{"id":572,"date":"2006-09-09T22:34:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-09T22:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=572"},"modified":"2025-04-25T19:06:48","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T19:06:48","slug":"rocket-jr-needs-a-mobile-phone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=572","title":{"rendered":"Rocket, Jr. needs a mobile phone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I walked into the front room of the house.  WeeRocket was on Stacey&#8217;s cellphone.<\/p>\n<p>Ro: Yeah, so I just went poopy&#8230; so that&#8217;s good&#8230;  Okay&#8230; g&#8217;bye!<\/p>\n<p>He slapped the phone shut like a pro, and dropped it on the couch.  He walked past me headed to the kitchen saying, &#8220;That was Jay&#8217;s mom.  She&#8217;s still sick.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I guess three year olds gotta talk about something.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Stacey and I watched the first episode of <i>Curb Your Enthusiasm<\/i> last night.  Yawn.  We&#8217;ll be sending it back on Monday with the remaining three episodes unwatched.<\/p>\n<p><!--more This Day in History--><br \/>\n&#8212;<br \/>\nAugust 31<sup>st<\/sup> was my 10 year anniversary of arriving in Atlanta.  I completely forgot.  Largely because I was at the beach.  <\/p>\n<p>Saturday, August 31, 1996.  The first meal I had was at Fellini&#8217;s Pizza on Peachtree.  I had checked into my 1 star motel in Peachtree City (near my first job at Panasonic Car Audio) and made a beeline to the city for lunch.  I did not know a soul (or so I thought) in the entire metro area (excepting my college roommate&#8217;s parents lived in Roswell).<\/p>\n<p>I had gotten nothing but bad advice about Atlanta prior to arriving, and it continued for a month or two after living here:<\/p>\n<p>1. &#8220;Check out Buckhead.  That&#8217;s probably where you&#8217;ll be spending most of your free time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>2. &#8220;Vinings is a really cool place to live.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>3. &#8220;You know an awesome place to go?  Stone Mountain.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>and so on&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I can probably pinpoint that moment sitting outside eating pizza as the inflection point of the darkest period of my adult life, financially and emotionally.  I had had to borrow some money from my parents to get to Atlanta.  F***ing Citibank Visa refused to extend my (then maxed out) $1500 credit limit so I could buy gas and other sundries, even though I offered to fax them the paperwork showing I was starting a new job as an engineer.  Amazingly, they still maintain the belief that I would become a Citibank customer again with their incessant junk mail.<\/p>\n<p>In the previous couple weeks, I had been cheated on and dumped by my girlfriend of 3.5 years, my car windows had been smashed out just prior to a rainstorm (contributing to the maxed-outed-ness of my credit card), and I&#8217;d been unemployed for three months since getting my Masters at Tulane.<\/p>\n<p>Within a year, I was closing on my first home in Midtown, performing regularly at Dad&#8217;s Garage, and designing movie theater sound systems.  Life&#8217;s continued since on a not-too-bumpy ascent.<\/p>\n<p>I gotta go to Fellini&#8217;s sometime soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I walked into the front room of the house. WeeRocket was on Stacey&#8217;s cellphone. Ro: Yeah, so I just went poopy&#8230; so that&#8217;s good&#8230; Okay&#8230; g&#8217;bye! He slapped the phone shut like a pro, and dropped it on the couch. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=572\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[472,473],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-2","category-rocketboy-family-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3761,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572\/revisions\/3761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}