Wednesday, January 07, 2004
The vacation is now 159 hours and 10 minutes old. I have made the very pleasant discovery that time seems to be moving slower than it does when I'm working. The past week seems at least two weeks long. So, I've found a way to buy myself time. Just don't work.
Last night, we came home from dinner and discovered a notice that our loft, and all those in the old school house, are going condo. They're offering us a "special" price (ha, ha, ha), but this is not where I want to spend the rest of my life, sooooo...we shall be moving when the lease is up at the end of November '04. It was a bit of a shock. I so loathe moving. Mostly I loathe packing and unpacking and hanging all the frelling pictures again. And I really loathe looking at apartments.
The wayward bookshelf has yet to arrive. Spooky called Office Depot this morning and discovered that the gleets have been trying to deliver it to my old Birmingham address. Yes, really. They had that on file and, somehow, although the new address was repeatedly confirmed when the order was placed, they sent the damned thing to Birmingham. So maybe tomorrow. But I shan't hold my breath.
Yesterday, we spent a big chunk of the day at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, looking at poison arrow frogs and orchids and pitcher plants, a gluttony of diversity. The Dorothy Chapman Fuqua Conservatory's vast tropical garden was my favorite, perhaps a cure for my hatred of winter. I stood in the center of a wet, warm summer day, listening to the birds and frogs and geckos, the mist all about me, waterfalls trickling. Wonderful. It would have been more wonderful if I didn't know so many facts and figures on tropical deforestation and impending manmade mass extinction events. I kept thinking of those greenhouse pods in Silent Running, that, very likely, someday soon all we'll have left of terran biodiversity will be held in such conservatories. The High Elevation House was very cool, and we marveled at more species and subspecies of orchids than I might have suspected to exist (and now I have a much clearer picture of what Nebari genitalia look like). We found a large patch of wormwood growing in the Fragrance Courtyard, near the fountain of Pan. We sat awhile in a sunny spot in the Japanese Gardens, out of the wind. We left pleasantly tired from hiking about the grounds and filled with images of greenery to help carry us through the cold days ahead. Afterwards, we stopped for coffee at San Francisco Coffee. Back home, I read two articles in the new JVP: "Vermiform bones and the evolution of gigantism in Megalania - How a reptilian fox becomes a lion" and "A new specimen of Excalibosaurus from the English Lower Jurassic." Then I dozed until dinner. Spooky and Jennifer and I went to Ostaria, an Italian restaurant on Highland. The food was quite good, but the chef needs to lay off the olive oil just a smidge. And then we came home, and there was a notice on the door, and this is where we started.
Here in Atlanta, it's bitter cold. Even Spooky acknowledged that this constitutes genuine cold.
I need to make a trip to the market, but I just don't think I'm up to braving the elephants...er, elements.
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