(actually posted Jan 17th) Meant to post this last night, but, as is still relevant here goes…

Well, fuck!

That sound you hear?  The sucking of wind? It was that bell jar I mentioned in a previous post lifting last Saturday, just in time for also aforementioned Falcons’ Playoff game. Expectations were high; Atlanta’s collective sense of self-awareness/absorption equally jacked.

Of course the bell jar hadn’t been air tight;  we were aware of Tuscon.  My medium du jour that Monday immediately following the storm was over-the-air digital TV: WSB. I sat my happy ass on the couch and surfed as I let images and soundbites, updates, road conditions, children on sleds – though most on rubbermaid lids – school closings warnings from the DOT to PLEASE stay off the streets wash over me. I Drank coffee.

That grew old Tuesday- not the coffee drink part-  and I switched to the radio. am750. Boortz in the morning, some Hannity at night; immediately apparent that all too many all too eager to politicize Tuscon. Shocked? Hardly. Not my point. Point of character. On a similar more zeitgeisty front watercooler talk tuned to the Golden Globes (OMG it’s Johnny Depp!)  But make no mistake,  Saturday was about us.  We’d survived It. For thousands of parents, survived the extra week with their offspring.  In the same house. 24/7.

As a city Atlanta woke up last Saturday, finished with snow and ice, hungry for milk and bread for our souls, the morning air not quite as dry. We stretched. Fired up the cars and headed out beneath blue skies to Starbucks. Game day.

I didn’t. I’d stayed up late Friday, crashing on the couch for a bit more than really sleeping (which I will pay for ironically later that afternoon. Or not, depending on your point of view), working on my first post to Gathering Spirits.

So, puttering about…Intermittently checking FB, drinking coffee. Radios on. Still am750. Personal finance rolls into home gardening rolls into sometime around 12:30 pm when the show is interrupted to announce that Royal Marshall has died. Dead. Gone.

Over the course of the following hours, one after another, those who had been privileged to know him came on the radio. When, finally, Boortz came on and tried to talk my own heart broke. In the course of that Saturday afternoon I was privileged to hear a family come together to love and remember a man in who the very gathering his passing engendered was testament to his character as much as their loss. The hours of tribute to him no programming stunt. For a full day, obligatory weather and breaking news aside, Royal T Marshall was celebrated. Listening to the radio I was witness to a gathering of spirits. Part of it. Zeitgeist at highest calling.

The Falcons…well, you know how that went. I missed the game, actually. Slept through it. Such is life.

Go team. The bell tolls for thee.

Tired. Little to say, other than was an interesting week. Went bowling tonight, my first first date bowling, actually. Had a blast.

Other than that, I say Farewell Snowpocalypse, and congratulations on your success at taking a massive dump on our routine.

That said, must get to sleep. Get up at a decent hour. Go to Starbucks.

Rinse, repeat.

That’s the best way to describe the city, four days later.

Though the highways are by and large clear, poorly (sun) lit surface streets and shadowed landscaping remain treacherous, the ice coating having a second night to melt, pool, refreeze. On the way home today, waiting for the light, am stopped at the corner of Freedom Parkway and Boulevard. The empty field on my right is a single sheet cake of ice;  it’s surface catching the 4pm sunlight.

The drive home is about what I expected, took an over an hour, but no accidents, just a lot of other commuters leaving early, thinking the same thing: getting home before the ice creeps back across the highways and streets.

I’m more concerned about the drive in tomorrow morning. Fewer obvious signs of ice – more black ice – no margin for error and no shortage of idiots on the road. I will be leaving for work later, again.

SNOWPOCALYPSE 2011, Atlanta will remember ye. A day after the events in Tuscon you arrived, a great white bell jar. And, noses and eyes to windows many of us stayed up to see it fall. And it did, thickly, quickly. Though a wind attended it the sheer volume was such that as it fell, crossing in front of the light of streetlamps, floodlights in back yards, the effect was complete: Atlanta become one great snow globe. The bell jar lowered, and as a single media-enriched entity we compartmentalized Tuscon, not unaffected by any means, just…Self absorbed.

This IS Atlanta. For those not from the area (or having spent sufficient time herein) we Atlanta is the closest thing to SoCal/Hollywood this side of the Mississippi. Meaning,  significant movie/news/media industry presences. A “local” radio personality just announced he’s officially initiating  an exploratory committee for the feasibility of a run at the White House. A gloriously disproportionate number of not only attractive but intelligent women, from all backgrounds. We have the Falcons/Michael Vick. The Thrashers…The Olympics…World’s largest aquarium. The Walking Dead. When not self-absorbed at least self-aware. Self-conscious. A heavy peppering of the materialistic, if not shallow (as the two are not mutually inclusive).

But I’m digressing. Though to a point.

I told you you’d come.

Anyhoo…We survived SNOWPACALYPSE 2011. I have coffee in my kitchen and food in the pantry. My apartment is warm. I occasionally check FB, smiling as I see those others who’ve posted their snow pictures…studies in contrast…planes of white, deep shadows…A splash of color in some where a child’s toy has been half buried.

And here I am, at home, enjoying a snow day myself. Watching the morning news…Impressed that so many have made the wise decision to stay off the roads. Perhaps the reputation Atlanta’s drivers have is unearned?

Nah