I Heart Atlanta

A lot of times people come away from a vacation needing another just to recover from all the self administered abuse that comes with travel. Even my friends complained about losing direction, but not me. I actually gained a certain clarity while out in ATL I see now what I want out of life, and let me just say that I love that city.

For the most part I had a great time. It was a vacation filled with non stop eating, drinking, snacking, and farting. I saw all of my friend Paul's favorite spots in town, and found a few unusual spots to take pictures in. We even visited some of the memorable sights from the last time I was in Atlanta.

Unfortunately (and very fortunately in a way) there aren't any gut busting stories like the gas station incident from the last trip primarily because everything went smoothly. Since Paul has lived down there for several years now he actually knows where everything is. The only times we ever got lost were when Sean and I decided to wander out on our own. Oddly we never got lost going to a place, but always going back and only for a short period of time.

While I tried to mostly keep my mouth shut outside of direct conversation the quirks of my friends were on full display. Sean is generally an eating enthusiast, but he had met his match in Paul. Paul literally lives meal to meal. There were two incidences where we had just walked out of a buffet - our belts bursting and our stomachs aching - and Paul was already talking about where we would eat next. The man dines with alarming regularity.

When Paul wasn't talking about food Sean was talking about getting laid. So most of the lulls in conversation would read out like a ping pong tournament of vices: Food, sex, food, sex, food, sex, food, sex. Fortunately for alcohol was always available so I didn't need to add a third voice to the chorus.

Did I mention I love Atlanta? This has to the first time in my life I have ever considered living in a place other than Florida. The thing is everything in Atlanta has a counter part in Florida. The North Point Mall (yes we went to a mall) looks just like Aventura. Down town Atlanta looks a lot like down town Miami only with no Hispanic people and a lot more brick buildings. On the downside it gets cold. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be until the day we left, but it does get too cold for my taste. That and it takes a lot longer to get anywhere. I can get to just about any place of consequence to hang out at in Florida in under an hour. In Atlanta everything seems to be about two hours apart.

Of course there is also the fact that everything is on a hill. Forget flat walking surfaces. You're either going up a hill or down a hill which might explain why all the doors are thirty inches thick and require a team of horses to open. I guess they think that everything will tumble over, and they want to make sure that all the doors are impossible to open should they need to escape.

As far as the stories go I'll start blogging about the different days with accompanying pictures starting tomorrow... maybe. Till then I'm working on some stuff and recovering from the lovely case of bronchitis I developed.

On a good note my sleeping problem seemed to have taken care of itself while I was away, and I came home with a tone of goodies though none are souvenirs. Believe it or not the only two things I bought were alcoholic and a video game. Paul lent me a book, three mangas, 3 Paton Oswald CDs (very instructive. I realized something about my friend base listening to those last night that I can't believe I never noticed before.), two Joe Rogan albums, some Doug Stanhope dvds, and a Spinal Tap unplugged dvd as well as another Playstation 2 game. Not to mention we brought over a copy of one of the MLUSO live albums, The Bark The Dog Live at Excutive Studios, and a copy of We Are Tired of Peace. What a haul.