Adventures in Atlanta

Okay. Atlanta sucks. Sorry if anyone lives there, but my experience is that it sucks. Now, partially that’s because I only saw a narrow slice of it, but narrow slice I did see was horribly sketchy. Like, it’s not fun to be walking down the sidewalk and have some homeless guy decide that you need his help, for which you will give him money, even though you didn’t ask him, you don’t need help, and you certainly don’t have money handy to give him. Furthermore, being given a lecture on race politics that somehow stemmed from a comment to my dinner companion along the lines of “Let’s cross the street,” was also not terribly fun. Additionally, being regaled by my waiter over dinner about how he’s saving up money to convert his car over to bio-diesel, while admirable, is not exactly my idea of a dinner conversation I want. It seemed like every interaction I had in the city was rife with personal peril of some sort. Also, the downtown area is not very pretty, given that it’s full of empty lots and sort of scary looking buildings, and thus does not inspire the spirit of exploration.

However, all this is mitigated by the fact that in terminal A of the Hartsfield -Jackson Airport is a vending machine that SELLS IPODS! iPods, you guys! At first I thought it was just skins and power cords and such, and then I looked more closely and no, they sell actual iPods. And not just, you know, “cheap” ones like Shuffles. Oh no, my friends. They sell Nanos and video iPods. And people were buying them! Like, they got to the airport and were like, “Nmmm....I sorta wish I had an iPod. Why look! There’s a vending machine that sells them. Why, I think I’ll go ahead and buy one!” It’s like in Wayne’s World when Wayne gets his money from the television show and goes and looks at the Stratocaster that he craves and, when asked by the clerk if he can put it away now says, “Not today my good man. I’m feeling saucy. I think I’m going to buy it. Do you take-” and then pulls out the wad of cash, “-cash? Cha-ching!”

So, severe homeless problem and feeling like I was being accosted at every turn = Bad
However, a vending machine in the airport sells iPods = Awesome

Maybe that balances out?

In other ATL news, I had two mediocre dinners (one at Azio ($$$) and one at the Landmark Diner ($)) and one great one where I got sushi that was amazing (Ray’s in the City ($$)). Nice bonus was that the meeting had great food for breakfast every morning, coffee that flowed all day (and miraculously didn’t taste like ass), and pretty cheap and good cafeteria (great barbecue).

I think I’m done traveling for a bit. Vacation was great, obviously, but having to go away for four days so soon after getting back from vacation was kind of tough. I think my kitty probably misses me, and I know I certainly miss her, my real bed and cooking in my own kitchen. Also, as I sit here and write this, I have my headphones in and am listening to the latest NYUB podcast, and a woman is sitting, like, right next to me, and is barking into her phone all self importantly about something that happened at work. and, you know, she sat right next to me even though there were, like, a gazillion other seats available. I don’t know if she thinks that I won’t be able to hear her b/c I’m listening to music (so she thinks) or what, but it was odd. Oh, Hallelujah. She just moved away from me. Maybe my glances at her notified her that I could, in fact, hear every word she was bellowing into her phone.

Also, I saw a fashion emergency in the security line of airport. This woman, who looked sort of like Ann Coulter (blond and thinks she’s prettier than she actually is) was wearing, what I’ll call for the sake of an argument, a suit. A black suit that had a bolero style jacket with a Peter Pan collar and three quarter inch sleeves, worn over a cream colored shirt and a skirt with a hem that was shorter in the front than in the back by about two inches and had lace edging and a belt with a giant flower on it. Now, I feel like I see this sort of thing on Project Runway all the time (see the suit that Angela, Laura and Michael made for the Macy’s challenge), but seen in the real world it was extremely jarring. I don’t know if I would take someone seriously at first who walked into my office wearing that. It looked like Romy and Michelle’s idea of what businesswomen wear, as opposed to women in business actually wear. It was a little bit mindblowing, to be honest.