In the tradition of those of us who can’t do the daily “my day be like” journaling posts, there’s the tradition of the weekly post that sums up what happened the week before. In my nod to one of my favorite TV shows, Last Week Tonight, I’m swashbuckling (🏴‍☠️) the hell out their title and using it on this blog series. Shiver me timbers! And, I’m ripping off my buddy James with the formatting here. Walk the plank!) Also I’m late AF as two whole weeks of January already passed. GyattDayum 2024 is already faster than ’23. OK, let’s dive in.

🎄So Xmas came and went with little fanfare other than the usual merriment of a Japanese/Afro-American family with very little time and money can make on such occasions. We exchanged gifts with each other, everyone got generally what they wanted but most of all just was glad to be able to enjoy time off with each other, my mom and oldest brother.

🛣️ Big Ass Hank (our RV) got some time on the road — we hustled down to Orlando for some R&R in a warmer place than metro Atlanta. We used our Boondockers Welcome privileges for a nice layover spot in Live Oak, FL when traffic got too much and continued on down the next day. Normally this is a 6 hour drive, but sometime between 2008 and now, about 5 million more people decided to move into the space between us and Central Florida, making I-75 look like a 320 mile urban expressway complete with crack-ups and speed traps every 20 miles. A train between ATL and ORL is needed.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Once in Orlando, we kinda didn’t do much except be in awe of our campsite on Lake Dora (a COUNTY park with cheap camping that blows some of the really expensive sites away) and Old Town Orlando’s Eola Park area. Orlando is a nice town even if you’re not visiting the theme parks; worth the visit just to hang out and chill for 2 days.

👨🏾‍💻 I actually only took a few days off for the holiday; my on-call shift usually has nothing going on this time of year and I work from home. But there were some bonkers edge cases coming into my queue and I really wish I could talk…vent about them here. I’m compiling them elsewhere, and someday dammit…someday I’m gonna sing like Dionne Warwick!

😷 Of course in the middle of all this, my entire household got sick! It wasn’t COVID but, that didn’t stop my doctor from probing my schnoz…

🎌 There’s lots of Japanese related stores around our part of Atlanta, and we kinda never visit them… So since the kiddos had their Xmas/お年玉 money burning holes in their pockets, we decided to check out Tokyo Kuma (which seemingly got TikTok’d and Instagrammed to death in the last 4 months) and Kinokuniya Atlanta (which has been a 20 year pipe dream ’til now because I swear they were 6 months from opening a location in Buckhead in 1999, but it didn’t happen. Were those just rumors?) Needless to say, I’m glad these are a little out of the way for me, else I’d be treating it like the Daiso or DonKi I so miss and desparately want over here.

🚊 I’ve decided to try my best to advocate officially for bringing a good transport solution to at least my part of Atlanta and Northern Georgia. The ATLTrains concept along with Beltline Lightrail and I-285 BRT concepts need to be combined somehow. Going down to central Florida and seeing Brightline along with SunRail, Lynx and the fledgling but strong grassroots changes in THAT area makes me think we still have a fighting chance up here. And Atlanta ain’t doing nothing but getting bigger. It’s high time we all started thinking regionally and collectively about solutions not just involving 2 ton machines on asphalt all the time.

And that kinda catches us up! If you read this far, you’ve got stamina. Or you’re just really bored. Either way, thank you and see ya next week!