yesterday evening i joined my coworker m. and a couple of his friends for a night full of georgie james and camera obscura at the earl in east atlanta. i was excited because 1) i haven't yet had a chance to catch georgie james, the toast of the d.c. blogosphere, live yet and 2) it was my first opportunity to observe atlanta hipsters in their natural environment.

things i like about working here: cutie canadian metrosexual and space/tech reporter da/ni/el sieb/erg was behind me this morning in line for starbucks. you may have seen him recently on cnn's coverage of the shuttle launch. the cashiers greeted him enthusiastically (apparently they are all good friends) and said they hadn't seen him in a while. he responded, "well, i've been on the road. that's the life of a correspondent, you know."

indeed. also, he smelled good.

i spent a big chunk of today at the atlanta botanical garden, which, while nice and pretty and full of adorable little children and a neat asian festival, did not really impress. i guess when the only other gardens you've seen are the boboli (with their sweetass giant bathtubs), the florence rose garden (with the duomo rising in the horizon) and the borghese park (with its kickass trees), it is tough to compare. anyway, if you're the kind of person who gets easily annoyed by endless streams of boring flower shots, then i most certainly would not click here.

i did see one fun thing while i was there, though. part of this random festival that was going on included lots of demonstrations of martial arts and dancing, etc. one was this totally boring sword-swinging routine of some sort. these dudes were swinging around their swords - not all that proficiently, i might add - but then came the awesome part. they cut off the tips of some stalks of bamboo that were stuck in the ground. woohoo. but then, they went absolutely fucking ballistic on the bamboo with their swords, shredding them to pieces. i don't know what the purpose of the whole demonstration was, but i thought it was hysterical.

yes, bamboo-shredding is now hilarious to me. and that fact is driving me back to d.c. next weekend. see you then.

actual words emitting from anchor lady's mouth: "next up: more on kim jong-il. some say he's just crazy; some say he's crazy like a fox. stay tuned."

in other news, tommy and the weather gods must be in touch, because after driving home last night from having drinks with the ex who's in town for business, my little dodge neon and i were nearly EFFING WASHED AWAY. seriously, there was a poorly-drained intersection where i swear to god, i actually started to feel my car float. it was scary. so i hereby, from my 10 days' worth of living experience, deem atlanta the goddamn rainiest city in the world. its slogan should be: "atlanta! you don't think of it as a rainy city, but you should. also, you'll drown."

i'm building an interactive july 4th quiz right now, and one of the questions from the text i'm working with is this:

The Declaration of Independence announced that the 13 colonies were breaking ties with what country?
France
England
Spain
Portugal

CNN: doubting the american public since 1980.

i've started keeping a list of things i'd like to do in atlanta over at my del.icio.us account - check it. if you've got any suggestions, please have at it. i feel like since my time in atlanta is rather compressed (three months) i want to get as much out of it as possible. i'm also spurred by the fact that in chicago i was like, oh! i have a whole year! i can do anything! and so i never really did anything that i meant to. and now i'm sad.

UPDATE: as a rather random aside, the atlanta zoo seems to have its own panda cam. ain't no butterstick, that's for sure.

i'm still here! in atlanta! and doing stuff! details below.

yay! i'm quoted in my second washington post article (and, as always, manage to sound ridiculously dumb). but boo! the article says i'm from atlanta! though i'm here now, i will always be from the d.c.

does anyone know of a free or relatively cheap running club (or marathon training group) in atlanta that preferably meets on saturday mornings to run and is preferably not atlanta-singles-running.org? that group actually looks like exactly what i am looking for (though their runs seem a little far out), but i do not run to meet singles and i am scared. i run for the pain. yeah.

a cool thing about work: generally, i feel like i'm working in the CTU offices on 24.

a few more cnn shots here.

it is now 12:30pm, and i've been at work for six and half hours. that's right: i pull the early shift at cnn.com, and let me tell you, it's a doozy. arriving to work by 6am is going to be, at least initially, much harder than i thought. though i was fast asleep by 10:30 last night with the trust of my handy sidekick named Extra-Large Dose of Nyquil, i am zombie lady today. three cups of coffee and a diet coke later, i am doing okay. the morning, with actual real work, has flown by; i get to leave in two hours! at which point i will go to the turner gym, which i've just joined, for my first workout in many moons. pray i don't pass out on the treadmill and get swallowed under.

anyway, i've been trying to take the positive spin on my work schedule. some upsides:

adrian grenier, whom i have an unexplainably huge crush on, was just on the cnn program american morning. does that film in new york? or does it film here? i DON'T EVEN KNOW. IS IT HERE IN ATLANTA? TELL ME!

UPDATE: i think it films in new york. of course. i'm sure celebrities aren't flying down to atlanta at the drop of a hat. bummer.

since all of cnn seems to operate entirely using IM, i've been obliged to create a new handle: CNNCatherine. i'll still use pablohoney on my laptop in the evenings, but during the day, i will be rocking the cnn name. so add me!

UPDATE: or CatherineOnMac. that's right, i've got two computers, one of which is a mac, which is good, cause it'll help me figure out if i really want to buy one or if they just drive me insane. so far it seems more of an insanity type thing, but that's mainly because i'm just not that good at using them yet.

i last left you in my fascinating tale of my weekend atlanta activities the night of the joys of spreading, catching and sharing disease. i mean, the joys of female faith. after escaping the traffic around the phillip's arena and the cnn building and checking out east atlanta the next morning, tommy and i discovered the joys of an establishment native only to atlanta: target.

Last week JP, Catherine and I were having a few beers and talking about places we'd lived. We enthusiastically agreed that Vermont was beautiful, Chicago was awesome and Montreal was cool. And eventually Catherine mentioned that she was about to move to Atlanta. JP said, "Oh."

"What? C'mon, it can't be that bad," one of us protested.

"No no, Atlanta's fine," JP continued. "It's just that it doesn't have any redeeming qualities."

Well, having just spent nearly 48 hours in the city, I now consider myself something of an Atlanta expert — or at least able to politely disagree.

Judging by when Orbitz left a voicemail for me, US Air decided sometime last night that my flight would be delayed by an hour — this wasn't the unforeseen pushing back a schedule, but rather a profound philosophical disagreement between USAir and myself about when the flight ought to take off. In a truly impressive display of meteorological synchronicity, this decision pushed takeoff smack into the middle of a newly-arrived thunderstorm. So I got to spend quite a bit of quality time on the ATL tarmac. That's when I wrote this, and tried (and failed) to publish it from my phone. It seemed like a good time to record my initial impressions of the city — if you can think of nice things to say when about a city you're sitting on one of its runways — wishing that you were merely an hour late and instead comforting yourself by shooting beams of pure hatred at the weather, control tower and anyone else passing by — well, then the nice things must be true.

I should get this out of the way first: Atlanta is kind of a freeway-choked hellscape. There's no getting around that. You have to drive to get anywhere. To some extent, I think the mark of genuine city-hood is how unnecessary cars are. By that score, Atlanta is a miserable failure, a gigantic suburb rather than an honest-to-god city. It's sort of like LA, only with an appropriate sense of embarrassed modesty.

But that's my only real complaint. You may have to drive to get anyplace, but once you get to that place, it tends to be pretty nice. Patronizing conceptions of the south notwithstanding, the area is considerably less choked with national franchises than you'd think. There are original stores, and bars, and restaurants -- more than you'd find in DC, at any rate. It's great.

It's an attractive city, too. I liked the skyline. I know my architecturally-inclined friends are recoiling in horror right now. "What is he thinking?" Kriston is yelling at his laptop. "Doesn't he realize the buildings don't look like the headquarters of a bank run by Darth Vader? And that they don't all look exactly the same?!"

Well, to be honest, I do realize those things. But the extent of my architectural phillistinism really can't be overstated: staring at the Coca-Cola building and noticing that it seemed a little drab, I joked to myself, "Why don't they just make it look like a giant bottle of Coke? Hahaha." Then, a moment later, I thought, "Hmmm.... That might not be that bad." See what I mean?

Finally, to slip back into the aforementioned patronizing conception of the south, the residents' sense of hospitality has to be factored into any judgment. Everyone was extremely sweet and helpful -- first and foremost among them Catherine's new landlord, Jeannie, who patiently drew lots of excellent and much-needed maps for us, and even went so far as to make dinner reservations on our behalf. Hell, even random neighbors at the bars were friendly, pleasantly introducing themselves and unselfishly sharing tales of martial animal cuteness (which I'm sure Catherine will regale you with later). And Catherine reports that, while I was fetching the car, the gentlemen at the bar proved to be quite friendly, too. It's because they're so hospitable, you see.

Anyway, that's the verdict: it's too hot and has way too many cars, but otherwise Atlanta seems perfectly nice. Although I have to say that the charms of its runways did begin to wear a little thin after an hour or so. And sweet tea remains completely unfit for human consumption.

allow me to take you on a step-by-step journey of my amazing atlantian adventures this past weekend. it is a magical land of SUVs and super walmarts, of crowded interstates and warm biscuits, of wicked thunderstorms and creeping moss hanging over brick verandas. it's weird, but it's nice. it's THE SOUTH.

sorry for the dearth on my part for the past few days - they've been doozies. sunday my dad and i flew into chicago at 7am, spent the entire day packing, and fell asleep at like 8pm. monday we packed up the truck (with the assistance of the lovely kevin) then drove six hours and spent the night at a quality inn in richfield, OH. (our thoughts, summed up the morning after - catherine: "quality inn maybe isn't the best name for that place." dad: "yeah. the quality part should be in air quotes.") the next morning we arose at 5am, drove drove drove, and got to my parents' house at 1pm, where we promptly unloaded the truck and collapsed in a heap.

anyway, tommy and i head down to fine, fine atlanta on friday at 6am, and i need your help! can you recommend me the following:

-things to listen to in the car (podcasts, new albums, books on tape)
-fun games to play in the car besides tommy's and my standard one of "roadkill!"
-a nice restaurant in atlanta to eat at on saturday night. not, like, SUPER NICE AND FANCY, but something cute and good.
-a yum barbeque place in atlanta to eat lunch at
-a bar that doesn't make me want to shoot myself in the head

do i even have any atlanta readers out there? i know i had a few chicago readers when i started out in that town that were quite helpful...but in any case, everyone can help out with the car activity listening stuff!