When Life Hands Me Lemons, I (Almost) Buy Apple Products

You may remember on Friday my mood was a little less than stellar. I was feeling all sorry for myself and my current station in life. Of course my mental ship was quickly righted when I heard of the death of one my aunts on Friday.

I was one button-click away from ordering a new laptop this weekend as a way to cure my ills. The only thing that caused me pause is the constant rumor that Apple will be updating its Macbook line “any day now.” Like many planes over Hartsfield I’m going to circle Apple’s runway for a while and see what turns up.

Nashville Just Never Panned Out This Time
Normally I love Nashville, it’s a city that allows me to unleash a hidden me. Normally I’ve come to love traveling alone, it allows me to do photography on my terms. I suppose I was just in no mood to drink alone and never saw anything that caught my eye (well, other than many of the young women on Vanderbilt’s campus). With the exception of going out for dinner early on Friday night I was a homebody in my hotel rooms. Professionally the trip may pan out as a successful one, but remains to be seen.

Sing It With Me… “It’s A Small World After All”
I was up and out of the hotel by 5:30am Central on Saturday morning. I was hoping to luck into a beautiful sunrise to photograph. Instead as the sun rose I found myself eating a breakfast in a Waffle House. With my belly filled I set Jill up to take me to Cloudland Canyon State Park, one of the many Georgia state parks I had yet to visit.

I arrived in the park some time just before 9am Eastern and parked my car. (Have I mentioned how much of a thrill it is to get continued use of my annual Georgia State Park parking pass?) As I started to walk toward the canyon I thought I recognized a guy getting out of his car, but since I wasn’t wearing my glasses I needed to get closer to make sure. Wouldn’t you know that I did know the person — it was my friend Bill from Atlanta. What are the odds that I’d run into someone I know while up there? Bizarre.

Cloudland Canyon is nice, and I’m sure will be much nicer when the leaves turn color. The park is probably a lot more picturesque when there is significant rainfall or snowmelt and the water falls actually have water, as opposed to the trickling that I witnessed.

ITP Flickr Pic
I have to cheat some more today. I took some shots at Cloudland Canyon on Saturday morning, but nothing seemed to jump out at me so I never got around to processing them. Instead I will use the photo that is sure to launch many a beer run to Tennessee.

Sadly it’s a bit blurry because I took it using my cellphone’s camera. Even so, I think you get the idea.

I Think I Drank At Least One Beer For Every Two Miles I Ran
While there was a little more walking involved, I successfully ran a (modified) ten mile run yesterday. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with Martha and Dave (aka P.E.) so after two miles I stopped and put on my headphones. For the next eighty minutes I thumped along to house / trance, only to desire a switch to Los Lobos with about four miles remaining. To my horror I realized that I blew away Los Lobos the last time I updated this iPod, so instead I shuffled along listening to the Butterfly Assassin’s “Sylivia.” I completed the ten-mile route in about 1:45:00 which is about five minutes slower than I had anticipated. Overall, I cannot complain about my efforts.

As is always the case, Martha had a wonderful spread of food and a full complement of beer and was not deterred by the (relatively) huge crowd of runners who gathered as this was our first running meetup in months. I chose to make it a “meat day” because there was no way that I was going to deny myself bacon after ten miles of running. This proved to be a really good choice when Martha returned with pizza from Little Azio for those hard-core drinkers who remained until late into the afternoon.

One Step Closer To A Winless Season
(Sunday morning) “Hey, let’s bench Eli Manning and play Trent Edwards because Buffalo is playing Arizona — who gave up six passing touchdowns to the Jets last week.” What a brilliant idea! Manning scored over twenty-two points against Seattle, while Edwards got knocked out of the game with a concussion after only three plays. This sort of “luck” has been the only luck the East Atlanta Deatbeat Dads have had this year. I am currently at zero wins, five losses. Yeouch!

Aaaamazing Race, Aaaaamaaaazing Race
Amidst the hours of football watching I found enough time to catch last night’s The Amazing Race. Two episodes in and I’m officially hooked again, although I’ve yet to commit the players’ names to memory.

So far I know that I am no fan of the separated couple because she annoys the living shit out of me, the young brother and sister team because I don’t like the way he plays, and the newly-dating couple from New York because the guy is such a weenie.

This Town Is Running Out Of Cuban Restaurants. The One I’ll Be At Tomorrow Might Be Packed
A couple of months ago we lost Kool Korner Grocery which had to close its doors because of the increase in value of the land on which it sat. This morning the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that a fire broke out this morning at the Havana Sandwich Shop on Buford Highway and that the building suffered significant damage.

I’ll be eating Cuban food tomorrow night (using my remaining meat-eating day in the process). I’m going to keep the location on the down-low in order to make sure that people hankering Cuban food don’t flock.

And now for some ideas stolen from LiveJournal…
Current Mood – sore, sniffly, but overall okay
Current Music – Sirius Satellite Radio, Channel 26 playing Belle & Sebastian — “Step Into My Office, Baby”
Website Of The Day – How can I not like a website called Tinkernut?
Exercise (b)Log – Saturday: running, ~3 miles; Sunday: running, 10 miles
Monthly Foot Mileage – 21.5 miles
Monthly Wheel Mileage – 0 miles
Monday Morning Weigh-In – 201 pounds (Dangen!)
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Monthly Marta Rides – 0
Consecutive Days Of Bed-Making (Longest Streak) – 22 (110)
Books To Read To Earn Kindle – 4
Vegetarian Days – 4
Carnivore Days – 2

October Goals
1) Lose no fewer than three pounds
2) Drink nothing but water, coffee, beer, wine
3) Run no fewer than 75 miles
4) Bike no fewer than 125 miles

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]