As I sat down to write this post Biscuit threw up in the other room. It was the yellow frothy kind of dog vomit. Many years ago, when I had just taken “companionship” of my first dog (as an adult) an older friend assured me that, “yellow frothy dog vomit wasn’t anything to worry about.” While that may be true in the abstract, I could have lived without it tonight.

I’ve been away from the blog for a while, though my sporks-based Wall-E review has kept sporksforall humming along. Very much like Wall-E himself.

I don’t know if I’ll return to faithful blogging through aught eight. I want to, but life gets in the way of sporks.

I’ve started a new (interim-again!) job as of two days ago. Four years ago when my boss hired me to be the interim thing that I’m now the permanent thing, I got sick. So sick that during the networking event with the University President, I stayed in my hotel room at the Marriott with fever and chills.

This year we did our slog/sling through the South early. I came back and have managed to get a massive cold (including fever and chills) and a nice case of laryngitis. Did I mention that my new job requires talking? It does. And I just don’t sound right

I mentioned to my boss that I had been sick the last time she gave me an interim job. She said, “I remember. Maybe this job change thing is more stressful than you think.” Could be, indeed. Also stressful is travel. And bombardment.

My favorite day of the “sling” is always the day Honey and I escape to the closest Spanish Moss draped city. Our usual escape is Charleston, but this year we went to Savannah.

As my few (and loyal!) readers know, I like me a National Park and will take a National Monument in a pinch. Thus, did I drag Honey to Fort Pulaski on Tybee Island.

Not brushed up on the Civil War of late? Here’s what happened. Fort Pulaski was started in 1829 to protect Savannah. (Tybee Island is 15 miles from Savannah). Savannah has always been an important port/city to Georgia and is one of the oldest cities in the Southeast. Note, please, that its importance is in no way related to Paula Dean.

Anyway, this being the 19th century and engineering being what it was, not to mention it’s bloody hot in the South in the summer, they didn’t so much finish the damn thing by 1860. South Carolina (a mere fifty miles away) seceded from the Union in January of 1861. Georgia followed suit and the governor ordered the occupation of the fort. The state then gave it the Confederacy. How kind. Lessee–”we’ll take this from the gumment (that’s how you say it) and give it to this other gumment. Yep.”

Righto, so in April of 1861, the War starts in earnest (you knew that right? April 1861 to April 1865) and the Naval blockade of Southern ports began.

Here’s the thing about Pulaski. The folks who built it: they thought it was invincible.

By November 1861, the Federals were encamped at Hilton Head and the Confederates got worried about that and abandoned land forces on Tybee EXCEPT for those at Pulaski. Whoopsie.

The Federals marched onto Tybee. The Confederates in Pulaski though they were safe. The guns of the day only went a mile and Pulaski is more than a mile from Tybee. The Union fellows, though, they had this new gun. Those Federals, always with the new guns. Must have been that industry infrastructure. They shot up the fort. Seemed like they might get to the powder magazine. 30 hours into the siege of the invincible fort, the Confederates surrendered.

The National Park Service notes, “Today the fort serves not only as a memorial to the valor and dedication of those connected with its construction, bombardment, and defense, but in a larger sense as a history lesson on the elusiveness of invincibility.”

I hope you can see that I get it. Not invincible.

I did survive that week and may yet survive my cold, my laryngitis, my new job, and my own vulnerabilities. I am certain, though, as certain as I can be, that invincibility eludes me. And I’ve never run very fast. Mofo needs to slow down and shows no sign of it.

Honey and I are just back from a visit to my parents, which we also turned into our second viewing of stages of the Tour de Georgia. I appreciate that California went with “of” instead of “de” for its bike race. Georgia, being Georgia, couldn’t. I grew up near a street in Atlanta called Ponce de Leon which was pronounced “ponts dee lee on” by all who knew it. Or just “ponts.” So Tour Dee Georgia it is. Ponce is home, for what it’s worth, to the last project Frederick Law Olmstead worked on. One of the Olmstead parks was the site of the only double date my brother and I ever went on. My boyfriend at the time was impressed by how smooth my younger brother was. But then, that boyfriend turned out to be gay. Of course so did I. I don’t think it had anything to do with the date, though, or the Omstead park, or the Southern pronunciation of a Spanish explorer’s name. Whatever.

Anyway, the bike race was cool. My favorite day was our day in Chickamagua (Walker County, though not the county seat) where we watched the beginning of the time trial. The woman dressed up in the “confederate widow tells all” outfit talking on her cell phone after the pretty bicycles and their pretty riders had launched was the TDG at its core.

One of my favorite tidbits about my home state is that each county in the state was not allowed to be farther than one day’s horseback ride (round trip) from its farthest corner to its county seat. There is no actual law to that effect (though I was taught differently in 8th grade Georgia history). There are currently 159 counties in Georgia and that is the maximum there can be according to the state constitutional amendment in 1945. (The high was 161, but two of them were absorbed into Fulton–county seat=Atlanta–during the depression). I grew up in DeKalb (county seat=Decatur and pronounced deekab).

The biggest county by population is Fulton, the smallest Taliaferro. (816,006 to 2077). The largest by area is Ware and the smallest is Clarke. In case you’re wondering, Taliaferro is in the top third of the state and toward the east. The county seat is Crawfordville and the county is pronounced “Toliver.” See. Ware County is in far southern Georgia and Waycross is the county seat. A good chuck of the Okeefanokee swamp is in Ware county Clarke county is where Athens and the University of Georgia are.

One day we spent in Lumpkin County and stood next to some people who didn’t know how to pronounce its county seat. It’s Duh lon ee gah.

My dad can name over 100 of the 159 counties. And he’s from Alabama.

My parents are building a house in Gilmer County (county seat=Ellijay). Their house is near Cartecay. Which sounds like something “Nell” would say in that stupid Jodie Foster movie. Which made Honey and I start doing our Jodie Foster/Nell impression while driving through Gilmer County.

My dad and I tried to get a map of adjacent Fannin County (county seat=Blue Ridge) in October. The guy at the gas station looked at him and said, “there ain’t no maps of Fannin County.” We found one at the next gas station. What he meant was, “there ain’t no maps of Fannin County for men from Fulton county driving Mercedes and wearing Joseph Banks clothing.”

My parents want us to leave us the Gilmer County house when they die. It’s in a beautiful valley overlooking the Blue Ridge mountains. Honey thinks we could be survivalists there in Cartecay. I’m reserving judgment. It is on Tickenetly Road.

I am disappointed to learn that Webster County (county seat=Preston, in the lower third of the state toward the west) was renamed Kinchafoonee.

One night we stayed in Gainesville (Hall County seat) and went to a restaurant that was using our meals to create its web site. Before we were served things, they got photographed. No one said a word about it. They’d just bring the food out and take a picture of it. The photographer guy kept licking his fingers. Honey was clever and ordered her salad without walnuts and it didn’t get its picture taken.

I’ll write more about the trip, but I hope you’ve enjoyed your Georgia county entry.

I like the Dolly Parton song from Transamerica:

Well I can’t tell you where I’m going, I’m not sure of where I’ve been
But I know I must keep travelin’ till my road comes to an end
I’m out here on my journey, trying to make the most of it
I’m a puzzle, I must figure out where all my pieces fit
Like a poor wayfaring stranger that they speak about in song
I’m just a weary pilgrim trying to find what feels like home

My mother often asks when I’ll move back to Georgia. No time soon, if ever, but looking out from that view in Gilmer County, I know what I miss.