Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Brownies for Breakfast
August 9, 2005
For breakfast this morning I had hot tea (my usual) and brownies (very unusual). Not that I don’t love brownies of almost any variety, but I’m generally a little more careful about what I eat. However, my tasks for the day lent themselves well to junk food, so the choice was quite fitting.
After living in rural North Carolina for 8 years and fairly rural Washington state for two years, I find myself back in Metro Atlanta for the first time since 1994. When I moved away, you could still rent an apartment “in-town” for less than $700 per month, and by apartment I mean a one-bedroom with indoor plumbing and a kitchen. I nearly gave myself a heart attack by reading through the apartment listings in Creative Loafing: one-bedroom apartments in Midtown for $1,500…and that’s if you’re lucky. This means one of two things: either everybody in Atlanta is making at least $60,000 per year (and this includes barristas and those kids selling all manner of “goods” in L5P) or people are amassing outrageous credit card debt to put roofs over their heads. Or, perhaps 10 people are sharing one luxury loft.
But back to me! My tasks for the day were 1) go to the post office – I chose the one in Powder Springs rather than Marietta, since parking was better in P.S. and I was feeling a little nostalgic for my old high school hangouts, two of which are still there: Johnny’s Barbeque, which I can no longer enjoy since giving up meat in 1996, and the Dairy Queen, where I can still throw down a Blizzard.
Task number 2 was to find a Barnes & Noble and use one of the gift certificates kind friends in NC gave me when I announced I had had enough of teaching middle school and was moving back to the ATL to find some kind of office job (if you know anyone who is hiring, I have exceptional office-type skills. Oh, and I can strike fear into 25 7th graders just by changing the tone of my voice.). The B&N I located is on Dallas Highway in a pretentious development that reminds me of SouthPark (not the show) in Charlotte. I wandered through the faux cobblestone walks and water gardens looking for all the world like a barefoot mountain girl whose low-life fiance has pushed her out of the truck and left her in an upscale neighborhood. After 10 years of precious little choice in the way of shopping, it is nice to shop at a Target store without driving 45 minutes, and it was tres easy to locate a cingular store (if we’re not careful, I suspect we might wake up one morning to find cingular stores in many front yards, crowding out the swing sets and lawn furniture). Still I could compare the number of shopping choices at my disposal to the 80 channels on local cable: I only watch about 8 of them regularly, and the others are mostly a nuisance. Too much of a good thing? More like too much crap I don’t need, don’t want, and don’t even want to see.
Task number 3 was to go to the library, where those nice ladies had three English mysteries that I had ordered last week. If you enjoy mysteries and you’ve never read Josephine Tey, get thee to the library and check out her books. You won’t be disappointed…unless you’re stupid, and if so why would you be reading, anyway? Go shopping, already!
For breakfast this morning I had hot tea (my usual) and brownies (very unusual). Not that I don’t love brownies of almost any variety, but I’m generally a little more careful about what I eat. However, my tasks for the day lent themselves well to junk food, so the choice was quite fitting.
After living in rural North Carolina for 8 years and fairly rural Washington state for two years, I find myself back in Metro Atlanta for the first time since 1994. When I moved away, you could still rent an apartment “in-town” for less than $700 per month, and by apartment I mean a one-bedroom with indoor plumbing and a kitchen. I nearly gave myself a heart attack by reading through the apartment listings in Creative Loafing: one-bedroom apartments in Midtown for $1,500…and that’s if you’re lucky. This means one of two things: either everybody in Atlanta is making at least $60,000 per year (and this includes barristas and those kids selling all manner of “goods” in L5P) or people are amassing outrageous credit card debt to put roofs over their heads. Or, perhaps 10 people are sharing one luxury loft.
But back to me! My tasks for the day were 1) go to the post office – I chose the one in Powder Springs rather than Marietta, since parking was better in P.S. and I was feeling a little nostalgic for my old high school hangouts, two of which are still there: Johnny’s Barbeque, which I can no longer enjoy since giving up meat in 1996, and the Dairy Queen, where I can still throw down a Blizzard.
Task number 2 was to find a Barnes & Noble and use one of the gift certificates kind friends in NC gave me when I announced I had had enough of teaching middle school and was moving back to the ATL to find some kind of office job (if you know anyone who is hiring, I have exceptional office-type skills. Oh, and I can strike fear into 25 7th graders just by changing the tone of my voice.). The B&N I located is on Dallas Highway in a pretentious development that reminds me of SouthPark (not the show) in Charlotte. I wandered through the faux cobblestone walks and water gardens looking for all the world like a barefoot mountain girl whose low-life fiance has pushed her out of the truck and left her in an upscale neighborhood. After 10 years of precious little choice in the way of shopping, it is nice to shop at a Target store without driving 45 minutes, and it was tres easy to locate a cingular store (if we’re not careful, I suspect we might wake up one morning to find cingular stores in many front yards, crowding out the swing sets and lawn furniture). Still I could compare the number of shopping choices at my disposal to the 80 channels on local cable: I only watch about 8 of them regularly, and the others are mostly a nuisance. Too much of a good thing? More like too much crap I don’t need, don’t want, and don’t even want to see.
Task number 3 was to go to the library, where those nice ladies had three English mysteries that I had ordered last week. If you enjoy mysteries and you’ve never read Josephine Tey, get thee to the library and check out her books. You won’t be disappointed…unless you’re stupid, and if so why would you be reading, anyway? Go shopping, already!
