Davelanta 2008!

This past Saturday was a nice, lazy day. It was my day off from the kids and I spent the whole morning and early afternoon scrap booking upstairs and listening to the train wreck of whining kids downstairs and a very frustrated Ty-man ready to rip out the rest of his hair.

Suddenly, it was 4 o'clock! I had 90 minutes to get ready and get to the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown Atlanta for Davelanta hosted by Dave of Blogography. He's doing a lot of work-related travel this year and wherever he goes, he gets all us local bloggers together for dinner and gabbing!

I got myself together within 30 minutes (together as in "Dang! She's hawt! She can't be a mom! She's a supermodel!" - don't I wish) and out of the house one hour before meet-time. According to Ty-man's car, the drive was supposed to take 35 minutes.

Yeah, whateva! It actually took 75 minutes thanks to the Georgia Department of Transportation who decided to not only resurface the connector through the main part of Atlanta, but who also took out the 14th street bridge (One of those bridges - 14th, 10th, Courtland, what the hell do I know? I live in the 'Burbs with Tom Hanks!). Fun! Every time I tried a new route, that bitch of a car navigation system would tell me to U-turn and go over a non-existent bridge or get back into stand-still traffic. GPS can suck it!

Finally, I made it and walked into the Hard Rock and almost walked into Dave. I sat down at the bar and got this:


Yes! He made name tags for all of us! And flair! We got flair! The man has talent!

After the shock of a Davelanta name tag and flair, I met Copasetic Beth and her husband Kevin from Houston, We Have a Problem:

(Obviously, the Hard Rock was dark and my iPhone has no flash. So my pictures are... interesting. Sorry.)

As the three of us sat and stared at each other, trying to figure out why we looked so familiar to one another, we started narrowing down the possibilities. High school? Nope. Hometown? Nada. College? YES! The three of us went to the same college (Beth and Kevin were class of 1993 - one year ahead of me)! Kevin was in the Army ROTC with Ty-man! Beth and I lived in the same dorm! How cool! We were able to reminisce about school chums (yes, I said chums) and even found out that for five years after college, we lived just a quarter mile from one another and didn't know it. Small world, people. Small world indeed.

I also met Elizabeth (big Dr. Who fan and fellow X-Phile) from Mentally Rehearsed and Mike & Diane (thanks for the key lime pie!) from Americans in Singapore. We all had a great time YELLING at one another over dinner at the Hard Rock because obviously the goal at the Atlanta Hard Rock is to Love Y'all, Serve Y'all, DEAFEN Y'ALL! My ears are still ringing and my voice is still hoarse. After dinner, we wandered over to the quieter Mexican/Latin fusion restaurant across the street for better conversation (although we were probably yelling over the Hard Rock music still ringing in our ears) and some yummy, tart key lime pie! We all agreed that Davelanta was much cooler than BlogHer and, unfortunately, the evening ended too soon. Elizabeth was off to see The Dark Knight and Dave had an early morning flight back to Seattle. It took me 20 minutes to drive one mile to the interstate and 20 minutes to drive 30 miles home. Georgia DOT! One construction project in downtown Atlanta at a time! Please!

It was an awesome evening and I have to give myself props for not being nervous. A few years back I would have worked myself up into a skyrocketing blood pressure, cold sweat situation over meeting people I didn't know. Saturday? I was nervous about surviving Atlanta traffic and finding parking. Once that was accomplished I was cool as a cucumber. Thanks much Dave and can't wait until next year's Davelanta!