There and Back Again

We spent the last several days on a whirlwind visit to Atlanta, which was fun, lucrative and painful all at the same time. Fun because we got to visit with friends, lucrative because Tanya earned some bank looking after the Butler children while their folks made off to Chicago for a break, and painful because at the end of it we had to say goodbye all over again.

Katie and Nicole, who complained that I’d never blogged about them, were awesome and really accommodating with their time and visits. We took the kids to their house on Friday night where they ran races with Katie’s remote control Hummer (which will never be the same) and watched Shrek. Saturday they helped us out at the Botanical Gardens all morning and then came back later on for more abuse at the hands of toddlers. Somehow I think they still want to have kids. They were super, and even though we did not get drunk and sing Indigo Girls all night long, we sure enjoyed their company and their help.

I had a great visit with Jodi and her daughter Winnie, who decided I was the perfect audience for her new hoochie dance. That afternoon get-together very nearly got jacked by the theft of Jodi’s wallet and the death of my clicker battery for the car. The damn thing was locked and the battery was dead. They told me at Saturn that if you unlock the car with the key the alarm will go off and the gas line will disengage. Thank god for the man at the gas station who told me all I needed to do was turn on the engine really fast before the alarm timed out. That would have been an expensive repair.

The wallet theft was worse and had more lasting consequences. Apparently the thieves had already charged somewhere in the neighborhood of five grand on various credit and debit cards. Lovely. But we had a nice lunch and Winnie danced for me, so it was all good. Heh.

Sarah came over Saturday and brought me an excellent mix cd for the road trip home and a ball cap from my favorite ASHTRAY affiliate company, Big Ass Fans.

I miss all of you terribly.

So now we’re home and at least one of us is going to be working SOMEWHERE by the end of this week. Hopefully both. We need jobs to stave off boredom and finance more trips. And pay the rent. Yeah, that too.

As much as I miss everyone in the ATL, it was also really nice to see Jenny and Chris when we got home. As Tanya said to Jennifer last night, “it is really hard to be in a bad mood around you.” They lifted our spirits considerably last night.

I’ll post what few decent photos I took on flickr in just a bit.