Atlanta's Cultural Paradox

On Saturday I experienced opposite ends of the cultural spectrum here in Atlanta. Saturday morning began with a trip to the North Georgia State Fair in Marietta. I love going to the fair. There’s just something about the rickety rides and the crappy food that make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside (and I do mean that). Besides, who doesn’t love a funnel cake? Not to mention the people watching. You will see some of the most interesting characters at the fair…“fair people” are not like normal people…Anyway, they had free admission and rides from 10-11 that morning, so I figured it would be a good time to go. I took Zachary last year on the free admission/ride morning and he had a fun time. He had a great time again – even rode the Ferris wheel with Josh (I stayed off because they make me throw up – any other kind of twisting & turning ride is fine, but Ferris wheels…um, no). We did question whether we were bad parents for putting our child on a ride that was being operated by a woman with no teeth. Aaahhhhh carnies...We were reminded that if we were bad parents, so were all the rest of the people there. At the other end of the spectrum, that evening, Josh & I went out for my pre-birthday “surprise”. I use the term “surprise” loosely because I actually had figured out what we were doing a few weeks ago. And the funny part was, everyone who knew had done a really good job of keeping it a secret. However, I am the one who pays the bills, so when I saw the charge for the surprise on the credit card bill about a month or so ago, the surprise was spoiled (although I kept pretending not to know for a few more weeks, until one day Josh said, “So you still don’t know what we’re doing??” At that point I confessed that I had a vague idea…). So the “surprise” was that we were going to see Les Mis at the Fox. This is my all-time favorite musical EVER. I don’t even know how many times I’ve seen it – numerous times here, once in London, and I finally got to see it in NY about 2 years ago when it made a brief return to Broadway. I didn’t even know it was coming back to Atlanta (that was the funny part – it wasn’t like I figured it out because I heard an ad for it on the radio…I figured it out because I saw the charge on the credit card bill!). Anyway, so Josh decided to surprise me with tickets to the show as an early birthday present. We preceded the show with dinner at Mary Mac’s – one of my favorite places to eat! Dinner was great. The show was great – it was a nice evening. Until we were almost home, on the road that runs outside of our neighborhood, and the night took a turn back towards redneck. We hit a possum! It was just standing in the middle of the road! Josh says we just “clipped” it…it wasn’t there on Sunday morning, so either someone got out & picked it up (gross!) or it was OK enough to walk off the road…back to where it should have been in the first place. This marks the 2nd type of animal that we (Josh) have hit with a car in the last couple of years (after never hitting an animal before in my whole life). We hit a deer a few weeks after Josh got his Rendezvous a couple of years ago. That thing dislodged the bumper and left a wad of hair on it! It wasn’t dead either, but it sure didn’t get up & run away either…Anyway, the only bummer about the show was that Josh accidentally bought tickets to the 8pm show, which meant that for the 2nd week in a row we could not watch the UGA game live. But we did TiVo it, and watched it when we got home, and I have to say that that is a really good (and efficient) way to watch a football game. You can skip past all the junk in between and get right to the plays. What a great game, and thank goodness we didn’t drop in the poll again! Everyone ready for the blackout this weekend against Alabama???