The Big Trip, part 4: Atlanta

After a week in Brunswick, we drove to Atlanta to stay with Eric's family for a quick visit-filled five days. We spent Monday afternoon with Jill and Robert Vonhagen, where Owen had a blast playing with five year old Sarah Jane. Tuesday was an epic odyssey to the southwestern exurbs, as we had lunch with Eric's grandpa in Palmetto, then visited my aunt Kim in outer Newnan, and finally hit downtown Newnan for cocktails with Dale and Jenny Lyles and Bill and Jerrie McCullough. It was great to finally see Dale's backyard labyrinth IRL. Wednesday Eric spent all day at Emory, where he was giving a talk; and I got to see my best friend from high school, Erin Gaston. That night Eric's PhD mentor Maureen threw a lab reunion party at her house. Thursday we had a bit of a break because Eric, who had been increasingly under the weather, needed to go to the doctor in the morning. They diagnosed a sinus infection, ear infection, and possible bronchitis, so it was good that he went when he did. However, in the afternoon I still managed to get down to Va-Hi to Doc Chey's, to meet up with St. Aug friend Sudie Nolan, whom I hadn't seen in literally twenty years. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT I AM OLD ENOUGH TO HAVE FRIENDS I HAVEN'T SEEN IN TWENTY YEARS???

The unfortunate coda to the Atlanta visit was that on Thursday night my computer started acting strangely, with bad results. It had gone to sleep with the monitor open, and when I hit the keys again, all the top-right icons (battery, wireless, time/date, etc) were missing. I relaunched Finder a few times with no result. I decided to restart.

Disaster struck. My machine will not advance past the very first startup screen (pale grey with the little grey in-progress wheel spinning around). We tried again. The next time I popped the battery out first. Same result. We left it to recharge overnight. No change. At least until we get to Dundee where we have the startup disks, I have a very expensive paperweight.


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