Not much to CDC

I have to say, the low point of my trip to Atlanta yesterday was the CDC Visitor's Center. Because of stupid 9/11, we were relegated to taking only a tour of the Visitor's Center, so no, I didn't see anything cool at all. However, I did have to pass through about a gajillion security checkpoints in order to see this nothing. The Visitor's Center is an absolute joke. But not a funny joke. A sad, why did I sit in a minivan all morning, can't we go get lunch kind of joke. It is a self-guided tour of one room complete with mannequins and games suitable for 12 year olds. All of the information is intended for a group of elementary school children. So my question for the CDC is, why in the world would you say, "Yes group of Masters level students from the UAB School of Public Health, please come see our crappy visitors center"? Wouldn't you think they would say, "actually, the visitors' center is geared toward younger audiences.....and even they think it sucks." I don't know.

Luckily, it got better once we left there. We had lunch at a place called "Doc Chey's" which was just like Jobe noodles (price and all.) It rocked like a monkey. I had Chinese Lo Mein and I ate the entire bowl. Which was a horrible mistake since I was in the center seat in the back row of the world's most uncomfortable van. It was horrible- seats were hard as rocks, there was absolutely NO leg room, and the windows were filthy from the inside. Enterprise rent-a-car was supposed to get us an 8 passenger van, and instead we have a 7 seater. Thank goodness one of our people didn't show up...not that it would have affected me cause no one else would have been squeezing into the back row. Still...it was bad.

Finally, we went to the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory to check it out and meet with some people. Their building is SOO nice. Richard was so jealous and kept commenting the whole time about how we need this and that. I kept telling myself, they pay an arm and a leg and their firstborn child to attend that school...so they should have all that stuff. We, on the other hand, pay the monetary equivalent of breadcrumbs to attend our school and its still a relatively nice building. So, as the bumper stickers so eloquently put it, "Quit yer bitchin'." It was a nice place though....we got some really good ideas about stuff we could do with our building that we wouldn't have to pay for, so I hope we can do some of that.

Well, that's basically my review of the trip that turned out not to be so bad, but could definitely have used improvement. Here's a recap of a few of the lessons learned:
1. CDC Visitors Center sucks.
2. Doc Chey's rocks.
3. Enterprise Rent-A-Car sucks.
4. Chevy Venture's are uncomfortable. Really. Uncomfortable.
5. Going to Emory when you come from Alabama is depressing.
6. Telling Richard that you're sleepy will ensure that he will not let you sleep at all. Spazz.
7. Never sit in the center seat of anything. Always a bad idea.

Laters!