Leaving Atlanta

In an ideal world, this would be the point I shut the computer off, pack it away and prepare to load it into a moving truck so it can make the 251 mile journey to it’s, and indeed our, new home. But alas it’s more than likely that it’ll be packed up and forced to sit for 5 days before being loaded into a moving truck for its 251 mile journey… Yes, our moving date has been postponed until Wednesday, which is good as Robyn’s last day at her current job is Tuesday. My last day was today and it was a little bit bittersweet…

Yes, I’ve said in the past that it sucked for the long hours and low pay, and even though I was only there a little over 3 months, I’ll actually be sad to leave the place as the people I worked with were a lot of fun, sometimes saying goodbye is sadder than you think. Speaking of goodbyes, we’ve got far too many to do and not enough time to do it in. Robyn’s work is throwing her a leaving luncheon on Monday, so that gives her a bit of closure in that respect, but we’ve still got all our friends to say goodbye to. Right now we’ve just been slammed for weeks on end packing, arranging stuff and every bad thing that goes with moving, so time is running out and it really sucks.

So yeah, we’re moving on Wednesday, a special day for me, it was Saturday January 24th 2004 when I first landed in Atlanta. I knew pretty much nothing about the city, all I knew was it held the Olympics in 1996 and the Braves were a good baseball team. I didn’t know where anything was, I pretty much hadn’t left the confines of Marietta before I started dating Robyn, now I can safely say I know Atlanta better than her, and she’s lived here for 22 years. Not a slight on her, I’m just good at getting my bearings. 3 years to the day, that’s actually kind of spooky really, it means my silly day in the life posts I make to commemorate it will be a bit more interesting than the 2005 and 2006 versions. Something for you all to look forward to.

Strange as it may seem, but I’ll miss Atlanta, sure it may be a sprawling metropolis where the main roads are nothing more than glorified car parks, but it has it’s cool stuff too. I’ll miss the monthly APWBWGTTD meetings, especially the ones I didn’t go to. I’ll miss all the bloggers of Atlanta, yes even Dave. I’ll miss the Atlanta Flickr group, far too many to name from there. I’ll miss going to Braves games, even if last year is best forgotten about, I wonder what my final record at Turner Field was, probably something like 15-9 (.625) (or *15-10 (.600)) which isn’t so bad overall. I’ll miss places like Decatur, Virginia Highlands, Midtown and various places I’ve ended up in a bar in. I’ll miss the continuing misadventures of Ron Mexico Michael Vick. I’ll miss Thrashers hockey, just as we were getting into it.

I won’t miss MARTA and it’s hit or miss schedule. I won’t miss the drive along 285 I have to take nearly every day, it’s the longest 6 miles in history. Along the same lines I won’t miss the construction on 400. Actually, that’s pretty much it, the horrible public transport and the awful highways, without those Atlanta would be an awesome place to live, instead it has that stigma of long, slow commutes. But hey, I learned to drive in Atlanta, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere…

Breaking up is hard to do, but worry not, for we shall be back in Atlanta next weekend, we have to clean up and repaint the inside of our condo so we can sell it, hopefully sooner rather than later, we’ve also arranged a bon voyage meeting at Meehams in Sandy Springs next Saturday, if you can make it then cool. We’ll also be back in late February as we have a date to see Spamalot at the Fabulous Fox on the 24th. So hopfully with these two opportunities we’ll finally see everyone we need to see. And if any of you usual suspects need a bed in Charlotte, give us advance warning…

So long Atlanta, it’s been emotional…