Dine out for Tornado Relief: TONIGHT

Today and tonight, a multitude of restaurants in or near the path of the March 2008 tornado are donating 15% of their proceeds to the Atlanta Tornado Relief Fund. Several of these restaurants were damaged in the tornado and could use the business to help defray the cost of repairs, while others simply want to help out their neighbors in East Atlanta, Cabbagetown, Grant Park and Downtown. If you're looking for a great meal and to help out a good cause, come out to any of the following:

*Dakota Blue
*Fox Bros. Bar-B-Q
*Ria's Bluebird (Donating 50% 8am-3pm)
*Six Feet Under, Grant Park
*Six Feet Under, Westside
97 Estoria
Agave
Flatiron
Grant Central Pizza
Redfish
Stella Neighborhood Trattoria
The Depot
The Standard
Vickery's Glenwood

*donating proceeds from lunch as well as dinner

The Atlanta bloggerati will be dining at Fox Bros. Barbecue in Candler Park.

The best of us

I loved Dave Coustan's recounting of the tornado weekend, and in particular all of the amazing help that neighbors and even people from outside the affected communities provided to one another to get through the aftermath of Friday night's twister. People with chainsaws, bobcats and just food and water coming to help one another get to their homes, resume their normal lives, and clean up from disaster...the best of what we can be to one another. While there were occasional brief reports of looting in the aftermath of the storm, there have been far more reports of the assistance the people of Atlanta have poured out to their neighbors. It's made me prouder than ever to live here.

If you want to help and need to find a way to do so, donate to the Atlanta Red Cross.

Atlanta, it's just snow. Don't be afraid.

As a Florida girl transplanted to Boston for law school, I had seen snow only once in my entire life. When I was four, we travelled to Minneapolis for Christmas and as is usually the case there in December, there were many inches of the stuff piled deep on the ground. My parents loved to tell the story of the amazement their little girl showed at being able to go outside and play in the cold white stuff again and again and again, coming in briefly to warm up before running back outside to play some more. Unfortunately, as those who have lived in such climates know, it isn't so much FLUFFY white stuff as melted and refrozen slush/ice by that point. I recall trying to make a snowman and instead having to stack ice chunks of decreasing size on top of each other as poor substitute. I wanted to go sledding but had no sled, so my uncle put me on the plastic top of his garbage can and sent me down the hill, only to see me hit a ragged patch of ice and tear the top clear in two. But from what little I remember of that trip, I know I found it blissful.

My first year of law school, there were several of us from warm locales who found ourselves in Boston eagerly anticipating our first real snowfall. I still remember the day it finally happened--the forecast called for sleet and I trudged to school through "snow" that sure did hurt when it hit my face and crunch underneath my recently purchased snow boots. When I got there, a student from Texas and I gleefully proclaimed how pretty it was, while the northeastern natives mocked us for not understanding that this was merely sleet--and that real snow neither stung when it hit you nor bounced when it landed. We didn't care. Later that night when it turned directly into snow, I made my boyfriend go outside and play in it with me, and we had a huge snowball fight in the parking lot behind our building. The little girl with boundless energy and a love of the flaky cold white stuff was still in there after all. Every winter for all 8 of my years in Boston, I was always gleeful at the first snow and I always went out and played in it.

The last 2 winters in Atlanta were hard for me because I came to desperately miss the snow. I can recall in February or March of 2006 seeing flurries on a Sunday and being giddy, but last year I don't think we got any at all. This year, while watching bowl games on New Year's Day at Moe's and Joe's, it suddenly started to snow about 9pm and I immediately went running outside again to "play" but twirly excitedly in the snow. While everyone inside laughed at the complete idiot, yes. But I miss running across a fresh field of downy flake and being the first to put deep footsteps in the pristine white. I miss balling it up in mittened hands and nailing a friend with a snowball right in the ass. I miss catching snowflakes on my tongue and walking past snowmen in the park. I even miss knowing when it starts snowing just before bed that I can sleep in the next day because everyone will understand that the commute will be a work in progress.

Which brings me to my ultimate point. Despite being a southern transplant, I know snow. I learned to drive in it, walk on it even after it had refrozen a dozen times, to shovel it and to scrape it off of my car. I learned the color the sky turns just before it starts to fall (there is a tinge of pink) and the smell in the air when snow is on the way. I learned that about half the time the forecasters up north predict a massive snowfall, it ends up being only a few inches. (Witness this week's nor'easter that wasn't!) And I know that a few flurries is not even worth a mention, let alone something to panic about.

Today, a paralegal in our group began lobbying for being allowed to go home at 2pm because she heard snow was on the way and would arrive by 3pm, and she wanted to "beat the rush." In our group we have an attorney who grew up in Maine, me who lived 8 years in Boston, and 2 secretaries who are from upstate New York. We all laughed at her. Shortly thereafter, probably in response to similar inquiries from snow-scared staff, our HR director sent a reminder of the firm's "inclement weather policy" and it was clear that early exit was not going to be granted. Then, as reports of flakes falling in the southern part of the city started to trickle in by phone, the frenzy built to a crescendo. Suddenly, a flake went flying by the window. Secretaries ran to windows to watch the amazing development. Eventually the flurries built to something not quite to the level of "snow showers," and they went out onto the balcony to catch them. And now everyone is griping about how evening traffic is going to be awful.

As I tell people that the snow is not going to stick and that there is nothing to worry about, the refrain is always the same: "but Atlanta doesn't know how to deal with snow and the other drivers are so inexperienced and I'm really just concerned about dealing with them, etc. etc. ad nauseum." And you know, I understand that winter weather is harder to deal with if you're a city or county that doesn't have a well-oiled plowing and salting machine. And I understand that people's stupidity multiplies exponentially when trying to drive in something unfamiliar. I even understand that we all want an excuse to get out of work early.

But seriously. It is not that hard to drive in snow. I never had to do it until I'd been living in Boston for nearly 5 years, and then I learned very quickly that there are 2 rules to remember: 1. go very slow and 2. leave a lot of room between you and everything else in order to stop. (Rarely rule #3 is required: if you do not have all wheel drive and/or snow tires, do not attempt to go up a large snow-covered hill or you will slide down it backwards. This one, I learned during my first blizzard.) Surely even people who see real snowfall once every 5-10 years can figure out these two fundamental principles and manage to avoid a 25 care pileup, right?

None of this is meant to disparage the difficulty of dealing with ice, which is your own special brand of weather hell down here and one that I in no way intend to make light of. My first ice storm upon arrival in Georgia 2 years ago was so miserable that I never want to go through it again, and even I do not pretend to know how to drive on icy roads. If there's ice on them there streets, I will be staying home. But snow--that is a piece of flake.

I'm not even going to try to understand the whole bread/milk phenomenon.

Congratulations, Al

Former Vice President Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize today along with the members of a UN panel on climate change.

Not sure if it makes up for being robbed of the presidency, but it must come pretty close.

Melting, redux

Today's high is 101 degrees. Ugh.

Meanwhile, it will be 65 degrees in my office.

Melting

It may hit 100 today in the ATL. Yesterday when I got off the plane from Baltimore and walked onto the jetway I was hit with heat so unbearable it was like walking into an oven. I stripped off my jacket for the walk to the parking garage but was still drenched in sweat by the time I got to my car, only to find that the temperature in the shade was 99 degrees according to my car's thermometer. Even last night at 8pm when the pizza delivery guy showed up and I opened the door the slam of heat was shocking.

I don't think I can deal with August heat waves. Not at a time like this. These sorts of days make me want to go float in a pool somewhere and drink ice water until my freckles multiply. It reminds me of Labor Day weekend last year when we went to the Drive Invasion and for some dumb reason spent the day in a black tar parking lot with no shade while we baked to crisps. I was so sweaty when we got out of there I thought I'd never feel clean. This year we talk about going back with a tent sort of contraption for some shade, as though that will really provide much more comfort if it's this hot out there again. If someone finds a way to air condition that tent, I'll think about it.

Oh well, at least I'm not in South Georgia or Florida. That would really suck right now.

Late Night Weirdness

So it's almost 4am and I just won another satellite for a WSOP qualifier that I started over 3 hours ago. That was exhausting! Hopefully this one will go better than the others.

Robinella was amazing tonight and I will definitely see her perform again when she is in town. She was hilarious too, though often unintentionally so. She was telling a story about going to the grocery story in her small town in Tennessee to buy easter candy for her son, and she said something like this:

"So I went up to the IGA, well, it's not the IGA anymore because they put a sheet of plastic over the IGA with the new name, but you know how southern people are, we'll always call it the IGA...so I went up to the IGA to buy some eggs to dye, and...well the thing about the IGA is you have to be careful what you buy there. Because a lot of times things at the IGA are out of date. Like, milk, meat, produce, cheese, even canned vegetables will be out of date. But the eggs are always fresh."

This may not amuse anyone but me and one reader out there, but let's just say that those of us who have shopped in an IGA before know that this rule about the things you don't buy there (hint: almost anything with an expiration date or that needs to be refrigerated at a decent temperature) is so, so true.

We won't be talking about the other part of my evening because, well, it's just not worth talking about. That's the nicest way I can put it.

Afterwards I talked to my friend Jen who swears to me that it snowed tonight up in Cobb County. I swear she lies. I saw no snow, and I know because I stared out the window for about half an hour after her call practically willing it to snow. I really miss snow.

And now I have to go to sleep. 'Night, all.

I'm all befuddled

All day I've felt like my head was put on backwards for some reason. First I had some supremely weird and vivid dreams, things like looking out a window at a huge black raincloud only to realize as it got closer that it was actually a swarm of birds...and video cameras. Yes, video cameras were flying around in this cloud. Weird, right? Then I had a dream that co-defendant's counsel in one of my cases showed up at my house dressed as R2D2 from Star Wars. Then I had a dream that the most recent object of my affection told me that he was in love with the girl who was my high school senior class president. There's more weirdness but that's just a sample. Talk about a strange feeling when I woke up!

The weather isn't helping. It was cold, then it was warm, then it was downright hot, now suddenly it's freezing again. Or at least it seems that way when you wake up and it's 37 degrees outside after it was in the 80s a couple days ago. I've switched back and forth between air conditioning and heat so many times in the last 3 weeks that I'm half expecting the HVAC to just go kaput next time I turn it on.

It's strange days, baby. I feel like I'm in a really bad movie.

Dreary thoughts for a dreary day

The weather here in Atlanta matches my mood...cold, grey, and blah. And rather than putting on a fake happy face I'm going to indulge my inner Eeyore a bit. In no particular order:

The work is never going to stop. I mean I make lists of things that need to be done this! minute! and it's enough to fill 3 days...not to mention that I have to find time to enter all of my billing for March before Monday AND get some other long-languishing projects out the door. I wanted to take the weekend off but that is looking increasingly unlikely. And this is the first time since I started this job over a year ago that I've begun to fantasize about quitting. It's not that I don't enjoy the firm or the people, because I do. But the pressure is insurmountable and it's times like these when I start to have delusional thoughts like being envious of my coworker who is beginning a 3 month maternity leave. I mean, I don't want a baby. What the hell would I do if I had to deal with a baby? But here I am jealous of her getting 3 months off. Yes, I know it's nuts. But that's where my mind wanders these days.

I'm also just so, so over being single. SO over it. All the dating bullshit is so tedious, and the thought of just giving up is looking more appealing every day. Everyone tells me how young I am but I don't feel young. I feel beat down by life and the universe and the unfairness of it all.

If I actually had the time and energy, I'd like to complete decorating my guest room this weekend and do a little more work to my depressingly awful front yard that is now 75% clay without a footpath, and the rest of which is dug up with bulldozer tire marks. It's just atrocious. But again that requires time I do not have to purchase paint and plants and supplies and then actually complete the tasks.

2007 has so far been the year of living irresponsibly. I ain't been living like I should. I just wonder if at some point I will snap out of it. My house is a mess, my car is a mess, my life is a mess. How do other people keep their lives together? I think this comes back to the whole having a spouse thing. Dammit.

The repair shop has had my car since Tuesday and if I don't get a call sometime today that it's ready I am going to be mighty pissed. It's just a damn back bumper, how long can it take to replace? The front bumper only took 2 days. And I don't like the Saturn Ion rental they gave me at all. It feels like I'm driving a plastic go kart. Grr.

OK that's enough ranting, raving, and whining. Damn this weather.

T-shirt weather

Today was the first legitimately warm enough day this year to allow comfortable weairng of a T-shirt, and Lord was it glorious. Makes me happy for about the 11,000th time that I moved out of the god forsaken tundra of Boston, where they won't see legitimate T-shirt weather until May if they are supremely lucky and July if they're not.

Of course spending much of it in the office offset a little of my glee, but not much. I mowed my yard (or rather mowed the wild chives growing in my yard, which is a bit of a wreck these days), installed some new front walkway lights, and cleaned up my deck. And tonight I am about to grill steak, because I can. Particularly because in 2 months the mosquitoes will make it nearly impossible to enjoy the deck so I might as well enjoy it now.

Sounded Like a Train

On the one hand, as I read this story of deadly tornadoes in Lake County, Florida where my parents used to live until last October, I am relieved that they aren't there anymore.

On the other hand, my mother was down there visiting my grandparents and scheduled to come home today. And now I am worried about her and trying to talk myself out of calling her out of worry, rather than calling her later as I had planned to in order to wish her a happy birthday.

Tornadoes scare the hell out of me.

Update: I talked to my mom, and she is fine and on her way back home to Georgia. They heard lots of wind, rain, thunder and lightning last night but nothing that made them worry.

Snow!

Well, I woke up to regular old rain that wasn't even frozen, but my dad just sent me this picture from their house in the mountains 90 miles north of here. Guess they got snow, huh?

BEWARE THE WHITE FROZEN DEATH!!!!

In other words, an ice storm may be a-comin'. Everyone can commence the panic now.

I am actually looking forward to sleeping in, so I would LOVE to see some icy goodness. Of course I have gas stove, gas heat, gas water heater etc. Plus I live in Midtown so odds of power outages are slim to none.

BUT I NEED BREAD AND MILK OR I MIGHT DIE!!!!!

Snort.

Moderate Ado About Nothing

Much like the warned-of ice storm, the chances of Samantha hitting, I mean visiting the Atlanta area this weekend have fizzled. Seems Ms. Sam's jewelry line is on the rise with several important meetings on Monday that cannot be missed or rescheduled. Sadly, this means she probably will not be able to visit until at least February after Fashion Week. And since February is looking oh-so hospitable to fun and time off for me thanks to work, it will probably be April before she visits.

Ugh.

Well, in positive news I could theoretically get house fixing-upping stuff done this weekend and then go to DC for the march next weekend. Except that I doubt I can take next weekend off from work anyhow. Double Ugh.

The part that really sucks is that even though I just saw her in December, I already miss her and was seriously looking forward to this visit. It may just be the hormones talking, but I am very glum now.

Hurricane Warning

Along with the ice storm (which has now cancelled my expected trip to the mountains tomorrow for a meeting and lunch with the parents), there is presently an 85% chance of Atlanta taking a direct hit from Samantha. My Christmas present to my best friend Sam was a train ticket down here (she don't fly) and we booked it for this weekend, but I hadn't been able to get in touch with her in about a week so I thought it was questionable whether she'd reschedule. Well, I just heard from her and apparently she gives it an 85% chance she will be coming this weekend. If not, it will probably have to be late February or March because my life and hers are about to get even busier (if that is possible).

Prepare for some serious crazycakes, Atlanta! 85% chance of drunken debauchery and random inappropriate nudity!

The ice storm cometh?

I can't really tell from the various local forecasts if we're actually going to get an ice storm here in Atlanta tomorrow morning or if they're just trying to scare everyone, but the locals sure have themselves whipped into a frenzy just in case. Ice storms were a relatively new thing to me when I moved down here, since up in Boston it's either cold enough to snow boatloads, or it's just going to rain. There was rarely any in between. But, last winter while staying in a small house up in Clarkesville that sadly was powered entirely by electricity, I experienced my first ice storm.

I already had the flu and wasn't feeling so hot anyhow, but when I woke up about 6am to discover that it was cold and the power was off, I wasn't real pleased. I slept in, and the power was still off, and when I looked outside all of the trees were coated with ice. It really is beautiful when you first see it, all glistening and whitish-silver. Oh well, I figured, might as well take a bath with the hot water in the hot water heater, so I did. That would be the last warmth in that house for 2 days.

I eventually went in to town and drove (slowly) past at least half a dozen downed power lines across the roads. There was clearly a lot of damage, and when I got to town most of the stores were open. Wal-Mart was a madhouse and pretty much all the camping lanterns and flashlights had been cleared out. I managed to find one battery-powered lamp. I then decided to have Wendy's for lunch/dinner since it was open and I had no ability to turn on an oven, microwave, or a stove at home. Everyone else had the same idea, apparently, since it took over an hour to get through the line. When I got back to the house I was hopeful that the power would be back on, but alas it was not. I booked a room at the hotel in town that took cats, and packed up my shrieking kitty for the 20 minute drive. When I got there I discovered that the person at the 1-800 number had apparently not checked to see if the hotel had power. The shopping centers on both sides did, but the lobby was lit by candlelight and I was most displeased. I decided to cancel my reservation and tough it out with the cat at home. That night I slept with a long sleeved shirt, jeans and a sweater on and under about 3 comforters. The cat burrowed under the covers with me. I couldn't tell how much of it was being cold and how much was the fever of the flu, but I remember being freezing the whole night.

The next day I had to deliver documents to the state bar of Georgia, and to do that I had to be presentable. My aunt and uncle lived nearby and they had regained power, so I went to their house to take a hot shower and get ready. Then I drove in to Atlanta, did what I had to do, got my internet fix at a Kinko's, and trepidatiously drove back up to the mountains. As I turned into the subdivision I was happy to see the houses lit up, but suddenly as I looked up the hill to where my house was, all was black. I started to cry, and called my dad. (This is what I do when I just lose it.) He had called the power company several times over the past 2 days, and he didn't know what else he could do. I went inside, found my very cold and freaked out cat, and sat on the couch and just wept. I was so frustrated, sick, and cold I didn't know what to do. I called the power company myself and got a recording but I entered the information into their automated outage system anyhow. I fell asleep on the couch wrapped in blankets. About an hour later I heard a loud noise outside and went to the front porch to investigate. There was a big green metal box, whatever those are called, down the street right around the point where the powered houses stopped, and there was a crew working on it. Shortly thereafter, the power came back on. It flcikered a few times, but it was back. The thermostat in the house read 40 degrees.

I never want to go through that ever again. In my current house the heat, hot water heater, and stove are gas, so I know that even if an ice storm knocked out my power, I could stay warm, bathe, and be able to eat. That's all I really need. I'm not going today to buy bread and milk and I'm not going to freak out about the great white menace that may or may not be descending upon us. After what I went through last year, I can take it. I have a shit ton of candles, and a Blackberry if the internet jones is too much. Bring it on.

Tornado Fevah!

Man oh man, I thought the weatherpeople in New England were psychotic about their stormwatching when a nor'easter or blizzard was approaching, but they got NOTHING on the Atlanta weatherpeople when there are tornadoes potentially lurking about. There has been nothing but fever pitched ranting and high powered graphics on any of my network channels for the last hour. They zoom in to almost street level and then go vertical to show the upwardly mobile circulation on the radar that they *think* might possibly maybe be vaguely tornadic...and then immediately jump to telling everyone in that county to go into their basements, or if they live in a mobile home to either head to a friend's house or, in the alternative (and I swear I am not making this up) to"go lie in a ditch outside." I was both horrified and evilly cackling to envision legions of elderly mobile home residents heading outside to go lay in ditches in the rain until the storms pass.

As I have talked about before, I am terrified of tornadoes. I have begun wondering if I should have a weather radio, and hearing mention of a tornado siren in Cobb County made me wonder: does midtown Atlanta have warning sirens? I wonder what they sound like. I wonder how badly I would freak out if I suddenly heard it going off. But, as a longtime Atlanta resident told me last spring, apparently the tornado danger is low for people inside the perimeter, and it's really the 'burbs who are in tornado alley. I guess that should comfort me. Not so much.

It is probably sad that I am so blown away by how great these graphics look on my new TV, right? I mean, there are probably tornadoes ravaging the Atlanta suburbs as we speak and I'm oohing and aahing at the pretty pretty pictures.

I blame the media.