Critical Mass!

Got to ride Critical Mass last night in Atlanta for the first time in a minute. It was a solid ride, but like any organism, after being kinda sleepy through the winter, the ride needed to find its pace again. It was way too damn fast at various points, massing up for entirely too long, and a couple people thinking they were the boss of it.

(Confidential to Whistle Man: this isn't a Saturday morning lycra & spandex training ride on the Silk Sheets, and you're not the ride leader. Leave the fucking whistle at home if you're going to use it to tell us what to do.)

Several times I actually called back, "no gods, no masters!" but Whistle Man was busily riding around to yell at other parts of the pack and didn't hear me.

A random guy on a motorcycle trike (3 wheel) playing loud music self-appointed himself an intersection corker about 2/3 of the way through the ride.

What would a bike ride be without stats? I counted 117 people at the start, and we gained a few more. My ride total was about 17.8 miles, though I peeled off a little early when there was still a good sized pack.

Good stuff.

If it's Tuesday, it must be Nashville

Okay, fine, so it's actually Wednesday. And it's Atlanta. And tonight is Sacramento. But these photos are from Nashville!

These are the delicious buffalo tempeh strips at The Wild Cow in Nashville. Everything on the menu is vegan unless you request dairy cheese. (No, I don't really get it, either.) The buffalo strips and "ranch" had great flavor, but definitely aren't as amazing as the all-time reigning king of vegan buffalo wings, at the old City 'O City in Denver. And of course, the company there was also fantastic. (A2, we miss you!)

Here is my reuben, which was good, but not great (the bread needed to be toasted more, and the tofu needed to be more heavily fried.) The side of BBQ seitan was very tasty (and in the right of the frame you can see the remains of the buffalo strips, which we demolished.)

This is J's seitan philly, and garlicky kale. Also tasty, but again, not amazing. We would totally go back, but would branch out some on the menu.

From Massachusetts: this is a mural I painted on a wall in my college dorm in my first semester, Fall 1993. Still there, with a few later artistic adaptations. (It used to say "...ITY)

In Revere, from a hotel room window. I noticed plenty of traffic on the road below, but zero on the overpasses. Clearly this needed to be explored.

The roadbeds themselves are abandoned. You can see them on this google map link, just north of the hotel. It looks like maybe they used to be highway on/off ramps, but it's hard to say for sure. Could also have been access roads to the abandoned Muller Airfield / Revere Airport. (Scroll down on that link, or search Revere...) It made for an interesting way of crossing that rotary to get to the bus stop on the west side without walking alongside traffic.

Did some mountain biking and urbex last night with D3 here in Atlanta, including the fascinating Hartsfield Incinerator site.

Named for the former mayor of Atlanta, William B. Hartsfield, just as the airport. In searching for it, I found this amusing bit of historical commentary in a google book: William Berry Hartsfield: Mayor of Atlanta, by Harold H. Martin (1978.)

...his profound interest in garbage paid off in honors when in May 1963 a new incinerator was named for him -- a fitting tribute, according to editor Eugene Patterson. "After all what more appropriate monument could be raised to the hottest-tempered old tyrant in the municipal annals of benevolent despotism than a roaring, 1,500-ton fountain of blue blazes," wrote Patterson. "Where is the man who has done more slow burns, roasted more enemies alive, thrown up more smoke screens or carried more coals to Newcastle than the former mayor who will be honored by a city that was shaped brick by brick in the kiln of the irascible genius? Bill Hartsfield never cooled off in twenty-three years as mayor. Now his temperature belongs to the ages." (p.171) 

This is the rusting but still climbable conveyor strutcure. 

Here is the observation post on the top of the conveyor, just above the massive hopper. 

To get up to it, you briefly have to crawl up the conveyor belt itself before switching out to the stairs (visible on the right.) 

 Lots of old cylinders laying around. 

Naptime! 

Under the pavement, the forest.


Which a little searching indicates might be an adaptation from a beautiful Wendell Berry poem:

IN A COUNTRY

ONCE FORESTED

By Wendell Berry

The young woodland remembers

the old, a dreamer dreaming

of an old holy book,

an old set of instructions,

and the soil under the grass

is dreaming of a young forest,

and under the pavement the soil

is dreaming of grass.

Various and sundry

Hot off the digital presses, since I know y'all must be missing the food porn and gardening porn something fierce.

This is this year's crop of container gardening tomatoes. (Containers, in this case, are drilled out 6.5 gallon homebrewing buckets. I sold some brewing equipment through Craigslist right when we moved to Atlanta, and the guy who came to pick the stuff up noticed I was using old brewing buckets for gardening, said something like, "Wow -- you really must have a ton of brewing equipment!")

The larger plant to the left looks healthier, but it struggling a bit. Atlanta is a tough place to grow tomatoes, and buckets are a tough place to grow tomatoes.

Now on the left is the smaller plant, a Tumbling Tiger, with a couple delicious specimens picked and sitting on top. And that's our little baby herb garden with, I think, oregano and thyme. We finally gave up on some transplated hydroponic basil which did surprisingly well for a while, but then just wasn't having it.

Here are those Tumbling Tigers in action: sliced on toast with Better Than Cream Cheese, then going clockwise: sauerkraut, fried tempeh, sauteed broccoli, and caramelized ONIONS!

My favorite apron from my time cooking aboard ship has a silkscreened patch sewn on. The text is: "under the pavement  |  the forest".

I love exploring, particularly abandoned buildings and industrial sites. I particularly love it when nature takes back over.

I'm posting this from my college alma mater which many of you know. Yesterday I moderated a roundtable discussion of alums and friends about Occupy, caught up with one of my most important faculty mentors (K), and am going to a couple more workshops today, and get to just wander around and re-explore the place.

Above is a shot from my bike and hike this morning through the "pine forest." (See any pines?) (Stir any memories?)

It's a little hard to express how amazing this place is for me, and for many people.

Here's a toad trying hard to blend in on that same little path. 

Students here make stuff. Sometimes it's hilarious.

I'm lodged in the housing group (starts with "P") I never did officially stay in, but spent plenty of time in. The first time was when I needed to flee the rages of Fuckmonger, and an upper year friend invited me over. They were going out on an exploration of the former SAC bunker built into Bare Mountain. (Neat video in that link.) It's massive: almost 26 acres, and 44,000 square feet. Now owned by Amherst College and used as the Five College Book Depository, it contains nearly 500,000 volumes, filed by size rather than by subject, on over 8 miles of shelving. Here's a wonky article all about how it was set up and is used as a library depository. Its initial purpose (1957-71) was as the eastern communications hub for the Strategic Air Command, and it played a significant role in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Back in 1993, however, it was in a strange transitional state of use, and, well, some students knew how to get in. And so we did. And wandered, climbed around, sat and spun around in really uncomfortable office chairs, went through piles of old records (mostly boring stuff like time logs.) For further details on this trip, we'll we'll have to talk in person.

This is only the second time I've been back to campus for any significant period of time, the first being June 2010. As of then, my mural was still up in the basement of the dorm I was housed in. I'm hoping to be able to go check it out today and see if it's still up.

Tomorrow: Boston for some friends, some Red Sox, some wandering.

Is this your bike? Or: notes on grammar, irony, and intentional misuse

Below is a recent posting from the ever-vigilant Midtown Ponce Security Alliance (MPSA), a citizen group that employs off duty Atlanta PD cops to patrol a nearby area with a significant emphasis onbusting "gangs" of trans* prostitutes, or what MPSA ally Wayne Mock of the similarly styled off duty rentacop police force Midtown Blue likes to call "tranny hookers."

Is this your bike?

May 13, 2012 · Posted in Eye on Midtown 

APD recently arrested a homeless male who is staying at the Peachtree-Pine “shelter” for stealing money out of parking lot boxes on West Peachtree Street. They are looking for the owner/victim of the bike he was riding, a baby-blue, almost brand-new Power Climber 2X suspension by Dynacraft. The subject refused to divulge where he found the bicycle. According to the police report, the “shelter” folks told police that he is new to Midtown community. If you are missing a bike please contact Investigator Cantin directly at JCantin@atlantaga.gov.

Power Climber? Dynacraft? Whoa! Sweet ride that someone is no doubt burning to get back, right? Well, in case the desperate crime victim needs their memory jogged, this might be their bike if they recently paid $88.00 for it at Wal Mart.

What really rubs raw about this article is not their lack of understanding that they really mean "dual suspension" rather than "2X suspension", but rather their bizarre and inappropriate use of scare quotes (a.k.a. air quotes) around "shelter." No matter one's position on the Peachtree and Pine shelter run by the Metro Atlanta Taskforce for the Homeless, it's most definitely a shelter. Check out this article and the reader comments to get a small flavor of the debate over this shelter. If you click through on that article, try to ignore the blatantly unobjective [micro] journalism in a series described thusly: "Welcome to another edition of "Visions for Vacancies," where we visit a local vacant commercial building and ask you what you'd like to see go in that space.…"

Confidential to Midtown Patch: the Peachtree and Pine shelter isn't vacant, and the parking lot across the street from it isn't part of the shelter, and those who hang out in the parking lot (which really isn't as terrifying as they make it sound: I ride by it semi-regularly) explicitly aren't allowed to access the shelter's services.

Confidential to MPSA: the word shelter isn't ironic. Perhaps you were going for a "writer's concise (but possibly misleading) paraphrasing, characterization, or intentional misrepresentation of statements, concepts, or terms used by a third party."

For the grammar nerds out there, if wikipedia isn't a sufficiently reliable source, see also the MLA Style Manual (3rd. Ed., 2008) at section 3.48(a), or The Chicago Manual of Style (15th Ed., 2003) at section 7.58. I assume the CMS 16th Edition (2010) section is numbered similarly, but I don't have it to check. Anyone out there in internetlandia have the 16th edition and want to post a comment confirming or denying this?

I know, I know.

It's been a while. But look, it's not you: it's me.

I'm a lead logistics organizer for a 400-500 person bike ride. Tomorrow. And then on Sunday J and I fly to the USVI. Whee!

I couldn't resist this (presumably unintentionally funny) screen shot from Patch, our little "hyperlocal" news source.

No, that's not the "crime beat" box, that's just some headlines you can click on. Yes, APD are clowns, all the way up the chain of command: that's a quote from (edit: former) Major Chris Leighty, Zone 5 Commander (where I live.)

Holy friggen pollen, Batman!

These are the pollen counts in Atlanta for the month of March, 2012:

"Extremely high" on this scale is considered anything over 500 (grains of pollen in a cubic meter of air.)

See last Monday and Tuesday? The 19th set an all-time record for Atlanta, which was promptly broken the next day. That was just about the death of me. (Okay, okay, I made the STUPID decision to ride my bike to the dentist on Tuesday. Stupid stupid stupid.)

I'm still "sick" from it (though I think I might have also caught a small cold on top of the pollen.) Dry, unproductive cough interspersed with excessive, gross greenish yellow mucous production.

I need to go scout out a route for a bike ride I'm helping organize. I hate to say it, but I think I'll drive.

For reference, here are the March 2011 pollen counts for ATL:

Highest we got last year? March 24, at 3939.

2010 saw a high of merely 462. 

 

How about 2009? March 30, at 1727.

2008, you ask? March 19, at 534.

You have to go all the way back to 2007 to find a year even remotely as bad as this year. March 26, 2007: 5499 (which was, I believe, the previous all-time record, before it was shattered last week.) 

Why? In significant part, an unusually warm and early spring. And yes, pollen counts and season length are definitely linked to global climate change chaos.

High Museum = lame

I really like museums. Most of you who have traveled with me know this. I particularly like free and cheap museums. Even museums that aren't free or cheap, I can love: I'm a huge fan of the Atlanta History Center, and rank it in my top five or ten favorite museums anywhere (this list include the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, LAMCA: the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the British Museum.) I did a significant chunk of my law school studying at the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston.)

We've lived less than a mile from the High Museum, which bills itself as the "leading art museum in the southeastern United States", for over two years. We haven't gone, though, since it's stupidly expensive: $18 for adults. Finally, a halfoffdepot.com coupon and J getting in free through her work enticed us to spend a hot, muggy Saturday afternoon there.

The air conditioning was nice, but on balance, it was an incredible disappointment. Despite a truly stunning (if somewhat disorienting) physical space, it's totally overrated. The curation is ridiculous: it looks like someone went on a meth binge with an art history book in one hand and googled the word "modern" with the other. There was a photography "exhibit" I was excited to see that ended ended up consisting of one room, about 10x10, four photos, and an "interactive" display (where you can put different sizes of frames against a print to see if you would have framed it the same. Whee.) They tell me that John Marin was the most important American artist of his time. Huh? The guards occasionally have to literally yell at the stupid people who touch the art. Yes: yell. As in: "DON'T TOUCH! DON'T TOUCH! DON'T TOUCH!" Navigating through the three major wings and walkways is confusing even with the map. There is all sorts of "art" that is only "art" because the museum tells me it is.

And I'm not the only one who thinks the High Museum is on the wrong track.

It's a kinda long story as to why, but we ended up getting in entirely for free yesterday. I'm going to give away my remaining free entry voucher: it's that uninteresting to me to bother going back in the next two months. Oh, if you want to check it out yourself for free, that famous patron of fine art, Target, is sponsoring free admission on Thursdays in September.

Must be spring!

Yeah, it's Atlanta: less than a month after the gnashing of teeth and rending of winter garments when the temperatures dropped into the single digits and we got two inches of snow in one day (OH, THE HORROR!) we're starting thunderstorm season here in the A-T-L:

"
TODAY
CHANCE OF SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS IN THE MORNING

THEN SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS IN THE AFTERNOON. WINDY. SOME THUNDERSTORMS MAY BE SEVERE WITH DAMAGING WINDS IN THE AFTERNOON. HIGHS IN THE MID 70S. SOUTHWEST WINDS 15 TO 25 MPH. CHANCE OF RAIN NEAR 100 PERCENT.
"

Sounds like a good day to blog, yeah?

(Oh, and BTW, the benevolent dictatorship here at DANGR World HQ has heard the cries of the people, and we will allow Free and Fair Elections(tm) in November. No, to hell with that, we'll fight to the death. But we'll throw a bone, since the cries of the assembled masses have been heard, even all the way up here in the corner office: triple sec!)

BeltLine love

I do, indeed, LOVE the BeltLine. I've been on it at least five times in the last six days.

Here is what your socks sometimes look like when riding off-road on the BeltLine.

I'm not sure if this is part of a public education/cleanup project, or witty hipster snark. Probably a little of Column A, and a little of Column B.

Ill-advised

What would any reasonable person do when they feel a vicious, violent sneezing, eye-tearing winter cold coming on full force? Ride their bike 20 miles roundtrip in 36 degree weather to Your Dekalb "Farmer's Market" hell, of course!

Hey, I didn't claim I was that reasonable person, did I? And I need some chili-garlic sauce, which YDFM is one of the only places in Intown ATL that sells it. I still detest the place. Blog bitching likely to follow.

Of snow and driving

Here is this morning's balcony panorama at sunrise.

I learned an important lesson: don't mess with the default focal length and focal length multiplier settings in Hugin Panorama Creator unless you know what the hell you're doing, or you'll get something like this:
Yeah.

Speaking of not knowing what the hell you're doing, if you live in Atlanta, and don't know how to drive in snow and/or ice, STAY THE HELL HOME. Really. Read a book, nap, play cards, clean the house, drink yourself into a coma, whatever. BUT STAY HOME.



From Sunday, January 9, 2011, the first day of our current Snowpocalypse 2011 episode, this is a quick video of one of a dozen or so cars driving the wrong way in I-85, between Shallowford and Clairmont in Atlanta. Yep: just turned around and drove the wrong way, apparently to a place where they could illegally cut over to the frontage road. Literally hundreds of cars were abandoned on the freeway, many on the sides, but a number just parked in traffic lanes. Many were turned off, dark inside, no lights, no occupants.

Where do those people go?

Full-sized tractor-trailers jackknifed, and sliding off the road. I thought you all were supposed to be professional drivers? (Hot Tip: meth doesn't keep you from sliding if you don't know how to drive on snow.)

Really, people: you knew this storm was coming for days. Nowhere you had to go in your rear wheel drive sedan or truck was that important. And if you do happen to drive an SUV with alltime AWD, but still don't know how to drive in snow or ice, refer to the paragraph above, and STAY HOME.

In my SUV, with true 4WD, the 20 miles from Lawrenceville to midtown Atlanta took an hour and a half, and would have taken much longer if I was driving like most of the chuckleheads on the freeway. At no point did I feel out of control, or slide, or skid. I spent most of the time avoiding other drivers, though certain stretches of 85 were delightfully (and a little creepily) empty:



At the risk of sounding like the bozo that NPR always manages to interview to respond to a snowstorm in the south by saying something like "Well, uh-huh, in North Dakota, we call that summer", this was NOT bad winter weather for driving. For much of the northern part of the country, it was a very average, even light, snowfall. The problem wasn't the snow, it was the drivers.

Oh, yeah, and: Confidential to Atlanta metro area drivers: don't drive with your emergency flashers on UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY HAVE AN EMERGENCY. Not knowing how to drive in snow is NOT an EMERGENCY. Driving slow is NOT AN EMERGENCY. We SEE you fine: you're driving a big dumb car or big dumb truck, and the visibility is approximately a half mile. It sort of dilutes the point of flashers if you are just toolin' along with them on, like all the other idiots on the freeway.

We're still in close to a state of weather siege in Atlanta, with public schools and many businesses closed, and glare ice all over the roads. The City of Atlanta is implementing its usual snow and ice mitigation program: wait until it goes away on its own. Which I'm fine with: I've been walking and biking on it, and enjoying the quiet streets. Oh, and getting the crap cut out of my face by my glasses in an iceball fight at Piedmont Park. (It's all fun and games until you have multiple lacerations and a black eye from a single nasty iceball assault.) You can email me directly if you want to see pictures.

Okay, snow day #4 in a row or not, back to work. (Really.)

Thoughts on airport

Catching separate flights an hour apart, J and I hurried to the MARTA station this morning, only to find it running less frequent than usual. The train was the most crowded MARTA train I've ever been on. Nothing like a crowded NYC subway, mind you, but essentially full. Lots of huge people with big bags and bigger voices. Full-on pedestrian traffic jam to get on the stairs down, with people shoving and talking shit not quite under their voices. Christmas does bring out the best in people, doesn't it?

At the airport, J was cutting her flight a little close, while I have time to blog. By email, we agreed that elite status is worth every penny sometimes. It's a regular fucking freakshow at the airport. The south security line was fine. Of course the morons in green jackets were telling people bullshit about which lines had which waits, and claimed that both south and north had 15-20 minutes waits, while main was allegedly sub-10 minutes. Total bullshit, especially for elites: I could see a long line at main, which doesn't have an elite line, and my wait was about three minutes in the elite line at south (which they are actually enforcing today, a relatively rare occurrence.)

The underground walkway between terminals was fine, since most people preferred to sardine themselves into the inter-terminal train, but walking through the B terminal is like the Amazing Race.

Now in the Sky Club at B25, there are two enormous fat guys, apparently brothers ("Think mom is awake yet?") sitting a table one over. Brother #1 just can't shut his fucking mouth. Just keeps talking. About nothing. And saying "unbelievable" with a big gushing release of air sort of sigh. Brother #2 mostly wipes his Mr. Clean head, picks his nose, and ignores him. Brother #1 is making various phone calls to get a "general antibiotic" and discussing checking into the hospital. Totally unclear why.

Interestingly, while the other people on the MARTA and many other passengers in the airport are all a-tizzy (or just downright rude and obnoxious) the staff I've dealt with have all been cheery and happy, including some of the rentacop TSA agents.

California here i come (remember that song?)

Food porn, winter, and stuff.

When I woke up this morning, it was 17 degrees in Atlanta. Woo whee! To warm it up a bit, here is some food porn.

K, recognize a couple ingredients? Concerned?

Here are the tofu steaks. And what is that goodness peeking in at the top?

That's right: ONIONS!

Brussels sprouts with red pepper flakes.

At least MARTA operators:

have a sense of humor:
This is the control panel in a light rail car I was riding in the other day to the airport...

In between

I can't really imagine flying much more than I do. I mean, I do it by choice, and love the travel, but I spend a lot of damn time in airports. This is an amusing article in the Atlanta Creative Loafing, Weekend at Hartsfield: A half-naked man. Two honeymoons. A 48-hour journey to nowhere by a reporter who voluntarily spent a weekend at my most regular airport, ATL.

My body clock still isn't right from the trip back from Australia. I'm not jet-lagged, in the sense of feeling like crap like I did when I arrived in Spain last year, but I'm not synced up yet to US eastern daylight time. I went to sleep the night before last around midnight, felt fine, then was wide awake at 3:00am. I went back to sleep, and was awoke to a phone call at noon. Then last night, I wasn't tried until 2am, went to sleep immediately, and just slept until 1pm.

I'm getting stuff done during the day and being fairly productive, but I'd like to get back on a regular sleep schedule.

Fog & rain

A few new panoramas from ATL's fog and rain, and then snow, last week:

Things I like about the Atlanta airport

Since I usually bitch and moan and snark about the airport, I thought I'd list a few things that I actually like about the ATL airport:

1) MARTA rail goes directly to it.
2) The security checkpoints, especially the South security checkpoint, are rarely crowded.
3) The various employees are usually quite friendly.
4) You can walk from terminal to terminal in an underground tunnel and skip the air train.
5) When you walk in the tunnel in #4, there is interesting art and sculpture from Zimbabwe.
6) There are two good vegan/vegetarian options in the Terminal A food court (Great Wraps has a surprisingly good and inexpensive ($5.55 all in) hummus & falafel wrap, and the Chinese place next to it has spicy tofu, and vegetarian fried rice.)
7) When you sit at the bar-style seating in the Terminal A food court, there is great people watching as people go to and from the air train.
8) Most of the people in #7 look and wander like zombies, which will make for good material if I ever write a short story about the airport.

See? I can be positive!

Off to DC now for museums, hiking, and beer. Woo!

Walking

Back from an excellent guided walk on the Beltline's west side:

Angel was an amazing guide, and the walk through the snow, ice, and slush actually made me miss walking in Alaska.

Now to overhaul, or alternatively destroy, my rear disc brake. It's full of crap and grit and so not operating properly (it doesn't spring back after braking, so the cable doesn't stay taut. I already lubricated the cable housing.) I figure I don't have a lot to lose: worst case, I screw it up beyond my ability to put it back together, and I go into the LBS tomorrow or Monday and tell them I fucked it up.

Snowzippa?

Unfortunately, all the cool snow disaster names seem to be taken this season: Snowpocalypse, Snowmageddon, Snowzilla, Snowapalooza, Snow... WAIT! SNOWAPALOOZA! I hereby claim that for the 1-3" Metro Atlanta is forecast to get today, leading to the winter storm warning currently in effect. I'm supposed to participate in a conference call today at noon: given recent ATL snow closings, I'm willing to predict the likelihood that it'll be postponed at around 50/50.

One of the more irritating parts about the storms are the asinine letters that NPR reads during All Things Considered. You know the genre: "I lived through the blizzard of 19**, blah blah blah, and this is nothing..." "Here in [Insert Midwestern State] you know what we call three feet? A dusting. Har har har..." "Waaaaaa, I *hate* New York City's law requiring me to clear the sidewalk in front of my property..."

And the story today on Morning Edition, with people feeling all virtuous about their snow clearing because it's a neighborhood competition? Whatever. Clear it because it's a nice thing to do for the people who live in your city/town/suburb, or leave it there, but clearing to keep up with the Joneses? Just keep out the gigantic fiberglass Santa and his light-outline reindeer all year, and save yourself the physical labor.

Even better is the occasion bringing out the climate-change-denial troglodytes, including Sean Hannity and James Inhofe. These guys are so breathtakingly stupid, you almost wonder if political satirists miss W anymore.

Now, since all the cool kids are doing it, here's my little snow reminiscence: In Anchorage, we regularly cleared our immense driveway for a couple hours, then went across the road to clear our nearest neighbor's driveway. This is when he didn't beat us out there: many, many mornings after a storm, our late-septuagenarian neighbor would be out there and half his driveway done when we woke up and looked out the window, his hand-knitted scarf flapping in the wind. He then had the time to come over and chat and bitch about the muni snowplows pushing up berms from the road into his newly cleared driveway. Ahhh, Alaska: how I don't miss clearing your snow.

Busy busy busy, and a rancid coconut in seven acts

Another whole random pile of updates:

1) J deployed to Haiti today, so we've spent much of the last few days packing and preparing. She has already e-mailed, and arrived safely. She's staying on the embassy grounds, so safety isn't a big issue, but her food life is likely to suck for the next week to three weeks. Her luggage (pictures to come) included about 50 pounds of food, which is good, since the MREs can be pretty vile, especially the very limited vegetarian options.

2) We walked a chunk of the Beltline on Saturday through Piedmont Park and up to the Armour Yards: it was a pretty great walk. Only a few places required some, uhh, trailblazing. Yesterday to meet J at the Sweetwater Breweing Company for happy hour, I walked another chunk from Peachtree Street back over to Piedmont Ave, which was interesting, more industrial, almost all on railroad tracks. I scouted out some more areas today and worked on maps. Pictures to come!

3) I think I have finally given up up the laser printer: after spilling beverage into it, and despite multiple attempts at cleaning and trying a new toner cartridge, it just doesn't print right. This led me to try to resurrect the Epson CX5400 inkjet that hasn't printed for a long time, and which I've been using solely for the scanner. Much ink on my fingers and an hour or so later, I hereby declare it beyond help. I'll try freecycling it to see if someone wants it for just a scanner, but since I'll be replacing it with another multifunction, I won't need it.

4a) I bought a fresh coconut the other day at the utterly miserable Dekalb "Farmer's Market"*. Well, two coconuts, actually: I bought one fresh/mature coconut, and one Thai "young" coconut. We used the young coconut the other night in a recipe (photos may follow, if you're good) and this morning I noticed that the mature coconut had leaked a small drop of very sticky stuff out of one of the eyes. Rut-roh. Hoping to make the best of it, I found a couple recipes for fresh coconut, both of which would require a trip to the supermarket. So I decided to confirm first that the coconut was still good.

4b) *"Farmer's Market" is in quotes because it's not. It's a big warehouse like store that is almost always maddeningly, make you want to crap your pants crowded, and where Atlantans inability to identify acceptable flow of traffic patterns comes to a real head. Lest you think it's me being overly sensitive, just read some of the yelp reviews.

4c) And it's not even particularly cheap: notwithstanding the knuckleheads on yelp who don't actually know how to do price comparisons, any number of the produce items are the same or more expensive than at the average local supermarkets, Public and Kroger, and are only slightly less than similar items at Trader Joe's and Whole Paycheck. Seriously, with the exception of cheap spices, the ONLY reason to shop here is selection for obscure ingredients for ethnic cooking, especially Asian, since the nearest Asian markets are way the hell out in Doraville, Duluth, and Chamblee. To hell with that: as much as I love Asian cuisine, I'd sooner fly to Asia directly than drive out to those burbs regularly.

4d) Oh, and despite many people considering them one of the best Asian supermarkets in Atlanta, they don't sell sushi rice, pickled ginger, or real wasabi, and the nori is in a different place than the supermarket-grade fake wasabi. The nori, however, is the biggest cheapest damn package of organic nori ever. So that's something.

4e) But back to the damn coconut. So ANYWAAAAAY, I did some online research, which indicated that if there is a slight hiss when you pierce the soft eye, that's a good thing, since a little pressure should be built up. However, if there's a significant hiss, that's a bad thing, since it likely indicates a bacterial infection. What the web didn't cover is when you put your small screwdriver in the soft eye, it plunges right through, and rancid coconut water blasts you in the face like a malicious geyser, covering your glasses, face, and shirt, and spraying your 10' high ceilings.

4f) Friends, don't try this at home: if there's creepy sticky shit leaking out of your coconut, just trust me: assume it's rancid and turn it into either trash, or a party activity.

4g) BOO!, too, since I was going to try a Gin Coco, which is gin, coconut water, and ice. Sounded good. But somehow not worth scraping the rancid coconut water from the kitchen ceiling.

5) Upcoming travel: DC, Eugene, and the SF bay area. Woo hoo!