This is what we used to call “good preachin’.” Some will be inspired by it; others will be offended. The doctrine of election and sovereign grace is a touchy one among protestant denominations. But, either way, he presents his case well. Don Fortner is a pastor in Danville, Ky., who semi-regularly delivers sermons at Lantana Grace in Crossville.

So much for plans to sneak in a 5-day school week.

Both the Scott County and Oneida school systems took the lead of other school systems across the state and turned the President’s Day holiday into a school day for students and faculty, in an effort to make up a day missed earlier due to snow.

But at about 5:30 a.m. this morning, the call went out: No school. Again.

Both local school systems are closed, as are the campuses of Roane State Community College. About 3″ of snow were received overnight, creating slick road conditions region-wide.

Students have been in class just three days in the month of February, and the 13-day bank of snow days has been exhausted. Going forward, each day that is missed is a day that will have to be made up. And while ground temperatures weren’t especially cold before the snow started, and a mid-February sun will quickly go to work on the snow pack even under cloudy skies, it isn’t looking good for school tomorrow, with temperatures falling through the 20s today.

OUTSIDE THE MOUNTAINS, the northern Cumberland Plateau probably received more snow than the rest of the state this morning. In valley locations, rain was reluctant to give way to snow as warm air trapped near the surface hung on for dear life. The non-mountain locations of Sevier County, for example, didn’t change over to snow until nearly 7 a.m. this morning. In Knoxville, heavy snow was being reported an hour or so earlier than that. In Nashville, meteorologists reported about a quarter-inch of freezing rain under 1.5″ of snow. Even in typically favored locations such as Macon County in northern Middle Tennessee, only about an inch of snow fell after the transition from rain to snow.

The main system is pulling away, and the primary snow event is finished for the Cumberland Plateau, while locations further east will see precipitation begin to wind down in the next couple of hours. However, convective-type snow showers are a good bet this afternoon as a northwesterly flow sets up behind the system, pumping colder air into the region. The National Weather Service in Morristown has a winter weather advisory in place for all of East Tennessee until 6 a.m. Tuesday morning (don’t be surprised if that is canceled well before then) and is calling for total snow accumulation of 2-4″ region-wide. The NWS in Nashville has a winter weather advisory up for Middle Tennessee until 6 p.m. this evening and is calling for less than one inch of additional accumulation today. The NWS in Jackson, Ky., has a winter weather advisory in place for eastern Kentucky until 8 p.m. this evening.

In an updated special weather statement this morning, the National Weather Service at Morristown continues to predict a major winter storm for East Tennessee, with “heavy snow accumulations” possible. In forecast discussion, the NWS throws out an early guess of 4-8″ for all locations north of Knoxville.

In the meantime, the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (HPC) is downgrading its thinking. The HPC has removed the 70% chance of at least 4 inches of snow on the northern Plateau, and now has us under a 40% chance for at least 4″, and now just a 10% chance of at least 8″.

The downgrade by HPC is likely due to model changes. It was noted yesterday afternoon that the foreign models had begun a trend of suppressing the storm to our south, which would mean less precipitation in the northern half of Tennessee. That trend continued into last night and with the domestic models as well. The GFS is now indicating just .25″ to .5″ of liquid precipitation for the northern Plateau and most areas north of Knoxville. The NAM remained an outlier of sorts as of this morning’s 0z run, still putting an inch of liquid precip all the way to the TN-KY border. Some models are also indicating more warm air advection from the Gulf of Mexico as the storm system moves through, which could bring precipitation types into question. Of course, there is still time for a trend back in the other direction…or they could trend even more towards suppression. There had been a pretty amazing model consistency until the middle of the day yesterday. It will be interesting to see whether the changes are a temporary blip or if the models are picking up on something they weren’t seeing before.

In the meantime, the NWS at Nashville is calling for at least 4″ north of I-40 in Middle Tennessee, and indicates that a winter storm watch will likely be issued there later today. Look for that to come by mid-afternoon, if it’s going to happen. Likewise, if NWS-Morristown decides to pull the trigger on a winter storm watch for East Tennessee today, it will happen around 3 p.m.

Misery is: Being at the office at 5 a.m., trying to make newspaper deadlines between races to the lavatory due to the stomach virus.

(I knew you would appreciate the details…)

This video has gone viral since the Kiffin drama unfolded last week. If you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth watching, as media members—specifically WBIR news director Bill Shory (in the black coat)—bicker with UT Associate Athletics Director Bud Ford (in the sweater) over whether video cameras can roll as Kiffin delivers a statement to the media.

Today, Poynter has a Q&A with Shory over his decision to stand his ground, which is also worth reading.

Tennessee is still coachless, though athletics director Mike Hamilton had hoped (and presumably still does) to have a coach in place by today.

David Cutcliffe continues to lead the way. Reports indicate that the job is his to refuse, with both VolQuest.Com ($) and the Knoxville News Sentinel continuing to indicate this morning that Cutcliffe is the lead candidate. Some other sources, including sportswriters from The Tennessean and the Chattanooga Times Free Press, backed away from that possibility late yesterday.

Meanwhile, Hamilton spend much of yesterday in Atlanta, where he continued to contact potential candidates (or their agents). Some other names that had previously been mentioned but that picked up steam last night included UConn’s Randy Edsall, Houston’s Kevin Sumlin and Louisiana Tech’s Derek Dooley. It was also confirmed that Tennessee has contacted Utah’s Kyle Whittingham in some form, while embattled Chicago Bears coach Lovie Smith was thought to be a possible candidate as well. There were also some indications—the Tennessean’s David Climer appeared to be fueling that speculation in a Thursday night chat session—that Tennessee had pitched another offer at Texas defensive coordinator Will Muschamp.

This morning, there was no mention in the Hartford, Conn., Houston, or Salt Lake City press of Edsall or Sumlin or Whittingham.

The only publicly acknowledged candidates at this point are Cutcliffe and interim coach Kippy Brown. The coaches who have rejected Tennessee’s advances are Muschamp and Air Force’s Troy Calhoun. After Muschamp turned down a Tennessee offer that was widely reported as being at least $3 million per year, the focus shifted yesterday to Calhoun, and it appeared the Air Force coach was on his way to Knoxville. In fact, after hearing from a couple of well-connected sources in Colorado Springs and one in Knoxville, this blog declared that Calhoun was the new coach. But efforts to lure Calhoun away from the Academy apparently collapsed at the last minute, leading Calhoun to issue a quickly-prepared statement that he would be at Air Force in 2010.

So, today, the search continues…and the wild (and often blind) speculation goes on.

Here’s the remarkable story of a Kentucky couple who won $128 million—the largest jackpot ever—in the Kentucky lottery. The story went public yesterday. Rob and Tuesday Anderson have folks in McCreary and Scott counties. Rob Anderson said he was buying three $1 lottery tickets as stocking stuffers on Christmas Eve, but the clerk mistakenly put all three dollars on the same QuickPick ticket. He kept the ticket but set it aside when he got home…and later found out that the “mistake” was worth $128 million.

Some people have all the luck.

The National Weather Service at Morristown has issued a special weather statement to highlight the possibility of accumulating snow in East Tennessee on Thursday:

UNCERTAINTY IS STILL FAIRLY HIGH AT THIS TIME…BUT FOR NOW IT LOOKS LIKE SNOW ACCUMULATIONS WILL BE LIGHT…WITH GENERALLY AN INCH OR TWO POSSIBLE IN THE SOUTH…AND 1 TO 3 INCHES POSSIBLE ELSEWHERE BY LATE THURSDAY NIGHT.

Because they’re now expecting snow amounts to remain below warning levels, no winter storm watch is being issued by NWS Morristown this afternoon. A snow advisory could be issued tomorrow.

The latest trend by several models, which we’ve been watching throughout the day, is for westerly winds to be persistent between now and Thursday. That would help work dry air into the region, which would reduce snowfall potential for Thursday. As of this morning, it looked like this drier air might only impact the southern part of the state, but now it’s beginning to look as though dry air might be an issue as far north as the Tennessee-Kentucky border. If this trend continues tonight, it’s likely that those winter storm watches to our west will not be upgraded to storm warnings, but to snow advisories.

In less than a week, a milestone will be reached. Thursday will not only mark the end of the year, but also the end of a decade. And not just any decade, but the first decade of the 21st Century.

I remember well where I was when we ushered in the new millennium: At work. At the time, I worked in the cash office at Food City. My responsibility was accountability of funds taken in each day and preparing bank deposits, as well as daily, weekly and monthly reports. Closing out the month was an especially tedious process, and it wasn’t uncommon to be finishing up at around 2 a.m. That night was especially tense because of “Y2k” concerns. When our computers’ clocks hit midnight, what would happen? Would we have a massive crash?

As well all know, Y2k’s effect on the world’s computing systems was way overblown, and didn’t amount to anything.

In a lot of ways, it seems as though it has been ages since we ushered in the 2000s with the Y2k hype. But when you consider that most of us will only see a changing of the decade seven or eight times in our life, it doesn’t seem like so long at all.

On a personal level, the first decade of the 21st Century brought many changes . . . as the decade of anyone’s 20s obviously will. It began with me still in college, studying education and planning to teach and coach football. I soon abandoned those career plans and jumped head-first into the journalism industry. I did some freelance work for some magazines and even published a website on the Rivals.Com sports network for a short period of time before Rivals entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid the dot-com crash and restructured. I eventually wound up in newspaper, and have spent the majority of the decade working for my hometown paper (and a little over half as editor of the same . . . which is almost hard to believe). When the decade began, I was little more than a kid (in mind, at least). As it ends, I have kids in school.

On the national and international stages, it remains to be seen exactly how many of the events of the 2000s will reshape our world. But some of them already have.

When Americans remember this first decade of the 21st Century, they’ll recall one thing before any other: 9/11. We had hardly begun the decade when a handful of cowardly terrorists unleashed their hatred on New York City and Washington D.C., and yet we’re still seeing the repercussions of those acts today, as we remain entangled in two wars and the simple matter of where to house al Qaeda prisoners remains a political hot-button issue.

The 2000s saw America swing from a Democrat-controlled federal government to a Republican-controlled government and back again. There was the election of our first black president, Florida’s hanging chads, and the emergence of the global warming debate on the world scene.

America’s pastime–Major League Baseball–became irrelevant in the 2000s (or at least continued its descent to such), while China and India became very much relevant. The Euro became a major currency; the dollar not so much so. It was a decade of nuclear arms unrest pitting the western world against North Korea and Iran. The decade of the Great Recession.

Technology advanced in the 2000s at rates perhaps never before seen. Cell phones went from a luxury item to as commonplace as flushing toilets. They went from being a device used primarily for spoken communications to tools used for taking and sending photos, texting, emailing and surfing the Internet. Broadband Internet replaced dial-up as America’s favorite way to access the World Wide Web. Video gaming was revolutionized. Personal computing was made affordable for all. DVR replaced VCR; MP3 replaced CD. TV screens became flat, digital cameras made 35mm obsolete, and software became open source.

The 2000s brought us the energy crisis, with the price of crude oil leading to tensions between the West and OPEC nations, not to mention Congressional inquiries into domestic oil companies. The price of natural gas spurred a hike in exploration in our back yard and in much of America. The 2000s brought us natural disasters that killed hundreds of thousands, from Hurricane Katrina to the Indian Ocean tsunami to the Myanmar cyclone.

And, as is the case in any given decade, we said goodbye to a number of noteworthy and influential icons. Among those I respected:

Jim Varney, actor (2000)
Charles Schultz, cartoonist (2000)
Walter Matthau, actor (2000)
Perry Como, singer (2001)
Hank Ketcham, cartoonist (2001)
Chet Atkins, guitar player (2001)
Dave Thomas, Wendy’s founder (2002)
Waylon Jennings, singer (2002)
Ted Williams, baseball player (2002)
Johnny Unitas, quarterback (2002)
Johnny Paycheck, singer (2003)
Buddy Ebsen, actor (2003)
Johnny and June Carter Cash, musicians (2003)
President Ronald Reagan (2004)
Ray Charles, singer (2004)
Christopher Reeve, actor (2004)
Reggie White, UT defensive lineman (2004)
Chris LeDoux, singer (2005) (God Bless Chris LeDoux)
Bob Denver, actor (Gilligan’s Island) (2005)
Don Knotts, actor (2006)
Kirby Puckett, baseball player (2006)
Buck Owens, singer (2006)
Steve Irwin, crocodile hunter (2006)
Porter Wagoner, singer (2007)
Jerry Reed, actor/singer (2008)
Paul Harvey, broadcaster (2009)
Patrick Swayze, actor (2009)

So long, 00s. Hello, 10s. It’s going to be interesting to see what you hold in store . . .

A few random quotes on Christmas and its meaning:

“He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.” - Roy L. Smith

“Christmas is a time when you get homesick - even when you’re home.” - Carol Nelson

“There has only been one Christmas. The rest are anniversaries.” - WJ Cameron

“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.” - Laura Wilder

“Isn’t it funny that at Christmas something in you gets so lonely for - I don’t know what exactly, but it’s something that you don’t mind so much not having at other times.” - Kate L. Bosher

“It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.” - WT Ellis

“Instead of being a time of unusual behavior, Christmas is perhaps the only time in the year when people can obey their natural impulses and express their true sentiments without feeling self-conscious and, perhaps, foolish.  Christmas, in short, is about the only chance a man has to be himself.” Francis Farley

“Christmas is not as much about opening our presents as opening our hearts.” - Janice Maeditere

“I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.” - Harlan Miller

“There is a remarkable breakdown of taste and intelligence at Christmastime.  Mature, responsible grown men wear neckties made of holly leaves and drink alcoholic beverages with raw egg yolks and cottage cheese in them.” - PJ O’Rourke

“Next to a circus there ain’t nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit.” - Kin Hubbard

“And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore.  Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.  What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store.  What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.” - Dr. Seuss

“Let it be Christmas everywhere. Let heavenly music fill the air. Let anger and fear and hate disappear, and let there be love that lasts through the year. Let it be Christmas.” - Alan Jackson

Luke 2:1-20 -And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. 2 And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. 3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David,) 5 to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. 6 And so it was that while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. 7 And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shown round about them; and they were sore afraid. 10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. 12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising god, and saying, 14 Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men.

15 And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. 16 And they came with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. 17 And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. 18 And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. 19 But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. 20 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard or seen, as it was told unto them.