"Atlanta is a pit of despair"



Rachael and I had a quick, desperate flurry of e-mails this morning, each of us at our respective windowless places of employment; I in my cube, she in her not-much-bigger-than-my-cube office. The funny thing is that we work less than a half mile away from one another, so theoretically we could have met up to talk, or called each other, or something, but it's much easier to pretend like you're doing tons of work when the only sounds coming from your end of the hall is the tap-tap-tap of the keyboard.



Anyway, our flurry of e-mails basically revolved around the oppressiveness of Atlanta in August. Up north people get depressed in the winter, from lack of sunshine and such, but down here we all lose it around August 1, when the heat and humidity and smog alerts, present for days and weeks on end, mix perfectly to form a toxic poison that makes the body hurt, the sinuses ache, and the soul curl up and moan.



Our nasty driving turns nastier. We drive recklessly at highway speeds through bungalow neighborhoods, curse at one another, cut each other off with a wave of the finger.



Our speech gets whinier. We complain more. We try to cut the unhappiness with a morbid humor. A perfect example: the admin at work (one of my favorite people ever..she reminds me of my aunt) looked up at me when I came in this morning and said, "How was Alaska?"



"I almost didn't come back. Seriously. It was amazing. It was the most beautiful place I've ever been. I was so relaxed. My skin cleared up instantly. Juneau is the friendliest place on Earth. Everyone was so freakin' nice. I loved it. I want to go back. When the plane landed in Atlanta last night, and the pilot said, 'It's currently a steamy 93 degrees in Atlanta' the whole plane groaned."




She laughed and, with a wicked grin, said, "Welcome to Hell!"



Rachael's first e-mail said much the same thing: "Atlanta is a pit of despair."



Anyone who doesn't believe in global warming should spend an hour standing outside in downtown Atlanta. Hell, five minutes will do. The sweat forms instantly, but because the air is already saturated (but no chance of rain...it's just awful humidity) it has no where to go. It collects all over you, and runs down you, and ruins your hair. I don't know how Rachael and her like manage to ride a bicycle in this mess. It's all I can do to walk down the street. I guess she's just a tougher woman than me.



In case you can't tell, I'm super ultra grumpy.



I also really don't want to have to go to Michigan tomorrow. Oh, and I came home to a broken washing machine, so I've got to drop my clothes off at one of those wash-by-the-pound places tomorrow on my way to work so I'll have something remotely clean to wear the rest of the week. And I had to go sit in a board room for 3 freakin' hours today for some stupid marketing meeting crap that was neither here nor there.



Whine whine whine. I told you Atlanta in August does this to a person.

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