georgia on my mind

Wow. The demand for an updated post has been debilitating (thanks for your concern, Feather). For those of you wondering why I haven’t been blowing up my blog for the past week, don’t fear – I was, in the words of Willie Nelson, on the road again. This time in Dahlonega, Georgia at Southeast Tourism Society Marketing College, a series of “classes” that when completed earn the student a TMP, whatever that means.

Luckily, after boarding a plane to Atlanta and riding in the car for an hour to reach the booming metropolis that is Dahlonega (pronounced duh-LAHN-uh-guh), I met up with some fellow tourism friends – Mary-Kathryn from Oxford (Olive eats Rebels), Kappi from Clarksdale, Susan from DeSoto County and Paige from Greenwood, my old stomping grounds.

I have to say that though the intent of the trip was to fill my head with knowledge of all things marketing, perhaps not surprisingly, the most fun was had outside the classroom. Crazy, I know. We had dinner at a winery one night, which was really lovely. My fear of food-borne illness prevented me from really eating, but it was nice nonetheless. Dahlonega is about 12 miles from an outlet mall, and I was able to pick up some Under Armour essentials for Kell and some cute yellow shoes for me. We also had a couple of lunches at Moe’s, which is now my new favorite place and had several breakfasts at Chick-fil-A (I recommend the Chick-n-Minis).

Moving past the food, we did girly things, too. We painted each other’s nails (mine were Dutch Tulips), drank wine in our pajamas and watched Big Love (for those of you who don’t watch it, it’s disturbing, yet you can’t look away – a sort of train wreck of a TV show). Mary-Kathryn tried to help me embrace my curly hair, and one afternoon was spent tubing down the Chestatee River. I use the term “tubing” loosely as it was more like floating down the river while you happen to be in a tube. At any rate, due to the low water, our rear ends kept getting scraped, and Kappi spent much of the trip either upside down or stuck between rocks.

All in all, a good trip, but I was glad to get home. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post dedicated to Election Day.