My Trip to Atlanta
One of my cousins received a single malt whiskey as a graduation gift. He was kind enough to share some with me. It was amazing. There's really no other way to describe it. I'll never enjoy whiskey again - on my budget. The whiskey was all after a fabulous dinner and some excellent Pinot Noir. It was a good evening overall.
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I took my sister and her two-year-old daughter to the Georgia Aquarium. It was pleasantly non-crowded. I mean, there were still tons of people there, but not nearly as many as I had expected. We got to see pretty much everything we wanted to see; the crowds didn't prevent us from getting a decent view of nearly all of the animals.
I learned that one can pay an extra fee (probably a substantial extra fee) to go scuba diving in the whale tank. You have to already be dive certified, but that's about it. Such a group of people were in the whale tank while we were gazing into it. They swam in a big circle around the tank and then settled onto the bottom of it, centered, in front of the large, two-story window.
Two of the divers in particular were facing each other at the front. One of the divers pulled out some laminated 8.5x11 paper ... and proposed to the other diver, who - and this is just my interpretation based on what I saw - was pleasantly surprised by the whole thing and heartily accepted; or, was enraged, and tried to kill him in the most unsavory manner: preventing him from using his mouth to breathe; which really wouldn't have been very effective, since they were at the bottom of a large water tank already. So, I'm guessing she happy and not enraged.
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I have this friend I met online. Her family goes to a church where the women wear head-coverings, they are exclusive psalmists and no instruments are used in worship. She lamented one time about being tired of always being in the minority. Its hard not to find amusement in that.
Being in Atlanta for Christmas, I had the opportunity to make a rare visit to the church of which I am a member. The choir director has questionable taste in music. The choir only sings moderately better than I do (and I can't sing at all). And Christmas time inspires the selection of some of the worst musical pieces of the year. In short, I nearly bowed to the exclusive psalmody pressure. It would solve all of these problems. My ears hadn't been so searingly accosted in a very long time. It was even worse than the time when one of my friends took it upon herself to convince me that being around country music would eventually cause me to become fond of it. It didn't work, in case you were wondering.
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I spent most of my nights in Atlanta at my sister's house. She has a cat. One of my other sisters gave her another cat that she (the second sister) wasn't able to keep. Her (the first sister) boyfriend has two cats that needed a place to stay after he sold his house. Yes, four cats. One of the cats chewed out the inside of one of my Johnston & Murphy shoes. The first night.
This sort of thing always happens. I try to get my expenses under control, and the next thing I know I'm put in a position where I have to splurge on dress shoes far earlier than expected.
Stupid cat.
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Julie made me cookies for Christmas. Not just any cookies - chocolate chip cookies. And good chocolate chip cookies, at that. They had a bit of oatmeal in them, which adds a distinct and not entirely bad flavor to them. They would have been solid 9.0 cookies without the oatmeal; but I had to give them an 8.25 with the oatmeal. Very delicious.
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It's better to give than to receive - and nothing exemplifies this better than when one catches some ailment while on vacation. I would have felt bad (momentarily) if I had infected someone else, but not nearly as bad as being infected. And I was infected. And it sucks. Well, it's fine during the day, since I'm up-right. The moment I lie down, the whole congestion nature of this ailment prevents me from breathing. So I can't sleep well. So I'm exhausted. So I'm not getting better as fast as I want to. Uggh. It's MUCH better to give than to receive.
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CompUSA went the way of the Dodo, and in the case of the Dunwoody CompUSA, it was replaced with a Total Wine. As far as I know, its a new chain; its the first I've ever heard of them. They have an enormous selection of wine, beer and all other kinds of alcohol. And at fairly decent prices. They're serious sticklers for carding. Maybe its a Georgia thing. I haven't been carded even once, for anything, in New York - in the year and a half that I've been here.
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I stayed up late one night playing bowling and tennis on a Nintendo Wii at a friend's house. It was my first experience with a Wii. I had always been a fan of it - even from the days before Nintendo announced the naming of its new console - the whole idea behind it has strongly resonated with me. But even more than that, playing is believing. It's very cool. I'll definitely pick one up, some day.
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The New Year is a second further away than I had anticipated. I'm going to have to re-do my whole calendar between now and then. They're inserting a leap-second at New Year (GMT). That's 7pm EST. Supposedly those wall-mount atomic clocks, and, I would imagine, any computers that have the updated leap-calendar-thing, should show a prolonged 6:59pm minute. I'm definitely going to watch for it. You should too.
Hmm. Maybe I can video tape the atomic clock.