I won’t be around for the next few days; I’m flying out to Denver in the morning for my grandmother’s funeral and won’t be back until late Sunday night.

For obvious reasons, it’s not a trip I’m looking forward to, but on the way back, we have a 3 1/2 hour layover in Salt Lake City, which is mildly exciting, because I’ve never really been in Utah.

Since I won’t be blogging over the next few days, I’ll point you to this tribute I wrote a year ago today about Steve Irwin. It might be the best post I’ve written to date, and since most of my dozens (okay, handfuls) of readers have come on board since then, you might have missed it.

It’s hard for me to believe that it’s been a whole year since he died; Animal Planet has been showing Crocodile Hunter specials all week.

Home Sweet Home Alabama

My wife’s great-grandmother passed away earlier this week, so Thursday morning, Caroline and I drove 10 hours to Huntsville, Alabama for the funeral.

With both Alabama and Arkansas being southern states and also located fairly close to each other, many people, especially over-generalizing Yankees*, would probably think that they were very similar. I am sure there are many similarities, but there are also some glaring differences, and I’m going to briefly mention a few I noticed over the past few days.

1. There are way more southern accents in Alabama. Now, Fayetteville might be somewhat of a high-brow locale compared to much of the rest of Arkansas, but I’ve also lived in more rural Searcy, Arkansas, and there is still no comparison: the southern twang is much more prevalent in Alabama.

2. Apparently, there are Old School, non-Supercenter Wal-Marts in Alabama. In my part of Arkansas at least, this is not the case.

3. Funerals are way different. Not only was the funeral at a local funeral home instead of the church that Caroline’s great-grandmother attended, but the family also sat up on a stage off to the side, out of sight of everyone else. Once the funeral was over, a curtain closed over the stage; I guess so the family could have privacy while looking at the casket. Different.

4. The Alabama/Auburn rivalry is way intense. Being from Arkansas, where the Razorbacks get top-billing in everything, this is completely foreign to me. I think it’s neat having the vast majority of the state unified in support of a team, but coming from a state with no real rival, the intense rivalry thing seems pretty cool too.

5. According to a sign we passed, in Alabama, coon dogs are apparently a very, very big deal. At least, more so than they are here.


*Yes, the ironic word choice was intentional.