Boy are my arms tired

I just got back from a trade show in Atlanta. It was fun. I am ex-to-the-nth-hausted. Highlights of the trip included:

1. Riding the MARTA. If you really want to know a city, you must first become acquainted with its public transportation. I'd give this a rating of 3.5 on a scale of 5 for a nominal degree of friendliness and cooperation, a pretty smooth ride, and an eye-catching color scheme. Points were deducted for unpersonable gate attendants and for the unintuitive nature of the token machines (And what's up with charging $1.75 for a token? I'd rather it be $2.00 so I could do the math in my head while five people waited in line behind me.). Points were added for the wisecracking late-night subway operator who encouraged community and group participation.

2. The Braves game. I call this a highlight mainly because it was so memorable. I've never physically witnessed a team losing that badly. I'm sure a professional baseball team has lost a game 8-0 many times before, but I wasn't there to be embarrassed by it. Now, I don't know much about baseball. If I were Jaimie, I could give you a play by play and tell you who was hot and who was not and what the Braves did wrong. What I can tell you is that a guy named Johnson made some impressive catches in what I'm pretty sure was the outfield, and a guy named Franco (who everyone was very excited to see at bat) was the only Braves player who managed to run two bases in one play the whole game. Also, I had to walk half the circumfrence of the stadium to find the nearest funnel cake and I'd missed seeing Arizona make three more runs by the time I got back.

3. The Irish pub at Underground Atlanta. I specify because Underground Atlanta itself wasn't all that great. It was cool and all, but it was very mall-like; it wasn't the hip, scary, subcultural breeding ground it used to be. It's sad to see cheap, cardboard commercialism seeping right under the skin of the city. Anyway, the pub was still great. They played U2 the whole time, and it made Mom and I giggle that there was not a single employee of the pub who even remotely looked Irish...or even caucasian. I had Guinness on tap for the first time, and it didn't taste different at all. So kudos to the widget people. It works.

That's the nutshell version. I need sleep. And probably a shower.