Saturday, October 9, 2010

Living in the ATL

Alright, so I finally arrived in Atlanta on Sept 9th!! Whoppee. I got the keys to my place and absolutely loved it. The only thing that sucks is that it's street parking only. I live in this great area, called Virgina Highlands. It is a very walkable area, which I love. I live close to a great park with amazing running trails. I can walk to a plethora of bars, restaurants and coffee shops. It is a great location. I am not that far from midtown, only about two miles, which with Atlanta traffic, it takes about 10-15 minutes to get there.

Well my first couple of days were busy getting settled, now I really didn't have too much stuff, just the stuff that i had in my car, so of course Target and Ikea were and are, my best friends. It was a Saturday afternoon and I hadn't talked to an actual human being, other than the phone, in quite some time. I decided it was time to get out and explore my new home. So, that day, happened to be Georgia and Georgia Tech playing football....well, on my journey I discovered a great play, Taco Mac, where I went to enjoy some human interaction and drink a couple of beers. I sat at the bar and met a very nice lady, Karen, we enjoyed some great conversation and she thought I was 24!!!! Whooppee!!! I wish??? Anyway, I stayed for the two Georgia games, but was planning on heading back home (why, it's not like I had t.v. or anything there) to finish getting settled. When in walks two gentlemen, they sit next to Karen, introductions are made and well, Notre Dame was playing.....so I stayed. We all then started chatting and having a great time. These were some really cool guys, and honestly, I was just excited to be an extrovert once again. I am not going to lie, I was pretty attracted to one guy, and was flirting like crazy with him. I ended up going to dinner with them and headed back to the Taco mac to watch some more college football. He turned out to be staying in town for a couple of days and asked if I knew who the Pixies were, I did, even though I've only heard a few of their songs. He was planning on seeing them and asked if I wanted to attend....why not! So I hung out with him until he had to head back to Florida where he lives, boo.

Well also during this time, I was starting my new job for USACIL. The first day, I then learned, i was headed to Albany, NY for five months in November....wow, I wish they would have told me this. Like usual I roll with the punches. In my in-processing, i met a cool girl, Jen, from Mississippi, she is also a DNA person working for EFD. We decide it's best if we stick together. The first couple of days is just in processing, before we head to our new home. Basically, portable trailers.....
Here, we met the rest of our team. All great people, that I will be spending the next year with!

Journey cross country II

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Ok, so after Zion, I headed out to Bryce National Park. These two park are very different. Zion has deep canyons, where as Bryce has protruding hoodoos, these amazing things that pop out of the landscape. It is absolutely beautiful and like nothing I've ever experienced before. I wish I had more time there, but I only spent an actual day in the park. I did do some hikes and saw the majority of the major sites. Walking amongst the hoodoos was probably the highlight of the trip here, they are crazy cool.
It was a great place, that I will be visiting again soon......
Alright so after, Bryce, I drove another 5 hours to see Arches national park. This park, unlike the previous two, is really geared towards driving. Of course there are hikes that you can do to see the arches, but most of them consist of maybe a half mile or mile. There were some longer hikes that I took, but missed the hike that required advance reservation. Plus it was over a hundred that day. At this point I was pretty lonely and ready for some sort of human/t.v. interaction. So I did the whole park and then thought I would stay in the town nearby, but it was labor day weekend and everything was booked. I headed towards Colorado. I finally sucked it up and decided to stay in a hotel. Now don't get my wrong the first couple of days of my trip were great. However, next time I decided to drive cross country, I will be taking a companion of some sorts. Driving for five or six hours everyday by yourself really gets old! Hey, you live and you learn. So, the next couple of days, there was a lot of miles put on little miss Lola. Oh, and another reason why I would want a companion, is because someone else is likely, to say, hey let's stop at this random location! When you are by yourself, it's just not as fun. So the next few days are blah, driving, more driving and more driving, and really besides the St. Louis arch, nothing exciting happened.