(Also posted to the abandonedplacescommunity)

Charles and I went out yesterday looking at some old, abandoned places that he knew about back from his days as a Surveyor, and found what I thought were some pretty interesting things at the site of an old wood mill by the river built in the 1800's, and a couple of very old cemeteries. All of these were taken just outside of Atlanta, GA.  Hope you enjoy, and that this isn't too long or picture-heavy!

Here is the exterior of the mill from the side we couldn't really get to by foot.  This picture was taken with a camera phone, but the rest of them were taken with a different camera, and are of better quality: 

 (#1)

Along the trail, there was an old, grown-over mill house that I really loved:

 (#2)



 

 We're having a second family reunion of sorts at Disneyworld in January.  This time, Elvis really would like to go along, as he never really completely got over being left behind a couple of years ago...



Maybe we could let him hang out in the RV while we play.  It would be nice to have a kitty to snuggle at night.  That's the worst part about leaving home...no kitties!

Obvously, the drought is a terrible thing, and we are heading for serious trouble, very soon, if we don't get several straight days of good, steady rain.  It definitely has reached the point of being extremely scary, and most of us are doing everything we can to conserve while we wait for something to change.  But I would be lying if I didn't admit that in the meantime, I have really been enjoying the amazingly beautiful weather and clear days.  I think it would be a shame not to.  This is my favorite time of year, and it has been a while since we've had a "true Fall" where we could wear sweaters before Christmas.

The drought definitely has played a role in the less colorful changing of the trees that we are experiencing this year.  Some trees are doing their regular thing, but others just dumped their brown leaves in the first stiff breeze of Autumn because they were so dry.  The sharp, vivid colors are harder to come by than usual, but I'm very lucky...the office complex where I work has lots of gorgeous old hardwood trees about, so I've gotten to see some really pretty leaves.

On Wednesday, I happened to have my camera in my purse.  There were 3 different kinds of trees over by the wooden bridge that I had intended to photograph, but I didn't make it over there before dark, so I promised myself I would go straight there the next morning.  Unfortunately, a storm came through that night, mostly wind, and when I got back, the trees were completely bare, as if a week had passed instead of one night.  Still, there were a couple of trees next to a nearby building that had held up, and they were by far my favorites anyway, so all was not lost:







Fantastic, yes?

And I'll throw this one in, too...Co-worker spotted it while she was out having a smoke break, and by the time she came in and told me, and I grabbed my camera, it was already dissipating, but you can still see that it had at one point been a cloud in the shape of a heart:



Wow.

The 'They Might Be Giants' show on Friday night was a lot of fun.  We got there early, and in a giddy show of support, we each purchased a T-Shirt - me choosing a traditional white jobbie with cartoon figures of the Johns in their younger days, and Charles went with the new shirt sporting The Mesopotamians, which was also the first song they played.  In exchange for the bucks spent on the shirts, we got a free giant foam hand in the permanent position of #1, like what you would get at a baseball game, only this one said 'They Might Be Giants' on it.  We were irrationally pleased by their generous gift at the time, but now in the light of day I'm not really sure what to do with the thing.

They played at the Variety Playhouse in Little 5 Points, which was the perfect venue for them, and I do believe it was sold out.  I expected the crowd to be a happy and polite one, and they didn't disappoint in that regard, but I wasn't quite prepared for how many people seemed to be unfamiliar with the concept of hygiene.  Perhaps if TMBG wrote a song about cleanliness, they might try a little harder?  I mean, we are talking about some SERIOUSLY rank individuals.   I should not be able to smell someones hair from 3 feet away, nor do I want to smell someones smoky, skunky dragon pits every time they raise up their arms.   

We were lucky enough to get actual seats instead of standing, but as it turned out, the crowd stood for the entire show anyway, so we weren't able to use them once things got going.  Strangely, the couple who were sitting in front of us had been napping in their seats until showtime, and chose not to stand up, even when TMBG first came out.  When the rest of us clapped and cheered, they looked around with a pained expression like they couldn't believe we had all gathered in their bedroom and woken them so rudely from a sound sleep.  They tried their best to go back to sleep, slumping down in the seats and laying their heads on each other, but eventually the loud music and boisterous crowd ended up being too much for them, so they left, while giving all of us the dirty stink eye along the way.  Their exit meant more breathing room directly in front of me, so I was happy with their decision, but I have to wonder how they ended up at a concert when clearly all they wanted was a quiet place to catch some zzzz's.

The show was high energy, full of old and new songs.  I was surprised they didn't ever play "Don't Let's Start", not even as an encore, and I would have liked to have heard "Spider" or "Evil", but they did pull out some favorites, like "Birdhouse in Your Soul", "Istanbul (not Constantinople)" and "Doctor Worm", so I've got no complaints.  I don't know how in the world they remember the words to all 8,000 songs that they've written...the only explanation is that they're geniuses, which...duh.   

We are batting 1,000 for good seats lately: 



 

And because devvie and I briefly discussed the cuteness of bunnies, I thought I would post the pictures of it that I found this weekend.

I was 14 or 15 - some age where I wasn't quite old enough to drive yet, but I hung out with kids who were, which is how I came to be at the mall pet shop one day without my parents around to stop me.  I had babysitting money in my pocket that was backing up my lifelong desire to have my very own rabbit, so $20 later, I walked out of the place with a light brown bunny that I had brilliantly named Thumper.  Had I thought more than 3 minutes into the future about what it would be like to own a rabbit?  No,  I had not.  Which is why I didn't buy a cage for it, because I had been told bunnies will use a litter box, and we already had one of those, so I was all set!

Needless to say, my parents were not overly excited about my purchase.  But, Thumper was good at winning people over, so it wasn't long before we all were charmed by her cute hop-hop-hopping around the house.  I kept putting her in the litter box, but she wouldn't use it.  I figured she would learn.  She didn't.  I thought she would sleep in the bed with me, but she was strangely nocturnal (most rabbits are not) and would spend her nights cruising around the house, chewing on every power cord and shoelace within reach.

So, one time when I was 9 years old I decided to go camping in our back yard.  This was very brave of me, because we lived on an acre of land that was nearly all woods.  I would NEVER do that now.  It was at the end of summer, and I'd spent the afternoon making a tent out of two sheets that were hanging on the laundry line, and placed bricks on the bottoms to hold them out at an angle.  I'm not sure why Mom let me do that, but she had always been really good about letting me make hiding places and cubbyholes for myself underneath tables and inside cardboard boxes.  What? Don't look at me like that,  I was an only child...I had to amuse myself.  

Anyway, so I had been playing in the "tent" all day, and when evening came, I just wasn't ready to say goodbye to it,  so my parents gave me a tarp to lay on the ground inside, and let me carry my sleeping bag, pillow and a flashlight down with me so I could spend the night.   For a while, it was all fine.  I could see the glow of lights through one of the sheets coming from the house, and as long as I knew my parents were awake, I felt perfectly safe.  After the lights went out, I started to get that butt-numbing fear of all the things that were probably lurking and salivating through sharp yellow teeth just outside of my cloth walls, and the crickets chirping from what sounded like underneath my sleeping bag weren't helping matters.  Not to mention that I could feel every little rock and twig underneath the tarp, but I had been determined to stick it out all night, scoffing at the idea of coming back to the house if I got scared.    In fact, I wasn't even going to go inside to use the bathroom, because I knew they would hear me and think I'd chickened out, which was just not going to happen!  But, eventually my imagination got the better of me and I started to panic, so I picked up my pillow and sleeping bag, and headed up to the house.

I remember all of that vividly, right down to the exact moment I made the decision to give up, but for some reason I have no recollection at all of what made me decide not to go inside, after all.  Perhaps my bravery came back once I saw that there were no werewolves laying in wait for me, but whatever the reason, I stopped just short of climbing the steps to the screened porch, and passed out on one of the patio chairs, instead.  That's where I was found by my parents, at whatever hour they came to check on me:

Finally, it's cool enough around here to actually make me think it's October.  I remember a time when you could put an uncut pumpkin out on the porch on October 1st and it wouldn't rot down into a boiled, nasty blob by October 7th, but those days seem to be gone.  We learned a couple of years ago to wait and buy our pumpkin the week of Halloween, and if we didn't carve it, it would usually last until Thanksgiving.  Tomorrow, we are getting a pumpkin...maybe two, so we can carve one, and save the other.

Today, I got a lovely birthday present from Christy (Thank you, Christy!!!!) and it put me in a better Autumny mood than I had been in previously, which meant that I had only stuck a few decorations outside before, and called it a day.  This morning, I dragged the boxes back out and dug out some more indoor pieces I wanted to have around, and after puting out all the candles and potpourri, this place is smelling mighty lovely.

The camera happened to be nearby, which is unusual, because it never seems to be within reach when I want it, so I decided to snap a few pictures of the house feeling Fallish.   This is BY NO MEANS all of the decorations.  I only wish these pictures came in Smell-O-Vision:

Well, I had expected food to be available at the Fair, but I had absolutely NO IDEA exactly what kind of volume would be there.  Truly, it was overwhelming.  Once we walked past all of the giant buildings full of livestock that I actually decided to not gawk at, due to the many piles of poop that were apparently inside, if the scent wafting out of the buildings was any indication, we walked past the clock tower, and it was ON.  Food, food, food, as far as the eye could see.  I was awestuck, and didn't expect there to be quite so many choices.  At first, I was all, "HEY!  Apple dumplings with ice cream!  No, WAIT!  Smoked turkey legs!  Oh hold ON!  Caramel apples that are ALREADY SLICED for tidy consumption!!!!!'" but ultimately ended up just taking some deep breaths and reminding myself that we had to use moderation if we wanted to survive this thing, so we started out slow, with a bag of cotton candy.

We shared the first layer as we strolled along and gaped at the piles of food that glassy-eyed people were carrying around in search of a place to sit down and dig in, and we found ourselves being drawn towards an intoxicating smell that came from an enormous covered area featuring a giant grill that stretched for about 50 feet, and had many people manning each section of the grill.  There were sausages and chicken and hot dogs and hamburgers, of course, but there were also a million enormous steaks.  Steaks!  Many people were lined up to get themselves one of those there steaks, and at first I myself thought, "Mmmmm....steak", but then we both agreed that the steaks looked really, REALLY fresh, which is certainly good when you are going to eat meat, you want it to be fresh, but realizing that perhaps those steaks had just hours before been walking around in the livestock building, well...we decided to think on it for a while and not be too hasty with the steak eating just yet.  It's not that being faced with the harsh realities of slaughter had made us rethink our carnivorous ways, we just at that moment weren't in the mood to think that hard about the Circle of Life, so we moved on.

What we landed on instead still involved beef, but in a more lighthearted context - Roast Beef Sundaes!

It was either 3 or 4 years ago that Charles first noticed a baby watersnake poking his teeny head out of our goldfish pond.  Being the nature boy that he is, he just casually grabbed a long stick with a hump on one end, slipped it underneath the snake's belly, and in one fluid motion pulled the snake out of the pond and flipped him over the fence into the creek that runs along the back of our property.  He figured that would be the last time we'd see that snake, but he figured wrong.

Apparently, our little pond is that snake's very favorite place in the world to be.  Ever since then, it has become something that Charles just knows he needs to do every week or two - go fling the snake out of the pond.  During the winter, we don't see the snake at all, but he obviously doesn't hibernate far away, because every spring he's back, only bigger.

On Monday, Charles tossed him over the fence for the hundredth time, but this time, the snake gave Charles a dirty look and turned around to come right back to the pond.  Charles had a hard time getting the stick back underneath him because he was moving so fast, and he made it back into the pond and stayed underwater until Charles got tired of waiting for him and gave up.  Since then, we've been able to see his head poke the surface from time to time, but if we dare take a step in his direction and he spots us, he darts back to the bottom again.  Also, we aren't able to find two of our goldfish, so we figure he finally got 'em, because they were so big that he probably wasn't fast enough to get them until he grew bigger himself.   

Oh, well.  Charles did his best to keep those fish safe for as long as he could.  I didn't really do anything for them myself except toss food into the water, because while I'm not particularly afraid of snakes, I'm not a confident snake wrangler, either.  Anyway, they were feeder fish that we got at PetsMart for something like 15 cents each, and they were able to grow as large as koi, so I guess we should just feel good that they lived a whole lot longer than they would have otherwise.  That's life at the bottom of the food chain.

This is a picture of the snake from a year and half ago - he's much bigger now: