Announcement

While some of you, my friends, are participating in NaNoMo this month, I will be much too busy to join you.  Why is that?  Well, let me give you a hint:

5 bed, 3 bath, 4000sf

12 acres total, about 5 newly cleared

and when I’m all done moving into all that, you will be able to find me here, with a glass of wine:

We move in the weekend before Thanksgiving.  I’ve got a lot to pack!

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Meeting Old Friends for the First Time

On Tuesday, I not only got to meet Stephanie from Being Stephanie, as she was here in Atlanta for work, but I also got to bring her to my house and cook her dinner.

From the moment Bad Pants, Dude, and I picked Steph up at her hotel, it was as though I was picking up an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while.  We were all completely at ease and talked as though we were picking up a conversation from where we left it in the past.

Steph is even more gorgeous than the photos on her blog would leave you to believe.  She’s very friendly and bubbly too!

Steph brought me a book she had that I have been wanting to read.  I gave her both my favorite brand of chai tea (Big Train- it’s also GF) and a bag of my very favorite coffee, Wicked Wolf by Raven’s Brew, which I can now get here locally at a specialty store.

After getting back to our place (and thanks for putting up with us being a bit lost in downtown ATL, Steph), I showed her around our tiny acreage, introduced her to the horses and then we met the dogs.  It was very reassuring to hear Steph say that Sugar is looking a lot better than she did the day I brought her home.  (Whew!  That’s a load off my mind!)

Once inside, after the tour, Salem hopped right up on Steph’s lap and made himself at home.  Even he loved her, and he can be stand-offish with strangers.

So we spent the evening talking, laughing, eating GF stew, drinking some 14 Hands wine, and eating gelato (also GF).  It was a great night I was sorry to see end.

I feel so privileged to have gotten to spend this special evening with Stephanie.  I can hardly wait for her next trip to Atlanta!  Next time, we’ll go see the Georgia Aquarium and have wine at their bar!  Whale sharks and wine….  Can you imagine anything better?

Love you, Steph!  Thanks for visiting!

 

(So, who’s up for a visit to Atlanta next??)

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The Storm

As you know, last week had some of the worst tornado activity in the history of the U.S.  Many have been left without homes, whole towns have been nearly destroyed.  Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee were hit the hardest.  You can see some of the Google Earth before and after photos here.  Just mouse over the photo to see the “after” image.  More images of Alabama can be seen here.  They were taken by a very talented photographer, Amanda Chapman.  Please scroll down through her blog to see the unbelievable devastation left in the wake of last week’s storm.  When you’re done, I’ll be here to tell you my own tale.

Done?  Need to get a tissue to dry your eyes?  I’ll wait.

Ready? Good.  As Mrs. Mom loves to say, “hold on to yer butts!”  It’s going to be a bit hair raising.

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest.  Tornadoes just weren’t part of our weather vocabulary.  About as close as any one in the PNW got to tornadoes was while watching The Wizard of Oz, when the tornado whisked Dorothy out of Kansas.  Earthquakes, blizzards, flooding…  Those were normal.  Tornadoes just were not part of life there.

Flash forward to June 2009.  We had a rare tornado cell go right over our house in Oregon.

In March of this year (2011), we discovered I cannot hear the tornado warning siren one town over, about 4 miles away.  What we didn’t know is that we are surrounded by sirens.  And as we learned on April 27th, I can hear some of the other sirens around us.

That fateful Wednesday morning, I woke up and hustled Dude out the door for his CRCT testing (state education standards testing).  We were there a little before 8 a.m.   Bad Pants had let me know that we were due for high winds and thunderstorms in the early afternoon, before I’d left, so I shouldn’t really stop to see the horses on my way home that day.  At 8:30 a.m., BP texted me that our local tornado sirens were going off.  Minutes later, I heard a loud, annoying buzz coming from inside the building we were in for testing.  I had no idea what the noise was.  Of the other 20 or so parents that were waiting with me, no one seemed alarmed.  NO ONE got up to investigate.  NO ONE moved to another room, away from the 20′ high floor-to-ceiling windows.  NO ONE.

About 15 minutes later, I found a building official who told me the noise I heard was a weather radio.  It had gone off signalling a high wind warning for the area.  She kindly reset the weather radio to go off only for tornado warnings, as she had heard about the sirens going off near my home herself, on her way in to work.  Then, she told me they had an emergency plan in place and filled me in on it, easing my mind.

Bad Pants texted me to tell me the sirens had gone off due to a pressure change from high winds.  Everything was ok.  He reiterated that I should not dawdle coming home though.

The trip home was uneventful.  I’d noticed the sheer number of dead animals at the side of the road on the drive in and home.  Odd, I know.  But, I have a theory about that for another time.  The important thing here is that they were all predators.  All of them.  Let’s just say it was extensive (and odd, don’t forget odd) for the sake of moving forward in the story.

Once home, Bad Pants filled me in on the tornado that hit Chattanooga, TN.  Chattanooga is only a couple hours north of us, and very near where Barrow’s breeder lives.  I started paying close attention to the weather reports online.  The weather alert services I signed up for in March kept sending me messages that we were under Tornado Watch.  I paid very close attention, even following The Weather Channel on Twitter.

As the afternoon progressed, we started hearing more and more reports about tornadoes hitting Alabama.  Around 4:30 p.m., Barrow’s breeder popped up on Facebook, letting everyone know they were ok.  A tornado had touched down in her front yard at 8:30 a.m. that morning and moved off into Chattanooga.  They were all ok, with only minimal damage done to fences.  Approximately twenty minutes after her Facebook posting, 2 more tornadoes struck her area and she fell silent.

Around 5 p.m. we were put on Tornado Warning.  My phone went off every few minutes with warning messages from the weather alert services.  (I believe I counted 5 tornadoes hitting Tuscaloosa, AL before 9 p.m.).  Tuscaloosa is only a couple hours west of us.  The storm was marching straight at us.

As the evening wore on, the air around us became denser.  It was heavy, humid and hot.  We sent Dude up to bed so he could get some rest as he had more CRCT testing in the morning.  BP and I continued to watch the storm march in.  By now, I had the song, “The Ants Go Marching” stuck in my head.  As more and more tornado reports came in, worry really began to take hold.

Around 10:15 p.m., Rox got in my face and started licking my chin.  I’ve learned this is her way of telling me a storm is coming, or, she really, really needs to pee.  As I’d taken her out not long ago, in preparation for the thunderstorms, I knew it wasn’t the latter.  Rox chooses to be annoying to get my attention, as she doesn’t like thunderstorms herself.  Her joints felt like they were on fire to the touch. I gave her some aspirin, hoping it would help her be a little more comfortable.   I was certain she was hurting.

Minutes later…

Tornado sirens went off!  I yelled for Dude, trying my best to wake him up.  I ran upstairs into his room and shook him so hard I was afraid I was going to break his arm.  It was hot.  Like a baby wrapped too much and quite warm, Dude was difficult to wake.  Just as I grabbed him to drag him bodily downstairs, he woke up.  We ran downstairs to climb into our tornado shelter, a closet in my bedroom next to an old, covered over fireplace, the safest place in the house.

The wind screamed around the corners of our house.  From our little closet, we heard thunder booming, drowning out the sound of the tornado sirens.  Yes, sirens.  We heard 4-6 different ones all told.  And yes, I could hear them.   With multiple sirens going off, fear really began to take hold.

I worried for my pets.  The closet is too small to bring them into it.  Instead, they were crated and their crates pushed into the hallway, with Roxanne in a down-stay next to them as we don’t have a crate for her.  The cats huddled in the hall on their own, freaked out in their own right.  I worried about my horses, 8 miles away, and hoping that my landlord was smart enough to leave all the horses turned out to pasture and not locked in stalls inside the barn.

I posted to Facebook and here on my blog, asking for people to please pray for the South.  The storm that had practically wiped out parts of Alabama and Northern Georgia was at our door!  My mind kept racing as to whether or not Dude would be able to go to testing the next morning, if it would be cancelled or rescheduled, or even if the building would still be there.

I don’t remember how long we stayed there.  It felt like a long, long time in that hot, sweltering closet.  Eventually, the sirens went off.  We went back to watching the weather reports, closely tracking the storm.  And when it looked like it was all done for a while, we sent Dude back up to bed.

No sooner had we done that than Bad Pants looked out the window to see a funnel cloud out our southern-facing windows.  No tornado sirens were going off.  No emergency text messages on my phone.  And the funnel cloud was CLOSE.  For the first time, terror truly struck my heart.  I screamed for Dude to get downstairs and we all ran for the closet again.

No sirens.  NONE.  Wind was screaming around my house as we waited and waited for the tornado to hit.  I believe we individually prayed more than we’d ever prayed before.  Being in that closet without any sirens going off, without any way to know what was happening was terrifying.  Was it going to hit us?  Was it going to roar on by?  What about the neighbors?  The woods behind us?  The hay field across the street?  Had it touched down?  How would we know when it would be safe to come out again?

Eventually, it got a bit quieter.  Bad Pants ventured out of the closet, looking out the window.  That particular storm cell had moved on.  It wasn’t in sight.

We came back out of the closet again, checked the weather reports, checked our weather warnings.  (Still on Tornado Warning).  And then the reports started rolling in.  The funnel cloud we saw moved off north-east of us, throwing cars and rolling semis on the freeway, east of here.

The storm had marched up to our area, broke apart to go around us to the north and south, and then form up again a few miles to the east of us.  There were tornado reports to the South and North of us, but the funnel cloud we saw went right over us, missing us completely.  How?  I don’t know.  I watched the storm on radar march right up to the freeway, just one mile from our house.  One Mile.  And then it broke up, parting like the Red Sea, to go around us and re-form to the East.  We were spared!

But the night was far from over.

Wave after wave of thunderstorms hit us, each one holding the potential to be carrying a tornado within it.  We’d watch the orange and red lines on the radar march up to us and then break up when it reached our area on the map, only to re-form on the other side.  We had thunderstorms overhead.  Loud, booming, house-shaking thunderstorms directly overhead.  Lightening lit up the outside like daylight.  But the tornado cells kept breaking up right before they reached us.

About 2 a.m., when he had calmed down, I put Dude to bed in our closet for the night.  At least I knew he’d be safe there and I wouldn’t have to drag him bodily from upstairs into the closet or worry that I couldn’t get to him in time.

An hour later, at 3 a.m., the tornado warnings came off.  Bad Pants and I went to bed, listening to the thunderstorms moving away from us, but prepared to jump into the closet if need be.

We didn’t get much sleep that night.  I was up at 6 a.m., getting chores done and taking Dude to testing.  The sun was shining brightly, the sky blue and cloudless.  Driving in to testing, we saw a little wind damage.  But the odd thing was that we saw score upon score of dead armadillos at the side of the road.  Only armadillos.  Bodies of armadillos that hadn’t been there the day before.  The predators that had been dead at the side of the road before, all the dead critters from the day before, were GONE.   Only bodies of armadillos littered the roadways.

Testing happened as scheduled, even though everyone was tired.  Nothing stopped.  Life moved forward.   I checked on the horses on the way home.  They were grazing peacefully, only stopping to call to me when I stepped out of my vehicle.   Life around me was peaceful and normal.  You’d have never suspected the chaos that had happened the night before unless you’d been here.

I went home and continued to keep an eye on the weather over Mrs. Mom.  Johnny Reb was declining and the storms containing tornadoes were marching her way.  As friends from all over continued to pray for her, Johnny Reb and the family during this time, those storms broke apart, leaving her only with some thunder showers.

Barrow’s breeder was able to get a message to us that they were ok, but the homes of many of their friends and neighbors had been destroyed.  By the Grace of God, the tornadoes had missed them.  They would be without power for 3-4 days, but her family was ok.

Be it a topographical anomaly or not, I fully believe the prayers of many kept Mrs. Mom and I safe last week during the days of terrible tornadoes.  I thank those of you who sent out prayers to whatever deity you pray to, and those of you that just sent positive thoughts our way.  The tragedy that befell Alabama and N. Georgia could easily have struck us as well.

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Hammered

And no, not in the fun, drinky kind of way.

If you’re living under a rock, on a mountain top, without tv or possibly in the wilds of Alaska, the South is getting hammered by tornadoes.  They’re saying that this is likely to surpass the Super Outbreak of 1974.

I sat and watched Twitter pretty closely early this evening.  I counted at least, AT LEAST, 5 tornadoes going through Tuscaloosa, AL.   Countless more hit Birmingham.  And you know what?  I live due east, the direction the storm is heading.

At 8:30 a.m. this morning, high winds triggered tornado warning sirens here. Dude and I were two towns away for his CRCT testing (state testing, like the WASSL out West).  The church we were at for testing had weather radios.  Yes, plural.  The weather radios went off, and I sat in a room of at least 20 adults who did nothing.  NOTHING!  We were in a room with floor to ceiling windows.  I didn’t know it was the weather radio.  I’d never heard one before.  But, after several seconds, I did get up to investigate.  And you know what?  I CAN hear the weather radio!  Luckily, it also was just going off for high winds.

At 8:30 a.m. this morning, more than 2 hours away from us, Barrow’s breeder, Jenny, had a tornado in her front yard.  The same tornado went on to smash Chattanooga to bits.  Eight hours later, a second, then a third, a fourth and a fifth tornado went through her vicinity.  They were spaced out over a couple hours, but still.  That’s a lot of angry weather!

This storm cell is ravaging much of the South.  It’s leveled homes and businesses.  It’s left many homeless, and at least 32 people confirmed dead at the time of writing.  It seems that someone has p*ssed off the Weather Gods.

As the storm moves east, it’s condensing down and gaining strength.  Tomorrow, the entire Eastern Seaboard will be under storm warning, from the Florida Keys to New York.  Already Maryland and Pittsburgh have seen Tornado Warnings.

So, if you remotely pray, even just once in a while, please send out a prayer for those of us in the South.  I don’t care which deity you pray to.  Allah, Buddah, Odin, Ceredwin, Shiva, Isis, Ra, Jesus, Jehovah…  I don’t care.  Please just take the time to send out that prayer.  Heck, if you’ve got some extra time, pray to all of them to make sure we have our bases covered!

Now, I’m going to take my dogs out to potty one last time before the storm gets here, make sure my phone is fully charged and prepare to lay low.  I’ll check in with you when I can.

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Hearing Impairment

Almost a month ago, we had the tornado siren go off here.  I was on the phone at the time and didn’t hear it.  Even after Bad Pants got me off the phone, I still couldn’t hear the siren.  Not from inside the closet next to the brick fireplace, the safest place in the house, nor outside the closet in our bedroom.  I’m not sure I could have heard it if I was standing outside, as the tone seems to be right under my hearing register when the sound travels any distance.

This has caused some consternation for us.  How am I to hear a weather emergency like that?  It’s not like our area uses air raid sirens, which I can here.  Instead, this is the siren they use, which I can’t hear from the 4 miles away we are from it.

That is what our siren sounds like.  Annoying when I’m listening to it on Youtube, impossible for me to hear in real life.

Most of the time, Bad Pants is home to alert me.  Or Dude.  But there are times that perhaps one or both won’t be around, or will be using earbuds or headphones and not hear the warning.

I have plans to teach Barrow to alert me to this specific sound once he gets older.  Only, I have to figure out how to teach him to do that.  If I can puzzle that out, I can teach Roxanne NOW.

Eventually, we want to get a couple of these:

But, as you can imagine, they are not exactly inexpensive.  And I’d need more than one for our home.  And I need the vibrator as we have lightening often enough that the strobe light you can get to go with it might not be enough to wake me.  Though, ideally, one of these with a loud alarm noise should do the trick to get my attention.

Of course, we’re still researching these units.  Some are pre-programmed for your area at the manufacturer’s, which is nice.  Apparently this particular model is not.

In the mean time though, I’ve found a couple text and email notification websites.  They’re free, as long as you use only one location.  I signed up to use this one and this one.  I’d like to compare the services before I shell out money for multiple locations monthly (we live on the border of 3 counties).  However, the drawback here is that my cell phone doesn’t always have signal during thunderstorms.

We are actively researching, plotting and planning for tornadoes.  And preparing for a future that might become quieter for me some day.

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Winter Woes

Dear Alaska,

Thank you so very much for sending the beautiful snow on Christmas.  I really, really enjoyed such a lovely, sentimental taste of home!   I have been missing your majestic beauty, yes that’s true.  I have been missing my friends there very much as well.  However, could you please not send me another ice storm?  Really, I’d be happy if you kept them to yourself.    Or, at least wait until I’m properly prepared with a snow shovel, ice grips and ice melt?  This having to chip ice off the driveway to make a safe path to carry water to the horses with a clam-digging shovel the Landlord has laying around is really for the birds!  And where in the heck is he digging clams here?  The ocean is more than 5 hours away!

Really, I don’t mind the hauling of multiple buckets of  water for 100 yrds a couple times a day or the cold, but better footing is much appreciated for future reference.  Oh, and can you wait until I’m not sick and Bad Pants isn’t injured?  K, thanks!

Love,

OS

PS I don’t think Molly enjoys the crunch of the ice covered snow under her hooves much.  It’s weirding her out!

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Brrr!

The temps here have taken a nosedive over the weekend.  We went from highs of 63 degrees on Saturday to 34 on Sunday, 27 yesterday and 33 today.

I decided to blanket the horses.  Sorry natural horse people, my ponies just aren’t happy with that sudden decrease in temps.  Casey was acting out and as fidgety as I’ve ever seen him.  Once I got his blanket on, he settled right down and was back to his calmer self.  “Better already”, he said.   Unfortunately, his blanket, which is brand new and purchased off the interwebs, is a wee bit small.  Both Case and Molly wear the same size.  Only, apparently, in this brand, Casey needs a warmblood sized blanket as his belly is hanging out a bit.  Molly’s is a perfect fit though!

I’ll be unblanketing them in the morning, when the sun is shining and putting the blankets back on tomorrow evening before dark.  I don’t care what the LL says.  My ponies, while hairy, definitely appreciated the blanketing.  It’s certainly NOT going to make them sick, as he told me when I put a sheet on Molly to keep her clean for pictures.  Yeah, I’m sure you know what I think of that.  After all, this isn’t my first rodeo.

It looks like the weather will warm up again by Saturday to quit blanketing at night.  I can’t wait!  Because this cold weather and water hauling stuff is getting old and it’s only been a few days.

So, any blanket recommendations?

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Just A Thought…

Recently, Bad Pants and I drove through a housing development that is on the other side of the hay field across the street from us.  So, maybe a quarter mile away.  Part of why we drove through was to learn our area better.  The other reason was that I’d seen houses for that neighborhood marked as low as $49,000 on zillow.com.  Yeah, you read that right.

Forty nine thousand dollars.

New, never been lived in construction.  Or, new construction before the market crashed.  Not all the planned houses for that neighborhood are built yet.  Most are standing empty.  Okay, more than 75% are standing empty.  It boggles the mind.

There are many neighborhoods that are like the one down the street from me that are empty or mostly empty here in the Atlanta area.  New construction is standing vacant, with algae growth on the siding, windows that look like cold, empty eyes, just waiting for a family to come fill them with warmth, joy and laughter.

And just moments ago, the news reported that there are 20,000 homeless people here in Atlanta this Thanksgiving.  The news segment was talking about how many people the Atlanta area soup kitchens will be trying to feed.  Let me repeat that number for you again.

Twenty-thousand people without homes.

Twenty-thousand people living on the streets, in homeless shelters and in abandoned homes without heat or hot water.

Twenty-thousand.

That is approximately 1/5th the population of Anchorage, Alaska.  That is the size of the population of the town in Oregon we just moved from.  That is seven thousand more people than the town I first lived in when I moved to Alaska.  And that is half the population for the county census records of the county where I grew up in Washington while in high school.

Why has the government not stepped forward offering tax incentives to builders encouraging donation of these empty homes to the HUD program?  Why are we, as a society, allowing homes to stand empty when there are so many homeless people without a warm, safe place to sleep?  Instead, we let these homes stay empty and cold, lowering the value of neighborhoods and increasing the risk of vandalism.

So, this holiday season, while you’re making your list and checking it twice, getting that just so gift for Aunt Marge or a sweater in Grandpa’s favorite color, don’t forget the homeless on your list.  Yeah, look down at the bottom.  They’re written in right there in invisible ink.  Go ahead.  Get out your de-coder ring.  I’ll wait.

Did you look?  Good.  Now, where were we?  Ah yes!  Helping out the less fortunate!  Donate a toy, make a contribution, spend your free time helping out at a soup kitchen, cook a meal for someone.  Your gift may very well help someone you’ve met in passing and didn’t know what their life situation was.  It might help that checker at the grocery store, the guy that pumps your gas (at least in Oregon!), one of your child’s school mates or that family that sits in the pew at the back of the church.

Don’t forget the homeless this season.  Because, the life your generosity touches may be that of somebody you know.

Oh, and…

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

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A Nightmare Tale for Halloween

<Insert Vampire Voice>

It was a bright and sunny afternoon!

<insert regular voice> (Hey!  If you were from the PNW, you’d perfectly understand why this is scary.  It might be 300 more days before you see the sun again.  Anyways, on with our story…)

It was a bright and sunny day.  The night before had been dark and thunderously stormy.  But now, it was bright and sunny.

It was the day before Halloween.  I took Rock’em out for a mid-afternoon stroll.  We observed that the storm the night before had left about a foot of water in the buckets I had left outside to clean.  Dumping them out, I took pleasure in the thought that my chore had been done for me by Mother Nature.  I silently thanked Her and took Roxie for a walk down the driveway to relieve herself.

Roxanne, unlike her usual self, took forever to pick a spot and squat.  We then walked the 50 or so yards back up the driveway to the house.

Just as I reached the back porch steps it happened!  I was bit by something!

Without looking, I quickly swatted at whatever was biting my leg.

It happened again!

I looked down and nearly screamed.

I was covered in fire ants.  My yoga pants and garden clogs had HUNDREDS of the little buggers swarming me!  From right above the ankles down, my legs were a brownish-red crawling, wriggling mass.

Quick thinking had me letting Rox in the house to free up my hands and get her out of harm’s way.

I spent the next 15 minutes swatting and stomping ants off of me.  More swatting than stomping, I’m afraid.

At last I was ant free.  And I wanted revenge!

I quickly got out the shaker of ant death and applied liberally to every mound I could find.  There were more than 20 mounds in all along the driveway.  I didn’t venture off the concrete at all.

The ants became angry and swarmed out of their mounds.  It reminded me of the 1970s movie, Ants!, where fire ants terrorized a town, killing people.

I had to be quick and pay attention to my feet, even on the concrete drive to avoid them.  One more lone ant managed to land a stinging blow before meeting his death at my hand.

I learned my lesson.  Even the concrete drive isn’t safe from the biting little bastards!

With any luck, the ant death will work and keep the area around the driveway fire ant free for the next month.

Then, the battle will begin once again.

*** Seriously though, I did have nightmares all night last night.  I’ll blame the fire ants, even though my nightmares weren’t ant based.  I dreamed that Bad Pants didn’t love me any more and that he moved out and took all the blankets with him (I was cold).  Then, I jerked awake to a loud bang from my dream in which Merlin crashed through a closet door head on and had a skull fracture.  In the dream, I got to him as he was sinking to the ground and I woke just before he passed away.  It was a very disturbing night for dreams for me.

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Edited: Georgia Bucket List

Right at this moment, I feel like living here in Georgia involves a finite amount of time.  I say this, because when I lived in Alaska, I thought I’d be there forever and put off many of the things I wanted to do because there was always later.  And when I moved, it was within four months of the first discussion that I had to go.

There were things I wanted to do in Alaska that I didn’t.  Like, attend the start of the Iditarod.  And to think I lived a whopping 3-blocks from where the dogs would run by, and didn’t ever go.  Not once.  I wanted to go see Denali, often drove within 20 minutes  of the park, and never simply went.  The list goes on and on.  And now, I have to go back as a tourist and do all those things I wanted to do before because I just never bothered.  Because there was always later.

I repeated the same behaviors in Oregon, but we moved within six weeks of the first discussion about Bad Pants’ transfer.  Multnomah Falls, Seaside, wandering around and exploring Eugene, going to Bend, spending time in Sisters, trail rides, the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, the State Fair (and we lived in Salem for cryin’ out loud for 2 years!).  How about visiting more vineyards?  Touring the winery that grew grapes next door.  That winery was a couple miles down the road, had more expensive tasting fees and vineyards scattered all across the area.  We did visit our other neighbor, do a couple tastings from his boutique vineyard and often bought his Pinot Noir.

My point is, there were a lot of things we didn’t do that I wanted to do while there.  So, I’m making a list of everything I want to do while here in Georgia since I may not remain indefinitely in the South.

1. Go to the Kentucky Derby, visit the Horse Park, meet Taoist Biker and his lovely family.  (This is all one because it’s all in KY and a kinda planned trip).

2. Hike Stone Mountain, see the laser show, ect.

3. Go to the Atlanta Zoo.

4. Visit Savannah, see Mrs. Mom, and tour the Historic District.

5. Eat at Paula Deen’s restaurant, The Lady and Sons.

6. See the Atlantic Ocean.

7. Visit the surrounding states of Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and North Carolina.  Expand this to include Virginia and West Virginia as well.

8. Visit some distilleries.

9. See some Civil War battlefields.

10. Visit an Antebellum mansion.  I might have to go to Louisiana for this one.

11. Run in the Peachtree Road Race.

12. Ride a riverboat.

13. See Charleston, walk down Rainbow Row.

14. Eat chicken and waffles- because Kitty is obessed with the idea.  (Where would I do this?)

15. Take a vacation- I mean a real vacation, not work related for Bad Pants or driving across country in a move.

16. Go to a Braves game.

17. Meet Denise and Lester from Less Is More.  They only live a few miles away.  Hopefully, we can do this soon!

Is there anything else I should add to my list?

 

Edited to add:  18. Tour Georgia Wineries and go to tastings.

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