Home > Lawrenceville.Talk > Archives > 2006 > May
May 2006
Will we ever see $2 gas again?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Spend too much on gas this past Memorial Day Weekend?
Sure you did.
Right along with about 38 million other Americans.
Last year this time, post-Memorial Day barbecuing, I found a gas station with the cheapest rates in Lawrenceville. The tip off? Minivans, SUVs, foreign compacts and good ol’ all-American gas-guzzlers circled this station in triplicate like a flock of vultures honing in on road kill. The true sign of a real bargain.
A few weeks later, a barbecue grill appeared every weekend right there in the Citgo parking lot. A smoking black barrel on the outside, cold drinks and a hot nacho cheese-making machine on the inside, and cheap gas prices that no one else had. What more is needed to survive?
Last week this time, pre-Memorial Day barbecuing, I passed this same spot that now charges 30 cents more than all the surrounding stations. The rates are too high so the customers have disappeared. And so has the barbecue grill in the parking lot.
So much for free enterprise.
I do a lot of complaining about gas prices like I don’t remember the 1970s when my father could only fill up on even-numbered days, that is, if there was any gas available.
Or like I don’t remember hurricane seasons in Miami in the 1980s when gas prices went up with every warning, causing long lines reminiscent of when Nixon was president. Except there’d be fist fights over pumps and yelling in two languages and people with automatic weapons in their glove compartments just in case someone tried to cut them off.
Still, in both cases, the gas prices always came back down.
Maybe cheap gas is just another revolving part of history. Maybe decades from now my youngest son will pay $2 a gallon. Or maybe his car will run on Mazola corn oil. Maybe he’ll tell his son about the hot cheese nachos he always ate while waiting in a long gas line in Lawrenceville as smoke from a nearby barbecue grill steamed up the car windows.
Deal or no deal: Do you think we will ever see $2 gas again in Lawrenceville?
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment | Categories: Jacqueline Bullard
Graduation showdown at Arena?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Starting today through Saturday, Gwinnett County high schools will salute more than 7,600 graduating seniors. Ten schools will do this inside the Arena at Gwinnett Center.
Biologically speaking, that means there must be about 15,000 of you just like me with 12th-grade offspring. Those of us who have spent $60 on a yearbook and $3 a day on school lunches that were barely eaten.
We went to not-so-tasty spaghetti dinners at the school and too-early-in-the-morning pancake breakfasts so that some segment of our child’s education could have a profitable season.
And now, finally, we’re finished!
Then we learn only eight family members will be allowed at graduation.
It’s like Willie Wonka giving out golden tickets to the Chocolate Factory: Charlie, Veruca, Violet and Augustus plus one guest only. The rest of y’all aren’t invited to the festivities.
So who should get to go to the ceremony?
The relatives who sent presents and checks for every birthday and every holiday for the entire life of the graduate?
Or the ones who have missed every birthday and every holiday but have sent four e-mails pleading for plush, air-conditioned seats inside Gwinnett Arena?
So far, only one person has a guaranteed seat at my son’s graduation. That’s my mother who has been talking about it every day for six months. This is due in part to her six-month existence in assisted living. Days filled with easily digestible foods and early bedtimes culminating with eight or nine prescriptions. Coming here is actually a plot she cooked up to escape physical therapy.
All the other blood relatives of the graduate will just have to continue arguing.
“X-Men” may open in theaters this Friday. But for my graduate’s family, split in half by divorce, it’s X Games at the Arena while we decide which eight family members are most important.
If you have a child in the exponentially growing Gwinnett County School System, expect larger and larger graduation classes in the future. Maybe your child will graduate from the Georgia Dome or Phillips Arena!
Finally, to my 15,000 fellow Gwinnett County parents of 12th graders, congratulations!
But who in your family will actually be at graduation?
Permalink | Comments (25) | Categories: Jacqueline Bullard
Lawrenceville native or transplant?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
More than 726,000 people live in Gwinnett County. This is according to something called the 2006 state of the county report that provides all sorts of lovely county answers to all sorts of lovely county questions.
Except the most important one: why do all these people just keep on coming?
Natives, does this bother you? Are you tired of us coming?
Wait, we transplants have more questions! We want to know a little something.
Please stand up and tell us what you did for entertainment when Gwinnett was considered the boonies before the birth of the mall and 18-theater cineplexes.
Tell us if folks could get television stations out here before Charter Communications. Because it’s like you’re not used to watching TV since “American Idol” is the only show discussed by 100,000 native Georgians.
What was life like here before Wal-Mart executives learned how to grow from zero to 60 stores in a matter of minutes, and Wachovia and Publix staked out every intersection?
How does it feel to look out in your yard at the trees and shrubs your great-grandparents planted, instead of fancy landscaping done by day laborers moonlighting outside the Home Depot garden section?
Dear natives, as a transplant, I’ve accepted people in the tag office using a Southern drawl to pronounce the Latin “ad valorem.” But I still don’t understand why those rates are so high and why meals always start here with sweet tea and end with banana pudding.
Make no mistake, we transplants love living here, especially the cheap gas stations. But we must attest to the superiority of a giant 7-Eleven Slurpee as something way better than anything QT could think of selling.
The saddest memory of a transplant is that first Sunday spent in Georgia. You think, perhaps a little Chardonnay with Sunday dinner, or a six pack while watching the Falcons. Then you find out you’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto, because there are no Sunday sales here of alcoholic beverages.
Transplants, are you happy now that you live in Georgia?
Natives, do you want more respect for being the founding fathers?
Permalink | Comments (49) | Categories: Jacqueline Bullard
Why I hate ‘Trading Spaces’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here are my nine easy steps to hating “Trading Spaces.”
Clean and organize garage — using tips from “Trading Spaces” episodes.
Later discover a leaking water heater has turned garage into a large pond.
Ignore situation and use gigantic 10-pound stockpot given to you as Christmas present to pour hot water into bathtub.
Burn fingertips carrying gigantic 10-pound stockpot filled with scalding water up and down staircase to bathtub.
Admit defeat and shop for new water heater at Home Depot, Sears and Lowes.
Argue with salespeople about extra installation fees based on ZIP code.
Realize it is impossible to lie about ZIP code to save money since water heater will be delivered to home.
Cry at VISA charge of $611 for new water heater, expansion tank, installation and mysterious Gwinnett County water heater permit fee.
Realize “Trading Spaces” made homeownership seem cheap by renovating spaces for under 1,000 bucks.
This list reflects a true story. The names of the stores have not been changed to protect the innocent because there is nothing innocent about charging mysterious water heater permit fees based on Gwinnett County ZIP codes. I felt like they were collecting fees on behalf of the city/county just like taxes.
There is nothing innocent about the city of Lawrenceville attaching a $120 permit fee to a resident’s sales transaction claiming this covers the cost of an inspector verifying the water heater was properly installed. The great mystery is whether these inspectors actually show up.
Thankfully, by some random act of planning and zoning, my street is actually outside the city limits, although I still call Lawrenceville home. The cost of my permit fee collected on behalf of Gwinnett County? $30.
I only survived this episode because of emergency questions phoned into Dr. Ken, Medicine Man. This is my brother-in-law, acclaimed do-it-yourselfer, able to surgically install water heaters all alone.
The one question the Medicine Man couldn’t answer from his home — 1,700 miles away — is why the city of Lawrenceville would charge $120 when Gwinnett County only charged $30 to approve a water heater install.
“Is this just another way to rip people off, Dr. Ken?”
“But of course.”
I thanked Dr. Ken for his diagnosis. For giving me tools for Christmas. For telling me which seasonal bug killer to buy after being under contract with a pest control company for an entire year although ants still spent summer vacation on the first floor of my home. And thanks for the gigantic 10-pound stockpot that can fill a bathtub.
Is “Trading Spaces” guilty of making homeownership look cheap? Or as someone living OTCL (outside the city limits of Lawrenceville), should I just be happy I saved $90 by not living ITCL when I needed a water heater installed?
In short, what do you think of these water heater permit fees?
Permalink | Comments (14) | Categories: Jacqueline Bullard
Wanted: New commute route
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Ga. 316 interchange at I-85 looks like an L.A. freeway is on the horizon.
The cause: Pre-construction prep work by the Department of Transportation for the 13 bridges due at this Great Divide. (They say by 2008, but you know that means 2009.)
So let’s just call it like it is: The interchange is bald. No trees. No shrubs. No vegetation. Just mounds of dirt and occasional humps of road kill, thanks to the $147 million extinction of wildlife.
The 316 commute westbound ain’t so great these days. It means 40 minutes spent in a reduced-speed zone dominated by Gwinnett County police while cars merge into the one lane left leading to I-85. This constant threat of a double-fine speeding ticket is like living “Cops: Episode 316” morning, noon and night.
At least, now that the DOT has scalped the land like a well-meaning barber working overtime, commuters have new scenic views at the Great Divide.
On a clear day you can see well enough to pick out your dream car from the Gwinnett Place BMW dealership while sitting in rush hour on the highway — say for instance, the $81,000 M5.
Or choose a $170,000 newly built townhouse facing Breckinridge Boulevard, heretofore hidden by lush foliage, but now with perfect backyard barbecue views of eight lanes of I-85.
Sadly, 316 and I have reached the end of the road. I just can’t do bald, boring and slow. (Though this is precisely what those dating sites match me with.)
I’ve already tried taking Lawrenceville Highway through Lilburn (land of a thousand school zones). I’ve also looped around Old Norcross Road (methinks this is just like I-285). I’ve also ridden Sugarloaf Parkway from the 316 side to the I-85 side. But you know that already because hundreds of you were on the road, too, the day I made that drive.
For someone heading to Atlanta, is there no sane highway left for leaving Lawrenceville to drive?
Permalink | Comments (19) | Categories: Jacqueline Bullard
Services »
