We were completely unaware of last night's weather as anything but heavy thunderstorms. Aaron did get an email saying the GA Tech was under a tornado watch, but we didn't know there'd actually *been* a tornado til I started reading LJ this morning. (Yes, all my news comes from LJ.) Never even lost power or internet.

AP article linked here

A local blogger posts pictures of the damage

More damage pictures

About an hour north of Atlanta is what is purported to be the world's largest collection of kangaroos outside of Australia. With an out-of-town houseguest and a holiday weekend, who could pass that up?

You're such a tiny, tiny kangaroo...

I was disappointed to see the Conservatory, who ought to know better, disseminating the folk etymology for the word "kangaroo." Though it makes a good story, it does not mean "I don't understand you." As far as I can tell, it means "kangaroo," i.e., that thing with the big feet and tail you're pointing at.

They look a little bit like deer, and a little bit like rabbits, and a little bit like rats. And no matter how many I saw, it never stopped being astonishing when they got up and ka-boinged across a field. It just doesn't seem like it ought to be possible.

Nor, for that matter, did the amount of food we ate at the Melting Pot on the way home. And this is after we decided that fondue for two would feed three. But after a long day of tie me kangaroo down, we needed a good, decadent meal.

Last year I marched, but this year I was just a spectator. After the rigors of family travel in August and September, on top of a really rough first trimester, I just didn't have the energy, when October rolled around, to deal with coordinating a costume. I'm kind of sorry, but there's always next year.

Having learned from the Pride Parade that the beginning of a parade route is much less crowded than the end, we met up with vatavian and museumfreak on the slope in front of the loft apartments on Euclid Avenue, and watched the merriment go by. The parade was smaller this year than usual; a lot of major L5P businesses were absent (notably the Vortex and Junkman's Daughter, which practically IS Little Five Points all by itself). And the businesses that did show lost a lot of coolness points by driving random trucks full of unthemed costumed folks down the street.

Chantelle's krewe, the Grateful Gluttons made their usual spectacular showing, with a circus sideshow themed float. I knew it was them as soon as I saw them coming, because it was, frankly, the only really impressive thing in the whole parade.

Pictures here!

Taking a brief break from school reading to post the pictures from the Pride Festival.

Ok, break over. Time for more reading.

I don't usually think of Atlanta as "my city," nor do I often think of it as a city, even-- more a random sprawl of suburbs. And I certainly don't think in terms of civic pride--we haven't lived here very long, after all.

But today I'm proud to be an Atlantan.

The plan was to meet autographedcat and kitanzi and some of their friends at the Renaissance Faire on Sunday. This is sort of what happend. Sort of. Mostly, really.

We got on the road around noon, whereupon I gave kitanzi a call to let them know we were on our way. She said, "Oh, hi, where are you?" I replied, "Uh, at the Starbucks on Peachtree Industrial. C'mon, you didn't really expect us to be there in the morning, did you?"

So we got to the faire about 1-ish, and I changed into the leather longcoat Aaron had bought me last year (it's the ren fest, no one cares about accuracy). We called again to say, "hi, we're here!" but this time there was only voice mail, so we wandered toward the Barely Balanced Danger Juggling (Ye Olde Abs o' Steel!) show while waiting for a call back...eventually we found the whole gang ogling the boots at the leather stall, but poor autographedcat was red from the heat and considering ending the day. (It was awfully hot--and I hadn't really thought about how it would feel to wander around all day in the sun wearing black leather!)

wheezingirl had the idea to take him back into the Parrots of the Caribbean bird sanctuary, where she'd seen misters set up before. Alas, though the sanctuary was shady, and full of colorful avians, the only misters were the ones we'd brough with us. It was eventually decided that kitanzi's mister was doing poorly enough in the heat that it was best they head out. They took hilfy with them, leaving us in the company of wheezingirl and her mister, Matt, plus thatcrazycajun.

We saw the washerwomen wenches, then shopped a bit--thanks to Aaron, I am now the proud owner of a gold hair spiral thingy that I should have taken a picture of (alas, I forgot the camera altogether, so the only pictures will be autographedcat's when he posts them). On the way to the fire juggling show, we noticed a booth selling mead, which is a rare treat for me, so we picked some up to drink at the show. Half an hour and a glass of mead later, I stood up and noticed that the faire had acquired a pleasant spin, and decided that perhaps the end of my day was nigh as well. We caught a bit of the Tortuga Twins' R-rated end-of-day show, but succumbed to the heat and headed out.

It was too bad not to spend any more time w/ autographedcat and kitanzi, but we really enjoyed getting to know wheezingirl, Matt, and Matt better. I hope we'll be able to squeeze in another Ren Faire expedition before the season ends!

Aaron and I saw these guys several years ago in Princeton, and they were fantastic. Now they're coming to Atlanta. Anyone interested in a night at the gender-bent ballet?

(We'll be getting tickets on Friday; Aaron gets a discount at the Ferst Center, but I'm not sure how many discounted tickets they'll let him buy...)

This is the second time I've seen this show, and I watched with that peculiar double-vision of one who knows how the tricks are done--one part belief and one part appreciation. I saw all kinds of things I wouldn't have known to look for before, and many of the same things that impressed me the first time.

Three puppeteers enact seven stories, with the help of a musician/SFX artist in a nest of drums and other novel devices. Scene changes are marked with verses of "The Bells," and the "The Raven" frames the show in bloody, flapping wings. The final act opens with Michael Haverty's* mastefully pathetic, bewildered delivery of "The Telltale Heart," and culminates in an interlocking montage of three gruesome tales of murder and confession.

The endlessly versatile set deserves its own special mention: it morphs and recombines to form houses, graves, cities, cellars, even the pitching deck of a storm-tossed ship. The puppets are uniquely constructed--the heads are on rods, but the arms consist of sleeves, through which the puppeteers thrust their hands to animate the puppet's movements. Since the puppets are about half-scale or even smaller, the hands are proportionally enormous: malicious and threatening.

Tales of Edgar Allan Poe is playing at the Center for Puppetry Arts through February 11. Sure, it will keep you awake...but you can sleep when you're dead.

(*Long time readers may recall Michael as the author of Gilgamesh from XPT 2004.)

Have you read Spider Robinson's Stardancer books? Remember the Quaddie ballet?

It was like that. With puppets.

This looks really cool! And it's got puppets! And black light! It's one-night-only, next Saturday, at the Ferst Center:

Momix: Lunar Sea

For a description, go here and click "Feature Show: Lunar Sea" in the bottom left corner.

I give the GA State Aquarium an official thumbs up. Highlights inlcuded, of course the beluga whales, but also the sea and river otters, African penguins, and some very amorous sea lions. (At least, I'm assuming that all the twining around each other and nipping constituted some kind of pinniped foreplay). We were also quite taken with the sea turtle (e per, se muove!), the leafy sea dragons, and the creepily beautiful sea nettles.

Our favorites among the non-mammals, though, had to be the garden eels. They're little tiny things, like very long, colorful worms--except we never did find out how long, because they burrow tail-first into the sea-bed, and nose around in the water looking for bits of plankton to eat. When something scares them (as two large yellow fish did by swimming down close to the sand), they retreat back into their burrows, then cautiously eel back out to see if the coast is clear.

Except the whales, it seems, save me.

Aaron is on the planning committee for an IEEE conference downtown this week (ironically, it's at the Marriott, one of Dragoncon's homes, but no one's in costume). Last night they hosted a reception in the Oceans Ballroom at the GA Aquarium.

Ooh, my favorite thing: loud music, conversation with strangers, eating while standing and juggling itty bitty plates. I was mainly off the hook for the conversation with strangers part, at least, since talking too much sets off more coughing.

But...Admiral! There be whales here!

One wall of the ballroom looks into the beluga whale tank. There are four of them, graceful, sinuous, majestic, gleaming white with aquamarine highlights as they glided through the water. They were like dancers, like birds, like angels...I was mesmerized. I sat myself down cross-legged where the glass meets the carpet, dabbling my hands in the reflected waves of rainbow light, and found all the soothing calm and peace I've been missing these last few weeks.

I want to get a year's pass to the aquarium, so I can visit the whales whenever I'm stressed. Put something new-agey on the iPod, find a comfortable spot, and drift away with them.

(This would mean finding time to get to the aquarium. I'll work on it.)

Yesterday we tried again for the Asian Festival, this time trusting to Marta to avoid the nightmarish (nonexistant) parking at the Botannial Garden. Aaron opted to stay home, so I escorted Ben and Bonnie and helped them detangle the transit system.

Well, Marta being what it is, it took us over an hour to get there, but we had a nice time. I got hennaed, ate purple flavored ice cream, made batik and origami creations, played the Taiwanese drums, and banged a magic gong.

Pictures here!

Is it a bad idea to be on call for jury duty the week after I've been to see Chicago? I wonder if it would be a viable excuse? "I'm sorry, your honor, I was all set to serve, but I saw this musical, and now I'm biased against the court system."

There were a few false notes, but overall, the Fox's production was quite well done. The actress playing Roxie did a brilliant job holding the stage during a monologue that has tremendous potential to bring the action to a screaming halt. Her husband, Amos, was entirely sympathetic--and somewhat pathetic--in his "Mr. Cellophane" solo, and especially in his silent, unaccompanied exit. The courtroom scene was every bit as good as I remember from the Broadway production Aaron and I saw when we were first dating (he knows how to impress a girl--Broadway tickets!), and Billy Flynn the crooked lawyer was just perfect. The only real problem I had was that Mary Sunshine was overmiked--I couldn't understand most of "her" solo, nor the later parts after she was unmasked. Aside from that, though, it was a most successful performance.

Last week on the train to the airport, there was a couple sitting across from us with a baby. The guy noticed a button on Aaron's jacket. "When did you go to Fantasm?"

I will note for the record that the button was sold by Fantasm, but we'd picked it up at DragonCon. (For the curious: "Rock is dead. Long live Paper and Scissors.") So we explained about DragonCon.

"Oh, I used to be in charge of the Robotics track there."

*blink* Small world, indeed.

There was shopping. There was good food. There was dancing. There was even a housefilk. It's been a helluva weekend. Thanks for coming to visit, celticdragonfly! It's nice to have an excuse to do this many fun things in a weekend.

Friday we had decided to go to the new GA Aquarium. This was built last year and is notoriously busy on weekends, but surely, we thought, if we go on a weekday it won't be so bad. Wrong! Not only was the place mobbed, but there was a sign at the entrance (at 2:30, mind you), explaining that they were now selling tickets for a 4 o'clock entrance.

Bugger that for a game of solders. It's just a bunch of fish, people, get a grip.

When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping in Virginia Highlands. Oh, first they eat pizza. Then they go shopping. Then they eat gelato. Beats all hell out of overcrowded fish, any day of the week.

Then, when we got home, the tough took a nap. Ok, I took a nap. celticdragonfly, who is considerably tougher than I, sat up and websurfed. But I needed the sleep, because later that night she wore me out dancing. Aaron was too tired after work to come along, but we got in three contras and a bunch of waltzes without him. (Points-wise, it turns out if I walk for 90 minutes every day, then dance another 90 minutes on top of that, I can eat all the pizza and gelato I want. If only...)

My fireworks craving was amply fed this weekend.  The Stone Mountain laser show was all one could have wished in tackiness, and followed by a gratifyingly extravagant fireworks display. 

We had received a dinner invitation for the 4th itself, from our next door neighbors, whom we had only met before in passing.  This was a whole new concept for a girl who grew up in NJ apartments--this whole "being neighborly" thing.  I hadn't realized at first that they had invited only us and one other new couple on the block--I had some idea it was a much larger affair and they'd invited the whole neighborhood.  This is approximately my least favorite social situation, right up there with office holiday parties--people I don't know, food I probably don't like, and nowhere to sit.  Luckily, I've been taking "How to Talk to Strangers" lessons from Aaron, and the smaller group setting was a great relief to me.  So it turned out to be a good time after all, and we chatted all neighborly-like until about 8, when we left for fireworks.

The Lenox fireworks display, allegedly the largest in the Southeast (and I shudder to think of the cost) was enhanced by an 11th floor view.  The original plan was to take the train to Lenox station like civilized people, but then I had to go into work at the last minute.  We thought of staying there to see the show, but we had an hour to kill and figured, we were right down the street from Lenox, surely in an hour we could find parking, right?  Ha.  We drove around Buckhead for an hour--as much of it as we could drive around with half the streets blocked off--and finally gave it up and headed back to the office, with two minutes to spare.  This turned out to be a perfect view--we missed some of the low fireworks, but everything else was fabulous.  We even had the radio tuned to a local news station covering the event, so we got the music and somewhat mis-timed booms as well.  Yes, they played that song again, but it was worth putting up with. 

We're going to Stone Mountain with some friends to see the laser and fireworks show tonight.  I've been to the laser show before, and it is an unbelievable paragon of patriotic tackiness, which I can only assume will be even more absurd this weekend, but I am a fireworks fiend.  My secret dream was to have fireworks at my wedding, but when you get married in a big-city skyscraper, lighting incendiary devices is frowned upon.  I've had to settle for as much as I can get when this time of year rolls around.  Despite my Barrayaran addiction for things that go "boom,"  I've never been tempted to set the things off myself (being attached to all 10 of my fingers) but I'll go to any public fireworks display I can get.  The year before I moved to GA, I went to six July 4th displays in six different little podunk NJ towns, every day of the week leading up to the 4th.  This year, in addition to the Stone Mountain extravaganza of tackiness, we'll also be hitting the Lenox Mall display on the actual 4th.

Now, don't get me wrong; I don't find patriotism tacky.  It's giant laser-outlined profiles of George Washington that make me snicker.  And that dreadful, ungrammatical, "I'm Proud to Be an American" song.  Not only is it musically uninspiring, but the grammar: you can't be "proud to be an American, where at least you know you're free," because American isn't a place.  I much prefer the old-fashioned patriotic hymns--America the Beautiful, for example.  Yes, yes, those hymns usually refer to a deity in which I don't believe; but the lyrics and the melodies beat all heck out of ungrammatical feel-good songs masquerading as pop music. 

There's been some discussion of tempering the bad grammar with a holiday viewing of "Farenheit 9/11." 

Headed down to Piedmont Park yesterday afternoon and wandered around the Pride fair.  Pictures here.  It was quite obviously an election year, and of course marriage rights were a prominent issue.  Most of what needs to be said on that has been said by wiser minds than me, but I'll add my usual comments for completeness' sake:  Anyone who objects to gay marriage on the grounds that it's unnatural should be made to live naked in a tree and eat their food raw.  Don't you look at me through the windshield of your air-conditioned SUV and eat french fries while expounding on the unnaturalness of love.

Heh.  Anyway...I caught the tail end of the parade, then got caught myself in an apocalyptic thunderstorm.  Since my sandals get slippery to walk in when they're wet, I took them off and ended up walking back to the train station barefoot.  Six city blocks barefoot on concrete...ow, ow, ow.  Feet are quite unhappy with me today.