It's a strange thing, really.

I remem­ber wait­ing for the shut­tle to take me from the long-term park­ing to the ter­mi­nal. I remem­ber hav­ing my bags scanned, get­ting on the plane, etcetera. But my drive from The Com­pound to the air­port? I haven't the fog­gi­est. I know that my plane took off around 10:30am, which trans­lates to leav­ing the house around 8:15 in order to get to Den­ver Inter­na­tional by 9:30.

On any other day, in some dis­tant uni­verse, I would have still been asleep. But this day was spe­cial, for I was jet­ting down south to see Amy and Jeff for a few days.

A vaca­tion? Yeah, sort-of. But, really, a week­end of relax­ation, dis­cus­sion, and solace.

One thing that I do know is that Fron­tier is my new favorite air­line. When I boarded the plane, there was an announce­ment that for only $5, one could get DirecTV dur­ing the flight. Upon hear­ing this, I couldn't wave the Lin­coln fast enough. From then on, it was a VH1 Clas­sic groove all the way down…

Ah, my old friend Harts­field Int'l Air­port. Amy and I had been com­mu­ni­cat­ing since I touched into Geor­gia to make sure we didn't miss each other; the plan was to meet her at the bag­gage claim. The fastest way there would be to take the ter­mi­nal train, but because I had been sit­ting for over two hours, I wanted to stretch my legs. So I decided to walk.

Thirty min­utes later.

I finally reached the bag­gage claim and found Ames.…where she had been wait­ing for about twenty min­utes. Um, oops?!

Then it was off to have din­ner with Jody, Kari and Bizzy at the Cheese­cake Fac­tory. But when I called Jody to con­firm plans, he said that Biz had come down with some sort of sick­ness and they wouldn't be able to make din­ner. *sigh*

So we turned around and made for Huntsville.

* * *

From Atlanta, GA to Huntsville, AL is about 4 hours drive time. I really liked the trees that adorned the sides of the inter­state through most of Geor­gia, and Ten­nessee was inter­est­ing, but unfor­tu­nately, the Chat­tanooga choo-choo eluded me.

The South is an inter­est­ing area. When I saw stores with names like "Pig­gly Wig­gly" and "Bi-Lo," I real­ized that I had indeed entered another uni­verse. A true moment of the sur­real occurred when we stopped off for fuel (some­where in Ten­nessee, I think). When I went in to pay, I noticed that the clerk was con­cur­rently smok­ing a cig­a­rette and roast­ing a chicken! I had to look around and make sure that I was still on the same planet. Yipes.

By the time we got to Huntsville, it was already fash­ion­ably late, so instead of going out to eat, Jeff and I jaunted to grab cheese­burger good­ness and wax nos­tal­gic about "Saved By The Bell," of all things. (Amy, being ever the gra­cious host­ess, TiVo'd sev­eral episodes for me while I was there so we could enjoy the pain together. Good times.)

After din­ner a la Sonic, we played with the slimp3 geek­toy and soon after that, Jeff went to bed. Ames and I stayed up until…wow, who knows…talk­ing and pro­cess­ing about events of recent.…which, hon­estly, we'd been doing via phone and IM since every­thing hap­pened. But there's some­thing to be said about actu­ally being in the same room as the per­son you're talk­ing to. The actual hugs help a lot.

* * *

The next day was the Big Geek Gath­er­ing and an afternoon/evening of brown­ies, games, cook­ies and booze. Now THIS, my friends, is a vaca­tion!

I think that Amy was a bit scared of the effect that her freshly-baked cook­ies had on me, though. As soon as a new batch would come out of the oven, I would imme­di­ately con­sume most of them, and this was before every­one else started show­ing up! I would have felt bad, but, well, the cook­ies were good!

Misty broke out a game called "Too Many Cooks," which was described to me as, "kinda like Spades, but with soup." Being as I'm not a huge card-playing game type, and the fact that the way the rules were described made my head hurt, I decided to play the all-around game cheer­leader and bringer of snack treats instead.

At some point dur­ing the game, the fol­low­ing exchange took place between the ever-lovable Kat and myself:

Kat: "Hey, bar bitch! Get me a Maker's Mark and a Coke, would ya?"
Chris: "Can you say please?"
Kat: "Now, bitch.…or die!"
Chris scur­ries into the kitchen to make Kat's drink.

The rest of the nite was quite enjoy­able, indeed. I still, for the life of me, don't under­stand that damn game, though. Oh well.

* * *

Mon­day saw us at a lunch-time eatery called Tim's, which Ames described as "part of the com­plete Visit Huntsve­gas! travel pack­age." I had never actu­ally had authen­tic south­ern food of any kind before, so I was intrigued at the con­cept. But, of course, like most peo­ple, I fear new things, and I remem­ber think­ing, "I hope they have ham­burg­ers there."

Hey, dum­b­ass. It's your brain check­ing in. Don't make me make your arms smack you for being an idiot! You're here, make with the south­ern cuisine!

Fine, brain.…if you insist.

Lunch at Tim's was actaully quite good. I had a gumbo lunch spe­cial that came with mashed pota­toes & gravy and potato salad. Nummy! Some of the other nerds showed up as well, includ­ing the mys­te­ri­ous Geof. Good times had by all.

The rest of the trip included unmod­er­ated bits of movie-watching, drink­ing, talk­ing and gen­eral geek­ery, which, aside from the two main par­tic­i­pants, the only wit­nesses to such carous­ing are the puppy and Sylvester slippers—and they're not talk­ing.

Much was learned, though.

1. I learned that Amy really hates the Freddy-running-his-razors-along-anything-metal sound from A Night­mare on Elm Street.
2. We can both down Mal­ibu rum incred­i­bly fast—and it hits quite fast, too.
3. Crown Royal doesn't make a good follow-up.
4. The guest bed will not fit in a suit­case. Believe me, I've tried.
5. The catzil­las like me!
6. Appar­ently I'm spe­cial enough to play with the iBook, bwahaha!

But most impor­tantly: A good friend knows when you need them. You don't even have to ask.