PreBaby GetAway 2011!

            One of the many loves that Mag and I both share is DOING STUFF. We like to go places and have little get aways and see things that we don't normally see. There is something fantastically refreshing about breaking away from one's normal schedule and rejuvenating through a little weekend excursion. We like to travel and have taken a few trips in our first few years of marriage to here and there in the local...eleven states. We went to the Dominican Republic for our honeymoon and I announced to Margaret at the beginning of the year that this fall, for our three year anniversary, we were going to return there and make sure all our bartenders were still doing okay. "For all we know we might have a kid next year," I said, "We gotta get going while the going's good." Our child has a fantastic sense of irony and therefore, upon hearing these words, cut to the front of line in heaven and said, "Excuse me Mr. Stork Master but - "
       "That's SAINT Stork Master to you, you rude little zygote!" a man with a (shock!) robe and beard said, peering down his large nose at my completely unformed son.
       "Right, well, anyway, I was wondering if I could go ahead and be created next."
       St. Stork Master pulled his glasses up onto his nose (he keeps them on a chain about his neck, naturally) and ran his finger down a large golden scroll. "Hmm. It says here that you aren't due to be born for at least another year and a half, if not longer. Do you have any reason for thinking that the rules somehow don't apply to you?"
       The zygote pondered this for a moment and then said brightly, "Well, it sure would be awful inconvenient for my mommy and daddy!"
        "Look behind you, you self-important cell cluster. This long line of soon to be conceived personalities are all going to be awful inconvenient for their parents. That's 90% of the point! Back of the line!"
        The zygote shoved his hands in his pockets in a gesture of defeat and hung his little imaginary head. He kicked at a (gold) pebble and slowly turned to the back of the line. Then, quick as a flash he scurried between the crotchety old saint's legs and dove into the kerchief of a stork that was just taking off from the runway. He turned back to the saint as he flew away to gain some not small amount of pleasure from his mischievousness but, as you may have guessed from all people constantly getting knocked up, Saint Stork Master is mostly blind anyway and doesn't really keep that close of a watch on who does and does not get conceived.

          As a result of this entirely true story, not two months later my lovely wife found out she was enceinte and we realized that the wonderful people of the Dominican Republic would have to spend another sad few years futilely scanning the horizon each evening, waiting for our triumphant return. Our child has now almost arrived and I told Mag, "Okay, we have to get out of this crummy little town for at least one night before he arrives." We began looking for some place up in the mountains to spend a night, and even looked into going to Jekyll Island, but remained undecided as it is much more fun to procrastinate. This weekend OUR (yes, we literally own the team) football team, Alabama, the Crimson Tide, the First and Only Forever Amen, was due to play the Florida Gators. While many teams in the SEC have some sort of rivalry against one another, Alabama's and Florida's is famous for when Florida put an end to Alabama's undefeated season during the SEC Championship game in 2008, and then went on to win the National title. The next year the two teams re-matched in the SEC Championship game, leaving Tim Tebow crying on the sidelines like a little bitch, and Urban Meyer being taken to the hospital with heart palpitations and saying he was quitting coaching football. Obviously, everyone who knows anything about football knows that anyone with class or taste doesn't like the Florida Gators, and I wanted to make things special for this weekend. (This is sad, but true. Once you get married you have to put all the energy you used to put into making yourself beautiful and clever and hunting dumb women who lack discernment into other unimportant things. That's why sports was invented). I was absolutely determined that I was going to eat alligator meat this weekend.

            One of the curses of the Internet is that everything is on it. Therefore, a simple question typed into Google like, "Where in central Georgia can I EAT A DAMN ALLIGATOR RIGHT NOW" doesn't yield to many helpful results. I did find a message board where, two years ago, some redneck was saying he wanted to kill an alligator and who wanted to buy the meat (he was quickly informed of the illegality of such unlicensed harvesting of one of the world's ugliest creatures). After a lot of detective work (which consists of rearranging the words in my original search to form new creative sentences) I found a few places in Atlanta that has gator on their menu and informed Mag, "Oh yes, this is really going to happen." Somehow this unfolded into an overnight stay at a resort and spa in Stone Mountain Park as our PreBaby GetAway 2011 Extravaganza!

            Now, I don't want to get into this in this post (though I'm sure I will at a later date. I am unable to resist airing all of my dirtiest laundry in the most public of places) but I decided on Friday morning that another drop of alcohol would not pass through this succulent lips until a pour a drink in celebration of the healthy birth of my son. Therefore, in order to make this the coldest of turkeys, I instantly leaped into a baptism by fire. Our trip began to the place I found with gator on the menu, a neat little restaurant in Atlanta called Six Feet Under (which is located right next to the famous Oakland Cemetery, where, among other semi-famous people, Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind is buried). Clayton is the one that originally told me about this place so I texted him and asked him about it. "It's fantastic." He texted back. "And they have like 100 beers." Of course they do. From like 200 different countries. However, like a 20-year-old on a Saturday night date with his 17-year-old girlfriend, I ordered a Coca-Cola (rum not included), a calamari taco, a catfish taco, a shrimp taco, a side order of hush puppies, and, most importantly, a fried alligator appetizer. I like the restaurant, and the tacos were pretty good (some of the other stuff on the menu looked even better, but I wanted to try these tacos that had cabbage and wasabi and all this other weird stuff on them).

          Our drive took us through much of downtown Atlanta, passing Turner Field (where we shook our fists angrily at the empty stadium that should have been holding 95,000 screaming fans watching their team lose the play offs), going straight through Little Five Points (where we shook our fists sweetly at all the unattractive alternative people who embraced being alternative as an alternative to being attractive), skirting around the Atlanta Zoo (where we made sure not to smile or make eye contact with any beasts), and finally expelling us into the sudden mass of trees and awful drivers that hides the world's largest mass of granite...Stone Mountain (for exciting details on Stone Mountain be sure to check out "PreBaby GetAway 2011! Part Two"). We pulled up to the gate, hurled a handful of quarters at the old man manning the booth, and sped away toward our hotel. There are two hotels located actually within the park confines and this one is supposed to be the resort hotel. It's nice and all, but we had barely enough time to check in and throw our bags on the floor and our jackets on our bodies before we were back in the car and headed to the LASER LIGHT SHOW SPECTACULAR PRESENTED IN MOUNTAIN VISION!!!!11!1!!!1!.

This is a thousand times better than the real show

           You see, back before there were video games and when people used to do a lot of acid laser shows were popular. You would take a date, who was wearing denim cut-off shorts and a t-shirt with a rebel flag on it (you would be wearing the same thing, incidentally) and lay on the lawn and watch lasers projected on the giant rock face of the mountain. The laser show was revamped this year to be THREE DEE while still retaining many of the classic elements which made the original such a fine work of popular artistry. Mag and I laughed through about twenty minutes before we got up and left. It was horrible. I guess it was cutting edge back in 1983, but that was before the Internet was invented, hair metal was popularized, or we got an anti-American Muhammad worshiping socialist Kenyan in the White House. Times have changed. Part of the laser show is a super interesting tour through the state of Alabama (in a monster truck) that shows the interesting sites of Alabama such as...a Shakespeare Festival? This is demonstrated by a cartoon Shakespeare overacting in the same four poses for about thirty seconds straight. There's then a sequence where a house grows legs and is dancing and it's neighbor gets angry and comes over and shakes his fist. At this point the house eats his neighbor and then begins dancing with his neighbors house (evidently these laser shows were also designed by people on acid). The new, 3-D parts of the show just look like someone is shining a giant projector on the side of the mountain. Ultimately, I think that the age of laser shows has passed. It's pretty neat to see something projected across 100 feet of a giant granite boulder while lying in a field with a thousand rednecks but I can't imagine coming to the park just to see that, and then fighting traffic for an hour trying to get out afterwards. My parents took me and my siblings when we were little, so I can only assume they are better parents than I will ever be.

           We left early, as I mentioned, and drove back to our room. Partially driving our desire to leave, I must admit, was that the Alabama/Florida game had started. We dashed into our room and I turned on our TV to be confronted with the thing I hate most about hotel televisions - the official hotel channel. It's a ridiculous maze that always ends in porn and, when I finally find out how to get off of the menu page, I'm on a channel that plays a constant loop of a Stone Mountain Park promotional video tour. Of course it's at the exact portion of the video that is displaying "StoneWall's" the sports bar located on the floor just beneath us that is currently playing the game, serving marvelous drinks, and has pool tables, darts, whatever. I've stayed in hundreds of hotels, but never one where I turn on the damn TV and have to be tempted with a sports bar that is literally less than 120 seconds away.

Wha' happened?

           So instead my wonderful and supportive wife went and got some drinks from the Starbucks that was 100 yards from the door to our hotel room (and in the lobby). Normally this close proximity would send me into paroxysms of joy except for the fact that I'm not some strange creature created by breeding a sheep with a lemming whose eyes glaze over and who begins drooling and stuttering when hearing the word, "Starbucks." Also I drink coffee about four times a year. However, I must admit that the White Chocolate Mocha was a marvelous dessert that I drank about half of while jumping around the room and screaming at the television. It was fun to watch the game in the room with Mag (who was drinking her Chai Tea Latte). She lay across the king size bed and I sat in the office chair with my feet propped up (I had to have a good launching spot to spring up from every time Alabama did something good, which was frequently during our 38-10 route of the nation's 12th best team).

          The game ended and Mag turned on her sleepy eyes while I got a shower and climbed into bed. I plugged in my phone and set my alarm (titled: "soannoying" and featuring a ringer of a rooster crowing over and over again with no pause) for 6:30 a.m. "Why are you getting up so early?" Mag asked. I laughed evilly while I cracked my knuckles (a part of my nightly routine). "I have...plans."

             TO BE CONTINUED...