Bristol is in a furious state of transformation as restaurants, hotels and other businesses prepare for the thousands of NASCAR fans coming to town. The excitement for the Saturday race, and the Food City Race Night on Friday, is palpable.

Talk about taking Cable Country on the road! We kick off a special six part series of stories in the Aloha State.

Let’s face it – most diet foods do.  As though sucking out the calories requires sucking out the flavor as well. 

The good news is that there are a few exceptions.  Being a perpetual dieter has resulted in me taste-testing more than my share of diet foods over the years and remarkably, I have actually found a few that I genuinely love!

In a strictly platonic way, of course.  Mostly. 

March can be pretty scary around here, weather-wise.  Sun and snow shadow each other, this year more than ever.  Predicting the weather is a crap shoot, for plants and flowers as much as for weather prognosticators. 

Everywhere are innocent bulbs, frozen in time after having been fooled into thinking the sun was here to stay.  Flowering trees are covered with buds that don’t know whether to burst out or cower-and-cling.  It’s a mess.

Sometimes, all it takes is for somebody to turn the lights on.

Rob’s candid photo made me realize - I’m a mess!

Excerpts from a journal written by Josh Smith, 11 Connects news anchor, during his recent assignment on the U.S.S. Greeneville based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii along with a video blog produced by Phillip Murrell.

This wouldn’t be necessary, you know, if we were capable of protecting our own borders.  Evidently though that is NOT possible.  No President – Republican or Dem – and no Congress – again, Republican or Dem – has ever had the tenacity or conviction to do the job.

So we are left with the next best idea.  A national i.d. card.  Will it spell the end of our privacy as citizens?

Prep basketball results from Tuesday

Watch Mayor Dennis Phillips and Northeast State President Bill Locke present Kingsport’s higher education story to Harvard today at 2 pm click here.

Monday’s Most Wanted:  Sullivan County Sheriff’s Dept. 3/15/2010

It’s time to start pulling your wallets out.