Day TWO of our 2020 Vacation - Family Visits Near Athens and in Decatur, Georgia · · PAGE 6. 

November 12, 2020:  Thursday, we checked out of the hotel on DAY 2 and were on the road to see my sister Jean at 10:14 AM.  The distance to the house where my sister lives with her daughter is about eight miles from the hotel.  We arrived at 10:27 AM and sat in the living room to catch up on family stories from Linda, myself, my sister, and some of our shared stories when we were growing up in Dalton, Georgia.  

Linda shared her stories of living in the same county in Florida all her life.  Linda has never lived anywhere other than Osceola County, Florida where she was born in 1954.  That amazes people who have lived in multiple states.

Here is Linda and Jean together on one of three photo attempts to get everything just right.

Chase has learned to look at the camera.  Us old folks do the best we can, but Linda has that GLOWING look she has from her days as the Silver Spurs Rodeo Queen in 1973.  I visited my sister today to introduce Linda since we have been together since February 2019.  The fall colors are evident in the background of these photos.

Chase was well behaved as I was making sure he had water and went out several times today.  We had lunch on the patio as the weather was nice today.  Jean and I went to get the take out meal at Zaxby's and returned to the house using her car, not mine.  We continued our visit until 5:25 PM when it was time to head toward Decatur, Georgia where Linda's daughter lives.  Here is the big interchange where Interstate 85 and Interstate 285 come together on the northeast side of Atlanta.  The locals sometimes use the term "Spaghetti Junction" for this multi-level connection between local and through traffic lanes are converging.

It was 6:50 PM when we pulled into the driveway at Jessica's home.  I have met with Jessica a couple of times when she came to visit her mother Linda during the time since we became a couple in February 2019.  Part of this trip is to see the house Jessica bought during 2020.  It was after dark when we unpacked Linda's car with the things that we need during our visit over this weekend.

Day Three of our 2020 Vacation, Office Hours

November 13, 2020:  DAY 3 was a quiet day on FRIDAY around the house when Jessica went to work at her office.  I spent much of the time today on the computer as Friday usually has some customer phone calls or emails that need to be answered.  Linda and I went out to a dollar store to get a shower mat for use on the road trip.  I also bought a pair of gloves for handling the 18-pound stones when building the fire pit in Jessica's back yard.  Linda and I went out for dinner at a Piccadilly Cafeteria that was located near the dollar store.  I have not been to a Piccadilly for a meal since I lived in the Chattanooga Area around 2011.

Day FOUR of our 2020 Vacation, Building a Fire Pit

November 14, 2020:  Saturday morning we all went to Lowe's in Atlanta to get 36 granite stones for building a fire pit in the back yard.  I checked the inventory at both Lowe's stores before we left Florida.  We brought the steel ring for the fire pit from Lowe's in Kissimmee since they had it in stock.  The store in Atlanta did not have the steel ring in stock.  Each of the shaped granite stones weighed 18 pounds for a load in the back of Linda's SUV of 648 pounds for the 36 stones.

The car was backed up to the house to reduce the distance for moving the shaped granite stones to the back yard.  Each stone weighed about 18 pounds which was a 648-pound load inside the SUV when the back seat was laying flat.  We also brought Linda's RED hand truck with us to move the stones, and a flat shovel.  We did not need the shovel as the ground was flat where we built the fire pit.

The size of the hill where the house is located becomes apparent in this photo from the southeast corner of the lot at street level.

Here is the back yard as viewed from the northwest corner of the house.  The fire pit will be placed in the center of the three tall trees in the center and right side of the photo below on the RED CLAY soil of Georgia.

This image shows the tall trees with the camera rotated 90 degrees to get a wider view upwards.

We did not take a single picture during the placement of the rocks and the steel ring.  Before we started the fire this evening, Jessica went to one of her favorite restaurants to bring home our dinner.  I had a beef brisket with barbecue sauce that was more than I could eat.  I saved half of it for tomorrow night.

The fallen tree limbs from the tall pine trees were used to start the first fire.  The temperature was a bit nippy tonight as we all have on our sweaters.  The wind was changing direction in small degrees.  The dog in this photo is the twin sister to Chase named Star because of the white star-shape patch of fur on her chest. Her fur is "Fluffy" while Chase has a smooth fur coat.

There are three layers of staggered stacked stones with the steel ring at the top of the pit.  The ring was used to set the correct spacing as each layer of stones were placed on the ground and atop the previous layer of stones.  The small dog in this photo is Jessica's newest addition, an Australian Shepherd with a multi-colored fur coat.  Her name is EMBER, appropriate for this picture and the burning fire.

Linda is all wrapped up with blue jeans, a sweater under the coat, and the hoodie pulled up tight around her head.  There are a number of larger logs stacked in the background behind Jessica.  Her neighbor helped to cut up some bigger fallen trees from a previous storm.  Tonight's fire is about clearing some recent smaller limbs on the ground.

As the fire dies down, the muted conversation between mother and daughter turns to getting more limbs to build up the fire again.

The flames are getting smaller...

Some pine needles have been added to the pit, but not all of them are placed in the flames.

The thick smoke comes from the brown, dry pine needles that have been placed on the flames.

A few more small dead limbs have stoked the fire.  The smoke disappeared as the pine needles were consumed.  That limb by Jessica's chair is used a poker to keep the fire going.

Day FIVE of our 2020 Vacation in Decatur, Georgia

November 15, 2020:  Sunday was a day to sleep late, take showers and shave for me.  Jessica slept in later than we did.  I spent time in Jessica's office with my computer reading my usual web sites for the news.  That office room is the room for the cat including the litter box.  The two windows on the East side of the room were slightly open to minimize the litter box smell.  The desk was placed between the two windows. I wore my sweater to stay comfortable.  

Alita is the name of her cat.  The new Australian Shepherd is named Ember.  Ember wants to play with the cat.  The cat is swatting the dog with her left paw hidden behind her head.

The cat wanted to get into the guest room and under the bed.  I caught her by the tail and pulled her out from the bed, and sent her back out into the main part of the house and kept the door closed.  Jessica only has internet from AT&T for streaming video services, no cable TV from Comcast, the local provider for much of the Atlanta area towns.  She showed me a streaming service on the guest room TV that provided one of the Orlando TV stations.  I watched that for a while. I had to put an APP on my personal cell phone to control the streaming web source.

As the afternoon wore on, I packed some of our stuff back into Linda's Chevy Equinox for tomorrow's trip to the North Georgia Mountains and beyond.  I had the remainder of my brisket from yesterday for dinner tonight.  Jessica went out to get some seafood for herself and Linda.  We had two Silky dogs, one Australian Shepherd, and a dark striped cat as part of the distraction before Jessica found a TV show to watch in the living room.