A few of the highlights from this trip (in random order):

• Direct flights rule. Seems like I rarely get the luxury of not having a layover where I either have to sprint across the entire airport to catch my connecting flight, or I have to sit around waiting for hours (Sidenote: why are airport chairs so damn uncomfortable?)



• The Sundial bar/restaurant – rotating 360-degrees at almost 800 feet above the city. (The Westin is the tallest hotel in the western hemisphere, or so I was told 90 times this weekend.)
• My dinner was Deconstructed Fried Oyster Tacos and Pasta De Mer (clams, shrimp, white fish, buccatini pasta, bouillabaisse broth, rouille) – it was scrumptious!
• The Georgia Aquarium was awesome – and a nice, quick walk from the hotel through Centennial Olympic Park where the bombing was during the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics. The aquarium is the largest in the world, with tons of ocean life in its 10-million gallons of fun. I instantly recognized the Whale Shark from an episode of Diego. (see photo above)
• Got a little carried away at the gift shop, as I bought each family member a gift souvenir to a place they’ve never been too. But everyone seems to like what they got – Ella is excited to have her first “real” necklace and Erin was sporting her cute jellyfish t-shirt today.
• Working at home I have little time where I can hang out discussing web geekiness like “optimizing conversion rates” and “reverse funnel analysis” – so having a bar full of web marketers to chat with was a blast.



• The number of bald/bearded men in my industry niche is impressively high. Oddly many of the others are super-skinny male models in three-piece suits with full mops of perfectly disheveled hair. Strange.
• Met the dude that coined the phrase “search engine optimization” which is a big part of my career. He coined it back in 1995 when almost no one was thinking of search engines and much less site rankings! Best part of the story is that it was his client Jefferson Starship that pushed him to learn SEO, and he must have done well, since he later wrote a rock opera with them.
• Got to see old pals Jeff and Dawn – the highlights are fuzzy since we were imbibing, but they include: Jeff scouting the layout of Atlanta, learning that The Macerana can still pack a dance floor – or at least at Metro Diner at 2am, Ann stopping her street dancing to offer a panhandler a nickle, stats’ row of bathrooms each adorned with its own decade – next time I want to get a beer tap booth and see if I can pee in each decade.
• And as always with my trips, the best part is getting home to my girls.