Setting

My wife and I live in the small town of Oxford, Mississippi.  Oxford is famous for three things:

1.  We're the home of the Ole Miss Rebels.  The University of Mississippi is the state's flagship university, a charter member of the SEC, and the center of life in Oxford.  The town has ~12,000 year round residents, many of whom are directly or indirectly dependent on the University, and another ~11,000 students who are here seasonally.  If you're not affiliated with Ole Miss in some way, here's what you need to know: virtually everything you've heard about us is wrong, or at least outdated.  Except that bit about how much we like to party. 

2.  We have a truly extraordinary food scene.  Oxford is home to at least two restaurants of the very first rank: City Grocery on the town Square and Ravine out in the county.  Taylor Grocery, the world's preeminent fryer of catfish, is a five-minute drive from my house south of town.  The famous Yocona River Inn burned down last year but has reopened as "Yocona in Exile" ~15 minutes north of town. Other great choices abound.  IMO, none of the world's great metropolises has a per-capita density of culinary excellence that exceeds that of tiny Oxford.

3.  Oxford was (and is) the longtime home of William Faulkner, and most of the settings in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha can be mapped to real-world places in Oxford and Lafayette (luh-FAY-ette, not LAH-fay-ette) county.  The primary difference is of course the University, which Faulkner excised from the town.  You know the creepy old house in "A Rose for Emily"?  Drive by it every day; it's across the street from my gym. And of course Faulkner himself is buried here, and his home, Rowan Oak, still bears his scribblings on the walls. 

Sarah and I went to school here, and have four UM degrees between us.  Though I'm originally from California and she was born in the upper Midwest, we both consider Oxford our home. I, for one, have no ambition greater than this: to live a quiet, productive life here in the hills of north Mississippi. So far as I'm concerned, they'll bury me here. 

Of course there are some things a town of 12,000 people doesn't have, and one of those is a a group of doctors specializing in assisted reproductive technology.  For that we have to travel to Memphis, TN.  It's just an hour and a half away. Virtually all Rebels (I refuse to say "Oxonians") know Memphis well. We travel through Memphis International Airport.  We go to Beale Street to party and the Rendezvous to eat.  We have our (foreign) cars serviced at Memphis dealerships. We get their news on TV and radio. And, yes, we use their specialized medical facilities.

Sarah's parents live in the suburbs of Memphis, and we always have the option to stay with them.  By and large, though, we go through IVF in our own home; the proximity of the doctor's office is such that the benefits of sleeping in our own bed, with our own dogs, simply overwhelm the costs of traveling back and forth.