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.

Staring at me from the magazine racks in line at the grocery store this week, I saw them.  Two women who have come to torment and torture me by ruining the perfectly nice, perfectly perfect little bubble of denial and delusion in which I had been living of late.

It is bad enough that they mock me from my tv set – now they are reaching out to tweak my calm from the newsstands too. 

It’s not fair.  It’s just not fair.  Bear with me a moment while I lapse into a moment of whining and self pity. 

Okay.  All better.  Now where was I?

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.

Just so there is no mistaking it, it says right on the envelope “Your Response Is Required By Law”.

Geez.  Fine.  Calm down. 

The 2010 Census.  My question is IS it required by law?  Or is the government overstepping its constitutional boundries?  And if so, exactly how much trouble am I in if I don’t comply?

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.