Ben left us on Friday to get back to his life in New Orleans. Overall, I thought he was great asset to the design team because he knows anything and everything about architecture and construction. After Ben left, Chris, Meggles and I hightailed out of studio to Atlanta for our first football game against Alabama. It kinda sucked that it was the only Hokie football game I would be attending all season. That was the first time I went to Atlanta, not counting the airport, so I was excited to see the city too. On Friday night, we went to Buckhead, which is the really rich area uptown. We met up with Chris' friends and went to a bar and that's where my hatred for the Alabama fans began. It was fine hearing "roll tide" come out of the first five Bama fans mouths, but after the 300th time, I was ready to throw them into oncoming traffic. After the bar, Chris dropped Megan and I off at my old roommates hotel while he spent some quality time with his ex. (Thanks again Lauren for letting us stay with you).
After a freezing night with Megan's blanket that wouldn't even cover a newborn baby, we woke up the next day and decided to go to the Georgia Aquarium to kill some time since kickoff wasn't until 8. We drove into the city and got our first glimpse of Dragon-Con! According to the website, "Dragon-Con is the largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the US". It was hysterical to drive through the city and see people dressed up like characters from Star Wars, a girl wearing high heels and holding a fake machine gun, and then see the VT and Alabama fans walking around giving them weird looks. Apparently this is a huge convention, because these people were all over the city and the line to get into the convention stretched several blocks. (Erica, I'm assuming you're very mad you missed it this year).
We parked and laughed every time we passed someone in costume, then we finally got to the Georgia Aquarium. It's the largest in the world and is the only in North America that has whale sharks. All of this said, it wasn't worth $27. The exhibits were good, but it was way too crowded and there were too many screaming children. The only reason I wanted to go was because there was a Titanic exhibit (yeah i know I'm cool), but the next showing for that wasn't until later in the afternoon so I didn't even get to see it. 
Perhaps someone from the South can explain this to me...but why do the guys feel its appropriate to wear Dockers and dress shirts with bow ties to football games??? And for the girls, why would you wear dresses that aren't even your teams colors!!! I don't think i'll ever understand that. So after walking by the ridiculously dressed Bama fans and hearing "roll tide' another 500 times, I met up with Bish at her tailgate and then went off to try and scalp a ticket. While doing that, I met up with Lindsay and Emily, who drove up separately. Emily came ticket searching with me, while Lindsay and her boyfriend went off to another tailgate. We probably walked around for 2 hours looking for someone selling tickets. Finally about an hour before kickoff, we saw a VT guy holding up 2 tickets and ran after him. I didn't expect to pay anything under $100 for a ticket, so I was shocked when he said they were $60 each in the lower section on the 15 yard line. The game was great, up until the 4th quarter. I'm pretty sure I could hear Bish's high-pitched screaming from across the stadium. After being thoroughly pissed off, Emily and I met up with Lindsay after the game. It was weird to run into 2 people from North Rockland, Briana and Anthony, within 5 minutes of each other outside the dome. Then I split up from Emily and Lindsay to try and find Megan, which was a pretty stupid idea considering both of our phones were dead. I guess the beer during the game really helped my thought process. And so, my solo journey half-drunk across Atlanta at midnight without a phone began. After walking until about 2 am, I finally decided to take a taxi back to the hotel room and hope Megan was still alive in the morning.
I woke up the next morning with a charged phone and tried calling Megan 10 times, but her phone was still dead. Then I called Chris, who was staying in a hotel right by mine. He picked me up at my hotel, but then we sat in the parking lot for about 5 minutes because we didn't even know where to start to look for Megan. We decided to call Lindsay to see if she had talked to her at all. She called her the night before from her friends number, so we decided to call that. After calling the number three times, the guy finally answered and put Megan on the phone, who gave us her address. Chris and I drove across town to her address, which was a nice little condo community. However, when we got to the address she gave us over the phone, we looked out and saw a big black guy lifting weights in the garage. After thinking about what she could have possibly done last night, she walked out from a different condo the next street over. And that was our weekend in Atlanta.
Back to Pass Christian...this has been a very busy week in the studio. The 10"x10" piers started going up on their holes this week, so we had to finalize our floor plan and floor framing plan so we can begin construction on that on Tuesday. The final design for the house is almost done, but we still have a lot more to do, including the wall framing, electric plans, materials, etc, etc. Hopefully I'll keep you updated some time next week.
-Mike
