Shown up in Atlanta

I was in Atlanta on Friday and it was an interesting day to say the least.  For 32 years I've believed that other than New York and LA, Miami had the WORST traffic in the Galaxy.  Once again, i'm wrong.  Not only isn't Miami's traffic as bad as Atlanta's, Atlanta's traffic probably wakes up every morning and laughs at Miamian's and our mere 2 hour traffic delays.  Even back when Elian was preoccupying everyone in Mia and people decided to protest by blocking ALL 12 lanes of 1-95, I don't think I ever saw anything like what I experienced in Atlanta.

But that's not really where I was shown up.  No, I got straight up PWNED by my homie Michael Earls.  And not in some small way, I mean, straight up and down, sideways you name it.  

It started out with the traffic thing, me thinking of myself as more worldy and big city than most, when Michael told me about the traffic  I was like “Bah, who's he to tell ME, MR 1-95 Himself about traffic.”  Ok, he was right.  Then I meet him at this place called the Happy Sumo.  I don't do Sushi but he was going to run me by an Indian place, and being the fat a33 that I am, I can get down with some Indian Food.  Regrettably it was closed.  So we head over to his 'house' (and I use that word Loosely - that's actually the point of this article. Calling it a house would insult him and Lori really bad.  I should call it “A wonderland of unbelievably cool decor and style rivaled only by the complete dream world for tech geeks)'.  But before we went over there, we had to take a short cut.  You see, traffic was so bad that there was a wreck and a few peole died.  So Michael says we're going to cut through the 'Bad' part of town.  Again, I grew up in the town where Trick Daddy   and  the 2 Live Crew came from.  When I was a youngin, I got to not go to school for a few days b/c you couldn't get to St Hughes from where we lived without going through Coconut Grove and the McDuffy riots were in full effect.  Suffice to say, Miami can hold its own when it comes to 'hoods'.  Or so I thought.  3:03 I get a phone call ( I was following Michael) “There's one to your right, looks like she needs a ride”.  So all I kept thinking was “Man, it would really really suck to get lost and end up here at night”.  We were on some road, I forget the name but I should have known b/c it's mentioned in a lot of rap songs, and it got surreal.  Eventuallly,there was this part where you would be in like total CrackTown, and then there'd be fairly afflluent looking homes like two blocks over.  Then hood.  Then Mercedes.  In Rap videos, you tend to see nice cars and the really bad part of town, but in real life , something about StreetWalkers at 3:00pm in the afternoon on one side of the street, with a used car dealership selling Saab's and BMWs on the other just seemed weird. 

I followed Michael until we got to his house.  Now he played it down quite a bit and described it as a small house in the country or somethign to that effect.  Well, I walk in and meet his lovely wife Lori and his daughter.  They are watching the wall.  Actually, it was just this big flat screen TV that just about covered the wall.  He went in to his office and hooked up his laptop , and sure enough, he had a bigger flat screen monitor than I have too.  But the book collection.  I'm a total book snob and one thing you will find in the Earl's house is books.  And Books.  And Books.  And Books.  Not just tech stuff like my house, but literature, fiction, bestsellers, children's books and of course, tech books.  So we all played a game of SpongeBob Life and I got crushed at it.  Crushed was putting it mildly. So Michael was going to change clothes before dinner and I checked out the living room in depth.  His wife's taste in decor is just really cool.  Picture the Seatlle W with a little more or a reniassance flair.  Then of course was the XBox, Game Cube, what looked like an original Sears Atari 2600 and all sorts of other stuff.  When he came out, he showed me the XBOX and fired up Halo 2.  DAMN!  Media Center PCs coupled with Huge Flat Screen TV's coupled with XBOXs and a really comfortable couch, just really make for a great 10 foot experience.  So I started thinking, maybe if I fake twisting my ankle, I can stay here for a few days, and then keep twisiting it and staying for good.  I could just sit on the couch all day and play Halo 2 and get really good at it.  If Michael ever finds that he can't cut it at software development any more, there's no doubt the Earls family could earn a good living with Lori doing interior decorating.

My own beloved Kim has pretty great taste in decor as well, but I think she just considers me  a lost cause. When the subject of marriage comes up, she simple indicates that In order to get along, I'll just need my own part of the house and her and Sarah can have theirs.  I've got the total Geek Chic going and to be honest, casey's home concept sounds  exactly like what I'd do except I'd have some advanced weaponry to keep out annoying people from trying to sell me magazine subscriptions and the like.

Tobin Moved back to Greenville.  He used to live in the same apt complex as I do know but moved back to Charlotte for a while, then moved back here.  I've seriously considered moving into the same coplex as T because it's pretty dang nice and then I could go over there and hang out with Him and Carole all the time.  I'm guessing he's probably got a pretty damn cool setup too.  But I've definitely realized that if I ever had any dreams of winning a “Blogger with the Coolest House“ contest, I definitely have a long way to go.  There are no Warehouses here in Greenville that I can spot, so I'm out of luck in regard to implementing Casey's idea before he does.

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Anyway, just wanted to thank the Earls family for having me over.   It was a really long day so I didn't have much time to hang out in Atlanta (I never do) but it ws definitely a good time.  And for the record, I'm picking up a copy of SpongeBob Life today and will begin practicing ASAP.  I've always sucked at board games and even though I suck so far at SpongeBob life, I think I may have some potential.  Every time  I play a game with a 6 year old I get my butt kicked, but maybe with some practice I can change all that .