Thirty-One Days in October

Catch up on this project of mine at the links below if you're new to the blog.

Thirty-One Days in March (Part 1)

Thirty-One Days in March (Part 2)
Thirty Days in April

Thirty-One Days in May

Thirty Days in June

Thirty-One Days in July

Thirty-One Days in August

Thirty Days in September

Tuesday – 01 October 2013

I've got a good feeling about October.  The evening sky agrees.

Song of the Day: Bath Water - No Doubt   

Wednesday – 02 October 2013

Today I installed at my first small event.  The canvases showed well in the space – so well in fact that I sold (2) pieces and have a definite perhaps on another.  The total of the experience renewed my belief in whatever it is that I remain compelled to do.

Song of the Day: Won't Give In - Finn Brothers  

Thursday – 03 October 2013

Twentieth anniversary party at the firm tonight.  Good times.  I take notes in my phone...just random things I want to remember sometimes.  One of tonight's notes...everything should do like PBR does.  I guess that says it all, doesn't it?

Song of the Day: I'll Do It Anyway - The Lemonheads 

Friday – 04 October 2013

It was an absolute Chamber Of Commerce afternoon in the neighborhood.

Song of the Day: Careful - Guster

Saturday – 05 October 2013

Making my rounds this afternoon, I happened upon the ATL's Federal Penitentiary.  I've always loved prisons – symbolically, metaphorically, actually – (I'll reserve my explanation for another day).  It really is a beautiful building...if you can see past all the razor wire and whatnot.

Song of the Day: Dear Mama - 2Pac

Sunday – 06 October 2013

I did my best to introduce a new ball into Belle's backyard shenanigans today, but she would have none of it.  She wants what she wants – can't fault a girl for that, I suppose. 

Song of the Day: Sweet Pea - Amos Lee

Monday – 07 October 2013

Today, a morning happened in downtown Atlanta for somebody and it was better than the morning they had the day before.  I'm almost sure of it.

Song of the Day: Jesus Is Just Alright - The Doobie Brothers

Tuesday – 08 October 2013

I was back in Katy, TX today for the final walk of another successful project.  Postscript: Linguine Di Mare at Antonia's – calamari, clams, mussels, scallops, shrimp, Diablo Marinara (whatever that is).  Outstanding.  After dinner conversation with new friends, even better.

Song of the Day: Cypress Grove - Clutch 

Wednesday – 09 October 2013

The west side of Houston is a nonsense scenario if you're trying to make a 10:00 flight out of Third World Hobby.  There are a lot of beautiful distractions like this scattered along train tracks though, so that's something.

Song of the Day: Train, Train - Blackfoot

Thursday – 10 October 2013

I drove down to Columbus, GA for the state AIA conference this afternoon.  I checked in and wandered new streets, just in time to see the sunset reflecting in these old windows – a much needed peaceful start to the end of the day.  

Song of the Day: Portland - The Replacements

Friday – 11 October 2013

I had a nice long conversation with this weirdo at lunch today.  She was cool. 

Song of the Day: Strutter - KISS  
 
Saturday – 12 October 2013

I woke up early for a Saturday morning, walked to the other side of the river and watched the timid sun rise. Then I had a day.

Song of the Day: Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key - Billy Bragg & Wilco

Sunday – 13 October 2013

Brief but flawless moment this afternoon up on Pine Mountain.

Song of the Day: Honeysuckle Blue - Drivin' n' Cryin'

Monday – 14 October 2013

This morning's sunrise helped bring the last few days into a very specific focus.

Song of the Day:  Heaven Nor Hell - Volbeat

Tuesday – 15 October 2013

New toy!  Thanks boss.

Song of the Day: Train in Vain - The Clash 

Wednesday – 16 October 2013

Much to Belle's delight, the new security door is made of glass.  All the better to facilitate her incessant barking at the passersby.  We celebrated with '80s Metal and a mediocre Argentinian wine.   

Song of the Day: Ice Cream Summer - Hanoi Rocks

Thursday – 17 October 2013

My firm successfully defended our Bowling for Boobs championship title tonight at Midtown Bowl.  I contributed effectively nothing but had a damn good time – even won a raffle prize.

Song of the Day: Drunk Like Me - Dogs D'Amour 

Friday – 18 October 2013

My pre-game morning smoke scenery at the office takes a decided turn for the better this time of year.  The little valley around Vickery Creek should be absolutely ablaze in fall color any minute now.

Song of the Day: Green Grass and High Tides - The Outlaws  

Saturday – 19 October 2013

The Little Five Points Halloween Parade is high, possibly tops, on my top five list of ATL annual must-sees.  The after was less than anticipated, but the day was legit.

Song of the Day: Godzilla - Blue Oyster Cult 

Sunday – 20 October 2013

I took Belle out to the country this afternoon.  It took a while, but we found those gravel roads we were looking for.  I stumbled upon a deserted pasture and allowed what I never do and let her off leash.  She bounced and bounded around and tumbled through the tall grass for a minute or a few more, but she was quickly over it – sitting, waiting by the truck door.  Back home, she found her Zen.  If there is anything better in this world than lying in the dirt with her filthy ball and the sun on her face, she certainly doesn't need it or know what it is.  She's home.  It was a good day.

Song of the Day:  Call Me The Breeze - Lynyrd Skynyrd

Monday – 21 October 2013

It looked like a good day from the morning freeway and it turned it to be exactly that.  I even managed to secure an unexpected commission with a quick fuse late in the day.  

Song of the Day:  I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide - ZZ Top

Tuesday – 22 October 2013

Networking event at Atlanta's favorite local brewery.

Song of the Day:  Trenches - Pop Evil  

Wednesday – 23 October 2013

A scooter sitting on a pole.

Song of the Day:  Animal - Three Days Grace

Thursday – 24 October 2013

The reverse commute from the suburbs was arduous and forced a detour to The Porter this evening.  

Song of the Day: Your Love - The Outfield 

Friday – 25 October 2013

Day off productivity interspersed with manic backyard ball time – perfection.

Song of the Day:  What Is Life - George Harrison

Saturday – 26 October 2013

Fall.  It's happening.

Song of the Day: Get Off This - Cracker   

Sunday – 27 October 2013

Ceremoniously photographing the season's first pot of chili ingredients marks the true first day of fall for me.  Sadly, this celebratory day coincides with Lou Reed's unexpected passing.  I raise my glass in salute old friend.  

Song of the Day: Sweet Jane - The Velvet Underground  

Monday – 28 October 2013

Rainy morning on the South Side.

Song of the Day: Hail To The King - Avenged Sevenfold   

Tuesday – 29 October 2013

Big deal interview morning.  Front stoop color afternoon.  The jury is out on both.

Song of the Day: Devastate - Amanda Shires    

Wednesday – 30 October 2013

I visited one of our projects down in Fairburn this morning.  DK did a helluva job with the design, but all I can see is fall.  (I might have a problem.)

Song of the Day: Stone - Alice In Chains  

Thursday – 31 October 2013

I arrived at the office, later than normal thanks to a way too early morning SIOR Leadership breakfast...but when I got there finally, Yahtzee!  How can I be expected to work in these conditions?  On Halloween no less.  

Song of the Day:  Welcome To My Nightmare / Billion Dollar Babies - Alice Cooper  

Thirty-Six Years Later

On this day in 1977, a Convair CV-300 airplane ran out of fuel and crashed into a forest outside of Gillsburg, Mississippi after a failed attempt to make an emergency landing. Six passengers died on impact, several others were seriously injured.  The plane was in route from Greenville, South Carolina to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and carried the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd.  Among the dead, were lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and backup singer Cassie Gaines (Steve’s sister).  It was a dark day for Rock ‘n’ Roll.

In 1977, I had never heard the music.  I was five years old and was much more a fan of Gerry Rafferty.  Ten years later, I saw what was left of the band live for the first time.  A few years after that, I found myself singing lead vocal in a Lynyrd Skynyrd cover band.  After that project sputtered out and eventually failed, I all but forgot about the music. 

I began to negatively associate it with where I had grown up and was doing my level best to put as much distance between me and that part of my life as possible for whatever reason.  In the last few years, I’ve become reacquainted with and rediscovered my love of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s music.  I think I finally stopped caring if you think I’m a redneck because I listen to it.  I let myself remember seventeen year old me barreling down gravel roads in a pickup truck on a Saturday afternoon with Gimme Three Steps blasting from the windows and how awesome it felt.  It really is, just that simple.  

97.1 The River is paying tribute by playing thirty-six Lynyrd Skynyrd songs in a row today, one for each year since the plane crash.  That sounds like a perfect Sunday afternoon to me.  I believe that me and my dog and my pickup truck will be in search of a gravel road in the not too distant future.  Call me what you will.

Ronnie Van Zant

15 January 1948 - 20 October 1977

Steve Gaines

14 September 1949 - 20 October 1977

Cassie Gaines

9 January 1948 - 20 October 1977

 

Fumble

Immediately after the L5P Halloween parade exists an untouchable moment, it’s like a wrinkle in time…a crease.  There’s a split second (that lasts about an hour) where it doesn’t matter that I’m an asshole and it’s okay to talk to me.

There is / was a moment today and it blinked and pissed itself away, right before I saw it, right before I watched her leave.

She was my age.  Her stories were as weird as mine. There was baggage as clusterly fucked as mine…she was clutch though and I couldn't match that.  She seemed to give a shit on top of, and sported an inquisitive pulse, with a tick-tock of nonsense chaser.  She wore a smoking hot pink wig, had a walk away ass and a desire to accelerate my day to day.

She said her name was Yvonne.  All I had to say was something, anything....I managed next to nothing.  All I should've said was yes.

I fumbled...

She walked away.  Oh well, maybe next time.

South of Here

I spent some time in and around Columbus, Georgia late last week and this past weekend attending the AIA GA Conference.  A few days out of town + banging out some continuing ed. credits = win / win.  I don’t venture much farther south of here than the airport typically, so I was excited to see a part of the state I never see. 

Columbus, and this is based solely on my own limited sample, seems to be a study of contrasts.  On the one hand there are oak-shaded streets lined with immaculate Victorian or Greek Revival homes, with perfectly manicured lawns – American flags and gas-light lanterns, mint juleps on porch swings; cobblestone and public fountains.  This is an affluent neighborhood but it doesn’t appear to be pretentious. It’s idyllic.  It’s what we all want to believe small town USA is or is supposed to be.  This is the historic district and it stretches north from 4^th Street to 13^th, from the Chattahoochee east to Veterans Parkway.  Inside of these boundaries, they have cornered the market on all things good.  They haven’t bulldozed their historic mill buildings – they’ve re-purposed them to be convention centers and live-work lofts.  They’ve clearly emphasized commerce and have made their downtown a destination, not an afterthought.  It seems to work, really well actually.  It’s as put together a small town as I’ve seen. 

This island of vibrant but tranquil Southern charm however, is surrounded on all sides by abject poverty.  Crossing Veterans, I quickly realized that things were not what I first thought.  On one side of the street; perfectly restored historic homes and buildings – on the other side; burned out warehouses and neon liquor stores.  On one side; microbreweries – on the other; windowless dive bars. On one side; Eagle and Phenix Lofts – on the other; Booker T. Washington Homes.  One side is white – one side is black.  One side is the New South – the other side is the Old.  Visually, I find them both compelling – philosophically, I don't fit into either.  

I of course could be wrong about all of the above but such was my perception wandering around between and after sessions.    Do with that what you will, not making a statement or whatever: I just wanted to share some photographs.

The conference came and went just in time Saturday for me to watch my Bulldogs narrowly avoid yet another public bedwetting.  Sunday morning I woke up early, rolled up the tents and headed south, intent on hiking Providence Canyon.  Taking its name from nearby Providence Methodist Church, it is billed as one of the greatest geographic wonders of the Eastern United States.  The hell of it is that the whole expanse is a result of early farmers' heavy hand upon the face of the earth.  Twenty years of plowing downhill resulted in this big damn hole – fascinating.  The canyon walls are as high as 150 feet and growing – an estimated 18 inches of canyon wall is lost every year.  It was an easy, beautiful hike and a nearly perfect morning. 

After a quick stop in Cusseta for epic barbecue I drove north toward Franklin D. Roosevelt State Park – I had heard there was a helluva view from the top of Pine Mountain.  Several miles of smooth asphalt under a flawless blue sky and multiple Metallica sing-alongs later, I started up the squiggle of pavement that leads toward Dowdell Knob.  FD and Eleanor reportedly picnicked here on Sunday afternoons during their long weekends at the Little White House in Warm Springs back in the day.  There’s a statue of FDR sitting on a stone bench admiring the view in the little park that was built there.  I sat down next to him and admired right along with him for a bit; told him what a mess we’d made of the place since he passed and whatnot.  Good moment right there.

With unfinished work looming, I rushed back to Atlanta to get to it.  I was greeted on my stoop with the unwelcome realization that some asshole had tried to kick my door down and steal all my cool stuff while I was away.  Luckily, they failed to make entry thanks to my neighbor’s barking dog but that did little to dissolve the wave of violation and anger that swept almost immediately over me.  If there is anything I hate more than a thief, I’m not sure what it is: maybe power lines or people who start sentences with the word well.  Regardless, I admittedly let this, what amounts to a (somewhat costly) inconvenience, ruin what was other wise one of the most complete days I’ve had in recent memory.  Maybe that’s what pissed me off the most.  The roller coaster has to go to the bottom to get back to the top of the ride though, I suppose.

I spent the better part of today talking to detectives and making various arrangements to secure more solidly my house.  Late this afternoon, tasks completed I allowed myself to reflect on the last few days and resolved to not let three guys in a silver Impala (thanks neighbor) take that good away from me.  The good?  Architecture, critical thought, trains, driving, music, nature, history.  That’s effectively a list of my seven favorite things and I packed them all into a span of just a few days, again and again and again. 

What happened here wasn’t cool this weekend. What happened south of here was badass though, so south of here wins this one.  Meantime, I need Trent Richardson to have a career game so I can beat my boss at fantasy football tonight.

As an aside (and just for the record) I still love my neighborhood.

Deb and Marty

While attempting to enjoy an unplugging nightcap at the hotel bar Tuesday night I quickly grew weary of my intrepid Colombian bartender’s insipid trip-hop music and equally confounded by his insistence that Pablo Escobar was not an inherently bad man.  Don’t get me wrong, I love me some gangster nonsense but Pablo didn’t do what he did for love of country or its poor citizens as my absurd barkeep might imagine.  Nevertheless, the nightcap had to be had, so I endured his incessant unfounded diatribe. 

It had been a long, last day in Katy, Texas – early flight, long punch walk, whatever.  We’re not getting published with this deal, but the client was overflowing with glowing praise of the firm and that’s a good thing, a very good thing hopefully.  Houston’s a market we haven’t cracked with any consistency as of yet, so with any luck they will tell all their buddies what bad-asses we are and I’ll have a few more flights along the coast in the not too distant future. Regardless, I’m proud of the final product as I am always.

I don’t drink scotch.  Not even my inflated ego will allow a pretension that I'm cool enough for such an endeavor and certainly not top shelf; neat no less.  The guy sitting next to the empty chair to my left was, in fact just that cool – more so even, as I would soon find out.  His name was Marty.

We shared a similar subdued disdain for the ludicrous hypocrisy that is the current government shutdown as well as an unlikely interest in chemistry.  He sported a kick-ass handlebar mustache that I certainly have never had the stones or genetic capacity to pull off outside the confines of my own infinite imagination.  We were instant friends.  Marty had been a miner of gold before he retired and I found his explanation of the process of that craft fascinating.

After some time and tales had passed, his wife showed up and occupied the seat between.  She was cool.  Her last career choice had been less than in every sense and she had become disillusioned with said; primarily because of the lack of structure in the corporate nature of nearly all business in these United.  She told me the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back had been the prevalence of Monday morning butt prints on the glass of the copier at her last job in Reno.  She runs a quilting studio now.  Her name was Deb.

Together, they live in a small town in Northeastern Nevada that I’ve never heard of.  They both have kids from previous marriages.  They both lived full exciting lives before they met each other.  They both love riding Harleys and they both hate the ground squirrels that are eating up the cabbage in their little garden behind their house in Spring Creek.  He is a Marty Robbins fan.  She prefers Katy Perry.  Every year in the fall, they trailer their bikes to a different part of the country and enjoy a weeklong adventure.    They were on their way to Mississippi to ride their Harleys south to north on the Natchez Trace.  

It’s a peculiar thing, the randomness of a person’s life; the arc of which one cannot know from day to day.  I embrace the random, like it’s a drug actually but I don’t, I never have understood why.  It’s even further impossible to comprehend the impact of my beloved random on my day to day.  As I regaled Deb and Marty with the ridiculousness that I so often do around people I know I will never see again in places I will never return to, I became acutely aware of one simple fact – everything they described about their life together is exactly what’s missing in the perfect life that I’ve insisted I construct for myself. Not the details exactly, but that illusive being together thing I’ve never been able to corner. 

As I tossed and turned after, the moonlight danced across the still surface of the hotel swimming pool and replicated again and again and again through the yellowed window shade across the puddling ceiling face.  The silence engulfed me and the muddled light was bullshit.  I couldn’t reconcile the seeming purity of their everyday with the chaotic twaddle of mine. 

I’ve written about at times and have expended countless hours thinking about some sort of path that we all must walk.  My thought and my all encompassing belief is that if I keep walking, I will find the thing.  What I don’t think I ever saw before was the possibility that the thing I’m looking for is the beginning of the path, not the end of it or even any of the early or middle goodness.  Maybe it's not behind me as I sometimes fear.  Maybe, I just haven't made the right first move yet.  Maybe the next one will be the right one, maybe it won’t be.  I have to believe that eventually it will be though if I truly embrace the random, right?

(Right.)

Everything above is a self-indulgent diversive maneuver just to say simply that I randomly met an interesting couple at a bar in the middle of nowhere and had a delightful conversation over a couple of drinks.  Realistically, that's the whole of it.  

Deb and Marty are the truth; just good solid people and I have full confidence that they are having a choice time on this year's ride.  

That's a beautiful thing.