I’m at Dad’s house in Atlanta (Well, Douglasville).

I’ve been unable to get a job, and, as a result, am going to be with Dad until he leaves for Birmingham on Monday 8 August, at which point I’ll leave for Knoxville and return to Douglasville on Friday 11 August. I shall leave Douglasville on Monday 14 August for Dallas.

These “plans” are subject to change at any point (by either my capricious self or any of the parties mentioned above), and may not be relied upon for anything other than a device to make you stop worrying.

I’ll be checking email, so respond if you like. If you are simply so worried that this email hasn’t done any good, (e.g., Mom), then feel free to call me here at 770.489.3352. I suppose you could call for any other reason as well, since you’ll be paying for it.

I passed the strangest thing on I-65 about 100 miles south of Montgomery today. I had the top down, cruise control set, my music playing, and was, in general, doing my best, even if somewhat unsuccessfully, to enjoy the drive, which was doing its best to be entirely uneventful. Few things exciting happen on I-65 between Mobile and Montgomery, AL. The road is boring and patrolled. The weather wasn’t too terribly sunny because of several Mobileish clouds covering the southern Alabama sky. These clouds were waiting for the Mobile Afternoon to come around so they could pour rain for a few hours, then mysteriously disappear, I’m sure. I was heading north, though, and figured I would get far enough by the time the afternoon rolled around that I wouldn’t get too wet. I was wrong. This happens occasionally, but not with great frequency.

I was alternating between passing the endless stream of large semi trucks (WHY are they semi trucks? There is nothing semi about them, they’re whole and complete trucks!) and letting the endless stream of redneck pickup trucks pass me, when I glanced up at the trucker I was passing. I can do this with the top down, but am completely unsuccessful with it up. I usually glance at the truckers because they usually glance at me, and in doing so, create a small moment eye contact of a sort peculiar to the highway. This time I was unable to make eye contact with the trucker because she was wearing sunglasses. I was traveling at least 10 miles an hour faster than she was because she was stuck in the right lane behind a very slow redneck. (I should be fair, its possible that the drive wasn’t redneck simply because of Alabama plates. Nah.) As I flew by, I thought I was seeing things. As someone who has looked at a lot of truckers, I’ve seen the occasional female driver. Never have I seen a beautiful young woman driving a truck. I looked in my rearview miror to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, and hoped I was awake. I was, she noticed me staring, so she smiled and waved. I waved back as her truck faded into the distance.

That was about the only interesting thing that happened. I stopped about 40 miles south of Montgomery, and the clouds, which had become darker and more ominous (ever notice that clouds are always ominous? I would bet that the world ominous is most frequently used to describe clouds than anything else.) than before, began to pour rain. I put the top up in the Miata, and drove rather slowly for quite some time, while the rain cleared. It never really cleared until I got fairly close to Atlanta. It doesn’t rain in Atlanta this year.

I tried to take a short cut instead of heading all the way to Atlanta on I-85, then heading back west on 20. This would have worked fine had I not been trying to drive and read a map at the same time. I ended up missing a turn, and driving 20 miles west instead of 20 miles north, which probably cost me at least 1.5 hours. Oh well. Someone should give me a GPS device for Christmas.