Wind-down Sunday

It's the last day of our "staycation" and today we pretty much used for relaxing. We actually slept until 8am this morning!!!! Boy, it's going to be a rough morning tomorrow. Anyway, David made me a wonderful breakfast of mini-pancakes, bacon and eggs. Yum! Afterward we headed to Little Mulberry Park with the doggies. Dexter and Sandy were SO happy to go for a ride and go for a walk! The leaves were changing and it was soo pretty at the park. We actually made our way to the highest elevation of the park. The views were pretty! We also discovered a funky citrus tree. It had small, round, yellow fruit on it that I didn't recognize at all. I couldn't pick any because the thorns all over the thing were pure evil! I opened one of the fruits that I found one the ground and it definitely smelled citrus-y. I didn't taste it for fear I didn't know what it was that I was tasting! Come to find out, it was a "Flying Dragon" fruit. It is of the lemon family. I ended up finding a cool website called Concrete Jungle that gave me more info about the Flying Dragon. Concrete Jungle "...is a volunteer-run, Atlanta-based organization helping to distribute unused food to the hungry. Our organization receives almost all of the food it donates from the hundreds of residential fruit and nut trees growing in the Atlanta area. Most of these trees are untended and ignored, with their bounty being wasted to wildlife while only miles away many poor and homeless struggle to include any fresh produce in their diet." How cool is that? I bookmarked 'em and asked to follow them on facebook. Maybe I can volunteer for them sometime. That would be cool! Anyway, we ran the dogs quite a bit as you can see from the below video.

They were soooo happy!!!

After our lovely time at the park we headed home and had lunch. Afterward, David took a really long nap and I went to sort through all my work email. Yuck. It took a few hours, but at least I got it done. Tomorrow will be a tiny bit less hectic than normal. Then I spent some time outside with the doggies and took pictures of the flowers blooming in our backyard. Believe it or not, we have one rogue baby sunflower that is blooming. It came from our birdseed. We have a couple nearly wild roses blooming too. Also our wonderful, fragrant tea olive is blooming as well. So pretty!

Tomorrow is back to reality. This week is month-end so it is going to be BUSY. It's ok. Without work I wouldn't have been able to go on vacation anyway! :-)

Staycation - Day 8!

Today's adventure consisted of theBruce Weiner Mini Car Museum. What a place! It's located in Madison, Georgia...east of Atlanta. I've been wanting to check out this museum for a while now. It was totally bizarre and fascinating at the same time. There were a zillion micro-cars, tons of coin-operated rides and candy machines, antique signage, cool neon signs, toys, replicas, etc. There was even a whole room dedicated to Dubble Bubble Bubble gum. Bruce Weiner actually sold Dubble Bubble to Tootsie Roll. I'm sure he made a pretty penny and my guess, this funded his wild collection of micro-cars and other interesting memorabilia. Here are some more pics below...just a small sampling of the many cars here.
The Myth Busters would have liked this be-dimpled micro car!

This was David's favorite car...a 4-wheel Messerscmitt.
Here is a cool Runabout coin-operated ride....Inboard, of course ;-)
This was a WIDE micro-car and a massive failure. Number made? One. You are looking at it.
I thought this one was really cute....whitewalls and all.
You are looking at the first Mazda .....ever!
I couldn't resist this model!!! <3
A teeny tiny police car!
A matchbox car replica and it actually works and shoots flames!!!! It only takes race fuel!
This one is called a Frisky! lol

A view from one corner of the museum.

After visiting the museum, we drove to Madison. I had been before but David had never visited "The city Sherman didn't burn". All the amazing old historic homes were interesting to look at, even just in passing from the car. Some of these houses are tied to some of the historic figures we learned about at the Atlanta History Center yesterday. David actually said he wants to go back and get a better look at Madison and it's homes sometime soon. Absolutely!!!! Unfortunately, I took so many pictures at the car museum, that I didn't have any juice left in my battery to take pics of the houses. Perhaps this will be a future post on my blog. :-) Tomorrow is our last day of vacay..... *sigh*

Staycation - Day 7!

We did it! As of today, we used all of the passes in our Atlanta City Pass booklets! They were well worth the cost and we saved a ton of $$$ as a result of using them.

Sooo, it has taken us a week, but we are now able to sleep until 7am. That's LATE for us! We got up, drank coffee and ate breakfast. Even though we woke up "late" we were able to get dressed and out the door by 9am-ish. Next stop? The Atlanta History Center. The last time I visited was probably close to 10 years ago! I remember loving it, so I was very much looking forward to going back. It did not disappoint! David really enjoyed it too. History is fascinating to us and we certainly learned a lot today. I didn't take that many pictures today (some parts of the museum didn't allow it), but here are some. The one to the left is actually a QUILT in the folk art section. It was incredibly pretty. I loved the use of color and shading. That must have taken a LOT of thought to piece. We signed up for a tour of the Tullie Smith House at 11am. We befriended and cute kitty by the name of Blackjack in the front yard of the house. He was adorable!

The tour of the Tullie Smith house was very interesting. We got to see wool being spun into thread, an outdoor kitchen, a smokehouse (with real ham hanging in it!), chickens in the chicken coop, and of course, Blackjack stole the show.

Our next tour was of the Swan House. This was quite different from the Tullie Smith House!

There was a big crowd of people that had the same tour time as us. When we started our tour, the other tour guide happened to notice us struggling to hear what our tour guide was saying. We were ok with it, but the other tour guide grabbed us and asked if she could show us around. Um, YES!!!! I guess she saw us having a tough time and the other group didn't seem to care too much anyway and didn't listen to any directions. As result, we got out own private tour of the house! That ROCKED. We really enjoyed it and got to learn so much more as a result. What a highlight of the day! Another neat thing about the Swan House was it's gardens. Here's a couple of pictures of those. The one on the right had extremely old, well established rose vines growing all around the arches. Impressive.

We wanted to visit more of the grounds, but it was raining out pretty hard, so we headed back to the museum. We went through the rest of the exhibits...spending a lot of time at the Civil War and Metropolitan Frontiers - both were very compelling. There was one thing in Metro Fontiers that I wish I took a picture of. Apparently there used to be an automobile manufacturer in Atlanta called Hanson Motor Cars back in 1917. There were very successful until Ford moved to Atlanta. The plant shut down in 1925 due to the competition. The museum houses one of only two known existing Hanson motor cars in existence! It's really attractive too. I just Googled it to try and find a picture of it, but none seem to be around. However, I did find where the old Hanson factory is under threat of demolition . I hope the Atlanta Preservation Center is able to save it.

So now it's after 3:30pm and we are starving! We knew traffic would be yucky on a Friday afternoon, so we hit the road. We went to Ted's Montana Grill for a very early dinner. We had never been before, but I always heard good things about it. The food was great! David had a green and spicy bison burger with handcut fries. DJ really liked the half sours too. I had bison meatloaf - yum!

What I liked best about Ted's was the fact that it is very green! They use paper bio-degradable straws, bio-degradable to-go containers, the menus are printed on recycled paper, and they use recycled paper on the table tops as well, among other things. Cool stuff!

Now we are home and chilling out with all of our pets by the fire. David is watching Point Break - he loves this movie 'cause he used to surf at most of the places that the scenes are shot at. Ahhh, my ex-surfer hubby is reminiscing and can relate to all this crazyness! Eons ago, while he was surfing, I was probably shelving books at the old Montville Township Library - lol! I probably would have been very afraid of him back then. ....Not any more.

I am so glad we found each other. :-)

Vacation - Day 6!

Well, we didn't really do any vacationy stuff today, but we did get some necessities done! We left around 9am this morning and made our way to Cartersville, GA....a town well northwest of Atlanta. We were in the truck and towing David's Mustang on the trailer with the intent of taking it to Modular Powerhouse. This was the place that was going to tune David's new Roush supercharger. We weren't sure what to expect, but we had a good experience. They seem to specialize in Mustangs and the owner did a great job on David's car. You can see it in the garage bay in the picture to the left. The whole project took the majority of the day, so we went into downtown Cartersville for lunch.

On the way there, we saw some pretty interesting things. One was cotton fields! How neat! I haven't seen one of these in a while. I took a quick picture of it as we were driving, so I am sorry it is blurry. I just had to share this though! I also just had to take a picture of this mammoth power plant with HUGE cooling towers. It is the Bowen Power Plant, operated by Georgia Power. It is powered by coal. Get this....in 15 seconds, it can produce as much electricity that a typical home uses in a year. Wild, huh? I thought so.

We had tasty Quizno's for lunch and ate outside. There are lots of neat old buildings still in use in downtown Cartersville. I love that kind of stuff. The old train station is still there and we even got to see a train go by! After lunch, we headed back to MPH and waited for them to finish up DJ's car. Here's a movie of the last dyno that was done on it. Not much to see, but LOTS to hear. It's a screamer!

I keep telling David that "You'll shoot your eye out!". LOL! I sure hope he doesn't. Anyway, he took it for a couple spins around the industrial park, much to the glee of all the MPH employees. David too. ;-) So we loaded the car back up on the trailer and headed down to Woodstock to visit David's mom, Mako. We had a nice time hanging out with her for a few hours, and then we headed back home...in rush hour traffic - UGH. It took us two hours to get from Woodstock to Lawrenceville! After getting home, I ran over to work close to 8pm because I couldn't VPN in (we lost power at work so my computer got turned off as a result). My self-assessment for my performance review is due tomorrow and I had to get it done, darn it. I don't like leaving things incomplete, so I am glad I got that weight off my shoulders! Now I can rest easy and enjoy our day tomorrow....at the Atlanta History Center! I haven't been there in a long time, but I remember it was one of my favorite museums here. David has never visited it before, so I am doubly excited to go!

Staycation - Day 5..I think? Wait, what's today?!?!? ;-)

Now that's a breakfast sandwich, huh? Darling DJ made a bacon egg and cheese bagel for me this morning and it totally hit the spot! Our big plans today included an errand that we had to run first. My brakes were acting funny....and David had made an appointment with the wonderful folks at Gran Turismo East. David's suspicions were confirmed, in that my rotors needed to be turned. So we hung around and munched on donuts (thank you Mr. Toyo rep!) and drank coffee and chatted with the employees and other fellow customers. Believe it or not, it was my first time at GTE, and I really liked it. They did good work (brakes work fine now!) and they have great people. I likee. Oh, and here was a really nice M5 that was there. Marc - I took this pic just for you! In fact, here is a close up of the monster front brakes of this machine. To me, it looks pretty!

After GTE, we headed to the Grant Park area for our next destination...the ZOO! Lions and tigers and (panda) bears - oh my! David had never been before and it had been many years since I had been there. We enjoyed it! We got to feed parakeets, that flew freely all around us in a special aviary pen. Here are two that we got close to below:

The Meerkats were super cute and fun to watch. I had never seen them in real life before (other than Meerkat Manor on TV!). We enjoyed their antics. :) From here continued through the path and got to see more cool critters - gorillas and orangutans, giraffes and zebras too!

We came upon a really pretty bamboo forest. The bamboo trees were some of the biggest I had ever seen. It was gorgeous. It even rivaled the bamboo forest that we discovered at Barnsley Gardens. The bamboo was a Chinese variety. In fact a lot of the plants all over the zoo were well-labeled and

we enjoyed learning about many of them. Back to the critters tho.... Check out this Komodo Dragon! He was HUGE! He was walking all around his pen and he seemed to enjoy checking out the people that were, in turn, checking him out. I wonder what he was thinking as he stared at this tasty morsel of a kid waving his hands in front of him??? (Komodo Dragons are omnivores, btw). One of our next favorite spots was the Reptile House. Often times it was really difficult finding the reptiles. They usually blended well with their environments, so it was a lot of fun seeing who could find the critter first! David definitely won this game. I know the pic isn't all that great, but check out this crazy looking frog. Yep, there is a frog in this pic to the right, but he looks exactly like the bark of the tree! (You may need to click on the picture to find him.)

Of course, no trip to the Zoo is complete unless you see the baby Panda. His name is Xi Lan and let me tell ya, he is a CUTIE. It's almost as if he posed when I took this picture of him!

We also got to see one of the elephants as it ate one of its meals.

There were just a ton of neat animals to see and today's weather was perfect for viewing them!

After the Zoo, we went to (oddly enough) Northern Tool and Equipment!

I have been to Harbor Freight Tools several times, but had never been to Northern Tool. There was some cool stuff in there...my favorites were the wind turbine, the solar panels, pellet stove and the rain barrels. David needed some heavy duty tie-down straps for trailering his car to Cartersville tomorrow, so that's all we bought. Here is happy DJ in front of the store after his purchase. :)

I kinda bonked after this 'cause I didn't really eat lunch. Gosh, I feel like I've been eating constantly for days. Wait, I HAVE been eating constantly for days! Anywho, we drove home and David fixed up my leftover Pad Thai from last night. I felt much better after that! It's 8:30pm right now and David still hasn't eaten dinner. He had to do some work on his car and then get it on the trailer (without power) so we can bring it to Cartersville tomorrow for tuning. It was a one-shot deal and I went out to try to help him, even though he stated he didn't need help. He had the trailer backed into the driveway and the truck was on ramps to tilt the trailer at the proper angle for loading the car (we have a steep driveway). David pushed the car while in the driver seat and hit the trailer ramps perfectly, but when he stopped part of the way on, the truck got pushed off the ramps and moved forward about 3 to 4 feet. It went out into the street and looked like it was going to hit my neighbors mailbox! I freaked out inside! I ran down the driveway and jumped in the truck and stepped on the breaks with both feet and pulled up the emergency break even further - both with all my might. Now we have a problem though. The car is partly on the trailer and LEVEL. We no longer have gravity working for us (can't start the car because it has to get tuned first). I got out of the truck and got in the Mustang and DJ pushed it the rest of the way onto the trailer at which point I hit the breaks. WHEW! That was crazy! The crazyness only just started for David though. He went to go fill up the Mustang with gas, but it began leaking like crazy out of the car! Ohhh nooo. Some kind of ring wasn't seated properly. It was something that required four hands to install when Matt was helping with the supercharger the weekend before last. After several hours tonight, DJ amazingly meandered through his roll cage (a few times) and somehow got that darn ring to seat properly. He trailered the car back to the gas station, and this time, it filled up just fine - no leaks! Thank goodness, because if he didn't fix it, he wouldn't be able to get it tuned tomorrow...something that he's been wanting to get done asap. He came in the house stinkin' of gasoline and filthy dirty, but happy that he conquered the job. Oh. Did I happen to mention he messed up his back this morning when he was getting dressed? Yeahhhhhh. I wonder if he will be able to walk tomorrow! ????

If there was one shining light among this stressful experience, it was finding that my Apple Blossom Camellia was BLOOMING! I had never seen it bloom before! I bought it when I moved into my house 14 years ago, but it never seemed very happy. Last summer I removed the trellis that came with it, and I think THAT was the problem! Look how happy it is now! I'm so glad that little things like this make me feel so good. :-)

Staycation - Day 4!!!

It's our 5-year wedding anniversary today! Who would have thunk it?!?!?! We've survived this long...and quite well too! We are both so happy, and I know that I am looking forward to many more years of bliss. :-) I love you, David Jones!!!

Todays adventures were many! Starting out, DJ made me some delicious homemade french toast. He gave me another cool gift...this being the National Geographic Guide to the National Parks of the United States book. Oh yeah, this little piece of reference material will be well-thumbed in the very near future!

We headed down to IKEA at Atlantic Station in Atlanta. In this pics above and below, we are hangin' out in the cool lounge-y section of the cafeteria, drinkin' coffee and sharing a yummy cinnamon bun.

I enjoy the thoughtfulness that goes into some of the products at IKEA. Here is a good example. If you look at the bottom of this mug, you'll notice grooves/notches.

Do you know why these are there? One of my biggest pet peeves is unloading the cups from the dishwasher and there still being dishwasher water (and sometimes food sediment) stuck in crevices of the cups. These little drain holes prevent that!!! Pretty keen. There is always neat stuff to see in IKEA and we always get inspired, but are at the same time, intimidated. You see, if you buy something as benign as new dishware....well, it seems like you will need new silverwear to go along with it, but all that newness doesn't looks so hot on the old kitchen table. You spy a neat kitchen table that would look so nice in the kitchen...but then, it doesn't really match the existing counter. A new counter, would then mean new cabinets. But wait, new cabinets and new counter would make our existing old linoleum look that much worse...so new flooring would be a must. Ok...so do you catch my drift? I mean this is a big huge snowball effect. The lesson? Don't buy the dishware. ;-) We actually ended up buying nothing from IKEA today, but had fun "window shopping" and lounging in the caf.

After exiting IKEA, David needed a smoke break, so we were hanging out outside by ourselves, when low and behold, we had this cool little visitor come by. A monarch butterfly!!! How cool is that? I was pretty psyched about it! Nature rocks.

Speaking of nature, we set off on our next stop, the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. This place was fun...and admission was included on our Atlanta City Pass! Niiice! I love the atrium in the center, but one of the the best parts were the floor tiles. They had fossils in them!!!! We walked around both inside and out checking looking for and discovering several fossils.

There were some other neat exhibits. David and I sat in these big hollowed out concrete thingers that were on OPPOSITE sides of the room. Boring, right? NO! We were able to have a conversation from ACROSS the room without raising our voices at all! The sound of our voices was captured and collected in the concrete thingees behind us. As a result, we could hear each other perfectly. That was funky! There was also this big bubble-making center that was a lot of fun. I basically skated into the thing from the slippery floor, but once settled, I had fun! Here is me making a big huge bubble!

There were other cool things to see, like an exhibit about gold and another about sea shells. We went through every single one and even checked out some stuff outside too. We grabbed some lunch in the cafeteria (once again, surprisingly yummy!) and then headed to an unscheduled stop...the Fernbank Science Center, located a few miles away. One of the senior volunteers at FMNH recommended it to us because I had asked about the woodland trails. She said they had some nice ones, so off we went. The Science Center had some cool things in it, like Apollo 6(!) and some neat critters...like tarantulas and snakes and lizards. Outside we discovered neat stuff as well. Check out this AWESOME piece of petrified wood! Just beyond that were some trails that went through the Fernbank Forest...an old growth forest that still exists...in the heart of Atlanta!

Some of those trees were HUGE! There were all sorts of fun things to discover out there. There was a pretty pond, with stone steps that led up to an overlook. Here's a pic of the pond and David heading up the steps. Here is another pic of him making his way to the overlook.

There were some other neat treasures to discover along the way too. One of the things I liked most was finding a series of old carved stone steps...all alone, in the middle of the woods, with trees growing around them. What are these doing HERE? Where did they lead to? Was there a house here back in the olden days? Was it a mansion like so many of the other old homes in the area? Who lived here? We may never know...but some of those really old trees know.

We headed back to the Science Center and just had to check out these noisemakers. They had a bunch of handsome roosters near the gardens! Wow, were they vocal! As I started to take a pic of these guys, the one in the center let out big "Cocadoodledoo" - you can see his mouth is open!!!

After admiring these handsome fellows, we checked out the small garden. It included several different ways to compost...which I love. I have a compost bin at home, but David and I have been thinking about upgrading to a better bin. We have some ideas of what we want to do now!

Ok, so it was late and we really needed to get home and let out our poor doggies. We hit traffic, but managed to get home before any accidents occurred! (To clarify, I'm talkin' about the pee pee/poo poo kind!) We played with the dogs for a while and fed them supper and then headed out to dinner ourselves. We went to Bonefish Grill! David's mom gave us a gift certificate and we really enjoyed ourselves. We had Bang Bang Shrimp for our appetizer (spicy and super-yummy!). David had the Ahi Tuna "Tokyo Style" and I one of the specials, Huge Wild Shrimp Pad Thai. I also had a glass of Seven Deadly Zins Zinfandel. Our dinner was fabulous! Of course, couldn't eat it all, so I got a to-go box. Look what our waitress drew on it!

We had a very fun-filled day and enjoyed it greatly. Happy anniversary to us!!!! :-)