I have often spoken ill of my time in Middle Georgia. I was unhappy there, so I tend to remember and focus on what I hated. I can do what I always do and bum hard on my time there. Or I can decide that some of it had to be good. So, what's good about Georgia?

First of all, Georgia was gorgeous. Lush & green in the spring, hot as fuck in the summer, gloriously colored in the autumn and snowy and pristine in the winter. Actual seasons sort of blew me away because in Houston, there are two seasons: surface of the sun and ice storm.

Also, Macon, GA was a font of tragic celebrities. I got a coworker to show me the two spots where Duane Allman and Berry Oakley died. I'd drive by Otis Redding's house. Just before I left Macon, they were opening the Georgia Music Hall of Fame there. I wish I would have checked it out before I left. Oh well.

And the last good thing I took from that time and place is hockey. True story, same coworker who fostered my burgeoning curiosity about death spots also took me to my first hockey game. The Macon Whoopee were playing. It was 1) the best name ever for a hockey team @) seats on the glass for $15 and x) some of the most fun I had the whole time I was there. I watched a kid take a skate to the eyebrow region, skate over to a bench, get stitched up, skate back out and finish the period. Holy shit, hockey players are awesome. Talk about giving your everything to do what you love.

Please to enjoy Otis Redding, recorded three days before he died in a plane crash in a lake in Wisconsin (that's why the whistling is there, it's a place mark for lyrics he had yet to write) - Sittin' on the Dock O' the Bay