This is the first time I’ve ever visited Atlanta. I’ve driven through a few times, but that doesn’t count. I’ve driven around the north end of Atlanta for a while the past few days, and there are things that stick out. There are churches everywhere. I didn’t think that Iowa was that godless, but I can’t believe how many more churches it seems like there are here. And BIG churches. Wowza. There’s also a lot of Chick-fil-a restaurants. We have one in Cedar Rapids, but I think there’s one on every corner here in Atlanta. But all the signs still say “Closed Sunday”, though, so that’s cool.

I have a theory that not all of Atlanta is under construction, but I’ve yet to see too much evidence to back that theory up. I’ve seen construction everywhere. There’s construction at the airport. There’s construction at the hotel/convention center where I’m at. I’ve been to two shopping malls, there is construction at both of them. I’ve been through road construction on every trip so far. Sheesh people, get things fixed already!

I am a bit surprised that the accents I’ve heard so far aren’t that thick; certainly not near so much as the ones I heard in Tennessee and Kentucky last week. Maybe I just haven’t talked to the right people. My waitress last night had a German accent; the guy I’m listening to at the conference right now has an Indian accent so think I can’t even understand him. Maybe I’ll get a better reading on accent tonight when I have dinner with Jeff and Adriene.

All in all, Atlanta has been A-OK so far. That being said, there’s no place like home.

After hearing the announcement that “much rock will be had”, I decided if I could make it work in my schedule, I’d head on a road trip to Nashville to see Andrew Osenga’s The Morning CD release concert. The schedule worked out, and next thing you know, I was on the road.

It’s not as bad a drive as I’d feared from Cedar Rapids to Nashville. I left at 4:30 am, and with very minimal stoppage I arrived in Nashville by 2:30 pm. I checked into my motel and then left to drive around and aquaint myself with the Nashville area. I drove past one shopping mall that was very dead, and then another one which turned out to be the Green Hills Mall that Andy Gullahorn sings about. After having located Mercy Lounge and how to get there, I went back to my motel to crash.

I apparently gave myself too much time to get down to the Lounge, because I got there about 30 minutes before the published “doors open” time. Deciding to escape the heat and humidity outside, I stuck my head in and managed to hear the end of Andy and the band’s sound check.

There were two openers for Andy; the first was Dave somebody; he sported a Napoleon Dynamite-style afro and a bunch of falsetto vocals with his acoustic guitar. Not bad, but not very memorable. The second act was Matthew Perryman Jones. MPJ is one of the Square Pegs, but I hadn’t heard any of his music until that night. He was very good. He played a few songs solo, then brought Andy O, Cason Cooley, and Eric Weigel up to play with him. Again, very good stuff. I bought his new CD Throwing Punches In The Dark after the show.

Then it was time for Andy. He was playing with a full band: Cason Cooley on keyboards, Eric Chris Weigel on bass, Paul Eckberg on drums, and a guitarist Jason Feller on guitar, and a percussionist whose name escaped me. They played a lot of music from Andy’s new album The Morning, starting out in album order with In Gym Class In High School, After The Garden, and White Dove. He played a few songs from his earlier album Photographs, including Kara and When Will I Run. The highlight of the night was probably his rocking Santa Barbara from the new album. It is a classic roll-the-windows-down rock and roll song, and it was great that night.

I thoroughly enjoyed the show, and also the chance to meet a bunch of folks, some I had already met, some I had not. This is where I name drop (though is it really name dropping if the people are only “names” to a few people?) : Geof Morris (of rmfo.net fame), Ron Davis (aka Ronzilla) of moreron.com, a couple of other dot.netters, and then in addition to the aforementioned band members, there were Jeremy Casella, Chris Mason, Andy Peterson, Ben Shive, Randall Goodgame, and oh yeah, Andy O’s wife Allison. Very cool.

After helping carry Andy’s gear down to his car, I called it a night and crashed hard at the motel. The following day brought me back on the reverse trip from Nashville to Cedar Rapids; again about a 10 hour drive. It was a great time, well worth the drive. As I told Andy, next time I’ll come back, but I’ll bring my wife along.

CID has free wireless internet in the terminal. My flight was delayed by about 15 minutes, but now I guess it’s about time to board. I wonder if DFW has wireless? I guess I’ll find out in a couple of hours.

So it’s been several days and still I haven’t managed to find the time to write-up the Andy O concert from last Tuesday. Tsk tsk. It has been a busy week. I’m getting packed up tonight to head to Atlanta for a work-related conference. Maybe I’ll have some time in the evenings for updating.

One quick bit of good news - heard from Aaron tonight and he’s coming home from Panama on Wednesday! Woohoo!

So between Tuesday and Wednesday I put about 1300 miles on the car over a span of 20 hours on the road. The car ran great, I had some good stuff to listen to on the drive down (D.A. Carson on Postmodernism and the use of the O.T. by the N.T.), and it went really well. The concert was great. It’ll merit at least one post, maybe a couple of ‘em, when I get the time. Well worth the drive - I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Next time, though, I’ll take Becky along.

So between Tuesday and Wednesday I put about 1300 miles on the car over a span of 20 hours on the road. The car ran great, I had some good stuff to listen to on the drive down (D.A. Carson on Postmodernism and the use of the O.T. by the N.T.), and it went really well. The concert was great. It’ll merit at least one post, maybe a couple of ‘em, when I get the time. Well worth the drive - I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Next time, though, I’ll take Becky along.

So between Tuesday and Wednesday I put about 1300 miles on the car over a span of 20 hours on the road. The car ran great, I had some good stuff to listen to on the drive down (D.A. Carson on Postmodernism and the use of the O.T. by the N.T.), and it went really well. The concert was great. It’ll merit at least one post, maybe a couple of ‘em, when I get the time. Well worth the drive - I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Next time, though, I’ll take Becky along.

I’m getting ready to leave in the morning for my quick road trip to Nashville. Not much to say before then, but I’m sure I’ll have some pictures and stories to share once I get back… so stay tuned.

I have decided to start tagging rather than categorizing my posts; The tagging paradigm (implemented nicely in this case by Ultimate Tag Warrior) makes so much sense I won’t even start on it.

I have tagged my last 15 or so posts, I’m not about to go back and tag all three-hundred-plus of them. So I’ll leave the categories over on the sidebar for a while along with the tags.

It came to my attention the other day that the sidebar is all screwed up in Internet Explorer; it displays way down at the bottom of the page on the left. I may be able to fix this at some point, but for now, if you’re using IE, do yourself a favor and go get Firefox. You can thank me later.

So it’s Friday. No major bad things have happened. I had one weird problem with my software at work, but I knew I’d seen it before, and searching through my old status reports brought me upon the solution. Now my software release can continue as planned.

This weekend is “Hog Wild Days” in our little burg. My sister notes that it just sounds like an Iowa shindig. And yep, that’s what it is. Not too exciting, but fun to have something that’s close enough you can just walk to it.

Tonight we might have some friends come over; haven’t heard for sure yet. Tomorrow is the Hog Wild Days parade in the morning, then Rebecca is moving down here in the afternoon, so we’ll get her all moved in. I think Mom and Andrew will be staying the weekend, too. Sadly, Dad can’t come, since he’s tuning for a piano sale.

Gotta love weekends.