Currently: Atlanta, GA

It's all kinds of awesome to hang out with a friend who knows all the in-jokes you want to make, who you can talk about one certain group of people with, and who you can talk about things honestly with. Which is to say that when people will ask me what I did in Atlanta, I'll mostly say "we watched movies and talked a lot." Because we did. I haven't seen my friend Kathe in seven years, and we had a lot to catch up on and are generally a low-key couple of people. But my general impression of Atlanta is a good one, though the traffic can die in a fire. I've lived in LA and driven in DC so it's definitely lower on the hierarchy of terrible traffic, but it's still no joke. Immediately after we left the airport we got stuck. And then we got the runaround from Waze and Morgan Freeman's voice trying to find the giant chicken.

The giant chicken is part of an old school KFC, and Morgan Freeman took us through nice houses, the woods, and finally through a trailer park before spitting us out onto a super busy road where it wanted us to turn left. We trusted you, Morgan Freeman. We hit another snarl on the hills trying to get up to it, but when we finally did, I saw it.

It's a giant chicken. Its beak moves, and apparently so does an eye. It's one of the more amazing things I've seen and it was absolutely with the hour-long adventure to get to it. (It was not an hour away.)

We drove through Marietta and Smyrna, which I always thought were farther away than they are, and for some reason every time we ended up around Smyrna I thought "Julia Roberts is from here!" and I hate myself a little for knowing that. We looked at the fancy houses in Buckhead. We ate at Meehan's Public House which has pumpkin bread french toast and mimosas and I highly recommend you try both. We also got to First Watch, which is a chain I recently discovered in Milwaukee and Indianapolis and is becoming a thing for me, because they have the best kale juice I've ever had. As for things we did... We went to Centennial Park? It's dedicated to the 1996 Olympics, and it's actually a really cute place. There's statues and fountains, including one in the shape of the Olympic rings that plays music. We saw a boy showing his little sister how to stand in the middle of the rings so they wouldn't get wet while they took selfies. There are markers with the names of the winning Olympians that year, which was kind of cool because I was obsessed with the summer Olympics that year and knew everyone's names on the Dream Team and can still pronounce the names of the Ukrainian gymnastics team and was able to proudly state my crush on Alexei Nemov.

There is also a giant Ferris Wheel, though for the life of me I can't figure out why. It seems to look at buildings you can see from the ground.

Nearby is the Coca Cola Experience, which I guess at Christmastime had ornaments you could sit in and take pictures on, but right now they had nothing. Aside from the poor bored information person who was under a giant bottlecap. We were also near the CNN building, where they give 55-minute tours for about $15, but we were about two hours early for that.

So, I didn't do a ton here, but I'm totally cool with that. When you have a limited time with someone, sometimes it's better to spend time with them instead of with things. Now that I know one of my favorite people is so much closer and I can find decent flights, this won't be my last trip.

Till next time, Atlanta! (PS your airport sucks.)