12 Oakdale

After a 5 year hiatus, I’m in Atlanta at a reunion with my high school girlfriends. We meet at Kathy’s house north of Atlanta. Sitting and talking is the agenda for the weekend, with 1 dinner out. In previous years, we who flew in, took Marta to the Avondale station to meet our friends. Next stop was the Dekalb Farmers Market, actually a big warehouse-sized grocery store. Many unusual vegetables, lovely fish and meat, plus a great bakery. A whole wall of spices in large quantities. We would start with lunch in the cafeteria, then bought food for the weekend.  Now the cafeteria is closed, a causality of COVID, so we stopped at Chat Patti, a favorite Indian restaurant of Mickie. I knew none of the dishes, so looking at the pictures on the wall, I ordered Behl Puri. According to the menu (which I read after I ordered), it is an appetizer made of puffed rice, crumbled crunchy puri, onions, cilantro, and chutney tossed together with pomegranate seeds, served cold. An odd dish but intere...

On a whim, I bought tickets to the Atlanta show of The Rolling Stones’ Hackney Diamonds tour. They’d played at Camping World Stadium in Orlando on June 3rd, but I was in Fort Lauderdale at the tree conference. Other tour dates didn’t fit our calendar, so Atlanta it was. Friday, we walked 6.7 miles between at the airport, getting to the hotel from MARTA, visiting the Georgia Aquarium, going to dinner at the Twin Smokes BBQ where they serve chitlings rather than chips as a freebie, and trekking to and from the Mercedes-Benz Stadium for the concert.We are tired. Of course, we were amazed by the energy of 80-year-olds Mick and Keith plus 77yo Ronnie, but the fact that most of the audience seemed about their/our age was as impressive. We old geezers still can stay up past 9:00 PM. Of course, at the hotel breakfast next morning, we mostly looked like something the cat dragged in.  Best part? The Stones tour is sponsored by AARP. Saturday, we visited the High Museum to see the Dutch maste...