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Still enjoying a quiet afternoon in the Devilled Egg/Rubber Poet kitchen, still writing up the Main Street Drag from Friday morning. The next school was a little bit older, probably a middle school. One of the groups of kids was a photography class. They had each been given a Polaroid camera and were allowed to take 4 photos each. It was fun to watch the kids sizing up the cars, trying to decide how to use their allotment of 4 photos.

I've got the iBook set up on the counter in Elizabeth's gorgeous, comfy kitchen. She and Barry told us that they tend to congregate in the kitchen and I have to say, I could get used to spending time in a kitchen like this! I processed a few more photos this morning, but the cell modem is a sl-o-o-w connection and it's having a hard time uploading them. While it's working on it I'll write another update.

It's Monday morning and we're in Baton Rouge for the day. Elizabeth and Barry had some errands to run, so I have a little quiet time this morning to get caught up on the photos and weblog. OK, so where was I? I think I was up to Friday morning's Main Street Drag.

It's about 10:45. We're about to check out of the hotel and head for the farewell brunch. Then we'll get on the road to Baton Rouge to see Elizabeth and Barry and Charlotte. I probably won't post again until sometime tonight, but I'll try to get caught up on the trip report and photos tomorrow during the day.

The parade was successfully completed and Peggy and Chris have gone home. I've gotten so far behind in my weblog that I don't know how I'm going to write up the entire experience. I still haven't written up the Art Car Ball from Thursday night! I'm feeling a bit of sensory overload.

we're at the parade! I'm writing from the car! the cams are working! life is good!!!!

We're leaving for the parade in 20 minutes!!! I just finished going over the car with Windex. Takes longer than you might think to go around all those little fishes. Georg is packing the car. Peggy is making sandwiches. She has the most beautiful dragonfly wings to wear while she walks alongside.

The cams. Not working. Verizon. Buttheads. Let's just leave it at that and move on. My friends Peggy and Chris just got here a moment ago. We asked for rooms near each other, but we're on the first floor & they're on the second. At least we're in the same hotel!

OK, it's 9 am. I've just gotten off the phone with tech support at Verizon again. It seems to be working. I don't know why, and I don't know why it didn't work before. But I'm running a test right now and my blobby, unfocused photos of the hotel room are being uploaded successfully. So let's cross our fingers. The Main Street Drag starts in an hour.

Now that I've had a chance to sleep on it, here are some further impressions of the Art Car Ball. We got there early, so I had plenty of time to take pictures of the other cars as they arrived. We saw an amazing laundry car, covered with bottles of detergent, irons and messages and laundry. On top of the car was a washer and dryer, and ironing board and a clothes-line (the kind shaped like a big metal T). At night, they had strung christmas lights inside the detergent bottles so they randomly lit up!

Either Verizon Wireless are loser morons, or I am. Because it's still not working! I spent a long time on the phone with tech support this afternoon, and he did something to my account and I was able to dial in. But that was with the cell phone plugged directly into the laptop. But when I plug it into the USB hub, it says I have a bad password!

The drive from Baton Rouge to downtown Houston was an easy 4 and a half hours. Then another frantic hour driving around downtown Houston to find our hotel. But we're finally here!

It's about 7 am, and we just need to say our goodbyes to Elizabeth and Barry before we head out. I want to get to Houston early so we have time to check in, get settled, clean the car, etc before the art car ball.

I'm writing from the lovely home of the lovely Elizabeth Cherry Owen. The trip took much less time than we had expected -- about 8 hours from Atlanta to Baton Rouge. Since we gained an hour, we ended up getting here around 4:30 in the afternoon.

I slept great last night! I was pretty tired after all that driving. Georg unfortunately didn't sleep as well. Maybe he should have brought his own pillow like I did. When I woke up this morning, the first thing I did was run down and make sure my car was OK. The last time I left an art car in a hotel parking lot overnight, it was seriously vandalized. But today everything is fine!

We went into downtown Atlanta to have dinner at Mary Mac's Tea Room, a restaurant Georg had heard about. They're supposed to have the best fried chicken in the country. It was good, and it seems to be an Atlanta tradition. But I have to admit, for a famous restaurant it suffered in comparison to the unassuming Gary's Bar-B-Que, which we had stumbled onto earlier today.

We're in Atlanta! I'm writing from our hotel room, which kindly offered internet access in the room. It's near the airport and seems to be geared towards business travelers. It took about 7 hours to get from Durham to Atlanta, including a generous half hour to eat lunch at Gary's Bar-B-Que, a fantastic barbecue joint near Charlotte.

It's 9:15 am and we're leaving. My next post will be from Atlanta. Houston or Bust!

It's almost 11 pm. We're packed, the glue is drying on the last doodads, various batteries are recharging, and the color in my hair is setting. We're just about ready to go!

Hard to believe that by this time tomorrow, we'll be half-way to Atlanta. I went back into the office this morning and took care of a couple of things I had forgotten. Then did a bunch of last-minute shopping. Also stopped by the phone store and had them explain how to set up voice mail on my cell phone.

After a long night (a very long night) of testing, I think I've finally identified and solved the ftp problem. Seems that Sitecam can't handle two ftp uploads at once. I had the cameras set to both take photos at the same time. So Sitecam was initiating two uploads at exactly the same time. Which it didn't like at all.

Spent most of the day decorating the car and I'm completely fried. It was hot and the car is parked right in the sun. But I got a lot done. In fact, I'm just about finished. There are a few odds and ends I'll try to get to tomorrow, but I had to leave for Houston with it just like this, I'd feel OK about it.

I think I've got it! We've tested the web cams from the living room: running the laptop off the battery, running two cams, uploading via cellphone, with the web page displaying the most recent photo and reloading itself once a minute. Success!

What an exciting time I've had since my last post. Got home from work last night around 9:30 and sat down to post a short update, only to find that Greymatter, the software that runs this journal, had completely conked out on me. Instead of the login screen I got a string of compile errors. Eek!

Again, not a whole lot to report today. We tried sending email to the phone, which worked great. And spent a lot of time playing the silly games on the cell phone to run down the battery. They said we have to completely drain and recharge it three times before we can use the car adapter.

You know, getting home from work at 10 pm, when you have to be up at 4 the next morning to be on the radio, pretty much sucks. But what sucks worse is getting home from work at 10 pm and discovering that one of your dogs has used your kitchen floor as her bathroom. Again.

I could use some good news this morning. So here's some: Cingular gave me no problems whatsoever about returning the phone and cancelling the plan with no charge. I was worried about it because I had heard from friends that sometimes cell phone companies try to stick you with a "nonrefundable activation fee," even if you've never made a single call.

So Georg drops me off at the mechanic this morning to pick up my car. The car is there, you will recall, to finish repairing the damage from a break-in a few weeks ago. I wasn't too upset about the break-in, even though the damage was fairly expensive, because they hadn't managed to get the CD player. I guess it was wedged in there too well or something.

Finally got a cell phone that will work for me. It's by Kyocera. I checked their website and they are compatible with Macs. They even had a PDF on the site with instructions for connecting to a Mac. And they had the data cable at the store, and I do get a signal at home. We're good to go!

On my lunch break today I walked over to the gift shop that sells Punky Colors. That's my favorite brand of hair color, and I'm wanting to dye my hair the same color as the car. Unfortunately, they don't sell it anymore! All they had left was two jars of Apple Green. That's a nice color, another favorite of mine, but I need Lagoon Blue.

Ran a few errands this evening. I'm trying to whittle away at my list of "things to do before we leave" but somehow the list seems to be growing faster than I can check things off.

Yesterday Georg and I went out to practice stick shift driving. He did really well. The main thing, I think, is not letting yourself get frustrated. Just taking it in stride, not getting upset when you stall out. Because every stalls out when they first learn.

Got the car back from Merchants yesterday, all newly aligned and balanced. It was a nice day so I got a little bit more done on decorations afterwards. I would have done more but I ran out of E6000 glue. It really is the best glue for plastic toys.

Last Sunday my friend Lisa, the car cam queen, came over and spent the day helping me set up equipment for the trip. The plan is to use a laptop and cell modem to upload photos during the parade. So folks who can't come will be able to see a bit of what's going on as it happens!

It's been quite a long time since I last wrote here. Rather than make useless apologies or excuses, I'll just point you to my other web log if you're interested in what I've been up to all this time, and plow ahead with the car's current state.