11 years ago today, Day 54

I have no pictures today or until the day I left Atlanta, I'm afraid.  And I forgot to mention one last thing on the way back to H's from the restaurant the night before eleven years ago today.  "After we left her friends, we drove back into Atlanta and stopped at a drive-thru doughnut place.  At midnight.  And there was a line of cars.  I was like, H, what the hell are we doing?  When she handed me the hot box with the incredible smell wafting out of it and told me to eat one, I obeyed.  The darned thing melted in my mouth."  Today, of course, Krispy Kreme doughnuts are pretty much a cliché, to the point where there's a KK outlet three miles from my house here in Washington state (and a lot of people don't think much of them, although I still like them).  But at the time?  I was pretty darned impressed.

The next morning we got a late start, got hold of H's friend V, and drove up to the small town of Rome, Georgia (my second town named Rome on my Long Trip, the first having been in New York), and went looking for grave houses.  "Long story.  A young relative of V's is doing some kind of research on them, and H was sure she'd seen one at the cemetery in Rome.  So we went looking, but didn't find it.  I never did find out specifically what a grave house was, but I assume it's an old Southern term for a crypt or a mausoleum.

"Anyway, this cemetery was on a very steep hill, and V wound her enormous Infiniti around the little paved roads and the narrow unpaved tracks and at one point wound up backing up several hundred yards on one of those unpaved tracks on the side of the hill.  30 feet up on the left and 50 feet straight down on the right.  It was quite an adventure."

That evening we went to see a production of Romeo and Juliet, which was mostly pretty good.  "Juliet started out sounding like Melanie Griffith and I didn't think I was going to be able to handle two hours of that, but she improved so quickly that I think it may have been deliberate on the part of the actress.  Juliet the child vs. Juliet the adult."  In my humble opinion, the actor who makes or breaks most productions of R&J is Mercutio, and this production had a brilliant Mercutio.

After the play we went out to a very fashionably late supper (we closed the restaurant down at midnight).  The food was good, but my stomach objected to the timing.  We didn't get to sleep till about two in the morning.

It was good to be social again.  I hadn't seen a familiar face since Cincinnati, almost a month previous.  I like traveling alone, don't get me wrong, but even I need to see someone who knows me every once in a while.