By the time you read this, you probably will have heard about the EF3ish tornado that roared through downtown Newnan, Georgia at midnight. Know that my family and I are fine and feeling very, very fortunate.

UPDATE 2021-03-29: Still no estimate on when Internet might be restored. They're still working on digging out downtown. Rumor had it that the high school might have to be bulldozed, but they've decided to try and save it. Hooray?

UPDATE 2021-03-30: Back online! The utility company says that in three neighborhoods they will have to rebuild their network essentially from scratch. That's terrible. Ours was only out for four days, and I was already suffering intense withdrawal.

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Reported by the Newnan Times-Herald on October 29, 2020:

Players, parents rattled after shots fired near Senoia ballfield

After the second shot, players were lying on the ground in the dugout, according to parents from one of the teams playing.

Adam Griffin said he yelled for everybody to get off the field, and by the time he got to the dugout, the coach had the boys lying face down in the dirt.

Griffin, a military veteran who served time in Iraq said he picked up his stepson and directed everyone to go into the bathroom – the safest place. Once all the kids were safely inside, he said he went back out.

That’s when someone yelled "it's only a deer."

After that, everyone came out of where they were hiding and the game resumed.

Because everyone knows those stupid deer can barely hold guns, much less aim them.

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Movie reviews part 1821 through 1823 in a series of indeterminate length:

167. (1821.) Reckless (1935)
This movie's script is, frankly, bad. (What starts as a romantic musical comedy collapses into bland melodrama based on current events with a preachy ending.) It seems the studio paired William Powell and his sweetheart Jean Harlow with the intention of overcoming that shortcoming. I don't think Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone could have saved it.

168. (1822.) People Will Talk (1951)
This anti-hypocrisy morality play could only work with someone like Cary Grant in the title role. Dr. Noah Praetorius' self-righteousness would be insufferable without Grant's impish charm.

169. (1823.) Lost in America (1985)
Albert Brooks and Julie Haggerty yell at each other across America. The comedy exists largely in what is not said, as the characters are blind to their own absurdity. It definitely has its moments, not the least of which is when the couple's RV travels through Atlanta and the delightful hamlet of Newnan, Georgia:

Thirty-five years later, Lagrange Street still looks like this on the way to Newnan High School. Of course, in 1985, that sign was pointing to I-85 Exit 8. They now call it Exit 41, which is just as well since they added an additional exit just up the road when they moved the hospital from Hospital Road to Poplar Road to accommodate the giant Summergrove residential community built on the east side of the Interstate back at the turn of the 21st century. They call the new exit 44, which is probably a better name than 8½.

More to come.

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Two years ago, I helped my mother with invitations and other aspects of preparing for her 50th high school class reunion. Part of that included developing art and layout.

The reason I mention that now is this placard recently spotted in the local public library:

That's my design at the top of that flyer, presumably taken from the reunion website.

It's kind of cool to see something that I had a hand in placed in a cultural archive. I'm immortal!

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I love sunsets.

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The fair came to Coweta County last week.

It came for the kids.

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I see deer everywhere these days. Literally every day. Deer here, deer there, deer everywhere. That's not paranoia talking, either. I have pictures!

Ok. That's not a great picture. But that really is a deer, and it was only the first of four I saw last night!

Even if you go to bed at sundown, you probably know that after dark suburban neighborhoods are teaming with raccoons, possums, and armadillos roaming between the religiously maintained lawns and hedges. Owls can be heard marking their treetop territory, and it's not summer without bats overhead hunting gnats and mosquitoes. Those critters are everywhere, but they're small. Deer are big, larger than dogs. You think you'd notice if they were around. Don't be fooled.

I've been letting Dad's dogs out at about 2AM for the past two months. Almost every night, I see deer. This week alone, on Sunday, I spotted a pair of does napped by a fence. On Monday a family of four walked calmly across the road in front of my car. On Tuesday another grazed at the end of the driveway without regard for my presence. The dogs chased it away briefly; then it came back and finished its meal. That was a determined, hungry deer.

Where do these deer go every day? Do they have a lair? Do they retreat to their secret underground deer cave? Do they squat in abandoned crack houses? (Dad watches a lot of Ancient Aliens on History Channel. He'd probably insist they go back to their spaceships.)

I'm not trying to be an alarmist about this. It's too late to build a wall. Deer. Are. Everywhere. It's time to stop fighting them and learn to live in harmony. And build bigger gardens: deer eat a lot of greens.

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Forest Lawn Memorial Park is just around the corner from my Dad's new house. It's been there since 1956, which means it was there when I was in high school. I must have passed it hundreds of times, but I'd never been in. Not until this week when the beautiful weather made a side trip necessary.

I've never liked it. Oak Hill is the older cemetery closer to town. As previous posts on this blog prove, I like it fine. Forest Lawn, on the other hand, has always seemed to me more like a small, sterile golf course than a cemetery. Now that I've been in, I'll second my own first impression.

I've never been a believer that cemeteries should remain solemn and unused plots of ground. If you can't celebrate the lives of the dead, why remember them at all? Besides, a tiny metal plate with a stack of fake flowers is hardly how I'd want anyone to remember me.

The rules are posted by the entrance. The first one is no kids (living ones, I assume). The second is no recreational equipment (read: no fun). The third is no pets ("Leashed Or Unleashed": even fish are out). That sounds awfully exclusionary, but read to the bottom and you'll see that "Properly Attired Walkers And Joggers Are Welcome Except During Funeral Services." Thanks for that offer, but I think we'll keep on passing by.

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What? I skipped a post again? Dammit.

In my defense, I've been busy these past few days. As you know, I've been supervising Dad's medications and dog-sitting Rambo and Scarlett (and trying to make July not jealous). Also, there have been issues with our commercial rental property, including an AC failure and an (unrelated) fallen tree that damaged the roof and destroyed the gutter over the back door that has a bad tendency to flood. Add to those that I have an end-of-July deadline on a coding project. And I helped one friend build some shelves and another fix her cable system. And my own ISP was down for most of Friday and Saturday. And I've been trying to find time to write more. And and and and.

But that's all just excuses.

On the up side, I did just recently discover that my phone takes great panoramic photos, a feature which I have been using exclusively to take photos of clouds.

So that's good. And that's enough.

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Seen from parking lot
the sunset's a forest fire.
Hooray pollution!

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