Sports

Welcome the month of April! We returned in one piece (two pieces? Each of us is a piece but together we're one??) Sunday night from our whirl wind road trip to Atlanta to see our friends AB, MB, PR, CR and the R's young child Sal (he's innocent enough so he may appear as a named character in here. Wait until he locates mischief someday, then I will resort to initials to protect his identity!) We left Friday around 8 in the morning - my tentative plan was to break out of Richmond by 7 or 7:30, but I scheduled that with the preemptive confidence that in no shape or form were we going to be packed into Craig's car and hitting the highway that early on a vacation day. But what had happened is this: the 30th of March was AB's birthday, and since I'm not the most inventive gift-giver and struggled to think of something appropriate, it was only too late (ordering smallthings' jewelry takes 2-4 weeks) that I realized she would love the double-stranded necklace I posted here a while back. I used my Nancy Drew skills to locate a gallery in Atlanta near Grant Park which actually had that exact necklace in its possession, even the right design! The trouble was, the gallery closed at 6 Friday so I informed Craig that we were to be standing in the doorway of the gallery in East Atlanta by no later than 5 to ensure my secure purchase of this jewelry piece for my good friend (she had previously almost bought it then thought better of it because of going back to school and money and so on and so on). On our way out of town, Craig and I swung by Captain Buzzy's (our Church Hill neighborhood mom-and-pop-coffee-shop), grabbed some coffee and hit the road by 8. I love road trips with that man, I can never stress it enough. If we're not exchanging worldly conversation or discussing philosophical States of Things (Friday found us trying to crack the codes of evolution, creation theory, big bang and the afterlife) we're singing along to our favorite music that I'm djaying on the iPod or we're riding in comfortable silence. There isn't a person in this world that I can genuinely say I'd be both willing and able to spend that stretch of time with in a car on a trip of that magnitude. We made it to Atlanta just in time to bring our trip to a grinding halt in rush hour downtown traffic. Nevertheless, we reached the gallery by my hopeful 5 o'clock, and when we pulled into the gravel side lot, we saw a mangy mutt sitting outside (the gallery mascot, we presumed) and an outside wall of graffiti announcing the store's name, Youngblood. We walked into this quirky building and in the background Jaan Pehechaan Ho from Ghost World rattled from a static f.m. radio behind the counter. I saw the case of smallthings jewelry immediately - her designs are so sweet, and fragile. I spent some more time pawing through a rack of silkscreened t-shirts before announcing to the girl behind the counter that I had called about the double-strand. Later I learned that Craig found it to be humorous (his word) that I looked around before telling her why I had come, and sometimes I just don't get Craig's sense of humor (he couldn't explain why it was humorous, it just was). I attribute it to the fact that the second we rolled into a neighborhood that Craig didn't know like the back of his hand he became anxious, skewing his sense of humor. I also mentally noted the fact that no wonder we had a difficult time hanging onto happiness while we were in Atlanta: sitting in a car in the crowded streets is alone enough to make you feel like balling up. Public transportation in Atlanta, while present, is practically impractical because it doesn't extend to the suburbs and driving is the only solution. Needless to say I'm very relieved to be out of that traffic. Anyway, the necklace trip was successful and we headed off to Turner Field to meet up with our friends and to see the White Sox play the Braves. We had a great time - even Craig's other co-worker DP and his fiance showed up. CR couldn't come because she didn't want to haul Sal downtown, which is understandable (he's still pretty young). After the game we departed downtown for Douglasville to stop at the R's for another beer or so. Saturday we woke up early and drank coffee with the R's and ate cinnamon rolls and I cooed at Sal while Sal flashed me the biggest blue eyes right before passing out (such a phenomenon to me, how I had just woken up and Sal was in like his fourth hour of consciousness and it had become time for him to sleep it off already!) AB and MB picked us up and we departed for downtown, stopping only to pick up drive-through Starbucks, where Craig made the unfortunate mistake of ordering some kind of iced coffee (thinking, I think, that he was ordering a frappacino, he instead wound up with black coffee poured over ice, sick!) and he struggled through it all the way down to Atlanta. We arrived a little earlier than expected so we hung out at a table in the CNN Center (above is Craig's photograph from where we sat) (I kept inquiring about Anderson Cooper's whereabouts). MB was going to be taking the ice at 1 o'clock to play his amateur league's exhibition game right there at Philip's Arena. The whole day was sort of hockey-driven, which was fine, but it was more fun than anything to see AB's husband down there suited up to play. Our hockey game later (the Thrashers game) was somewhat anti-climactic comparatively speaking but still fun. We loved seeing our Atlanta friends again. They took good care of us while we were there. Our trip back to Richmond felt exaggeratedly longer than the leg down of it, but that is likely because a bunch of junk food and beer and a day later, our bodies' organs were beating against each other in protest. Sunday night began the regular baseball season! Craig's White Sox played the Cleveland Indians in Chicago. We watched the first several innings before severe weather shook Chicago and delayed the game. But it did sure feel nice to just be home after so much travel time, to watch some baseball and hang out. I might be kind of spoiled, but I think I will take flying versus driving any day, if the choice is mine.