We arrived into Atlanta on Wednesday afternoon, and within an hour had viewed an apartment, signed a contract, conversed with our landlady and her ‘significant other’ (her words, not mine. And more on her later…) and begun the arduous tasked of cleaning the place from top to bottom. We finished on Thursday night (Cleanfreak? me?!), in between trips to the evil empires – Target and Wal-mart – for cleaning supplies, extra spoons, dental floss, popcorn. So Friday was the first day for exploration. We wandered down Church Street and into Decatur and found Indie, our local independent bookstore, bought a book, found our local independent music store, bought a CD, (etc…) nosied in retro antique stores, noted the location of the post office and popped into a gorgeous boutique called squash blossom (and came out one pair of jeans later).
Cooling down with an iced caramel latte in Indie, I was perusing the pages of the Southern Voice when I noticed an ad that said Amy Sedaris was doing an early evening book signing in Decatur Recreation Center. We headed that way, stepping over the diehard Amy fans already in line (see: I’m trying to speak American, they weren’t queuing, or queuing up, or forming a queue. There’s just no need for all those vowels. They were in line. And later, so were we.) We found out that yes it was tonight and yes it was free. We’d spent six and a half hours with David Sedaris on the roadtrip, and we were itchy to know whether Amy really had a fatty suit she wore home for the holidays to fool her father into thinking she was overweight and would never marry. So we went. First she made a ghost out of two Kleenex and some dental floss. Then she answered a lot of questions and was generally very funny. Then she pulled three wands out of her bag. She had made them herself. They were home entertaining accessories. At three dollars a piece. Then she signed a lot of books. Then we left and ate Thai food, rented a film and walked home.
But before all that, there was the band. The Seed and Feed Marching Abominable. Boy. Oh Boy. Oh Boy. They were quite something. The bearded cheerleader was my favourite. His tiara was gorgeous. And he could really handle his baton. Since Friday, we've been hanging out in Java Monkey, our Common Grounds replacement this side of the Atlantic. The free wireless is nice. There was a guy there on Sunday who could complete a Rubix cube in 34 seconds. It was cool. And he knew it. But now we have wireless at our apartment, so I am writing this from my front porch. I've always wanted one of those. It's nice.
