My husband, the dog and I are off for sunny South Florida for Thanksgiving with his (husband's not dog's) family. I hope you all have a lovely holiday with plenty of good food and good company. I'll be back next week.
Like many, MANY people in the ATL, I spent a looooooong time--8.5 hours WITHOUT a potty break, which is really like 205 bladder hours--in my car last Tuesday trying to get home in the snow and ice. In that 8.5 hours, which started at 12:45 p.m., I ate a handful of tiny little chocolate candies that I grabbed out of my desk, just in case it took me a couple of hours to get home--because I hadn't had lunch yet. And no water--but that was actually okay, since I had nowhere to pee. Here's the first indication (besides, you know, the fact that I wasn't moving very fast on the interstate and it was snowing) that I wasn't going to get home for a while: Yes, that does say it's going to take 89-91 minutes to go 9 miles. But, it lied. It took me more than three hours. I'm not sure how many minutes that is, but I know it's more than 89-91. Here's my view for most of the ride. Here's the Delk Road exit (the one mentioned on the sign in the first photo...
At the edge of the caldera, in the tiny town of Fira, on Santorini, my sister, Susan, and I peered out at the Agean Sea, marveling at a blue they created just for Greece. Our eyes traveled to donkeys ferrying people and things up from the boats docked at the old port below. I don’t remember which of us thought it would be fun to hike the zigzagged path to the port, then ride a donkey back up, but it was a terrible, scary, asinine, stupid idea. It was still fairly early in the morning when we started down the thousands of wide, uneven, cobblestone, horror-movie steps. But the sun that beat on the island in August didn't have a clock. We'd finished our water and worked up a sweat before we hit the half-way point. At the port we poked into gift shops, bought a couple of trinkets and drank more water before seeking out our animal transport. We climbed a few steps, handed over our money and sat down on the next donkey that waited beside the top step. A mother and her two...
My Nana died a week ago today. She was 92 years old and lived, at least as far as I knew, a full, wonderful life, though she certainly had her share of hardship. She left behind three daughters (my mother included), eight grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. We were all at the burial and memorial service in Charlotte, NC, this past Friday. Five of the eight grandchildren spoke about Nana at the service. And I learned that she apparently thought we were all as special as I know I was to her. That was the theme that ran through all five of our stories. Here's what I said about her. I knew from early on that Nana loved me, not in some abstract, send me a card with money in it for Christmas kind of way, but in a concrete way that made me know she wanted me around. She introduced me to her friends. She wanted to know mine. She was a part of my life. I took all of that for granted until my freshman year of college. I was at Emory, living in a dorm that had been built in the 1920s. I...
Comments
Too bad it'll be too far for you to bring any leftovers home.
Morgan Mandel
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com
http://www.morganmandel.com