Thursday, February 20, 2014

An Intimate Night With Pizza

I spent this week in Atlanta and though it's been mostly for work, I have been able to do a couple other things as well! I really wish I could have visited the CDC-- I looked online and while you can't tour the campus or labs, you can go to the David J. Sencer CDC Museum.

I thought I was going to have time to get some reading done.. hah! I basically just passed out as I had a 6:15am flight and my shuttle picked me up at 3:30am.


As soon as I landed at the airport, I picked up my rental car and headed to Little Five Points for pizza and then worked out of a coffee shop for a bit. I also had sweet tea, which was fantastic and, uh, sweet. I finally made it to the hotel as it started to get dark. I got a room with a cool view!


I figured I should go out and try to do something since I've never been to this city before. I decided to go to a show at this bar called 529 in East Atlanta. When I got there, I ordered a drink and immediately made a new friend! It was rad. 

Del Venicci at 529
Oh, another thing. I had grits. Garlic grits. They were awesome. This whole meal was hella decadent. Biscuits topped with sausage, gravy, and eggs. I was stuffed. (I was stuffed this entire trip, but I needed a nap after this meal). 

Georgia Benedict from West Egg Cafe
Salmon Chips from Serpas

We also went to another restaurant that had amazing food and I had this delicious trout that was stuffed with crab and mushrooms. These were someone else's salmon chips, but they were so ridiculous(ly awesome looking) that I had to snap a picture!


Today we went to the Capitol to support with some lobbying and I quickly found out that lobbying in Georgia is the most chaotic process ever. Appointments? Nah. Let's just stick with the good ol' days of lobbying in the lobby! You need to figure out who to talk to amongst the sea of people, where to go, and where you are and are not allowed to stand while you wait to talk to your representative (who may or may not show up), but we're happy to have you (read: we're going to make it so difficult for you to interface with us, and when you finally get through, we're going to be dismissive and disparaging). Who doesn't love a shitshow? 

The way that process is set up is so messed up, and in my opinion it's doing an injustice to Georgia's constituents. That being said, the work we went to support was really powerful, and the actual building is really beautiful. 

So now it's my last night here in Atlanta. I contemplated doing a number of things, but I ended up ordering a pizza for myself that I'm eating on one of the two beds that I have to myself in my hotel room. Why do I have two beds in my room? Because they were out of singles. What am I doing with two beds in my room? Well, I was alternating sleeping between the two beds (it just felt like a waste to not use both of them!) and trying to sleep in the starfish position to take up as much bed real estate as possible. But tonight I ate pizza in bed. Because it seemed like as good of a thing to do as sleep in it. 

"An Intimate Night With Pizza" - the name of my future autobiography

Not bad for four nights! 
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