Another hectic day:

• First thing this morning, dropped the car off for it's 5000-mile service and to correct a recall on the seat belt. I'm driven from the dealership to my office, and an hour later they tell me they're done. I'm driven from my office back to the dealership only to find that they've done the service, but didn't have the part for the seat belt (and they were the ones who called and set up the appointment in the first place). Obviously, I'll be back there some time soon.

• Drive back to the office. The baby jays are getting bigger in the nest outside my window - where I used to only be able to see little beaks when daddy jay arrived, I can now see whole heads and even little featherless wings.

• Client asked if we could meet at his office downtown. I said "sure" and stopped home for lunch on the way (I live between my office and his). Tough traffic - made the meeting just in time.

• Headed back home after the meeting, and saw on line that the owner of The Flying Biscuit has sold her restaurant to a corporation. This is sad. The Flying Biscuit was one of those unique Atlanta institutions (there's actually two of them) undiluted by corporate banality. It's a place where pierced and tattooed waitresses would bring you biscuits with apple jelly and eggs over easy on a Sunday morning, and even though you waited outside under the Georgia sun for 90 minutes for a table to open up, when you got your food you decided it was worth it. But now, the new owners say they are going to open 50 new Flying Biscuits next year and another 50 in 2008. With 100 new restaurants out in the 'burbs and the Bible Belt, they'll have to replace the funky in-town waitresses with former supermarket cashiers and, I dunno, Hooters girls. You can probably expect to see a FB restaurant near you soon. If you've got a Moe's, a Doc Green's or a Shane's near you, you're in the market area of the FB's new corporate owners, and you can get your biscuits in the same strip mall as your Bed, Bath & Beyond, Old Navy and 64-Screen Mega-Theater.

• After digesting that news, I drove back downtown in even heavier traffic to the City meeting where I was to express the neighborhood concerns over the planned big thing that I won't talk about here. The meeting lasted from 6 to 9 pm, but interestingly, the meeting became, well, interesting. I got to express some of the concerns, but the other neighborhood reps and I found the city planners much more receptive than we all had thought, and rather than turn into a bitching session, the meeting got into some very interesting areas of environmental justice, development and capitalism, the science of public opinion surveys, and long-term urban planning. Sure, it was a big wank-fest, and they're still going to build the big-thing-which-shall-not-here-be-named anyway, but at least we were intellectually entertained for a while. Thanks, Atlanta!, and too bad about the biscuits.

• Best part of the day: driving home, pulling up to my urban bungalow around 9:30, a fox ran across my street and into my back yard. Readers of this blog will know that I'm queer for wildlife, and although I've seen fox in the area before, specifically, the nearby golf course, I didn't think they lived in my wooded backyard. Now I can hope that the fox will eat the cat that ate my chipmunks.