Snow in Atlanta!

Okay. Get ready.
We've got snow in Atlanta. Here it is. Hannah and I committed shopping yesterday at IKEA. Then we had to visit the new gigantic Target at Atlantic Station, right next to the IKEA. Then we remembered that they're making snow at Atlantic Station, every night at 7:30 and 9pm during the holidays.


We hot-footed it over to the gigantic tree -- look how small Hannah is -- so we could catch the snow.

Now, we've been in trouble already, here in Atlanta, over snowmaking plans at my beloved Stone Mountain. So I wondered how the folks at Atlantic Station -- the new, hip, "in" place to live and shop (I could never live here -- not nearly hip enough... I can barely qualify to shop here) -- are justifying their snow making.

What we found: the tree isn't real and neither is the snow. It's foam. So when it started snowing, we didn't get snowed on. We got foamed. For three whole minutes. And THRONGS of Atlantans came with their babies and strollers and cameras to take photographs of their kids in the snow.

We giggled and took photographs of each other, just like everyone else did. It DID look like we were inside a snowstorm and it WAS fun to be foamed. But where does this foam come from? We have a water shortage here in Atlanta, nay, a drought, a major drought. We've all been saving water like crazy. It's all we talk about in polite conversation with strangers. How are we justifying making snow?

We turned into investigative reporters for you. Here's what we found. Okay... but where DOES the water come from? Dunno. Couldn't find the answer online either. Maybe I'm not supposed to be able to find it. Maybe I'm not an investigative reporter.

At any rate, we had fun, had supper at Doc Green's, came home, and collapsed. I'm still recovering from the road, and I crave frequent naps. And egg nog. Think I'll have a nap and an egg nog right now. Not in that order.

Here's my Christmas tree in a little corner of my candle-lighted living room -- it can't compare with the one at Atlantic Station, but I love it just the same. (Actually, I have the tree downstairs this year, with all the ornaments from years past hanging on it haphazardly -- I just sit there in the dark with the twinkling lights and stare and remember -- do you do that?)

Over at the The '07 Tour Blog, I've wrapped up what I learned about my week teaching at Canterbury Woods Elementary School. If you've come here to One Pomegranate, I hope you'll consider subscribing so I don't lose you when I stop posting at the Tour Blog. So far, almost half of you have done that -- I don't know who you are, I just see numbers of subscribers, but I've heard from bunches of you on email, and I so appreciate your kind comments and thoughts -- thank you so much. I want to create something that feels useful and meaningful here -- a real conversation. Whatever that means. We'll figure it out together.

Things won't change -- same stuffs that I chronicled at the tour blog will happen here at One Pomegranate -- it's just that I had this hair-brained, inspired, cockamamie idea that I wanted THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS tour and the travel year to have a definitive beginning and end to it and to have its own home. It will always be there for you to come back to when you want to, when I want to. We'll just go forward right here, at One Pomegranate.

After my egg nog. And my nap.