Trip into Athens

I drove a friend to the hospital to visit her dying daughter. Not exactly the way I had hoped to have an excursion. A sad situation for all.













I'm often caught by this train on Sundays. Nothing to do but take photos of the graffiti on the cars.














Handicapped parking at the emergency entrance. My friend asks me to drive her car, which has the handicapped sticker. She is 84 and suffering from cancer, herself.














Hospitals always seem so stark. What's going on in the interior is bad enough (aside from births and successful life-saving operations) but the exterior is pretty harsh too.












After a few hours in beeping hospital machine-land, I and my friend drove home, once again enjoying the rural aspects of the apartment. This bird skidded the circumference of the feeder while nibbling on the dwindling feed. Mental note: buy more feed.














Lichen on the tree the feeder hangs on. The shape so perfectly mirrors a flower, or a snowflake, doesn't it? And the light green is so pleasing.













Looking out at all that beauty from inside. Ahhh, better than jagged angular lines of hospital building and roaring trains,...and dying daughters.

Athens Georgia shooting

Just when you think 'it could never happen here', it does. A University of Georgia Professor allegedly shot and killed three young adult student at an off-campus theatre. (UPDATE, AP at 8:53 pm: Authorities say a University of Georgia professor suspected in the deaths of his ex-wife and two others outside a community theater near campus had left his children in the car when the shooting happened.) One was close range, unfortunately. Three additional students were injured. The alleged shooter- Professor got in his car and drove away. Manhunt on now...Police are looking for George M. Zinkhan III, a professor in the Department of Marketing and Distribution and have searched his house with a SWAT team....

NYTimes article

AP article

AJC article

Happy Tuesday

Some random thoughts

I bought a Canon LIDE series 90 scanner and I LOVE IT. The thing is ridiculously easy to use and it scans up to 600 dpi. It's fast, color-accurate, and best of all, only uses a USB cord. No electricity, it plugs right into your computer. The OCR is pretty accurate and it even lets you make .pdfs. It is slim, light, and did I say, I love it? I've been putting up a lot of old photos I have around on 35 mm to my flickr page.

I got a waffle maker from Freecycle recently, and I made waffles for the first time ever yesterday. I feel like a grownup now.

I am letting my hair color go bye-bye. After coloring it for over ten years I decided to dispense with the color processing and time and mess and expense and let it go au natural. My hair is gray, 100%, but I am thrilled to report it is a silvery waterfall dew in the morning sort of gray. My hair is thick and way anyway so the added bonus of a luxuriant variation of a gray color is nice. Here is an article about other women enjoying their gray.

From the Overheard in Athens blog:

Girl: I just finished my first final. The question was "What is life?"
Professor: It's a fine magazine and a delicious cereal.

I didn't say they were big thoughts. Just random.