Escape from the Basement!

I got out of the basement this weekend!

My husband and I drove to North Carolina to have a small McDonalds birthday celebration with our 2 year-old Godson, then off to other parts of North Carolina to visit some old friends. We drove about 700 miles over the past two days. I had a great time though so the heck with the money we spent on gas. James entertained me by reading to me while I drove. I love road trips!

This weekend we are preparing for a visit from the contingent from Tennessee. James has known these folks since he was a wee shaver and I get to know them through him. We always have a great time together. Last year we were invited up to their part of the world and we spent the day in Dollywood. Which was fantastic! If you're looking for a nice weekend getaway, Dollywood is something you should see. But I digress.

So this weekend is DragonCon in Atlanta. Also there's a Black Gay Pride thing going on downtown (I might have dreamt that, I was sort of snoozing through the alarm.) I'm not even going to get into the fact that it's a 3-day weekend and that there has been perpetual weekend freeway maintenance on I-85. Let's just say that getting downtown, and being downtown is going to be a nightmare.

Anyhoo, the gang are coming down for DragonCon, a comic, sci-fi, anime geekfest of epic proportions. My part in this is to be the cordial hostess, provide a hearty hot breakfast and launder the towels. It's a good thing we have tankless hot water, that's all I can say. James is going to the WNBA basketball game Friday night, but he'll be geeking along with the rest of them for the remainder of the weekend.

Throw into that mix that a good friend of ours will be at DragonCon for 24-hours and you can see that I've got my hands full! I really want to try to meet up with Jill, but given the situation, I'm not sure that it wouldn't be more of a pain than it was worth, for both of us. If you've only got 24-hours I'm thinking that you'll want to be doing things at it, not trying to figure out how to get from it to a neutral place to have a cup of coffee.

And in other news…

After having dinner at our local pizza joint, James and I traveled the back roads of Chamblee and discovered that a bunch of new, adorable shops and restaurants have opened up on N. Peachtree St. If you aren't from Atlanta, it's a local joke that there are about 200 streets with Peachtree as part of the street name. Except that while being a joke, it's also true. We are heartened by the addition of quaint, local shops and we expect to patronize them.

This is part of a revitalization plan. The city of Chamblee is a marketing machine! A bit of history. We are next to Doraville, which houses a GM plant where they make…trucks? At any rate, both auto-plants were closed. The Ford plant in south Atlanta, and the Doraville Works, which are slated to be closed any day.

So, as a hold over from more factory-centric times, the end of Peachtree Street that our neighborhood resides on was previously called Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, even though the main Peachtree St, the one referenced by Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, runs right into it. A few weeks ago new street signs went up and now we're off of Peachtree St. You see? So much tonier already. They still need to fix the big signs on 285 (aka The Watermelon 500) but we are coming up in the world.

There was a big store out there, Brandsmart. A giant, Florida-based two-story warehouse where you can buy electronics and appliances. It resembles a coliseum in that there is the main floor where they sell small appliances, irons, waffle-makers, computer cables, etc, and then there is a second level that rings the edge of the building, where they have the washers, stoves, refrigerators and car stereos. We bought our digital camera there.

There was still some land so a NJ based Korean Supermarket, H-Mart is in the process of building a new store there. The nearest H-Mart is all the way up in Gwinnett, so I'm THRILLED. They are super-cheap and they have the best produce. 7 kinds of Bok-Choy! Fresh herbs, lemongrass, tamarind, Asian pears, long-beans, eggplants, pretty much anything you can imagine. The fish is fresh because they have tanks where the fish are swimming around. You can tong up a live blue crab. When you buy fish you have a choice of how you want it. Whole? Guts removed? Filleted?

The meat department has cuts that are familiar to folks in Asia, but different from those in an American grocery store. There is an aisle just for noodles. There's a kim chee section. A food court. But I'm waxing ridiculous now. I have been to Japan and Korea and this store is just like one you'd see there, only instead of being on 5 different levels, it all on one, glorious level. As big as a Super Wal-Mart, but with your choice of 16 kinds of rice cookers. I'm still waiting to see the Hello Kitty washer that I saw in Japan.

So the H-Mart progresses and it should open by the end of the year. Now we hear that the GM Plant has been sold and we're going to get a development of condos, shops, restaurants. Ka-Ching! Property values are rising.

We are in Chamblee, a neighborhood affectionately referred to as being "inside the perimeter." The Perimeter? Yes, if you are within the confines of 285 you are ITP, if you are outside…well, not as attractive. So our 45 year-old neighborhood is enjoying gentrification. The old, established residents are seeing their neighbors turn into young families, Asian families, DINKs (dual income, no kids, like James and I) and gay folks. My kind of place. The colonial houses are being renovated, yards are being landscaped and it's the kind of place where if you go for a walk at around 6, you'll see everyone with a stroller and a couple of dogs out for a stretch.

The gist of the thing being that property values are up in our part of the world. What used to be kind of dreary and old looking will be pretty and new soon, but not so much that there's no character. My gym is an old converted warehouse. There are loft apartments opposite the train tracks. Our closest grocery store will be an Asian specialty market. And that's a good thing.