Category: Uncategorized

If you’ve been to my house you know we have neighbors two doors down who chain up their dogs and leave them outside. They never let the dogs off the chains or inside the house, or outside of the yard. The code for Atlanta says that you can’t tether your dog with less than 30feet and the yard is must be closed off, but our neighbor’s yard is open and the tether does not look that long. Dogs from the neighborhood can get into the backyard if they want to. Every year one of the dogs gets pregnant and has a litter. Sometimes it happens more than once a year and sometimes the puppies don’t make it. They, too, live outside all the time but are not on chains.

In the latest litter there were five puppies that made it. The kids who live on the other side of us found out about the puppies and went over to have a look at them. A day later, the puppy owner brought a puppy over to them and then left one of them under the kid’s house in the crawlspace without their permission or their knowledge. They’ve decided that they will keep the puppy and they got it shots and dewormed. A second puppy also went somewhere else so now there are three left. They’re about 3 months old and they’re mutts. They need some attention but I’m sure they’d be free to a good (or any) home. I assume the owners would give them away since they’ve taken to leaving them under other people’s homes. Anyone interested can get in touch with me.

Atlanta finished third in Outside Magazine’s most recent listing of the best city’s in America. The article in Outside says they kept coming back to the notion of healthy cities with regard to, not only fitness, but economic stability and quality of life. They started with the 100 largest cities in the US and whittled it down from there. There are also listings for best small towns, Ely, MN is one of note. Not sure how I feel about this ranking but glad to see Atlanta up near the top. Here’s the list:

1. Colorado Springs, Colorado
2. Seattle, Washington
3. Atlanta, Georgia
4. Austin, Texas
5. Boston, Massachusetts
6. Albuquerque, New Mexico
7. Portland, Oregon
8. Minneapolis, Minnesota
9. Cincinnati, Ohio
10. Charlotte, North Carolina

I looked at a few quick stats on some of these cities that I thought I would report here. Atlanta, Cinci, Boston and Charlotte all have air quality problems in the form of ground level ozone, which make it hard to be outside some times. Charlotte and Cincinnati are in the American Lung Association’s 20 Most Polluted Cities for Ozone (Cinci and Atlanta in top 20 for particulates). Cincinnati was the highest ranked on Forbe’s 2007 list of the most Obese Cities at 11. Also on the list were Atlanta (16) and Austin (18). The Portland (11.7), Charlotte (12.4), Cincinnati (10.1) and Atlanta (10.7) areas all have unemployment above the national level (9.7). Median home prices were used to assess affordability.

I think Atlanta and the southeast have great access to tons of interesting spots, including mountains and coast, but Atlanta certainly lacks its own body of water to enjoy. However, one of the first things mentioned in the Outside article is the presence of the Chattahoochee River in the city, though most people couldn’t tell you where it is. Proximity to skiing, which Atlanta definitely lacks, was also in the magazine’s multisport rating.

My recent fascination with the West and disenchantment with the Midwest may explain some of my surprise at the relatively even distribution of the top ten throughout the US. (and my shock of seeing a city from Ohio in there) The more I think about this ranking and all the info going into the final scores, the more I think Atlanta is going to be near the top of a lot of lists of cities in America; good and bad. Any publicity is good publicity?

Last night I attended a class on derailer installation, tuning, and maintenance put on by the local bike co-op. All in all it’s a pretty ingenious design but the more I learned about it the more complicated it sounded and the more I began to understand the appeal of the simplicity of the fixie. I also found it ironic that I went to learn about derailers at a shop where maybe half of the people who show up regularly are on bikes without them.

I can’t wait to try my new skills with my own bike. It needs a quite a bit of work to get everything going smoothly. Luckily one of the hardest parts (making sure all the components are designed to work together) is already taken care of.

You can learn about derailers for yourself here.

derailer FAIL pic curtosy of theoelliot

Today I have been wasting a lot of time on the internet watching stupid videos and laughing at pictures, etc. But I wanted to pass on this pool of interesting videos captured at the World Science Festival. I guess it’s from a discussion of music and neuroscience which featured Bobby McFerrin. If you go to the conference’s video highlights three of the four videos feature McFerrin. Watching the videos, his talent and knowledge of music is evident but his creativity to experiment with how we react and interact with music is the reason he’s on stage. Interesting stuff.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5732745&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

I have been hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting a lot lately about bacon. It seems that there is a certain something about bacon that appeals to a lot of people. It’s a unexplainable feeling that’s visceral and which convinces us if bacon is good, more bacon is better. Similarly we also like to think that everything is better with bacon. I’d like to present a few examples.

First, Tony’s side of bacon. On our trip up to northern MI we stopped at a Brich Run restaurant staple known as Tony’s. It is known for the huge portions and, in particular, their sides of bacon. Matt and I had heard about it all the way there from my mom and dad and it sounded too interesting to pass up. I think I have eaten there before but have no memory for these anecdotal events and a different taste in my mouth from those days to these. As we ordered I waited for the famous bacon to be added to someone’s meal or picked up as a side but everyone shied away from what had been the talk of the trip up there. I had to do it so I added a side of bacon to my order of french toast (see photo). It’s effectively a basket full of bacon, and by bacon they mean huge cuts of fried pig (no thinly sliced strips here). I got help from some of the others but we could not finish it.

Second, Camp Bacon. On the same trip we also visited Ann Arbor and stopped by one of my favorite place to eat, Zingerman’s. It’s more than a deli, more than a bakery, it’s a mailorder, publishing, olive pressing, cheese aging, explosion of taste. Anyway, they are celebrating the release of their newest book, Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon with a bacon extravaganza of sorts. They’re offering a number of bacon-enhanced recipes at their various shops and encouraging people to try them all in what they call the Tour de Bacon. This includes bacon scones and reduced price bacon add-on for any ice cream order. I trust their appreciation of food to do right by bacon but it’s still a shock to see it on some of these dishes.

Finally, the Bacon Explosion. I have only posted a teaser picture, please visit the website and look at it in all its bacony glory. I found out about it from a series of tweets by a friend of mine, Chad. He has recently come into a new smoker and is busy experimenting with the limits of what meats can do. The Bacon Explosion appears to be the epitome of bacon exuberance. Glutony is too simple a description, it’s the gastronomical equivalent of a Bernie Madoff-size ponzi scheme. Average people can only begin to imagine the limits of its wealth. You bring home a lot of bacon and then you bring home more and more. You revile it but you also want it. I imagine I could take about 2 bites but I have no idea what to expect with them.

I’m anxious to hear other bacon experiments and eccentricities as we continue to search the mysteries that are bacon.

Not a BLT or a homemade sauce, this is the fate of more than 20 of the ripening tomatoes in our backyard. The cause: squirrels. They are systematically picking apart the tomato plants and trying each fruit. If it’s not ripe they make a few bite marks and move on to the next. The picture was of the specimen I found today, one I had hoped they would continue to passup due to its size. It used to be a ripening bradywine variety, but now it’s compost.

I have not mentioned much about the garden this year but it has, until now, been a fairly successful followup to our foray last year. We added a bed and a more substantial fence and even planted some flowering plants for decoration and maybe bees. Also we tried lettuce and started most of our vegetables from seeds. The first setback was the now annual attack of the squash vine borer. This moth lays eggs on squash which hatch inside the stem and eat the plant from the inside. We found them last year and they struck again on our best squash this summer. Next year I think we’ll definitely go with the easier and more consistant cucumber. Also, the peper plants have taken forever to come in from seed. They may just now be getting there. Now the squirrels have moved in and they are tearing up the tomatoes. The good news is that the compost is going gangbusters and we should be able to greatly improve our soil over the winter. We’re slowly grwoing our GA clay into noteworthy soil.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

A lot of press has been devoted to the King of Pop’s passing and it will probably be one of those events where people remember where they were when they heard the news (at least for a while). On the day Michael Jackson died I was attending another monthly meeting of The Dirty South Beer Club over in local Decatur. Indeed I will remember for some time how I was greeted at the door with the news that Michael Jackson had died. However, lest I forget some other events of the night they were documented in the lesser known, but still important, journalistic endeavors of Creative Loafing’s Jeff Holland. This bit of news aired online six days following the now famous events of June 25th, but you may not have seen them between all the MJ coverage. Read it here!

Back when I was a kid blowing up the moon was only a dream, but this weekend I heard a story on the radio confirming that NASA was indeed planning to create an explosion on the moon to blow some of it up. Here’s an article talking a bit about their plans. It also says that there are people collecting signatures to actually blow up the whole thing. The story immediately reminded me of one of my favorite Mr. Show sketches, seen below. Regardless of what happens with this it is worth 10 minutes of thought and a laugh. I wonder if we’ll be able to see it.

In the last month we’ve been on the road a lot. We spent a week in Utah, heading to National Parks and hanging out Salt Lake City. But we’ve put some miles on the car attending some destination weddings throughout the south and east.

The first was in Asheville about a month ago. It was the union of two friends I met while at Emory. We headed up to one of our favorite mountain towns early on Saturday and spent a few hours eating and walking around and hitting up a great store in town. Before I get too far ahead, I should mention that we had a brief shopping spree at the outlet malls on the way up to outfit ourselves. Dress codes have varied for these events and we’re always feeling less than certain in our attire. For this wedding Lauren picked up a new dress that turned out to be the same as the bridsmaids’ only in a different color. The wedding was on a farm outside Asheville in Weaverville. It was a beautiful setting and very laid back. The ceremony was in a field surrounded by hills and there was an old barn where we ate and outside of which our dinner was smoked for hours. There were also tons of activities like a big soccer game, horseshoes, smores-making, and even game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals (and that’s all I’ll say about that). It was a great event.

Two weeks later we set off for Kiawah Island, outside Charleston, SC. Pre-trip emails confirmed that this would again be a semi-casual affair, no jacket or tie required. We carpooled with another work friend of Lauren’s and were staying in a condo on an adjacent island. Both islands were operated like compounds with restricted access and we felt like VIPs. The ceremony was held on the green of a country club and looked out on the sunset over the reeds. The wedding had a live band and excellent food. I, unfortunately was one of three people to be without a suit. On the short ride back to the condo, my glasses fell off the dashboard and out the window. They were run over by a car. The lenses are fine but one of the arms fell off. Then we nearly hit a road-crossing alligator. In the end we got to spend some time on the beach and had a good time with some new friends.

Next we headed to Utah for a week, but more on that in another post. This weekend we drove up to West Virginia for the wedding of two other Atlanta friends. This one was on the family farmhouse in the countryside. We stopped somewhere on Friday night to break up the drive. We had picked out a backcountry site at Crowder Mountain State Park, NC but decided to keep driving and find a car spot further north. We were able to land the last available spot at Claytor Lake State Park in Virginia. The weather and setting were perfect for the wedding yesterday and it was great to see a lot of friends we haven’t seen in awhile. We all wondered if Michael Jackson songs would be played and of course they were. The dance floor got packed when they came on. Nothing too crazy happened, we enjoyed ourselves and had a long drive back to Atlanta today.

I haven’t grown tired of all this traveling yet. It’s fun to have new destinations and things to do and seeing your friends get married and helping them celebrate is always fun. I have yet another couple weekends of roadtrip left in me, as I set off to MI next weekend and drive back to Atlanta the week after that. I’ll be sure to post more about the trip once it happens.

I have been MIA for a bit and there is a lot to catch up on but I am writing a quick post to let you know (if you don’t already) that The State is finally coming out on DVD on July 14th. Here’s a classic sketch to whet your appetite.

http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtv.com:375233