Welcome to Atlanta!

I'm new here - a transplanted "peach" I guess. I've decided to write a blog about my first year here and what I've found that's cool and some of the experiences we will have in this first year. If anyone decides to read this and they know the area, please feel free to chime in with suggestions of places to go, restaurants to try, festivals to hit, etc. I'm open to adventure!

It's a huge sprawling area and as far as I can tell, most of it isn't anywhere near the actual city of Atlanta. Coming from Cincinnati, which is a navigable medium-sized city, this is a little crazy to me. There are so many street names that contain the word "Peach" that to a new transplant, it's a little overwhelming. Peachtree Road, Peachtree Street, Peachtree Industrial, Peachtree Boulevard....and don't even get me started on the hyphenated names of streets! Peachtree-Dunwoody, Chamblee-Tucker, Chamblee-Doraville, and more that I can't even remember or haven't been on yet. It's crazy. I'm not prone to breaking down and I cried five times in one trip to run errands. One of those errands was to get my tire fixed since we got the "Welcome to Atlanta" flat tire while exploring "Historic Norcross" on Memorial Day. Then (ironically) I needed to get to Costco to buy a Garmin. I never did find it.

I gave up and went home but Brian and I found a Costco later that day and bought one. I'm sure I'll cry a lot less now even if I am a little sick of that woman saying "Recalculating." Seriously, shut up and recalculate. That's what I paid for. And stop with the snarky tone already.

I had heard the term "Hotlanta" and just sort of laughed it off. I figured "How much hotter than Cincinnati can it really be?" Well, I'm here to tell you that it's much hotter than Cincinnati and it will last much longer. While the degree number might be the same, the humidity (which I thought was bad in Ohio) is astonishing here. People tend to be harsh on southern girls with big hair. I'm a northern girl and I now have big hair. Cut these ladies some slack, people. They're working with what they have, embracing the hand Mother Nature dealt them!

In stores, everyone seems to move slow...both the shoppers and the employees. Last weekend it was bugging the crap out of me but yesterday I started thinking "Is this such a bad thing? Why do I rush around stressed out all the time anyway?" I'm thinking I'll just adjust my "to do list" (which is always olympian in size anyway) and just be a little more realistic and calm.

Plus it's too damn hot to run all over the place anyway.