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Sharon & Barry are gracious hosts: the sushi they fed us was awesome, their cats are sweet and the dress is gonna be great. It’ll melt if I get to close to the candles, but it’ll look good.

There is not a Starbucks in the nearby vicinity of the Perimeter Mall. Well, I’m sure there is, but we couldn’t find it. I lamented that the Perimeter is at the Ashford-Dunwoody exit, cause I know exactly where the Starbucks is off the Chamblee-Dunwoody exit. However, there is a McDonald’s in the Wal-Mart a few blocks from the Perimeter.

The folks at Alterna join the ranks of those at Schwarzkopf in realizing that Kris is a hair genius and should be teaching classes for them.

I have watched too many episodes of America’s Next Top Model, because I couldn’t help but critique the catwalkers harshly at the post-class fashion show. But really, there was one girl whose walk is best described as Trailer Trash Slump Scuffle with Tonya Harding Scowl. And one girl had nipple slippage. And one had man-jaw. (Four of ten of them were excellent, though.)

The class was from 9am to 12pm at the Mariott. I sat in the lobby with my journal, the latest (and my last) issue of Jane and my Caitlin Kiernan offerings. I watched the array of ladies that passed me to head into the Alterna area. I stood out harshly from these women by not having bleached blonde hair, a heavy tan or an all-black dress ensemble. The other chick that stood apart from the crowd had dark brown hair in a tight coif, a monroe piercing and a svelte style-punk checkered dress. Kris said she was from Jacksonville.

We had planned to use the afternoon to visit cool places that Atlanta has that Alabama does not, but the only one we managed was Earthshaking Music. It was like yeah, sure we could drive to Buckhead for a trendy eatery, but the Cheesecake Factory is right there and remember that cool vegetable pizza they have? And yeah, we wanted to go to Urban Outfitters, but it’s on the other end of the loop, and oh, look, the Perimeter has The Limited.

I tried my hand at reading the city map to steer us onto I-20 past the myriad of insterstate (fingerprints have just as many loops and whorls) hovering over the heart of downtown Atlanta. But the result is what usually happens: a spike in my blood pressure and any number of expletives dropped as each and every street that we took either split or ended or turned into another one without any warning. I hate the Atlanta road system with the firey passion of a 1,000 burning suns.

But overall, it was a great trip.

I am an eejit.

From the time I got my Hotmail account in 2000, I’ve never changed the password. (Yes, savvy geekers, I know it should be changed more often than that. Leave me alone.) So I freaked out a bit when my password kept coming back as incorrect this morning. “What???” And the screen tried to helpfully remind me that the password is case sensitive and maybe I forgot that, hmm? To which I huffily replied “Yes, I know” and proceeded to type in ********. No go.

“Well, crap.”

So I created a new password, stifling the mini-panic when they asked me my security-prompt question… the panic that I blame for not realizing it was weird that when I typed the answer, it read BUFFY.

Nay, it was not until I made it into my Hotmail account (whew!) and began to reply to something that I noticed CAPS LOCK was on. My thoughts:

“%@#$! Now my new password is gonna be in all caps.”

Children, I don’t want to tell you how many hours later it was before I realized that was why my original password wouldn’t work this morning. And that little MSN page laughs and says “I tried to tell you.” Oh, shut up, you.

Caps Lock! Who uses that? People from Sports, that’s who. Yeah, whoever updated this week’s Guessperts column, I’m looking at you. Caps lock. Jeez.

In other news, Heather A. and Lorna and her new boyfriend Chris S. came over for dinner last night and that was fun. Except for the shining reality that Kris and I are those people. You know the ones. That talk about their cats? Yeah, we’re those. Damn.

Argh. Missed the movies on Friday due to the monsoon that slowed Kris’ commute home. Without a Paddle may no doubt join the ranks of Van Helsing, Fahrenheit 9/11, The Count of Monte Cristo and so many other movies that we plan to see “on the big screen” and then never see at all.

Also missed: walking to the church once a week to have lunch with my dad. We do dinners now instead (weekly lunches became hard to schedule), but I miss walking downtown to either Mater’s or the Courtyard Cafe. Today I got to reminisce. (We had to cancel dinner two weeks in a row, hence a lunch.) We tried out the Ballpark Cafe; it’s one of those downtown restaurants that’s only open for lunch.

Broad Street is a different place M-F than it is on evenings and Sundays. During working hours, it bustles. But come 5 o’clock, it’s all but dead. Yet, it’s always oddly alive at the same time. For example, on the walk back to the Times, I passed a 2-inch baby skink* on a concrete column on Court Street.

I feel connected to those little skinks for the same reason I feel connected to Mount Shuksan: I’ve drawn them. (You try laboring over something in pencil and see if you don’t bond with it, too.)

* Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Chordata, Class Reptilia, Order Squamata, Family Scincidae, Genus Eumeces, Species fasciatus

I finished Threshold. The end of the book had some definite Donnie Darko-tones. Portions of the book were very Frailty-like. (A movie I still wish Brad & Cindy hadn’t lent us right before we moved into a house with a creepy basement.)

I went snooping around the ‘net today to find out when the season premieres of Gilmore Girls and Joan of Arcadia are, and there it was: a frowny face in my heart because for the first time in six years, there is no Buffyverse premiere to note on the calendar.

Last week, Jaimie tried to check out a specific lite chicklit romance-mystery book for me to breeze through, but it was overdue. Instead, she skimmed the aisles for something that looked interesting but wasn’t too thick. She came away with Threshold by Caitlin Kiernan, presumably because there’s a quote from Neil Gaiman on the cover, and boy do we chicas love us some Neil.

I knew from the first sentence that I would like her writing style. I’m 3/4 through now and have gathered 3 post-its on pages that I wanted to copy a quote from or use an as example. Like an example of how the author describes things: when a character is trying to stay very close to a brick wall so she can remain in it’s thin line of shade, Kiernan says she presses herself scrapbook rosepetal flat. There are dozens of descriptions like that, but that particular one caught my fancy.

The first character we meet is named Chance, and I can’t help but picture Amber Benson. The story is set in Birmingham, and I could kiss Kiernan’s cheek because not one of the characters has had a warbled Southern accent. There ain’t even been no redneck double negatives, y’here? And lo, that is refreshing.

At one point in the narrative, Chance pulls into a parking lot and she’s deliberating something and it’s mentioned that the radio is playing an old Nirvana song. And I laughed cause I just knew that meant she was listening to 107.7 the X. They’re the local alternative radio station in B-ham, but they are notorious for playing the same songs to death, and yeah they dip heavily into the Cobain Archive.

But the thing that caught me the most was her description of Chance returning to her house. Her grandparent’s house, her grandparents who raised her and now her grandfather has died and she is all alone and the house is only hers.

She crosses the threshold, shoescuffed strip of varnished pine to mark her reluctant steps … into the shadows and leftover scraps of night waiting inside; a house to anyone passing by but Chance knows that it’s become something more: a dim and whispering box to hold all the memories of her life, a memorial. Frame for a thousand reminders she doesn’t need because she couldn’t forget if she tried, wouldn’t if she could. And she just wants it to be a house again.

Oh, how right she is.