my first weekend in atlanta

tommy and i started off around 6 or 7am in northern virginia and slowly but surely worked out way down various interstates, stopping for food along the way. first place was the waffle inn - not the waffle house, the waffle inn, some bizarre subsidary or something - a place where they scooped butter for your waffles with an ice cream scoop and everyone chain smoked throughout the breakfast. the jukebox also had the baja men on it. delicious!

we stopped at buzzy and bear's grill in north carolina for some lunch. it's the saddest place on earth.

the food was good, and the place was incredibly clean and cute, but there was an atmosphere of lost time and wasted years pervading the place. or at least that's what tommy and i got out of it. it might be because at every turn you were faced with a story of the history of the place which involved the two owners, a married couple, dating in high school, spending FORTY YEARS of their lives apart, then reconnecting recently and opening the joint. articles like "COUPLE OPENS BBQ SPOT FORTY YEARS LATE" paper the walls and the restaurant's brochure talks about the husband who, early on in his life, wanted to attend the culinary institute, but "was discouraged from that path and went into industrial sales for 30 years instead." that must have been some discouragement!

anyways, on the way down we chatted, listened to some albums and a hell of a lot of this american life. making pretty good time, we pulled into atlanta around 6pm and made our way to jeanie's place.

that night we ended up eating at little azia's and jeanie drove us around, sharing her encylopedic knowledge of the neighborhoods with us. we even drove past the cnn building and got stuck in massive traffic because a convention was taking place in the area. it was the "contagious joy" women of faith convention. but no, we didn't catch the fever. even though they did want us to "get it, keep it, and spread it around." but, um. no.

saturday morning tommy and i headed to east atlanta to check out that neighborhood. a few photos of it here. it's cute, with a couple of cute restaurants, bars and shops. we had ham and sausage and cheese breakfast croissants at the australian bakery. there's also a live music venue called the earl - georgie james will be there, supporting camera obscura, later this july. and i will go!

and i will split the weekend up in two, because i am exhausted and must go iron and watch entourage. a bit more to come later.