then it was Tuesday... (and Wednesday)

So I got up the next day and put on my green shirt to go to work for four hours.

And did some things at home, ran a few errands, and lingered around until about 6 o'clock. Packed up and left to go back to Decatur to spend the night, so I would have a head start on driving to SC on Wednesday. Went for a shorter than usual walk to exercise dogs before leaving ATL during eight o'clock traffic craziness. But it was not really bad, since I was going in the opposite direction of most everyone else who had left for work twenty minutes late and was desperately trying to make up the lost time by traveling at the speed of sound.

The drive was pleasant, as I was immersed in a story I had started earlier in the week, reading talking books/recorded CDs. (Not my usual choice of material, but so intriguing I wanted to drive on to SC Tuesday night to get to the end and rest assured all the right people survived... weird stuff about time travel and psychics. They got sorted out Wed. morning by the time I got to Greenville.) I had a nice visit with my pen pal. We made plans to go to the 66th Division reunion, June 2013 in Nashville. And talked about him completing the paperwork I had printed to apply for the French Legion of Honor medal that could be awarded for his Army service in 1944. I read something about it in the newspaper a year or so ago: a handful of WWII vets being awarded France's highest honor. I clipped the article, kept it in mind, finally pursued it by locating an embassy in Atlanta. Looked up an address, phoned for more info., and had the required form emailed to print and take for him to complete. I hope he will get family to help him gather the necessary paperwork, and will send it all in to qualify for receiving the award.

Drive back to Columbus:  not so much fun. Due to hitting commuter traffic at 5:30. Listening to the radio, I heard the south bound lanes on the west side of the perimeter are all blocked due to a semi-trailer accident: the south bound lanes on I-285 on the east side are moving like cold molasses; traffic on I-75 is barely creeping along through mid-town... arrgggghhh. So I got off and went through town, as best as I could, for someone only vaguely, slightly familiar with surface travel in north Decatur. If no one else had been on the roads, I could have made that part of the trip in about twenty minutes, but it took me an hour... though still much better than sitting on the six lane interstate highway going Nowhere, while the overturned truck gushed a mystery liquid across the lanes.

Got home about dark again. That was about seven hours of driving.