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Three feast on Buford Highway for $42 | Omnivore Atlanta.

I am going to eat at this place, and very soon. Close to home, and looks fabulous.

The AJC reports that The Advocate ranks Atlanta as America’s gayest city! This makes me happy. There are several criteria apparently, and as a straight myself, I’m unaware of many of them—but it turns out Atlanta is gayer than San Francisco or New York! I’ll have to tell Tom Price, my Congressman. It should make him feel happy too.

Shrimp Pho.

It’s a foggy warmish Monday morning. I found this displayed in the window of a clothing shop one block away from my office. First I’ve heard of this.

A small slice of my commute, paralleling GA 400 between the stations at Buckhead and near Northside Hospital.

We had unprecedented amounts of water running into the culvert in our front yard, but nothing like what happened in other places around Atlanta.

I want to eat these Two tasty things that Creative Loafing’s Omnivore blog writes about.

My particular friend Stefan, an attorney who throws pots, was interviewed in the local free weekly after some of his work was in a gallery show in Decatur.

Strolling the stalls at the Art•B•Que show in Avondale Estates east of the city. Immediately found Jason drawing Monsters And Robots I Have Known. See more of Jason’s work at his Red Rocket Farm website. Very fun stuff.

Update: corrected link to Jason’s website.

Twice a day for nearly twelve years, Ive seen this view looking north walking between work and the train station. I like this view… though I still dont think the Coke sign adds anything worth seeing. For one thing, the clock has been wrong since the rest of us sprang forward about two months ago.

In concert at St. Bartholomew Episcopal Church. Renaissance and modern choral works, sung with beauty and real appreciation. A lovely concert.

Outside the Montag freshman dorm on the campus of Georgia Tech, 11:03 this morning.

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Peachtree Street at Upper Wall Street, 11:36 a.m.

Saturday is one of two days a year that Decatur accepts just about any kind of electronics for recycling. We’ve got an old coffee maker that’s missing the carafe, a decrepit PC with a bad power supply, some old big batteries, cell phones, and some other odds and ends. Some of these things are toxic, and we don’t want them in landfills, and we’re very glad Decatur provides this opportunity.

You can probably do this in your town. Search for recycling centers in or near your zip code at Earth911.com.

These guys are terrific—amazing energy, great musicianship. They play the hell out of it.

An interesting commute on the train this morning. Well down the platform from where I came up, a guy was yelling and cursing at someone I couldn’t see. He stopped after I think less than a minute. I felt a little anxious and hoped it wouldn’t be a fight, but nothing came of it. I hoped he was just having a bad morning, but I also thought that he must have some real issues elsewhere in his life to make such a scene in a place like this. I’ve ridden the train almost every working day for ten years, and can count incidents like this on one hand. The guy, apparently calm now, eased toward my end of the platform and ended up on the same car I did, standing near a door though there were empty seats, reading a newspaper. I lost track of him as I read some news on my laptop. As the ride progressed, In the seats ahead of me two people realized they’d been neighbors for years, knew people in common, and had a small old-home week. It was great hearing them make friends, sharing stories and laughing. It was nice to be near.

I thought about how lost tempers are probably more likely on driving commutes, and chances to get to know a neighbor and have a good time are pretty rare. I really like riding the train.

Watching the Yellow Jackets beat up (sloppily) on the Duke Blue Devils. Ten minutes to go in the 4th quarter, Tech is up 17-0. Go Jackets! And happy 50th to me!

Update: 27-0 final score and a photo.

Later update: Finally got the photo up; the Wordpress client on my iPhone wouldn’t behave. Meh.

Well, howdy-do John Christopher Burns, fellow Atlanta blogger, fellow Wordpress user, and fellow TextDriver/Joyeur.His blog is Positively Atlanta Georgia. He’s been rebuilding his house after the March tornadoes, and he’s been making progress.

Good on you, neighbor, and we wish you continued success.

Maybe it’s a bit strong to compare the drought here to the plight of murderous Macbeth, but things are in a sorry state in the south. I’ve been saying Atlanta’s weather has been like southern California’s, dry and not too hot for the last several weeks. Except we don’t have desert and sagebrush and rattlesnakes here, we have pine forests and creeks and water moccasins, and possum and mosquitos and… and rain, dammit.

Well now it’s gotten scary. I had heard the drought was serious, but I hadn’t seen that map or read this article:

In the Atlanta metropolitan area, which has more than four million people, worst-case analyses show that the city’s main source of water, Lake Lanier, could be drained dry in 90 to 121 days. Drought-Stricken South Facing Tough Choices, NYTimes, 16 October 2007

This is finally serious in ways even I understand, all across the south, a slow-motion disaster that could change our way of life more profoundly than the 1998 tornadoes that blew through here, blowing down the many trees that used to make this neighborhood seem forested. It nearly blew Ellen and her dad and Jack and Will away, but the houses have been rebuilt, the stumps and wrack have grown over, and it’s hard to find a trace now. Who knows how this drought will change things? Will we become more like the inland scrub of the southwest? Politically, Georgia is already too much like Texas – will our climate come to match theirs? Oof. Will the fights for water escalate, will Tennessee and Alabama and the Carolinas find ways to keep it from flowing to Georgia? They might. They’re hard hit too. Things will change one way or the other.

So what can our family do here in our corner of the south? I have scarcely ever watered my lawn, so I can’t cut back there; the garden’s nearly dead and hasn’t been watered in weeks; we don’t wash our cars (we buy them with exterior colors that don’t show the dirt); we don’t have a pool or pond or even a birdbath. (Although I may add one; the feathered ones are parched too.) We’ll just have to wash our clothes and dishes and selves in less water to do our part.