One of our new across-the-street neighbors--a family of four. You reckon our property values will go up if we talk about the wonders of free-range, fresh goat cheese right here in the 'hood?
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...
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...
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...
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