I'm sitting here just short of 9am having slept in until 8am. I'm sitting on my porch/deck/patio/whatever you want to call it with a cup of tea (English Breakfast), watching the rain fall gently. It is letting up now, but it was a bit heavier at 8am. (Not a torrential downpour, mind you). This ought to make the Grove look nice today, then again, if the stories about it being covered in tents is true, it might still be dry. The field at Vaught-Hemmingway Stadium is fake grass, so it will just be slippery like recycled tires are. Certainly the humidity should be on the rise now, making for a very muggy game day here in Oxford.
Hattiesburg was a nice town. It is a town of about 45,000 with a university (Southern Miss) of about 16,000 students. In other words, Southern Miss and Hattiesburg have the same proportion of population and students as does Tuscaloosa and UA. Similarly, Hattiesburg has a city just across a river (the Leaf River) like Northport, and is proportionally about the same size as Northport. The town is called Petal, which is where I was doing my land use surveys down there.
They were less frustrating than they were in Yazoo City, probably because I had more experience in doing them. What I dislike most is the fact that we are currently doing these on paper maps which are rather large (imagine having several dozen maps the size of state maps sitting in your lap and marking on them with a red pen). I'm going to push for a more automated way of doing them. We have a portable computer with GPS capabilities which in theory it wouldn't be impossible to set up a system to scan the maps, and rectify them to an existing spatial database of the study area. In fact, it might be rather easy once the system is figured out since with PLSS exists in both mediums easily giving me the three or more points I need to rectify. (I'm sorry I bored you with that last tirade). Maybe once this new planner (with GIS experience) gets on staff here the week after next--Sept. 17th--that will be more of a possibility that either of us can do it.
I got back to Oxford after being in Hattiesburg and spent two days entering the data into the computer for Yazoo City, setting up Petal to a point at which I could feasibly do it, and of course doing a few things Mike had me working on before the land use survey. I left straight from work on Friday to Tuscaloosa forgetting to complete my timesheet for the day (not a big deal) and leaving my laptop at work. I realized this about five miles out of town so I turned back across Hwy. 6 and made a detour back to pick it up and then the trek back to Tuscaloosa.
Tuscaloosa was fun, I really do miss it. I went to campus during the game (while Paul and Tim went to the game itself). We parked out on JWP with hundreds of other cars parked along River Road Park and JWP. It was warm, but for a Sept. 1st game, it could have been A LOT worse...especially given the then recently passed heatwave. I watched the game at The Ferg. It was nice watching it there. It has all the benefits of watching it at home (AC, clean restrooms nearby) but some of the beneifts of watching it with 92,137 of your closest friends (the dining room near the Starbucks was full of people in crimson and white). Bama won 52-6. The "D" was a tad suspect at times, but it was the first game of the season, and we actually played with some "O", the last time we scored that many points was...well...against the same team (W. Carolina) back in 2004...but they didn't score on us (consider, though, that was the beginnings of the 2005 "D").
More later, including my trip back to Hattiesburg on short notice, the hopeful end to my AC saga, and my summary of tailgating on the Grove (I've been invitied...now to find parking...fortunately, Oxford is a small town and Ole Miss is a large University, so if I find a spot, I won't be too terribly far from the University), and perhaps a summary of the UA/Vandy game which kicks off here in just over an hour.
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