Andrew and Brenda

So down here we don’t have to deal with the pollution from the plants, but we’ve recenty learned of a springtime phenomenon here in Atlanta….pollen. Apparently every spring we’ll be getting treated to a nice dusting of this yellow crud on every possible surface. Keeping the cars clean has been a pretty futile exercise. We’re even finding a fine layer on things inside the apartment.

Luckily, neither one of us have allergies, although Brenda has been a little more bothered by it than me. The upside is that it won’t last but another week or so, and it won’t normally be this bad. We went like two weeks without rain, so even the locals were saying it was worse than normal because of that.

At any rate, we’re back to the seventies and low-eighties this week, so our weather should be fairly similar to Ohio, at least for a little while.

In other news, I’ve been super busy on a project at work that I can’t really post here. But let’s say it’s a major company that you all know One of our developers is relocating to Florida, but will be working remotely. It’s a bummer, but the upside is I get her office. Hopefully a trip to Ikea will follow to make it more homey.

The Final Four games are in Atlanta this weekend. So we’re not planning on venturing out too far, as traffic will be a real drag. There are not only the games, but big concerts, a baseball game and a hockey game all going on this weekend. No way I’m getting close to downtown.

I’m also planning on learning the art of stop-motion animation (or at least giving it a shot). I’ve been doing a lot of research on it, and bought a book from the studio that does Wallace & Gromit. Don’t know if I’ll actually do much with it, but I hope to do some test shots soon to see if I have the patience to do it.

That’s about it for now. Not much else going on. Work all day. Work in the evening. Watch some TV. Repeat.

It may actually happen today. Apparently the highest temp in Atlanta in March since 1926. We’ll see. The rest of the week should be high seventies to low eighties, so still pretty pleasant spring weather here. Plus, our pool opened yesterday!

We’ve been in Atlanta for almost three months now, and today we finally got to go to the Titanic Artifact Exhibition. It’s being held at the Atlanta Civic Center until May. We’ve already missed two shows from waiting until the last minute, Cirque Du Soleil and Spamalot, so I’m really glad we got to see this.

When you get started, you’re given your ticket, which is actually your “boarding pass”. On the back is the name of a passenger aboard the Titanic. You learn their age, where they’re from, who they are travelling with, what cabin they’re in, their reason for being on the Titanic, and some interesting facts about them. You’re told you’re this passenger for the tour, and you’ll find out at the end whether you survived. So not morbid at all.

My passenger’s name was Mr. Emil Brandeis, who is 48 and travelling alone, having boarded the Titanic in Cherbourg, France. He is returning home after his annual four-month trip to Europe, where he visited his niece in Italy and his sister in Switzerland. He is from Omaha, Nebraska, owns a department store, and must be rather wealthy, as he is a first class passenger.

Brenda’s passenger is Mrs. Maria Penasco from Spain, 22, who is travelling with her husband Victor and a servant. They also boarded at Cherbourg and are extending their two-year honeymoon with a transatlantic voyage on Titanic.

We then were given these nifty gadgets that looked like the combination of a long remote control and a telephone. Every so often, you’d punch in a code shown on the wall, hold it to your ear, and hear some narrated facts. Pretty cool.

The exhibit was very well done and put together. From an attraction standpoint, it was top-notch. There were a lot of really nice artifacts on display, some huge, some tiny. Everything was enclosed in one-inch-thick glass cases that all had humidity and temperature sensors in them. I can’t imagine the difficulty in preserving pieces like those.

The thing that struck me the most is how hard it is to wrap your head around the fact that these are not replicas. What you’re looking at was actually at the bottom of the cold, black North Atlantic, 12,500 feet down. Before these pieces were recovered, the last people to touch them were passengers or crew on the Titanic, who may or may not have survived. It’s pretty eerie.

A highlight of the tour is “the big piece”, which is a 17-ton portion of the ship’s hull, complete with 3 portholes. What’s interesting is they show you a diagram of the ship and where the piece was located. When seeing it in that scale, you start to get an idea just how gigantic the Titanic was. It’s also interesting that it took over two years to prepare and preserve the Big Piece for display.

The also have a big iceberg mockup, actually made of ice. They have you feel it so you can actually get a feeling for how unbelievably cold the water was that night. I can’t even imagine the feeling.

I could go on and on, but long story short, it was well worth it. And unfortunately, Mr. Brandeis, my passenger, did not survive. Brenda’s did, however, but her husband did not. It’s an interesting and effective way to make the whole thing a little more real.

At any rate, if any of y’all make it down before May, we’ll gladly take you to see it if you want