I like to make the best use of my time. Between holding a full-time job, being a full-time mom and wife and trying to have a full-time life of my own, there's just not much time to go around.

So, like today, I use the five-minute walk from my building to my car to return or make personal phone calls. A friend had left a message about the $130 speeding ticket he got this morning, and I was calling to gloat. I've never had a ticket. Over the course of the message, I realized I have had three accidents, though, and that's probably worse. So I'm musing about my mishaps:

• Totaling my roommate's car on OU-TX weekend. (It really wasn't my fault. I was turning left, with a light, when a guy plowed into me, running his red. My friend, who was in the Pride, had gotten sick and took the band bus back to Oklahoma, leaving me with her car. I was getting on the interstate to head back, and bam. I escaped, soaked -- a cup filled with water exploded on impact -- with a nasty bump and bruise on my forehead, but had to drive the smashed Sentra the 200 miles back to Oklahoma. Both driver's side windows had to be covered in plastic, that door wouldn't open. The thing barely drove. But I took it home, to my roommate, who'd just made the last payment on it.)
  
  
• Backing into a tree. (It was more like rolling, really. Adam and I lived in Albuquerque and I was on my way to pick up my Little Sister -- as in Big Brothers, Big Sisters. She got to see me in tears, telling her we couldn't go see a movie after all, as the back window of my Blazer was shattered. I'd stopped to get cash, and as I paused in the parking lot, writing in my checkbook, I let the truck roll backwards. And more. And more. The tree stood; the window didn't.)
  
  
• Rear-ending the fifth car in a six-car accident. (Again with the "not my fault." Four cars in front of me on the I-35 access road hit the cars in front of them, and I just followed in line. Those of you in the Norman area know just where I mean, getting on I-35 north at Lindsey. It's a hazard. And yes, if I'd been following at a safe distance, yadda yadda ... It was the Blazer again. Boy, those '89s hold up well. It wrecked the back-end of the little sports car in front of me, and all I got was a teeny split in the grill.)
  
  

So, I'm recounting all of these accidents in my head -- and I don't count tearing the side mirror of my Saturn wagon last summer when ("Mommy, you hit the house!") pulling out of the garage -- as I start looking around the parking structure for my car. Which isn't there. Turns out I wasn't on 3 today, after all.

I'd parked in a lot on a slightly different part of campus, for ease in getting out to run my lunchtime errands. So I wasted 10 minutes speed-walking from the garage to that lot. So much for being a time saver.

And I'll scratch yours.

World Star Gazette is a new "blog newspaper." It has a front-page look that highlights recent -- and ostensibly good -- blog entries. They've got a couple from me out there, so I should help them pimp.

Check it out, if you haven't already. And you can submit your own stuff at the bottom of the page.

So I finally have a few minutes to write about my Atlanta trip. The funny thing is, the farther I get away from it, the more what I want to say changes. I'd wanted to write about all of these things in a series of short posts, but it didn't work out that way!

The first day I was there, I was desperate to complain about how bad my first night had been. The Oscars blinked on and off my TV all evening, because the hotel's cable kept dropping. Adam kept me in the loop with text messages, but I'd really been looking forward to watching them all alone. My room service meal was 45 minutes late -- 45 minutes AFTER the 45 minutes they'd told me it was going to take. So I'd done a lot of snacking and wasn't really hungry by the time it arrived. And I drank the Coke I'd ordered -- planning to have it WAY before bedtime, as caffeine keeps me awake. (Yes, I'm a wimp.) Said caffeine did keep me up, long after the Oscars had finally ended.

About an hour after I finally fell asleep, my cell-phone alarm went off. It was clearly set for the right time in the morning, but it buzzed me awake nonetheless. It took me awhile to drift off again. A couple of hours later, I was awoken by quacking ducks. Yup, ducks. It took me a minute of "WTF?" in bed before I realized it was the white-noise function on the alarm clock, the same clock I couldn't FIND an alarm button for, so didn't set. I pushed buttons until I got the quacking to stop. Fifteen minutes later, the jungle noises started. White noise again. Damn.

So I barely slept at all that first night. And then I was out of my room from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday. So much for alone time. There was some good stuff at the conference, some mediocre. About to be expected.

I did squeeze in some time for myself on Tuesday. As the event wrapped up, I had an afternoon to kill before catching my flight home. I decided to see all I could see on foot, within walking distance of the Omni. A CNN tour had been part of my activities the day before, so that was done. (Bleh, too.) I wandered through Underground Atlanta, which I thought was going to be historic and exclusive. The shops hovered around the "Everything for a Dollar" level, which at least was within my spending range. The history was limited to a plaque here and there describing the facade of a 19th-century building.

The highlight of my downtown walking tour was The World of Coca-Cola. While not nearly as kitchy and cool as the Dr Pepper Museum in Waco, Texas, I spent a couple of strange hours in Coke world. No mention was made to cocaine (which Adam says confirms the drink used to contain it -- otherwise they'd have addressed the rumor), but a pretty complete history is given nonetheless. I was enthralled by the marketing genius from the very beginning at Coca-Cola. The logo was sketched by the original pharmacist's accountant and has stuck ever since. The company made the famous contoured bottle so that "even in the dark" you'd know you had a Coke; many factories produced more than one brand of drink, so the bottles were the same. All of them tried to look like Coke. The contoured bottle was Coke's answer.

Advertising products from the late 1800s on were amazing. Kiosks telling "Coca-Cola stories" were a little creepy, like the Georgia preacher who makes folk art shaped like bottles and paints his testimony on the back. (Apparently it sells well. "I charge for the art, but the message is free," he says.) Creepiest, though, was a production by Coca-Cola itself, a nine-minute tour through Coke in other countries. You're locked in a little theater with a chorus playing over and over, of a pop song that croons "It's a part of your life every day, like sun and air." It's rare I go a day without seeing the logo, though I don't drink it daily. Still, the song was disturbing, as were the set up scenes of the Japanese family sitting down to a traditional meal with their brimming glasses of Coke, the driver barreling past the pyramids and men on camels, the yacht team stopping to share a can.

I have to admit, though, I choked during the best part of the museum. I knew I'd get a sample at the end. Even if I hadn't been bright enough to figure that out on my own, signs everywhere said to watch for my treat. So when I entered the room with all Coke's U.S. products in the fountains, I drank about four teeny cups of Vanilla Coke, my own addiction. I tasted Barq's Red Creme Soda, which was so-so. But mostly, I OD'd on V Coke.

As I left the room, thinking I'd be deposited in the gift shop, I realized there was one section left. Fountains of international products, and here I was, full of the drink I can get in a vending machine at work. I did sample a few. If you're ever offered ginger beer, turn it down. You'll feel better for it. Lychee nut drinks, however, are pretty tasty. Many of the rest of the offerings were like melted Jolly Ranchers -- apple and apricot, strawberry and watermelon.

After leaving the Coke museum (with a long stop in the gift shop), I wandered over to the Georgia capitol. I'd glimpsed the dome through a museum window and figured that's what the building must be. There wasn't that much to see, though it was a gorgeous site.

Part of the novelty of the trip was I could do things on my own schedule, not Emma's. Between the giant breakfast the conference fed me and the gallons of soda I'd consumed, I didn't eat lunch till 3 p.m. While in the mall at 12, I felt compelled to eat, because it was time, even though I wasn't hungry. I held out, though, and strolled downtown later hoping to find someplace local. No go, though I did skip anything I could eat at home, finding a build-your-own-burrito shop called Moe's (which is a chain, I'm sure).

I'd walked a few miles by this time and was pretty beat. But it was still hours to my flight, and I'd had to check out of the hotel and stow my luggage with the bellman before leaving. So despite my exhaustion, I was still looking for things to do. I wandered around Georgia State's campus a little, having seen the amazing new addition at Georgia Tech as part of the conference. (It cost $180 million. Astounding.) I saw all I could see, enjoying the difference of being in a big city. Nearly back to the hotel, I glimpsed signs for the Georgia World Congress Center. I knew nothing except I'd heard of it, so thought I'd check it out. A total waste, as my throbbing legs agreed, as it was just a conference center. A pretty, cool conference center, but nothing I needed to tour.

So I camped out in a quiet nook in the hotel, reading the third of my five books until time for the airport. My taxi driver text-messaged someone while he drove, which was a little scary. (I was messaging at the same time, but I wasn't behind the wheel.) Again with the novelty, I just had Starbucks' hot chocolate and a pastry for dinner. The main thing I'd done on the trip was eat, so I didn't exactly need a full meal. And the hotel bathroom had a scale -- how strange is that? I wouldn't think they'd want guests to worry about poundage while staying there.

Speaking of the hotel, glitches were paramount. I mentioned the Oscars. Two of my lamps -- including the all-important bedside, reading one -- had burned-out bulbs. When I ordered a web-TV service, the keyboard didn't work. After the batteries were replaced, it was slow and ridiculously hard to use. (Besides the fact that neither email system I use worked with it.) And then the service asked me to pay again after about four hours, when it was supposed to be good until noon the next day. There was hair in the bathtub and the sink. A few times Adam called, he was told the number was disconnected or I'd checked out. Nothing very big, but a lot of little things that added up to me sitting in the room, waiting for someone to fix something.

All in all, even considering the strange guy at the airport who wouldn't stop talking to me and the three women and the newborn seated near me on the plane who'd never flown before, it was a good trip. I learned some things, work wise, that might give me added motivation in the office. Lots of good ideas to try and things to implement.

And being gone from Emma wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, even though she asked, "Are you coming home now?" every time we talked, including five hours after I'd left her on Sunday. I read her books over the phone, she told me everything she'd done and I snuggled up with a crib blanket she insisted I had to take with me.

I'm pooped now, between traveling and playing catch up after getting back. But it was worth it.

It's a good thing I took five books on the trip. I needed them all! I finished the one I was in the middle of, read three cover to cover and started the fifth.

Check out the mini-reviews in the sidebar or visit the 2004 list.

I hope to squeeze in some Atlanta news at some point today ... but it doesn't look good. Too much to do!

So far this morning, Emma and I made monkey bread for breakfast and baked a chocolate chocolate-chip pound cake. (And it didn't all come out of the bundt pan. Damn it. Em swears "It is pretty!) No, we're not just on a carb fest (though after eating hotel and fast food for the last few days, anything homemade is delicious). We're celebrating Adam's birthday.

So, first and foremost, before any Atlanta posts or book reviews, happy birthday, honey. Go over or email and send him well wishes. His cake looks like crap, after all. (Though god, it tastes good. The only plus to leaving bits stuck to the pan is that there are pieces to taste before we cut it ...)

So far, he's got a new universal remote from Bryan and I and a bag of Swedish fish from Em. I suspect the remote -- which is part of the reason I pushed for TiVo, I already had this gift in mind and needed to know if we were going to have the service before I picked which one -- will be a fun toy for a while. He's got lots of programming and stuff to do, and with any luck, we'll only have one remote instead of five. You think?

Emma and I had planned to make his favorite meal for lunch today (it's my at-home day, but considering how late I got in last night, I'd have probably stayed home anyway). But he's using his lunch hour to give blood on his birthday, ya'll. And we can't make it for dinner, because it's a Gymboree art night, and he's willing to forego his celebration for Em's fun. We'll do the lunch on Saturday, the night of his wild shindig.

Happy, happy birthday, Adam. I'm so lucky you were born, 30 years ago today.

I've tried to post four times now from this web TV service -- which also won't let me check work or personal mail -- with no luck. This is my last attempt, and it's got to be quick, since I've now lost 30 minues, the first I've had to myself all day.

So you'l have to wait till I return for book reviews, the art of the schmooze and details of my long, bad night.
I'm out for another reception and dinner. Yay.