hey y'all, besides asking your opinions on my quite-possibly-hideous-taste-in-shoes, i have another favor to ask. i'm writing an article for you-know-who on the decline of the indie store - you know, big chains taking over and fun, quirky, small stores closing, etc. why it's happening, where it's happening, will independent stores cease to exist at all one day, etc etc. so i'm asking you for any thoughts, fresh angles, or sources who might be willing to be interviewed (store owners and employees, patrons, um, indie store pontificators and experts?). if you've got some tips, shoot me an email, or leave a comment.

these shoes for fall: hideous or TOTALLY AWESOME?

sometimes it's a fine line. and i've been at work for 10 hours now so i'm not really clear in the head.

I'm back from a weekend in Atlanta filled with fried food, delayed flights and filial guilt. I had a great time, although I was pretty surprised to find myself making the trip. I'd even tried to cancel my tickets on Thursday night, but, low on sleep and frustrated by cheaptickets.com's slow password recovery feature, let the situation fester until Friday. And by then my mom was feeling well enough that she and my sister told me to head to Atlanta after all. From the sound of things, it was the right decision — mom appears to be doing very well. I'll be heading back down to Charlottesville in about 45 minutes to confirm it with my own eyes.

But, like I said, Atlanta was great. I was pretty disappointed to learn that the Cyclorama is this rather than this. But there was plenty of stuff to make up for that. Catherine gave me a tour of her office (I peered into Sanjay Gupta's office! Exciting!), which was cool, although we did get yelled at by a guide who thought we'd wandered off the tour.

Liz, who was introduced to us by Scott, proved to be approximately the sweetest person ever and gave us an incredibly great tour of Williams Street, aka Adult Swim HQ (I peered into Dave Willis's and Matt Maiellaro's offices! Genuinely exciting!).

And we spent some quality time with my old friend Chris, gaining a keen and not entirely un-terrifying perspective on the Atlantean post-fraternity lifestyle. To be fair, an important part of this lifestyle seems to be sitting in a pool and drinking beer. So it's not all bad.

Other than that, we passed the time by eating a lot, dropping by a few bars, participating in an on-the-street podcast for the local McSweeney's farm team, and generally having a pleasant time. So thumbs up to Atlanta. Driving everywhere still sucks, though.