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Tuesday...
Apr. 27th, 2010 05:25 pmHmm...It's been a very windy and cool Tuesday. I'm still looking into arrangements for travel this summer. It's been a little over a decade since I've really gone anywhere at all. It looks like I'm going to need to get a new ID card. Mine expired in 2000. Oh well, one more thing to get sorted out.
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Apr. 17th, 2010 08:42 pmSo anybody out there? I'm having a pretty lonely Saturday night.
Anyrate I've almost decided against the tablet netbook. As far as those goes it'll probably be better to wait a year or two and see what comes out. Which brings me back to eee PC 1001P that I was seriously considering before I was enticed tabletward. This netbook boasts an 11 hour battery life which is a major plus given how I plan to use it. If all goes well I'll probably purchase one in mid May.
June will be my month for traveling. Looking into bus and train travel since I don't think I have the patience these days to deal with the travesty we laughingly or not call airport security in the early 21st century. To those who might ask, a trip to Seattle is certainly a possibility, so let me know if June is good. Minnesota is next to definite, knock on wood.
In other news I'm giving thought to just deactivating my Facebook account. I've been on Facebook for 2 years now and quite frankly I've yet to see much point to it.
Anyrate I've almost decided against the tablet netbook. As far as those goes it'll probably be better to wait a year or two and see what comes out. Which brings me back to eee PC 1001P that I was seriously considering before I was enticed tabletward. This netbook boasts an 11 hour battery life which is a major plus given how I plan to use it. If all goes well I'll probably purchase one in mid May.
June will be my month for traveling. Looking into bus and train travel since I don't think I have the patience these days to deal with the travesty we laughingly or not call airport security in the early 21st century. To those who might ask, a trip to Seattle is certainly a possibility, so let me know if June is good. Minnesota is next to definite, knock on wood.
In other news I'm giving thought to just deactivating my Facebook account. I've been on Facebook for 2 years now and quite frankly I've yet to see much point to it.
Errands took me downtown.
Aug. 31st, 2008 11:02 amI took the grueling bus trip into Atlanta. The GRTA express bus downtown wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to get up before dawn in order to catch it. The part about being stuck downtown until late afternoon doesn't help my resolve either. Anyrate, I got my errands done in about two hours. Leaving me with six hours to kill before the first bus back to Snellville left.
I reused the Breeze Card I got the last time I made the trip. It was nice to be in Atlanta again. I still found the whole tap to exit thing at MARTA stations a bit irksome. It still feels a little absurd.
I decided to head over to Lenox Square Mall and maybe browse the Waldenbooks there. I haven't been to a Waldenbooks in ages. Well, I haven't been to any mall bookstore in ages, really. It's been about five years since the last time I walked through Lenox Square and I was struck by how different it was. The majority of the shops I remembered were gone and in many instances the whole shape of the shop fronts have changed making goodly portions of the mall nigh unrecognizable. Sadly, Waldenbooks was gone. A quick look at the directory told me there were in fact no bookstores in the mall now. I can remember when that mall had three bookstores and most malls in the metro area had at least one.
I reused the Breeze Card I got the last time I made the trip. It was nice to be in Atlanta again. I still found the whole tap to exit thing at MARTA stations a bit irksome. It still feels a little absurd.
I decided to head over to Lenox Square Mall and maybe browse the Waldenbooks there. I haven't been to a Waldenbooks in ages. Well, I haven't been to any mall bookstore in ages, really. It's been about five years since the last time I walked through Lenox Square and I was struck by how different it was. The majority of the shops I remembered were gone and in many instances the whole shape of the shop fronts have changed making goodly portions of the mall nigh unrecognizable. Sadly, Waldenbooks was gone. A quick look at the directory told me there were in fact no bookstores in the mall now. I can remember when that mall had three bookstores and most malls in the metro area had at least one.
Let's take a moment to discuss Breeze Cards. It's something I should have researched more thoroughly before starting out. I really should have checked MARTA's propaganda as well as the stuff I was getting from GCT, GRTA, here and a couple Gwinnett County related forums elsewhere, Though most of all I really should have checked Wikipedia which I now see has what is probably the clearest explanation of the things I've yet seen. It's impossible to use MARTA without one. MARTA has completely replaced the tokens, transcards, bus to bus and bus to rail transfers with the things. It's difficult to get out of a station without one. The card opens the fare gates both ways; in and out.
After a few confusing moments revolving around the Bus to Rail transfer the driver of the express bus gave me I went ahead and bought a card from one of the vending machines that seemed to be even more numerous than the token machines of old ever were. Ended up getting a Breeze Card encoded with a one day pass which functioned exactly like the transcards I used. Well, maybe not exactly, since those transcards were magnetic strip cards these new fangled Breeze Cards use some sort of RF chip. While I'm not sure how I feel about the new cards I have to admit their nicer in at least one way. Back when I rode MARTA regularly I had more than one transcard get mangled by a faregate.That won't happen with a Breeze Card.
Ah, yes, I was arrived at Five Points. I very carefully noted where I got off the bus figuring I'd be catching the bus later but it didn't work like that. Thankfully I finally reread the print-out of the route web-page enough times that it clicked that the morning and afternoon routes were completely different. They didn't stop at any of the same spots downtown, except for ending and beginning at the Civic Center MARTA station.
From Five Points I went to Decatur, where lay a wonderfully accessible branch of my bank with in easy walking distance of the transit station. The place had changed a bit in the past three years. I almost didn't recognize it. It used to be warm and homey but now they've followed the trends of the other branches and taken it to the distant, cold, and sterile end of the spectrum. Nothing endures but change as they say. By time I finished there it was 9:00. After some thought I decided there were two places I wanted to go for today: the Library and Oxford Comics.
So, I headed up to Oxford Comics first. Figured since the library would be closer to the Civic Center station that it would be a good finale. I arrived at Oxford Comics as they were opening. It's amazing but I don't think the place has really changed all that much since my last visit in 2003. Almost everything was in exactly the same places as it had always been. They have got to be the only place I've visited that has not appreciably changed their layout over the years. It's nice to have one constant.
I arrived at the library a little before noon would have gotten there earlier had I not caught the wrong bus when I left Oxford. The library was great I spent a wonderful hour communing with the OED and filled a few pages of my notebook with wordly goodness. Unfortunately in my haste this morning I forgot to bring my list of words to look up, but I got the ones I could remember and a few others besides that caught my eye.
After the library I went to the Chick-fil-A in Peachtree Center. It had been a few years since I'd had a sandwich from a Chick-fil-A. I should have waited a few more years.
I caught the first bus for Snellville at the Civic Center and here I am at home. All in all it was a successful trip. The express bus is a viable option for those times I just have to get somewhere on a MARTA line but I don't think I'll do it often. I've grown unaccustomed to getting up before dawn and I was very winded when I got to the bus stop this morning. It's been too long since I walked any real distance with a backpack. It took a bit more than I care to admit out of me today. On the plus side I got my exercise. Tomorrow I think I'd do at least an hour on the bike if my legs aren't too stiff. They were really sore when I got home but now it's just a dull ache.
Speaking of aches. I kept having these spells where my left calf muscles locked up painfully and I was limited to a kind of hobbling shuffle when walking. I've had that before over the last two years but this is the first time I've really pushed it to keep moving. From my experiences I think it's the cold that really irritates it. It seemed like it started locking up and hurting when I was outside in the cold and every time I was in a really warm building it felt better and I could move normally again. I'm going to have to watch for that more carefully in the future. and if that pattern holds up I'll invest in some really warm socks.
The cold had another effect on my hands. The skin would crack and I experienced bleeding from around the thumbnail on my left hand at one point when I was outside without gloves. That was a bit disconcerting. After that I started making a point to always put my gloves on when leaving a building. That seemed to help greatly.
On that note I'll call it a wrap.
After a few confusing moments revolving around the Bus to Rail transfer the driver of the express bus gave me I went ahead and bought a card from one of the vending machines that seemed to be even more numerous than the token machines of old ever were. Ended up getting a Breeze Card encoded with a one day pass which functioned exactly like the transcards I used. Well, maybe not exactly, since those transcards were magnetic strip cards these new fangled Breeze Cards use some sort of RF chip. While I'm not sure how I feel about the new cards I have to admit their nicer in at least one way. Back when I rode MARTA regularly I had more than one transcard get mangled by a faregate.That won't happen with a Breeze Card.
Ah, yes, I was arrived at Five Points. I very carefully noted where I got off the bus figuring I'd be catching the bus later but it didn't work like that. Thankfully I finally reread the print-out of the route web-page enough times that it clicked that the morning and afternoon routes were completely different. They didn't stop at any of the same spots downtown, except for ending and beginning at the Civic Center MARTA station.
From Five Points I went to Decatur, where lay a wonderfully accessible branch of my bank with in easy walking distance of the transit station. The place had changed a bit in the past three years. I almost didn't recognize it. It used to be warm and homey but now they've followed the trends of the other branches and taken it to the distant, cold, and sterile end of the spectrum. Nothing endures but change as they say. By time I finished there it was 9:00. After some thought I decided there were two places I wanted to go for today: the Library and Oxford Comics.
So, I headed up to Oxford Comics first. Figured since the library would be closer to the Civic Center station that it would be a good finale. I arrived at Oxford Comics as they were opening. It's amazing but I don't think the place has really changed all that much since my last visit in 2003. Almost everything was in exactly the same places as it had always been. They have got to be the only place I've visited that has not appreciably changed their layout over the years. It's nice to have one constant.
I arrived at the library a little before noon would have gotten there earlier had I not caught the wrong bus when I left Oxford. The library was great I spent a wonderful hour communing with the OED and filled a few pages of my notebook with wordly goodness. Unfortunately in my haste this morning I forgot to bring my list of words to look up, but I got the ones I could remember and a few others besides that caught my eye.
After the library I went to the Chick-fil-A in Peachtree Center. It had been a few years since I'd had a sandwich from a Chick-fil-A. I should have waited a few more years.
I caught the first bus for Snellville at the Civic Center and here I am at home. All in all it was a successful trip. The express bus is a viable option for those times I just have to get somewhere on a MARTA line but I don't think I'll do it often. I've grown unaccustomed to getting up before dawn and I was very winded when I got to the bus stop this morning. It's been too long since I walked any real distance with a backpack. It took a bit more than I care to admit out of me today. On the plus side I got my exercise. Tomorrow I think I'd do at least an hour on the bike if my legs aren't too stiff. They were really sore when I got home but now it's just a dull ache.
Speaking of aches. I kept having these spells where my left calf muscles locked up painfully and I was limited to a kind of hobbling shuffle when walking. I've had that before over the last two years but this is the first time I've really pushed it to keep moving. From my experiences I think it's the cold that really irritates it. It seemed like it started locking up and hurting when I was outside in the cold and every time I was in a really warm building it felt better and I could move normally again. I'm going to have to watch for that more carefully in the future. and if that pattern holds up I'll invest in some really warm socks.
The cold had another effect on my hands. The skin would crack and I experienced bleeding from around the thumbnail on my left hand at one point when I was outside without gloves. That was a bit disconcerting. After that I started making a point to always put my gloves on when leaving a building. That seemed to help greatly.
On that note I'll call it a wrap.
I ended up making my trip into Atlanta a bit sooner than I anticipated. I was figuring on doing it in a week or two and maybe even a month off but an issue with my bank and the necessity to get money into my checking account to pay off that after Yule-tide credit card bill forced the issue and I had to get to a branch of my bank to get things sorted out. Getting a ride to a branch in Gwinnett County wasn't going to be feasible for a couple months so I looked over my plans and decided that Wednesday was going to be the day.
There is an express bus that goes through the Park & Ride lot a mile from the house. It started up during the summer of last year but I never felt confident of my health or felt a burning urgent need to go through the hassle of dealing with an unknown transit system; technically two unknown transit systems since both GCT and GRTA are involved in this express service. I'm a bit less adventurous in this regard than I was in my younger days. My bank provided the urgent need and so I had to go. I got up at 5:00 this morning and got myself ready. I left the house at 6:00. It was very dark out. I've never walked through this neighborhood at that hour of the morning before. It was dark; really, really,dark. We don't have an over abundance of streetlights here. In fact some streets don't have a light at all. That made me a little nervous. My wardrobe tends towards dark colors and I was more than a little concerned about getting hit by a car or worse shot at. Someone shot our mailman a few years back in broad daylight and there have been reports of violent mischief in the area. Bored middle class teenagers; enough said.
Lest I forget to mention this, it was rather cold too. I wore that wool jacket I got a few years ago. I don't think I've ever worn it before. Usually I just wear a thin windbreaker. It was sufficient and I'm glad I wore it. I think I would have really been in sorry shape if I'd worn the windbreaker. I also wore some cloth gloves I got from the corner drugstore the other year. Those were adequate. (Note to self: Get a new pair of gloves.) Anyrate, it was cold. It was probably just a hair above freezing when I left the house and I don't think it got much over 40 degrees Fahrenheit all day.
Other than being dark and cold the walk to the Park & Ride lot was uneventful. I found the bus stop, it's one of those little covered pavilion type things that seem popular. Anyrate, it was easy to spot. There was no one else there so I sat down. I knew I'd have at most a half hour to wait. While I was waiting others started showing up, in ones and twos. Before long there was maybe twenty or thirty of them It seems strange but they formed a very orderly line stretching a good ways back. I've never seen such an orderly line at a bus stop before. Usually people kind of spread out at a bus stop and gather into a line when the bus appears but these people were forming their line right from the get-go. It was kind of unnerving.
The bus ride itself was about an hour long. I sat all the way in the back in what was probably one of the least comfortable seats in the bus. It was a peaceful ride, I watched the scenery go by and the sky lighten.
Okay, this is getting long and I grow increasingly hungry. I'll continue this later in another post.
There is an express bus that goes through the Park & Ride lot a mile from the house. It started up during the summer of last year but I never felt confident of my health or felt a burning urgent need to go through the hassle of dealing with an unknown transit system; technically two unknown transit systems since both GCT and GRTA are involved in this express service. I'm a bit less adventurous in this regard than I was in my younger days. My bank provided the urgent need and so I had to go. I got up at 5:00 this morning and got myself ready. I left the house at 6:00. It was very dark out. I've never walked through this neighborhood at that hour of the morning before. It was dark; really, really,dark. We don't have an over abundance of streetlights here. In fact some streets don't have a light at all. That made me a little nervous. My wardrobe tends towards dark colors and I was more than a little concerned about getting hit by a car or worse shot at. Someone shot our mailman a few years back in broad daylight and there have been reports of violent mischief in the area. Bored middle class teenagers; enough said.
Lest I forget to mention this, it was rather cold too. I wore that wool jacket I got a few years ago. I don't think I've ever worn it before. Usually I just wear a thin windbreaker. It was sufficient and I'm glad I wore it. I think I would have really been in sorry shape if I'd worn the windbreaker. I also wore some cloth gloves I got from the corner drugstore the other year. Those were adequate. (Note to self: Get a new pair of gloves.) Anyrate, it was cold. It was probably just a hair above freezing when I left the house and I don't think it got much over 40 degrees Fahrenheit all day.
Other than being dark and cold the walk to the Park & Ride lot was uneventful. I found the bus stop, it's one of those little covered pavilion type things that seem popular. Anyrate, it was easy to spot. There was no one else there so I sat down. I knew I'd have at most a half hour to wait. While I was waiting others started showing up, in ones and twos. Before long there was maybe twenty or thirty of them It seems strange but they formed a very orderly line stretching a good ways back. I've never seen such an orderly line at a bus stop before. Usually people kind of spread out at a bus stop and gather into a line when the bus appears but these people were forming their line right from the get-go. It was kind of unnerving.
The bus ride itself was about an hour long. I sat all the way in the back in what was probably one of the least comfortable seats in the bus. It was a peaceful ride, I watched the scenery go by and the sky lighten.
Okay, this is getting long and I grow increasingly hungry. I'll continue this later in another post.
