So Atlanta.
Some more.
Sunday, Esteban and I went out in search of “fun things to do”. My list included “go eat Southern famous food”, “see Stone Mountain” and “Do something Civil War-ish”. I also wanted to see the Centennial Park downtown where the bomb did or didn’t go off.
First thing was to go downtown in search of Varsity, which a reliable source told me had very good chili dogs. Esteban is a very big fan of chili dogs in general. I, on the other hand, have to consciously think about other things while eating them and I can somewhat enjoy them, but if I start to dwell upon the entire concept of “hotdog”, I get squeamish. (A bit of trivia: I don’t have issues with corn dogs… apparently, the corn meal forms a protective barrier to grossness…. I never claimed to make sense, people, you should know that by now!). We found it without much trouble, although my method of navigation, which has worked fairly well for me for the last 30 years, is to find something I’m looking for, (in this case, a big V along the side of the highway), then get off the highway and head in that general direction. You can generally find what you’re looking for pretty easily that way. It’s organic. It’s pure. I imagine that indian scouts used a method very similiar to that when tracking moose or chili dogs. Esteban, on the other hand, would like me to spout out MapQuest-like directions. “Proceed to Peachtree, which is .8 miles and take a left onto Memorial for approximately 75 feet until you see a bum named Regis…then turn left into the third empty spot in the parking lot.” I’ve been able to acclimate to his need for anal-retentive directions fairly well in places like Milwaukee or around Wisconsin, but Atlanta is a different story. I have never been to Atlanta. He, on the other hand, has been to Atlanta at least once, and I think more than that. But I’m still Directions Girl anyway. So he was getting grumpy, but we found Varsity and pulled into a carhop style joint. We were all excited because we got to stay in the car and eat but I couldn’t see the menu sign, so I ordered out of my Fodor’s, which said that the chili dogs, onion rings and frozen orange things were the way to go. Ok by me. Esteban ordered a chili dog and a Coke. He doesn’t like Diet Coke, he likes Diet Pepsi, but they didn’t have Diet Pepsi, so he got a Coke, which he doesn’t like either. Please, if someone understands this, explain it to me.
The guy brings us our food. Apparently, in the south, chili dogs come with mustard. I don’t like mustard. Esteban looks at me and says “Well, it said it right on the sign.” You know, the one I couldn’t see. My orange freezie thing was so completely frozen that I felt my hair getting shorter as I tried sucking any frosty orange goodness through the straw. It was not happening. So I just ate my onion rings, which, in case you’re wondering, were the best onion rings I’ve remembered having in my entire adult junk food eating history. And two days later when the orange frosty thing thawed enough to become straw worthy, it was delicious.
We tried to go to Olympic park to eat our food, but parking around it was $10 because of something going on with basketball down there or something. I don’t know. If it ain’t football, I ain’t watchin’.
Or Martha Stewart. I like Martha Stewart too. I’m transfixed by her.
Then I guided him to the Hard Rock, where I had to get my black hat with white writing (I have a collection of Hard Rock black hats with white writing… it takes up much of my spare time, in fact). We parked in a No Parking Zone, but I pshawed the sign, figuring that on Sunday, that wouldn’t apply and there were tons of other cars there ignorning the signs too. Esteban had a beer and I had a Blind Russian (note: only a month since churling and am able to drink the same drink… woohoo!). We hung out there for a bit then went back out to our car. The first thing we saw was flapping yellow tickets on all the cars, but when we got to our car… no ticket. Esteban’s theory is that they took one look at our out of state plates and didn’t ticket the car, since they’re not going to extradite for an unpaid parking ticket. It was awesome. It was like we had diplomatic immunity. We were ambassadors from the Great White North… and were not subject to the silly Southern parking regulations. We got back into the car and I made myself giggle by suggesting new places to park (like the lawn of the capital building).
We drove around downtown without MapQuest like directions until Esteban decided that he had enough of wandering and we were going to Stone Mountain. For this, I had directions, as it was in the guidebook. We drove out there but decided that we didn’t want to spend a lot of time inside the park itself, so we drove around the perimeter of the mountain and said “Yep, thar’s a lot of granite.”
Then we saw a really cool old cemetary, so we walked around in there. I took some pictures with my Canon (aka non-digital camera… sorry) and it was very lovely. The sun was warm and it was almost 2 o’clock. We were thinking of going to the Cyclorama but with the sun so lusciously warming my skin, I decided that what I really wanted was to go swimming back at the pool, which was fine with Esteban, since he’d only been humoring me anyway and just wanted to sit and read his book on J. P. Morgan. Yeah, he knows how to party.
By that time, however, we were both hungry again. This time, I decided that we needed to get some Krystal, which is another fast food joint we don’t have in Wisconsin. Esteban sounded nervous, but he went along with it. Esteban got some kind of value meal (with a Coke again… and he didn’t drink the first one because it tastes like malted battery acid… I just don’t get it) and I got two Cheese Krystals, which are like White Castle hamburgers and are tiny.
They were good, but then we started to get gurgly tummies. Later that night, he had what can only be described as eye-wateringly bad farts. I’m talking the kind of smells that make dogs howl. It was a whole new level of potency for him.
We went back to the hotel and I got changed into my swimming suit and trodded out to the empty pool. The sun was creeping below the tree line and the wind was picking up but the water was very warm, so I swam about thirty laps until I was freezing. Then I ran back up to our hotel room and took a shower.
The last time he was in Atlanta for business, he was brought to a Ruth’s Chris steakhouse and he said that it was very good. At that point, I suggested that we make late dinner reservations since we’d essentially only had junky tras food all day… all trip, unless you count the wedding and my lovely evening enjoying Deb’s incredible soup. So I called and made an 8:30 reservation and we proceeded to get all dressed up. It was like we were grown ups… it was a very weird experience for me. My hair was a little strange, having been wet and not really styled, just blowed dry and pinned with fancy thingies, but Esteban looked very nice. Esteban and I ended up having the shrimp bisque. I had the filet with an enormous baked potato, he had the New York Strip, and we split an order of sauteed mushrooms. For dessert, we had something called Chocolate Sin Cake (which almost gave me a mouth orgasm… my eyes were half-lidded the entire time I ate it. It was shameless, actually).
After that, we went back to the hotel and chilled out.
Have I mentioned how horrible our bed was? I needed three pillows to sleep on the thing every night. One for my head and two for under my back. It was like sleeping on lumber. Not lumbar… lumber. Every morning, we both woke up stiff and tired.
Monday morning, Esteban needed to spend the day working in the hotel room (no rest for the wicked), so I put on my Business Chica clothes and went out in search of our Atlanta office in order to do some networking with the people I talk to on the phone all the time. I felt like a serious corporate geek, spending some of my vacation at an office, but I had fun, so I didn’t care. Also, they offered me a job if I wanted to move to Atlanta (gee… I now know where I’d be working and living… this is all coming together should I decide to forego the slippery roads and mosquitos the size of Stealth bombers).
I also went in search of a Sephora, which I’d heard was the shiznit. It was cool, but not all that. I ended up in Nordstrom where I did the Prescriptive thing and got my perfect shade of foundation. That made me feel like a princess and is something I’ve always wanted. I also drooled over some insanely innappropriate shoes and purses. Never in my life have I wanted more than to be independently wealthy, to just tool around and shop to my hearts content. But it is not to be. Unless you’d all like to send me $9.99 each month. That would give me like… seventy dollars or something. Never mind.
I also had a moment of what might be considered “biological clock”. I saw an April Cornell store and wanted to buy an outfit very badly. That was scary, though. It was a scary thing, that yearning from seemingly nowhere. Then it passed. Like gas. Maybe it was the Krystal burgers.
I checked out some antique stores, but wasn’t really impressed. I saw quite a few things I’d recognized from Speigal or TJMaxx floating around, posing as antiques. That was disheartening. I did see a really lovely table but there would have been no way to transport it home (not cost effective, anyway) and it didn’t really match our cheap ass house.
Then I toodled back to the hotel where I made Esteban put on pants and take me out to dinner (neither of us had eaten a thing all day). We went to Maggiano’s, which is a place I’ve wanted to try for the last four years, but the closest one to us is in Chicago. Even though Esteban didn’t pick it out himself, he really enjoyed it (normally, he only likes places he picks out himself). I had chicken parmagiana and Esteban had chicken pesto linquine with pine nuts. We split an order of stuffed mushrooms and tirimisu for dessert.
Another night going home stuffed and yucky feeling. Oh well, it was worth it.
We packed up everything in the room, set the alarm for 3:00 a.m. and tried to get some sleep before driving the 1000 miles back home, which I’ll tell you about tomorrow, having just driven the 1000 miles, I’m fairly tired and want to go to bed.
