Today is Andy and my “nothing” day. I had nothing to do this weekend except to drive him around but he had figured that he would probably have to work some today in addition to yesterday but he had managed to have completed everything that he needed to yesterday so we don’t have to worry about anything at all today.
We slept in pretty late and took advantage of the lack of anything needing to be done. Both of us have needed a break in our schedules and this was pretty good. We got a late check out at noon and just took our time getting out of the hotel.
Once we left the hotel we started hunting for some lunch. We couldn’t decide what we wanted so we just went down to the Waffle House. We didn’t expect Waffle House to not have a single seat available but apparently it is the hot spot for Sunday lunch on the north side of Anderson so we gave up on that idea. We had seen a Cracker Barrel next to our hotel so we went there. Same story though. The place was packed and there were tons of people outside in the heat waiting for there to be space in the cool inside to go in to wait. So we bypassed that option as well.
We thought about going to outback Steakhouse but they don’t reliably have much of anything that I can eat so we thought that that wasn’t worth the risk. So we went back to Hooters since we know that they have vegetarian food and it is the only other restaurant that we know without driving back into the city of Anderson which we didn’t feel like doing. We walked in and were immediately greeted by the same waitress that we had had last night. Last night had been her last night of training and this morning she had taken her “Hooters’ Exam” and was officially a Hooters girl and was able to wait tables on her own. So it turned out that we were her last “training” customers and her first first “official” customers as well.
As Andy and I needed to kill a lot of time as we had made no plans for today at all we hung out as long as we could there in Anderson. Then around two thirty or a little after we decided to go get some exercise at a park in Georgia so we hopped into the Chevy Cobalt which is possibly, likely in fact, the worst car I have ever driven. The car handles like crap and has no power at all. At some points I had to put the accelerator to the floor just to keep the car moving in traffic when there was a small hill involved. It was the mushiest and least responsive vehicle that I can remember having had the misfortunate to have drive including my grandmother’s old Ford lawnmower and several broken golf carts over the years. I have had vehicles stall and still have more power than this thing.
It was early when we got out to the Chattahoochee National Recreation Area in Georgia and we had a couple of hours to spend visiting in that area. We went out to Lanier Lake and the Buford Dam area and took some pictures and went for a short walk. It was a really nice area and there was a lot of really nice new homes being built in the area. There was even a restaurant Dam Good Food but we didn’t stop and I didn’t bother to get a picture. But at least I mentioned it.
We continued on to the Atlanta Airport and got the car turned in before seven. We were running plenty early but best to have more than enough time rather than not enough. I checked in and tried to get an earlier flight but there were none so I am stuck waiting until the late flight tonight to get back to Newark.
We managed to get into the main restaurant for the Concourse C area and we had some dinner and killed some time in there before Andy had to get to the gate to wait for his flight. His flight boarded just a little after nine and that left me two hours to just sit at my gate waiting for my flight. Luckily I managed to score one of the best seats in the waiting area that had both an electrical connection but also a nice view of the terminal so that I could people watch instead of just staring out the dark windows. It gave me a chance to mostly get caught up on SGL even though I couldn’t post it as I wasn’t about to pay $8 for two hours of Internet access when there wasn’t any emergency.
Dominica called today to let me know that she had finally managed to procure a Nintendo Wii from the Target in Clifton. That only took us about nine months to finally get one from the time that they first went on sale here. That is crazy. And it isn’t like they have been selling like hot cakes or anything. I don’t know anyone who has one! (Okay, I know one person.)
Dominica managed to get two full sets of controllers (which cost a ton extra because the Wii comes with almost nothing) and she managed to get a few games including Trauma Center, Red Steel and the new Zelda game. The Wii comes with the sports game that is kind of a sampler of the system. Min did not get a chance to set up the Wii today though so although she has it she has not yet been able to play it.
While at the airport tonight I noticed, yet again, that every time that I am at the airport that the national security alert level is orange. Is there any other colour? It has occurred to me that orange means “no danger” and they have just assigned moderately scary sounding colours in an attempt to excuse the high level of discomfort that one has to suffer at the hands of airport security. In reality, orange is completely meaningless and should be completely ignored. It means that there is no reason to believe that today is any different than any other day. As far as I am concerned the federal government has cried “wolf” on terrorism threats so often that they don’t have any means of actually alerting the public anymore. Who would believe them? Threat Level Red must mean “low to moderate” chance that maybe some undisclosed agency of some unidentified country thinks that some child’s lunchbox might actually contain a moderately contagious strain of the flu riding on an undercooked chicken salad sandwich!
Andy flew out around nine thirty and I flew out a few hours later around eleven thirty. I took the time between his flight and mine to plug in my laptop in the fairly empty airport and get somewhat caught up on SGL. I can’t let myself fall too far behind now as I will be out most of this week as well.
It was around one thirty or a little later when I finally got home to Newark. I was exhausted. I have to be up quite early tomorrow to fly to Toronto so I am hoping to at least get a tiny bit of sleep tonight.