This time last week, I joined the legions of Atlantans who trekked to the grocery store in anticipation of snow and ice predicted for the city.While most snow/ice warnings of the last 15 years were false alarms, Ice Storm 2011 was the real deal (much more like the great Ang Lee film "The Ice Storm" starring longtime favorite Sigourney Weaver).
It was an ice storm that welcomed my arrival in Atlanta during the first days of 1996. That holiday season of 1995, while packing for the move to work at the Olympic organizing committee, I bragged to snowbound friends in Minnesota and St. Louis that the South's warm winter temperatures would be a welcome change.
Of course, within hours of arriving in Atlanta, the thermometer dipped to the teens, and the next few days brought more than an inch of ice, wreaking havoc on the city and the super-sensitive diesel components of the silver VW Jetta for which I held the keys.
The winter storm this week was fun, but it's good to get back to "normal" this weekend which honors Atlanta's first Nobel Prize winner (make Monday a day on, not a day off!).
Today I screened "The Fighter" (excellent film), did a little homework, and tonight look forward to the Atlanta Falcons versus Green Bay Packers game. Not much of a football fan here, but with my girlfriend's family in Milwaukee, it's irresistible to root for the Falcons and put down the Packers (even though in general I pull for neither team as I am a post-season-only fan and viewer of the NFL).
No matter the victors of tonight's game, the crowd inside the Georgia Dome will no doubt melt any remaining ice atop the stadium, creating a nice ice moat that may remind the Wisconsin fans of home.
Go Falcons!
Photo via the Georgia Dome
Post-Game Update 1/16/2011 -- Packers beat Falcons 48-21. Embarrassing.
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