful. The air conditioning is on. I’m trying to put together an Ikea chair without instructions. Boxes are everywhere. I have a job interview at ten in the morning. Life is good.
GREENVILLE, TEXAS
It’s 11 o’clock Texas time, and we’re chilling at the LaQuinta Inn in Greenville, Texas, 45 minutes east of Dallas. In Greenville, they used to have BLACKEST LAND, WHITEST PEOPLE, painted on the water tower. Luckily, that isn’t the case anymore.
We swam in the pool, grabbed warm chocolate chip cookies at the front desk, now we’re watching some cable. Today we drove to Memphis and did something I never thought we’d do.
We went to Graceland.
Fun facts about Elvis that I did not know, and did not learn from the Graceland tour, but from my mother-in-law: that Priscilla was 14 when she met Elvis, and that “the king died on the throne.”
Here’s a fun sign on Vernon Presley’s (Elvis’s dad) office door:
I couldn’t get a good picture of Elvis’s office, but there were books about football, karate, World War II, and, oddly enough, Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha.
We drove out of Memphis, through Little Rock, and ate at the Whataburger in Texarkana:
The drive from Texarkana to Greenville was gorgeous. Meg saw her first armadillo by the side of the road.
Tomorrow, we’ll be Austin, in our new apartment. Unbelievable.
NASHVILLE
THE FEAST OF LOVE
I had completely forgotten that Charles Baxter’s The Feast of Love is going to be a movie. Meg and I read this book aloud to each other when we first started dating. “Hey Ya!” is our song, Lost in Translation is our movie, and Feast of Love is our book. We’ve also met Charles Baxter, who was really fantastic, but assured us that we were not the first couple to declare that the book had brought them together — people have actually read from it at their wedding. I really hope the filmmakers don’t screw it up…
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