Joe arrived at about 10:30, and we headed out right at 11:00, as when we got around to the Hardee’s drivethru just around the corner from my house, they had just changed the sign from breakfast to lunch, but still had four sausage biscuits left for us to purchase.
Somewhere between Durham and Burlington it occurred to me that I should have brought the two place settings of my sister’s china with us that I need to return to Replacements, since we were driving right by it, and I was planning a trip to do that next Wednesday. Darn it.
A little ways past Greensboro, it occurred to me that I’m going to make a trip to Charlotte next week, and I can take care of it then. Yay!
The weather was nasty the entire trip, which was expected to be about 6.5 hours, but turned out to be longer due to very annoying traffic snags at about 60 miles out of Atlanta. It was the kind of snags with no cause — slow downs for no good reasons, and then picking back up. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
In Atlanta, after checking in, we had dinner at IHOP, where we were served by Frederick, who might as well have been Fredreecka, or Jackée for that matter. Talk about a purse falling out of her mouth when she opened it.
He was a great waiter though, in spite of the tad-too-long story about cheap Hershey chocolate and his candy for the homeless people, about none of which had we asked.
Back at the room, we had a nap, and then headed out to Hoedowns, which, not surprisingly, was jam packed.
We said hello to Gabriel when we got there. He’s the whole reason we ended up going to Atlanta for NYE, as he was going, had a room, and invited the three of us (me, Robert, and Joe) to join him. We ended up getting our own room, though.
Speaking of rooms, we highly don’t recommend staying at the Extended StayAmerica on Clairmont in Atlanta.
As soon as we arrived at Hoedowns, they played a two-dance line-dancing set, consisting of two dances that I knew: Backstreet Attitude and Midnight Waltz. I did them, of course.
Robert and I did a lot of dances during the evening, which included, in addition to the two aforementioned: two-stepping, a shadow dance, the Tush-Push, the Mambo Shuffle, Reggae Cowboy, and the Chill Factor.
The Chill Factor was cool, as they did an “extended play” version that kept getting faster and faster until it was done. I made it without passing out.
We saw a couple of folks we knew there: 1) Jim (the guy Tony used to date, who lives in Atlanta), and 2) Wes (Jay’s ex-boyfriend). Joe saw at least one other person he knew from Raleigh, but it was someone he didn’t like, so we didn’t say hello.
We headed out at around 1:00, I guess. The music got progressively louder as the night wore on, until it really was a little uncomfortable on the ear drums.