Birthday Weekend

Last weekend, Laura and I took a mini-vacation to Chattanooga. We stayed at The Chattanoogan, which is a pretty nice hotel, even though the shower was weak. Within moments of entering the room, Laura had discovered the ethernet port and was bouncing with as much glee as could be expected from a geek on vacation.

Saturday afternoon we went to the Tennessee Aquarium and looked at weird fish and turtles and other fishy turtley things. [Tuna are some really huge, really scary fish. Really.]

Sunday we Saw Rock City, as commanded by a huge number of billboards, pamphlets, and barn rooftops the day before. To me, the experience of Rock City is far more American than football or flags or cherry pie. There’s something distinctly American about hordes of sweaty, overweight, ethnically-diverse, mostly-middle-class folks swarming over what is basically a kitschy overgrown rock garden, shoving screaming ice-cream-covered children through massive cracks in rocks aptly named ‘Fat Man’s Squeeze’ and gawking at bizarre Day-Glo fairy-tale figures lit in blacklight deep in underground caverns.